Political Innovation Essays: Towards Interactive Government
A few months back Paul Evans asked me to write a short essay/blog post for the Political Innovation project – taking a series of posts about how politics could be done better – and cross-posting them on political blogs from different places on the political spectrum. I managed to escape dissertation writing long enough to draft the below, which has been posted today as the first post in the series and is featured on the Political Innovation site; Left Foot Forward and Local Democracy blog so far. Comments, if any, should all go to the main Political Innovation site…
Here’s the post:
The communication revolution that we’ve undergone in recent years has two big impacts:
- It changes what’s possible. It makes creating networks between people across organisations easier; it opens new ways for communication between citizens and state; it gives everyone who wants it a platform for global communication; and it makes it possible to discover local online dialogue.
- It changes citizen expectations of government. When I can follow news from my neighbour’s blog on my phone, why can’t I get updates on local services on the mobile-web? When I can e-mail someone across the world and be collaborating on a document in minutes, why is it so hard to have a conversation with the council down the road? And when brands and mainstream media are doing interactivity and engagement – why are government departments struggling with it so much?
Right now, government is missing out on significant cost saving and service-enhancing benefits from new forms of communication and collaboration. But the answers are not simply about introducing new technology – they are to be found in intentional culture change: in creating the will and the opportunity for interactive government.
There are three things we need to focus on:
- Culture change. Although there are pockets of interactivity breaking out across the public sector, it’s often counter-cultural and ‘underground’. Most staff feel constrained to work with tools given to them by IT departments, and to focus on official lines more than open conversations. Creating a culture of interactivity needs leadership from the top, and values that everyone can sign up to.
- Removing the barriers. There are literally hundreds of small daily frustrations and barriers that can get in the way of interactive government. It might be the inability of upload a photo to an online forum (interactive government has human faces…), or consent and moderation policies that cover everyone’s backs but don’t allow real voices to be heard. Instead of ignoring these barriers, we need to overcome them – to rethink them within an interactive culture that can make dialogue and change a top priority.
- Solving tough problems. Public service is tough: it has to deal with political, democratic and social pressures that would make most social media start-ups struggle. We need to think hard about how interactive technology and interactive ways of working play out in the tough cases that the public sector deals in every day.
The Interactive Charter is a project to explore how exactly we go about making government into interactive government. It’s got three parts:
- Creating a pledge – The ‘Interactive Charter’ will be a clear statement that any organization (or senior manager within an organization) can sign up to say something along the lines of “I want my organization to get interactivity; and I’ll commit to overcoming the barriers to interactive ways of working”. With a promise and commitment from the top removing the barriers should get a lot easierOf course to just hand down a pledge wouldn’t be very interactive, so we’re drafting it on Mixed Ink.
- Naming the problems…and overcoming them – We’ve already made a start over on the Interactive Charter wiki, but we would love you to join in suggesting practical challenges, and practical solutions, to interactive and digital working in government.
- Putting it into practice – We want to pilot the approach: getting top-level support, and removing the barriers to interactivity from the ground up. Could your organization be part of that?
So, if you’ve got a vision for more interactive government, you can share it by redrafting the current pledge. And if you’ve faced or solved problems around interactive government, help shape the body of knowledge around each of the barriers and their solutions on the wiki. Of course, you could also just drop in comments over on the Political Innovation blog…
Oxfordshire: open & interactive
[Summary: A local post about open data, interactive working and social media in Oxford & Oxfordshire - and some rough ideas for making stuff happen...]
There’s not all that much open data published by local authorities in Oxfordshire right now, and whilst there are some great pockets of social media use, and digital technology projects across the different local authorities in the County, online interactivity from councillors, digital engagement from local councils, and hyperlocal community websites seem pretty sparse round here. We’ve got some great geek gatherings and social media meets, but not much that I can find in the way of social media surgery type activities.
But, having met with quite a few people from different local authorities across the County in the last month it seems clear that there is real potential for more online engagement and open working in Oxfordshire, just some gaps in the knowledge, networks and catalysts to make things happen.
