Designing for Civil Society

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

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

Announcing UKGovweb barcamp - with an open invite

Whitehall Webby Jeremy Gould, whose day job is web manager at the Ministry of Justice, is making a very direct contribution to the promised new politics of Government-citizen collaboration: he's inviting us to help transform government by sharing expertise in the use of social media tools.
Jeremy's Ministry is responsible for the Governance of Britain initiative, which underpins Gordon Brown's enthusiasms for promoting engagement, as I outlined here.
Jeremy has just announced a get-together in January for anyone interested in innovation online as applied to government. Although it is billed as UKGovweb barcamp, and mainly aimed at people in or near to government,  the wiki page offers a pretty open invite to enthusiasts:

This event should be of interest to all who work in the UK government digital media community: permanent civil servants, contractors, consultants, agencies, advisers, supporters, observers, and critics.

Here's the full post:

Announcing UKGovweb barcamp:

Those of you who read this blog regularly, or get cornered by me in the real world, will know there are two things in particular that I am particularly passionate about

* clarity around government online strategy, and
* how to innovate online, especially piloting the use of social media tools

I think these are important issues for government webbies (and by government, I don’t just mean Whitehall but right across the public sector). Talking to colleagues I know that these issues important to them too.

I’ve been talking for a while with colleagues in the transformational government team (they who are driving the website rationalisation / convergence, and other related, initiatives) about how we can harness the collective knowledge and intelligence of all those with an interest in improving how government does all this web stuff. Its becoming more important as we start to explore the possibilities and opportunities of government online beyond our corporate websites and intranets.

My proposal was to run a barcamp event, where those who want to participate in  developing ideas, sharing their expertise and swapping tips can come together as a community. For those not familiar with the barcamp concept, check out the wikipedia page. The key point is that you come if you have something to offer and you participate, rather than simply observe.

I’m delighted to report that they agree, so I’m pleased to seed the message here that we aim to have the event run across the last week of January 2008 (Saturday 26th/ Sunday 27th). I say ‘aim to have the event run’ because it will only work with the input, energy and enthusiasm of the participants. We have suggested a proposition and date, we’re hoping that enough people will want to be part of this to come along and also to help organise the event.

A page has been set up on the barcamp.org website. Please visit it, and sign up if you want to be part of this event.

If you know others who might be interested, let them know about it. In particular, if you blog then please point your readers to the page on the barcamp website.

I really do hope that together we can work together to get a common sense of purpose, and share some innovative ideas about government’s approach to all things online.

Maybe I'm wrong to make a direct link to the Governance of Britain/new politics initiative - and the barcamp is strictly apolitical - but I find it incredibly heartening when a civil servant goes that bit further to practice emerging policy, and notions of openness. At a weekend too.
Disclosure: I have done some consulting for MoJ, helping civil servants use this engagement design game. Maybe barcampers would like to play too.

Technorati Tags: socialmedia, socialtech, ukgovweb

Reaching out to bloggers? Admit limited transliteracy

I wrote recently about how large organisations may be able to reach out to bloggers to promote conversations in the public interest, and the sensitivites involved. Here's some news of a project along those lines that I and colleagues been working on recently for the BBC Trust.
It has given me some insights into what may be involved to make this type of blogger engagement work. Actually it could better be described as organisational engagement. More later on that, and the new-to-me idea of transliteracy which may be the space within which the engagement takes place.
The project also brought home to me what an extraordinary resource we have in BBC online - bbc.co.uk - and how very difficult it is to judge whether we are getting good value for the two per cent of our licence fee (£74 million) that goes on it. (Note to non-UK readers - each household pays more than £130 a year for BBC TV, radio and other services .... and bbc.co.uk costs about 36p a month of that according to this Wikipedia round-up).
No, that's not quite right. I've personally no doubt at all about paying that amount for the wealth of goodies on offer ... what's much more challenging is helping licence payers provide feedback via the Trust on just what mix the service should offer.
The Trust has taken over from the BBC governors as the body responsible for standing on the side of the licence payers, making sure we get a good deal, and that the people who make the programmes and run online services - the executive - stay on track to provide a splendid public service. But just what should that public service be?
The Trust - and the BBC - has recently been very taken up with staff cuts and other savings brought about because the licence fee isn't going up as much as the BBC wanted.
At the same time the Trust has been running the first of a long series of service reviews, during which the public (licence payers) will be consulted on the contractual agreements between the Trust and the BBC executive who provide the services. Before the Trust came on the scene no such explicit agreements were in place, so it is very new territory.
The first review is of bbc.co.uk, which the Trust started a few months back. There is an online questionnaire which takes us step-by-step through the issues the Trust is examining. (I'll return later to the work Lizzie Jackson, Ed Mitchell and I have been doing.)
The BBC's purpose is  " To enrich people's lives with programmes and services that inform, educate and entertain" with a vision " To be the most creative organisation in the world." It aims to create public value in six main ways:

