Local Government Engagement Online Research » Straight From the Horses Mouth

Digital Strategy: How Camden Council (UK) will be engaging with the local community through hyperlocal websites

Liz Azyan — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 10:16:25 +0000

This is a cross-posting from Camden Council’s (UK) blog, where I also blog.

Camden exploring and learning from online neighbourhoods

Recently, Camden’s webteam has been talking to Will Perrin, Founder of ‘Talk About Local’ about the potential of engaging with citizens in Camden through hyperlocal blogs and local community websites. Just in case you are unfamiliar with ‘Talk About Local’, here is an excerpt from its website describing the project.

Talk About Local is a project to give people in their communities a powerful online voice. We want to help people communicate and campaign more effectively to influence events in the places in which they live, work or play.

As you may know this blog is about developing a new website for Camden that can help us get more people to transact with us online so you may well be asking how ‘Talk About Local’ works in this project. The answer comes from Alasdair Mangham, Head of Information Systems at London Borough of Camden

‘In Camden we are very fortunate to have such a large number of our customers with easy access at home or at work to the internet, but around twenty five percent do not. We don’t want to leave them behind so we are working with Talk About Local to help us build capacity within our communities that will encourage people to go online. Once communities have got their websites up and running we will give them widgets to put on their websites that can give them direct access to the Council services they want rather than expecting them to come to our website and track down the services that are most relevant to them.’

To find out in more detail what ‘Talk About Local’ can do for you and what its doing for Camden Council, watch this video and hear it from the horses mouth himself, Mr. Will Perrin.

Will Perrin talks about ‘Talk About Local’ with Camden Council (UK) from Liz Azyan on Vimeo.

About Will Perrin (an excerpt from Hello Digital)

Founder of Talk About Local – a project to empower hundreds of local communities to express themselves on the internet and former technology policy advisor to Tony Blair.

William has a track record of innovation in public service. He catalysed the last great upheaval in communications regulation by driving through the Communications White Paper in 2000 that abolished seven regulators and created OFCOM. William went on to be technology policy advisor to Tony Blair. William was responsible for the world’s first Government use of YouTube, the world’s first government/third sector mashup, and was one of the team behind the Downing Street e-petitions system the world’s biggest online government engagement system until the Obama administration. William commissioned the Power of Information work in 2007. William is taking a sabbatical from the civil service to run Talk About Local an attempt to scale up his community activism on www.kingscrossenvironment.com to hundreds of communities.

Hyperlocal websites

What are hyperlocal websites anyway?

First let’s have a look at the definition of hyperlocal according to Christopher Wink

hyperlocal news (n): information gathering about a geographically-specific community that is part or was once part of a broader coverage area or focus.

Christopher goes on to elaborate the definition as you see below

So here’s what I mean by that. The hyperlocal movement is encapsulating some pretty broad, disparate agendas, from (1) citizen journalists covering their neighborhoods or towns of just a few thousand people or even fewer through to (2) media entrepreneurs who are trying to create news-gathering organizations covering as many as a few hundred thousand people in a specific geographic place — or, you know, data assembled by a computer.

If you’re still a bit hazy on the whole concept, take a look at the examples Christopher gave that helps give you a better idea of what hyperlocal is and what it isn’t.

Some Examples to help make the definition more clear:

NOT HYPERLOCAL

A news site that covers the entire city of Pittsburgh

A blog recreating a local newspaper’s coverage of a cluster of towns in Arkansas

YES HYPERLOCAL

A citizen journalism project reporting on the east side of Detroit

A newspaper beat writer creating a portal for the portion of the county he covers

Hyperlocal websites = Naughty school children?

I think the biggest challenge we face sometimes is what I call the ‘I don’t want to know’ syndrome. Having been a researcher who was impartial to organizational policies, I often found that most councils treated or viewed hyperlocal websites like ‘naughty school children’ that needed to be punished instead of heard or just not taken seriously at all.

Some home truths about hyperlocal websites

There are some home truths that have lead us to where we are today. Given how the social web has evolved recently, its no wonder how its taken some people by surprise and reacting quite negatively towards the significant developments of our online communications and society. A lot of people have called this age “A brave new world” and I couldn’t agree with it more. We do need to be brave to face the changes as a government that wants to move forward and in line with the society it serves.

Citizens now have a bigger voice than they have ever had before and we need to learn to manage the new expectations and also learn that being defensive is probably not the first call to action. There are also some very interesting developments on how hyperlocal website are given more credibility and funding by commercial entities, like what happened to hyperlocal newswire Fwix in NYC. Take a look at some of our handpicked articles on hyperlocal websites that might spark your interest

MP Condemns Hyperlocal Websites as Purveyors of Tittle Tattle and Opinion
The fight for a right to report
William Perrin discusses his hyperlocal website (The Guardian Video)
Old media or new media – who breaks the news today?
A digital engagement framework adapted for local government (an academic overview on digital engagement and hyperlocal blogs activities and impact on citizen participation by Michele Ide-Smith from Cambridgeshire County Council)
Annals of mutual incomprehension: Local newspapers and hyperlocal bloggers
Council newspapers: One hyperlocal site’s response

The reality…

However the reality of it is hyperlocal website can actually help local councils to better understand the community they are serving. Hyperlocal websites can sometimes be the voice of a certain group in a local area that are sharing their life stories and only want to be heard. Most times its about a community of people with common interests or lifestyles who are locally linked together with no specific or politically driven agenda.

And sometimes, since their lives are intertwined closely to their local well-being, its common for these websites to discuss council services and how they feel it could be better from their point of view. And usually when people choose to bring their problems to an open or public platform, its often because they are feeling frustrated and need to vent or seek for help.

Why local conversations are important to local councils

Why are local conversations important for local councils? from Liz Azyan on Vimeo.

In the video above, Will explains why local conversations are important to local councils. We here at Camden realize that we need to find a way to listen in on those conversations without being authoritative, for example through consultations and other methods of collecting citizens feedback. Not that those methods aren’t reliable, but we feel that each method has a different goal or purpose. The main thing is, we all arrive at the same end product, which is ‘Better services for citizens of Camden’.

Listening to local conversations often outlines a story to a community that builds a picture of how the community is changing or adapting to its surrounding. And changes happen everyday in our communities, therefore the picture changes and people need services to adapt to those changes more quickly and efficiently to allow them to live their everyday lives more comfortably.

Local councils building their own hyperlocal website?

So therefore, you might be thinking… why can’t a local council just build their own local community website so they can control those conversations. The video below, Will Perrin discusses the reasons why this is possibly not a good idea.

Why local councils shouldn’t be the one to setup local community websites from Liz Azyan on Vimeo.

People don’t talk to the council, they talk to each other

The reality is people are the same online as they are offline. In the offline world, they talk to their neighbours, friends, family, at their local church or mosque and etc. In the online world, this concept does not change. People will be more open about their lives and the complexities they deal with in their everyday lives with people and in places they are comfortable doing so.