Which got me wondering about how the knowledge, networks and catalysts could be brought together. What would help…
- …local authorities in Oxfordshire to understand, explore and release more open data;
- …local authorities and community groups to get the most out of social media and interactive technology;
- …turn Oxfordshire from a bit of a laggard in the worlds of open data and online interactivity, into a leading light…
And I realised: I’m not sure. But, here’s two modest proposals:
- An informal gathering some time in September of people interested in catalysing more online engagement and open data action in the county to explore possibilities. Could we set up a regular social media surgery? What about some hack-days with local open data? Or should we head out a build a better directory of the hyperlocal websites across Oxford? Interested? Let me know in the comments below – and suggest when might be a good time on this Doodle and I’ll try and find a suitable venue… (offers of venues welcome…)
- Running a half-day event for Oxfordshire local authorities sometime in the Autumn to provide an introduction to open data; social media and ideas for more interactive ways of working. Sometime to be discussed at an informal gathering perhaps – but I’d also be interested to hear direct from anyone in Oxfordshire Councils about whether this would be useful / what would be most useful…. drop me an e-mail if you work with an Oxfordshire LA and you would be interested; or if you work with open data / social media locally and might be interested in helping organise something.
What do you think? If there is interest then I’d be up for spending a bit of time helping make something happen…
Of course – this may all already be happening? Or it might have been tried before? So comments / ideas on stuff already going / criticism / alternative ideas etc. welcome too…
Pareto Problems for Digital Innovation?
Filed under: E-Democracy, Innovation, Social Media, digital inclusion
Going for the High Hanging Fruit?
[Summary: Local by Social author Andy Gibson is working on a new paper for NESTA on how digital innovation can save public services, and has asked for reflections on ‘obstacles and their solutions’ to adoption or more social technology. I’ve written on practical barriers to digital technology in government before, but here I’m exploring an economic argument that sets out a potential challenge to many digital-social innovation projects*.]
The Pareto Problem
The Pareto Principle (named after the famous Italian Economist, but often known just as the 80-20 rule) suggests that in many real-world situations 80% of the features required in a project can be gained with just 20% of the effort**.
In software development and much of the business world, focussing on the 80% of features you can build easily makes sense. For each bit of effort put in at the start there is a large marginal return and benefit; but as you get to the trickier bits of a project, the marginal benefit (the number of people who will use a feature; how much benefit each new feature will bring etc.) relative to effort put in falls. The last 20% of features might cost four times as much as the first 80%, and in many cases, implementing them simply isn’t cost effective. So, the rational developer or manager never provides them.
Public Services don’t work like that. The tricky 20% of a service to provide is often the service to the most in need. Into that tricky 20% might fall providing services in remote rural areas; educating children from more challenging backgrounds; providing transports services for the elderly; making sure education classes are accessible to those with additional needs and so-on. When social innovators hold up technology driven innovations – new ways of providing public services – we have to ask: are they just solving the easy 80% and ignoring the tough cases?
Is the promise of more efficient and cheaper digital services simply the result of a slight-of-hand – measuring the costs of a service based on it’s provision in the easy cases and bracketing out the tough cases which would require re-engineering systems and adding significant cost and effort if a digital service were to be a universal service?
Possible Solutions
The Pareto Problem isn’t an argument against digital innovation per se. Innovation can shift where the Pareto Problem kick’s in (e.g. Can we serve 90% of the people on 10% of the cost and make savings that way?) and innovation can help the public sector to challenge the frequent over-design of processes and systems around the tough cases. However, the Pareto Problem is significant. A few possible ways to address it in thinking about digital innovation are addressed below.
- Account for a universal service – any digital innovation needs to show its cost and benefits not just in the easy pilot cases – but also if it were to provide a universal service. Or if it can’t provide a universal service it needs to explain it’s limitations, and allow the public sector to properly cost provision to those the innovation will not work for.
