97. Councillor question and answer pages

This is something I picked up at the recent Nesta Digital Democracy Day (I wrote about the day here).  The idea was one of many included in a rich presentation from super cool Taiwan ‘Digital’ Minister without Portfolio, Audrey Tang.

Upon taking office earlier this year Audrey set up a question and answer page for public and media enquiries on Wiselike (although I'm sure other solutions are available...).

Anyone can submit a question although it will only get published once the answer is published.  This gives complete content control and allows the page owner to curate their media responses in public.

As Audrey explained at the Nesta event, this is her single channel for dealing with the press.  So, if anyone wants her official line on something, or is simply looking for a story, this is the only place to go.

I think this idea has bags of potential for local democracy in the UK.

It would be great if councillors in their ward roles, but also as cabinet members and chairs of committees, could set up pages like this.

It would be a step towards making the process of local democracy more human by giving people and media direct contact with real people rather than the more traditional more corporate PR approach.

It is also something that councillors could (and should) manage for themselves – a ‘self-serve’ benefit of digital.

No doubt a degree of support and training behind the scenes will be required but the key point, I think, is that the councillors’ role as the face of local democracy is reinforced as is the principle of working openly in public.

What's not to like?

76. Three user stories for local democracy

This is my write up of the workshop I ran at the #notwestminster event.  Here is a lovely storify by John Popham if you want to find out what it was all about.  It was quite excellent by the way.

The workshop looked at how the user story technique might help us to redesign democracy around what people need.  User stories are simple statements always written in the same way:

As a... I need to... So I can... 

You can see the set up for the workshop plus some background links over at the event website here.

Our mission, as with all the other workshops, was to come up with three ideas for local democracy that people could take forward and work on.

Three user stories

The three actions from this workshop came as three user stories (I've simplified a little):

1.  As a local resident I need to see council reports in a form I can easily digest so I can understand the decisions that are being made

2.  As a disengaged voter I need to understand why politics should be of interest to me so I can work out whether to vote and who to vote for

3.  As a council policy officer I need to see through the eyes of the public so I can deliver good solutions to the actual problems people face

The process

It's worth saying a little about the process just because the workshop went a little differently to any I've run before - I have been trying to learn a little from the principles of service design and apply those.

• I brought a lot of cards with me and put some instructions on the back
• These were then handed out to people at the event who were asked to write their user stories and post them in the ballot box (provided by @72prufrocks - thanks!)
• By the time we came to the workshop we had collected about 40 cards which turned out be just right for the time we had
• For the workshop we stood up in a group and, discussing each card in turn, sorted them and stuck them on the wall under one of four headings; 'mmm, not sure what that means'; 'yes, this need is already met'; 'woah, that will need a big change'; and 'yes, definitely one to think about'.
• We then sorted the ones we had in the last pile between; 'small difference'; 'some difference'; and 'big difference' piles and we were left with 6 cards which we discussed and reduced to three.
• This all took about 40 minutes.

I think it worked pretty well and group were happy with the final choices - well done guys!

What next?

Well our challenge is to work on these stories and come up with solutions.  At the end of the event everyone had a chance to sign up to working on things they wanted to change so think of this post as just a first step - watch this space and let me know if you want to get involved.

More stories

Here are some other user stories from the event to give you a flavour of the discussions:

As a person living with a loved one in a care home I need to understand the democratic accountability for his care so I can decide how to vote in a way that will make a difference and know who to hold to account when things go wrong

As a resident I need to be more aware of what my local council are doing so I can have more say in how I live in my home

As a student I need to be more aware of what is happening in local government so I can solidify my future

As a regular traveller I need to find ways to connect with the work of the council so I can volunteer and contribute when I have time available

As a fun loving individual I need to feel that I can be myself in meetings, when writing letters etc... so I can express myself freely

As a youth council coordinator I need to reach more young people so I can empower them!

