55. Democracy Bytes

Just as a byte is a unit of digital information so a democracy byte is a unit of digital democracy.

If we want to make traditional representative democracy more open, engaging and vibrant by digitising it (and we do) then we need to be clear, conceptually speaking, about what the stuff of democracy actually is. Democracy bytes are that stuff – democracy, broken down into its constituent atoms, so that it can be digitised and shared.

The argument here, which is about how we use digital to enhance local democracy, comes in four parts:

• We should be talking about the local decision making process rather than meetings, organisations or even elected representatives although they are all relevant and important of course.
• The local decision making process can be broken down into many separate democratic conversations that lead to decisions.
• Democratic conversations can themselves be broken down into four basic and distinct types of democratic statement; questions, opinions, proposals and decisions.
• Democratic statements can be digitised and shared with citizens as democracy bytes.

This post is a development of the ideas I’ve previously shared on Social Council Decision Making and is an aspect of the wider Digital Democracy Framework developed with Carl Whistlecraft. Carl and myself are part of the Localgov Digital Steering Group, where we are majoring on ‘redesigning local democracy in digital world’ and this is a part of our contribution to that work.

 

Democratic Conversations

If we want the public to be engaged in the local decision making process then we need to offer people simple routes into the decision making conversations that interest them. One big problem with the process at the moment is that local politics is, without an investment of time and effort, a mystery to most people. Lawrence Pratchett uses the metaphor of jazz to argue this point:   

The argument here is that the institutions of local politics have become like jazz: without a high level of concentration they are incomprehensible to most people.... This is not an argument that says that most people are stupid and that politics needs to be ‘dumbed down’. Rather, it is an argument that most people are too busy doing other things to worry about the institutions of local politics: they do not want to work that hard to understand something that is often deemed peripheral to their lives (1).

As Pratchett notes, Jazz was effectively superseded by rock and roll, a form of music that ’stripped back this sophistication to a much simpler sound that was easier to follow and understand’. Not that Pratchett is arguing for simplification at the expense of the necessary subtleties of a political system but rather that the answer might lie with intermediary bodies such as the media or voluntary groups who might act as interpreters.

Democratic Statements

To define a democratic conversation we have to break it down into its constituent parts. In short we can say that a democratic conversation starts with a question, ends with a decision and includes opinions and proposals. Questions, decisions, opinions and proposals are all basic types of democratic statement where:  

• Questions are the start point of conversations. They are a statement of a problem and an invitation to an audience to participate (they may not always have a question mark). They can originate from anywhere but must be adopted by a decision making individual or group. Examples would include scrutiny topics, consultations or planning applications.
• Opinions are statements that set out the view of a particular person or body in respect of a question. They will normally be supported by evidence or at least clearly stated reasons. Opinions belong to a named individual or group (e.g. Citizen, Cabinet Member, Council, Scrutiny Committee). They can be presented anonymously as part of a conversation but somewhere it must be known that they are owned by someone entitled to present them. ‘Facts’ enter the process as opinions, partly as every ‘fact’ has some element of subjectivity but more because the relative importance of a ‘fact’ for a question certainly is down to opinion.
• Proposals are statements that make a recommendation about what an individual or group, responsible for a decision should do. They are directed to the specific individual or group who has the power to make the decision. Proposals are promoted by questions in as far as closed questions limit the range of possible proposals down to a minimum of two whereas open questions are less prescriptive.
• Decisions define the ends of conversations. They are statements about what the council will do and relate to policies and services for which the council has responsibility. Decisions will be taken only by the individual or body that has the legal responsibility for that decision – the decision maker.

This is of course pretty much how it works already just stated in a more generic way. The intention is to define a language that applies whether we are talking about cabinet, planning, scrutiny or any other council function. Cabinet ‘conversations’, for example, operate within a clearly defined policy framework. Questions, often triggered by officers, lead to consultation processes that gather opinions and proposals before decisions are finally taken. Scrutiny inquiries follow the format of questions, evidence gathering, conclusions and recommendations. For planning process, applications are questions, objections are opinions, proposed amendments are proposals and decisions are, well, decisions.

The idea is that, by using a common language across all of these processes, we can generate one single flow of democratic conversations before providing them to citizens in a bespoke way; we can move from an approach that is committee centred to one that is citizen centred.

 

Democracy Bytes

Democratic statements linked in democratic conversations and made available digitally in a form that people can share and comment on, become democracy bytes. In one sense we can say that these are ‘digital minutes’; they are the open data of local democracy (the word minute actually means ‘chopped small’, which is exactly what we need the decision making process to be if we are going to make digestable it to the public).

