98. The Citizens Chest (and Community SOUP)

[I said when I started this blog that I would share 101 ideas.  I'm now getting near the end so I'm having a final push.  I found this in my drafts and thought it was worth sharing - so here it is.]

Turns out that the Community Chest on the Monopoly board relates to an actual thing.  An actual thing that has been around for a while in the United States where community chest means a general home for charitable donations that are then allocated to worthy community causes.  I suppose the nearest thing we have to this in the UK is something like the Big Lottery Fund.

I think the idea is an interesting one as it sits somewhere between taxation, where government makes decisions about what you give and how it is spent, and philanthropy, where it is the individual that makes those decisions.

Hence you could either think of a community chest as voluntary taxation or civic philanthropy (I prefer the former as a concept).

One way I would like to see the idea developed is to add the dimension of participatory budgeting.  At the moment (as far as I can tell) community chest funds are allocated to good causes by a board or committee. Imagine if the funds were allocated by a participatory process involving all citizens instead.  There are participatory budgeting schemes that use a 'community chest' approach but, as I understand it, the money for these schemes comes as a lump sum from a local council or parish and not from individual citizen donations.

The idea of the Citizens' Chest then is a linking together of the idea of community chest and community based particpatory budgeting schemes.  Not only would this be a great way to expand participatory democracy, engaging people in debates over what should be funded and why, but it would also be a much more democratic way of allocating funds. 

I wonder whether giving people the right to participate in the allocation might also nudge people to donate.  As I've blogged before, people might be more comfortable about contributing if they have a better idea about how the money is being used.

Update:  John Popham has pointed to a rather brilliant scheme that captures the community chest idea in a nutshell - 'Huddersfield Soup' is an evening where you pay to get in, get fed soup, hear pitches from local projects and help to decide who gets the door money.

Here is the video:

Update 2: Turns out that SOUP is an international thing.  See this news piece for example.  Thanks to @helencammack for pointing out on twitter also making the point that there is room to do this on a larger scale, in other words, scope to scale up the soup.  Here is the Guildford SOUP website also via Helen.

42. Cause Marketing for the Public Sector

I saw this blog post from Richard Layman (via @greatemancipato) about some of the issues around parking provision in cities.  The whole thing is worth a read but what particularly caught my eye was the proposal by Professor Donald Shoup, working for the city of Pasadena, that the higher parking charges he had suggested could be made more palatable to local businesses if they could see that the money was going back into the city centre:

To address the concerns of the proprietors of businesses in the commercial district, who preferred low-priced parking because they believed it to be key to the success of their businesses, he recommended to the city that they spend the bulk of the revenue generated by the parking meters on public space and other improvements to the commercial district.

It turned out that this approach worked as a parking scheme and was also acceptable to local business.

For me, the moral of this story is that when people pay charges or taxes they feel much better about it if they know where the money is going and agree with what it is being used for.  OK, I don't have any hard evidence to back this up (a topic for further research perhaps?) but I know from my days working in the Housing Department how passionate council tenants were that the money they paid in rent was used only to benefit council housing (the law agreed as it happens).  I'd also suggest that this connection between donation and use is an important motivation in charitable giving.  Conversely I know that many people don't like the idea of their money going to 'the council' who they believe wants their money simply to grow rich.

Turns out that the parking story is an example of 'cause marketing'; something that is already a thing in the private sector. Take this example from the wikipedia page:

Following various pilot schemes in 1981, American Express developed a campaign which donated funds to a number of different non-profit organizations as part of the San Francisco Arts Festival. Essentially every time someone used an American Express Card in the area, a 2 cent donation was triggered and each time new members applied for a card a larger contribution was made... Card usage was reported as having increased significantly and relationships between American Express and their merchants also improved as a result of the promotion. From the charity's point of view, despite being a short-term campaign, $108,000 was raised, making a significant contribution to their work.

The idea of cause marketing seems like a useful one for local government, particularly the idea of stating where charges will go.  Even it it is something that already happens it would make sense to make it more visible and advertise the fact. It doesn't even need to be the whole amount or a permanent thing e.g. "this month 50% of car park charges are going to support the local park".  Other obvious areas where this might apply include leisure centres, theatres, museums and galleries.  I'm sure there must be others.

I wonder if it might even apply to to council tax.  Of course it isn't voluntary and council's often do provide a nice pie chart showing where everything goes, but maybe more could be done to give people a genuine sense of connection between the local tax they pay and the benefits that it provides.  Maybe each year there could be a theme i.e. 5% of council tax could be allocated to healthy city initiatives or maybe to school literacy schemes.

Either way, strengthening the link in the minds of citizens between charges and taxes on the one hand, and public good on the other, can only be for the best.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davedugdale/5457170804/

12. The iPolis

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...

6. Full Local Taxation Powers

Under this idea local government would be able to raise all its own tax in the way that it sees fit.  Setting not only the level of tax but the system of tax collection. It could chose a property based tax, a form of local income tax, a local poll tax or any combination. 

People are sometimes surprised to learn only about 25% of UK council income comes from council tax and that the majority of funding comes from government grants of one form or another.  It is also true to say that, more or less, local government can only spend its money on something that central government has given permission for - usually through law.  There has been some talk in the UK of late on the idea of financial autonomy for local government and a power of general competence that will allow councils to spend more on their own priorities - full local taxation is one way that the idea of financial autonomy for local government might be taken to it's natural conclusion.

 There are a number of advantages to this idea:
 

• Control over tax gives local government status and legitimacy.  In the Localopolis pamphlet (pdf) I suggest that local taxation is closely linked to the sovereignty of local government.
• The system would be very simple for people to understand and therefore easier to make open and accountable to the public 
• Full local tax powers would generate greater interest in local elections and promote greater public involvement in local politics - the local economy would come into much sharper focus in local political debate 

Instead of the old slogan 'no taxation without representation' local councils might argue for 'no representation without taxation'. 
 
The costs of local tax systems would clearly be an issue but one to be resolved locally.
 
Finally, why limit local tax collection to council services?  Local tax is already collected for police and fire authorities and for community and town councils.  Why not for health and other services?