Therefore having a council build a local community website most probably will not work and be difficult to build a community around anyways. The most successful communities online are built organically. And for the community to grow and interact with each other , the conversations need to be real life events based on their day-to-day problems.

List of hyperlocal website in the UK and Ireland

So if I’ve managed to spark enough interest for you towards hyperlocal websites, here’s a list of hyperlocal website kindly collated by Openly Local that lists all the hyperlocal websites currently active in the UK and Ireland. Also if you want to take some of Will’s recommendation of good hyperlocal website in the UK, have a listen in the video below.

Good Examples of Local Community Websites by Will Perrin from Liz Azyan on Vimeo.

Some links to some good examples of hyperlocal website

Exploring online neighbourhoods

Early last year, I came across Hugh Flouch the founder of HarringayOnline, a hyperlocal website for people who live in Harringay, London. He introduced me to the world of local government twitterers that lead me to where I am today. During my chat with Hugh, I asked about his experience running HarringayOnline and came up with some very interesting insights. The paper titled ‘Exploring Online Neighbourhoods’ will feature the background, tips, motivation, achievements and testimonials.

ExploringOnlineNeighbourhoods – HarringayOnline

Hope this was useful!

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Investigating the perceptions & challenges of using social media for informal e-learning and collaboration within the NHS trust

Liz Azyan — Wed, 19 May 2010 08:11:22 +0000

This blog post is sponsored by Semantix Ltd.

We often ask ourselves, why do certain organizations choose to embrace or completely reject social media? For those who use social media everyday for every little part of their lives, its easy to argue that its completely relevant and people should give it a chance and embrace it. I obviously fall into this category – guilty as charged!

But after conducting research in various public sectors, I’ve learnt that there are very real challenges in adopting social media and taking that step can be a really big one for certain organizations. This blog post looks into those perceptions, both good and bad of why people want to resist or embrace social media within the medical e-learning environment within the NHS trust.

Medical Professionals perceptions & challenges

“Trainees and students have been annoyed not being able to collaborate with other people in the Trust.

“There is a strange relationship between the trust and postgraduate. How does it fit it and the Trust needs to pick up on the ongoing cost.”

“We need to give access to social networks because its how people network.”

“From education point of view – there are undergraduate committees, if you give them a paper, they would say this is totally useless, we want honest feedback from them. If there was an anonymous feedback system on the website then its honest.”

“Undergraduates are used to is having a link to their calendar. Lectures come up on their calendar. Try to setup something like that on the site. Google calendar. They can download to their phones or iPods. I can’t go onto the network from the phone. Trust should support cost if there is a need for it.”

“One of the worries, the informal e-learning that is already out there, the concern is the solution to the problem that we have, is that the trainees can’t access it because its been block. We need to have conversations about how we can provide this access.”

“They ask practical questions. I think they need that networking like Facebook where they can actually do it. How we give access to them and how we are going to do that is what we are concerned about.”

“Moderated site – the problem is about access. People had to go home to their own computers at home and not on site. As a trainee, you are risking having less honest conversation.”

“What we would like to go on the website, is teaching programs. The postgraduate have teaching programs that would be good to have on the website.“

“If we want to push the teaching program through the calendars, then we should do that. Then we can go the trainees to go on that. About linking in the phone, that is already available within the NHS.”

“We need to marry an IT environment and what is a university, academic requirement where there are issues around security and capability. Suggest the academic requirement should be separated form the business/patient network environment.”

“The priority from IT is about the patient not about the teaching. Who is the customer? The patient, not the academic.“

“Significant IT infrastructure issues about clinical data about opening up networking sites and undergraduates.”

“It’s not about having a separate network. What would be nice is to provide patients with access around security.”

“You can setup Virtual Local Area Networks (VLAN) – not mature yet. It is how it is being setup in the county. And hopefully the NHS will move towards that model. (Oxford example) VLAN would mark public access or private access. It allows you to see within the environment and has gateways to JANET or a direct connection. It’s all about cost for these things to happen. We don’t have the money. Its going to cost money. We need to come toward some sort of compromise.”

“VLE was used after it was initiated by the nursing staff. Moodle was just recently used. It’s because of the VLE that triggered this. We did plug the VLE project into the prioritisation and turned out in the quadrant as a ‘don’t do’. Looking at everything we want to do and which is being prioritised. When we talk about a Deanery with a certain budget, you can try what you want. The trust has got to give the approval.”

Learner’s perceptions & challenges

“There’s no time to collaborate, you have no time to sit at the computer and do these things. You call your friend then your friend tells you to look on the forum because they’ve seen it there.”

“It could also be used to notify another doctor that a patient prefers to see another doctor. And seize opportunities.”

“Lots of people don’t open their email. I open, read, close it, that’s it. When you get sent group emails, every single person gets the email like form Kings College, it’s irrelevant. Everybody puts together a list of people who doesn’t get onto the list just gets lost.”

“There’s a problem with Trust. Some of us in the beginning still didn’t logon to the network because its so difficult. And you have your own email address. There’s a problem with accessibility. You have to spend 15 minutes to talk to them to rectify the problem.”

“Work with a system of somebody who gives you formal certificate and done teaching basically. With facility for feedback and reflection and having targeted resources for different grades and levels of people. Probably a module that is more difficult and effective so learners might be a risk for an employer to see how you’re doing.”

“You don’t want somebody getting frustrated and a little usability testing would be good.”

“You get a variety of answers, there’s no way or how strong the evidence is. You might be completely wrong. I’ve never found forums, I find its easier to call your mate.”

“Sometimes I do look at forums to get piece of mind seeing other people’s problem. And not really there to learn.”

“I never use blogs too.”

“Doctors don’t have time to look into informal learning’s because they have to look into the formal learning.”

“How bout stuff like leadership, communication and stuff you don’t get taught? How do you know what’s going on in a different trust?”

“My perception on blogging is people’s experience are different from each other. And you want to learn the right thing. When you look on a blog, you don’t know if you can trust it rather than going to the lbrary and picking up a text book.”

“When it comes working in a place, its completely disorganized.”

“When you’re filling in forms, that type of thing. It’s not actually learning. Its general enquiries about how do I get my study leave.”

“There is nothing better than direct email and direct contact.”

“Facebook – does it have a role in training? No. Use it but its completely separate. Very doubtful for people use it for e-learning or professional.

“They setup an F1 group for Facebook but I believe people are not really themselves on it. Twitter might be useful. It can be a less intrusive paging system to see a certain patient.”

“In New Zealand they have a 120 character system where you can send from computer to mobile and select people who you want to send it too.”

“If we’re talking about clinical opportunities – if he sees something he could put on a board and you go and try to learn from it, that would be useful. A shared area for resources so you put something up – like a bulletin board.”

Communications perceptions & challenges

Regarding facebook – “Students communicate with friends and family. They ask silly questions, like where is the nearest supermarket or how do we get a parking permit. Or nightspots – the social side of it. I believe most students use Facebook. We get about half of each group to sign up to Facebook. Others say they can’t because it’s being blocked. It helps me to get to know them before they come.”

