Virtual Town Hall workshop: Essex

Spent the day in Chelmsford today meeting loads of people re: Virtual Town Hall.  This is by way of some observations and notes for me to remember for research purposes:

Meeting the districts:

• We spent the morning with 3 districts who are considering getting involved and we had a very in-depth discussion about the concept of the VirtualTH as well as the specific project details.  Once again the basic proposition held up to scrutiny but there was a lot more concern about risk management than we have had in other meeting - this is perhaps because I have spent a lot of time talking to social web people who are more relaxed about the idea of content being unmoderated – but highlights the need to talk about risk when I start interviewing officers/members about their experiences of the project.
• It was also clear that there is a considerable amount of additional complexity added by working in two tier areas.  Questions of where decision making will sit, relationships between the two sets of members and concerns about what might happen if two participating organisations found themselves in conflict over an issue where raised.  It will be interesting to see which (if any) of the districts decide to get actively involved and which decide to wait on the sidelines until it is clear how things are going (have put predictions in an envelope and we will see how accurate I am!!).
• There were a couple of folks there from the LSP and they seemed very interested in the project.  LSP involvement could be really important in terms of connecting citizens to the right decision makers for specific issues so it was good to have their involvement
• Overall it was a very useful morning with lots of good discussion – hopefully it will lead to some active involvement from districts – if not immediately then early next year

Getting the internal infrastructure working

The afternoon was spent with the Essex CC team discussing more operational issues such as:

• Social web audit:  We have yet to really crack the social web audit as Essex and we spent some time discussing ideas of new places to look for activity.  Lots of new leads here which was very useful.  We also defined some more of the useful questions which we can apply to other sites.  it is increasingly clear that this is a process which will never be finished – we need to build it in as a regular maintenance task
• Social web policy:  We discussed the process of getting this into place and also went through the key points for inclusion – next up I have to deliver a draft.  Part of this will be defining the commitment which is made to participants in the site and as part of this I am going to suggest a list of democratic activities which could be offered here – I will post this list later in the week hopefully.
• Defining the democratic promise – we need to be very clear about what people can expect in terms of democratic outcomes from participation
• Recruiting Community Ambassadors:  We had a good discussion about where to find the right kind of people and came up with some existing internal mechanisms which can be connected to

Conclusions

We made a lot of practical progress today and it was also very useful to talk through the project with the districts.  As I was driving home however I was thinking about the scale of what we are trying to do here – in terms of fundamentally addressing the nature of the relationship between council and citizens – and though it is clear to me in every way that this is an essential process if we want to use the social web to do democratic things – it may be as well to try and break this down into more understandable stages (as per the ladder of engagement) so that we can focus people on more immediate goals.  Will need to think about this.

 

myconservatives? Or someone elses??

Perhaps it is just because I have only started twittering this week but there did seem to be a lot of talk about the new conservative party website – but perhaps the twitterati are always this vocal!

Of the articles/blogs I’ve read today I thought the futuregov one was probably gives the best summary/analysis – you can read it here.  One thing I would pick up on is mentioned in the FutureGov piece – there is no social networking or online community building included as part of the site.  Now in some ways you can just see this as more honest – I can’t imagine the party machine (of any party) listening to on online debate on their manifesto – but its a fairly stark admission in my mind.  Its all about broadcast views and comments – not about valuing the community and their contribution.  This is so very similar to the way that government has ended up relying on consultation rather than listening and debate – but I think really highlights the fact that “politics” seems to be getting in the way of actually engaging with the issues.

But the reason that this has set us all chirping is the parallel’s with the Obama campaign and its huge success in the online arena – and its clear that as a campaigning platform this is very impressive and I hope the other parties step up to the plate.  I have to say I do wonder if the website will be able to mobilise the party followers in the same was as was achieved in the US – but I don’t really know enough about grassroot party membership to know – please comment if you do!

I guess the thought to finish with was something said to me today by one of the people in the Virtual Town Hall Pilot:  “I am quite excited to see UK politics pick up on the Obama banner/strategy +interested to see how it works here…potential to get more online people engaged in UK politics – surely knock on to local – which is what people really care/can make a difference. This is why we need to be in a position to funnel users into our democratic channels etc.” And I have to say I agree – feel free to criticise me but I feel very little connection with politics at a national level – but I do have a huge belief in the opportnity for local politics to improve.  Hopefully the spotlight of fancy new websites and a general election is something we can use to help achieve this.

PS – the only reason for the title was the idea that you might want your own conservatives – I just find this rather odd – it kind of assumes that the site is only for people who have made up their mind – but on reflection perhaps this is exactly what it is!

 

Quick post from edem09

Just been at the eDem09 conference in Vienna – I will post properly once I am on a proper keyboard and not the phone one but just wanted to capture the headlines:

* lots of talking about social networks and I think a big question was posed as to whether or not politics and democracy can support an entire networked public or, as I believe, we need to be harvesting the discussions from exisiting sites
* The technologists are thankfully dominating the field less and there were great contributions from political scientists, sociologists and media studies/journalism folks
* lots of stuff made me think about ‘the tragedy of the commons’ – more on that later
* will be reading more about self-efficacy thanks to Peter Cruikshank

one last thought – these is still no real sense of which academic field all this falls into and I guess there won’t be one as we gradually drop the ‘e’ and start talking just about democracy and participation.

More anon