Local innovation: collecting examples of best practice

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Permalink Reply by David Wilcox on January 10, 2010 at 7:36pm

Hi Andy - great project!
One example in an earlier forum post here from Stephen Hilton in Bristol - use of social media for actions related to climate change.
Stephen is making the point that social media is good for supporting collective action ... and that's needed in combatting climate change.
As I suggest there, maybe what's needed is a framework that matches on the one hand councils' priorities, and on the other where social media works well. Jemima Gibbons offers some broad headings in her recent book Monkeys with Typewriters – the chapters are Co-creation, Passion, Learning, Openness, Listening, Generosity.
Where might we see councils adopting these values and behaviours?
And where might we see citizens using social media to work with ... or maybe press councils on these fronts?

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Permalink Reply by Ricard Espelt on January 10, 2010 at 10:25pm

Hi Andy, I write the abstract of Copons project:

Copons 2.0: approach to consensus decision making

What's the idea?

Really, it's easy. We proposed a new path to take decisions. Until now, when a citizen had a problem they went to the Council to explain it or filled out a form. Only sometimes the citizen received an answer and a lot of times it was difficult to solve the problem. Now when somebody wants to solve a problem, they have a new way: publish their problem on Facebook. More citizens can get involved to give their opinion, and of course, the council too.

What are benefits?

Not just seven people at the council give solutions. Everybody can participate in solving a problem. Sometimes, citizens who have had the same problem in the past give their opinion and this is fantastic!
Another benefit for the councilis to have a space to propose projects for the future, and see the opinion of the citizens.

The premises of the project:

- Everybody can participate with their digital profile -anonymity is not allowed
- Everybody can start a discousion to solve a problem
- The Council must alwaysgive an answer
- Work to involve maximum of citizens in a digital space
- Offer training sessions to avoid the digital divide
- Share the project with other villages to increase open government

Results & lessons learned

- More digital profiles in the vilage
- More ICT in the village
- More dialog
- More knowledge about the limits of local administration
- More who is who wants to help and who is who wants to put obstacles
- More analogic dabate
- More knowledge about the real problems of citizens
- More long tail of problems
- More people involve in a specific searching solving problems
- More accountability
- More transparency
- More proximity
- More co-creative (administration-citizens) solutions
- More feedback & demands

And you have prezi - dotsub video in this post

If you need something else I open my knowledge for you!

If you need something else..

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Permalink Reply by Hugh on January 13, 2010 at 12:09pm

Andy,

Are you looking for council-led projects only?

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Permalink Reply by Andy Gibson on January 13, 2010 at 12:31pm

Hi Hugh - no, anyone can be behind the projects, as long as the work delivered value against things which councils care about and need to achieve. So if there are citizen-led projects which have delivered value against council priorities, I think councils should know about them!

Hugh said:

Andy,

Are you looking for council-led projects only?

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Permalink Reply by Ingrid Koehler on January 13, 2010 at 3:10pm

Hi - I'm starting to collect examples as I find them at http://www.socialgov.posterous.com

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Permalink Reply by Kirsty Horne on January 20, 2010 at 12:44pm

Hi Andy,

There is some great work being done north of the border by Fife Council - www.digitalfife.com

Kirsty

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Permalink Reply by Andy Gibson on January 20, 2010 at 3:48pm

Thanks Kirsty!

Kirsty Horne said:

Hi Andy,

There is some great work being done north of the border by Fife Council - www.digitalfife.com

Kirsty

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Permalink Reply by Geoff Coleman on January 29, 2010 at 8:47am

I work in the press office at Birmingham City Council and – with the help of Birmingham bloggers like Nick Booth - we’ve developed an online newsroom: www.birminghamnewsroom.com.

Using wordpress, the site incorporates news headlines and releases, blogs, video news (YouTube), photographs (flickr) and has a growing following on twitter.

Our aim is to reach a much wider audience than traditional media outlets, so we make everything available to journalists, residents and bloggers alike.

So far the response has been very encouraging, but the newsroom is definitely a work in progress and we’re happy to shamelessly beg, borrow or steal ideas from elsewhere.

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Permalink Reply by Andy Gibson on January 30, 2010 at 1:38pm

Thanks Geoff - nice to hear from you. There's a lot of great stuff happening in Birmingham at the moment.

