Designing for Civil Society

Community leaders, or representation?

The Government's enthusiasm for double devolution, which Drew and I gamed recently with Kevin Harris, depends on more people being actively involved in community affairs. Kevin in  Community leaders, or representation? has a suitably sceptical take on the tendency to brand people who do good stuff as 'leaders'.

Here I am reading a draft report from a meeting about neighbourhood governance, and the phrase 'community leaders' stops me, the way it always does. I have difficulty with the frequent and unreflective use of this term - not, I hope, just because of some wishy-washy resistance to hierarchical cultures, but more because I'm unconvinced that calling for more 'community leaders' is a solution to anything.

Kevin adds:

I think most use of the label refers to activists who play a prominent role, often representing locally a community of interest, sometimes falling victim to accusations of 'usual suspects' or becoming manipulable media products. I'm more concerned right now with the chorus of calls for more of them. (Are we gonna have some kind of genetic programme here, get them all to breed so we have a stock for the future?)
Maybe just whistling for more community leaders won't work, because we'll still have a gulf between them and the rest of us. If our democracy lacks the key ingredients of engagement and participation, I'm not sure it makes sense to crash-course a new cadre of likelies.
Maybe we need to ensure far more widespread understanding of the notion of representation. We need to smooth over the gap between representation and apathy, between involvement and disinterest. We need to establish the habit of participation and an understanding of what it means to be represented by someone, and what it means to represent others.Update - Stephen Coleman has kindly drawn my attention to his 2005 ippr pamphlet called Direct representation: towards a conversational democracy, which to my shame I had missed. He argues that we need to move to a richer, more conversational form of representation.

I like Stephen Coleman's approach. However, I was swayed in the direction of cherishing our traditional elected councillors more by a fascinating evening and a few pints recently with Paul Evans, who blogs over at Never Trust a Hippy. Paul is passionate about the need to revive local democracy, and we discursed widely on ideas about capacity building for councillors (if community groups can have it, why can't they) and even "adopt a councillor."
It reminded me that Jamie Rose, head of MORI's Participation Unit, gave a very relevant presentation at the recent Bristol conference on activists and councils. She was saying, as I recall, that research shows that we all have different levels of commitment to different issues - and if you score more than five you count as active. Activity will depend on time of life and circumstance. That suggests to me that branding someone "activist" isn't very helpful. You can find the presentation somewhere in the conference webcast. I'll check if it is available elsewhere.

Gaming at Together We Can

Drew Mackie and I ran two sessions of the Engagement Game yesterday at the Together We Can conference organised by the Home Office - and generally felt that it went pretty well with about 15 people in one workshop and 20 in the other. As usual, we invented scenarios before pitching in to discussion about who to involve and how, assisted by sets of cards. In one session we tackled illegal use of motorbikes and in the other "youth nuisance". It could as well have been adding a lane to the M1 or neighbourhood management, which both figured as possible scenarios. We were please the format and cards seemed to work well for both, suggesting we have a robust framework. The game is still very much under construction, supported by an innovation grant from the Deparment for Constitutional Affairs. You can read more about yesterday - and other games - on Useful Games.

How to seat a conference - issue flags

How do you organise conference dinner seating for a hundred people, so they end up on tables with others of like interest? That's the sort of problem that can land you with lots of rather tedious organising and agonising just when you should be hosting and socialising.

Last week Drew Mackie and I helped out the organisers of a conference where we were running a workshop. Our solutions - bring on the flags.
The event was the annual conference of Enquire, the Scottish Advice Service for Additional Support for Learning, where I was also presenting a keynote. We mentioned to organiser Charlotte Richards that we had a speedy way of creating instant communities of interest ... and she thought we should give it a go at the pre-dinner drinks reception.
The props were simple - sticky badges, and flags ably made by Charlotte  from card and sticks. Everyone was asked to write on their badges two or three topics of interest to them, then wander about and find kindred spirits. Four others and they could claim a flag, write on their interest, and rally up to nine people to fill a table. It worked almost too well. Everyone set to with enthusiasm, and with 10 minutes reception time still to go flocked off to the restaurant brandishing their flags. Note to conference organisers: this can also cut your drinks bill.