”Students sent out surveys to other students using SurveyMonkey too”

“Some don’t want to come here because of social networks being blocked.”

“Its quite embarrassing when they say they can’t go onto the Facebook. All the military sites were blocked. A student needed to do some research for her project on military medicine and IT would not lift up the restrictions.”

“Problem with internet in accommodation as well because of lack of reliable IT provider. Students were wondering up in the nighties coming up to the centre to get access to Internet.”

“I told them to get the 3g dongle. This was before they decided to include the price of accommodation with the dongle, which in the end never even worked. It screws people over when people are already on 18 month contract and forced to pay for access that is automatically included in the rent”

“MySpace and Youtube are good but sometimes the firewall won’t even let you on the NHS website. And as for Twitter, there’s not access to that at all.”

“We do however use SurveyMonkey which is a $200 annual subscription. We use it as part of audits, clinical audits. It’s very easy to use actually and its better than the one that we have in house. Every teaching session we need to evaluate. We keep a TrustWide spread sheet. They use it for their appraisal.”

Teachers perceptions & challenges

“I’ve been experimenting with Ning. I’ve got all different learners, I’ve tried with forums, failed miserably.”

“It’s a different type of learning isn’t it, it’s actually the voluntary process because you actively learn it. Whereas in a ward, it doesn’t. A lot of practical learning is missed. It should be shared. If you took the patient vs the Trust, you will realize that.”

“There’s quite a lot of similar stuff on King’s and not reinventing the wheel. We should learn about their environment.”

“There is also this thing called iPath, we have to login to.”

“We also need to encourage those who just need a good kick up their back side to get them going in their learning. Its often things like my wife just had a baby or I don’t know.”

“Traditional teaching is irreplaceable and this is just a supplement. A small group that you have to attend and register also is a professional point of it. But you can do it online by replicating the physical classroom scenario.”

“For some people Facebook is second nature but for me, its not. I worry about the group trainees who are not motivated. It’s important to understand why their not motivated. Is it the trainers’ responsibility? It’s not but it is, therefore we need to understand why. The question is, are social networks a useful resource to help the trainee.”

“The way I think of this, when I qualified in 1990 I had no ‘e’ anything. This is completely out of the box, in addition to what we have now. Now I can type into Google and a thousand results whereas before I have 6 books and refer to that. Makes it easier.”

“An easy way to access with all the things that are good; if we can have a branch way to do and find it, that would be good.”

“There is a example of distant learning in Cardiff, where there’s learning online and work very well. I think it’s the Diploma in Dermatology, run by the Wales University. It was a mixture of distance learning and a small group P2 they now use podcast type approach.”

“What fresh cases are useful can be made available online, so there is a incentive for using the online resource by using it for sharing.”

“By using YouTube, you could watch the video and learn. This is good for visual learners. But some people who are auditory learners.”

“Some people just learn better than others. None of this is going to be the answer to this.”

”Sometimes its easier to be honest with a computer rather than a human being. “

“It works both ways, there is massive learning material but do we use that to its massive learning potential. Maybe this is what sort of thing that it could tap into. Say if you want to focus on someone’s leg, The other way we can use is in general, you could use nationwide or area wide.”

“Social networks are worth using it for exams for better group work.”

“There has been a curriculum that has been created in that and would be suitable for podcast.”

Hope this was useful!

@Liz_Azyan xxx

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How formal e-learning can be improved within the National Health Service (NHS) trust

Liz Azyan — Tue, 18 May 2010 08:31:54 +0000

This blog post is sponsored by Semantix Ltd.

I’ve recently talked to many medical professionals, learners and communicators within the NHS trust. They all have expressed their views and problems with the current e-learning software and IT infrastructure. This blog post highlights the challenges faced by all these stakeholders and hopefully better inform e-learning practices for medical students within the NHS trust.

Formal e-learning

Recommendations and views of Medical Professionals

“It should be interesting, essentially needs to be delivered in a format that is fast and efficient. Compliance point of view there’s not point in doing e-learning because it becomes an activity tick box. Needs to be an enjoyable activity so that people want to do it and not have to do it.”

“Trainees spend a lot of time on the ward and we want them to concentrate on the clinical training. If they have a podcast they can go back and learn at home. This will be the student aspect of their learning. Do on their own initiative.”

“Exam preparation – curricular criteria? Exams and courses are clinically oriented, we need to redo, reinventing something that is already there. Portal into what is available not recreating the wheel.”

“When you go to a particular website, the homepage turns me on or off, should be interesting and capture you and should indexed. If you need to click 6 times to get there, you’ll never get there. “

“There needs to be a single route into e-learning instead of multiple systems because it’s difficult to get into. Website is unfriendly, uninviting and uninformative.”

“The issue the mandatory training is a big chore to go through and people find ways to cheat the system, have two windows at the same time, one is the assessment window and the other is the test window…”

“The medical schools are very clear and when students come out, they expect the same standard. It’s a showcase for us and most trainees do their homework and if you don’t have an interesting website, they won’t be go there. It needs to be a platform for all new types of learning, podcasts and etc.”

“Subscribe to 123Doc, revision for exams. More and more they are going multimedia, they are a lot more interactive than it used to be. So it needs to be fast and efficient.”

“The mandatory training is targeted at the entire Trust, there is no training to the people. It needs to appropriate to you.”

“Because some of the team is not in the trust it doesn’t allow continuity.”

“Would we need something there to sell the Trust to demonstrate its learning possibilities. We should show how the rooms look like, kitchen and how the living area looks like.”

“Software’s that have been deleted is the 360 degrees virtual tour needs to be reinstated.”

“The current website is restricted in its capability, others are selling a lot of stuff that we are doing which makes it look like a PCT are using. Its innovation latest technology and clinical stuff is what attracts people. It also needs to be location based.

“You need resources to create it and capability. Think outside the box, there are 2 other universities here that need to learn how to use these technologies and tap into their resources. Its work experience for them, the best way of learning is to actually do the job.”

“In terms of websites, less is more. The website has become a dumping ground. We don’t separate between marketing and functions for staff and users. We need a proper marketing front end to it. Front end must be for both patients and trainees.”

“Information is a huge site but the information does is not updated. Hoping this project can go hand in hand with the whole redesign of the website.”

Recommendations and views by ‘Learners’

“At the moment we are using BMJ learning house modules, which we print out the certificate.”

“Using the pass text, you pay. You hope that everything that you learn from that can fit into the pass text.”

“The internet access is so bad. You can’t use the wireless and mobile broadband access too, limiting the e-learning access.”

“Its so painful because once you try to go to the next page, you’ve been idle for so long because you’ve been logged out.”

“We’d like to see a tool that is web-based, and type a quick question with an x-ray. It needs a vehicle that can build e-learning and share teaching resources. Easy to access, easy to remember.”

“Questions should be tagged to see which department it is relevant to for level of content, speciality, user and subject.”

“At the moment we are using Stratogy, which is very expensive and the London Deanery pays for it. We also use “Pass Medicine for examination, which is also a paid site.”