- Take the tough cases into account – Conventional design of services in the public sector often starts with tough cases. Staff have in mind the cases they faced recently where a service user had complex needs – and they design from the tricky cases first – building all sorts of processes and systems to cope with the complexities. Agile developers often start with the easy cases – and far too often the tough cases get ignored. For example, how does your service work for young people who need additional privacy because of a custody battle currently taking place? Or how does your service work for people with learning difficulties and other additional needs? ??Find the balance between over-engineering processes, but having processes that work for those with the greatest needs, is the key challenge for social innovators.
- Design with social justice in mind – digital innovation in the public sector shouldn’t just be about creating ‘better stuff’ and ‘better services’ for individuals to consume: it should be about creating a ‘better society’ – and that involves thinking about the distribution of benefits from innovation as well as the nature of the innovation itself.
- Collaborate and listen – the most important way to make sure social innovations don’t fall into a Pareto Problem trap is to design with the people working at the frontline.
A metaphorical summary
I started writing this post a while back under the title ‘What happens when we’ve picked all the low hanging fruit?’. Many digital innovations come showing as basket full of the low hanging fruit and explain how easy it was to pick. The key is asking – how are you also planning to get the stuff from the top of the tree as well?
* I’m posting this very tentatively, not sure that I’ve quite managed to express the idea I’ve been reflecting on – but aware that Andy’s paper is currently in progress and that working on the last 20% of tweaks to get this blog post spot on is, um, well, going to take at least four times as long as what’s been written so far… (#paretopost)
** Pareto’s original observations concerned the distribution of wealth in Italy, but the principle has been applied much more widely since. The actual numbers don’t matter here. The 80-20 ratio is simply used because Pareto observed it as a ratio that applied in many real-world situation. Take any ratio in the region of 70-30 towards 99-1 and you will see the argument above still broadly holds.
Skills for public voice & participation alongside skills for social media
Filed under: Civic Participation, E-Democracy, Youth Participation, digital inclusion
Eszter Hargittai was in the Oxford Internet Institute earlier today sharing her research findings on the role of skills and socio-demographic factors in influencing levels of use of the Internet – and particularly web 2.0 spaces.
Implicit in Eszter’s argument was a relationship between the diversity of Web 2.0 use and democratisation. The presentation highlighted how socio-demographic factors, and particularly gender, can have an impact on the extent to which different groups contribute to public online spaces such as YouTube and Wikipedia. It’s not enough to give access to the web, and to web 2.0 for the imbalances in who is speaking and expressing their views through these online platforms to be challenged. Skills matter in addressing the imbalance.
However, as discussion at the presentation explored, if our concerns are of democratisation, social justice and equality, then the the skills that need to be promoted are far wider than technology skills, or skills to work with social media.
Skills to exercise public voice and to participate in community (online and offline) are arguably prior to the skills to use technology for public expression.
Both as we measure engagement online, and as we work to promote online engagement – keeping in mind a focus not only on digital skills, but also on general skills of public expression, interaction and dialogue is key.
For those working with young people and communities then that perhaps adds up to encouragement to address digital skills as part of wider civic skill-building programmes such as ‘Act by Right (now online as a free resource BTW)’ rather than to address digital skills and social media in isolation.
The myth of easy engagement. Who should participate and how…
Filed under: Civic Participation, E-Democracy, Youth Participation, digital inclusion
Decisions are made by those who turn up.
Often, those looking to engage people in decision making and shaping services make the shaky leap from the fact that over 70% of people have internet access, to the idea that the internet offers the straightforward opportunity to engage 70% of the people. A few days ago, frustrated by questions driven by this logic, and of the form ‘How many people in our local area are on Twitter?’, Dave Briggs sought to explode ‘The myth of engaging with everyone‘. Dave asks for clarity stating:
The first thing to be clear on is that no one engagement method will reach, or suit, everyone.
The second thing to be clear on, is that you don’t necessarily want to reach everyone, anyway.
Two statements that seem empirically and intuitively sensible. But the argument they lead Dave to is not necessarily so uncontroversial:
My argument would always be to focus on the small number of active, enthusiastic people first.
