Creating Community Conversations - Gallomanor

Code of recommended practice on local authority publicity - A consultation

It's a fairly important part of the DCLG White Paper Consultation process for CivicSurf. The Code of Practice on Local Authority Publicity has been blamed by many as a major obstacle to helping councillors use blogs. This consultation is a chance to make your views clear on the matter.

I'll be reading this over Christmas and posting some thoughts and responding in the New Year.

[Cross posted from CivicSurf]

And that's why we need FOI

From an article in The Guardian.

A minister apologised to parliament yesterday for telling MPs that 70 police officers were hurt during a climate change protest, after the Guardian revealed that most of the injuries were inflicted by insects or the heat. Vernon Coaker, the Home Office minister, told MPs at Commons question time yesterday: "I was informed that 70 police officers were hurt and naturally assumed that they had been hurt in direct contact as a result of the protest. That clearly wasn't the case and I apologise if that caused anybody to be misled."

The apology followed a freedom of information request from the Liberal Democrats, which showed that no officers in the £5.9m police operation at Kingsnorth power station in Kent during August had been injured by protesters.

Instead, police records showed that their medical unit had dealt mostly with toothache, diarrhoea, cut fingers and "possible bee stings".

Shock Horror - Positive Youth Media Coverage!

Wiltshire Times Headline
Originally uploaded by gallomanor

It's not often that young people get positive media coverage, and it is even rarer for Skate Boys to be seen in a positive light. That's why this needs to be shared.

Original Story.

Councillors, even better than your Dad!

The I'm a Councillor evaluation report for 2008 is now ready. Topline results for this year are that councils were busier than ever before. The average number of questions asked per council is 331, by an average 203 users. Compare that with 111 questions asked, by 126 users in the average council in 2004 and you can see the huge growth there's been.

This is partly due to great work by councils and teachers. Thanks! But another reason, we think, is that schools now have much better ICT facilities. And teachers and students are more computer literate. So it gets easier and easier to engage schools using a project like this.

BarcampUKGovweb09

One Saturday in January I jumped on an early morning train from Bath to London to go to a BarCamp.  My expectations weren't enormously high.  I'd heard they were very geeky, get your laptop out and code type affairs and that, quite frankly, is not me.  And it wasn't BarCampUKGovWeb08 either.  And I doubt it will be the case for the 09 event which again is happening in January.

BarCamp was in fact just what I, and many others, want from conferences: expert speakers who know what they are talking about and not selling you something; an interesting and full agenda (made up on the day); and lots and lots of networking with folk you want to meet.

My one complaint from this year's event is that not enough non-techie government types were there.  There were enormous numbers of ideas and some very committed comms and IT related civil servants but not enough policy and service types who inevitably need to buy into Gov2.0 to make it happen.  So I added an action point to the To Do on the BarCamp wiki that we must spread the word to that type of person.

So if you're working in Local Government and have wondered what the hype about Gov2.0 is, but not wanted to get pitches from expensive technology firms; if you understand the realities of trying to get councillors to adapt and engage with communities; if you recognise the value of the information that local government holds but wonder how to use it best; then BarCampUKGovweb09 is where you should be on Saturday 31st January 2009.  Sign up on the Wiki or email me and I'll do that for you.

Others blogging about it include:

Tom Watson, Jeremy Gould, Dave Briggs, Simon Dickson, & Neil Williams

"This is your victory"

"Above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to.  It belongs to you. It belongs to you."

Barack Obama acknowledges why he won the election.  He gave his campaign to his supporters and they gave him his victory.

I'm a Councillor 2008 - final report

Young people deserve a voice. The minority group we call youth includes the "hoodie" who nicked my mobile telephone, the 18 year-old winger your football team just signed, and the sixth former who will, some day around 2040, be elected Prime Minister. It's unsurprising, then, that young people are eager participators in politics. All they need is a voice!

Our flagship youth engagement event, I'm a Councillor, Get me out of Here!, has finished for the sixth year. The event - featuring local councillors and young people from 22 counties across England, Wales and NI - put school pupils and youth group members in contact with local politicians live and online. Young people also met volunteers from abroad: a former MP from Taiwan, a political activist from Zimbabwe, a city politician from the Netherlands...