“You can access from outside but you have to register but you must put your leaving date.”

“We don’t have a computer centre, the one that are available doesn’t have access to the clout/e-learning.”

“If you have a slide and upload and share it online. So a protected network is needed to protect the content. The lectures at Kings College need to email to administrator and they upload it. Sometimes they just don’t bother because it’s too much hassle. And administrator ends up with a bunch of slides.”

“It has to be user-friendly, it needs to be nice and simple. You don’t want everyone controlling. Put ratings on content.”

“We also` learn managerial e-learning such as child protection, health and safety, blood transfusion, complaining. There is no structure to it; they don’t follow on from one to another. We try to get through them ASAP.”

“The disadvantages of the managerial e-learning modules are it’s for everybody from care assistant to doctors and level of knowledge is different.”

“We need reliable internet access. We use the other room but its temperamental.”

“Needs to be a short because doctors don’t have time. 2 min case studies. 18 – 20 mins max is what education shows.”

“Should be accessible from within the trust, boards, library, and accommodation.”

“E-learning is quite useful is the Synaps website which is available for all London Deanery trainees. It’s informal. The benefits, the e-learning things should be credible and up-to-date. That credibility must come form seniority. You cant based your practice on people who are not experienced. Must be from seniors. ”

“Some questions are difficult, some you are only going to right if you read the material. The Trust knows its rubbish and they’re redesigning.”

“Regarding the e-learning for health, we haven’t used it, though we did get email about it (junior doctors). It is not for all colleges yet, loads for anaesthetics etc. Very vigorous process modules.”

“There are issues with mandatory learning to be accessible anywhere because some things need to stay within work hours.”

“Most interesting audits are usually published and all been peer reviewed so you can trust it. We have a lot of formal resources that are dependable. You just have to look at the ward to see its not working.”

“Online lecture notes, 3^rd year Kings College Virtual campus. They don’t mark it, but they’ve got the capacity to do so. No one bothers to see if anyone does it. You just put anything in the text box and it will come up with an answer.”

“They do setup face-to-face with the tutor to discuss the e-learning module together. However it depends on tutor on effectiveness of e-learning once its printed out.”

“Bigger issues when it comes the trust should be department specific and should be commission lead.”

Recommendations and views of ‘Communicators’

“Its boring, exactly the same since I started here. The fire learning module, I know all the answers.”

“It’s easy to use and has relevant modules for doctors but only use it only from home. “

“In regards to Kings Virtual Campus, my students have never complained apart form it being a bit slow on the trust computers. I think things are going well because students are usually the first to complain.”

“Its Trust Wide, same software, very depressing.”

“I use Doctors.net. Its independent from the NHS. I also use the BMJ, which is easy to use and covers a whole range of topics.”

“After you qualify, you pass, there are other e-learning sites such as, On examination, Pastest and Pass Medicine. The content is sufficient.”

”In terms of accessibility, provision sites you have to pay. I haven’t but I might do when I get there. Its £80 for a few months for the provisions and £2000 for 1 exam. There should be a Trust Wide subscription.”

“First time you learn, but then after you don’t. But what you do on your site, it doesn’t cover that. You don’t learn where you have to physically.”

“It helped with exams but not planning to use again.”

“I was from Kings and its got everything, its good and sufficient. It was very useful.”

“You can open the learning module alongside the exam.”

“We were told to setup a virtual campus for us but I don’t see the point really because its already out there.”

“We weren’t given time to do them, we do it in our own time.”

“If we were given time in the trust, then you’d probably go through it all. But if you’re at home, you through it quickly not really wanting to learn.”

“Some of the questions were quite silly, make it more interactive and relevant to what you’re doing.”

Hope this was useful!!

Liz xxx

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Charlie Leadbeater’s Keynote Summary on Cloud Culture: How Cloud Computing Will Change Culture and Politics

Liz Azyan — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:01:32 +0000

Just a few weeks ago, Charlie Leadbeater gave a great keynote speech at the Personal Democracy Forum Europe 09 in Barcelona. I had the pleasure of being in the audience as a Google Fellow at this conference. He talked about the cloud culture and its impact on leadership and politics. This post breaks down and summarizes all the important points he made in that speech.

Micah L. Sifry (@misif) described Charlie Leadbeater (@wethink) as an….

Ideas generator
strategic advisor to corporations and governments all over the world
Tony Blairs favourite thinker
The New York Times voted his idea of the Pro Ams (Amateurs) – Economy as one of the most innovative of the last 10 years
He writes for the Financial Times
Author of many books, most recently “We Think: The Power of Mass Creativity”
He is now working on a report on the concept of cloud culture which is how the web is changing in relationships between the state and citizens worldwide which he is doing for the British Council.

What is Cloud Culture?

Charlie starts off by explaining that “Cloud Culture” is just going from the idea of cloud computing. Where it is an idea that instead of computing having to do with beautiful things that Apple makes for us, its located somewhere up there and we draw it up as we need it. Information and software sort of just floats around and we take it down to multiple devices and we don’t have to carry around USB sticks and things like that and this has all sorts of potential and advantages for cost and specialisation and collaboration and so on and so forth.

Cloud computing definition

Cloud computing is Internet- (”cloud-”) based development and use of computer technology (”computing“).^[1] In concept, it is a paradigm shift whereby details are abstracted from the users who no longer need knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure “in the cloud” that supports them.^[2] It typically involves the provision of dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources as a service over the Internet.^[3]^[4]

^{Introduction to Cloud Trends & Culture Video}

Digitized culture

Charlie say that if we were to use the idea of a cloud as a kind of metaphor for culture and how we organize, then you could see how more of our culture can become digital. We’ll have many more digital stores of cultural products of film, image, music and text. Whether its a world of digital library of wikipedia or its the billions of photographs on Facebook.

Culturally rich

So more people than ever will be able to access that, so the opensource movement has this catchphrase which says “Many eyes make bugs shallow”. When in culture, “Many eyes make culture rich”.

The more an archive is opened up for more points of views and eyes, the more value will be seen in it. This is the lesson of open archives. More people than ever will have tools of creativity and then they add to that. So if you take together bigger stores, more people having access, more tools to create. You get this type of cultural mushroom clouds of kind of artifacts and stuff being created. Often completely fluid kinds of way.

“Twitter is like a cloud machine.”

These leads to 2 different things….

1) What should our goals be?

Charlie: We should have the maximum diversity of kinds of clouds.

2) Karl Popper distinguished between cloud problems and clock problems.

What he meant be that is that there are clock problems that have many moving interconnected parts but if get a clock maker you can make it all work. Cloud problems you have many moving interconnected parts but much more diffused and difficult to work out how they work. Its very difficult to create clouds from scratch. So this is the organizational challenge. If you wanted to create a cloud, how do you go about it, how do you create it? How do know whether a cloud is big or not? How do you know whether its going to carry on in the same shape?

So in a way, clouds are a get metaphor of the type of world we are moving into.

