Designing for Civil Society

Is eBay really a model for civic discourse?

The IPPR Manifesto for a Digital Britain seems strangely in favour of online trading models as a way to stimulate and help "citizens connect to one another in civic, non-market interactions" as Will Davies put it in his paper for an event last week. Jo Twist's report for the BBC certain picks up the flavour of the discussion:

Existing services such as eBay could provide a good blueprint for such services, says the think-tank.
Although the net is becoming part of local and central government, its potential has not yet been fully exploited to create an online "commons" for public debate.
In its report, Is Online Community A Policy Tool?, the IPPR also asks if ID cards could help create safer online communities.

Not another good practice website, please

A major research project funded by the prestigious Joseph Rowntree Foundation has confirmed what residents in poor neighbourhoods have known for years: the complex new partnership arrangements of local government can't fix the small things that make life miserable. The researchers' proposal: a nationally-coordinated good practice web site. I don't think so.... but a citizen-coordinated bad practice site might help.
The project "Representating neighbourhood environmental concerns within Local Strategic Partnerships" , headed by Dr Karen Lucas, concluded:

Despite considerable policy focus on the renewal of Britain's poorest neighbourhoods, the dirty and neglected appearance of many deprived areas continues to plague local residents, often appearing at the top of their list of local concerns.
Residents in poor neighbourhoods have repeatedly raised concerns about the condition of their local environments in consultation exercises. Anti-social behaviour, busy roads, inadequate and irregular street cleaning and rubbish collection are of particular concern.

The researchers suggest that "Local Strategic Partnerships would benefit from guidance on how to build 'environment' into existing structures. They should develop more transparent and accountable local delivery mechanisms. This would be greatly assisted by a nationally co-ordinated website that could collate and disseminate good practice initiatives."
I profoundly disagree. I don't think council officers or elected representatives will take time out of to search a web site for examples of what other people have done in the hope they can translate that into a local solution. They'll be too busy putting together their funding bids for iconic regeneration projects.
I think that the best hope for local people is some good old-fashioned campaigning backed up by whatever media they can use. Since local papers are unlikely to be interested, it may be that some 'name and shame' on a neighbourhood web site, with good pictures and interviews might help. It then wouldn't be too difficult to put together a national bad practice gateway site and unveil it in time for Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's grandiose Urban Summit in Manchester early next year, producing some bottom-up collective leverage for action from the delegates (cost: £650 a head). I'd be glad to help. I wonder if JRF would too.

E-research without discussion doesn't help

Another piece of research on E-neighbourhoods hightlights some of the key issues circulating over the past few years:

To what extent does the global reach of the Internet and the World Wide Web render neighbourhood and neighbours irrelevant?
Alternatively does this technology foster a re-assertion of neighbourhood in terms of local ties and information or the provision of services and democratic accountability - in the way that is being argued for Virtual Cities?
Are there information rich and information poor neighbourhoods, and can information technology itself be used to bridge the gap and overcome social exclusion in a way assumed by the UK Government's 'Wired Communities' initiative?
Can IT provide a focus (via message boards etc) for neighbourhood activities? To what extent does the information available on the Internet affect the reputation of different neighbourhoods?
.... and so on towards "In sum this paper explores the articulations between neighbourhood functions and the various forms of information technology, the e-neighbourhood as "virtual" and "real".

I'm all agog, but unfortunately it turns out to be Yet Another Piece of Desk Research which doesn't deliver many answers, or - as far as I can see - any opportunity for those who may have them to join in.

Insights into organising online

The IPPR Manifesto for a Digital Britain is gathering pace with a full calendar of events and associated papers. I couldn't make it to "Organising Online - where next for Unions and the Internet", but Will Davies has now published the paper he wrote, and some of the insights have general relevance. Will suggests that campaign organisers may find the Internet helpful:

* Where there are obstacles to a campaign scaling –e.g. affiliates or members are very geographically scattered
* Where the mainstream media are not very responsive – e.g. the fuel protests were not taken seriously by the press until after it had already scaled up.
* Where a campaign wants to scale very quickly, often for a short time – e.g. a ‘flash protest’ where protests come out of nowhere, then disappear again.