• Sustaining citizenship and civil society: the BBC supports civic life and national debate by providing trusted and impartial news and information that helps citizens make sense of the world and encourages them to engage with it.
• Promoting education and learning: by offering audiences of every age a world of formal and informal educational opportunity in every medium, the BBC helps build a society strong in knowledge and skills.
• Stimulating creativity and cultural excellence: the BBC enriches the UK's cultural life by bringing talent and audiences together to break new ground, to celebrate our cultural heritage, and to broaden the national conversation.
• Reflecting the UK's nations, regions and communities: by enabling the UK's many communities to see what they hold in common and how they differ, the BBC seeks to build social cohesion and tolerance through greater understanding.
• Bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK: the BBC supports the UK's global role by being the world's most trusted provider of international news and information, and by showcasing the best of British culture to a global audience.

The review of bbc.co.uk is looking at how that service serves the public purposes and, in particular, the citizenship and educational purposes. It is also looking - among other things - at how far it is distinctive and innovative, whether it extends the range of BBC's broadcast services, whether it enables users to search easily, leading users beyond BBC content, and whether it makes the BBC more accountable to licence fee payers.
The questionnaire takes you through these issues, with examples of what it would take to fulfil these requirements. There have already been several hundred responses, and consultation has been extended to mid-December.
Lizzie, Ed and I became involved because the Trust wanted to extend engagement further online ... to encourage more conversations as well as formal responses. It is difficult for the Trust to do that up front because it must be strictly neutral, so we spent some time with the Trust team working from broad ideas of what might be possible, towards a workshop with bloggers leading to wider online engagement.
We ran the workshop last week, and you can see how some noted bloggers picked up the challenge.

Charlie Beckett, the director of the new journalism and society think-tank POLIS, highlighted the difficulties of the consultation process, while wishing the Trust well in the process.
Simon Dickson, a new media consultant specialising in news and government work,  suggested the Trust had its own blog pulling together conversations from different places, acting as a neutral moderator.
Sunny Hundal, who is editor of Asians in Media magazine, and runs the Pickled Politcs site, raised the issue of how satisfactory, or not, the management of interaction is on bbc.co.uk.
Sue Thomas, professor of new media at De Montfort University, questioned whether the BBC is transliterate ... which is a term I'm ashamed to say I hadn't met before. It means the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. Very relevant.

Although the number of posts is so far small, they have started discussion ... with for example 20 comments on Sunny's site, and eight on Sue's.
We made suggestions to the Trust about how to carry the process forward, and already our client Anna Coghen has joined in the discussion on the blogs. On Sunny's site, Anna says she hopes that the Trust will run a bigger event later in the process with a wider invitee list.
The bloggers are also sharing ideas on how to collaborate between themselves, and with the BBC, so I'm hopeful we'll get a second wave of activity soon.
The process so far has reminded me yet again how far engagement is a process, not an event. I think the workshop went well, but in a few hours we barely had time to get to know each other and start some conversations. I hope more of those who attended post their thoughts, that Anna can find time to respond, and there may be further stimuli to discussion.
But maybe the main lesson is that it is possible for an organisation like the BBC Trust - which by its constitution is rather cautious and "official" - to get together with bloggers and do two things. First, invite involvement in topics of public concern and hopefully mutual interest, and secondly to say, in effect "we aren't entirely sure how to engage online. Can you give us some ideas and share your experience?" I think that admitting you aren't yet transliterate is lesson one for effective online organisational engagement.
More here in Wikipedia on transliteracy. Meanwhile, do please take a look at the questionnaire, and add your own views.
Update:
Anthony Mayfield writes on Citizen regulators: BBC Trust reaches out through blogs in its review of bbc.co.uk

