Tag: Local Councils

Stuff I've seen June 9th through June 13th

These are my links for June 9th through June 13th:

  • Local Works | Campaigning to implement the Sustainable Communities Act – You can only use the radical new bottom-up powers in the Sustainable Communities Act if your councils (district/borough/city and county) choose to use it too! See the map and list below for those who have. If your councils have not already done so please write to them (and urge others to write too!), this sample letter will help you.
  • The Open Rights Group – But with Lord Carter departing, there is a serious question as to whether the government will push the Digital Britain agenda forward at all. Who will pick up the brief; will they support and desire the completion of its recommendations; will they be able to build up the political will to see any proposals through Parliament, especially as its mood darkens?
  • BBC NEWS | Technology | Web creator job 'beyond politics' – The inventor of the world wide web has been asked by the prime minister to help open up access to government data.
  • I smell a government rat in my news | Online Journalism Blog – To help you measure the amount of government-funded journalism, Nicolas Kayser-Bril built this little app, I smell a government rat in my news. Just type in any query and you’ll see the share of articles produced with state funds.
  • Peregrine Falcons – Worcester Webcam – Great work from Worcester City Council to engage public interest and establish broader positive relations with folk.

“Councils are no longer dependent on traditional media to communicate their messages”

This has come from Vicky Sargeant at the Socitm press office and I offer it to you verbatim simply because I don’t have time to fully digest it and add links just now, there doesn’t seem to be a apge to link too, but I don’t want to forget to share it with you:

News Release:

County Councils saw their web traffic double last Friday and Saturday thanks to their provision of a sophisticated online election results service coupled with use of social media tolls like Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds and email alerts.

Figures from the Socitm Website Takeup service, subscribed to by more than half of all county councils show that on Friday 5th and Saturday 6th June, web traffic to county council websites was more than double that of the Friday and Saturday of the previous week.

This trend is bourne out by results from individual councils like Derbyshire, which last Friday saw the highest ever number of visits to its website in one day including more than 19,000 visits to its election section alone.

The sophistication of the election results coverage by councils through their websites has been captured through a survey by Socitm Insight, publishers of the annual Better connected report on council website quality. The survey looked at websites of county councils and new unitaries where elections had been held to see how the results were being reported. It followed a similar exercise carried out at the last county elections in May 2005.

The survey found that almost all councils were reporting results on their websites ‘live’ or as near to real-time as possible and were carrying very prominent links and features on the home page. Many included some form of interactive map, summary tables and charts or other graphics to allow visitors to follow the results as they happened and to access a summary in various forms. Some councils provided TV style graphics including ‘virtual council chambers’ filling up with figures in party colours as the results came in.

A few councils provided a live online comparison with previous election results, showing whether seats were being held, lost or gained. A number of councils stated when the count was due to start, but even better were councils who offered an estimate as to what time the first result was likely to be expected.

Nine councils were also promoting their use of RSS feeds and / or Twitter to publish the results, using these opportunities for to enhance their interaction with the public through these new channels. During the results period, fans on Derbyshire’s Facebook page rose from 22 to 73 and their Twitter account followers rose from 122 to 335. Derbyshire’s Facebook ‘fans’ were contributing comments, and responding to one another as the day unfolded. One said ‘Local newspaper site reporting recounts in Long Eaton while Twitter and @derbyshirecc knows its over. SO behind. V. poor compared to you guys. Many thanks for all the hard work pulling this together today’.

Other innovations noted on election pages included:

  • Norfolk County Council – featured its YouTube video on why you should vote
  • Lancashire County Council – offered the facility to subscribe to receive results by e-mail
  • North Yorkshire County Council – featured a video about how the democratic process works

Surrey County Council – charts included a summary of holds and a swing chart
‘Our survey provides evidence of the opportunity local councils now have to use their website and social media tools to engage with and inform local people as never before’, says Martin Greenwood, Programme Director for Socitm Insight. ‘Councils are no longer dependent on traditional media to communicate their messages and can outperform them anyway as a source of immediate, authoritative and totally up to date information – we have seen this with local emergencies like flooding, and now with elections. Councils should be seizing this new opportunity with both hands.’

More Socitm news here.

Very Local Media blossoming in Lozells – but who should keep watering it?

I was really pleased to find the first bulletins from Lozells News – a new child led digital service, appear in my feed stream last week:

Lozells News Highlights from can uk on Vimeo.

This is a project from CAN-UK, who’ve been working from Ladywood for more than a decade. Lozells already has the very fine www.lozells.info and the South Lozells Housing Regeneration area is beginning to use the web to tell the story of how it is progressing, see vision-lozells.org.

A couple of things.

The first is the question of how to integrate these a little better and so seed more local story telling? Perhaps a local social media surgery might help? It is a certainly somehting I’d be interested in.

The other is that our own experience of creating local news with young people  in Frankley or Castle Vale (and others) tells us there remains a problem of how we keep things going once the project ends. There’s no lack of enthusiasm from the young people:  Comments like

this was the best week ive had at Frankley, and making this podcast was a great experiance!

and

can’t wait to see if we do anything else

show there is an appetite for more.  It’s rarely an issue of equipment or websites etc, these are now cheap enough and simple enought to leave behind.  I think the problem is often who will take the lead/ownership in your absence.

So thoughts?  How could we ensure that when the project dosh dries up the storytelling keeps flowing?

Does no pay make you more powerful? Grassroots Channel Programme 21


I’ve just spent a wonderful morning with two women who are both directors of Witton Lodge Community Association. Linda Hines has been involved for 15 years while Michelle Ashmore got stuck in just two or three years ago.

The Association has been working really closely with Birmingham City Council and other partners to drive through a huge regeneration project for Perry Common in the north of the city. It began with the bombshell that hundreds of homes were so structurally unsound they would have to be demolished.

The association is really central to its success for two reasons. First the 14 unpaid (and mostly resident) directors have a common sense idea of how to help the community thrive. Secondly the council was unable to raise the money for rebuilding on its own. The finance was only possible because of the association. Their hard won expertise is now being shared through the governments Guide Neighbourhoods programme (along with Balsall Heath and Castle Vale)

If you scroll down you can listen to their lively (and sometimes tearful) conversation and find out why both directors are convinced that much of their power derives from them being unpaid. So much so that wouldn’t want it any other way. Oh and please leave any comments here on the blog.