Playing through double devolution

The go-between wears out a thousand sandals, according to a Japanese proverb. In deepest Holloway last week that fate befell those playing the role of councillor in our game simulating the government's new neighbourhoods policy.

As conference organiser Kevin Harris reports, the game aimed to simulate what will happen in a few years when "double devolution" takes hold, and public service delivery moves down the ladder beyond councils to offer more contracting opportunities to nonprofits, and more opportunities for active citizens.

Drew Mackie and I were relieved when participants readily agreed to move from presentations to interaction, to form groups, and develop descriptions of fictitious (but pretty realistic) neighbourhoods. To spice things up, they threw in plenty of problems and then passed the challenge to another group, while inheriting someone else's neighbourhood. After that, their task was to come up with ways in which different agencies, organisations and community groups would plan and carry out improvements. It was a revised version of our first run last November. As Kevin reports:

The first version of the game had been uncannily realistic but we had struggled to integrate the policy role. On this occasion we diluted it but Drew introduced a role for ward councillors - and it was fascinating to watch how, in two of the three groups, the councillor ended up being a butt for complaints from the community groups and systematically ignored or by-passed by the service agencies. Watching one group was like watching a game of tennis, and reminds me that I've often been puzzled as to why anyone would want to become a councillor. It just doesn't seem a pleasant way to spend one's evenings.

Earlier Kieran Drake, from Neighbourhoods and Citizen Engagement at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, had provided a full briefing on how policy is developing, and explained the enhanced role councillors might have. They would move from the back benches to the front line, becoming leaders of communities and empowered advocates, while calling on support from council officers running neighbourhood management. You can download the presentation here, together with others from Gabriel Chanan and Paul Hilder.

It all sounded fine in theory, but then things don't always turn out the way the policy makers hope. Games are one way of testing out what may happen. In this case it seemed that councillors could end up being pulled in two directions, trying to build bridges but just as likely to get in the way. Is that a mixed metaphor? I'm not sure, but it was all pretty hilarious since people managed to have fun exploring the future of Slaghampton.

Kevin highlights the complexity of what the government plans:

Presentations and discussion at the conference, as well as the game, confirmed that this agenda packs a hugely complex set of issues. The scope and power of agencies, the formality of neighbourhood agreements with service providers, the skill-levels of councillors, the worries about burn-out among activists, and so on - all sorts of unanswered dynamics and tensions. To their credit, the ODPM have long-since recognised the importance of strengthening local government and enhancing the role of councillors.

While there were clearly a lot of tough issues, I found some support for the way things may develop. I asked two people from what could easily become opposite sides of the fence what they thought. Folake Segun works for Croydon Voluntary Action, and Theo Fasoyiro for Croydon Council. They were very positive about the new policies and the benefits they may bring. However - and this to me is the key issue - they emphasised that it is because the public and nonprofit sector have a good working relationship at present. Where different sectors don't get on so well the new arrangements are going to be pretty challenging, and the role of councillors particularly so. In that case, start ordering sandals now.
More pictures here

For collaboration, try telling true stories

Stephen Hilton and Kevin O'Malley of Bristol's e-democracy team put on a good show with their conference last Friday exploring whether councils and community activists can work together. Discussion was well-focussed on democracy rather than technology, even though the event was to launch their online CampaignCreator. The event attracted a strong turnout including e-democracy gurus Steven Clift (US), left, and Stephen Coleman (UK), below. The missing element was local councillors - apart from Barbara Janke, the leader - who came to make a speech.
There may have been good reasons why councillors weren't there ... other events, jobs to do ... but I felt their absence underlined the difficulties implied in our electronic voting during the morning. A majority of us felt that council-activist collaboration was a good thing - but that activists should at the same time maintain their independence. We thought collaboration might, unfortunately, prove ineffective because councils wouldn't share power. The biggest barrier to collaboration we identified was likely to be lack of trust.
The starting point for collaboration is usually a good conversation, and you can't do that unless people are all in the same room.

Anyway, we did have some good conversations, particularly when we broke off into smaller groups in the afternoon. Our group was to address the question of what councils could best do in order to improve collaboration. It was fascinated to hear people consistently talking about the basics of good human relationships - rather than particular methods, or structures.