Nico Macdonald writes on In the BBC we Trust

Technorati Tags: bbc, bbctrust, socialmedia

Engagement is all the rage ... at least in theory

The push towards a new politics of greater citizen engagement and volunteering get a strong nudge from Sophia Parker in the current edition of the RSA journal. She notes that politicians are increasingly arguing that our social wellbeing cannot be delivered solely from the centre:

We, the people, are all the rage. In a passionate speech to the NCVO, Gordon Brown argued that “it is people who are engaged in changing the world that will be the next momentum for change”. But it’s not just Brown who is trailing this agenda. The day after Brown promised a series of citizens’ juries to open up policy processes, David Cameron launched a proposal for a ‘national citizen service’ for young people, to help them “feel that British society is something they want to be part of".

Sophia offers an historical perspective on the current enthusiasm for more bottom-up action, from Beveridge to Blair, through Margaret Thatcher's declaration: “There is no such thing as society…too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it.”
We started with a post-war 1940s belief in the State, moved through the consumerist look-out-for-yourself phase, into a world of top-down performance targets for public services mixed with requirements on agencies to engage, consult and empower. It's now time to work out what can be "delivered" and what depends on people's involvement for lasting solutions and wellbeing. As Sophia points out:

Whether it’s managing long-term conditions, living sustainably or tackling gun crime — all issues dominating the press recently — these are not things that can be delivered to passive citizens by formal services alone. Their ‘solution’ relies as much on how we as individuals behave, and how we interact with the world around us, as it does on how the government responds. In other words, this new-found interest in the role of citizens in change is not only ideologically led, but deeply pragmatic too.

The journal article is in support of the vision of  RSA chief executive Matthew Taylor for an  organisation where the 27,000 members - called Fellows - develop a network for civic innovation. Sophia, who has previously worked at Demos, is now busy on the programme to engage Fellows, focussed initially around an event on November 22. Previous posts on that indexed here.
Fortunately for those interested in the "how to" of engagement, my friends over at Involve have just launched a very splendid new web site People and participation.net. It has been designed by social media specialists Headshift, with funding from a couple of Government departments, and includes an interactive tool which helps you select appropriate participatory methods depending on your circumstances. That's a bit like the Dialogue Designer I wrote about here. As well as a database of methods, case studies and resources, there's a section where you can post a question to Involve experts and so get specialist advice.
The site was launched by Communities Secretary Hazel Blears as part of the Government's 'Empowerment Action Plan', which Involve says:

... sets out how the Government will deliver on its commitment to empower communities through a range of activities, including more community power to trigger petitions, citizens' juries and an increased say for local communities over local budgets....

A few years back I would have been whooping for joy at all this official support for public and community engagement ... and I do believe it is essential whether within membership organisations like the RSA, or programmes for community regeneration. And yes, it is brilliant that Involve has pulled together so much excellent advice.
My reservation is that it's one thing to talk about engagement, and an entirely different matter to make it work ... because change depends not just on methods but on attitudes. I rambled on about that here and here, arguing that not only do power-holding organisation have to be prepared to listen and deliver their side, they have to start early in the process of engagement. They need to open up, form new relationships, and work things out with key interests from the start. Engagement doesn't work unless it is collaborative. I hope Involve are already working on a sister site: organanisationsandparticipation.net ... and that the RSA will prove a good case study.

