Designing for Civil Society

The birth of Our Society

As I wrote earlier, one of the problems with the Big Society idea, when promoted as a brand by Government, is that it wraps together policies for a smaller state with practical action to promote local social action, social enterprise and voluntary action. This ConservativeHome post by Neil O'Brien underlines its political nature.
That has made it difficult for many people involved in grassroots action, who may not agree with the politics, to embrace Big Society as a space for discussion and social innovation.
Here Julian Dobson launches the idea of Our Society, that emerged from discussions with John Popham, me and others involved in Big Society in the North.

Amplify’d from livingwithrats.blogspot.com

So while Big Society in the North can keep debating, discussing and developing ideas of Big Society in a neutral space, we need something more: something that connects civic action, creates a mutual learning network, and helps people work out practical ways of addressing the challenges we face.

Let’s call this space and this service Our Society. It’s not Big Society, but it engages with and complements it. It should be a social enterprise, bringing together those who are already thinking differently and helping others to do so. It can create an informed, agile network of energetic people who can develop collaborative solutions to thorny problems. It can combine the advantages of digital technologies and social media with social innovation and local engagement.

Big Society is the government’s story of how to do so; Our Society is ours – a critical friend, a space to explore, and a crucible for practical action. It recognises that social change starts at the margins, not in the mainstream – with people who are prepared to step out and experiment, rather than with those whose job is to implement policies.

What do we need to turn this into reality? First, we need doers and thinkers and innovators who understand the diversity and richness of social action but are prepared to share their learning with each other and with those who are just starting out on this journey.

Second, we need glue-ers as well as doers. What I mean by that is people who can broker, facilitate, network the networks, put people in touch with each other, and appreciate the whole as well as the parts of the jigsaw. We already have some of these within Big Society in the North, but we need more, and it shouldn’t be geographically limited. Part of that glueing needs to be about ensuring this is something for everyone – that Our Society takes into account the forgotten society of the poor, the isolated, the distressed and the marginalised.

Third, we need people who are prepared to invest modest amounts of time and resources. We’re not interested in building empires and organisations, but in freeing up enough time from enough people to feed the energy we know is out there. We want to pull together key lessons learned from the past, tap into the brain power of social innovators and share the stories that will inspire others and give them the confidence to act. Read more at livingwithrats.blogspot.com

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/cynp

Back off the #bigsociety brand - let people choose their own label

Two articles in today's Prospect magazine highlight for me why the Coalition government should scale back promotion of its contentious Big Society brand - if it wishes to see significant take up of its best ideas. Stop worrying Labour will "capture" the ground. It isn't yours or theirs, it's our.

David Marquand uses an examination of the potential cross-party appeal of the philosophy of 18th century polician Edmund Burke to argue that he is the patron saint of big society (no capitals), and there are lessons for Left as well as Right. Big society is not a return to Thatcherism, which involved large-scale state intervention. David Marquand writes: "Cameron’s big society could hardly be more different. So far from signposting a return to Thatcherism, it signposts a departure from it. True, the signpost leaves more out than it puts in. At the moment, the big society is little more than a label, a dream, a confused if glowing aspiration. There is no knowing whether the notion can be made to fly in the harsh climate we now live in. But that is not a reason for rubbishing it, as most of the left seems determined to do. It is a reason for treating it as the opening gambit in a national conversation, to which all schools of thought—left as well as right—have an obligation to contribute. At this point in our history, above all, no single tradition has a monopoly of the truth. It would be a dereliction of duty to allow one party—or even a coalition—to treat the big society as its exclusive property".

I certainly agree that conversation could, ideally, be started now. Many individuals and organisations - like those who set up Big Society in the North - see merit in Big Society ideas about devolution of power, support for local social action and social enterprise. The problem is firstly, that the Big Society brand is now contaminated by association with the coming public sector cuts. It was conceived before those were planned - but it's no good saying that if you can't also articulate clearly what Big Society stands for.

That can't just be done by government: it has to be done by those engaged on the ground, and not many will stand up for a Tory brand that launched their manifesto. Secondly, civil society organisations that well understand this are unwilling to say: "Dave, great ideas, pity about the label. We are now in consensus Coalition land, so why not go for something uncontentious like Good Society, Civil Society ... people doing good stuff for others".

They are worried that their seriousy threatened funding will be cut.

The second article in Prospect underlines the problem: it's all being see in Westminster through the usual lens of party politcs, and who who can grab an idea for electoral benefit. Shiv Malik sets out "Why Ed Miliband should own the big society". He starts off by agreeing on the potential for consensus - but then destroys the possibility of achieving that by saying new Labour leader Ed Miliband should grab the idea for himself. My suggestion to government: stop trying to sell Big Society as a brand when it is (largely) a set of good ideas in a very tough environment. People are focussing on the environment (cuts), not your ideas. Help those who are doing good stuff on the ground tell their stories, but under whatever white label brand they choose: social action, community development, local enteprise, trusts, associations, charities etc. Then ask their permission to aggregate and celebrate those achievements. Come to think of it, that's not a bad idea for Labour to steal. Here's some relevant paragraphs from Shiv Malik's article.