How democracy bytes are shared is a matter for local debate – it could be a single site or a range of apps. Great examples already exist of course. Check out Ask Bristol or the Friction Free Democracy project for example.

By clarifying what democracy bytes are we can at least have a common understanding of what the stuff of local democracy actually is and a clear assignment for developers to work with. The challenge for local councils is to find the technical ways in which these democracy bytes can be shared. The day to say sharing of a democracy bytes will be, in the first instance, a role for democratic support staff. No, actually this will be an entirely new role for democratic support staff but that sounds like another post.

(1) Pratchett, L (2004) Making Politics Work in Stoker and Wilson (Eds) British Local Government into the 21st Century, Palgrave Macmillan

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smithsonian/2551172370/  

54. Communities of Practice (civic solutions #2)

This is my second post about how whole place partnerships might employ civic solutions to tackle wicked problems. By civic solutions I mean:

Emergent strategies that involve the whole community including public services and the voluntary and business sectors.

My first stab at thinking about what civic solutions might look like in practice focussed on the public innovation literature and ended by looking at the ways in which whole place partnerships might harness collaborative innovation for problem solving.

I want to undertake a similar exercise in this post but this time I am drawing on the communities of practice idea that has grown out of the literature on learning and knowledge management and that is associated with Etienne Wenger in particular. Wenger has provided a general overview of the theory here.  Wenger has also written a book with Richard Mcdermott and William M. Snyder called Cultivating Communities of Practice and it is from this I am getting most of the content for this post.

I first came across the term communities of practice when it was the name of the predecessor to the Local Government Association’s Knowledge Hub. I’m not sure if that was inspired by Wenger’s concept but there are certainly some elements in common.

Anyhow, to business.

Communities of Practice

Wenger et al's definition is as follows:

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topics, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis.

The idea is not a new one; in fact communities of practice are a naturally occurring phenomenon that can be observed throughout history. From the trade ‘corporations’ in Rome to the guilds in the middle ages right up to the tech networks of Silicon Valley in more recent times. We already belong to communities of practice even if we don’t recognise them as such; families, school communities, hobby clubs for example.

At the heart of the communities of practice concept is knowledge management as, according to Wenger et al; ‘knowledge has become the key to success’. Knowledge is collective, a dynamic social process and getting the greatest benefit means finding and utilising the right social structures – and this is where the communities of practice idea comes in. As communities of practice are in some senses natural the way to make them grow is through cultivation – creating the right environment and providing the right resources.

Getting this right can be of benefit to organisations and business in particular. Wenger et al argue that communities of practice have the potential to:

• Connect local pockets of expertise and isolated professionals
• Diagnose and address recurring business problems whose root causes cross team boundaries
• Analyze the knowledge-related sources of uneven performance across units performing similar tasks and work to bring everyone up the highest standard, and
• Link and coordinate unconnected activities and initiatives addressing a similar knowledge domain

It doesn’t take a much of a leap to see that similar benefits would be very desirable in a civic context. Indeed, while the primary concern is with private companies, Wenger et al are also keen to show how communities of practice can be applied to community problems. So, for example, the approach has been used to set up family services coalitions that address the bureaucracy surrounding ‘at risk’ families seeking government assistance in the US. The learning networks that were formed as a result achieved some valuable benefits such as new after school programmes and a dramatic reduction in the forms that families needed to fill out. The point here is that these solutions were emergent and developed from the bottom up – the leadership role was to facilitate the networks not design the solutions.

If we accept the argument of Wenger et al then communities of practice clearly have the potential to provide a means for whole place partnerships to address wicked problems. But what would this mean in practice?

Cultivating Communities of Practice to Tackle Wicked Problems

To help with the task of cultivating communities of practice Wenger et al break them down into three structural elements:

• The domain which creates the common ground and the sense of common identity – affirming its purpose and value.
• The community refers to the social fabric, the relationships and the human interactions.
• The practice refers to the frameworks, tool and ideas, information, stories and documents that the community members share –in order to ‘proceed efficiently in dealing with its domain.