Technorati Tags: engagement, rsa

Reaching out to bloggers - acceptably

It's commonplace these days to say that the best of blogging is about promoting conversations rather than solo soap-boxing ... but how can this be done to foster a cloud and not just a hub and spokes effect? How might these conversations filter across into face-to-face, Facebook, and MSM (main stream media)? It's a great idea, but it isn't easy.
I'm particularly interested in these issues at the moment because of a couple of projects I'm working on - as well, of course, as a personal interest in seeing my modest ideas occasionally spread. I'm sure I've seen a study somewhere saying that any response to an item on a blog or forum - positive or negative - hugely increases the likelihood of the person contributing again. It certainly does for me - so thanks, commenters.
Marketing and PR people have, of course, caught on to this and may seek out prominent bloggers to try and get them to write about their products. This can backfire seriously if you try it with someone like Tom Coates, who responded with a picture on Flickr titled "This is not a brothel". As well as the discussion under the picture, there's more here and here. Anthony Mayfield muses that "blogger relations" may do more harm than good, and wonders Can marketers ever start conversations?.

The conversations I'm keen to promote myself, and on behalf of clients, are generally about worthy issues of social policy and public engagement, so I hope I'll escape any charges of unsavoury practices if the promotion of ideas and conversations is done in an open fashion. A couple of items I saw over the weekend have crystalised my thoughts. The first, by Michelle Martin, is about promoting comenter-to-commenter conversations, the second, which I've already mentioned, is the launch of http://www.journa-list.com/. This allows you to track which MSM journalists are writing about what.

First, of course, you need a topic of interest to bloggers, and then - in my emerging model - a client or other interested party prepared to host a get-together with suitable refreshments.
You then need to be able to contact a group of bloggers who will both be interested in the topic, the convenor, and the chance for a chat. Fortunately Facebook is making this much easier, because bloggers are befriending each other, joining groups, meeting up, and generally getting to know each other outside the blogosphere.
At the get-together there will be two areas of discussion (well, lots, but two I would like to see). One around the topics that brought us together, and the other around how to spread blog conversations - hopefully to everyone's benefit.
The discussion about spreading conversations might touch on Michelle's ideas, on how to create buzz, maybe trigger cross-overs into Facebook - and also into MSM now it is easy to see which journalists might be interested. Incidently, there's another new Facebook campaign launched by NSPCC on combating cruelty to children.
None of these ideas is new, and with a bit more research I'm sure I'll find a more sophisticated approach described and tried.
However, what's important in my mind is not so much the particular methods that might be used, but the acceptability of "blogger outreach". Colin McKay offers some social media outreach maxims for civil servants who might be considering engaging with bloggers:

• Know your strategy - your strategy for policy development as well as communications. Your contact and discussion with bloggers and social media must fit into your overall strategy for outreach, consultation and legislative action.
• Build a detailed outreach list. Make sure you’re speaking to influencers and bloggers well-versed in your issues and concerns.
• What does it take to win? Agree on your organization’s goals for your outreach.
• Explain how your outreach program can go wrong. Map out for others how a comment stream can go negative.
• Be thoroughly aware of the “state of play” in your issue or program. What are you trying to say? What are the limits to what you can say?
• What is the logical next step? Be ready to continue the conversation or debate.
• Be straightforward about your limitations. Don’t just drop a conversation or comment thread - explain your reasons for disengaging and identify how your organization may pursue the subject in other ways.
• ALWAYS be clear about your identity and level of authority. Communications staff shouldn’t wade knee deep into a technical conversation.
• Link and Point - don’t just restrict the conversation to your own knowledge. Point to other sources of information and commentary, especially if its buried deep inside the site map of your own organization, partners or international organizations.

These days, if you want to make an impact, you can't be solely a blogger, journalist, event organiser, or producer of press releases - you have to blend your media ... and be open about it.

Engagement isn't marketing, members are more than customers

I believe much fresh thinking and innovation emerges from cross-overs between sectors, disciplines and cultures, and so I was fascinated to sit in on a presentation last week about engaging and expanding membership of a charity, given by a team from a major retailer. (Is there such a big difference these days? I'll come back to that).
The challenge given to the retail team was to help the RSA in its re-invention process towards a network for civic innovation (previous RSA postings here). They interviewed staff and members (Fellows), and looked at other organisations (possible competitors for members). They came up with an engagement plan, shown here, starting before the big event planned by the RSA for Fellows on November 22**, following through to further activities. There was a lot of emphasis on promoting the vision of the chief executive, Matthew Taylor.