Amplify’d from www.prospectmagazine.co.uk

There is a fourth way, to Giddens’s third. As both “red Tory” ideologue Phillip Blond and “blue Labour” thinker Maurice Glasman have argued, instead of redistributing cash, the state should be helping to distribute ownership. Whether you call it the “big society” or “mutualism,” the idea is the same: that the working and middle classes will reject welfare dependency as a long-term solution if, with help from the central state, they can use their own resources—savings, profits and earnings—to purchase businesses, homes, and the land they stand on, and put money into mutually-owned long term investments—everything from local banks to pensions to infrastructure. In other words, if globalisation cannot be reversed by protecting the border of the nation state, then mutualism can help root capital to make it harder to pull up and outsource to China or India in the first place.

Today, David Cameron is the politician most closely identified with the big society—but, as David Marquand points out in this month’s Prospect, the concept does not need to be party political. If anything, it has more resonance with left, appealing to the working classes who loathe welfare dependency. Yet it would also chime across society. Through the idea of community land trusts—non-profit organisations that acquire and manage land in order to provide affordable housing for local communities—mutualism could offer a lasting solution to Britain’s housing crisis. According to a recent survey for the Council of Mortgage Lenders, this would resonate with around 96 per cent of the population.

Modern day mutualism would also undercut the Tories on their right flank. Labour could once again begin to advocate for building a better existence—not through charity and guilty concern for those less fortunate, but through work, fair pay, lasting institutions, and most of all family, home and community.

Ed Miliband’s first speech to the Labour conference was thin on policies, but he doesn’t have long before he’ll have to come up with some. The emergency budget later this month will force positions to harden, and will be crucial to setting an ideological direction for Labour. In the Labour leadership race, Ed Miliband managed to steal his brother’s place. As Labour leader, stealing David Cameron’s one novel idea would be another devilishly canny manoeuvre. Read more at www.prospectmagazine.co.uk

See this Amp at http://bit.ly/ae5XOB

Nat Wei explains Big Society: it’s like the Internet

Nat Wei, one of the origjnators of the Big Society idea, and now a government adviser, uses his new blog to post what seems to me one of the most significant set of insights we have heard from someone close to policy. Nat says:
* Big Society is like the Internet, not so much technically, but in the way that we do things.
* It is an ecosystem.
* It is about shifting power ....
... "The key test of whether something is Big Society or not is about whether it represents a genuine shift in power, whether the power of information, decision-making, and/or people to us as citizens without compromising on the quality of a given service affected, and without the vulnerable and poor being adversely impacted overall when the measure is taken together with other social justice actions happening at the same time".

Amplify’d from natwei.wordpress.com

Thankfully, while politics and the Big Society are intertwined because it represents a vision and a debate about the kind of country we want to build together, I’m also increasingly clear that it is here to stay. This is because the Big Society (or whatever you want to call it) builds on thinking from the internet – it is about a change in the way we operate, about releasing information, power, and people in their streets and institutions, and supporting people to take as much or as little control over their lives from whomsoever currently hoards it – mainly government, but also other large vested interests. Once you have had a taste of the freedom offered by the internet, can you imagine going back to life without it? Yes of course there will be challenges, just as there were with the creation of the internet, with those who would seek to disrupt it, and enterprises that harnessed it that have come and gone – and it had its critics too. But it is here to stay, for better or worse, and generally for the better.

How do all the pieces fit together? Well the different levels are all being developed at the same time, rather like internet servers, browsers, and websites or apps being created all at the same time, or like an ecosystem coming into existence with minerals, and large and small organisms evolving in real time. The governing philosophy is really about creating culture change to move away from the almost literally bankrupt(ing) ideas of the late 20th century about the relationship between citizens as passive recipients of state and non-state welfare and services, to their being more in the driving seat and to change the assumptions about how we should and can live our lives. The policy agenda is about creating specific legislative and non-legislative powers for citizens to take up in every department (“public sector reform”), creating financial, organising, and enduring capacity to enable citizens and citizen groups either directly or with the help of social enterprises to take up those powers (“social action”), and strengthening really local groups with formal and informal powers (“neighbourhood empowerment”). The citizen led approach is about together tackling all the barriers to mass citizen participation at a local level, recognising that these are formidable and finding solutions so that everyone can have good reasons for getting involved, demand and use local powers, and can have repeated experiences of citizen engagement that better fit their lifestyles and expectations and which lead to active involvement in local groups.