Whilst there are a limited number of cases where putting the primary focus on the active, enthusiastic people is the right way forward, in local authorities, national government and other democratic contexts we need to think more carefully. The ‘active, enthusiasts’ who leap upon any opportunity to get involved may well be great & capable people – but they may well not have all the ideas, insights, experiences and networks that we need for innovation, change, and the development of engaged vibrant communities. The following post is not a call to reject the active enthusiasts, engaged online and willing to make considerable contributions to civic life – but it is a call to remember that, if decisions are made by those who turn up, those planning and facilitating engagement have a responsibility to make sure they are inviting and supporting the right individuals and groups to be part of the process.
So, who should turn up? Below I’ve sketched out three steps to thinking about who you need to engage, and how to manage that engagement.
This is a quick sketch – and I’m sure the ideas it explores have been well developed elsewhere – so I welcome comments / pointers and reflections to help shape and develop this more…
1) Start from the end
You can’t start planning an engagement process without thinking about why you are looking to engage people. Why you are thinking about engagement, will determine who needs to be engaged, and how.
Some useful questions to ask yourself about the outcomes you want:
- Are we looking to make a decision at the end of this process? If so:
- Does the decision need to be decided by a democratic process? Or does it otherwise need some democratic legitimacy?
- Do we already have a mandate or responsibility for making this decision?
- Is the goal to make a particular project happen where we already know what that project is?
- Is the goal to take action on a particular issue, but without already knowing what action to take?
- Is the goal to build a community who can take forward projects and action in future?
And then ask about the sort of input you need. Do you want:
- Ideas?
- Insights?
- Expertise?
- Innovation?
- People taking action?
- Voting?
- etc.
The reality is that most engagement projects involve multiple possible outcomes, and multiple sorts of input.
For example, you may want to initially get a wide range of ideas about the priorities that should be set for a £100k pot of local funding; to follow this up with a democratically legitimate vote to discover the top local priorities; to put together a panel who will invite local groups to apply for funding to run innovative projects that match up against the chosen priorities; and to decide who gets the funding and to support them in running projects and making an impact. Each stage of the process answers the questions above in different ways – and so will need to think differently about who to engage and how…
2) Think about who is affected & who should be involved
If you want to engage a local population – you could just put an engagement opportunity up online, and let the people who are interested find out. But, as Mark Pack points out in a comment on Dave’s blog post:
often those keenest on an issue have a different view from those less keen on the issue
Those who self-select to get involved in an engagement opportunity may not represent all the people who should be involved in an engagement opportunity. Of course, who should be involved depends on the sorts of answers you gave to the questions above.
If you want to get the best possible democratically legitimate outcome that respects the independence and self-determination of local communities then you need at least two broad groups of people involved:
- (a) People with expertise on the issues in consideration;
- (b) People who will be affected by decisions or actions that result from this process;
You could just work with a tick-list consisting of these two items, and check you have people from both categories taking part – but chances are that breaking down category (b) at least is going to prove useful for targeting engagement opportunities and making sure you get beyond the easy-to-reach enthusiasts.
For example, you may decide you need to hear from:
- Men & women, of a range of ages and employment situations, who live in different wards where your funding of £100k might be spent.
You may find you can generate a matrix from the lists of different group you want to engage – giving you a tool to check and think about who is engaged so far. For example, the matrix below helps get a rough sense of whether a process is hearing from participants across areas of Oxford, and from a range of age groups and employment backgrounds.
It’s important to note, however, that these are not tick-boxes. You may not necessarily have someone from every category. These lists are tools to help you think about and visualise whether or not you are getting a broad range of inputs into your engagement process.
Engaging some groups is easier than others. Although – as I heard it put at the recent Beyond Twitter conference, that’s not because some groups are ‘hard to reach’, but because from some places in your local area, the council is harder to reach. With a matrix like the above, you can think about where you put your resources, and how accessible the engagement you are creating is to different groups.
3) Think about the sorts of input you allow, and the inputs you are getting
The people you engage are not, unless they have been elected through a suitable process, representatives . Nor, unless you’ve gone through some in-depth statistical sampling, are they representative.