Micah later on moves on from the clock and cloud maker conversation to ask whether Obama was a clock maker or a cloud maker?

Charlie said “Obama is definitely a cloud maker.”

Obama the cloud maker…

Obama is a cloud maker who gets into a kind of clock land where incumbent politics where you kind of have to make things work to deliver stuff so seems to me decision to deploy more troops in Afghanistan is more of a clock problem. He’s had a lot of clock makers working away. There hasn’t been a lot of transparency and crowd-sourcing on whether or not we should have more troops in Afghanistan.

But Obama’s roots are mainly in cloud land it appears and most of the people who do this well are in a sense community organizers.

The “Towers” – Mark Pesce

Micah also quotes Mark Pesce (@mpesce) who was talking at the Personal Democracy Forum this year (2009) in New York described the cloud being structures of an organization so the hierarchal, top-down organization of the past he refers to as the “Towers”. Policy that comes from above. The media comes from above. A few people decide what those will be and the rest of us consume it. And the cloud that is his favourite example is the wikipedia of a open, very loosely structured organization, it has almost no leadership. It still functions very much like a cloud because its still very difficult to control. Wikileaks is an example of a cloud but its very difficult to control.

The problem with cloud culture in relation to leadership and politics

One of the issues is how on earth then do you want to create a cloud because you have a cause to promote something, how do you do that? And therein you get into the heart of the problem with leadership and politics which is buy in large, politicians like to claim that they are doing things for people. And often doing things to people. But hope to claim they do things for people and hoping people will reward them.

But the problem is if you tell a politician that you are going to give stuff away and create a platform and see what people will do with it, how will the politicians be able to take credit for it when they have their press-conference? Politicians who are in power, need to take credit so they can say I did this and I’ve delivered it to you. So this is the problem. There is something about the nature of leadership about these things that you have to be comfortable with giving stuff away and being able to let people create with it and not take credit for it. It takes a type of leadership where a politician are constitutionally in many ways unable to grasp.

Obama was Dean done right!?!

Structured participation in Obama’s campaign

Micah argued that in Obama’s campaign, there was a structured participation in which they enabled brilliantly because they had a goal which was to win an election and not just to make a lot of noise. So what they recognized was to be a mass participation in politics in a scale that we had not seen before in the US because the internet makes it easier because a lot of people wanted change and so they smartly created structures channeling that energy into the campaign whether it was to raise money or collect volunteers and to channel to skim off the most talented people and train them to be more formal organizers but the myth is people were controlled from below.

David Plouffe’s “The Audacity to Win”

Micah also mentioned David Plouffe’s new book (campaign manager) “The Audacity to win” which described there were 4 people on the top made the decisions so participation was open at the bottom and some tasks were shared in new ways which is different from the way politicians do things but not all.

The forms of collaboration that take place in science

Charlie made some interesting references to looking at cloud culture from a science point of view, quoting Caroline Wagner who wrote the book “The new invisible college” which is about international virtual collaboration in science and she distinguishes very different ways in which science now collaborates, there is sort of large scale, multidisciplinary kind of collaboration centered on single resources like the large hydro collider, sizemology and things that are concentrated on SARS or bird flu. So you look at science and the kind of clouds science is creating their multiple, depending on the tasks they face.

What we need to think is what we need to create in other aspects of our culture

Its important to think of the diversity of forms of collaboration that might be passing, might actually be completely permanent and many things in between. Obama is probably just one model and in very different political circumstances here, that model might not work or at least the elements of it may work.

Micah asks: How are we going to pay for important public goals such as investigative journalism?

Charlie says the first thing, is its a very important debate, how we fund creative activities and culturally vital activities producing high quality product in a world where the cost of copying is virtually zero and its free. This is a really big issue and we will be tackling this for the next 20 years. So the first thing to say is its a big issue.
The second thing is beware of completely false kind of golden eras of the past. The idea that political journalist in the westminster lobby do any investigative reporting of politics at all is a complete nonsense. The lobby in westminster which is the political core of journalist or newspapers who swarm around the Prime Minister, their dealt a daily dose of briefings by number 10. There are fed stories by Ministers to promote their careers. The problem with newspapers is they haven’t done enough of investigative journalism. They forgot and stopped doing that 20 years ago. The trouble with newspapers is once you get to page 4, there’s nothing in them. And actually when you add it up, there’s a bit of blogging which you call commentary and then there’s some news you’ve already heard. And they’re not actually adding any value so as societies, we need ways to fund people who will do work in the political sphere who will hold power to account. Newspapers are the only way or even the best way to do that. The concern is about where we will generate the kind of substance and skills for that to happen. So one can be excited but anxious. Charlie adds that its wrong to be complete utopian and imagine it will all sort itself out. We have an opportunity but now its getting real. The Guardian is laying off 10% of its staff. Many newspapers are going to retract in trench. The new models will probably reward brands very strongly. You’ll find television becoming increasingly dominated by what the brands will pay for in terms of content. They won’t pay for investigative journalism brands. We probably won’t know what subscription models will work. People will pay for some things and not others. There’s a huge amount of turmoil and still I think a lot of risk.

What are the challenges to this more generative, transparent cloud culture?

Charlie: I think its very important as you said in the beginning about your comments about freedom, that we realize that we’ve been presented with something that could easily go away. And why could it go away? Let’s just think 4 reasons.

First is governments are increasingly getting to grips with it and understanding how to stop clouds forming, bring clouds down, or most effectively of all, infiltrate clouds. So James Boyle argument in the public domain I think is a really interesting argument which is the more this stuff feeds into our lives, the more people who will want to control it will also need to feed into our lives. So you find much more diffuse sensors of censorship and self-censorship. So you find the blogging army in China. So censorship and government action is crucial. I think its fair to say that I am ashamed that a labour government has chosen this 3 strike rule and cut people off from the ISPs for file sharing without in the slightest bit thinking that the big story is the freedom of the internet and its impact on democracy around the world and if western governments do that, they are just giving an excuse to authoritarian regimes to use that to say they’ll clamp down. It really distresses me and apart of the problem that an apparently progressive government from the left fails to see the big progressive opportunity in this technology globally. So that’s a big thing.
All the issues of old media and copyright that the more you get this freedom, the more you’ll find people like Murdoch and others try to kind of clamp it down and basically if you want to control one piece of information in this economy now, you have to control all the links that that piece of information and that person have to everyone else. You’ve got to control all the links in the network so you end up with almost complete control and the denial of the peer-to-peer stuff.
We don’t want a sky full of cloud branded Google. We don’t want to hand control to a set of technology companies who will then find net neutrality has gone out the window. And its a bit like ringing AT&T and use the telephone to order a pizza and find out AT&T have preferential deal with Dominos and you end up with Dominos and getting the independent pizza company down the road is impossible because you’ve put them on hold for 3 mins. So that’s a problem.
And the final thing is we’ll possibly just cock it up. That’s the big problem. We’ll just mess it up, we just won’t take this opporunity because we won’t understand, we won’t have the capacity, we won’t have the imagination, we won’t find the business model to really invest in it. And that remains I think something that is untested and I don’t know a media organization that apart from Google and Glastonbury that has a secure business model. And even YouTube losing 470 million dollars a year. We’re in sort of economic fantasy land still it seems to me and no ones quite worked out how all this stuff is going to get paid for.