No doubt I will have missed out loads of detail and other organisations. Do comment with your thoughts and plugs for other activity underway and organisations involved in any of the above areas, though I cannot claim to endorse everything that is posted as a comment, and comments will be moderated. It goes without saying, despite many commentators and twitterati’s best attempts, that not everything these days that goes by the name “Big Society” is in fact bona fide. Sometimes, the name is evoked to try to protect an organisation that is having its funding reduced (“So much for Big Society”), or to describe an action someone intends to take or is about to take like running a public service (“I’m taking out the trash and doing my bit for Big Society”), or as a synonym with the fight against poverty. Such comments show how many though not all understand the once in a lifetime shift taking place and how wedded many are to the idea that government and large organisations must do and be everything, so much so that you could in fact replace “Big Society” in such comments with the word “government” without changing the meaning. The key test of whether something is Big Society or not is about whether it represents a genuine shift in power, whether the power of information, decision-making, and/or people to us as citizens without compromising on the quality of a given service affected, and without the vulnerable and poor being adversely impacted overall when the measure is taken together with other social justice actions happening at the same time. Read more at natwei.wordpress.com

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a4qz

 

Community organisers for Big Society from both sides

Ben Toombs, blogging at RSA projects, explores the role of community organisers, now being promoted by one Labour leadership candidate as well the Coalition. Does anyone know what plans there are to train the 5000 organisers promised under Big Society? Will Citizens UK get the job, as they might have hoped from references in the Conservative manifesto?

Amplify’d from projects.rsablogs.org.uk

How many organisers does it take to change our communities?  Quite a few, apparently.  The ballot papers for the Labour leadership election went out yesterday, with David Miliband having recruited 1,000 community organisers as part of his bid.  In doing so he’s stolen a march on the Government, which has promised to recruit and train 5,000 of them to get the Big Society going.

So soon we’re going to have 6,000 new organisers, and the idea has new-found favour on both sides of the political divide.  This, and the pre-election timing of both pledges, surely begs the question: are community organisers simply the latest must-have policy accessory, or can they really make a difference to our communities?

In that sense, the Miliband organisers are in a better position – they can align themselves against the establishment and draw on people’s anger to motivate and engage them.  But the purpose of these organisers is overtly political, as well as social, in that they are Labour party members and intended to promote grass-roots engagement with politics.  This worked well for Obama (him again) during his run for the presidency.  But it’s a separate task, and I wonder whether it will diminish, or even conflict with, organisers’ focus on community issues.

There’s also a question as to how much duplication there will be between these organisers and the community development workers, local councillors, party members and others who are already active in their communities, only under a different name.

A piece of research I conducted at the end of last year indicated that the level of organisation in a community is largely self-perpetuating: organised communities organise themselves; those that lack that structure need a significant leg-up before they can reach that self-sustaining position.  I do believe that organisers, be they Big Society or Labour, have the potential to provide that external leg-up, but their effectiveness will depend on who they are, how they’re presented to communities, what their agendas are, and how well they’re trained, funded and supported.  If they’re being made available, they’re an opportunity for communities that should not be allowed to go begging.  But we don’t yet know enough about them to judge. Read more at projects.rsablogs.org.uk

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/9mce

 

Recent posts at socialreporter on evolving Big Society

I posted four pieces at socialreporter.com giving my perspective on Big Society developments: this is the summary pieces with some first ideas on networking.

Amplify’d from socialreporter.com

Here’s a catch-up on the posts I’ve written over the past few days about Big Society, with a few more thoughts on networking and knowledge ecologies. All posts on the topic are here. As a reminder, the Big Society idea, launched pre-election by the Conservatives and now a centrepiece of coalition Government policy, is about a smaller state matched by more powers for local communities and encouragement for volunteering, social action, social enterprise and other forms of nonprofits.

The post There is no Big Society Big Plan – but that’s no bad thing said there’s a lot starting to happen under the Big Society banner, but it is a mistake to see it as an old-style government programme. The idea is that things emerge more organically, without any one Minister – or anyone else – being in charge. Fair enough for something aiming for wide-spread action by many interests, but the problem is that no-one really understands what Big Society stands for, or how to join in. There’s no voice, no story, and consequently a lot of rubbishing. In Since there’s no Big Society Big Plan, can we expect Big Process? Probably not I examined the idea of a Big Process to develop some clear purpose and shared vision, led by Prime Minister David Cameron, but concluded that was unlikely to happen. It’s not really feasible in the current political climate, and probably not the sort of thing Downing Street would want to orchestrate anyway. Networking Big Society – or maybe some knowledge gardening suggested another approach to get the best out of Big Society: build on the wealth of activity already supported by many community and voluntary sector networks, while also adding innovative methods for mass engagement. Help community organisers and anyone engaged in social action make good use of the social technologies now widely available, but under-used by traditional activists.Read more at socialreporter.com

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/9mbd

 

Collecting Big Society news

I'm experimenting in using Amplify.com to collect tweets, blog posts and other articles. Amplify is a great free tool which allows you to write a blog post or a tweet, and also to clip content from web pages, add a comment, and post to several different places.

I'll be posting content about Big Society in this amplify space, and also setting to repost some content to designingforcivilsociety.co.uk.

I could try explaining more ... but this is an exploration, and the best way to see what works, or doesn't, is just to get started and throw up some examples.

One of the great things about Amplify is that you can have both personal spaces (like mine here) and also group spaces. In the group spaces a number of people can add their separate posts, creating in effect a group blog, with scope for commenting.

