Localopolis

35. Reduce Inequality with Universal Services

2012-03-01T21:37:00.000Z

Proportionate universalism is a very, very important idea in my opinion.

It is one of the key concepts to have come out of the Marmot Review. If you are not familiar with this review then, well, why not? It is a comprehensive and thoroughly well researched statement of what causes health inequality and what we have to do if we want to reduce it.

The report that came out of the review, Fair Society, Healthy Lives, argues that inequalities in health cannot be tackled effectively if we only focus on the most deprived:

To reduce the steepness of the social gradient in health, actions must be universal, but with a scale and intensity that is proportionate to the level of disadvantage. We call this proportionate universalism. Greater intensity of action is likely to be needed for those with greater social and economic disadvantage, but focusing solely on the most disadvantaged will not reduce the health gradient, and will only tackle a small part of the problem.

Here are a couple of charts which seek to illustrate the point (I have borrowed them from a presentation by Dr Fu-Meng Khaw that can be found here):

Instead of thinking about equality of service output, as local government has traditionally done, we need to be thinking about equality of service outcome. Even more than this, remember that services are already universally in-proportionate by virtue of the fact that the middle classes are able to draw down public services more effectively than those lower in the social scale. This research by Matthews and Hastings is a really interesting exploration of exactly that issue.

How Can Universal Services be Made Proportionate?

As Llaria Geddes points out in her presentation to the Greenwich Health and Wellbeing Partnership (that can be found here), practitioners and professionals get proportionate universalism as a concept but find it less easy to understand how it can be put into practice.

Using some of the examples in that presentation I want to offer some tentative suggestions about how proportionate universalism might be applied in practice. In part this is about breaking down services into types according to the way that they are delivered.

Seven Strategies

1. Invest in Services that are Intrinsically Proportionate

As Llara Geddes notes in her presentation, some services have proportionalism built in. Some services, such as GP services for example, are tailored to individuals and should automatically respond to levels of need. Other services, such as the provision of green spaces in urban areas, can be more attractive for those who need them most and will have less of an impact on people with the resources to travel or to live in greener areas.

2. Specify Service Zones

For ‘place based’ services such as street cleansing, street lighting and planning, outcomes can be ‘equalised’ by concentrating services at different levels in different areas. ‘Service zones’ would work just like planning or environmental areas, conferring a particular status on a geographic area with maybe three or four levels. For street cleansing this might mean having different frequencies of service depending on the level of risk for an area. For other services it might mean different speeds of response times for repairs or dealing with graffiti etc. For planning it might mean more intense advice or consultation in areas less likely to have the resources to engage with planning processes.

3. Build the Right Referral Systems

For services that are provided directly to households or to individuals (e.g. benefits advice, pest control and home energy advice) referrals can be used to ensure that access is increased amongst those less likely to ask for services or respond to advertising or marketing campaigns (it may be better not to do these at all). Referrals can take place across any services but ‘first line’ services such as GPs and health visitors will be particularly important.

4. Provide Enhanced Services

The presentation gives the example of the fire service giving additional support for vulnerable people. In the same way any service provided directly to households / individuals can include triggers for extra layers of service.

5. Carefully Target Population Groups

Providing services to certain population groups will have a proportionate affect because of the nature of those groups. The presentation gives the examples of providing effective contact to, and support for, young people who are not in employment, education or employment. Carers and care leavers are other examples of these types of group.

6. Ensure that Service Centres are Community Sensitive

Many services are delivered via physical centres - in other words from a building within a community. Examples include health centres, schools, libraries, leisure centres and community centres. The way that these centres provide their services can be varied, whether in terms of opening hours, access, associated groups (PTAs, friends of), community involvement or facilities. A proportionate approach would ensure that centres are sensitive to the needs of the community where they are located and that their services are adjusted accordingly. They can also provide an excellent point of referral for other services.

7. Provide New Service Centres

It might be that existing service centres are not enough to ensure that access is being ‘equalised’. Sure Start centres are an example of an initiative that concentrates universal services. The spatial distribution of these types of centre can ensure a proportionate approach.

34. Evaluate the Policy Outcomes from Public Participation

2012-02-24T17:23:00.001Z

If I want to describe the force of an earthquake I can use the Richter scale, if I want to describe wind speed I can use the Beaufort scale but if I want to describe the impact of public participation on local government policy and decision making (and I do – it’s what my PhD is about) what can I use?

The answer is nothing as far as I know.

The purpose of this post, therefore, is to share the crude scale I’m using to describe the value of the outcomes from participatory initiatives on policy and decision making. It is very much a work in progress so please feel free to suggest improvements!

My Kind of Outcomes

Public participation initiatives, such as citizens’ panels, area forums, focus groups etc, will normally consider issues, relevant to policies or decisions being considered and will produce outcomes. By outcomes I mean opinions or proposals that might be captured formally through minutes or reports, or informally by decision makers, perhaps councillors, being present and taking conclusions away with them. These outcomes are the policy products of participatory initiatives.

Evaluating Public Participation Isn’t Simple

While I am only really interested in those outcomes relevant to policy and decision making there are of course a wide range of other outcomes that can be evaluated, sometimes it seems, to the exclusion of the ones I’m interested in.

I’m not going to get into the whole thing here. If you want to see the whole picture then Tina Nabatchi has produced a very useful ‘Manager’s Guide to Evaluating Citizen Participation’ that you can download here. It gives a very good feel for the challenge of evaluating public participation, as she says:

Public participation is an inherently complex and value-laden concept. There are no widely held criteria for judging the success and failure of citizen participation efforts. Some advocates focus on the intrinsic benefits of participation and believe that its instrumental outcomes are irrelevant. Others focus on its instrumental outcomes for citizens, communities, policy, and governance. Critics often doubt both sets of claims.

Nabatchi’s guide also highlights some of the specific challenges associated with evaluating the specific type of outcomes I’m interested in:

...there are difficulties in demonstrating causal links between participation and policy outcomes, in part due to the time lag between processes and policy or public action, as well as intervening events. There is also considerable ambiguity about what would constitute a substantial impact, which means that impact must be considered in relation to the initial goals of the participatory program. Finally, scholars and practitioners are still devising methods with which to better examine the links between public participation processes and public policy changes and action.

This then, is my attempt to try and address those challenges.

A Simple Evaluation Scale

For my scale I have borrowed from this paper by Paul Burton on measuring the benefits of public participation. In particular two of the ‘strands’ he argues need to be considered when conceptualising participation.

The first strand is the level or scope of the decision: Burton describes the possible range like this:

At one end of the continuum are decisions that affect everyone in a particular constituency or jurisdiction, while at the other end are those affecting only a few.

I’ve adapted this a little bit and have divided decisions between those that are strategic, affecting the whole local authority area, and those that are local, affecting one community or population group.

The second strand is what Burton calls the participatory relationship, in other words:

the relationship between those people who choose to or are invited to participate and those who retain formal responsibility for making the decision in question. At one end of the spectrum formal responsibility for taking a decision is handed to all participants, for example in a referendum, while at the other end participants are allowed only the most cursory degree of involvement and in ways that have no meaningful impact on the decision taken.

Again, to simplify, and to place this in a local government context, I’ve distinguished between those cases where the difference made is decisive and where the initiative has been informing.

From a councillor perspective these two categories are the flip side of two classic representations of the councillor role. For those councillors who see themselves as trustees, in other words, elected to follow their own judgements, the informing relationship is likely to fit more comfortably. For those that sees their role as one of delegate, closely representing the views of the public, a more decisive influence might be more likely.

Putting the two strands together generates four types of value and looks like this:

I then translate this into a four part scale as follows:

1. High Value (Strategically decisive)
Outcomes either substantially change the intended decision / policy or bring a clear direction where the way forward was in doubt. We would expect this to happen in connection with council, cabinet or even strategic partnership meetings.

2. Medium Value (Locally decisive; strategically informing)
A substantial change or a clear direction is affected at a local level through say an area committee.
Alternatively the influence is council wide and the outcome has been clearly taken into account but as one of many considerations of which others were decisive.

3. Low Value (Locally informing)
The outcome has been clearly taken into account by local councillors or officers acting locally but it cannot be said to be decisive.

4. No Value (Neither decisive nor informing)
Nothing has happened as a consequence of the outcome.

I appreciate that this scale is a crude one that plays fast and loose with many subtleties and is likely to be highly subjective in its application. No doubt it could also be improved. Nevertheless I believe it at least goes someway to describing something which has (probably) never been properly described before.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/playingwithpsp/2280744328/

33. The Public Servant: A Local Government Biz Book

2012-01-22T20:45:00.000Z

This idea is a proposal for a book, one that I think is missing from the market, a local government ‘biz book’.

I started thinking about this after a couple of exchanges on twitter with Mary Mckenna (no relation!). Mary leads a company called Learning Pool that provides e-learning for the public sector. She told me that she often reads biz books and found one of them – From Good to Great – so valuable that she bought a load of copies for the company and got everyone at Learning Pool to read it. While there is a real industry around ‘how to’ guides for the private sector manager, there isn’t really a public sector equivalent – we agreed that there should be.

So, here is my take on what that book might look like.

The core concept of my book is to take Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’ and update and adapt it for the present day public sector manager. Instead of The Prince I call it The Public Servant. Instead of advice on ruling a city state it will provide advice on managing a service or policy area.

The Prince

The Prince is almost exactly 500 years old. It is a very readable and relatively short text - well worth having a look at.

The purpose of The Prince was to provide advice to the autocratic rulers of the time, particularly the new ones, about how to rule successfully. Machiavelli has a reputation for promoting the dark arts of politics but his intention, with this book in any case, was to present a realistic view of the political world and to offer advice accordingly. As a one time senior civil servant in Florence he knew what he was talking about.