But they do bring something to your process. And knowing what they bring is important to ensure the outcome is as high quality and legitimate as possible.
People bring ideas, insights, lived experience, energy to take action, skills and practice know how and a whole lot more. Sometimes people should be allowed to bring a veto; or to call for a vote on particular issues.
Fascilitating engagement involves looking at these different sorts of input, and getting the right balance at the right time.
For example, you may first gather stories from across an area about what living there is like, and share these stories with the ‘active enthusiasts’ who have time and energy to give in thinking about innovative funding priorities that could respond to those stories. You may invite those affected by decisions about funding to reflect upon the ‘active enthusiasts’ suggestions. You may offer a veto power to local community members. You may seek out the views of specific groups to make sure a decision is well rounded. And you may seek to bring together a large group to vote on proposals. If all the stories and insights come from one group; all the ideas from another; and all the action from another group again – then the risk that your process is unbalanced is big.
Engaging everyone
Many people have had bad experiences of engagement in the past. Some people are not interested in being engaged. Many people face barriers to getting engaged. You can’t engage with everyone all the time.
But whatever you do, look beyond the easy and obvious, to seek approaches that will work, and that will push forward are more just society.
Why engage online?
Where does this leave the argument for online engagement that Dave Briggs was exploring in the post that sparked the exploration above? Well, one avenue worth exploring is how digital technologies can lower the costs of engaging the easy-to-engage, to free up resources to offer substantive support to those groups, who for reasons of structural and systematic disadvantage, may find their input less likely to be otherwise included.
Three challenges for proponents of a Rebooted Britain
Whilst there might still be a lot of work to do in order to remove the practical, everyday and mundane barriers to building more interactive, open government – and public services fit for the 21st Century, it’s also important to ask critical questions about the sort of public services and government we want developments in technology to help bring about. I’ve just been reading the essays prepared for the Reboot Britain conference that was held last month – and whilst their provocative cheer-leading for a digitally transformed world is often well placed, I also felt slightly uneasy at the omissions in this NESTA publication, and the challenges either unseen, or glossed over.
I’ve tried to capture that unease into three challenges that I believe need to be addressed by those proposing and arguing for more open government, digitally enabled public services and a ‘rebooted britain’. Challenges that are intended, not as a argument against moving forward, but as a the starting point for an argument for subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle, tweaks to our direction of travel.
Challenge 1: Where is social justice?
It doesn’t just matter that it is made generally easier to access public services; or that access to democratic power is redistributed to a greater number of people. It matters who has easier access to services, and which voices are now being heard in democratic debate. If digital innovations stand to widen the gulf between the best off, and the least well off, then it may well turn out to be wrong to pursue them. Markets and technologies are not morally neutral or value free – and we need to ask questions about their impact on equality and socially just outcomes.
Social justice, equality and inequality are not terms that you will find anywhere in the Reboot Britain essays – and there is a lack of critical appreciation of the way in which existing social inequality can be re-enforced by the introduction of technologies that outsource to the individual the burden of managing the fulfilment of their needs, rights and entitlements from public services. Whilst the VRM movement advocated by Lee Bryant could indeed lead to a powerful transformation of the relationship between citizen and state – we should be asking ourselves the Rawlsian question of whether some of our innovations, applied without attention paid to equality, could end up benefiting the well off, to the unjust detriment of the least well off in society – widening, rather than narrowing the gulf in our unequal society.
The challenge in a nutshell: ask what sort of society your innovation creates – and tell us if that society is closer to a just and fair one?
Challenge 2: Supporting Deliberative Leadership
Accountability is generally a good thing. Having more information on which to base decision making is generally a good thing. Having decision makers who can debate their decisions by appeal to public reason, and who can account for their decisions clearly and transparently is also much to be desired. However, having decision makers and leaders who are human being is also important. And human beings have practical limitations.