Let's get started

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/9ls1

 

 

Now we have a Minister for Civil Society

I haven't posted anything to this Designing for Civil Society blog for a couple of years, because I've been concentrating on socialreporter.com and socialbysocial.net. However, I feel I should record that we now have a Minister for Civil Society in Nick Hurd, and a major announcement today about the Big Society initiative he will be leading in the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat government. More about that here.

I've been writing a lot recently about the use of games and other workshop techniques to develop the sort of local collaborations needed if the Big Society ideas are to prosper. Definitely Designing for Civil Society ... which makes me wonder whether I should start blogging here again, or at least take the term across into a group on socialbysocial.net. Thoughts welcome, if anyone is still reading.

Recent stories from socialreporter

I'm currently doing most of my blogging about social media, e-democracy and open collaboration over at Socialreporter.com. Here's some recent items

Citizen journalism: what happens if no-one comes?
Charlie Beckett wonders whether the potential joining up of citizens and pro journalists in networked journalism will happen if most people aren't interest in active participation online.

Costs of the BBC Action Network
A Freedom of Information request by Tom Steinberg reveals costs of £1.3 million plus

E-Democracy Centre “surprised by speculation”
The director of ICELE says she is surprised by discussion around the activities of the centre, and whether it offers value for money.

Ruralnet shows how to do distributed communities
Ruralnet has revealed the results of its co-design process to re-invent its business in the open, with a demonstration at the recent Collaborate|2008 event.

Inovation needs big and small players
Director of the Innovation Exchange John Craig provides an update on progress

Social media, creativity, and open collaboration

I presented at the Creative Juice seminar, explaining why I think games, events like social innovation camp and co-design processes like that developed by Ruralnet, are important for innovative design.

I've also been experimenting with instant video to the web using Qik, at some recent events.

CoPs at boundary of institution and innovation

Click to play also at blip.tv

Steve Dale designed the IDeA online platform that enables local government officers to share knowledge across a wide range of topics, and last week he invited me to a workshop with some of the facilitators who make all it all work.
Conversations at the workshop brought home to me how these online space may become the frontiers where the inevitable institutional formalities of government meet the challenges of innovating in service delivery, democracy and partnership working.
Steve captures that in his item about the event when he recalls someone saying:

“I’m not sure that we have permission to innovate in our organisation”

and adds:

I’d like to think that CoPs do empower people to make change, but the heavy hand of command and control is still evident in many organisations, and could in some cases snuff out that spark of innovation that is in all of us.

More positively, he heard:

“Someone read and commented on my first blog! I got a real buzz out of that - it’s not an ego trip or anything, I’m just so pleased that someone thought I had something interesting to say”

I was in a group who got around to discussing whether their community of practice could generate a newsletter and other content for local people they were serving. If so, what would be the process for vetting and agreeing the content? Would it all have to be authored on a wiki, and reviewed by everyone? I suggested enabling different people in the community of practice to find their own individual and collective voices through blogs ... but that would probably push the boundaries of what a local authority would allow. I was reminded by local government officers that IT departments may well block access to anything other than standard web sites. This means that while citizens , newspapers and broadcasters are increasingly using social media, local government is restricted in how it can communicate with us.
However, as you can hear in this interview with Michael Norton of IDeA, and Steve, they are pushing ahead with experiments to introduce different media into the system.
Overall I got the sense that local government Communities of Practice are becoming the place where people can both share day-to-day experience across boundaries of geography and discipline, and have useful conversations about how local government can innovate more effectively. Putting that into action may, of course, be rather more challenging in organisations that are not necessarily innovation and collaboration-friendly.
Update: listening to the clip reminds me a shouldn't try and do interviews in noisy rooms. Will do better next time.

New jobs in nonprofit e-learning and innovation

I've come upon a couple of interesting projects and jobs ... the Cass Business School in London has spent the last three years putting together plans and funding for an innovative programme to provide online learning for people in community and voluntary organisations who might not go down the route of the usual courses. Details here, including a chief exec post at £50,000.

We are looking for a dynamic individual to lead and direct the entire project, working closely with the Trust and Project Board to create a commercially viable and well-used e-knowledge network.
Your knowledge of the voluntary sector, social networking, e-knowledge transfer and experience of successfully developing and implementing start-up projects will give you the expertise needed to ensure the project’s success and to lead and motivate a team of people working with you. In addition, you will manage all marketing and advertising activities associated with the project.

Over at NCVO they are looking for a Sustainable Funding Enterprise and Innovation Officer.

You will lead on developing a programme of work to enable voluntary and community organisations to identify, develop, and value innovation. You will lead on establishing links and forming relationships with organisations that work around innovation and enterprise.
With a strong understanding of funding and finance issues in the voluntary and community sector, you should have experience in enterprise and innovation, and the ability to plan, manage and deliver projects. This post is a one year contract.

There is always a certain amount of bureaucratic overhead in these situations. Each job, in different ways, should test out how far it is possible to deploy new ways of doing things in the third sector. good to see those opportunities emerging.