The Prince was controversial for its advocacy of ‘immoral’ methods in certain situations and for its distinction between public and private morality. There has been much debate over the years about whether the book should be taken at face value not least because Machiavelli himself is widely believed to have been a republican.

Leaving all that to one side, I reckon I can borrow a number of useful things from The Prince for The Public Servant including:

The use of examples from the classics although where Machiavelli referred to Greek and Roman classics I will be referring to the local government classics
A realistic view of the world – in this case the world of contemporary local government
The concept of fortune, in other words the constant change that those in local government are exposed to and need to respond to
The concept of virtue – in other words, independent of universal moral codes, the values needed in the role to respond to particular circumstances

The Public Servant

The Public Servant will have four main chapters.

1. The Meaning of Public Service
The value of public service, recognising the value of what the public sector does, the central duty of the public servant to protect and promote the service or policy that they are responsible for.

2. How to Protect Your Service or Policy Against Change
The nature of change in local government, the different types of change, the values needed in different circumstances to protect your service or policy.

3. How to Promote Your Service or Policy
Why the public manager needs to be constantly promoting their service or policy, the different methods to be used and the circumstances to use them in, internal and external arenas.

4. How to Build Your Team
The qualities of a good team, the way to appoint and retain good staff, the way to lead a team and ensure loyalty and commitment

Sound like a bestseller?

Photo credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Machiavel_Offices_Florence.jpg
Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/blue_mountains_library/6415559533/

32. Proper Methodology

2012-01-21T18:07:00.000Z

If you follow me on twitter you might have heard me moaning about people who use the word methodology when what they really mean is method. You probably think this is just some grumpy middle aged bloke being pedantic and, well, you are probably right.

Anyhow, I do wonder whether 'proper' methodology has something to offer for council decision making. Before I explain what that might be, here is my go at defining methodology - forgive me if you already know this stuff - you can skip to the last bit.

Methodology in Research

In broad terms methodology refers to the consideration of methods (survey, focus group, participant observation etc etc) and is a word normally found in the context of research. Specifically it tends to refer to a discussion of why certain methods were chosen over others. If you have ever produced a dissertation for a course you will probably have written a methodology section (you know, that bit about quantitative and qualitative methods – you probably wrote it last).

A methodological discussion in the context of research would normally include:

The aim / purpose of the research

Your philosophical assumptions – such as how you view the nature of reality (ontology), how you think things can be known (epistemology)

The different methods available

The resources available to undertake the research and any other practical limitations

Ethical considerations – if your research involves children, for example.

The characteristics of the group, people or things being researched –researching an elite is different to researching the public for example

Having taken all these factors into account the researcher can then justify the choice of research method and how set out how the research will proceed. A clearly stated methodology provides transparency and supports rigour. By setting out your choices it is possible for others to challenge poor decisions and see if your reasoning is consistent. This point about consistency is why it is important to set out your philosophical assumptions even if these things may seem ‘academic’ and are ultimately difficult to prove one way or the other.

A Proper Public Service Methodology

Boiling it right down, methodology is simply an aspect of decision making and this is why I think it can be applied in the public sector which is, after all, constantly considering methods. If you think about it, many of the questions that go to local government cabinet and council meetings are about choosing methods e.g. ‘which method should we use to deliver this service?’ or ‘which method should we use to achieve this policy aim?’.

Why not include a methodology section, similar to that used for research, in every report that considers this type of question?

I am not suggesting that every council report should spell out the author’s philosophical assumptions (although, why not!) but, while many factors are explained (aims, needs etc), there are some important assumptions that inform decision making that often go unstated such as:

Assumptions about human nature and how people will behave

Assumptions about what people want

Assumptions about staff behaviours, capabilities etc

Ethical assumptions

Exactly how this might happen in practice might need some further working out but I hope you get the gist.

Let me give the example of sickness absence policy to show what I mean.

Essentially there are two views of human nature / behaviour that can underpin this policy each having very different implications for the methods that get used. One is to assume that people want take advantage of the organisation and ‘pull a sickie’ given the opportunity. This assumption lead to policies such as increased monitoring by managers and use of disciplinary procedures. The alternative is to assume that sickness is genuine and that employees want to be in work. This assumption leads to investment in occupational therapy, stress counselling and the like. A third option is to assume that both types of behaviours exist and this implies that both strategies need to be used but is this really possible? Does one set of strategies cancel out the benefits of the other? To be honest I don’t know but if these assumptions were set out clearly then the implications could be tested and debated.

So, by introducing proper methodology into council decision making we should get a more transparent, rigorous and ultimately effective process.

It's the democratic equivilent of showing the working out.

And, if I have used the term methodology incorrectly – please feel free to tweet me :)

Photo credit (presentation): http://www.flickr.com/photos/fumi/2740537902/in/photostream/
Photo credit (blackboard): http://www.flickr.com/photos/gianpierre_soto/5505213117/

31. Appreciative Community Planning

2012-01-18T22:11:00.000Z

Community planning (a.k.a. producing a community strategy for a local council area) is one of the things I’m involved in doing for my own authority. If you have been involved in this type of process, either supporting or as a ‘stakeholder’ you will know what a challenging area of work it is. The expectation is that local needs will be mapped, the public consulted and all relevant agencies and organisations engaged. This is, as you might expect, quite a challenge. While producing a community strategy is actually relatively straightforward. Producing something that is meaningful and that makes a difference is a lot, lot harder.

I would point to two particular problems. The first is that community strategies tend to be all encompassing and will include all of the priorities of the major public bodies in an area without every really prioritising or creating a genuinely new focus. They often don’t prioritise at all. The second is that they tend to be generic. It is hard to distinguish the vision, themes and actions plans in one area from another – maybe this is because everywhere has the same problems but maybe it has something to do with the process.

Recently I’ve come across an organisational development method called appreciative inquiry and it is something that I find really interesting. The idea here, then, is to apply this approach to community planning to come up with a different type of process – let me know if it has been done before.

Appreciative Inquiry

I’m no expert on appreciative inquiry but, if it is not something you are familiar with, and it sounds of interest I’d urge you to research it further.

Essentially it is an asset based rather than a deficit model of development. In other words instead of asking ‘what’s wrong and how can we fix it?’ the question is ‘what’s good and how can we have more of it?’.

Here is part of the Wikipedia entry (there are loads of other things to look at but I thought that this was quite a nice starting point):

Appreciative Inquiry attempts to use ways of asking questions and envisioning the future in-order to foster positive relationships and build on the present potential of a given person, organisation or situation. Applied research has demonstrated that this method can enhance an organisation's internal capacity for collaboration and change. Appreciative Inquiry utilises a cycle of 4 processes, which focuses on what it calls:

DISCOVER: The identification of organizational processes that work well

DREAM: The envisioning of processes that would work well in the future.

DESIGN: Planning and prioritizing processes that would work well.
DESTINY (or DELIVER): The implementation (execution) of the proposed design

The basic idea is then to build - or rebuild - organisations around what works, rather than trying to fix what doesn't. AI practitioners try to convey this approach as the opposite of problem-solving. They take a positive focus on how to increase exceptional performance instead of improving poor skills and practices. AI assumes that this line of reasoning is motivational. Progress does not stop when one problem is solved: it naturally leads on to continuous improvement.

Appreciative Community Planning

Appreciative inquiry applied to community planning turns the process on its head as community planning is definitely a deficit model of development – it asks ‘what is wrong with our area and how can we fix it? Appreciative community planning, on the other hand, asks ‘What are our assets and how can we make the most of them?. It implies the following stages:

DISCOVER: Finding out what is good about an area, what the public like, what services and initiatives work well, what are the strengths of the local economy

DREAM: Similar in some ways to the visioning process associated with community planning but done properly. Rather than trying to boil down every aspiration down into a single sentence (‘a healthy, green, prosperous, fair and equal place’), giving people a chance to express themselves and collecting a wide range of ideas.

DESIGN: A regularly updated statement of the services and processes that need to be valued and supported and of the new projects that can develop the assets (in the widest sense) that an area values.

DELIVER: The activity of doing the things that have been agreed.

There are a number of things that I think will be helpful about this approach:

The discover and dream phases lend themselves particularly well to public engagement whereas the later stages would sit well with ‘professionals’ – the process might provide a clear division of labour which I don’t think community planning ever has
By focussing on what is good about an area the planning process would promote distinctiveness rather than uniformity
The process would be one that continuously unfolds – I’m not even sure the ‘statement of priorities’ would be a fixed plan or set of actions / targets
The process would be much more motivating for those involved

As with old style community planning, appreciative community planning doesn’t prevent the majority of services in an area being delivered as usual and the things that need to be done by law would still get done. It is an evolving means of social and economic development in which the whole community can be involved. Well, that’s the theory anyway.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/la-citta-vita/5921677886/

30. Community Government

2012-01-15T21:01:00.000Z

A number of councils have recently been pondering the question: What should be the role of local authorities?’ Examples include Essex, Enfield and Lambeth.

I wonder, however, whether many of these debates, whilst valuable of course, suffer because they do not draw on useful thinking from the not so distant past. I have previously mentioned the Commission for Local Democracy as a valuable source of ideas and discussion and there is also a whole series of linked books from the 1990s, under the heading of ‘Government Beyond the Centre', worth looking at.

The purpose of this post is to highlight one of the most significant ideas from the 1990s – the idea of community government. This idea was outlined by the excellent John Stewart in ‘A Future for Local Authorities as Community Government’ – his contribution to Local Government in the 1990s (1995) edited by John Stewart and Gerry Stoker.

Stewart was responding to what he saw as an over emphasis on structure in debates on local government at the time when what really mattered was to clarify ‘its role and way of working’. He was concerned that local authorities had come to see their ‘main role as the delivery of services specified in national legislation and accepted the stimulus of central government grant and circular as the main spur to action’. This service orientation, although accepted as a natural state of affairs in the UK, contrasted with local government in Europe and even a earlier UK tradition, dating back to the later 19^th Century, which saw solving wider community problems as an important role for local government.