As a broadcast journalist I need to raise awareness of the local council so I can get people more involved in politics

  

71. Mini Mayors

Mini mayors are local councillors with added status and recognition.  More than simply the community’s representative on the Council they are the focus for community governance.  Many councillors already act informally as mini mayors – the idea here is that this role could be formalised and given legal weight.

Mini mayor wins award for services to community governance

I was at a Welsh Government seminar this week on Reforming Local Government.  One of the questions was around the role local councillors and how it might develop. A couple of issues came out of this:

• Many back bench councillors are disillusioned and feel they cannot make a difference.  Young councillors in particular have come into local government full of expectation but find that they are excluded from council wide decision making.
• Sub local governance, in other words the patchwork of community and town councils, community regeneration partnerships, voluntary groups, school governing bodies etc etc, is, democratically speaking, a mess.  There is nothing that formally links everything.
• Councillors are in a great position to tie all this together. They are already on many of these bodies, as school governors, on management committees of community centres and involved with voluntary groups.  Many councillors already wear two hats – they serve on local authorities and on their community and town councils.

As well as their traditional councillor role this means they would automatically:

• Have a seat on the community or town council (no need to be elected)
• Be a governor on all the schools in their patch
• Sit on the management committee or board of any community initiatives in their areas

This would ensure that the local councillor not only had influence in all of these bodies but was able to join things up locally.  The presence of an elected councillor on all of these bodies would also ensure added democratic legitimacy for them.  At the same time the mini mayor would be a stronger position to represent the views of the community to the Council and there would also be more scope for mini mayors to facilitate public engagement in their areas through area forums or similar initiatives.

When people vote for their councillor now, they are electing someone to represent them on the Council and various committees.  Would it make a difference to turnout if people knew that the councillor they were electing would also be automatically be involved in a number of other community bodies?  Would it improve the accountability of those bodies if the mini mayor for the area gave them all a public and accessible face?

Couple of issues.  The first is, to make this work, there would probably need to be only single councillor wards.  Second, and most important there would need to be enough councillors to ensure that mini mayors are not spread too thin.  One the plus side, supporting a network of mini mayors could be an important counter balance to the increasing remoteness of our increasingly large local councils.

UPDATE:  A reality check from Councillor Simon Cooke and plenty more food for thought in this post.  In it Simon says:

Much though I see merit in the mini-mayor idea, it is a reminder that the 2000 Local Government Act emasculated local councillors and created the situation where many ended up flapping around wondering what their role and purpose might be.... What we need to do is give those councillors the support, access and capacity to actually do that vital job of kicking down the doors of bureaucrats to ensure that the people's voice echoes round those offices as loudly as possible.

Photo: https://flic.kr/p/eYuxeZ

70. Cabinet and Backbench Councillor Support: Uncrossing the Streams

National and devolved governments have separate support arrangements for their executive and non executive politicians.  In local government, however, the support streams for cabinet members and backbench councillors, including scrutiny, are crossed.  Officers work for the whole council and provide the same advice regardless of which councillors they are advising.  But why can't local government have the same separation between executive and non executive support arrangements?

Best to avoid a total protonic reversal

Mirroring the National Assembly for Wales Commission, local councils could have each have a Council Commission charged with delivering support to back bench councillors, to scrutiny and to council and committee meetings.

The Councillor Commission Expert Panel Wales thought that this type of separation was a good idea, both for the independence of the scrutiny function and for the protection of resources for backbenchers.  Their recommendation was that:

Consideration should be given to introducing a legal separation of the executive and non-executive functions of the council, with separate funding streams, that would protect the central provision of members’ services. 

You can find the full argument in their report here.

This didn't happen of course.  Opponents pointed to the added complexity, bureaucracy and cost that such a system might bring.  Important arguments that are perhaps even more pertinent now.

We have, however, had steps towards a separation of powers in Wales.  The Local Government Measure (2011) introduced Democratic Services Committees and the Head of Democratic Services Officer role specifically to ensure that support for backbench councillors was properly protected.  