Innovation camp needs imitators

I spent much of last weekend at the London Social Innovation Camp, and as I have written over at Socialreporter, I think we need more of these events that bring together social activists and techies to brew up bright ideas ... and carry them through to action. Using new stuff to do good stuff, in new ways.
The win by Enabled by Design was very well deserved. I experimented with live steaming video from my phone using Qik, and will be doing more of that tomorrow at the Ruralnet|UK Collaborate2008 event. You'll see what I and other produce here.
If you have a Nokia S60 phone you can try qik for yourself ... it is still in alpha, but I'm finding it works well and the Qik folk are really helpful in encouraging us to try their free service and report back.

Professor questions the value of e-democracy centre

Professor Stephen Coleman, guest blogging at Connecting Bristol, an acknowledged leader in local e-democracy, has now turned his questioning gaze on the government-funded International Centre for Local e-Democracy (ICELE). After listing a range of well-known e-democracy projects in the UK, he says they will be judged by the quality of their outputs.

In the case of ICELE it has been difficult to arrive at any judgments because I simply don’t understand what they are aiming to achieve. Is it new research and understanding? Or new tools to be used by governments? Or critical debate about the merits and values of e-participation? Perhaps someone can tell me what ICELE is for and why considerable amounts of public money should be spent supporting it?
The pilots that were funded by the national project for local e-democracy seem to have disappeared without trace, with the exception of the local issues forums (which survive largely because of the commitment of Steve Clift and his colleagues) and some rather under-used councillor blogging tools. What became of the other government-funded projects? How much money was spent on the now-abandoned Voice toolkit, described by ICELE as ’a web-publishing toolkit and an online community network rolled into one’? At the very least, a fully transparent evaluation should be made available.
Incidentally, I don’t write this in a spirit of negativity. Some projects will fail and we should learn from them. It’s the failure to be open about or learn from such experiences that worries me much more.

Ouch. Will ICELE feature this in their news section? I don't think they have a blog ....

Chance to blog with Stephen Coleman

A post from Shane McCracken let's us know that Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication and Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Citizenship, is guest blogging on the future of politics and citizenship at Connecting Bristol. This is an unusual opportunity to engage online with Stephen, so do pop over. I've covered the topics in more details on socialreporter.com. Great discussion starting, and a reminder to keep in touch with Stephen Hilton and his team in Bristol who do such great e-democracy work. This is not always the case elsewhere, as Ian 'Cuddles' Cuddy reported a few months back in Public Sector Forums - Local E-democracy: Dead, Alive, or in Hiding?
Over on the Bristol blog Stephen Coleman asks if anyone would be interested in discussing ICELE, our International Centre for Excellence for Local e-Democracy. I've said yes please.

Technorati Tags: edemocracy

BBC trails their version of networked journalism

A few weeks back I posted a lengthy piece about possible BBC plans to fulfill its public service remit for "sustaining citizenship and civil society", after hearing of a preview by Controller of BBC English Regions Andy Griffee. His demonstration provoked strong criticism from regional media interests, but promised some benefits for citizen journalists and others producing their own content.

Now confirmation of the closure of the BBC Action Network - which I first wrote about last October - has produced more details from the BBC. They say they will ..

.... launch a new service which will give people access to all the BBC’s content across tv, radio and online on a range of topical issues. Many of these topic pages will reflect the same issues that have been central to Action Network, from healthcare and schools, to public transport and policing.
Each topic page will offer the latest news stories on an issue, including TV and radio programmes, while linking to the wider debate through people’s blogs, campaigns and websites.

I'm now writing about networked journalism and related topics over on a new blog: socialreporter.com. You'll find more on this story over there, plus some discussion of what might be the values of networked journalism.
Designing for Civil Society has worked well for nearly five years, but doesn't seem such a great blog title in the networked world. May be time for closure and moving house here too. What do you think?

Technorati Tags: bbcinternetblog

Government pledge to support online collaboration

Cabinet Office Minister Tom Watson has announced a new Task Force, headed by Richard Allan, to take forward proposals in the Power of Information report. Much of this was about the way that Govenment information is handled - important in itself. However, Tom also says that Hazel Blears Department of Communities and Local Government will be producing a White Paper on engagement this summer. He remarks:

Over 7 million electronic signatures have been sent, electronically, to the Downing Street petition website. 1 in 10 citizens have emailed the Prime Minister about an issue. The next stage is to enable e-petitioners to connect with each other around particular issues and to link up with policy debates both on and off Government webspace.
The challenge is for elected representatives to follow their customers and electors into this brave new world. Some of us have already taken that leap. As well as blogs, there are many more MPs using Facebook and Yahoo Groups to communicate their ideas and listen to other.
Only last week, the Prime Minister became the first head of Government in Europe to launch his own channel on Twitter, which I can tell you from experience, is extremely useful to his ministers at least.
But we need to make it easier for others too.

After declaring his belief in the power of mass collaboration, and support for initiatives like Netmums, Tom adds:

The power of information taskforce will work to support the endeavours of collaborative communities in the UK and beyond. New tools and ways of working are going to allow us to apply our collective intellectual capital to the seemingly impossible challenges of the modern age. I look forward to collaborating with them and you on this exciting agenda.