My immediate reaction to the presentation was "you've got it wrong - this is just marketing", moderated to "you've got some of it right", through to something about "it depends where you are sitting, and your view of the world".
The retail team were presumably chosen as advisers because their stores suffered a potentially catastrophic downturn in business a couple of years back,  and are now on the way up thanks to the drive and vision of a new chief exec. Matthew Taylor is trying for major changes at RSA, including expansion of membership from 26,000 to 100,000 in a few years. He wants Fellows (customers?) to be at the heart of the organisation, not the edge. You can see the video here.
The retailers offered eight principles of good engagement:

1. From the horses mouth
2. Timely, transparent and full disclosure
3. A concept you can pass on
4. One big idea
5. Delivered with energy and personality
6. Dialogue and discussion
7. Hand over ownership to the audience
8. Next steps, easy, clear and booked in

They said that their new chief executive was brilliant at achieving this in big events with managers, sending them back to their stores to enthuse staff. They said it was very important to give managers clear guidelines on how to do this. They had tried leaving it to managers to choose their own methods, but it hadn't been too successful. The implication - for me anyway - was that on November 22 Fellows need to leave the event fired up with missionary zeal to put Matthew's vision into practice.
Maybe I misunderstood the detail - but I started to feel uncomfortable because it seemed a pretty top-down approach, and didn't fit well with the idea of Fellows creating networks for action using social media and other distinctly peer-to-peer models. In the spectrum of engagement, is seemed to sit up the inform and consult end rather than collaborate and empower ... which is where the RSA narrative is.

Anyway, I didn't write about the event straight away, but let the ideas ferment for a few days. That led me to think that maybe the retailers had got some of it right - perhaps the part that they would understand best. The RSA does need to improve and market its services to Fellows - the bar, library, restaurant and so on. Otherwise people will start to wonder whether they are just foot-soldiers in Matthew's New Army of civic volunteers ... and why are they paying £130 or so a year for that? The other thing they got right is that any telling-selling-engaging process shouldn't stand or fall on one big event. It is a long process ... so November 22 is just one milestone.
What didn't seem right was the overall emphasis on "selling" a vision ... when anyone in the nonprofit sector knows that ultimately volunteer activists do what volunteer activists want to do, so it is important to get some alignment of interests. Ideally you should co-design programmes with them.
It was at this point of musing that I reminded myself how important the culture, context and background is in understanding, quite literally, where people are coming from. The retailers had been through a few scary/energising years of decline and resurrection, and their presentation featured lots of press cuttings about "slide goes on" ... "faces more storms ahead" ... then ... "stunning sales" and "eight year peak". Of course they would draw upon this experience when faced with the challenge of re-inventing the RSA.
Similarly, Matthew Taylor must have in mind some of his experience in the Labour Party. As Simon Dickson points out, there's a passage in the video I did of Matthew where he talks about his idea for a network of civic for innovation. He says:

Part of the reason I was enthused by this idea is that I tried to do it at the Labour Party for ten years - and it was totally impossible. I spent ten years saying ‘can’t we turn our members into civic entrepreneurs? can’t we actually look like we believe in progressive change on the ground, rather than just knocking on people’s doors?’ The party leadership and party stakeholders were utterly resistant to this idea.

I certainly don't think that replaying that experience more successfully is the main motivation behind the vision ... but I guess you can't spend 10 years or so in the service of the New Labour modernising machine without being touched by its less-than-empowering culture. It's a great tribute to Matthew's versatility that, if there, it isn't too evident.
In order to put all this into the context of engagement theory, I cast my mind back to some excellent work undertaken by Jack Martin Leith a few years back when he charted engagement and ideas generation methods against worldview - you can find it here.
Put simply, within Worldview 1, the world is a machine and methods you are drawn to  are fairly mechanistic. Under Worldview 2 the world is a system, while in Worldview 3 it is a field of energy and consciousness ... and undoubtedly a lot messier, as I've touched on here and here.
I suspect that part of the difficulty the RSA faces is that the different interests involved have different worldviews, and don't have a way to talk about this. I hope that NESTA Connect - who are funding the current exercise - have work-in-progress monitoring in place to see how things play out, because process is as interesting as outcomes in engagement. There may be lessons for that from Diane Warburton's work on evaluation of public participation.

