Creating Community Conversations - Gallomanor

Horses for courses - local websites

Over on the UKIE-dem mailing list and at Designing for a Civil Society, there has been discussion about the BBC relatively new plans to launch an Ultra-Local network of community sites and the closure of the BBC Action Network.

Mick Phythian, a Local Government ICT manager from Yorkshire wrote:

Working as a local government IT manager I have offered to provide the
117 parishes within our district with sites but they don't want or won't
maintain them - they probably have enough trouble getting councillors!
Try doing it on communities of interest and the same issue will arise.
We put discussion forums on the district council web site (internally
and externally) and no usage. We offer the councillors web sites or blog
and little take up.

Some local communities do well and have the focused energy or campaign
needs. When young people want something they remanage Youtube or
something their friends will look at.

Its horses for courses and we'll have a ragbag of solutions for a long
time to come!

He's come to the same conclusion as we have.  The excellent local sites such as TalkSwindon, VentnorBlog, TalkClacton etc are down to the energy and passion of individuals rather than technology.  People need to be free to choose whatever they are comfortable with and local government, if it wants to support, should help to cover costs of training and hosting if requested and more importantly to engage with the people on the sites.  Run consultations, get cllrs and senior officers to join as members in their professional capacity, but dont try to set up a rival or to take control of it.

Youth help elderly technophobes

School children in Wiltshire are to help older people in the county become more familiar with new technology.

Shock horror.  Some positive youth coverage in the media.

Quick Plug:  Tom Gaskin of NorfolkBlurb is leading a session at the Empowerment Symposium on "Young people and eParticipation: X-Factor excitement meets bureaucratic boredom".  He's asked me to be part of the panel along with a team of young people and youth workers.  We'll be trying to shake up the conference format a little and see how much the conference grandees are willing to learn from young people.  On the agenda is social networking, media portrayal of youth and whatever the audience brings up on the day.

Don't spin the web

Someone told the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham that YouTube is a good way to engage with people.  Nobody told them not to use it as a way of distributing spin.

This video just invites criticism because of the way it is so obviously spin with the fake newspapers.  To add insult to injury the first few people to comment on the story seem overly fawning and have been accused of being plants (or astro-turfers) from the council.

YouTube is a place for user generated content.  The video is council generated content and therefore liable to attract criticism as it has from disgruntled workers and residents.  LBHF would have been better off gathering the views of real people and posting them on YouTube.  It would have been better received.

(hat-tip: Politics, PR & Marketing)

Straight Talking Aussies

Last night I was chatting with a friend about how straight-talking the Aussies are compared to the English.  His example was that if he's wearing a bad jumper out there they'll tell him that he looks like a gnome.

Then this morning I see the Kick a Migrant site produced by a digital agency in Sydney.  How close could/should Govt get to using humour to communicate serious messages?

(hat-tip to Tom Watson)

Banksy 3196, Cycling 6687 and climbing

Banksy has been held as a shining example of local eDemocracy for a couple of years now.  Until now it was the petition that had gathered the most signatories on a council ePetition site.

As of this morning a petition to get Bristol City Council to reject a plan to turn the most popular part of the Sustrans cycle network into a bus route has been signed by 6,687 6,703 (and climbing rapidly) people.

Of course this is only part of the story.  The Banksy artwork was saved for the city after the petition.  We'll have to wait and see what happens with the cycle path.

(Hat-tip The Bristol Blogger)

Does Unitary Consultation mean you take just one side?

"Once again, the citizens have disappeared."

Michael Ancram, MP, Devizes.

Yesterday the House of Commons held the first debate about the Local Government changes - the approval of unitary status for a number of councils around the country.  The first debate was about Wiltshire, our home county.

From reading the debate it would seem that the Government has based its decision to form a unitary Wiltshire County Council based on the ease of working of a variety of bodies and organisations and ignored strong evidence that the citizens of Wiltshire opposed the change. I've highlighted some of the salient parts from the TheyWorkForYou rendition of Hansard.

"The citizens did not disappear. ...  There were probably more people in favour of maintaining district councils and not moving to a unitary council than there were in favour of a unitary council. Nevertheless, about a third of the public who offered a view could see the merit of a unitary Wiltshire and would like that to happen."

John Healey, Minister of State (Local Government)

So the citizens didn't disappear but the government choose to ignore them in favour of the views of other stakeholders as described by the County Council who had proprosed unitary status.

"[ask] whether the Government took any steps to authenticate [the evidence produced by the councils submitting a proposal]?"

Simon Hughes, MP, North Suffolk and Bermondsey

"we, as a Government Department, did not undertake any direct opinion polling or checking of residents' views on the proposal."

John Healey, Minister of State (Local Government)

But the government didn't check what they said was true. 

"the district auditor stated in response:

"I agree with you that it"—

a press release issued by the county council—

"represents a misinterpretation of the MORI findings. "

Andrew Murrison, MP, Westbury

Even though the District Auditor felt that the county had been mis-representing findings.

I don't want to get into the debate about whether Wiltshire should abandon the two-tier system or not,

Congratulations to Ben Wallace MP

Ben Wallace MP is the first MP to publish details of his expenses.  Right down to the £1 parking charge.  It is really dull stuff, but really important.  People are naturally cynical in this country, so if an MP declines to publish their expenses then the assumption is that they have something to hide.  I'm hoping that in the interest of better public engagement with politics that more MPs will follow Ben Wallace's move.  I'm about to write to my local MP, Andrew Murrison, to offer him any help he might want in order to publish his.  (UPDATE:  A very fast response sadly shows that he doesn't get it:  "the Commons finance and administration office checks all my claims against the rules of the House.")

Also in the same vein the Speaker of the House of Commons has announced a(nother) "root-and-branch" review of parliamentary allowances.  Excellent news, but that's where it ends.

Firstly the review won't report until the Autumn once everyone has moved on and secondly if this report is to be believed the people running the review include, Michael Martin the Speaker, David Maclean, Nick Harvey and Sir Stuart Bell.  Not very reassuring.

e-Petitions - Rung One on the ladder

The NLGN have just published a paper called 21st Century Democracy - e-petitioning and local government.

It is a big title and subject.  The author sees e-Petitions as the solution and there is some logic to it, but I feel she places far too much hope in them.  ePetitions are useful and councils fo all sizes will need to be able to offer them, but it is important that those implementing ePetitions realise that it is part of an overall eDemocracy/engagement strategy.  They are easy to participate in and can gather lots of signatures, email addresses and traffic.  Councils need to plan ahead what they want to do with all of those.