For whole place partnerships these elements can be translated as follows:

• Domain = the outcome they want to achieve or the wicked problem they want to address
• Community = the relevant practitioners, public and politicians
• Practice = day to day delivery of projects, programmes and services

Wenger et al argue that ‘the most important factor in a community’s success is the vitality of its leadership’. In practical terms the role of ensuring that communities stay focussed on their domain, maintain their relationships and develop their practice falls upon the whole place partnership. Building on seven functions that Wenger et al suggest for the role of the community coordinator it is therefore possible to identify the core tasks for a whole place partnership that is seeking to cultivate communities of practice in order to tackle wicked problems:

1. Map the important issues that need to be addressed if the agreed outcomes are to be achieved / wicked problems solved
2. Plan and facilitate community events
3. Promote informal networking between members in the different communities
4. Foster the development of individual community members
5. Ensure that the formal organisations do not prevent communities from functioning – that they give people space, time and flexibility
6. Build resources to support practice such as a ‘knowledge base’, practice events etc
7. Regularly assess the health of the various communities and monitor their impact

Photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/barkingdagenhamarchive/7545414066/in/set-72157630518709532

53. Local Government Blog Clubs

There are many great local government blogs out there.  If you don't believe me then check out this post from We Love Local Government.  These blogs contain a wealth of ideas, thoughts and feelings.  I'm not sure, however, if we are making as much of all of this as we could.  In particular I wonder if enough local government people are blogging, if the right people are reading the right blogs and if bloggers are talking to each other enough.

I am writing this post as the author of a OWSAB (Occassionally Written Single Author Blog).  Unlike multi author and frequently updated blogs it is more challenging for OWSABs to connect with an audience so clubbing together with other OWSABs seems like a smart thing to do.

It is partly for that reason I have been having a look at Triberr recently.  Essentially the idea is that bloggers with similar interests 'tribe' together and agree to promote each others blog posts through social media and in particular twitter.  The potential benefit is that you can extend awareness of your posts far beyond you own followers.  The site automates this process in various ways.  It is an intersting idea although I'm not sure the site itself works so well.

A better approach I think is the brilliant Weekly Blog Club which I came across recently.  The way this works is that people tag links to posts on their personal blogs and they are picked up by the site and published incluiding as part of a weekly list.  It's like a specialised local government blog aggregator although with human components (the site itself relies on different volunteers each week I think).

Three Wishes for Local Government Blogging

All of this is great, and there isn't really much to fix, but, if I had three wishes they would be:

1.  Better Sharing inside Councils

In my council we just have started to use yammer and people are using this platform to share interesting blogs from elsewhere and I hope this develops.  Even better, perhaps would be blog clubs for individual councils.  Perhaps even internal aggregators for sharing (maybe even through intranets).  Hey people could even meet up in real life to swap tips and give encouragement.

2.  More Local Government Niche Blogging

As the number of bloggers increases it will be harder focus on the things that are of real interest.  Hashtags are a great way to create smaller groups so maybe we need to be smarter about these?  So for example we might want us #localgovHR #localgovSocServices etc.  There may be better ways to do this of course.

3.  More Inter Blog Conversations 

Comments are great but I'd love to see more lengthy and considered responses turning into posts in their own right.  In the academic world it is socmmon to see articles written 'in reply to' and I think there is scope for more of this sort of thing.  As well as creating richer conversations it would strengthen relationships between bloggeres and takes people to blogs they might not ahve previously been to.

Have I got this wrong?  Is it happening already?  Let me know!

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/4727573694/

52. Collaborative Innovation (civic solutions #1)

In my post about wicked problems I suggested that the answer to these problems might be civic solutions which I defined as:

Emergent strategies that involve the whole community including public services and the voluntary and business sectors.

In this post I want to look at collaborative innovation as one possible framework for thinking about civic solutions and consider what this approach might mean in practice for whole place partnerships. 

There is a large and diverse literature on innovation and I’m not claiming that this post is any kind of a review.  I’m going to draw mainly on just one recent paper that Sørensen & Torfing wrote as an introduction to a special edition of The Innovation Journal - it provides a nice overview and is of course well worth a read.

Innovation is a contested term insofar as there are a number of different ways to define it.  While the literature has historically been concerned with innovation in the private sector in recent years there has been a growing interest in public sector innovation to the extent that this now represents a field of research in its own right.  It is, however, important to understand the difference.  As Hartley argues in this paper in Public Money and Management:

... there is an important difference in innovation between private and public sectors. In the private sector, successful innovation is often seen to be a virtue in itself, as a means to ensure competitiveness in new markets or to revive flagging markets. In public services, however, innovation is justifiable only where it increases public value in the quality, efficiency or fitness for purpose of governance or services. Moreover, in the public sector at least, innovation and improvement need to be seen as conceptually distinct and not blurred into one policy phrase.