Community Government

Stewart’s proposed alternative was community government. This concept sees the primary role of Council’s as solving the problems of the wider community and, more than that, as a means for communities to debate issues and resolve conflicts so that:

Community government is achieved through political processes that balance different interests and values. A local authority is the political institution for the authoritative determination of community values, based on public discourse.

For community government to be achieved the critical change is for a power of general competence to be granted to local authorities, one that could even be used to extend legal powers such as for regulation. Further than this councils need to have formal powers to influence the work of other public service providers even to the extent of taking direct control as this is the best way to ensure that the concerns and wishes of local citizens can be met.

Community government implies news ways of operating:

Many ways of working – councils having the freedom and capacity to meet needs in different ways including direct service provision, contracting, grants, regulation etc
Responsive in action – beyond simply good customer service this means that the whole organisation recognises that it only has value in as far as customers and citizens see that value and acting accordingly. The capacity for ‘responsiveness in action’ can only be increased when the level of central government control is reduced.
New patterns of organisation – means moving away from traditional committees and departmental structures and investing in the right structures in order to be responsive to a given need as long as these are accountable and sanctioned by citizens. Once again central government needs provide the space for councils to innovate and experiment. Examples include arms length companies, public / private partnerships, co-operatives and decentralisation.
Rebuilding accountability – recognising low turnout as a problem for local representative structures, considering proportional representation and finding ways of engaging citizens actively in services and the business of the council.

Community government is an idea that has been influential. In the modernisation agenda associated with the 2000 Local Government act, for example, it is possible to see the influence of this idea – in the power of wellbeing, in the requirements for local strategic partnerships and community strategies, and in the emphasis on democratic renewal and community engagement. More recently the emphasis on localism chimes with the notion that local councils should be free to meet the needs of their local population the way that they think best.

Local government today is of course far from Stewart's ideal of community government. For my money, however, it is always worth a re-reading - especially if the intention is to rethink the role of local government.

Manchester Town Hall Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jacockshaw/2975276974/

29. A Community Approach to Supporting Social Media

2012-01-07T16:33:00.000Z

Here is the result of some thinking I have been doing for my own Council on how we can best support social media internally. It seems obvious to me (and to others) that the traditional response of writing a strategy just wouldn’t do for this purpose. Trouble was that it wasn’t obvious what was the best way to do this corporately so this, for what it is worth, is the approach I have come up with – I did promise I would share it.

The approach is based on three things:

The idea of a social bureaucracy that I have posted up previously where the central organising principle is the community rather than the hierarchy, newtork or market.
Ideas I have borrowed by good souls such as Dan Slee and Carl Haggerty
An internal workshop held for staff

The workshop was one I facilitated following the broad principles of appreciative inquiry – in other words focusing on ‘what do we do well and how can we do more?’ rather than ‘what are our problems and how do we solve them?’ The seven proposals that came out of the workshop were:

Review the access / permission policy to provide clearly defined different levels

Market social media use to the organisation to raise awareness

Provide basic training for all staff (including induction)

Provide an integrated corporate website (and intranet) that provides social media in a form fully visible to staff

Support an internal community of social media ‘enthusiasts’ / pool of expertise (online, via yammer)

Provide training for the social media ‘enthusiasts’

Review software / network to ensure fit for purpose, up to date and capable of updating

Building from all this here is my first stab at a community approach to supporting social media in local government.

2. Assumptions

Underpinning the approach are the following assumptions:

Levels of customer satisfaction, the effectiveness of public engagement and the overall reputation of the Council are all now influenced by social media use – getting this right matters
Effective social media use requires an environment in which people are supported to innovate within clearly defined boundaries – it means ‘opening the doors for bight people’ (via Dan Slee)
Social media is never an end in itself – its use always supports clear business goals (via Carl Haggerty)
All staff are affected by social media in some way
Social media blurs the traditional boundaries between the private and public roles of staff

3. The Community Approach

The Community Approach means organising support, access and training for a community of users with three levels:

Basic Level

Includes all staff
Requires awareness of guidelines on personal use of social media
Includes access to a basic list of sites
Should have awareness of potential of social media and benefits of increased involvement
Requires visibility of all of Council’s social media activity via ‘passive’ channels (viewing tweets / videos etc through internet / intranet where direct access is blocked)

Corporate Users “A licence to tweet”

Includes those who actively use social media on the Council’s behalf
A registered list with entry via application
Responsibility for social media may be included in job description
Required training probably through e-learning
Working within guidelines on representing the Council on social media sites
Access to all approved sites
Supported through a sub community of corporate users both online and face to face events

Account Managers

Must be a corporate user
Responsible for an official Council account
Responsibility linked to a post and included in job description
Aregistered list – entry is linked to approval for Council account
Working within account management guidelines
Supported through a sub community of account managers

The intention should be that, over time, an increasing proportion of staff become corporate users until eventually everyone is! Some organisations, such as Monmouth CC (via @helreynolds), have been much bolder and have opened up social media staff to all staff. I actually think that this the best way to go but not everyone is going to be comfortable with that so this approach allows for a more evolutionary rather than revolutionary route - albeit to hopefully the same destination.

4 Key Roles

Responsibility for supporting the community needs to be embedded in a number of key roles which may be added to existing posts:

Customer Service Champion(s) – Either corporately or by department, responsible for:

ensuring a consistent approach to social media contact with the public through monitoring and review and referring where necessary
review and updating of guidelines

facilitating the sub community of corporate users (this could be one champion or a team approach)

availability of training for corporate users

awareness training for basic level staff

Account Coordinator - responsible for:

monitoring the management of accounts and maintaining a corporate register

applications for new accounts

facilitating the account managers sub community

availability of training for account managers

review and updating of guidelines

Technical Support Specialist – responsible for:

maintaining the lists of basic / blocked / approved sites
secure and effective operation of the network in respect of social media use
ensuring appropriate systems in place to update software
troubleshooting as necessary

and that is as far as I’ve got so far……

Please feel free to borrow, add, amend and comment.

Photo credit: Computer Party - http://www.flickr.com/photos/oneras/80574135/

28. Democratic Fractals

2011-11-02T12:36:00.000Z

Fractals are fascinating.

According to Wikipedia:

A fractal has been defined as "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole," a property called self-similarity.

Fractals are formed by various types of mathematical repetition and can be found in many aspects of nature such as clouds, snowflakes and plants.

One of the wonderful things about fractals is that they look the same at different scales – this is particularly true of certain types of fractal such as the Koch Snowflake and the Sierpinski Triangle which are created by the repetition of simple mathematical rules. These are the same sorts of rules that can be found for naturally occurring fractals.

So what, I hear you ask, has this got to do with democracy?

Well, it occurs to me that fractals might provide a rather neat way for establishing democratic structures based on the following two principles:

1. Exactly the same democratic structures should be repeated at every level of government

So, for example, if the UK parliamentary arrangements are in fact ‘the envy of world’ then they should be replicated at every level of government. This already true to some extent for the devolved administrations but is certainly not for local government or town and parish councils (I have posted about local parliaments before). It doesn’t have to be that system of course, it could be a different one, but there has to be ‘self similarity’ at every level.

The benefit is that it is easy for everyone to understand – once you ‘get it’ at one level, you ‘get it’ at every level.

2. The distance between different democratic levels should be decided by a simple mathematical rule

How are these distances decided now? How did we decide, for example, that there should be x number of devolved administrations below central government, x number of councils below that and x number of community councils below that? I don’t really know to be honest although I’d guess the arrangements we have now have evolved for various historic and contextual reasons.

Instead why not have a mathematical rule for deciding distances? Here is an example using ‘divide by 21’ to illustrate this:

1 UK Government
21 Regional Governments (population about 3 million each – same as Wales)
441 Local Governments (21 for each region, average population c. 140,000 – about the same as Wales!)
9261 Community Governments (21 for each local area, average population 6,500)
194,000 Street Governments (21 for each community, average population 300)

I wondered whether you could use Fibonacci numbers but I’m not sure my maths are up to the task!

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dkuropatwa/2912488625/

27. Social Bureaucracy

2011-10-27T20:34:00.000+01:00

I've posted before about how social media practices and technologies might transform council decision making. Here I want to apply the same thinking to the other side of what local government does - the administration of services. Social media has changed many aspects of council business but these changes are in many ways on the periphery, the fundamental way that local authorities work is unaffected. The task of this post, therefore, is to attempt to imagine some principles on which a truly social administration might be based.

Part of my reason for doing this is because I am helping to develop a social media framework for my own council and I'm wondering if social media might require something different to the corporate strategy and policy approaches that have been used for other 'cross cutting' issues.

Anyhow, to business.

Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy, as discussed famously by Max Weber, will be familiar concept familiar to most people who have done a management course. Classically it means a rational system of administration associated with, amongst other things, a single hierarchy of supervision and command, compliance with a clear set of organisational rules, professional status, objectivity and a premium on experienced workers -bureaucrats.

Of course this is an ideal type and in practice things don’t always work out this way. Michael Lipsky’s famous study of street level bureaucrats, for example, highlighted the ways in which public servants on the front line devised coping strategies as a response to the impossible task of allocating limited resources in the face of seemingly limitless demand for public services.

More recently the old notion of bureaucracy has been challenged by a whole range of ideas associated with the private sector. Both networks and markets have been suggested as organising principles that could replace traditional hierarchies. Much of this has gone under the heading of the New Public Management although I’m not sure anyone really knows what that means.

Although the term comes with a lot of negative vibes these days, ultimately bureaucracy simply means organisation by bureau (department). It has certainly been updated over the years and the idea here is that it can be updated again – and made social.