Arguments For

Is it now time to go one step further and debate a full legal separation between executive and non-executive functions?    Here are 6 reasons why this could be a good idea:

1. The independence of scrutiny from the executive would be more visible if scrutiny had independent support
2. The Council Commission would be mirrored by a strengthened Cabinet Office providing direct administrative and policy support to the executive 
3. Backbench councillors would be able to directly decide the best use of their own support resources
4. A separated scrutiny function would have more credibility with other public service providers who would be less likely to see it as an arm of the local authority
5. A separated scrutiny function would be a necessary prerequisite for local public administration committees (see the Centre for Public Scrutiny proposal here)
6. The introduction of council commissions and cabinet offices would bring professional alignment for local government support officers with those working national government and the devolved administrations  

Of course, as the Ghostbusters will tell you, there is one really, really significant risk of crossing the streams - total protonic reversal - best to be avoided I reckon.

Photo: https://flic.kr/p/o5j92s

69. Councillor Untraining

Have just been swapping a few tweets with @GlenOcsko and @jj_mclaughlin about councillor training and development.

I’m wondering whether some of the principles of the unconference movement might be applied here (I’m not claiming to be any kind of expert, after all, I’ve only been to two).

If there are two things I've learnt about councillor training and development tho' (Ok, I’m no expert here either but I’ve seen my fair share) it’s that:

A) Councillors generally don’t like to be talked at lecture style
B) Councillors learn best from other councillors or at least from those who have been a councillor

Agenda setting at #localgovcamp 2014

Councillor Untraining 

A councillor untraining session might look like this:

Time and Space:  I don’t expect that this will be as long or as big as an unconference (although why not!).  It could be two hours with three thirty minute sessions split between two streams in two different rooms.  So yes, some time and some space. That's all you need.    

Participants:   A mix of people – mainly councillors of course but others who can contribute ideas.  Support officers, councillors from other councils – anyone who can bring something.  Main thing is that it is entirely voluntary – people are there because they want to be.  Be creative.

Pitching topics:  As in an unconference the first stage is for session ideas to be pitched so an agenda can be developed.  This needs someone to facilitate.    

Sessions:  People join (and leave) sessions as they like. Whoever pitched should lead but beyond this it’s an entirely open format (although questions seem to work pretty well).

Social media:  Always good for sharing between streams and getting people involved from outside. Also a good way to share....

Outcomes:  There is no formal requirement.  Hopefully people will want to share reflections or learning points but that is entirely up to them.  I don’t think you need to fill out a form to prove you have learnt something.

So, councillor training and development people and unconference people - are you ready to cross your streams?

Update:  Good point by @sarahlay is that @futuregov ran something along these lines called Councillor Camp.  Here's a nice set of reflections on that from Barry Kirby.

Photo: @surajkika

67. 11 digital tips for new councillors

These tips come from our @LDBytes session at #localgovcamp June 2014 co facilitated by @gr8governance who also helped with the editing - cheers Carl.  It's part of our Rewiring Local Democracy work.

Good points being made

It was a brilliant day and we were fortunate to have a great mix of excellent contributors; councillors and officers; in the room and via twitter.  This list is a just a starting point – please feel free to add and correct.

Our question for the session was ‘What advice would you give to new councillors who want to use digital?’  This was not particularly about councillors who had never used twitter before (although it works for them as well) but for those who perhaps already know social media but want to find out how to use it in their new role.

The consensus was that digital does make better councillors but you have to know why you are using it; that it’s not just about broadcasting messages – you need to engage and respond.  We also thought that digital should be part of every councillor induction but, just in case it isn't where you are; here are some tips to get you started.

1.     Find out your local rules.  We certainly got the feeling that social media for councillors is on the rise but not yet everywhere.  Some councils still ban twitter from meetings for example whereas others encourage all their councillors to go digital (Lambeth sounds like a great example).  If you don’t like what is going on with you then you should...

2. Change your local rules.  Ask the people who run your council why things can’t be different, hang on a minute, you run the council don’t you?  Not sure what you are asking for?  Here is a handy checklist to get you started.

