Tag: Birmingham UK

Podnosh is based in Birmingham in the UK, so often we write about exciting things that are going on near us.

Links: Trust, collaborative planning and google maps

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On Demand Micro Volunteering by mobile phone from the Extraordinares. Hat tip Thriving.

All the News that’s fit to Network. “So if there’s trust to be created, there’s money to be earned. Trust is the foundation for a value proposition. All else equal, it stands to reason that users will pay more for the news in which they have more trust. If so, then it follows that users will pay more for the news they use based on a relationship with creators, in whom they can place more trust than they can in newspapers as brands.”

Michael Grimes on The Big City Plan:  “I truly believe there are lots of people in the council who really want this to work. But the bureaucracy of Birmingham City Council seems incapable of understanding how public engagement works.” Jon Bounds on the same: “The resources needed to produce the Big City Talk site were only time (the domain name cost £2.99, and I used existing hosting), the skills we used would have been readily available within the council structure — and experience if needed is already in the city. The only thing stopping Birmingham City Council running a “social” online consultation was the organisational will. I think there may be more of that now.”

Steven Tuck uses Big City Talk to get tongues wagging in a Social Media Session at Kirklees Council
Google Maps created with a spreadsheet of addresses.

Control Shift – The Conservatives on Local Government

With a name like Control Shift it would be rude not to blog about Conservative plans for local government. You can download the whole document here, this summary is taken from here:

Control Shift’, our decentralisation green paper, outlines a series of policies that will see powers transferred from the central state to local people and local institutions:

  1. Abolishing all regional planning and housing powers exercised by regional government, returning powers and discretion back to local communities
  2. Creating bottom-up incentives for house building, by allowing councils to benefit more from the increase in council tax revenues from new homes, rather than being equalised away by Whitehall
  3. Allowing councils to establish their own local enterprise partnerships to take over the economic development functions and funding of the Regional Development Agencies
  4. Giving local authorities a new discretionary power to levy business rate discounts, allowing them to help local shops and services, such as rural pubs or post offices
  5. Provide citizens in all large cities with the opportunity to choose whether to have an elected mayor, through mayoral referendums
  6. Greater use of direct democracy, including allowing residents to veto high council tax rises, and instigating local referendums on local issues
  7. Requiring councils to publish detailed information online on expenditure by local councils – including the pay and perks of senior staff, and issuing new guidance to stop ‘rewards for failure’ to sacked town hall staff.
    Caroline Spelman, the Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, said, “It’s not just about empowering local government; we want to empower the people it serves so that they can have more say in how much of their money they want their council to spend on their behalf.”

In the Guardian David Cameron writes:

Many worry that decentralisation is a step backwards. But localism isn’t some romantic attachment to the past. It is absolutely essential to our economic, social and political future. If our local economies are vibrant and strong we are far less vulnerable to global shocks or the failures of a few dominant industries. If people know that their actions can make a real difference to their local communities, they’re far more motivated to get involved – and civic pride is revived. If local government is both more powerful and more accountable, we can start to restore the trust that’s been lost in our political system. It’s for these practical reasons that I am a confirmed localist, committed to turning Britain’s pyramid of power on its head.

To my mind the green paper appears to be suggesting very modest shifts of power towards anything that resembles local. A presumption that local councillors should have money to spend in their patch is about as close to home as it seems to get. It seems to embody the same struggle that the mainstream media is having with understanding what is local. Local radio is rarely what I would consider local – likewise local government. The question remains how can government (rather the people who spend public money)  really get involved in useful conversations at a local level – ones which will improve decision making.

Director of Digital Engagement – Cabinet Office.

I’ve always thought encouraging the active use of social media in government is a patient game. Culture change takes time and asking people to start listening in new ways, joining new conversations, collaborating with new people is a substantial culture change.  What it can lead to is a step change again.

Fortunately the Cabinet Office is quite impatient to see progress. They are looking for a Director of Digital Engagement (salary £81,000 – £160,000) who will take on “a new role charged with getting Government to work differently.

This will require Government and individual departments to change the way they do business – from consulting citizens to collaborating with them on the development of policy and how public services are delivered to them. It will involve supporting Ministers and senior officials in entering conversations in which Government does not control the message or the dialogue.

Within six months the Head of Digital Engagement will have developed a strategy and implementation plan and be able to show concrete signs of momentum in executing the plan.

Within a year the Head of Digital Engagement should be able to point to two departments whose use of digital engagement are recognised in the digital community as being world class

Within two years the use of world class digital engagement techniques should be embedded in the normal work of Government”

Umh. Is Tom Loosemore really ready to leave 4ip or perhaps Richard Allan wants a change from Cisco?  Steph Gray from Dius has already begun thinking about what this “poor soul” should do first and with uservoice has begun voting on just that problem (No 1 appears to be promote the use of small contracts and contractors for govt IT). Even Jeff  Jarvis noted the job. So there’s some names. Who else do you think ought to be sharpening their pencil?

Update: 1 Dominic Campbell fleshes out the role: “the Digi Director must also avoid becoming embedded in government and spend as much time out and about as possible, out with the policy makers, politicians and social innovators. They will also need uber executive back up from somewhere in government to make the change happen, with experiences such as those of the recently ex-civil servant Jeremy Gould highlighting the distance the government still has to travel before it truly gets the web and is willing to invest appropriate amounts of time and attention in it.”

2 I fear that Dave Briggs coinage of blogging tsar might catch on. Twould be a shame.

3 A campaign, begun to get the job for darrenbbc, as already had cold watered poured on it by Tom Watson. Sheesh – the job applications will be crowd sourced, why not teh job itself!