One of the strong themes in the Power of Information report - as covered by the BBC here - was that Govenment should collaborate with existing initiatives rather than setting up its own ... and it seems as if that approach is being adopted.
The BBC is following the same line, confirming on the site, as I reported earlier, that the Action Network is going to close after five years partly because so much else is now happening online.

If we talk, will Government listen?

Two contrasting approaches to UK e-democracy emerged over the last few days. On the one hand OurKingdom is promoting the idea of a massive online conversation leading up to a Citizens Summit to discuss the British Statement of Values, which I wrote about here.

I've been one of a small group offering ideas on how this might work, and OurKingdom is now inviting anyone else interested to join in. This isn't the big conversation itself, just how to plan it. The assumption is, if we talk sensibly Govenment will listen.
On the other hand Tom Steinberg, who runs the hugely successful mySociety organisation (Pledgebank, FixMyStreet, No 10 e-petitions) spells out their philosophy in launching Free our Bills, a new initiative focussed around getting Parliament to publish bills properly. It boils down to - don't expect Government to change except in very small ways, whatever you say.

In a post to the UK and Ireland E-Democracy Exchange, Tom says:

mySociety has traditionally worked on the assumption that it's basically impossible to ever get any part of any government to do anything of any real significance in the field of edemocracy, or in the wider field of greater access to data.
As a result we've always tried to pick projects that work as well as possible for the citizen without requiring government to do anything it didn't do before (think FixMyStreet, or WriteToThem). Picking a project that requires a bit of government to move a single inch in order for your project to work at all is a sadly proven path to failure. Unfortunately, our need to campaign today is a validation of this highly pessimistic approach. It is absurd that this campaign is even necessary, given that we tried so hard to do it the 'nice way' with meetings, gentle encouragement and nicely written word documents in Whitehall-speak explaining why it was useful and cheap and non-threatening. But where it counted the unelected officials who hold the relevent power here just weren't persuadable for reasons that we're having to FOI to find out.

Tom suggests a new approach to evaluating e-democracy. Instead of looking at what e-democracy projects don't achieve in terms of mass engagement, it is better to look at "pressure points, chinks in the armour where improvements might be possible, whether with the consent of government or not". He concludes:

Anyway, if this seems like a counsel of despair, it isn't supposed to be. I'm just saying that being realistic about the nature of actual progress in our field (tiny, incremental, currently peaking with things like TheyWorkForYou and Stemwijzer.nl ) makes for more interesting, useful discussions than comparing everything to the Holy Grail of True, Mass Scale Deliberative Democracy.

The OurKingdom approach does rather fall into the Mass Scale Deliberative Democracy frame. It started through a conversation between Anthony Barnett of OurKingdom and Michael Wills, the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice responsible for the Citizens Summit, and Anthony gives a summary of the private discussion a group of us had, now public here. Buried in there are my reservations about how far it is possible to plan something like this in the abstract: I think you need to be very clear about what you are trying to do, with whom - and to do that in the room, with the client. Others more experienced in the ways of e-democracy were able to be more constructive and it turned out to be a quite interesting discussion.
However, the question for me - highlighted by Tom - is whether it is worth having big conversations with Government, local or central. The Minister and civil servants may be very well-intentioned, but it is going to be very difficult to manage, and to analyse ... and even trickier to get agreement with all the different interests within Government. I remember Tom at UKGovwebBarcamp, when asked for his three tags (keywords) of self-description, saying "code not talk". So - is it worth trying the big conversation, or is it better to focus on the small steps? Or can we afford the time, energy and public money for both? "Image what you could do for one million pounds", was thrown into the OurKingdom discussion as a hypothetical. You get a lot of mySociety sites for that.

Update: the BBC has a very interesting way of displaying comments and emotions in relation to its discussion Is white working class Britain becoming invisible? I wonder if something similar might be relevant for a British Statement of Values conversation if that did get started? Hat tip to Nico Macdonald for the link ... who then points me to Healthcare for London, which I see is done by my friends at Delib

Technorati Tags: governanceofbritain

Back the blogging bosses

It's a friendly place, the blogosphere. Following news here that that Stephen Bubb, chief executive of the organisation for nonprofit chief executives acevo has started blogging at Bubb's blog, a couple of more established bloggers have launched a support group.
First of all Shane McCracken set up a Facebook group, now Paul Caplan has a public page on his blog inviting more nominations and offering a badge.

I've pointed Paul over to Matthew Taylor at the RSA, and Andrew Brown's suggestion of Eric Carlin.
All good fun - with the very important underlying purpose, as Paul points out, of helping encourage the non-bosses to believe they can speak up too:

Some heros are breaking free and we salute them. There are brave men and women bearing the title CEO or Director of this, that or the other who are stepping up and talking as the passionate and interesting men and women they are. They are brave and forward thinking and they make it easier for those of us who are talking to the frontline troops in the public sector and saying: “Yes it’s OK to get out there and have conversations. Yes it’s OK to talk like a human being and tell stories.” Because now we can add: “… because look, your Boss is doing it!”