I wondered if you could say something about how the Newsroom and other services have helped you deliver the core work of the Council? The trouble with a lot of this stuff is that it can sound like interesting things to do on top of normal services, but I'm keen to show that these technologies are more than just "nice to have" and can actually be part of delivering core Council objectives.

Do you have any thoughts, or stats, that might help with that...?

Geoff Coleman said:

I work in the press office at Birmingham City Council and – with the help of Birmingham bloggers like Nick Booth - we’ve developed an online newsroom: www.birminghamnewsroom.com.

Using wordpress, the site incorporates news headlines and releases, blogs, video news (YouTube), photographs (flickr) and has a growing following on twitter.

Our aim is to reach a much wider audience than traditional media outlets, so we make everything available to journalists, residents and bloggers alike.

So far the response has been very encouraging, but the newsroom is definitely a work in progress and we’re happy to shamelessly beg, borrow or steal ideas from elsewhere.

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Permalink Reply by Hugh on February 9, 2010 at 10:45am

Excuse the hiatus. Harringay Online is a project you could cite for impact on National Indicators 1 - 4 and some evidence that it's beginning to work for co-production.

It may also be worth your mentioning the study that Networked Neighbourhoods are doing with London Councils in partnership with Central Office of Information, Cisco, Cap Gemini, Experian and with the support of Talk About Local. The study is looking at neighbourhood networks to seek evidence for their impact and understand the implications for local councils. Due to report this summer. Let me know if you need more info Andy.

Andy Gibson said:

Hi Hugh - no, anyone can be behind the projects, as long as the work delivered value against things which councils care about and need to achieve. So if there are citizen-led projects which have delivered value against council priorities, I think councils should know about them!

Hugh said:

Andy,

Are you looking for council-led projects only?

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Permalink Reply by Andy Gibson on February 9, 2010 at 11:28am

Thanks Hugh. Have you got any tangible figures that relate to NIs 1-4 then, or is it more about qualitative progress in these areas? In fact, any general thoughts on how to measure impact for these tools would be great, evaluation is a bit of a dark art at the moment...

Hugh said:

Excuse the hiatus. Harringay Online is a project you could cite for impact on National Indicators 1 - 4 and some evidence that it's beginning to work for co-production.

It may also be worth your mentioning the study that Networked Neighbourhoods are doing with London Councils in partnership with Central Office of Information, Cisco, Cap Gemini, Experian and with the support of Talk About Local. The study is looking at neighbourhood networks to seek evidence for their impact and understand the implications for local councils. Due to report this summer. Let me know if you need more info Andy.

Andy Gibson said:

Hi Hugh - no, anyone can be behind the projects, as long as the work delivered value against things which councils care about and need to achieve. So if there are citizen-led projects which have delivered value against council priorities, I think councils should know about them!

Hugh said:

Andy,

Are you looking for council-led projects only?

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Permalink Reply by Steven Clift on February 11, 2010 at 7:21pm

Glad Hugh opened up the scope. Focusing on council-centric approaches versus council supported efforts for the benefit of the broader community is the root of why "local e-democracy" in the UK has not lived up to its early hype. To me "social media" in the government context is just the latest term for e-democracy.

So, hammering home the point - it is about how you can benefit your community not a narrow focus on corporate image and one-way communication via additional channels.

I think you also need to point out what models of activity are relatively low cost to initiate and which ones sustain themselves more naturally and which ones take continued investment of time and potentially resources. Of course all uses of social media in local communities benefit more from tending versus illusions of magic solutions.

On that note, the whole "locals online" movement has real value and local councils should support, encourage, link, fund, contribute to, etc. such efforts.

Here is what E-Democracy.org has been doing in the UK since 2004 when we were ask to bring our model over from Minnesota: http://e-democracy.org/uk

Issues Forums may not look fancy, but have a look at Headington and Marston and Brighton and explore the actual content. They work extremely well with the proper outreach.

If you are a council without a grid of neighbourhood-by-neighbourhood spaces or a country with parish-by-parish spaces, you are missing out big time.

Cheers,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.org

P.S. Also note: http://e-democracy.org/locals and http://e-democracy.org/citycamp

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