3. Check out what support is available.  Again, there can be big differences between councils, and between different councillor roles (Cabinet and scrutiny for example) but see what is available.  Make sure that officers are producing the kind of content that you will want to share through social media.

4. Listen before you speak.  Social media is a listening tool first and foremost.  Also it is important to get to know the terrain before you contribute.  We also heard some very good advice about pausing before you respond – you are publishing in public after all.

5. Don’t annoy people by campaigning.  Even at election time.   People want to hear about what you are doing to improve the area but will get turned off by constant recycling of ‘party lines' on social media.

6. Be careful when tweeting from meetings.  Not everyone thinks this is a good idea or likes to see councillors tweeting when they “should be listening”.  You should play this by ear (see point 1).   One thought we had was that an official twitter feed from meetings provided by officers would reduce the need for councillors to tweet (see point 2).  The officer stream is good for providing the commentary (which is by its nature factual) while the councillor value is in providing personal insight and views. In an ideal world we would like to see free wifi provided in council chambers and everyone encouraged to use social media (see point 2, again)

7. Use twitter.  As an organising tool – you can link to campaigns using hashtags and even start campaigns.  As an accountability tool – let people know what you are doing and maybe even, how you are voting.  As a way to link to useful people in your area.  Often councillors are given lists of other councillors to follow but what about the local CVS, partners, private providers, the hyperlocal websites, the movers and shakers etc etc.  We think every councillor should be provided with a ‘who to follow list’.

8. Find the councillors who are already using digital and speak to them.  Councillors learn best when they are hearing it from other councillors so find out who does it well in your area or the next area or wherever.  We think Council’s should involve social media savvy councillors in delivering their induction training.  It has worked in Kirklees – check out cllrsocmed to see what we are talking about.

9. Make sure you know what to do during an emergency.  We heard examples of how councillors both helped and hindered by using social media during emergencies such as floods.  Make sure you have the right advice before giving it to others.
Update:  Ben Proctor said he would write something on this.  And he has.  And it's a must read.  Read it here.

10. Don’t forget the non- digital folk.  You need to use the right channels to reach the right people but actually you, as a councillor, are brilliantly placed to do this.  We heard about how church halls can be used alongside facebook pages to reach out wider.  You are in the perfect position to connect everyone together.

11. Promote digital democracy.  As a digital councillor you should be a champion for the ways in which digital can get people involved.  We talked about online registration as one very good example – but we all need to be on a mission to get people involved and voting.  Always.

Photo: @surajkika

60. Scrutiny Bytes

Public engagement will be an increasingly important aspect of the local government scrutiny function.  Digital tools and behaviours provide a brilliant opportunity to enhance this engagement.  It sounds like a marriage made in heaven but exactly how can it work? Scrutiny Bytes is a project we are running in my council that tries to answer that question.

I've written before about the idea of democracy bytes.  Just as a byte is a unit of digital information so a democracy byte is a unit of digital democracy.  Bytes are the simple statements that together make up democratic conversations.  They might be questions, opinions, proposals, decisions or outcomes.

Scrutiny Bytes is a project about applying this idea to the scrutiny process.  Conversations typically will be held around; the performance of a service; work on policy or strategy development; the holding to account of Cabinet Members or other decision makers; or the planning that is done for the scrutiny work process.  Conversations might centre on a single meeting but more likely on a longer process such as an in depth review or inquiry.

You can see the central idea in the diagram above.  It works in five stages:

1. The scrutiny team convert what comes out of the formal scrutiny process into bytes through the Swansea Scrutiny website.  The key here is to produce content that people will want to share.  We are not expecting people to want to come to our site necessarily – content needs to go to the online places where people already are.  
2. The content is then placed where councillors can share it.  In Swansea about a third of our scrutiny councillors are active on social media in some way.  The most popular platform is facebook followed by linkedin and twitter.  It is important to underline here that the emphasis is on councillors (not officers) sharing – this is a democratic process after all.
3. The idea is that content will spark conversations between councillors and the public in which ever place it is shared.  While sharing and engaging is a fundamental part of what councillors do - doing it online is different and these new behaviours will need to be carefully worked through.
4. The results of these conversations will be harvested by the scrutiny team and summarised into reports that can be fed back into the formal scrutiny process.  As with any research method careful thought will need to be given to how this is done.  Reports will also provide a means of feeding back to the public what councillors have heard.
5. These reports can then be presented to scrutiny meetings, working groups etc. where they can influence the work that scrutiny councillors do in their more traditional and formal setting.  Of course new questions will be raised so the process can start again.