That's best answer to We can't do that - and they mustn't do it either. More examples of public or nonprofit blogging bosses over at Paul's place, please.

Technorati Tags: nptech, nptechuk

Not getting it may be a worldview thing

When people are unenthusiastic about social media and other Web 2.0 stuff it is tempting to be a bit sneery and say they don't "get it". Who can fail to see the benefits of publishing without publishers, and organising without organisations? The tools may take a little getting used to, but surely they are worth trying in pursuit of a better world?
Maybe for you, but not necessarily for them. It could be people do get it and don't like what they see, because your world view isn't theirs.
If they say We can't do that - and they mustn't do it either, it may be a reflection of organisational culture - or something deeper about the way thing work.
I remember a few years back reading an excellent piece by Jack Martin Leith about worldviews, and writing, in the context of participation and e-democracy:

He suggests it is important to understand whether we - and others - are seeing our world (organisation, neighbourhood, group) as a mechanism, a set of changing relationships, a system, or something even more organic and inherently messy. As he shows, that influences the sort of techniques professionals may use when they intervene.

So when knowledge management guru David Gurteen sent out a World 2.0 newsletter the other day I had Jack in mind.
David wrote:

Most of us understand what Web 2.0 is all about as we move from a read-only web to a read-write or participatory web.
And we are starting to come to grips with so called Enterprise 2.0 where the concept and technologies and social tools of Web 2.0 are moving from the open web into organizations.
It is still early days and there are many issues to be grappled with as we try to balance the structure and stability of the old world with the more fluid and complex nature of the new.
But the "2.0 meme" is starting to affect everything. In a talk in Kuala Lumpur I was asked how you implement Enterprise 2.0 and I was talking about some of the barriers when someone spoke up and said "We will never have Enterprise 2.0 until we have Managers 2.0!” In other words it was managers and their out-dated mind sets that was a major barrier to change,
And a few days later while giving another talk at the National Library in Singapore I found us talking about Libraries 2.0 and Learning 2.0. It then hit me that “2.0” thinking was permeating everything. People were also taking about Business 2.0 and Education 2.0.
So what does this mean in its broadest sense? Well, we are no longer consumers: of goods, services or education - we are all prosumers - we all have the opportunity to create and consume. For the first time we are participants in everything and not the “victims”. Fundamentally it is about "freedom".
We are moving from a world where we were told to do things and where things were structured or planned for us to one where we get to decide what works best for us. We are moving from a mono-culture to a highly diverse ecology.
We are moving from a simple world to a rich, complex, diverse one. One where power is less centralized and more distributed. We are moving from a command and control world to a world where people can do as they please within the boundaries of responsibility.

David offers a neat little World 1.0/World 2.0 chart.
And while I'm thinking about this I see that Jack has spotted it as well, and blogged his own piece, paying tribute in the process to David's excellent knowledge cafes and generous knowledge sharing. Very definitely a World 2.0 person.
Perhaps nudged by David's piece Jack has updated his own mid-1990s Worldviews, 1, 2, and 3 article which is now here. As a taster, here's Worldview 2.0:

Worldview 2 is the emerging worldview. In this scheme of things the world is seen as an ecosystem. These are some of the main features of W2:

* Effective when the environment is complex, turbulent, unpredictable
* Organisational life is governed by democracy and self-management
* Plan-do-review
* Adult-adult relationships (interdependence)
* “Create what you want” mindset
* Innovation through creating value for the whole system
* Beyond the metaphor of “the future is a place, change is
a journey”

The W2 worldview is based largely on complexity science and the various branches of systems theory, including the cybernetics of Gregory Bateson.

This is in contrast to Worldview 1:

Worldview 1, in which the world is seen as a huge machine, has been the dominant worldview for the last 300 years. These are some of the main features of W1:

* Effective when the environment is relatively simple, stable and predictable
* Organisational life is governed by bureaucracy and command-and-control
* Plan then implement
* Parent-child relationships (dependence)
* “Problem solving” mindset
* Innovation through tools and techniques

The W1 worldview is based largely on reductionism (attempting to understand reality by studying its constituent parts), a mechanistic view of the world and a limited, linear model of cause and effect.

Jack is a terrific Open Space expert, committed to helping people come together face-to-face and ...

.... discuss issues of heartfelt concern, share ideas, pool knowledge, reach agreement on the best way forward, and develop plans for collaborative action.

He - and others using similar methods - demonstrate that you don't need Web 2.0 to develop World 2.0 - though it does extend what you can do out of the room, and a bit more. What you do need for World 2.0 is people who are prepared to be open, collaborative - and recognise that life is messy. If you wish to explore:

• Free downloads from Jack Martin Leith
• Free downloads from David Gurteen
• My guides to participation, partnerships and social media and networking

Technorati Tags: worldview

Network to explore "civic function of news"

Stephen Coleman, Professor of Political Communication and Co-Director of the Centre for Digital Citizenship, is launching an RSA Journalism Network over on the RSA Networks site.

The public’s declining trust in the news media is a worrying trend. The RSA and the Reuters Institute of Journalism are looking at how we can support the civic function of news. We’re particularly interested in how professional journalists and Fellows relate to the public’s ideas about news and what it is for.