Phew. I didn't expect to spend quite as long on this piece as I have. It shows (for me) how interesting the RSA is at present. I'll hang in as long as it gives me stuff to write about. I suspect many other Fellows have their own rather diverse interests and motivations as well.
Perhaps the most telling exchange during the RSA-retailer event was when someone pointed out that most of the engagement processes discussed were aimed at managers. How did they know whether their customers were engaged or not? "Well, if they don't like us, they don't come to the stores" was the reply.
Not a bad lesson - if you remember members of charities aren't just buying, they are contributing ... so they require even more care and attention. It is interesting to listen in to the re-invention process ... it would be even more motivating to play a more active part.
** The part that Fellows can play in the process has been un-clarified by a message to those who signed up following the November 22 event invitation, believing that would ensure a place. Unfortunately this isn't so, and Matthew now tells us "we will be making our final selection of registrants shortly to ensure that we have as representative a group of Fellows as possible here on the day".
However, all is not lost for those who may be disappointed. An earlier mailing to those interested inadvertently displayed some 260 e-mail addresses, thus giving any Fellow the opportunity, for the first time, to contact directly others interested in the re-invention process. Nobody has yet, which suggests either a high degree of satisfaction with the way things or going, or a generally low-level of social media awareness ... or maybe a feeling of "let's see how it goes, don't rock the boat". Just in case that changes, I suggest the event organisers take a look at Communities Dominate Brands, by Alan Moore and Tomi T Ahonen. As I reported here, Alan has a compelling metaphor, warning brands about complacency once their customers can find each online:  "once you have stormed the Bastille, you don't really want to go back to your boring day job."
The retailers didn't mention that one.

No election ... so let's get on with New Politics

Now that the prospect of traditional mass participation indifference and accompanying frenzy of old-style party politics is out of the way for a bit, it could be time for Whitehall to turn its attention to implementing Gordon Brown's ideas for a New Politics of citizen engagement.
These started to surface in July with a Green Paper on The Governance of Britain:

Our constitutional arrangements underpin how we function as a nation.  The nature of the relationship between government and citizens, the accountability of our institutions, and the rights and responsibilities of everyone in Britain together determine the health of our democracy. 
The proposals published in this green paper, 'The Governance of Britain', seek to address two fundamental questions:  how should we hold power accountable, and how should we uphold and enhance the rights and responsibilities of the citizen?
As part of this, the Government wants to engage people around the country in a discussion on citizenship and British values and will be conducting a series of events around the UK to gain as much input as possible. 

This got some attention from Chris Leslie - local government specialist and self-confessed constitutional hobbyist,  the British Humanist Association (let's disentangle church and state), and the Flag Institute, who naturally enough were interested in the review of flag flying practice that was part of the package. Apparently there's some confusion about how often it is OK to fly the Union flag from government buildings. The Liberal Democrats produced their own proposals, the Policy Exchange has an event this week, but I didn't see much wider popular interest.
This changed in September when the Prime Minister promised a "a new type of politics" in a speech to the National Council of Voluntary Organisations.

I believe that Britain needs a new type of politics which embraces everyone in this nation, not just a few. A politics built on consensus, not division. A politics that draws on the widest range of talents and expertise, not the narrow circles of power.
Whether it is crime and gang violence, the future health of the nation or climate change, the solutions will not come simply from a narrow debate between states and markets.

He added:

So quite simply I reject the old politics of dividing people, not uniting them, of quick fixes, not the long term solutions that everybody knows we must work hard to achieve together, and it means therefore debating concerns and issues like housing, crime, the NHS, schools, community development and regeneration, debating issues that affect local communities direction, not just in the corridors of power but throughout the country.