The purpose of this post has been to provide a brief outline of the thinking behind the Scrutiny Bytes project.  It’s early days but I will feedback as we make progress through the different stages.  Specifically I hope to share the outcomes of the work that we are doing:

• A checklist for producing democratic digital content
• Tips for Councillors involved in digital scrutiny conversations
• A method for analysing and reporting online scrutiny conversations

51. Pop Up Local Democracy

If we can have pop up shops and pop up restaurants then why not pop up local democracy?  Actually I'm guessing this is already happening - I'd love to hear examples.

I've blogged before about the importance of weaving democracy into the urban space.  At a time when there are so many shops, houses and other buildings sitting empty why not take the opportunity to bring local politics closer to the public. 

In particular it's worth thinking about the techniques of pop up retail.  Setting something up and blitzing the immediate area with publicity, people with leaflets and sandwich boards; using traditional and social media to generate interest.

These 'events' would be temporary - quick hits. 

The kinds of things I've got in mind are:

Pop Up Scrutiny:  Take over an empty shop in the city centre for a few weeks to open public access to a scrutiny review.  As well as consultation materials why not locate scrutiny officers there so they are on hand to answer questions and record ideas.

Pop Up Consultation:  For planning or anything else.  The empty shop / house can be recreated imaginatively as an exhibition space using displays, models or whatever.  

Pop Up Councillor Surgeries:  Rather than the traditional community centre or town hall locations, groups of councillors could take over somewhere unexpected for a day to deal with casework or any other queries.  The very fact of 'popping up' somewhere unexpected might just generate some additional public interest.

One advantage would be the ability to match the location with the topic; to go to where the public are.  So, for example; a shop in the city centre for city wide issues; an empty house in a residential area for community issues.

Update:  A couple of nice tweets in response to this -thanks guys!

@gaillyk @kdcasey87 @localopolis agreed I’d love to try and do a scrutiny pop up #localgov also use the pop up to get ideas for scrutiny
— Matthew Skinner (@Skinner_M) October 27, 2012

@kdcasey87 @gaillyk read @localopolis blog post re pop up #localgov- would like to try this out on the high street localopolis.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/51-pop…
— Matthew Skinner (@Skinner_M) October 27, 2012

Photo credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marmite_pop-up_shop_in_2009.jpg

44. Local Digital Democracy: A Five Point Checklist

Back in February 2011 I wrote a joint post with the legendary Carl Whistlecraft setting out some thinking on local digital democracy and what it might look like.  You can find the original post on Carl's blog here.

In the post we defined local digital democracy as:

• Using social media to make a bridge between the formal world of local politics and the real world of real people
• Being clear that local government is not just about services – it has a distinct and important democratic role with elected local councillors at its heart
• Recognising that the world is changing.  Social media is changing the way the world works – local democracy needs to catch up
• Recognising that local democracy needs stronger citizen engagement
• Building from the traditional ways of doing things and using online tools to make them work better and reach more people

We could also see numerous benefits including for decision making and for reputation, for councillors, officers and citizens.  

In the post we identified the five essential features of local digital democracy.  Here I have just tweaked them into a into a checklist of five questions.  I think they provide a nifty little framework for assessing whether any given council 'has' local digital democracy.  How does yours score?

Local Digital Democracy:  A Five Point Checklist for Local Government

1.  Are Councillors Online?   

• How many councillors are blogging, tweeting, facebooking etc?
• Is training and support provided for those using social media?
• Are awareness sessions provided for those who haven't yet put their toes in the water?

See CllrSocmed for much more info on this.