But, enough sales pitch. The best thing about  I'm a Councillor isn't the event: it's the young people, who logged in, read manifestos, asked questions, completed quizzes, attended live chats, and so on. For our final report, we'll focus on the young people that are I'm a Councillor's heart and soul.

What gets young people going? What did they ask about? How did their local councillors respond? Quotes, and a final report on the event, in this extended entry.

Atheist Bus Campaign

Chloe joined us last year to be our admin support for I'm a Councillor.  At the end of the contract she left us to work for The Bible Society.  One day, as happens occasionally, the conversation in the office turned to religion and atheism.  Chloe remarked that she never met a atheist.  There was a bit of silence, and then one by one people in the office stated their position on the matter and Chloe was surprised to find that she'd been working with three for the previous couple of months.

I guess most atheists aren't too dogmatic about it and don't shout about it too much.  For most it is a bit hypocritical.  That's why the Atheist Bus Campaign is all the more astonishing for it's success.

In just over a week over 7,500 people have donated a total of over £112,000 against a target of £5,500 to run bus ads in London.  It's an incredible response and from a professional point of view it is worth looking at the reasons why.

1. Simple proposition. Donate money for an ad.  It didn't try to crowdsource the copy for the ad; it didn't try to get ideas for where the ad should be placed.  It just asked for money.  Interestingly a Pledgebank pledge gathered 877 signatories - well short of the 4680 required.  Is it because a pledge is that much more complex than a donation?  "I'll say I'll donate if enough other people also say they'll donate.  I hope they do as they say."

2. Simple process.  Click on link, decide how much, follow clear instructions.  More complex than signing a pledge but because the concept is simple the instructions and process make sense.

3. Fun. The advert is funny. The campaign feels rebellious. People were trying to outdo each other in the comedy stakes by leaving witty comments on the donation page.

4. Press Coverage. These factors made the campaign an unbelievable success.  They helped it to gather lots of lots of press coverage, which snowballed into more donations and more press coverage.

The person behind who started the campaign is Ariane Sherine.  Unsurprisingly she's a TV comedy writer and journalist.  She teamed up with a website designer called Jon Worth and the rest is history.

Blog Action Day - Poverty

I've seen poverty, but never experienced it.  Living in Bombay (as it was called back in 1985) the drive from the airport to downtown involved passing by shanty-towns and beggars with limbless babies pressing themselves against the window of the air-conditioned Mercedes as we stopped at the traffic lights.  We were always told not to give money because of reasons which I really don't want to publish as I have no way of verifying.

Working with the folk from the Scarman Trust (now 2QAB) in recent years has given me a little more insight into the thoughts of how we can help with poverty here in the UK.  It's not just about a lack of money and personal effects but also about communities with a lack of power and control over their environment. 

What was clear from working with the team was that pity and outside consultants were not what helped communities.  It was primarily about providing members of those communities with the skills and knowledge they needed to take control, the skills they needed to transfer the knowledge they have around the community.  Too often they had seen well meaning government funded agencies descend on a community, spend money, depart and leave the community in the same situation of deprivation and lack of control as before.

Sucessful new technologies are socially inclusive

I went to see some dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum yesterday.  I was there because TalkWiki had gathered speakers such as Tom Reynolds, who blogs at Random Acts of Reality and others.  One of the others, Peter Kawalek, from Manchester Business School, mentioned a powerful idea almost in passing.  He said "all successful technologies are socially inclusive".  Unfortunately he didn't back this up with anything but anecdotal truths as evidence, but think about it:

The alphabet vs hieroglyphics
English vs Latin
Internal Combustion Engine vs Horses
Printing press vs scribes
Radio and TV vs broadsheets
Internet vs books

The reason why this caught my attention was that social exclusion is one of the barriers we face when trying to implement e-government activities.  The fear that by doing so we are excluding part of society.  If it could be a commonly accepted notion that e-enabling things was inclusive in the long run then that particular battle over social exclusion would be easier.