Demands for data, demands for transparency, and demands for new systems for getting more voices into decision making are common across many of the Reboot Britain essays – but without a recognition that decisions should be made, not just upon data-points and on the basis of who shouts loudest, but upon careful deliberation and discursive weighing up of ideas – we risk ending up with a very impoverished politics.
To demand far greater accountability from politicians than we demand either from the media, or, indeed as categories of media / politician and ‘other’ break-down in a digital world, from ourselves – seems to risk creating leaders unable to use their judgement, not least because of the basic practical burdens of auditing all past statements they have made and accounting for any changes in their view over time.
The challenge in a nutshell: don’t stop at making demands for data – think about how it will impact upon deliberative decision making. Can you provide an account of the form of leadership or decision making you want to see – and provide a realistic portrait of a politician fit for a Rebooted Britain?
Challenge 3: Local Control vs. Universal Services
In part this challenges is a replay of the social justice challenge – in so far as it asks whether local control of services leads to a concentration of better services around the already well-off, and a relative decline in the quality of services in areas where populations find it more difficult to exploit new technologies of voice. But more generally this challenge asks whether we can make compatible the idea of Universal Services, available to everyone across the country (without the ‘postcode lottery’ frequently decried in mainstream media) with the idea of local and hyper-local control of services?
The challenge in a nutshell: Does the idea of universal and uniform provision drop out of the picture in the Britain described in the Reboot Britain essays?
Overcoming the 50 obstacles at #localgovcamp
I spent a fantastic day yesterday in Birmingham Fazely Studios at #localgovcamp – an unConference exploring local government use of the internet. I offered to lead a session based around the ‘50 Obstacles to Open Government‘ which I jotted down a while back – and to host a discussion sharing tips and ideas for overcoming these obstacles. The notes that I took during the session are on the 50 Obstacles wik (and if you took part – please do add your own notes…), and below are a few quick reflections on the session and where the 50 Obstacles list goes now…
Top down, bottom up, sideways?
I wrote down the 50 Obstacles based on my experience of working with front-line youth service practitioners through action research and a recent action learning set on youth participation and social network sites. They are challenges as seen from perspective of staff wanting to engage with social media, but without neccessarily having responsibility for driving forward the use of social media across an organisation.
However, the #localgovcamp session drew a wider range of participants – including service managers, web teams and more. Quickly discussions turned to the need for vision from senior management and significant cultural change as key to driving social media adoption. Vision and leadership are important. The importance of styles of leadership in organisational change is something I’ve written about before. But when it comes to social media adoption – there is a strong case for recognising the many different possible approaches. And for recognising that local authorities are collections of diverse and different teams and services with ever more blurred boundaries – not monolithic entities with a single form, function or direction .
Not only is social media adoption something that can be driven by bottom up ‘nibbling’ away at problems (as David Wilcox put it), or by top down strategic programmes, but it is also enabled by social media moving sideways – from services that find ways to adopt and use social technology sharing their stories and experiences with the rest of an organisation.
Practical Problem Solving
You can find many of the tips people shared for overcoming hurdles over here – but I was particularly struck by the dialogue around experimentation with social media – and sharing examples of social media use and success to help managers and teams make sense of what they might be able to do.
So – I took 15 minutes out later in the day at #localgovcamp to develop the wiki page for obstacle 48: “Managers do not support staff exploration and experimentation with Web 2.0″ and to add a collection of links to sources of information about what other authorities have been doing with social media. And I quickly discovered there are a lot of great examples out there. Take a look at the wiki page here and see if you can add to it…
We only had 15 minutes in our #localgovcamp session to share tips for overcoming the obstacles, and there are still at least 4o obstacle pages which right now only list the problems and no solutions. However, they are all wiki pages, which anyone is welcome to dive in and edit to share their learning, links and insights.
Where next?