2.  Is the Council's Online Decision Making Social? 

• Can online agendas, minutes and reports be easily shared via social media?
• Are items broken down into bite sized chunks rather than published in unwieldy PDFs?
• Is it possible for people to comment on decision making items via social media?

See my previous post on social council decision making here. 

 

3.  Are Council Meetings Social?

• Do meetings have webcasts that allow engagement via social media?
• Can councillors and citizens tweet at Council meetings?
• Does an officer provide a formal live commentary on meetings via social media?

See the Kirklees experience for a great example.
Dave Briggs has also been looking at the issue of tweeting at council meetings.

4.  Are Local Elections Social?

• Do election teams make use of social media to promote the election process?
• Do candidates share their election materials online or parties provide online manifestos?
• Are results shared via social media?

Again, more wonderful stuff from Kirklees.

5.  Is There a Local Digital Democracy Community?

• Is the Council proactively supporting local digital democracy?
• Are initiatives such as Local Democracy Week being used to support digital engagement?
• Are there online communities supporting local digital democracy and looking at how it might be improved?

I've posted before on Council's producing democracy plans - what's needed is a digital version.

So, what does your Council score out of five?  I'd be amazed if any actually scored five but, who knows, maybe one day...

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/3660047829/

43. The Six Roles of the Local Councillor

I recently came across a leaflet that I was involved in producing for the Council a good few years ago.  The aim was to explain to the public what councillors do by highlighting six different roles.

There are a number ways of doing this - I'm not claiming that this is the definitive version, although we did try to take the best of what others had done at the time. 

Looking at it now I think it would be interesting to apply these roles in the context of social media - something that wasn't really around when this was made.

Anyhow, I thought it would be worth sharing so here is the text from the leaflet.  You might want to credit the City and County of Swansea if you use it.

 

Local Councillors - What Can We Do For You?

Decision Maker
Your Councillor makes decisions about how Council services are run and may also be a decision maker for your local school, your community partnership or your community centre.

If you feel strongly about something that affects you, then you should let your Councillor know – they can make sure that your views are represented.

Community Volunteer
Your Councillor is likely to be involved in local community activities, projects and groups, giving advice, organising support and making sure that things are happening for old and young alike.

If you want to get involved in your community let your Councillor know – they can help you arrange some volunteering.

Signposter
Your Councillor will know a lot about the services offered by the Council and by other agencies. They can explain why things are done, the way they are done, and why decisions have been made.

If you have something that needs sorting out or you need some advice and you are not sure who to contact ask your Councillor – even if they don’t know they will probably know someone who does!

Watchdog
Your Councillor keeps an eye out to ensure that local services are provided properly and that any problems are reported and sorted whether it’s faulty street lights, potholes, graffiti or abandoned cars.  Councillors also have a wider scrutiny role which means that they can look at city wide issues and come up with solutions.

If you spot something that needs sorting out in your community let your Councillor know, it might be part of a wider issue.

Caseworker
Your Councillor sometimes deals with complex disputes that people have with the Council or with other agencies by providing confidential advice, suggesting solutions, and, in some cases, representing people at meetings and through letters.  They may also hold regular local surgeries where you can discuss your concerns.

If you have a complaint or a dispute with the Council or other agency and you don’t feel confident about dealing with it yourself, let your Councillor know – they may be able to help.

Campaigner
Your Councillor may be involved in campaigning for changes in your community or city wide, in charities and in voluntary groups.

If you are interested in starting a campaign then contact your Councillor – they can give you advice and maybe even some support.

40. Six Reasons to Use Social Media for Scrutiny

In a previous post I developed the idea of social council decision making.

Here I want to make the case for using social media in my own line of work –overview and scrutiny (If you are not sure what that is - it's a bit like a local government version of parliamentary select committees – find out more here). Our scrutiny team has been blogging and tweeting for just over two years now without any problems and, as I have had a couple of people asking me about this recently, I thought it was worth sharing some of my own ideas about this. For those thinking about developing social media for scrutiny I hope this post will give some food for thought and, if needed, will help them to make the case.