I think it came down to councillors and officers being prepared to take people seriously and listen to them, to be clear about what was really on offer, and to provide feedback about what was going on. Transparency, openness and honesty kept cropping up, together with the need to have conversations in terms that people could understand. Let's get out of committee-speak into the sort of stuff people talk about day-to-day.
I tried summarising that as "tell true stories" - and got some heads nodding.

In that spirit I managed to persuade Steven and Stephen to give me a couple of minutes of video, and also interviewed Valerie Ann Jenkins about the potential value of CampaignCreator in helping communication and campaigning in Bristol.
One of the good things about the project is that local groups can call upon the help of coaches who will not just help them with the online system, but help them plan their campaigns. There's some excellent material on the site too.

I met Jacqueline Roshkani, who told me what this involved, and how important it was to have a laptop because many groups would not have easy online access. One of the challenges for the project, I suspect, will be to continue to provide support after the end of this financial year.

As I've mentioned before - see links below - I have reservations about how far councils can host campaigns for activists, and also whether £395,000 might have been better invested in other ways. The project has been a terrific scramble to get finished in the time available, and it isn't clear how far other councils will be interested in using the platform. But then, it's always easy to be critical. The project has been funded under an e-innovations programme, and you can't innovate without taking some risks. Stephen Coleman and his colleagues Giles Moss are carrying out an evaluation, so we get a measured appraisal in due course. Meanwhile I hope Bristol councillors find time to explore this new space for them to tell some true stories to local citizens.
Videos play in Quicktime, which you can download free

A webcast of the event is now available

Previously
Can councils and activists work together? Let's vote on it.
CampaignCreator site goes live
Can a council host community campaigns?

How video could turn parables to policy

I was talking to one of my colleagues the other day about the value of short video interviews that might be used in videoblogs, or as part of a longer storytelling exercise. I had been inspired by a meeting with Stuart Maister of BroadView, who does amazing work for corporate clients using the techniques of TV journalism and more for a range of internal and external engagement processes. I think public engagement programmes would benefit from these techniques too.
Anyway, I was enthusing about the way that Stuart's highly professional formats might provide a framework for content created with participants in the sort of engagement events that we and others run. Suddenly the penny dropped for my colleague, whose speciality is evaluation. She loves reading all those data sheets generated by surveys. Call me cynical, but I suspect that too often those who commission them may just cut to the summaries or a briefing from the consultants. Residents and other stakeholders who suspect nobody really listens to them in engagement processes may just be right. (Of course there are totally wonderful engagement processes, dedicated public servants poring over the stakeholder responses etc ... but the problem is we never really know).
"Hang on", said my chum, who has hitherto resisted getting much beyond basic email, browsing and word-processing "this means it would be possible for people to talk directly to policy-makers instead of having their views filtered by consultants.
"If we included video reports in the evaluation process these could provide open, real-time feedback. If they weren't listened to everyone would know. I can see this might be a really useful way of using video, blogs and all that stuff you keep going on about".
These day e-democracy and e-innovation is all the rage in Government, so it might just get a go. Video wouldn't be enough on its own, and there would need to be balance, a range of views etc. I don't think the idea is new, and recall my friend Terry Grunwald telling me about the "From Parable to Policy" project in southern rural America. Anyone know of similar projects in the UK? It would be much more fun for participants, and I can see some public servants welcoming an escape from reports and Powerpoint.

The price of local democracy - a bit of "street clutter"

With formal democracy in such poor health, and a Government Minister calling for double devolution of power to community groups, you might expect local councils to be desperately keen to encourage active citizens to drum up interest in elections. And if a group said they would give every candidate a free web site linked to an online hustings (something I believe councils can't do), you might expect high delight in the Town Hall and collaboration all round.
Not entirely so in Richmond upon Thames, however, where there is a sticking point: lamp-posts. There the volunteer-run online community site Oncom , that covers the borough, offered to run a May election site in exchange for one concession: they wanted to publicise it with placards on lamp-posts to make sure local people read what the politicians had to say, and democracy was widely served.
But the council has refused permission, stating: “It would set a dangerous precedent given the level of coverage desired and would add to street clutter.”