The Social Bureaucracy

Instead of the hierarchy, network or market, the fundamental organising principle for the social bureaucracy is the community. This is the idea of community that is applied to online activity. So, in the sense I mean it here, a community has the following features:

A clear purpose decided by the elected side of local government
A limited number of members as defined by the organisation
Named individuals performing essential community roles e.g. admin, facilitator etc
Defined responsibilities for members describing how they contribute to the purpose of the community
Assets such as shared knowledge, equipment or facilities
Mechanisms for active dialogue between members; online and off

Communities would replace departments, sections, teams and units. Communities can easily overlap and individuals would have multiple memberships. In fact job descriptions would in effect be a list of memberships. The beauty of communities is that they are fluid and flexible. They can be created and closed, increased and reduced according to what the organisation requires and can support. Neither do they need to be contained within the organisation. Communities can cross organisational and professional boundaries, they can include national and international contributors and crucially they can involve the public.

Some communities, such as those providing social care or planning services, for example, would require some or all of their members to have professional qualifications but, underpinning this, would be a generic set of skills and competencies. There would, of course, be communities for training and development to support this.

Permissions

Rather than concepts of seniority and regimes of line management, in communities it is the application of permissions that mark out the different responsibilities of community members. So, for example, the permission to speak on behalf of the community, to use particular resources and of course to add and remove community members would all be granted at an organisational level. This might also have implications for what people get paid. Perhaps pay would be linked to the communities a person belongs to, the permissions they have been granted or a combination of both.

Collective Responsibility

Instead of compliance with rules or performance management regimes, the social bureaucracy would be driven by collective responsibility. In other words, at an organisational level, it is the success of communities that is judged. For individuals the incentives to do well come from peer pressure, from the desire to be associated with successful communities and from the ethos that drove people to want to be part of any community in the first place. One of the important aspects of a community is that it implies an emotional as well as a rational aspect – passion as well as professionalism.

Community Co-production

For the social bureaucracy the relationship with the public is a co-productive one. I’ve posted before about a co-productive decision making process, here it is all about the partnership between public servants and the public to provide services (here is a lovely description of how this relationship can work by Simon Pickthall). For the social bureaucracy the idea goes a stage further. Rather than partnerships with individuals or groups the idea is to build communities to achieve specific outcomes that contain both professionals and the public. In the social bureaucracy the public are understood not as clients or customers but as co-producers, as fellow community members.

What about Now?

Ok, so this is not something that is going to happen soon, if ever, but as an ideal I do think it points towards some of the ways social media use might be supported corporately right now:

Use the Language of Communities – Start talking about communities, not tools, as a way to get things done. So, for example, it’s ‘a community working to improve support for foster carers has set up a facebook page’ rather than ‘a facebook page has been set up to help carers’.
Promote Your Communities – You already have some, work out who they are and tell people about them – show how a community can make a difference through real examples.
Corporately Support Communities – Create an environment where communities can flourish. Make sure senior officers are leading by example, redesign the intranet to be your community hub, provide social media surgeries and drop-ins for interested staff etc etc
Clearly Define Roles and Permissions – make sure everyone knows what they can and can’t do and why.
Build a Community of Community Builders – There are many people already make great use of social media whether supported or not – they need to be recognised and supported.

These are just some initial thoughts – I hope others will build on them. I’ll finish with @danslee’s tweeted adage about supporting social media corporately which sums it all up rather well:

Best #localgov #socmed advice? Help open the doors for bright people. That’s all.

26. Nine Party Democracy

2011-10-15T18:36:00.003+01:00

As Prof. Colin Copus argues in his excellent book Party Politics and Local Government, for better or for worse, political parties have come to dominate the landscape of local politics in the UK. Most of the time it is the national political parties that determine the processes, outcomes and (within legally defined limits) the structure of local decision making. As a ruling group, parties, or a coalition of parties can decide the number, role and size of council committees and other associated bodies.

But what if we turn this on its head and instead design a system that explicitly determines the shape of local political parties? I had this thought when reflecting on something Jean Jaques Rousseau said. Rousseau didn’t like political parties - he thought that they interfered with a communities ability to identify the general will of the people. This is what he says in the social contract (Book II, chapter 3):

If, when the people, being furnished with adequate information, held its deliberations, the citizens had no communication one with another, the grand total of the small differences would always give the general will, and the decision would always be good. But when factions arise, and partial associations are formed at the expense of the great association, the will of each of these associations becomes general in relation to its members, while it remains particular in relation to the State: it may then be said that there are no longer as many votes as there are men, but only as many as there are associations. The differences become less numerous and give a less general result. Lastly, when one of these associations is so great as to prevail over all the rest, the result is no longer a sum of small differences, but a single difference; in this case there is no longer a general will, and the opinion which prevails is purely particular.

It is therefore essential, if the general will is to be able to express itself, that there should be no partial society within the State, and that each citizen should think only his own thoughts:which was indeed the sublime and unique system established by the great Lycurgus. But if there are partial societies, it is best to have as many as possible and to prevent them from being unequal, as was done by Solon, Numa and Servius. These precautions are the only ones that can guarantee that the general will shall be always enlightened, and that the people shall in no way deceive itself.

The interesting point here is that, for Rousseau, if there are partial societies, e.g. parties, ‘it is best to have as many as possible and to prevent them from being unequal’. OK, Rousseau is talking about all citizens rather than a representative assembly but it started me thinking about what a council decision making structure, designed around this principle might look like. This is what I came up with.

The Nine Party System

The rules for this system are as follows:

First, every council will have exactly nine parties of equal size. The size of these parties will be proportional to the size of the council but the number of councillors would need to be divisible by nine. So, for example, a council with 64 councillors would have 63 under this system, seven councillors in each party. The minimum size of a council would have to be 27 councillors for the system to work.

Second, elections would be for parties not individuals. Voters would have a list of the available parties on their ballot papers and, depending on the preferred voting method would select one or more. Of course information about the membership of each party would be made available.

Third, every committee of council, including the executive, would have nine members with one place allocated for each party who can nominate any of their members to that place. Chairs and vice chairs would be decided by each individual body at their first meeting. As places are for parties rather than people then if someone cannot attend, someone else from their party simply attends in their place.

Fourth, the requirements for forming and running a party will be established in law and carefully monitored. Ideally funding should be provided and access to publicity regulated so that each party has a chance to operate on a level playing field.

Fifth, the number, type and functions of committees would be determined by the first full meeting of each council. This meeting will also elect a chair.

Benefits

Here are some of the benefits of this system, from a rousseauian perspective at any rate;

National political parties could not dominate. They could stand as a single party in elections but, as they could only stand one party they could never have more than one ninth of the councillors;
Single parties could not dominate. Every party in this system would have an equal chance to participate in decision making - there would be no more ruling groups;
A wider variety of opinions would be represented, more space would be created for local concerns to be raised;
It would be much easier for organised groups of citizens to access the decision making process by forming a party
Politics would be more fluid as it would be much easier for parties to form and dissolve.

Why Nine?

Actually nine may be something of an arbitrary number. Seven or even eleven might do as well. There doesn't seem to be an optimum size for a council committee although for any group five seems to be the minimum worthwhile size and as groups get larger the law of diminishing returns probably kicks in. An odd number seems helpful simply as it avoids needing the chair to have a casting vote on split decisions.

25. Everyone Can Vote

2011-10-13T19:53:00.000+01:00

This is guest post from Dr Toby James from the Department of Political and Cultural Studies, Swansea University:

Idea 18 suggested that making voting compulsory couldimprove local democracy. Turnout is low in local elections in most democracies, commonly flat lining in the 30-40% range. Fining people who don’t vote would be one fix.

One reason that people may not vote, however, is that they lack the time. We have many competing demands on us. Sometimes we don't have a babysitter, we work long shifts, need to get to a friend's party etc. Citizens can easily be distracted from participating in our democratic institutions. It is not that they necessarily do not wish to be involved in local democracy or do not want their views to be heard.

In some countries voting and registering to vote can be very bureaucratic and time consuming. Citizens often have to visit a polling station to cast their vote, which may involve considerable travel. They may be required to present special forms of photographic identification to vote. Sometimes citizens may find that they need to register to vote a long time in advance of an election and provide intricate personal information such as social security numbers to be included.

The more intricate and bureaucratic the requirements imposed on voters, the more likely that some will slip up and not make it onto the register. In the

, citizens wanting to cast their vote by the post have had to provide a date of birth and signature on their application form for a postal vote and their eventual ballot paper. The two are then compared. But some votes are often deemed invalid because citizens make administrative errors like providing the current day as their day of birth. Asking citizens to provide a social security number is even more burdensome. Do you know yours off the top of your head? One election administrator recently gave me the example of a citizen who wanted to vote, but who she could not add to the electoral roll:

‘We had one woman every year would give you her national insurance number. Every year you’d write to her and say “That’s not your national insurance number.” It turned out it was her gas mask number from the war but she was convinced that was her national insurance number and there’s no way you could get any other number out of her.’

The procedures for voting and registering to vote are not always so out of tune with modern lifestyles. In some elections voting and registering to vote is very convenient. Some states in the US allow citizens to turn up and register on the day of election. In Estonia and Norway citizens could cast their vote over the internet. The UK has experimented with all postal elections and these provided an enormous boost to voter turnout. In the US you can register to vote when you apply for your driving license. Making the polling station closer to the voter increases the chances that they will vote. Extending election day over two days, or even a week, helps too.

We are increasingly a Facebook/Twitter/XFactor generation. We are used to everything being a click away. Why should we have to travel to the village hall to let government know our views?

For an overview of the research on how election administration can increase turnout, and a broad brush tool for practitioners to identify some reforms, see my article in Representation (which is free to download).