Great topic - and maybe this network could provide an opportunity, among other things,  to explore what the BBC plans are in this field. As I quoted in that post, Stephen has said:

The BBC is dropping/has dropped the Action Network. It plans to do a number of other exciting things along these lines in the coming months. The Action network (previously iCan) was always meant to be an experiment. The BBC is right to learn from experiments and change course if that's what seems right.

As well as his position at Leeds University, Stephen is Visiting Fellow at the Reuters Institute, which maybe explains the connection.
The timing of the project is right, with growing interest in the shifting role of journalists, as citizens produce content for themselves. Charlie Beckett explored that in Networked Journalism: For the people and with the people. More in posts cited below.
I do, however, hope that Stephen makes a commitment to bring the network out from behind the RSA Networks login, as we did with The Membership Project once it had some initial RSA support and interest from Fellows (members). The RSA is running a terrific series of public lectures, free and open to anyone - why not follow the same approach online? I can't see how it is possible to have a useful discussion about media and citizenship in an old-style walled garden. You can link out - but people outside are then forced to come to "your place" to join in. This seems particularly inappropriate on this topic, where issues are so interesting precisely because the Internet has created a public commons.
I've argued the open approach and the case for distributed communities in the RSA, though I  can also see the case for private spaces for member-to-member discussions. In this instance I think that Stephen Coleman, the RSA and the Reuters Institute will provide more public benefit by sharing the conversation with everyone. Journalists would agree - wouldn't they?
Previously on Stephen Coleman, the BBC, and open-closed:

• BBC leads us behind the scenes on new media, if not news
• BBC plans to sustain citizenship and civil society. Please tell us how.
• TV voting scandals and poor e-democracy both destroy trust
• Do communities need boundaries?

Mashing up for social action: they need our votes

While projects are now chosen for the London-based Social Innovation Camp, voting is on for the equivalent US-based contest, and MySociety are drumming up support:

NetSquared (based in the U.S.) has launched their newest summer contest, the N2Y3 (that’s NetSquared Year Three) Mashup Challenge. You can see the 100+ projects that have been submitted here. One of mySociety’s projects, PledgeBank, is featured in one of the submissions: Social Actions. Peter Deitz is developing a way to lead any given user (an individual or an organisation) through the process of selecting a social action platform. Do you want to raise money? Do you need to integrate with a specific CRM? Do you need an online donation processing tool? Do you need a widget for your site? This mashup with combine 29+ (the list keeps growing) “action” tools (including PledgeBank) in that wizard, helping the average Joe or Jane figure out which tool would work best for them.

Of course, in order to move forward in the competition for mentoring and money, Peter needs your vote. To vote for this mashup (and at least four more — NetSquared is smarter than to just let everyone vote for one), just create a free account on the site and add at least five projects to your ballot. There are some really cool ones out there, so browse around a bit. The polls opened on Monday at 8am PST, and they will be closing on Friday at 5pm PST. The 20 mashup proposals with the most votes will attend the annual NetSquared Conference in San Jose, May 27 & 28, 2008. During the conference, the mashup creators will have a chance to pitch their projects to funders, foundations, and fellow nonprofit tech professionals.

Another UK-based project to take a look at is Project Bija:       

The project will change how we look at the world, thinking spatially and in terms of layered interwoven societal drivers.

With a map as the primary navigation tool users can access information on local, regional, national and international scales about:

1. The challenges;

2. Available resources;

3. Who is working to overcome the challenges; and

4. How 1,2 and 3 can be synergised.

The project promoter is currently anonymous, but offering some clues:

I'm a UK lawyer specialising in digital social media so work with many clients in the private and non-profit sectors who use social media. For example, I advise Oxfam on their use of social media and drafted their blogging and social networking policies.

I also lecture at Westminster University and London Southbank University regarding social media law.

I guess the reason for anonymity is that law firms are somewhat restrictive in what their staff can promote in public. There is, however, more on the idea:       

The primary interface is a map api - eg google maps.

Divide the map on a country basis. Individual countries can be clicked upon. the second stage will divide those countries into clickable regions and the third stage dividing those regions into clickable local areas. Each scale provides more focus and filter.

Clicking on a country zooms into the country. On the navigation bar are a series of links (Challenges, Resources, Organisations etc. Links open up to further sub links which then lead to information feeds (feeds are either RSS or scrapped using dapper) for that country divided into:

1. Challenges.

2. Resources. 

3. Non-Profit Sector.

4. Private Sector.

Zooming into the map allows more detail of filtered results for example, local newspapers, closer detail of which charities and companies are working in the area.

Due to the greater detail required at local level users may log in to the site to add information via a wiki.

This is all a bit beyond my technical understanding, but checking in with my friend Paul Henderson at Ruralnetonline got a positive response to the idea,  with suggestions for linking up with things like Groups Near You  and National Rural. There's also potential in the rural community carbon Google map. As the guys at MySociety say, you don't have to choose between these two. I think they both deserve our votes, following instructions above.