I learnt a lot throughout #localgovcamp about organisational change and social media adoption – and I’ll be reflecting more on the insights gained over the coming weeks. However – hopefully there are also some strong next steps coming up to help turn 50 Obstacles, into ’50 things that use to give us trouble… but we’ve sorted them all out now’ – including a possible session at Reboot Britain. But more on that later…
Update: Just as I was about to post this, David Wilcox upload this clip he took just after the session…
Overcoming the challenges to open government – the wiki way
The Wiki
My recent post on 50 Small Hurdles to Open Government generated some great comments and conversation. And so, with the encouragement of a number of those who commented, I took the 50 hurdles from the blog post, and turned them into a Wiki where anyone can share insights and ideas for overcoming them.
Take a look and see if you can offer some tips for dealing with the technical, organisation, policy and skill-set hurdles that hold back so much digital engagement potential in local and national government.
And in true Wiki style it can be built up and developed. Paul Evans has already pointed out one ommission which now has it’s own page: the lack of clarity about what the law says about engagement. However, thanks to Paul’s pointer to ICELE guidance, and contributions from the DC10PlusNetwork today, we now have a pretty good list of where laws and policies support and enable online engagement rather than prevent it.
Visit the Overcoming the Hurdles Wiki here.
Blogging from the National Digital Inclusion conference
I’ve been live blogging yesterday and today for the E-engagement strand at the 2009 National Digital Inclusion Conference.
You can take a look at some of the discussion and dialogue that’s been going on over here.
Update:
You can watch a full recording of all the plenary sessions here.
And if you’re interested in the engagement theme I was tracking at the event then take a look at these posts:
- Stuck in the middle – tensions for e-engagement – my attempt to draw out some of the dichotomies that day one of the conference uncovered.
- Using the F-Word – on the importance of fun
- Digital Futures – are young people a connected generation
- Digital Inclusion and Deafness – notes from a presentation with AbilityNet
- From E-Engagement to Encouragement – looking at local action and digital TV.
- Building an E-Engagement Manifesto – Notes from the final meeting of the e-engagement work group
And a few general posts:
- Don’t forget the downturn – but for goodness sake be generous - I caught an interview with Matthew Taylor – and was rather pleased to here his key recommendation for action was not about money or policy, but about generosity.
- Digital Inclusion One Year On – notes from the opening plenary
- It’s all about people – tracking what the conversation had covered so far (and sparking a good conversation with Michael White)
OpenGov: One big challenge? Or a thousand small hurdles
Update – July 2009: This list of 50 Hurdles has evolved into the ‘Interactive Charter‘ (an attempt to create a clear statement of intent for open government) and ‘Social Strategy‘ (a toolkit of practical resources for sorting it out). Keep an eye on posts tagged ‘interactivecharter‘ on this blog for the latest updates.
The original post:
What’s the big challenge to using new technology for mobilisation / communication around social issues, where government or large existing organisations are to be players in creating change?
Working with front-line professionals in local government over the last couple of months, I’ve been coming to see that:
- The big challenges are not about technology – they are about the content and the process of mobilisation and communication.
- When it comes to technology we’ve not got one big challenge we’ve got 100s of small challenges – and we’ve got no systematic way of dealing with them.
When all these small challenges stack up – the chance of staff members or teams in local or national government organisations and agencies being able to effectively engage with online-enabled policy making shrinks and shrinks.
Of course – as small challenges – I’m sure they can all be overcome. And one of the first steps to overcoming a challenge is knowing it is there – so below are 50 of the challenges I’ve encountered since the start of this year.