Also see: http://www.tobysjames.com/election_laws_1.html

24. Participatory Budgeting

2011-10-06T20:23:00.000+01:00

This is really a guest post by Robin Clarke of the Office of Public Management. I am grateful he offered to write the short piece below as it meant I finally got round to highlighting what is one of the more interesting local democracy ideas around.
According to the Participatory Budgeting Unit:

Participatory budgeting directly involves local people in making decisions on the spending and priorities for a defined public budget.

The idea, which comes in many shapes and sizes, started in Porto Alegre in Brazil where it has been a major part of governance in that city. As Graham Smith says in his excellent 'Beyond the Ballot: 57 Democratic Innovations from the world':

Of all the participatory initiatives used in developing nations, it is Participatory Budgeting that has caught the imagination of practitioners and academics.

If you are interested in PB (as folk like to call it) then Smith's case study in Beyond the Ballot is an excellent place to start. After that you can dive in to the many, menay reports, posts and articles that are out there.

In terms of what is happening in the UK, this report - 'Communities in the driving seat: a study of Participatory Budgeting in England' - gives a in depth and up to date round up. However, what is happening in the UK doesn't look much what is happening in places like Brazil. This is a shame as PB really is one of the more interesting ways to transform the structures of local government in the UK.

Here is Robin's take:

Participatory budgeting still needs a shake-up?

Somewhere in my distant past I worked at the IPPR think-tank on developing ideas for new democratic processes which could have the potential to liven up the UK’s less than vibrant democracy. Democracy had come to be seen as something which happened once every few years at the ballot box and was then filed away until the next election. To me democracy should also be about the conversations and activities that take place between elections.

Some of the work we did at IPPR did make something of a difference, for example, deliberative approaches such as citizens’ juries attracted interest and even found their way into Prime Ministerial speeches and policy. But other things fell by the wayside or just became a side show never quite realising their potential. I remember hosting a seminar to look at whether we could introduce Participatory budgeting (PB) into the UK context. At the time they did not quite fit into any of my project briefs but I felt sure that they could shake democracy up in a fairly big way. Here was an approach which was not about just consulting people but actually handing direct decision making power over to them. Potentially large budgets could be put in the hands of ordinary citizens.

For the next few years I knew that PB had found a niche in the local government world but I had not read up on the practical detail. Then a few months ago I attended a conference to celebrate 10 years of PB. But the models that were being presented did not look anything life what we had speculated about all those years ago. PB had become a process whereby small areas of discretionary spending were decided by small groups of local people. A typical example would be that a budget of £20k would be shared out amongst 10 local projects with no single project being allowed to receive more £2.5k. The project proposers would get up on a stage and say what they wanted to do with the money and audience would vote. It is not hard to imagine that those projects which managed to pack the hall with the most people would be the most likely to get the £2.5k.

More recently there has been a push by NESTA to scale-up PB so that it deals with bigger budgets and more mainstream areas of spending rather than the small less hard hitting discretionary areas. There should be so many incentives for PB becoming more like the model we envisaged. The coalition government is pretty clear that it wants to redraw the relationship between public bodies and their publics. Local people are to become more powerful. They should be co-deciders, co-creators, co-deliverers…co everything. But this won’t happen unless local authorities are pushed and encouraged to make this change and at present I don’t see much evidence of PB being a tool for driving some of this.

23. Ostracic Voting

2011-09-23T09:28:00.002+01:00

OK, the phrase ‘ostracic voting’ sounds strange. This may partly be because I have probably just made it up. Yes, it is connected to the idea of ostracism which, like many of my favourite democratic ideas, goes back to classical Athens. I wondered whether it might be something that could be applied to the practice of modern local democracy.

Agora Museum in Athens

I got the idea after a visit to the rather beautiful Athens Agora Museum, where, as well as coming face to face with a real life kleroterian as they used for sortitions, I came across some ostraca (ostracons?). Now these wonderful little broken pieces of clay or shell where used for the process of ostracising (expelling) unwanted politicians.

Ostracism in Classical Athens

The Wikipedia page about ostracism, which is well worth read, explains it like this:

Each year the Athenians were asked in the assembly whether they wished to hold an ostracism... If they voted "yes", then an ostracism would be held two months later. In a section of the agora set off and suitably barriered, citizens scratched the name of a citizen they wished to expel on pottery shards, and deposited them in urns. The presiding officials counted the ostraka submitted and sorted the names into separate piles. The person whose pile contained the most ostraka would be banished...

Banishment would be for 10 years although, as property rights were essentially unaffected this constituted a political suspension rather than any more significant – you could get the death penalty for political crimes back then. Once the term was up the victim could resume their place in the political order as before – in special circumstances people could even be brought back early.

The benefit of ostracism for the Athenians was that it provided a countermeasure against tyranny and could alos help decide issues of policy where particular positions were strongly associated with individuals. With the rise of organised factions, however, its use declined.

Ostraca in the Agora Museum in Athens

Ostracic Voting in Local Democracy Today

Thinking about this I wonder if there are at least four ways ostracic voting might be used in local democracy:

1. Committee Meetings

Committees could be given the option to decide whether to have an vote and the ability to expel a member of the committee for any period of time. This might improve the performance of the committee and keep individual members on their toes. It would not affect political balance as a replacement would come from the same party. However, party motives may come to the fore and with a small group, the secret nature of the voting might not be sufficient protection against these motives dominating. On the other hand, where the committee members are genuinely concerned about the effectiveness of the group it gives them the ability to remove unproductive, disruptive or uninterested individuals.

2. Council Meetings

Council meetings could be given not so much the power to recall, as the power to eject. Council as a body would have the option to remove any unproductive, disruptive or uninterested individuals and force a by election in their wards. Again, this procedure could be subject to group politics but, with a secret vote, that would be more difficult to arrange.

3. Recall Elections

The procedure of recall elections gives voters the chance to remove unwanted representatives. Ostracic voting provides a different way to organise this. Every year voters would have the chance to nominate a councillor they would like to see ostracised (this could be done on a ward or council wide basis), the councillor with the most votes, perhaps with a minimum threshold would be ostracised, and a by election held.

4. Local Elections

Finally, ostracic voting might be applied to the local election procedure itself. Voters could rank candidates, not in their order of preference, but in their order of disapproval. Selection could take place on the simple basis of the candidate least disliked being elected or after a series or rounds similar to the alternative vote or single transferable vote.

All of this might sounds weird but perhaps it is not as weird as all that as this method is already popular. Just look at any number of reality TV shows such as Big Brother to see ostracic voting in action.

22. The Co-productive Council

2011-09-21T21:25:00.000+01:00

I’ve been doing some work with the excellent Prof. Tony Bovaird lately on co-production and it prompted me to think about what a co-productive council might look like. First, however, a few words about co-production as, if you didn't know, you might have thought it was all about making movies...

Co-production in Public Services

Co-production is an idea that is certainly gaining traction. There are probably too many definitions but a good place to start is where the phrase was first used:

The term ‘co-production’ was coined originally at the University of Indiana in the 1970s when Professor Elinor Ostrom was asked to explain to the Chicago police why the crime rate went up when the police came off the beat and into patrol cars. She used the term as a way of explaining why the police need the community as much as the community need the police.(new economics foundation, 2008: Co-production: A Manifesto for growing the core economy)

The New Economics Foundation and NESTA describe it this way:

Co-production is a new vision for public services which offers a better way to respond to the challenges we face - based on recognising the resources that citizens already have, and delivering services with rather than for service users, their families and their neighbours. Early evidence suggests that this is an effective way to deliver better outcomes, often for less money.

A great summary can be found here. This overview by Tony Bovaird, Elke Löffler and Frankie Hine-Hughes, highlights how the concept can be broken down to apply to different aspects of the service delivery cycle such as co-planning, co managing or co-assessment.

For a really interesting example of a whole Council approach take a look at Lambeth Council. They have recently defined themselves as a 'Cooperative Council and are seeking to underpin all of their service delivery with the principles of co-production. A white paper was produced and a special commission set up to work through the proposals before the approach was agreed - there is plenty of material to look at.

Can Local Democracy Be Co-produced?

In many ways this sounds like restating the question about whether representative and participatory democracy can work in tandem or even be combined. In some ways it is but in some ways, however, applying the debates around the co-production of services to the co-production of policies and decisions opens up a new perspective on some old problems. Start thinking about politicians instead of professionals, citizens rather than service users and policy cycles rather than service cycles and I think there definitely something new to be had.

Borrowing from Bovaird et al, the benefits of co-producing democracy can be stated as follows:

citizens know things that many politicians don’t know

... and can make a policy more effective by the extent to which they go along with its requirements

... and have time, information and financial resources that they are willing to invest to improve their own quality of life and into helping others

… and have diverse capabilities and talents which they can share with politicians and other citizens

… and can engage in collaborative rather than paternalistic relationships with politicians, with other citizens and with other members of the public

The Co-productive Council

Adapting the principles of the co-production of services, then, it is possible to imagine a Council that co-produces its democracy.

Like the ideal of co-producing services, where initiatives can take place at every stage of the service delivery cycle, the co-productive council would have in place co-productive activities at every stage of the policy and decision making cycle. So, borrowing again from the model by Bovaird et al, it is possible to conceive of a co-productive policy making process:

Co-defintion of problems – e.g. area forums, community conferences, petitioning

Co-formulation of options – e.g. co-option of public onto scrutiny committees, community / user consultation

Co-decision making – policy juries, referenda, online deliberation

Co-implementation – (see co-production of services!)

Co-evaluation - co-option of public onto scrutiny committees, area forums

This simple framework might be the starting point for identifying gaps and looking at what areas might need to be developed if a council is to be truly co-productive.

One final thought, a co-productive council would also be one where councillors, like the Chicago Police, would get out of their metaphorical patrol cars and onto the metaphorical beat. Although this is of course what many, if not most, councillors do already. It seems that the foundations for a co-productive council may already be in place.