He promised a series of citizens' juries, standing commissions to bring together a wide range of interests to address key issues, and a Speaker's conference to deal with the problems of the political system.
My friends over at Involve were quick off the mark with an analysis from director Richard Wilson. This urged that juries and summits must not be just opinion-gathering exercises, they must help empower citizens; events aren't enough... you need to "leave the room" and go where people are; and new media could play a big part, perhaps through media agencies including the BBC.
Involve used their blog to create pages where people could comment on what would be needed for the new politics to succeed, and offer up videos. The aim is to create a Democratic Dossier for submission to the Prime Minister in November.
One of the ideas in the Green Paper was a statement of values, and the Daily Mail had some fun with suggestions that this would be a motto to be displayed on schools and public buildings. Could be "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" ... or as one BBC website user suggested "Smile! You're on CCTV". If you are looking for a more serious discussion, Prospect magazine offers thoughts from 50 writers and intellectuals - but my Googling didn't throw up much else.
What I take from this is that there won't be much point in the Prime Minister's no doubt genuine efforts towards a Bill of Rights, or other mechanisms to engage and empower citizens, if New Politics just become Old Participation and political knock about. What's needed are ways to break out of the usual narrow media-politician dialogue, and top-down consultations.
Could new media offer at least part of the answer? Fortunately the Ministry of Justice has published a second report from the Digital Dialogues programme, under which Ross Ferguson and colleagues have studied various Government experiments in online engagement. These range from David Miliband's Ministerial blog at Defra (now transferred to the Foreign Office, where it is joined by other officials) , to a Communities and Local Government Forum, Downing Street Webchats, and a blog by the Food Standard Agency Chief Scientist).
The findings from the study, and associated recommendations, seem to me to provide guidance that could be very relevant across the New Politics/Governance of Britain programme. I think that their preceding analysis is spot-on:

The UK government has a challenge on its hands. Public trust, knowledge and efficacy in British political institutions have been consistently depressed in recent years. Whilst few would question that Britain is a democracy, it has been criticised for its lack of democratic vitality. Its citizens have been described as  ‘noisy spectators’ rather than active participants, and its politicians and  government accused of retreating into a ‘bunker mentality’ rather than facing the problem. 

The researchers suggest that there is a latent interest among citizens in being more engaged by political institutions and representatives - but that there is "a failure on the part of political institutions to take advantage of opportunities to engage the public, often by failing to address what motivates awareness and participation".
I think this is the crunch issue. People are usually interested in issues that affect their lives, if they can understand what's going on. But they are increasingly cynical about engagement processes in which power-holding agencies don't listen, or if they do listen, don't necessarily deliver much resembling the wishes of those engaged. As my friend Drew Mackie wrote a few years back, we are Dancing while standing still.
Anyway, The Digital Dialogues report argues that online methods not only offer new ways for people to engage, but also present "significant logistical, and transparency benefits that are not always present in conventional offline methods". I think that is shorthand for shake things up a bit. They should be mixed with other offline methods, and owned-by and involve Ministers. They work best where government representatives are active participants, not detached convenors.
Recommendations emphasise innovation, being ready to scale-up pilots, co-designing with users, training staff, being interactive, evaluating ... and lots more wisdom generally applicable across the whole field of engagement.
Here's conclusions after a few hours piecing this item together, and reflecting on the various reports and recommendations:

1. It is difficult, at the moment, to see what's going on, and to write about it in the spirit of online engagement. Reports are usually pdfs which you have to laboriously download, scan, copy and paste to create anything remotely usable. There are too few links on official sites - "if you are interested in this, you might like to look at that".
2. Unless I've missed it, no-one in Government is speaking or writing about this in remotely conversational terms. That - together with the inaccessibility of source material - makes it difficult to talk about - or blog. The default approach is still Ministerial speech,  press release, document. Putting a speech on YouTube helps a bit, but the message in the presentation is still "you have to understand things our way".
3. The emphasis in most of the policy proposals is still one-way: we need to do more to engage citizens. In my experience, that's not the biggest problem. What's needed is some organisational engagement and culture-change to address not-listening, not-delivery. If you can't deliver, just offering engagement makes things worse.
4. When online engagement is discussed, there's a presumption that it means simply creating another official web site, forum, blog. But a long-learned lesson of convention engagement is that few people want to come to "official" places. Don't rely on public meetings, go to the places where people are already talking. As a first step, do some scanning of the online world to find the buzz, then invite the hosts and bloggers in for a chat about how best to engage. Less scary (and risky) than walking in unannounced. Create your own place too, of course.
5. Overall, think about creating trusted places and networks within which (hopefully) more constructive discussion can take place. I had a go at explaining that here.