50 Small Hurdles to Online Engagement in Government
(Update 4th May 2009: There is now a wiki set-up with all these hurdles listed, and space for you to read/add shared learning about overcoming them…)
INTERNET ACCESS
- Access to Web 2.0 sites is blocked or filtered;
- Requesting that a website is unblocked requires a form to be filled in and the request may not be actioned for 24 hours or more;
- A site that has previously been unblocked is suddenly blocked again;
- A site is only unblocked for the computer a staff member usually sits at – and they are unable to access Web 2.0 Sites from another part of the office, or another desk;
- Web 2.0 Sites can only be accessed during lunch hours;
- Managers see abuse of ICT resources as an ICT issue rather than a management issue;
- ICT staff see access to Web 2.0 sites as an issue for ICT decision making, rather than for team leaders and managers;
- There is no capacity to provide staff with internet-enabled mobile phones, even if a business case can be made;
- Staff are not aware of the ICT, internet access and mobile phone/internet access resources they can legitimately ask for;
- Permission to use Web 2.0 is granted ad-hoc but not enshrined in policy, so a change in ICT manager could make access more difficult;
OFFICE TECHNOLOGY
- Computer only have out-of-date Internet Browsers (E.g. IE6);
- Staff cannot change their browsers home-page;
- Staff cannot install browser plug-ins or add-ons, and key plug-ins like Flash are out-of-date versions;
- E-mail sign-up confirmations from Web 2.0 sites regularly get caught in spam filters;
- Staff cannot install desktop widgets and utility software (e.g. Twitter clients, RSS readers etc.)
- Office computers have no ability to play sound;
- There is no easy way to get a photo onto an office computer. For example, a personal photo to use as a profile picture online;
- Any customisations staff add to their computer log-in are regularly lost;
- There is no WiFi in meeting rooms, and guests cannot get access to the internet in the building;
- There is a one-size fits all IT policy;
SYSTEMS & PROCEDURES
- There are no finance procedures or company credit cards to pay for low-cost online subscription services;
- There are no systems in place for backing up content from Web 2.0 tools;
- There is no secure password vault that can be used to keep track of ‘corporate’ memberships of Web 2.0 sites;
- There is no agreed way of notifying other staff members of plans for using Web 2.0 tools;
- There are no policies or procedures for responding to positive or negative online comments;
- There is no processes for carrying out CRB or Independent Safeguarding Authority checks on staff or sub-contractors involved in the use of Social Media to engage with young people or vulnerable adults;
POLICY & GUIDANCE
- There are no policies on personal use of Social Networks and Social Media sites;
- There is no accessible guidance available to staff on personal use of Social Networks and Social Media sites;
- There is no policy on Safeguarding and Child Protection in digital environments;
- There is no policy on Data Protection in digital environments – and no guidance on items of data which should not be shared in digital environments;
- There are no policies on appropriate levels for official staff engagement with Web 2.0
- Consent forms and model release forms make no mention of possibly sharing photos or videos from events and activities online;
ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE
- Senior managers see Web 2.0 and the Social Web as something to be scared of;
- Senior managers see Web 2.0 as a passing fad, or at best a persistent distraction and minority interest;
- Staff see Web 2.0 as an extra burden to add to already busy and pressured days;
- Ideas from outside the organisations are treated with suspicion;
- The organisation wants to be in control of any discussions that take place about it online;
- The organisation wants to moderate every discussion that it is any way responsible to convening or starting;
- The organisation wants to put it’s brand front-and-centre in every online engagement;
- Service-user engagement is not valued;
BASIC TECHNICAL SKILLS
- Staff have never received basic training in how a web browser, web addresses and search engines work;
- Staff are not aware of tabbed web-browsing;
- Staff do not make use of search tools;
- Staff find it difficult to adapt to and remember new ways of working digitally;
- Staff are not able to download, edit and upload images in web formats;
- Staff do not know how to install new utility software or browser plug-ins;
- Staff have no opportunities to share skills and develop their understanding of digital environments;
LEADERSHIP & MANAGEMENT
- Managers do not support staff exploration and experimentation with Web 2.0;
- Managers take no ownership over exploration and experimentation with Web 2.0 and provide no support to their staff;
- Managers react to initial teething problems with Web 2.0 engagement by shutting it all down and banning further exploration of the potential;
Your Challenges & Your Solutions?
I know that not only can all these challenges be overcome – but they have been. Somewhere.
If you’ve overcome one of the challenges here – could you write 50 words on how you did it? Add it as a comment here or your own blog post including the tag ‘smallchallenges’.
Or perhaps you can add to the challenges list? Naming the challenges is the first step to overcoming them!
Tim’s Blog
This is the personal blog of Tim Davies, an independent consultant and researcher from the UK.