There are already many great examples of scrutiny teams using social media; Kirklees, Bristol, Brighton, Harrow, recently Warwickshire all spring to mind and there are many others. The Centre for Public Scrutiny keep a list of tweeting scrutiny units that you can find on their twitter page here.

So, in no particular order, here are my six main reasons why scrutiny teams should use social media.

1. Research

Consultation and evidence gathering makes up a large part of what overview and scrutiny does. Social media tools such as blogs and twitter are great ways of supporting this. This might be directly though gathering comments, for example, or by advertising surveys and research events. Dedicated social media accounts are also great for disseminating the research that overview and scrutiny committees do. You can use twitter, for example to share findings and target relevant organisations.

2. Niche Marketing

The scrutiny function is non executive, in other words it operates independently of the Cabinet. It is, of course, not independent from the Council but it does have a distinctive role. It makes sense, therefore, for scrutiny committees to have their own distinctive channels for communication and social media can help with this. In a more general sense I fully subscribe to the idea that councils should have a wide range of twitter and other social media accounts as people can then follow their particular interests (within an overarching council brand). It is far better to reach a smaller number of people who choose to follow scrutiny than to reach a much larger group who don’t really care.

3. Public Engagement

Overview and scrutiny is intended to be a way for the public to influence decision making. Social media accounts can help this in two ways. First it allows scrutiny teams to provide a friendly and understandable running commentary on the work of the overview and scrutiny committees – through blogging in particular, but also the use of video, can help translate the inevitably jargonistic language of committee minutes, agendas and reports. Second, social media gives scrutiny teams the opportunity to answer questions and signpost information. To be honest we haven’t had a great deal of this type of engagement with the public but we live in hope! Of course any engagement of this type must take place within corporately agreed guidelines and people must know what they are doing, but this is simply the sort of professional behaviour you would expect in any case.

4. Network Building

Scrutiny teams work with a range of local organisations, think tanks, academics, other layers of government and other scrutiny teams in order to understand current issues and good practice. Social media provides a great platform for scrutiny teams to link in with current debates, ask questions and disseminate the work of their own committees which often have a wider value outside of the council in question. Relationships developed through social media can sometimes lead to people contributing to the work of scrutiny that might not have done otherwise.

5. Councillor Engagement

Unlike many other council services, scrutiny teams work directly with councillors and, as local politicians increasing make use of social media to connect with the public, so it makes sense for scrutiny teams to work through this medium as well. Providing information about what scrutiny committees are doing through social media makes it easier for the councillors sitting on those committees to share that information through their own networks.

6. Internal Engagement

One of the familiar challenges for scrutiny teams is the low levels of awareness amongst council officers about what scrutiny actually does. Even where twitter and youtube might be blocked sites, blogs and internal social media such as yammer might be used to reach an internal audience. Intranets can also be used to share social media content with staff and provide messages about what scrutiny is doing.

There are, it seems, always concerns about responsible use of social media by staff but scrutiny teams, as it happens, are used to working in a politically sensitive environment and can therefore adapt with ease to the ‘publicly sensitive’ environment of social media – and do this within the context of any overarching communications strategy.

Yes, there may be occasions when things don’t quite work as planned but the potential rewards surely far outweigh any risks – especially when you consider that the financial cost is often zero.

Finally, I want to point scrutiny folk to this post by Helen Reynolds where she argues that we should be thinking of using social media primarily in terms of the increased influence it brings:  

As far as terminology goes, 'influence' makes a bit more sense when you consider its synonym 'authority'. We are local authorities and we want our communication to have 'authority' in that it has high credibility and currency.

'High credibility and currency' - if that isn't what we want for scrutiny, then I don't know what is.

Photo credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BLW_Telegram_Table.jpg

34. Evaluate the Policy Outcomes from Public Participation

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/

23. Ostracic Voting

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 also 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.

20. Social Council Decision Making

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:

1. 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. 
2. 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.
3. 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. 
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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 :-)

14. Volunteer Democracy

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

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.