21. Collective Pledging

2011-06-12T11:54:00.000+01:00

I was reading this piece today in the Guardian. It's about a website called Groupon which offers discounts to subscribers on a wide range of products. The Guardian piece summarises the way it works like this:

each morning, you open your email to discover one or two offers of steep discounts on restaurant food, or beauty treatments, or adventurous experiences: recent London deals, for example, included 54% off a kite-surfing course, tapas for two at £19 instead of £48, and six sessions of laser hair removal at a quarter of the regular price. Nominally, there's a catch – you get the deal only if it "tips", meaning that a sufficient number of people sign up – but today that almost always happens.

In other words discount deals are proposed by retailers but are only triggered if a specified number of consumers sign up for them - thereby, in theory, reducing the risk for the retailers and allowing them to manage their promotions more effectively. The added value of the website is the extra reach that it gives to companies. There is also an added social effect whereby people who have signed up for a deal may seek to encourage others they know to sign up so that it will 'tip'. It's not all straightforward of course, read the article if you want to learn more about the downsides.

The interesting question for me is whether this kind of collective pledging could be applied to local politics with the local council acting as a kind of democratic groupon. It might work like this:

The Council would maintain an email list of interested citizens - all would be eligible but some may choose to opt out
Proposals would be formulated by councillors as potential solutions to current policy problems
Proposals would be sent to citizens as offers - these might be targeted to specific groups such as council tenants, businesses or people living in a particular community
If the support of enough citizens was received the proposal would be enacted - citizens pledging to participate directly would enter into some kind of formal contract to help ensure continued involvement

Different types of proposal might include:

Decisions that need a certain number to sign up to be validated
New models of service delivery, such as community trusts, that require citizens to be formal stakeholders
Voluntary community initiatives such as litter picks, walking school buses or elderly care schemes
New services that require high levels of community support or that the council does not have the resources to enforce such as perhaps new parking or recycling schemes

Of course this could all happen without the technology but it is social media that makes this easy to organise and fun to use. It also creates a social environment for collective pledging to take place.

So , there it is, all it needs now is a catchy brand name. Anyone?

20. Social Council Decision Making

2011-01-24T20:12:00.001Z

This idea follows a few tweets I exchanged with @davebriggs, @ingridk and @acreoandy. I've left it a while before getting all this down so apologies for what I've left out. I should also point out that I am highly non-technical so risks of errors in that department are high. I write this from the perspective of a local government policy person who has been increasingly interested in the way that social media can help with the day job and increasingly impressed by the many supportive people out there who have been willing to help.

The starting point of this idea is the generally poor state of online agendas, minutes and reports on UK local government websites. More often than not you are presented with a list of pdf files, pages organised by date rather than content, reports hidden away in a larger 'agenda pack' documents and layers of pages that have to be waded through to find what you want. If you want a metaphor then think of the final scenes of the first Indiana Jones film where hard won and precious treasure is lost forever in a massive warehouse. Ok, maybe this is a bit harsh but you get my drift.

It seems strange, given the importance of this stuff to local democracy, that it is so badly presented online. After all, those agendas, minutes and reports tell the story of local democratic deliberation and decision making. Its even more surprising given the availability and diversity of online tools that something clever isn't being used (as far as I know).

So, by way of giving some clever techie developer a start out there, here are my 10 essential features of social council decision making - in other words how to better present agendas, minutes and reports on local government websites, based on what I've seen on Facebook, Twitter and the Communities of Practice Site:

Everything should be broken down into bitesize chunks to look like status updates or tweets. This makes things easier to share. Instead of agendas, minutes and reports we should be talking about discussions, decisions and documents. In other words, no more collecting everything into single agenda pack and minutes documents.
Discussions and decisions should be taggable so its possible to easily find anything linked to a particular subject. If I want to find out everything my council has discussed and decided about wind turbines I should simply be able to click on the wind turbine tag and find out. Tags will also allow everything relating to a single geographic community to be found instantly. This will be useful for citizens but also for councillors and for the officers supporting them.
Discussions and decisions should be shareable. If I see something I'm pleased or angry about I should be able to share it on facebook or twitter quickly and easily. Similarly if I want to bookmark something for future reference I should able to do that.
Discussions and decisions should be commentable. Just like a status update on facebook it should be possible to add comments. It's an easy way to get people's views before a decision is taken and to find out what they think afterwards.
A well designed widget would be a great way of embedding discussions and decisions onto blogs and other sites. Tailoring the RSS feed (yes of course there would be one) to specific tags would allow hyperlocal sites to only feature content relevant to that community or special interest bloggers to only pick up on the issues relevant to them. Here is an example of Kirklees Council doing the sort of thing I mean.
Every committee and councillor should have their own dynamic homepage. As well as providing for 'manual' updates each home page would automatically feature content relevant to that committee or to that councillor. This would make it easy to see what your councillor was involved in and how they voted. They could add their own commentary on to what they had done which would also be open to comment.
Reports should be stored in a searchable, taggable library just as with the communities of practice site. Presentations and any other relevant media could also be included.
Of course it would also be nice to include a metrics page so people could see what activity was taking place and how many people were actively engaged. Again, like they do on the Communities of practice site

All of these seem perfectly reasonable to me. These last two features are perhaps a little more ambitious.

Everything should take place in real time. This is straightforward for items on agendas - these can just be published when they are normally published. Points made at meetings and the decisions made may be a little more difficult to do. The process of writing minutes is currently a formal one which takes place after the meeting where different people are consulted about what they should contain. Minutes are not formally agreed until the stat of the next meeting. Having real time decisions means a change in way this is done. You can follow Kirklees Council (#kirkcouncil) on twitter to see what this might look like in practice.
The platform that supports all this should be national. The advantages are that information could be gathered across all of local government on a particular topic, say wind turbine applications, and work could be borrowed between councils saving time and resources. This article about using the communities of practice site to do research explains much better what I mean..

There we are. That's all I want. Now go away and make it for me :-)

19. Local Sortitions

2011-01-23T11:36:00.001Z

As I have mentioned in a previous post, elections, whilst regarded as the very definition of democracy by many, can simply be regarded as a means to an end. The end being to select a group of people to make decisions and agree policies relevant to local government.

One alternative mechanism, that I'm quite keen on as it happens, is sortition. This is the process of selecting representatives by lot. (Another word for this is allotment but if I titled this post local allotments it might have given the wrong impression...).

There are a number of arguments for and against sortition as you would expect. It ensures that the selection of representatives is free from corruption and the manipulation of vested interests through the mass media. If designed in the right way it can also ensure that representatives as a group reflect the general population. It also addresses the problems of legitimacy that derive from low election turn outs.

Most significantly of all it would radically alter the way that national political parties are involved in local politics. If you you don't like that involvement then this idea is for you.

Of course there are downsides. You can argue about the quality and motivation of those selected by this method but elections suffer from similar problems. More of a concern is that you lose the engagement in politics for the general population that elections bring - this would need to be addressed by other forms engagement - I don't think its an insurmountable problem. I suppose one other worry is that unelected officials may get overly powerful so measures would be needed to address this.

If you still think its a bit far fetched then remember that we already have this system for decision making on legal issues. Lay people are drawn at random to sit on juries. We consider it a fundamental aspect of our democracy.

The reason I decided to post this now is because I came across this great site dedicated entirely to sortition. It's called Equality by Lot - the blog of the Kleroterians.

If you want to know more this is obviously the place to go - they know a *lot* more than I do.

By the way, a kleroterian was the machine used by the ancient Greeks to conduct their sortitions. Which again goes to show that so many great ideas for local democracy can be found in the history books.

(More about Athens and sortition here - link courtesy of @participatory)

Kleroterion

18. Everyone Must Vote

2011-01-04T20:29:00.001Z

I recently came across an interesting paper by Heather Lardy entitled 'Is there a Right not to Vote?' in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies.  It deals forensically with arguments against compulsory voting in a general sense but got me thinking about what local democracy might be like in the UK if voting in local elections was made compulsory.

Of course turnout is a big problem for local democracy in the UK. At around 40% (when there is not a general election at the same time) it is significantly lower than national elections and also lower than in other European countries. It doesn't help the legitimacy of local government when less than half of those eligible to vote chose to do so.

But what is the alternative?

Well, voting could be compulsory for all local citizens, fines or even short prison sentences could follow for failure to comply. It's an idea as ancient as the Greeks and such schemes operate today in countries such as Australia. Is it really so difficult to embrace? Citizens have a duty to pay tax, to serve on juries, so why not vote?

There are many ways in which concerns could be dealt with. So, for example, you could add an 'abstain' option to the ballot, give people the option to vote 'none of the above' or even provide a blank space for people to add in their own preference.

One idea I like is to pay people to vote. A surcharge could be placed on the Council Tax to fund a £10 'reward' for every voter.  It would (more or less) act like a deposit scheme for Council Tax payers and redistribute a little wealth for those who are not.

One important benefit of compulsory voting is that it would improve the functioning of local politics.  Parties would need to revisit their electoral strategies and ensure that their policies appealed to all voters - not just those might be expected to vote voluntarily. Hence politics should be more inclusive and promote a fairer society.

update: another article here but I haven't read it yet...

17. Staff Mutual Councils

2010-11-20T11:54:00.001Z

As is common with many of these ideas about local democracy, the method here is to apply a model from outside of local government, in this case from the private sector, and see how it might look.

The Staff Mutual Council could also be titled as the John Lewis Council, an idea that has been bounced around a lot but, as with many of these things, lacks a little clarity.

The idea is that local government, or at least the officer structure, can be organised in the same way as the John Lewis Partnership. This means giving staff a direct stake in the running of council functions whether front line services or central support. Whilst recent debate has focused on the possibility of outsourcing specific services along these lines, this idea explores the possibility of arranging all of the council 'business' as a staff co-operative or mutual.