Presenting to promote conversation

Geoff Mulgan, former head of Tony Blair's strategy unit, this evening provided a striking lesson in how to do a presentation that favours the audience - by chunking the content in a way that stimulates conversations. It was all the more effective because there was no Powerpoint, no exhortation, and no evident ego. Clearly some people can survive a tumble in the No 10 spin machine.
The occasion was a meeting of the Tomorrow Network, a free, loose association of about 2200 people treated by the Tomorrow Project to end-of-the-day meetings every few months, mainly in London. Not all at once, of course.
Tonight's topic was 'The future of the electronic media', which is usually a great temptation to fancy slides and baffling techie references. Instead we got 10 stories that provided different windows into the issues, based around technology, business, geography, power relationships, civil society, mentality, community, children, morality, time. The content was a crisp mix of anecdote, analysis, and hunch, all in 20 minutes. I'll do more later on one or two of them. My point here is that the presentation was - it seemed to me - designed specifically to prompt some conversations (and incidently offer at least 10 neat blog items). It occurs to me you could also take the structure and use the 10 categories for further research... a good jump start to some Spurling perhaps. Or do a mindmap - here's a start.
As it was, after some question and answer, we moved to more traditional knowledge-sharing over a free drinks in the splendid building of the Royal College of Physicians. There was no problem finding something to talk about.
The other speaker, futurist Dr Wendy Schultz, had some great ideas too, but suffered from.... uhhh, electronic media. Her Mac-based Powerpoint didn't fare well on a PC lacking Quicktime, so most slides featured big white spaces telling us about TIFFs, missing compression gizmos and so on. She promised us a multimeg, multimedia download - later. It seemed like a telling metaphor about technology, people and communication, with Wendy triumphing over the limitations of her technical aids.
Geoff is now director of the Institute of Community Studies, which has a 50-year track record of social innovation initiated by its founder Michael Young, who invented the Open University and Consumers Association. Lots more ideas will follow, I'm sure. They may even be accessible too.
Free membership of the Tomorrow Network - details here
Update: Hands up if you are a knowledge activist

Regeneration game reaches China

Chinese social entrepreneurs now have the benefit of some innovative (and fun) planning tools to help improve urban and rural neighbourhoods, thanks to my friend at ruralnet|uk, Jane Berry. I think Jane picked up some ideas too.
A couple of weeks back Jane called to say she was off to Beijing, and please could she have some games to take. No surprise, since she has been a collaborator with Drew Mackie and I over the past few years in developing workshop techniques to help people work out how to set up everything from online community networks to technology centres and one-stop rural service hubs.
Fortunately our development partners NIACE rushed over a couple of boxes of The Regeneration Game, and you can see the hand-over here. Jane says it was rather more than a formality, and local people at the Shining Stone Community Centre quickly put together their own version of the game which, as her official press release says, led to "heated discussions" into the evening. Some things are the same the world over.
The trip for three UK social entrepreneurs was organised by GLI - Global Links Initiative - and was supported by the British Consulate-General, Shanghai.
Jane's sessions went beyond the Regeneration Game, and in the pictogram on the flip chart (right) I can identify an attractive and intriguing version of ruralnet|uk's model for a sustainable multi-use service centre.
The various games developed with Drew and Jane use cards to represent project ideas, with cartoons, budget points, descriptions, and hints about resources needed. The group playing the game has the task of choosing projects to address challenges in their situation within a given budget, and then turning the choices into an action plan. For the Regeneration game we had the added expertise of NIACE, and the particular pleasure there of working with Jane Thompson and Cheryl Turner. We've found games worked well in the US, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Spain and no doubt other places too, since many of the games are available online. They have the added advantage of being a fun way of getting to know new people, and leaving them with something that is hopefully useful when you go. I hope Jane has brought back some useful contacts.....
Update: Jane told me: "I was delighted to find Chinese community groups much more open and dynamic than I had expected, unexpectedly vocal in their insistence on participation, self-determination and the need for change, and anxious to learn lessons both from within the country and beyond. There is a strong recognition that the next steps for Chinese non-profits are to work more closely with each other, as well as to find ways of reflecting the needs and wishes of their target groups."

Ruralnet|uk press release
More games at our Useful games blog
and at Making the Net Work
Download an article on Why games (pdf)
Questions and Answers about The Regeneration Game
Where to buy the Regeneration Game

Ladder of Participation now available online

One of the most powerful models for thinking about how much influence people have in public programmes is Sherry Arnstein's Ladder of Participation, developed 25 years ago. Her eight rungs range from Manipulation to Citizen Control. I developed a version for The Guide to Effective Participation, but could never find an online reference for the original. However, it is now available in full as web pages and downloads.