The final recommendation in the Digital Dialogues report is for government to start some co-ordinated internal thinking on engagement processes:

Team up. There are a number of different government networks and funding streams specialising in discrete engagement fields. This  fragmentation is leading to replication and inefficiency. Government  should establish a cross-departmental ‘community of practice’ to provide  leadership, coordination and resources in order to maximise the  effectiveness and sustainability of on- and offline engagement activity.

My suggestion: open that up beyond the civil service. There are plenty of people who would like to contribute some thinking and practice, and help create genuinely new politics. The big lesson from using new, social media is that you don't have to do it on your own: build on what's out there already, share what you create, cross boundaries, make new friends. Should be good practice for the new politics too.

Supporting Simon in his participation ride

My friend and partner in the Open Innovation Exchange, Simon Berry, is a very open and collaborative fellow, as well as being dauntingly fit and energetic. He's combining all this in the 1230-mile The Particiption Ride from Land's End to John o'Groats, starting on Monday and taking 12 days.
Simon is the chief executive of the charity of ruralnet|uk, which runs a terrific conference each year. The aim of the ride is to raise funds so community activists who might not afford the cost of attendance, and ruralnet's online services, can join in. You can read the full story here, with links to the 48 stages detailed on Google maps. Simon emails me an update:

Another interesting angle has emerged, I am now collaborating with the OpenStreetMap Foundation  who have a drive on to map the National Cycle Network. I'll be carrying one of their GPSs with me to record the route and our ride will get 10% of the NCN mapped in one go!
There are at least 10 people taking part with four of us attempting the whole thing . . . . 100 miles a day for 12 consecutive days . . . . all on the NCN (a first).
Please keep an eye on the blog to track our progress in words and pictures -  - I have just taken delivery of a helmet-mounted video camera so there will be video too when I get back!

Last year's ride raised £1000, and the target this year is £2000. You can make your contribution here. I've hit the subscribe button, feeling slightly guilty that I'm not being rather more participative, and wondering how many other chief executives would go as far to ensure that people can take advantage of the services their organisation offers.
If you want to see how Simon packs everything on to his Pashley Moulton TSR 30 there are details here and a video from last year.

Open RSA in Facebook: re-inventing from outside

I think this is a marker for all membership organisations faced with the task of re-inventing themselves, in an age when people can simply leave and form their own groups and networks online. We can also use this capability more positively to add some push from the outside.

Malcolm Forbes has done this by following through from our RSA and social media event on Monday and set up a Facebook group called Open RSA, which you can find here if you have joined Facebook (it's free).

Open RSA London is a group for all those interested in the RSA, its people, its projects, its aims, its challenges, its vision. This is an open group, anyone can join, not just 'fellows' or staff of the RSA, but we would like as many of them as possible to join in.
This is exploratory - seeing what value can emerge from the use of social networking software such as Facebook.
We have started as a London group but again you can still be a member if you are not in London. We want to encourage discussion, ideas, action, meetings and linkages to other networks and groups. Maybe other Open RSA groups set up in other areas.
The RSA by the way is the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce and 'works to remove the barriers to social progress'. Lets see what happens and also have some fun!

I'm pleased that a previous blog post of mine helped promote the idea. However, the really interesting thing for me was the way that once messages started circulating within Facebook it was possible to organise a meeting (thanks to Ian Delaney), follow up the discussion, check out with people what they felt about a group, and then move forward, all in a couple of weeks.
I hope that Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the RSA, will welcome the idea. He wrote on his own blog about Very many networks following an event in Manchester, saying:

Between now and the start of our new engagement strategy we need to have a substantial and clear headed dialogue across the RSA about how Fellows working together really can make a difference.

Anne Johnson, in response,  asked if there was a Facebook group for Fellows. Matthew's reply: "No, but there soon will be - watch this space". 
I hope the RSA does set up an "official" group. Meanwhile we can get started in our space.
Previously:
Why bother with "membership" in future?
Other items here on the RSA

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