Much of the John Lewis council debate has been about involving the public as stakeholders, a separate idea that Carl Haggerty has discussed here and the LGIU have commented on here. As far as I am aware the John Lewis model is actually about the role of staff rather than the public and that is what this idea focuses on.

How would it work in practice?

Well, the current hierarchical officer structure would be replaced by a system in which every council employee becomes a shareholder in the organisation. Shareholders would exercise their voting rights in branch councils which would in turn elect representatives to an authority wide staff council. John Lewis describe their partnership council like this:

The Partnership Council embodies our democratic structure. Representing Partners as a whole, most of its members are elected by Partners. Its main role is to hold our management to account, to influence policy and to make key governance decisions. It has the power to discuss, to ask questions, and to make recommendations on any subject and elects five directors to the Partnership board. The Council has the ultimate power of dismissing the Chairman if he fails to fulfil his responsibilities.

So far so good. There seems little reason why this could not be applied to officer structures in local government. Decision making by the staff councils would need to dovetail with the decision making of elected councillors of course. Just as the John Lewis model excludes staff from directly deciding on core commercial issues, so the staff councils would be concerned with the implementation of policies decided by councillors, as corporate management teams are now.

The really interesting possibility is that the staff council could elect members of the Corporate Management Team. This would introduce a very different leadership dynamic for those on the officer side of council organisation.

In private partnerships the staff as shareholders can receive bonuses and this is an important incentive within in the decision making system. In a public sector partnership it is difficult to see how a similar scheme could operate. Financial rewards might encourage efficiency and could event help find savings if staff were able to attract a percentage as a bonus. But how does this square with the aims of a public service provider? Perhaps bonuses could be in the form of promotions or increased influence thus encouraging a more meritocratic organisation?

However, as Neil McInroy of CLES points out, there is a rich tradition of mutualism based on achieving social good rather than private profit that can be drawn on.

‘Co-operatives are based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. In the tradition of their founders, co-operative members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others’

These values, to my understanding, must be reflected in operational terms to indubitable standards of effectiveness. Standards of employment, cooperation and of service. Efficiency is not the main driver here. We must ensure the proposed flourishing of cooperatives in the deliver of public services, reflect these values and standards. For example, they cannot be a Trojan horse for inferior employment terms and conditions.

In fact, it could be argued that the staff of local councils often embody the values of public service more than the senior management do, especially where managers have been brought in from the private sector to run local authorities 'as a business'. Giving staff a greater stake could have the effect, therefore, of strengthening, rather than weakening the public sector ethos.

16. Foundation Councils

2010-10-23T11:32:00.003+01:00

This idea comes from Colin Barrow, Leader of Westminster City Council and Edward Lister, Leader of Wandsworth Council. The idea is outlined in a report called Magna Carta for Localism and is further developed by Barrow who makes his argument in a series of posts on the Conservative Home site.

In essence the argument is that council's are restricted by:

An onerous, centrally-imposed performance framework
Insufficient operational freedom to design services that suit local circumstances
Lack of financial control in their areas

To overcome these problems a number of sympathetic, high performing and well managed councils should pilot foundation status. These foundation councils would be given additional powers to help them innovate in order to provide low cost quality services such as the power to:

set local fees and charges
generate income and save money through full freedom to trade and share services
exempt them from some regulatory burdens
introduce bye-laws and manage the public realm without reference to specific enabling legislation
present “offers” to central Government for more specific powers, freedoms and flexibilities in particular areas

Regulatory 'exclusion zones' could be established in certain areas to allow innovation around particular policy problems. A proposed 'power to innovate' also reflects the idea that local government needs to be freed from central control if complex issues are to be tackled. These ideas are underpinned by a belief in civic entrepreneurship and local responses to social and economic problems.

Barrow sums it up like this:

Local authorities could do so much more if we weren’t strangled by increasing centralisation and onerous inspections which hamper our ability to innovate and deliver savings to local taxpayers (Quoted here)

The Foundation Councils idea draws on three strands of thought.

First it develops a form of localism that rejects centralist managerialism and in particular the achievemnet of national policy goals through the use of central control and targets.
Second, whilst rejecting central managerialism, it sustains a belief that local government needs to be judged on its ability to deliver services effectively and efficiently rather than on its role within the national polity. It is therefore an idea that is more technocratic than democratic.
Third it rejects the idea that all local council councils should have equal status. In many ways this resonates with the ideas of foundation hospitals (New Labour) and free schools (Conservative). It suggests that councils need to 'earn' their responsibility in much the same way that children earn responsibility from parents. Ultimately it is central government that decides which councils are deserving and which are not. Foundation Councils therefore represent a limited form of localism.

As I often try to suggest, most ideas in politics are old ones reclyled (nothing wrong with that).

In this case I have found at least one interesting historical precedent (no doubt there are many others). During the Holy Roman Empire a number of free and imperial cities were established. They were run by Bishop Princes and (according to wikipedia):

They were not required to pay Imperial taxes or raise troops except during a Crusade, and had other additional rights and privileges (which varied greatly among them).

Now, what about the idea of replacing council leaders with Bishop Princes....

15. Hundred Democracy

2010-10-02T11:27:00.002+01:00

Not all democratic principles come from the ancient Greeks or from the philosophers of the enlightenment. Some ideas can be found in the day to day experience of history.

Author: Thomas Moule

One example of such an idea is that of the hundreds. In a British context the hundreds were political units of roughly one hundred households that came together under the supervision of a hundred 'man' or 'elder' in a recognised place, such as a hill or other local landmark. Their purpose was to settle questions of administration, law and military organisation. Originally established by the Saxons, hundreds operated for over a thousand years in Britain in some form or other right up until the nineteenth century.

Here is a description of how they worked in their Anglo Saxon heyday from Aurea Mediocritas:

...households were sub-divided into groups of ten (a tithe) who then selected a representative to attend a “hundred-moot”, where they would meet up every four weeks with the representatives of the other tithes and the king’s financial officers to settle matters of taxation, law and order and legal disputes within the hundred. The representative of the king could offer advice but the decisions were made by the local people.

So how might this apply today?

Well modern style hundred local democracy would replace our current elected representative system and work like this:

A mayor would need to be elected for each city, town and other administrative areas (shires)
The mayor would be responsibly for allocating every household to a tithe and every tithe to a hundred within the shire
Tithes would have the opportunity to select (however they wished) a representative to the hundred and the hundred would also select an elder
Most meetings would be small enough to take place in pubs, cafes or homes
Shire councils including all of the hundred elders and representatives of national government would decide all matters of policy as needed for the local area

This system is one based on a delegate rather than a Burkean notion of representation - one that has been criticised recently by some. It also allows flexibility for selection processes in tithes and shires - as long as only one person is selected local custom and practice can apply. Thus the potential bureaucratic burden of administration and regulation is reduced.

Doubtless there will be problems in the system such as disputed and inactive tithes and hundreds and it will be for the Mayor to address these issues and to be accountable for doing so.

Despite potential difficulties this form of local democracy might nevertheless feel more natural to run that current arrangements - after all it does have a thousand year history.

Update: Thanks to @cataspanglish for pointing out the Catalan version.

14. Volunteer Democracy

2010-07-16T16:21:00.002+01:00

This version of local democracy comes from an idea I mentioned in passing in the localopolis pamphlet - that anyone who wants to should be able to become a councillor.

I was reminded of it by some recent comments by Grant Schapps MP, Minister of State for Housing & Local Government, that the professionalisation of councillors was a worrying trend and that they should be volunteers.

My argument would go like this:

Local political representatives are there to do a job - it doesn't matter how they are selected it is what they do that matters
We get very tied up with the idea that representatives have to be elected and this is what makes them legitimate but why? In ancient Athens they drew lots and we are quite comfortable with that method for selecting juries. So the method is just a means to an end not an end in itself.
One of the reasons we use elections and lots is to select the few from the many but this hardly seems to be a problem as far as local councillors are concerned. Local political parties often struggle to get people onto ballot papers and many seats are uncontested.
Clay Shirky has recently been talking about a cognitive surplus that social media might be able to harness - in a similar vein what about focusing on civic surplus and how local government might harness that? People who are unemployed, retired or just have a little spare time might all want to give being a councillor a go.
Giving everyone a go at being a local councillor would be an excellent way to raise awareness and understanding of local democracy throughout the community

So why not offer the opportunity of being a councillor to all citizens and, instead of thinking about how we fix the electoral process concentrate on redesigning institutions to accommodate everyone who wants to volunteer?

Here are some thoughts about how it might work in practice:

Every four years, instead of local elections we have local invitations - letters to all eligible citizens inviting them to volunteer to serve as a councillor
Volunteers would them be allocated jobs, for example, sitting in council meetings to vote on council decisions, working on scrutiny committees and policy juries, dealing with service problems and complaints - there might be an interesting hook up with the Citizen's Advice Bureau here - after all councillors in 'surgery mode' fulfil a similar advice role. I'm sure that there are many other roles.
Representativeness and equality could be addressed from within the pool of volunteers so that their is a reasonable mix of volunteers for each task - this would also promote social cohesion as people from different parts of the community get to interact
If needed there could still be a formal election for a mayor or similar to facilitate the whole process
If there are too many volunteers then lots might still be used, or better still, give people one or two year terms of office - even better would be to keep redesigning local government so that everyone can be put to work for the civic good

I think this would also be a neat way to solve the thorny problems associated with combining representative and participative democracy - in fact it's possibly the neatest.

13. Agoric Democracy

2010-07-08T21:25:00.000+01:00

If you think that the Internet is the way to revive democracy then look away now. You probably won't like this one.