Micah: Is it just going to be a generation before we can see new leadership that will actually act in an open networked way or do you see some signs of people really willing to change for the good?

Charlie: Well first thing to say is that one of the things that strikes me in Europe is just how different political cultures are in Europe? If you just think about those issues relationships between politicians, citizens and government.

Examples:

Northern tip of Europe, you have kind of authoritarian social networks working in Putin’s Russia.
You have the pirate party in Sweden.
You have Finland which is the Finnish public service broadcaster who is about to distribute its iPlayer so that anyone can embed it on any site. So anyone can become a broadcaster of content.
Estonia is the most advanced possibly in the world for e-government led by some of the guys who were involved in the formation of Skype where cabinet decisions are reported as they’re made. And I ask him what impact of all the openness that had on politics in Estonia and he said it just speeded up the fight. So its had no impact really on how they conduct politics.
And in Denmark, remarkably, 90% of Danes get an email from the government saying “We estimate your tax to be this, do you think that’s right?” Click this box, and they say yes and that’s they’re tax done. So 90% of Danes don’t fill out a tax form, they accept electronic estimation of tax by the government.

Charlie: Every country is different…

So what you have to do is take all this stuff that we’re talking about and insert it into these very different context in relationship with citizen, state and trust. In Denmark its going to be so different from Spain or Italy where the Prime minister controls the television stations. The hope is that there will be generational change. There may be younger politicians who are much more adept at it.

In the UK, Charlie says the Tories have made a real effort to engage with their staff to do it seriously. He’s not sure whether that’s really paid dividends for it. Charlie sees much more of it at a much more local level, at what you might not call politics but civic engagement. One example is a local Lib Dem councillor communicating with citizens through Facebook, that’s just a very intelligent localized way of doing it.

Darlington town in the North East, there is something called the Town Crier which is a website for people to debate the future of Darlington. Its basically being run by the British National Party, which is the fascists party and they have absolutely dominated town politics by a small number of them using it. So you see a whole diversity of people but the imagination will come from outside of politics. It will come from civic campaigns, causes, social enterprise, other people. Its unlikely to come within the mainstream parties. And I don’t even see yet anyone really changing within that mainstream, Charlie personally doesn’t see an Obama moment really in British politics. But thinks there will be ever greater pressure from outside politics to campaign organize and raise money, get attention in new ways that challenge formal politics.

Micah: Job of early adopters

Keep finding the good examples because we’re in a shift that is as big as the printing press or the automobile. Henry Ford used to say “If I had asked the people what they wanted, they would’ve just said faster horses.” So if you ask today, what do you want the internet to do to improve politics and democracy. Its hard to imagine because there so many possibilities available and they’re being tested in different places. The opportunity that the PDF conference community overall is to surface all the good examples.

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Local Gov Camp Lincoln Social Reporting Bumper Issue!

Liz Azyan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:40:10 +0000

Hello! ;o)

So its been a been a while since LocalGovCamp Lincoln but its never too late to share all those juicy details for all your reading and viewing (special videos) pleasures! I was sponsored by Jadu on this trip and am ever so grateful to them for sponsoring me because if it wasn’t for people sponsoring me to attend these ‘wicked cool’ events, I would never have the opportunity to learn everything that I have learnt so far. So massive thanks to Jadu for sponsoring me this time around.

So without further adieu, here are the specially crafted official LGC Lincoln blogposts!

Hope all of this is useful!

FYI I’ll be in Sweden and Barcelona middle of this month for 2 more conferences, so look out for those blogposts too!

Liz xxx

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Better Connected 2010 looking into Local Councils Social Media Activities

Liz Azyan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:31:28 +0000

The rise of social media… just ride the wave baby!

It was really interesting to attend yet another session about social media at a conference. However this session at LocalGovCamp Lincoln seemed to bring in some interesting debates and honed into the real issues that UK local government is facing in terms of really embracing social media or making any sense for it in the public sector.

However in all the commotion, I managed to catch up with Helen Williams who is a Socitm Insight Associate as well as a Better Connected Report Reviewer and ask her thoughts on social media in local government.

It was certainly interesting to learn that the Better Connected report will also be reporting on local government social media usage in next year’s report! This is really exciting news for local government from my point of view because as its important to see how we can better local government services online, isn’t it just as important to have a proper and ongoing evaluations on emerging trends and technologies that have an impact on our communities?

The “fair enough” debate….

I think by now, I’ve heard it all and seen it all when it comes to the debate on whether or not to use social media in local government or public sector all together. The truth is, there are some warriors amongst us who took the leap of faith and trusted their gutt instincts and have reaped the rewards! And I feel they should be recognized for their efforts and most importantly in a time on uncertainty for most councils to dive into social media, good practices are hard to come by.

So if we can start to share our experiences, wouldn’t that help to understand how it can fit into the bigger picture?

We gotta “Fight for this love”??? hehe ;o)

So its great that the Better Connected Report will outline these wins or losses and evaluate them to create a path for success in the future. How do we learn if not from our mistakes? Its not how many times you fall, its how you get right back up and try again! ) If you still don’t get social media, make sure to have a look at this, just a quick outlook on how it works….

So don’t think that we are ever suggesting that social media to replace traditional media. It works side-by-side with traditional media and it is also here to stay. Just like the telephone or mail. It will evolve into voicemail, mobile phones, text message, emails and etc.

Social media is….

Look at it like a microphone, magnifier or hearing aid, it allows you to speak louder, see closer/better and hear/listen better.

Make sense? Looking forward to your comments!

Hope this was useful!

Liz xxx

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What’s the problem with ePetitions?

Liz Azyan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:25:32 +0000

Hey guys and dolls,

Feels like ages since I’ve been in the right mood to really get into writing again. Sorry about that! I finally found what I was looking for… I was needing some well needed inspiration and the Epic LocalGovCamp Lincoln was certainly the inspirational dosage I needed to get my creative juices running again ;o) This event was run by no other than my good twitterati friend and also one of the founding members of “Epic Visionaries” – Mr. Andrew Beeken

First up is…. The House of Fraser ;o)

The first session was run by Fraser Henderson (Founder and Director of Particitech) who discussed the issues surrounding e-Petitions. Now I wasn’t in this session myself, as I was in the “social networking sites” session (where else would I be …? hehe ;o) ), but I’m gonna have a go at reporting it based on the twitterstream and my own knowledge on this subject! Haha let’s see how well I do ay? But hey before I start, just wanted to share one interesting thought… did you guys know that the cathedral in the Da Vinci Code film is in Lincoln?!? Hehe, well it is, and its pretty wicked guys ;o) You must see it!

So.. what’s the problem with e-Petitions…?

