What's the role of trustees now we are networked?

The BBC's new Internet blog is proving a useful place to engage with BBC techies on how they develop new media and run bbc.co.uk. It covers hot topics like provision for Linux users, DAB, DTT, DRM, Dirac video codecs .... no, don't turn off, there's more to it than geek talk. I think it raises again the issue of governance, and how we licence-payers get to influence that we get for our money - as already highlighted by Ben Whitnall and Simon Dickson. Here's why.
The purpose of trustees and regulators is to stand on the side of beneficiaries and consumers, and make sure they get a fair deal from those providing products and services. It's a particularly important role when there's little competition, and donations or public monies are involved.
But what should the trustees do when those producing the services open up a direct conversation with their customer/beneficiaries?
That's what Ashley Highfield and BBC Future Media staff have done in setting up the BBC Internet blog, to complement existing Editors' blogs for News and Sport. It's in line with a trend for companies to use blogs to push at the corporate membrane, as Robert Scoble helped pioneer at Microsoft. There's now lots more examples, and as Alan Moore has remarked, once customers have stormed the Bastille, they don't want to go back to their boring days jobs ... or indeed, ineffective ways of complaining about service.
The BBC Internet blog is very timely because the BBC Trust - which represents licence-payers - is currently carrying out a review of bbc.co.uk, and consulting licence-payers. I recently helped run a workshop on behalf of the Trust, with colleague Lizzie Jackson and Ed Mitchell, to involve bloggers in the process. This prompted a number of blog posts - as we hoped - including one from Anthony Mayfield, who made these points among others:

The shift from channels to networks means that the concept of governance must be challenged and reassessed: Power is shifting out (not down, as some condescending types out have it) from large organisations. The BBC Trust needs to understand the nature of this change, of the shift to networks, and be clear (to itself first of all) about what that might mean for its role. The opportunities to involve and engage with the people that pay for and use the BBC and the organisation are increasing - and it's about more than just engaging with the "blogosphere". In short the Trust needs a strategy for responding to the media and social revolution going on around it. Social media is not just another channel for consultation and governance as usual.
The BBC Trust needs innovation as much as the BBC does:  The Beeb has had some stumbles of late to be sure, but I'm generally admiring of its past efforts at innovation that have been generally helpful to the new media industry in the UK and beyond. The BBC Trust needs to be an innovator too in how it carries out its duties. It needs to innovate around how governance is carried out and, I say again, what governance means in the age of network. These review exercises are, I think, carried out every five years - imagine how much larger and sophisticated online conversation will be in 2012... The techniques of engagement and listening online that the Trust uses now will be far important, perhaps even central, to any kind of meaningful review then...
Governance / public consultation needs to be *live* if it is to be relevant today: It's neat and tidy to carry out a one month consultation with stakeholders, but it is limited. People interested in all sorts of aspects of the BBC on and offline are offering their thoughts all the time. To remain relevant, and indeed legitimate, I would say that it was in the Trust's and all our interests that listening and engaging with their publics was something that was happening all the time. The BBC Trust should be thinking about a retainer for Market Sentinel, or developing their listening skills and process networks in-house. 

Nico Macdonald has provide a range of suggestions on how the BBC Trust could extend its engagement, and Anna Coghen for the Trust confirms that "We're currently looking into some sort an online meeting/aggregation// linking space."
All this highlights the wider questions of governance in a networked age, raised by Anthony. As I wrote earlier audience isn't "audience" anymore when it is online, contributing content, and now in direct dialogue with the professional content producers. Trustees are no longer mediators ... they are (or should be) part of a system of co-creation and co-governance. The Ideal Government project is discussing similar issues around the transformation of government services.

The basic lesson is let’s transform government services for the benefit of users. But the Web 2.0 way is to invite users to help co-create the e-enabled public services they want, in the style they like, and share it.

Similar issues will emerging in the world of nonprofits, where Dan McQuillan is suggesting Charities are broken and may get by-passed.
Of course, it can be argued that this is all very well when the customers and providers are online, as in the case of bbc.co.uk, but rather different in many other circumstances where the services are not digital, and the customers or beneficiaries are the other side of digital divide. In that case trustees have a particularly important role to play ... and should think even more carefully about how they ensure that they are in touch with those they represent. As so often is the case, the opportunities and challenges posed by the Internet just raise old issues of organisational relationships that need refreshing or redesigning.
Meanwhile the BBC is not standing still in its own formal submissions to the Trust review, and as Nico Macdonald reports, has commissioned essays from a number of people in the field. You can read Nico's outline here.
Direct responses can be made to the BBC Trust here until December 14.

Technorati Tags: bbc, bbccouk, bbctrust, governance

Comments

[Alan in Belfast]

It's a valid question.

Isn’t the short answer that in the BBC’s case, trustees should continue to listen to as many opinions as possible, and conduct as many conversations as they can manage.

[Alan in Belfast]

The previous snappy answer was written at the last minute after my fingers wore out typing a more lengthy answer. Since you’ve scrolled down far enough to read the second comment, I’ll not let my scree of typing go to waste!

> But what should the trustees do when those producing the services open up a direct conversation with their customer/beneficiaries?

In a sense, there's always been a direct conversation with the audience (I'll stick to that term for now, since the number of licence fee content collaborators is still pretty small - though rising). If you like or dislike something, you've always been able to phone or write in to make your point, or raise a more official complaint. And it can be quasi-two-way when a response is received. Not just true for the BBC - people haven't ranted and raved to their local ITV stations for decades too.

Is that a conversation? Perhaps not a very good one. But is one that the Trust have some visibility of.

The kind of conversation on the BBC editors' blogs isn't massively two way either. Other than clarification on the oops with the Linux figures, and success is getting the owl reversed on the BBC Internet blog, there haven't been a lot of BBC responses in the comment section.

Is the blogosphere representative of the UK audience? I hardly think so. Majority male, tendency towards being young, more folk in the media, IT and academic worlds than any other. So someone needs to converse with those not yet living in our online bubble.

Although commenting personally, I should come out at this stage of this particular conversation as someone appointed to the BBC's Audience Council for Northern Ireland - a group of licence fee payers advising the Trust on local (as well as national) issues, responding to Trust consultations, asking the BBC executive for comment, surveying, consulting with and sometimes just chatting to other members of the audience and stakeholder groups (independent producers, politicians, school children).

Now I haven’t yet noticed any 8 year olds on any of the nations’ Audience Councils, and I haven’t noticed too many 80 year olds either! So just like the participants in the BBC’s editorial blogosphere we’re not statistically perfect. But we do recognise and take on the responsibility of representing those not in the room, seeking out their views and feeding them into the Trust’s wider conversations.

And taking advantage of the online public square to pick up opinions as well as to road test arguments and test the credibility of viewpoints prior to making formal submissions is a very good addition to the existing tools of audience engagement.