I think that the ladder (left, click for larger) remains a useful way of thinking about power and control, though participation programmes are more complex these days. Back in the 1960s it was usually a matter of one civic power holder - council or agency - considering how much 'say' they would give to citizens. These days there is almost inevitably a complex partnership of interests, who may not agree among themselves. The result is often that promises are made about high levels of engagement, but the reality drops down the ladder.
When I amended the ladder I suggested that it was not really a matter of the higher up the ladder the better, but rather horses for courses. There's more explanation of the idea of stance here). Sometimes consultation on fixed options would be appropriate, sometimes a partnership among stakeholders, or support for key interests. Unfortunately things seldom work out that cleanly, and I think that Sherry may have been right to include terms like manipulation and therapy in her model.
How e-consultation can become e-manipulation and other items on participation

Spurl: super webtool with service too

The online bookmarking tool Spurl reached version 1.0 last week, and looks like a must-use tool for anyone organising and republishing their bookmarks. Spurl enables you, when browsing web sites, save online the location together with a description and other information. Useful enough if you want to access bookmarks from different computers, or research sites with colleagues and create a shared list.
However, the exciting features, for me anyway, are that you can both categorise and tag your sites and create an RSS feed from the list, and also publish your collections of links.
Suppose you manage a web site where you want to show useful resources as lists of links. Usually they get done once and it is a pain to edit and update them. With Spurl you research sites, categorise and tag them, then insert a feed (or a bit of Javascript) into your links page. When you find something on other site, add that to Spurl, and it gets added to your site automatically. If you find a site has changed, edit the information in Spurl and the change ends up on your site.
If you find inserting the feeds tricky, you can publish some or all of your bookmarks...Spurl creates a publicly-viewable page, excluding bookmarks you have marked private. So you could just put a link from your site to that.
One additional treat is that if you have an account with del.icio.us - which also saves your bookmarks online in a different way - the sites you tag in Spurl also end up on del.icio.us, where they go into the growing pool of tagged sites.
Here's another plus: service. I spent some time with Spurl yesterday, and it all seemed fine until I tried to get feeds from categories. Some worked, some didn't. I emailed support, and within a couple of hours had a response from Spurl founder Hjalmar Gislason, doubling up on help desk, saying he had fixed it. "Happy spurling, and spread the word," he said. Glad to.
When I have a bit more time I'll document using Spurl and del.icio.us (the help system is a bit lacking and out of date). Meanwhile I just wanted to get the word out, and maybe pick up some comments or links from others trying the service. Oh, and it's free. Interviews with Hjalmar explaining how here and also here.
Update: I've been back to look at the other major online bookmarking system, Furl. It promotes the ability to save a page when you bookmark it, which is worth doing if you think the item may disappear. Spurl does this too, if you choose an 'advanced' setting. Furl doesn't have tags, but you can do multiple categories (unlike Spurl) and you can configure manually RSS feeds from categories, as the help system explains. Not so easy as Spurl, and you don't get the Javascipt to insert into web pages. Nice to have choice and competition among free services.
Update: comparison of Furl, Spurl and del.icio.us features: download pdf

People + networks = collective intelligence?

George Por - who led a London collaboration cafe earlier in the year - has posted an item on his blog about how we can raise the collective intelligence of a group or network, and also the ability of the participants in six key areas: intention; reflection; competence; recorded memory; support; trust and social capital. I'm particularly excited because the model, and George's wisdom, is very relevant to the problems of partnerships I wrote about yesterday, and the challenges of developing networks. My title equation - People + networks = collective intelligence - doesn't do justice to George's item which he entitles What Is My Collective IQ? - Boosting CI from Within. But then, as some of the blog comments indicate, the ideas can be a little difficult to grasp. It's a bit chewy to take at one gulp, but that's no bad thing.
I'm so excited by the ideas that I know if I don't write something I'll feel frustrated all day, so I'm just doing a brief mention to further alert the blogosphere to the item, and then turning back to work I'm doing on network development, with sideways glances at George's item for inspiration. I'll then post more later. On refIection, I think that's in line with George's suggestion for collaborative learning exploration, so it's working already.