Now, I know its kind of funny that everytime we mention e-petitions, our minds go directly to Number 10’s e-petition facility. Even when I was in the states attending the Participation Camp, they kept on talking about how wonderful the Number 10 e-petition system was. I guess when we have it, we tend to take things a little bit for granted when the rest of the world is looking at the UK for good practices in online government. Its definitely a great facility and it was interesting to learn from this session of a heartfelt story of Alan Turing “The Father of Computer Science”. Definitely a positive outcome coming out from Number 10’s e-petitions. Watch this video to hear about his story…

Advantages of e-Petitions

It was stated during the session that the advantage of e-petitions is petitions have to be approved and therefore problems can be solved before the petition goes live (via @pezholio) . And it is also believed that local e-petitions can have more impact than national ones (via @pezholio). Though there are some challenges when it comes to localizing e-petitions which primarily includes validating whether or not the person signing the e-petition in fact lives within the local area. Obviously this is vitally important when it comes to “petitions on planning applications, alcohol and gambling licenses or on people” (via @pezholio).

E-Petition Verbs…

Petitions and e-petitions: A few observations…

Upon doing some digging around on the net regarding e-petitions bill that is rumoured to potentially come in April 2010, I found a brilliant article summing up the issues surrounding e-petitions on Paul Evans Local Democracy Blog. I do know Paul personally as I met him earlier this year at the UKGovCamp. He says…

My sources in Westminster tell me that the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill (pdf) (text version) is likely to get royal assent at some point in the autumn and will come into force in May 2010 with guidance potentially in place as early as February 2010.

Without repeating what Paul has mentioned in his blogpost, a few other challenges for e-petitions in local gov will be..

Who will manage and moderate ePetitions at the Council? Is it a full time job? (via @surajkika)
How do we detect duplicate petitions? (via @pezholio)
Is it possible to do e-petitions via Digital TV or Twitter? (via @pezholio)
How do we get the e-petitions system embedded into councils (via @davebriggs)
What about the issues of ‘unsigning’ a petition? Does it then become a poll? (via @iancuddy)
How do we authenticate? (via @jaducms)
Should we validate because local means different things to different people. (@pezholio)
User management module is crutial in ePetitions (via @jaducms)

Let’s have a look at the four stage model of the processes involved during the life of an individual petition to purely understand how e-petitions might work… You can find the copy of this research by Napier here.

So, the question I guess now is, are we ready for this and will local councils “get it”? Any comments? Links and guides to e-petition:

My Interview with Fraser…

Hope this was useful!

Liz xxx

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What’s in store for Better Connected next year?

Liz Azyan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:25:32 +0000

Taking a fresh look at the web…

I remember the days where I was just reading the Better Connected Report for my literature review and not really understanding the impact it has on local council web practitioners. But this year, my eyes were open to see just how important it is to do well and measure a local council websites effectiveness in delivering information and services.

More Reasons to Keep on “Better Connected’s” Good Side…

With budget cuts looming, there is a greater need to be more innovative in delivering public services online and self-services can be used to deliver more for less. So local council websites are looking like a more attractive channel to move away from the costly business of servicing customer enquiries via the phone or face-to-face to self-service through the local council website.

Socitm Insight show that web transactions cost £0.27p each, compared with £3.22 for the phone and £6.56 for face-to face

I guess this is similar to what is happening with supermarkets such as Tesco or Sainsburys offering more self-service checkouts. Recently it was even reported that Tesco has opened the country’s first all self-checkout store.

Tesco Express, located in King’s Langley, Northampton, has five self-checkout terminals and no traditional checkout lanes, the report says, a model Tesco refers to as “assisted self-service.”

So this type of phenomenon is not only effecting local councils, its happening to businesses everywhere and it has become more important to give customers and push them towards using self-services to cut the cost of dealing with customer enquiries in a significant way. But after reviewing many local council websites, I still personally find local council websites are not taking up this opportunity seriously or taking the time to understand the state of web and the way customers are interacting with it now to fully exploit its cost-cutting benefits.

The Challenges…

So what is it you might ask is stopping local councils to move forward and really score high in the Better Connected report next year? Well let’s have a look…

The myth that customers want to ’speak to a real person’ when dealing with government.
People are still not finding the information they need when visiting a local council website.
There needs to be a change in the way local councils think and user testing to ensure the customer’s journey in completing a transaction online can be processed as smoothly as possible, especially in the most common ‘top tasks’ like looking at jobs, finding schools information, paying council tax, viewing planning registers, and paying parking fines. And for this to happen, there needs to be a significant change in the way local councils look at the web and engage with their customers online.
Quite often I find through my research, the team that actually is responsible of the local council website, be it the IT department, web services or even online communications department, the lack of people within the team itself shows the level of commitment or dedication that is being put towards online services. Therefore management might not be seeing the local council websites as a corporate asset therefore increasing failure rate on online transactions and costing the council more money.

Better Connected’s new ranking system…

As mentioned by Helen in the video, next years Better Connected report will have a new ranking system. Martin Greenwood, Programme Director for Socitm Insight says:

We have signalled very strongly in Better connected 2009 the need for all council websites to raise their game in view of the critical importance now of self-service, and the equally critical importance of getting self-service right first time, every time. It is, therefore, right for us to be more thorough and demanding in the assessment carried out in Better connected.

Modelling the new system on the Better connected 2009 results as far possible, the 2009 results would be (via publictechnology.net) : Nine four star sites (compared with nine excellent sites) 88 three star sites (compared with 160 transactional sites) 223 two star sites (compared with 255 standard sites) 104 one star sites (compared with 225 standard sites) To get more information from Socitm about what to expect from the Better Connected 2010, be sure to check this description taken from the Socitm Insight’s webpage.

Description

Socitm Insight subscribers, council webmasters, web managers, and other interested parties are being invited to comment on the proposals by 25 September 2009. Changes agreed will become effective for the 2010 survey carried out in November and December 2009, results of which will be published, as usual, on 1 March.

IN BC10 Proposed new ranking system.pdf

IN BC10 Proposed new ranking system contains details of the proposed new ranking system to replace Better connected’s existing three ranks of ‘excellent’, ‘transactional’ and ’standard’. In future, it is proposed that there is a four star rating, with four stars equating to the current rank of ‘excellent’ through to one star denoting a ‘poor’ site. The changes are being made because of confusion about the descriptive terms used for the current ranks. In addition, Better connected reviewers have found it increasingly difficult to separate borderline ‘transactional’ sites from the better ’standard sites’. Also, the range of standard sites has become very wide, including those that are good with some limitations, to those that are, frankly, poor. The additional rank being introduced will separate these sites from each other.