The idea of Agoric Democracy is inspired by the Agora of the ancient Greek polis (the Roman equivalent was the Forum) . Now I'm no expert on ancient Greek cities and I'm basing this on what is probably an ideal version of a much messier reality but, as far as I know, you can say the following about the Agora:

Agora literally means 'gatheing place' (agoraphobic comes from this and actually means fear of public places not open spaces)
It was at the centre of many ancient Greek cities including Athens during the height of its democracy
It was the city's central square which often had public buildings around the outside and hosted markets as well as political activity
It was the place to come and deliberate, shop, see entertainment, argue or just be seen
It was the place where trials could take place, political speeches made and new laws declared
People who didn't go to the agorae were idiots - this is where the word comes from

From this I'm drawing three important principles of agoric democracy:

Politics is not a separate activity. Politics, law and commerce all take place in one physical space, sometimes at the same time. (Compare this with many cities in the UK today where council chambers are housed in building away from city centres and where shopping centres are devoid of (more or less) all political activity). At a personal level people don't have separate identities as citizens or as consumers so why should these things be catered for separately by society?
Political activity is open and in public. Law making assemblies meet in full view of people going about their normal everyday business. You don't have to make a special effort to see politics in action - it will just be there in front of you. 'Speak to my councillor' would be on the shopping list just below 'batteries' and just above 'socks'.
Interaction and deliberation are face to face. Non verbal communication is very important for human communication and so communication concerned with democracy and decision making should not be conducted without it. Citizenship needs face to face deliberation.

This last point is one that can be argued but there is no doubt that online and offline deliberation are different and, according to this article by Min:

... many theorists are skeptical of the power of online deliberation. With the exception of Walther's (1992) social information processing theory, most other communication theories suggest that online discussion will be less effective than face-to-face discussion. Traditional social presence theory (Short, Williams, & Christie, 1976) asserts that communication is most effective when nonverbal cues are present.

From the this perspective, the challenge of democracy is one that needs to be taken up by urban planning and political geography. It means taking a new look at city centres and shopping centres and weaving in spaces for council committees to meet, for councillors to have their surgeries and for council officials to have their offices. These political spaces should either be completely open or, at worst, behind glass. It means providing places where people can stand on soap boxes and make their arguments, set up stalls to support their campaigns or just meet with other folk to debate the issues of the day. Of course all this takes place in the middle of shopping, eating and entertainment in the thriving centre of the urban space.

Hence reviving democracy is a challenge of design and planning. Not so much designing out crime as designing in democracy. Ensuring local politics takes place in a constant stream of human contact and interaction.

One footnote to this is that this new (old) vision of the city might actually help with a problem caused by the Internet - namely the pressure placed on city centre retail by online shopping.

I have also noticed that the Welsh word agored means 'open', I'm not sure whether that is connected, but I'd like to think it is.

12. The iPolis

2010-06-26T12:03:00.001+01:00

This idea is an extension of the very elegant idea, put forward by Tim O'Reilly, that government can be understood as a platform.

I found this idea (like many others) through the very well informed Dave Briggs.

I have called this version of local democracy the iPolis (Ok - I know, but bear with me) as it uses the iPhone/iPad as a metaphor for government.

Tim O'Reilly argues that government can be seen in a similar way. A basic platform is provided on top of which different applications can be run. O'Reilly makes a number of fascinating points:

Whilst the whole Gov 2.0 thing (i.e. 'government as a platform') is borne out of web 2.0 technologies, the concept should be applied to government as a whole - not just the techy bits
Think of of the original U.S. constitution as a platform which was developed and improved and onto which states ran their different 'applications' (although this was, of course, Gov 1.0)
Once the basic platform is provided (in the right way) then the market will innovate and provide applications - just in the same way that Apple provided a small number of applications for the iPhone but the market soon came up with many, many, many more
The Apple example also highlights the importance of being willing to strip away anything that isn't working or relevant. The basic government platform should, in the same way, be simple, well designed, functional and appealing.

So that is the broad approach. The idea of the iPolis develops this a little further and applies it to local government and democracy. It revolves around three core concepts:

Central government provides the operating system / platform. It provides the core constitution for each local democratic unit. It sets out how the core processes will work (the same in every area) and it employs the people that support the core functions (legal, finance, ICT, etc etc). Central government is just like Apple.
The applications are provided mainly by the market. Delib provides an example of the sort of company that might do this from a web 2.0 perspective - I'm sure there are many others. Budget consultation and online participation are the sort of 'software' apps we are talking about here but any democratic innovation whether representative or participative, whether online or off could be on the menu. One advantage is that highly specialised companies could develop these tools in national markets in a way that local governments acting alone never could.
The user is the elected government of the local area. The user is not (as you might expect) the citizen. For the metaphor to work the iPolis (like the iPad/iPhone) can only really have one user - the local government. The accountability of that government to the citizens can work in any way and ultimately the citizens are the beneficiaries. But the user is the final decision maker about which apps to use and what apps can be afforded - hence it is the local government.

What I like about this is that it provides an interesting angle on the age old debate between those who argue for local autonomy and those who believe that services should be provided fairly across the country (this normally comes with a call to dispense with post code lotteries). For the iPolis, central government could determine and run the core elements of democracy and service provision and this would be paid for through tax. These core elements might also extend to essential services such as child protection and waste collection. Local government would then determine which 'apps' to run on top of the basic operating system and this would be paid for through local taxation. So museums, leisure centres, recycling centres, welfare benefits advice teams might all be apps. A national apps procurement system would provide a regulated environment though which apps could be 'downloaded'.

The iPolis also provides an angle on the debates in the UK about the Big Society. Apps could also be provided by the third sector or the community. They might or might not be supported financially but by adding them to their platform local governments would be providing basic support, sponsorship and recognition.

Update: About the same time I wrote this, David Wilcox blogged about a recent open night for the Big Society Network:

Last night Steve Moore asked me to speak briefly about ideas for a Big Society Commons or Store, which I wrote about here, and here. I said we need space with different levels … information, conversation, exchange, products and services. Maybe it is a mall plus a market, some high tech, some low. It is absolutely not created by government, but by those with something to offer.

Then I started to wonder about the role of the skilled, creative, passionate people at the Open Night. Perhaps one analogy for part of the store is an Apps store, where you can download smart ways of doing things to your mobile phone. Some are free, some you pay for. The fee goes to the developer, with a percentage to the store owner.

It works because there is a framework for the way apps are developed – tight in the case of Apple, more flexible in open sources stores.

So perhaps some of the people at the Open Night were potential developers for the Social Apps Store. If the Network can help to create the store, it will provide a much bigger market for those with social action products and services to sell – or offer free.

The Apps Store offers one metaphor to help us think how we bring good stuff together, what’s in it for the different interests involved, what rules and frameworks we need to make sure things work together.

David suggested that the two ideas dovetail together rather nicely and I agree. Hopefully a case of great minds think alike or maybe a case of when metaphors collide...

11. Facebook Style Democracy

2010-06-21T12:50:00.002+01:00

This idea may be the first of many drawn from the world of social media.

Whilst some see social media as an enhancement for local government and democracy for example, others may see it as a more effective alternative, especially for organisations. It is not difficult to see why given both the level and extent of participation in sites such as facebook compared with involvement in local democracy. No doubt the rise of social media presents a challenge for democracy at many levels. The important point for me, however, is that people are crystal clear about what democracy is, and what social media is, and not to blur the distinction between the two.

Another way of looking at things is to see social media platforms such as facebook as useful metaphors for how local democracy might work. In other words taking the successful structures and patterns of participation of something like facebook and applying them to democratic practice. Behind this is the belief that social media platforms have much more successfully tapped into natural modes of human interaction and political behaviour than local governments, and therefore hold useful lessons for democratic practice which was perhaps better suited to very different times.

Facebook Style Democracy is my own 'thought experiment'. I'm taking what I believe to be the successful attributes of facebook (feedback, affiliation, networks) and thinking how they might appear in local democratic form. I'm also trying to imagine it offline as well as online (although online is the most likely form offline forms may be required for inclusion and choice)

Facebook Style Democracy, then, would have the following features.

Bespoke individual accounts where people can set their own democratic preferences to receive information and interact with only those issues they chose to (customer management systems in many local councils can already suggest services and benefits to customers based on known intelligence - a democratic version of this would ask for opinions on policies etc in the same way)
Preferences and allegiances visible and open (Citizens could display theirs on front doors as well as on their online profiles)
Policy development conducted on fan pages with polls, comments and discussions providing opportunities for citizen interaction (this could be a physical location - a policy shop in the town centre, for example)
Citizens establish their own policies by setting up fan pages (policy shops) and campaigning for support
Decisions made through 'like button' referenda. In other words local laws would be passed if a given percentage of the population approved (this could also be done physically through more traditional means)

Government in Facebook Style Democracy is made up of a number of different officials:

Facilitators: Setting up pages, running referenda, sharing issues, spotting opportunities for bringing different campaigns together, closing pages etc.
Moderators: Ensuring rules are complied with e.g. offensive language, abuse, privacy etc.
Capacity Builders: Providing education, training, support for individuals etc.
Implementers: Running services and enforcing local policies

Officials would be elected - again through the use of like buttons. People would put themselves forward for posts and those most 'liked' would be elected. Elections would be a continuous process as citizens would have the right to 'unlike' whenever they felt the need. Hence officials would be assessed by citizens in real time - there would be no need for election campaigns and no real role for political parties either.

Note that elected officials are not representatives - this form of democracy is purely participative - officials have a technical not a democratic function.

The structure and form of Facebook Style Democracy would be dynamic not static. Citizens could change the way their democracy works. (Facebook themselves are tentative steps in this direction - see this discussion for example.)

Facebook Style Democracy seems highly suited to our 'postmodern' world. Perhaps an ideal way to support people swarms and a truly sovereign citizenry.

Update: Here is another post in a simlar vein flagged up by Carl Haggerty.