Volunteer Jill Sanders, who helps run the online community, sends me a series of email exchanges between her friend and site founder John Inglis, and the chief executive of the local authority, Gillian Norton, which are extremely courteous but quite adamant.

The chief exec adds: "We have tested this view quite hard but in the end that was the conclusion of discussions. However, we are very keen that this initiative gets good coverage and would hope that the posters could be displayed in libraries and other community facilities. It may be that Doctor's surgeries and other places where people visit/gather will be able to help."

This isn't good enough for Oncom.

“We must have the posters on every street if we are to make a success of the May Poll,” says community websites founder and developer, John Inglis. “Without this level of promotion there is no point in carrying out the massive task of creating candidate web pages. We have done this before and we know that everyone likely to vote needs to know about the May Poll, and the only way of doing this is to have posters about the website visible on every street across the borough.”

You can read the story here on Oncom, and I suggest while you are there you look around at what is a quite extraordinary example of what volunteers can achieve. Jill describes the project in more detail in egovmonitor. It is just the sort of project that first got me excited 10 years ago about the potential of the web at local level. Sadly most online local communities haven't done as well, perhaps because it is such hard work to cover the diversity of any area and its interests.

I've met Jill and John, and admire enormously the passion that they bring to their project. I gather there is, to put it mildly, a bit of history with the local authority. There may be good reasons for the lamp-post decision, but they are not evident in the e-mail exchanges. It's difficult not to feel that the local authority could be just that bit more helpful. Without that double devolution just isn't going to happen.

Can councils and activists work together? Let's vote on it.

I'm looking forward to a conference later this month, hosted by Bristol City Council, in which we'll be invited to consider how far local authorities and community activists can work together effectively. In particular, we'll be looking at whether local councils can provide a useful online campaigning platform for community groups. There'll be speakers for and against the idea, and opportunities for the rest of us to vote using keypads.
I should think Bristol - and the e-Innovations group at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister - will be hoping for a positive result, because they have invested £395,000 in the CampaignCreator system developed by Bristol. I've been rather sceptical in the past - links below - but hope it turns out well for all concerned. As the Power Inquiry report shows, we need some good ideas to revive democracy, and this one has the advantage of giving citizens a direct voice instead of relying on existing organisations to become more participative.
I know voting at a conference isn't the most participative way of working through the pros and cons of an issue, but I'm assured there will be plenty of time for debate, discussion and networking .... and if we don't like it, we can always follow up with our own campaign on the system. The site is now open for business, and you don't have to live in Bristol.
Previously
CampaignCreator site goes live
Can a council host community campaigns?

Comment on Power, courtesy of mySociety

As I'm musing over Power to the People, and concluding this independent inquiry into Britain's Democracy is a bit top-down, Tom Steinberg and his inventive crew at mySociety come up with a neat way for us all to join in. Tom writes:

I expect you all read about the launch of the Power Inquiry report on Monday. mySociety has no formal connection with it, but I found it such a surprising, intriguing document (having read just the exec summary) that I thought it deserved a good roast-chicken-style picking apart and chewing over. In a nice way, of course. So, we did a bit of a 'theyworkforyou' to it: http://www.commentonpower.org/
All unofficial, 100% fresh off the presses. Kudos to Chris Lightfoot and Francis Irving who built it all in less than a day. If nothing else, and if nobody wants to leave comments, I hope at least it'll mean more people read the summary.

Chris and Francis have developed a wonderfully simple site allowing margin comments to the 30 inquiry recommendations. Hmmm... how about a couple of extra boxes ... "none of the above" and "my recommendation"? Then it would be nice to have links to blogs....scope for reporting on the forthcoming conference...no, stop. The appeal of the site is that it's so straightforward. Every report should have one, preferably when there's still an opportunity to make a difference to the proposals.

Power to the People - or Just Another Consultation Exercise

The other day I went to the launch of Power to the People, the independent inquiry into Britain's Democracy, and came away not sure what to make of it. The message in the 300-page report was pretty clear and well reported, as the Make My Vote Count linkdump shows. In essence it was that the current way of doing politics is killing politics - and democracy too.