IN BC10 Criteria for Better connected sets out proposals for updating the criteria for ‘useful’ and ‘usable’ websites that are reported on in Better connected and used to assess and rank websites. 16 criteria are used: information; currency; links elsewhere; news value; transactions; e-mail; participation; ease of finding; use of a to z; use of search; use of location; navigation; design of transactions; accessibility; readability; and resilience. Each of these criteria is defined in detail by Socitm Insight, and the document published now, when finalised, will update Version 1 of these criteria, first published in Better connected: aiming high (January 2005). If you would like to discuss the proposals please visit the Socitm Insight Web Improvement and Usage community with the IDeA Communities of Practice platform. If you are not a member already, you will need to register to join the 420-strong community that we established earlier this year. (http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk). If you would like to respond to the proposals please email your response to: Insight@socitm.net

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IN BC10 Criteria for Better connected.pdf (118 kb)

Hope this was useful!

Liz xxx

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LocalGovCamp Lincoln Recap: My interview with Andrew Beeken

Liz Azyan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:25:32 +0000

The guy behind it all…

So as you guys already know, I was at the LocalGovCamp in Lincoln last Friday and was fortunate enough to talk to Andrew Beeken (in video above), who was “the man of the hour” and ask him about what he thought about the whole unconference. I mean, I personally thought it was great and definitely different from the previous LocalGovCamp in Birmingham just because it was a smaller crowd and we had more time to chat to everyone who was there. Having the capability to network rather effectively and have a more open table discussion, certainly made this LocalGovCamp a more cosy and intimate affair.

The Think Tank Mugs…

One of my favourite things at the LocalGovCamp in Lincoln was surprisingly the MUGS! I know its silly, but if you’ve been to as many conferences as I’ve been to recently, you do tend to appreciate the little details like the mug. If you think about it, almost everytime you go to an event there’s this white cup with a saucer which you have to hold rather delicately to make sure it doesn’t tip over (I’m a klutz, it always happens to me!). But here at the Think Tank venue, we were instead given mugs (gosh I wish I had taken a picture!) which worked perfectly because it was a cold day so it was nice to wrap our hands around the mug to keep us warm… Wow, who knew I had so much to say about a mug… ;o)

The building that changes colour…

It was also quite delightful to see the Think Tank change its colours throughout the day from orange, red, green and purple. Yes, people, you heard me right… the building changes colour!!! )

The sessions..

It was rather nice to have just 2 sessions running at one time because makes life much easier when trying to decide which session to go to. There were alot of familiar and unfamiliar presenters at this LocalGovCamp which was great because it created a great mix in dynamics and content that most of us has either heard or not heard of before. I have to say, there were some heated discussions here at LocalGovCamp Lincoln, but I take that as a positive step forward because the event is now attracting a different type of crowd who are not all on the same page or see eye-to-eye, giving us a better view of what the ‘real world’ objections and assumptions are. This way we can clearly identify our way forward along with the challenges that come with it. There was also a good mix of topics being discussed, for example mapping, e-petitions, advertising, social networking sites, hyperlocal blogs/community websites, user testing, government consultations and etc.

Blogging the sessions…

I will cover a few of these topics here on the blog and hopefully you’ll be able to have a better insight into what was discussed and possibly join in on the conversations. And also, if anyone of you took a picture of the mug, can you please share it with us please?!? ;o) Thx. Be sure to check out my interview with Andrew in the video above!

Hope this was useful!

Liz xxx

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Let’s talk about Government Consultations with Joss Winn

Liz Azyan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:25:32 +0000

Talking about “WriteToReply.org”…

Being a student and possibly sometimes out of the loop on innovative things like this, it was refreshing to listen to Joss Winn talk about WriteToReply.org…

A site for commenting on public reports in considerable detail. Texts are broken down into their respective sections for easier consumption. Rather than comment on the text as a whole, you are encouraged to direct comments to specific paragraphs. The full texts for comment are listed on the right under ‘Texts’.

I think this is great, however I wonder if I would even know that it was possible to comment on public reports while they are still in the draft versions before I got involved in this community. I mean, there’s no doubt this is a useful exercise and certainly encourages e-participation in its truest sense, but how many normal citizens actually do know about this? Though I am a optimist on everything that’s good, its quite hard not to once in a while ask those tough questions to ensure that we can get more ideas to make it work better. And of course, I’m sure with time and collaborative efforts across the sectors, efforts such as this will gain its recognition and be usable when the time calls for action.

The Right to Reply at WriteToReply.org…

Quite often I find when it comes to government, having a radical change or effective impact on services usually does come from the hard work of volunteers or people who care. And quite often the old saying is true “The best things in life are free” because people act on what they feel and not what they’re told. Same goes here, where Joss Winn and his collaegue Tony Hirst, who exchanged a few thoughts on twitter, then saw the Digital Britain – Interim Report and thought people might like a way to respond to it in detail. To learn exactly how WriteToReply.org was founded, take a look here.

Government not Twitter friendly costing them loss in valuable innovations?

Its interesting here to see that dynamic collaborations can be created through social networking sites such as twitter that talk about real issues and real solutions for government and at the same time, alot of local councils are blocking down these sites. Is it possible by doing so, government is losing out on possible low-cost and innovative solutions to improve government? Just look at how the conversation between Joss Winn and Tony Hirst unfolded in front of our eyes…And if you want the full details of how all of this came about, read all about it here.

Local Government Consultations…

Saying that, its been my own as well as other citizens frustrations watching local councils chuck out online consultations in PDF formats basically asking citizens to help them deliver better services but making it as hard as possible for us to do so.

Lame attempts to engage and encourage citizen e-participation..

If you look at it in terms of trying to create a harmonious relationship between citizens and government, its seems like a pretty lame attempt doesn’t it, rather insincere and does not connect with the average citizens who need to spend the least amount of time thinking about how they can help their government because they’re too busy thinking about how they can make improve their own lives on a day-to-day basis. And the funny thing is, these are the people whose opinion probably means the most and lives have a significant impact on all those decisions made.

Other ways to conduct online consultations???

Earlier this year I blogged about how Coventry City Council took its billion pound city centre planning consultation to Facebook. Now I know alot of people are still trying to figure out how do we actually start using social networking sites such as Facebook to benefit local councils and their citizens. Well this is a great example on how existing practices of local government consultation can go hand in hand with all the social technologies available publicly and freely to us. The problem here might be the ability to change with the net and not resist the tide.

I feel it is a matter of WHEN and not IF for government to start being brave and embracing the new face of public engagement online.

Digress.it

Its interesting to see how a simple idea has come quite a long way now where CommentPress was a theme has now evolved into a plugin called Digress.it. Now anybody using wordpress using any theme can use it! Certainly a more attractive option for those who are image conscious ;o)

Using WriteToReply.org to actually read between the lines in legislation documents, using layman terms…

Something that was quite interesting that came out of this discussion was the idea to somehow combine writetoreply.org and simplyunderstand.com (translates consultations into plain English). I think this is a great idea and does make it easier for citizens to relate to without having to have a local gov dictionary!

The challenge is… once we get this done, how do we get citizens to find out about this? Will local councils help to promote this? Will it still be on the outskirts or underground and beyond reach to some citizens? Will there be a digital exclusion within the digitally included community? And here comes the questions!!!;o)

Hope this post sparked a few questions or comments in our heads. Thanks to Joss Winn for the interview and also hope it was useful! ;o)

Liz xxx

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