4 Paul Evans toys with the Robin Williams problem, do ‘they’ really want to be that engaging.

Mappa Mercia – Open source mapping for Birmingham

An open source street map of Birmingham has been completed by volunteers – next they will be turning their attention to the Black Country, unless of course the Ordnance Survey open up it’s data as recommended in the Power of Information Taskforce report.  (Come on OS – save these folk some pixel work.)  I’m also told that the folk who handcrafted every pixel are keen to come to the next Social Media Surgery.
Below is an entire news release from  www.mappa-mercia.org

“OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by people like you.”

PRESS RELEASE FEBRUARY 9th 2009

Today Birmingham takes another huge step to becoming a digital City. The metropolitan area of Birmingham and its environs within the motorway ring have been completely digitally remapped by its own citizens in a format which is freely editable and available at www.openstreetmap.org.

It is the first English city to be completely remapped in this way. It joins the likes of Paris, Berlin, Canberra and Vienna

Birmingham now has a digital map that is more up-to-date and accurate than all other online or satnav maps. Only Ordnance Survey can claim to be more accurate – and they have huge technical and financial resources at their disposal.

(Click here for a detailed view of Birmingham )

The OpenStreetMap of Birmingham has been created by local people, with local knowledge, who take pride in how their neighbourhoods are represented. They can match, and even surpass, the efforts of commercial mappers who spend millions creating this kind of rich data. A dedicated band of 100 volunteers has been collecting GPS data whilst cycling, walking, and riding the buses and trains. One of our team has even mapped by canal boat!

The raw positional data is supplemented by additional visual observations on the ground and then edited into a format that can be rendered as a map readable by humans. All the software used in the project has been developed as open source software and is free to download and use. All participants have to do is invest their time and pay attention to detail. All data once submitted is editable in a wiki-style process.

“It’s very satisfying to see a complete city mapped in OpenStreetMap. Four years ago when this project was created we were looking at a blank screen and most commentators thought we were crazy.” said Andy Robinson, secretary of the OpenStreetMap Foundation and a prolific mapper in the West Midlands.

The Birmingham effort is part of a worldwide movement to digitally remap the entire planet which started in 2004. The project was originated in the UK and now involves some 85,000 enthusiasts globally, who have so far mapped almost 14 million miles of road globally. We have mapped some15,000 residential roads, 6,000 footpaths and 9,000 other roads in Birmingham ( and over 700 bus stops, 300 pubs, 200 traffic lights and 300 postboxes)

Why re-map the world?

We need a free dataset for programmers, social activists, cartographers, and communities and the like to use geodata and create maps suited to their purposes without being limited by proprietary restrictions designed to protect large corporate investments in geodata. Under-developed countries are particularly helped by a project of this sort, because it is just not economic for commercial mappers to map their areas in detail.

How can it be accurate? The essence of a wiki-style process is that all users have a stake in having accurate data. If one person puts in inaccurate data, maliciously or accidentally, the other 99.9% of people can check it, fix it, or get rid of it.

Just think how amazing it was a few years back when you saw Google Maps for the first time. Suddenly mapping was cool, and access via an API* lead to a wave of innovation. Satnav was nowhere 3 years ago. Look at it now! But you still can’t access the incredible amount of data locked behind the API and you can’t add or improve it, so your applications are limited. Just think of the explosion of innovation, much of it in unexpected areas, that’s possible when the data is available!

All the software used in the project has been developed as opensource software and is free to download and use. The data and maps are licensed by Creative Commons which defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright — all rights reserved — and the public domain — no rights reserved. What this means to users (and this isn’t legal advice) is basically you can do what you like with the data, so long as you mention the original creator and the licence and anyone else can do the same with anything you produce.

A flagship example of the power of opening up access to geodata is OpenCycleMap.

It’s a customised online map for cyclists, based on OpenStreetMap data. It shows things that are interesting to cyclists including signed cycle routes, offroad cycle paths, bike shops and bike parking – and of course hills – whilst diminishing other things like motorways that are of little interest. It’s built on top of OpenStreetMap, and was recently commended by the British Cartographic Society.

So we’ve got a map, what’s next?

1. There’s most of the Black Country to map for a start!

2. Local businesses and organisations can start using OSM maps and data, rather than proprietary sources, freeing themselves from the technical, financial and accuracy restrictions of commercial mapping providers.

3. Now that we have a complete set of local data, Midlands software developers can start using it to create novel applications (e.g road traffic simulations, tourist trails, restaurant guides).

Why would a business consider using OpenStreetMap data when anyone can use maps from Google, Mapquest or Yahoo for free? Put succinctly: they have control. OSM data and map users have significantly more control over their maps than someone who uses a free API. With OSM you can modify, supplement and select the data to create a highly customised map.

4. It might take a 100 people to produce a map like this but we need a 1,000 to keep it up to date. We need communities and individuals to improve and verify the map via a simple tool available at http://openstreetbugs.appspot.com/ (or on our local West Midlands site http://www.mappa-mercia.org/openstreetbugs.shtml ) All they need is local knowledge and access to the internet.

For more information, individuals and community organisations can contact Brian Prangle 0121 604 1141 and community@mappa-mercia.org

Press contact Andy Robinson Tel No 07775537872 and press@mappa-mercia.org

More information for editors can be found at:

www.openstreetfoundation.org

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Main_Page

www.openstreetmap.org.

www.opencyclemap.org/

Images of one year of edits for the whole planet:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterito/3054501076/in/pool-itomedia

Animation of all the edits we have for Birmingham showing progress from initiation to today:

http://blip.tv/file/1625650

We have gathered all the resources together in a specific West Midlands website:

www.mappa-mercia.org