The chair of the inquiry, Helena Kennedy QC, summarised it in the press release (pdf download) and also gave an impassioned speech at the launch reception:

“Politics and government are increasingly in the hands of privileged elites as if democracy has run out of steam. Too often citizens are being evicted from decision-making – rarely asked to get involved and rarely listened to. As a result, they see no point in voting, joining a party or engaging with formal politics."

The reception was the usual fine affair - big atrium in Millbank, plenty of free drinks and nibbles - with a splinkling of senior politicians including Gordon Brown, Kenneth Clarke and David Davis. It was also pretty usual in that there were small badges but no hosting, so if you weren't an insider you had to squint at people's chests while deciding whether to risk introducing yourself inadequately to someone Important, or over-enthusiastically to someone who might prove difficult to escape. I'm not sure if there were many People there, but we are all invited to a post-launch conference on March 25.

The year-long inquiry, funded by two of the Joseph Rowntree trusts, was very thorough, taking in 1,500 public submissions and running a wide range of surveys and hearings. There seemed general agreement among the people I talked to that the analysis was sound: people are not disengaging because of negative news media, apathy, lack of time or other voter-centric factors. They are cheesed off in large part because participation in political processes doesn't seem to make much difference. As I've written before, that's a problem with lots of local engagement processes too, so I suppose I should have been pleased to find some agreement.
It wasn't until I was walking back to the Tube that my underlying uncertainty surfaced as a simple question: how did the inquiry move from it's enormous and thorough process of gathering evidence, to the challenge of coming up with its 30 recommendations... and do these recommendations really address the problem?
Page 38 of the report details the evidence-gathering, and says that the Commission then spent six months deliberating and discussing drafts of the report. The recommendations (pdf download) are comprehensive, and emphasise rebalancing power between different elements of the political system, changing voting systems, and strengthening engagement processes. There's lots about the role of the whips, Select Committees, decentralisation, citizenship education, and public hearings. Every local authority should have a "democracy hub".
But aren't these just the sort of political procedural mechanisms that people are sceptical about? At the reception there was also a fair representation of civil servants, think tankers and political advisers musing on rebutals, counter-proposals, and yes-buts. My misgivings about the report perhaps stemmed from a subconscious sniff at the rising scent of business as usual. The report argues cogently that it is important that citizens re-engage with the machinery of democracy. It dismisses various views that other types of engagement can be substituted. Fair enough, but I'm not sure that the procedures recommended are very appealing.
It was at this point another train of thought took over... and the key question surfaced. Where did the recommendations come from? How did the Commission move from analysis of evidence to recommendation? It took six months.... but how? Was it a matter of the staff and advisers drafting and redrafting, running Commission meetings and away-days? Or were there some procedures by which emerging ideas were tested back with those who submitted evidence? I couldn't see anything in the report about that ... though it may well be in the backup material, and the conference will provide an opportunity to find out more. For what it was worth, I contributed to the Inquiry through an interview and didn't hear about any further possible involvement.
Anyway, if it was an entirely internal process it does, for me, raise a question about whether the Commission is walking the talk, practising what it preaches, and so on. Is it really "downloading power" - as it advocates - or is it simply offering JACE - Just Another Consultation Exercise? In JACE the power-holding body consults with various stakeholders and comes back with options or recommendations generated by some black-box process managed by the experts. They then ask people to comment or choose among the recommendations, without offering ways to generate new ones. The whole package is then despatched to some other powers-that-be who may or may not take any notice. In short, the process of analysis, recommendation and delivery is out of the hands of most of the participants. General experience is that nothing happens, and people become further disenchanted.
I looked again at the inquiry's recommendations to see if there was just one thing where I could do something to make a difference. Nothing. The whole reform package depends upon the current power-holders changing the way things work. Will they? Do turkeys vote for Christmas?
Last year, when first looking at the work of the Commission, it struck me as pretty conventional and top-down. Still, there was a blog, so maybe there would be interaction throughout the process. I checked back today to find "The blog was archived as part of the end of the Inquiry's evidence-gathering phase". Even the archive is off-line. Suspicions confirmed. It was all JACE.