Sørensen & Torfing define innovation like this:

Innovation is a dynamic process through which problems and challenges are defined, new and creative ideas are developed, and new solutions are selected and implemented. It is a complex process with many jumps and feedback loops. Innovation can be seen as an intentional, learning-based practice that incorporates occasional chance discoveries. It brings about qualitative change as it breaks with conventional wisdom and well established practices. Innovation is not always based on an invention, but may also involve identifying, translating and adjusting new ideas and solutions from other countries, policy fields or organizations.

Innovation in this context is an emergent strategy process that depends on bottom up and frontline activity rather than top down planned solutions.  It is about recognising where public services need to be delivered differently, working through options ans implementing changes.   As Sørensen & Torfing suggest, the greatest public value is generated when innovative processes are collaborative, not just limited to individual organisations:

... we propose that public innovation can be further enhanced by bringing together different constellations of social and political actors in collaborative processes that involves a constructive management of difference . A constructive exchange between different kinds of actors helps to identify and define problems and challenges in ways that capture their complexity and to develop new, viable strategies for dealing with this complexity. Collaborative interaction facilitates trust-based circulation and cross-fertilization of new and creative ideas, and ensures a broad assessment of the potential risks and benefits of new and bold solutions and the selection of the most promising ones. Finally, the implementation of the new solutions is facilitated by resource exchange, coordination and the formation of joint ownership.

Hence collaboration is a civic process in the sense that it involves public, politicians and professionals.

But what does collaborative innovation mean in practice for whole place partnerships wishing to employ it as a means of tackling wicked issues?

Again we can turn to Sørensen & Torfing who have mapped out the different roles that managers will have to perform if they are to overcome ‘the different barriers to interaction, collaboration and innovation’.  They argue that managers must act as conveners, as mediators and as catalysts.  Below I attempt to translate each of these roles into a set of concrete tasks for whole place a partnership. 

 

Convening

 

Sørensen & Torfing suggest that:

...in order to create well-functioning interactive arenas with active and committed actors the managers must act as conveners. The convener motivates, empowers and brings together the actors, creates and frames the interactive arena, sets the initial agenda, clarifies the process and ensures a mutual adjustment of the expectations.

For the whole place partnership this could mean:

• Identifying the wicked issues and setting out what is expected to change
• Identifying the people who need to be involved in the collaborative process and inviting them to participate
• Designing the innovation process i.e. as a one off event or a longer term project, determining the method that will be used
• Securing resources; perhaps buying in external support
• Investing in and managing collaborative events as part of the agreed process
• Reporting back to participants at the end of the process
• Giving account, for example to scrutiny or external auditors

Remember, the expectation here is that the process will not be hierarchical; the partnership has to trust participants in the process to design and implement solutions.

Mediating

According to Sørensen & Torfing:

...in order to encourage and facilitate collaboration between the stakeholders the managers must act as mediators. The mediator aims to create or clarify interdependencies, manages the process by dividing it into different phases, builds trust and resolve disputes by aligning interests, constructing common frameworks and removing barriers to collaboration.

This is an interesting point to reflect on – it is important to recognise that conflict (even if it is with a small ‘c’) will exist in local governance and will need to be managed.  Sources of tension may include; competition for resources, funding relationships, issues of legitimacy between the elected and the non-elected; and tensions between organisational and partnership priorities. 

The partnership tasks might include:

• Recognising and understanding tensions and conflict 
• Defining what is shared in terms of values, vision, outcomes etc - but these must real for participants - they cannot be imposed top down
• Managing conflict through the design of processes – using appreciative processes for example
• Using overarching plans to provide a common framework
• Intervening where strategies and plans overlap or are in conflict
• Actively giving people permission to participate where they might otherwise feel constrained

Catalysing

According to Sørensen & Torfing:

... in order to spur innovation, the managers must act as catalysts. The catalyst exercises an entrepreneurial leadership that encourages re-framing of problems, brings new knowledge into play, explores existing and emerging constraints and opportunities, manages risks and encourages transformative learning and ‘out of the box’ thinking.

The point to reflect on here is that while members of the partnership cannot do everything, they certainly can be involved in the flow of the work and show ‘leadership by doing’.

This might include:

• Getting directly involved as a participant inside and outside of events
• Taking ownership of small projects
• Acting as a sponsor / champion to encourage others
• Talking up innovation and showing that they are relaxed about failure
• Enthusiastically communicating to reinforce and appreciate successes

External facilitation might be good in this context as it gives members of the partnership a chance to act and be seen to act as participants rather than leaders.

Photo credit: Jon Fravel