77. #notwestminster

Carl Haggerty had it right when he blogged yesterday:

Remember this date : Saturday 7th February 2015, because on Saturday in Huddersfield a special event We’re not in Westminster – Local Democracy for Everyone took place that created the space, time, inspiration and curation to bring together an amazing group of people to discuss and suggest small and big changes to how local democracy works.

It certainly felt to me like a game changer.  We talked about practical stuff, yes, but there was also energising, re-energising and inspiring by the bucket full.

This post isn't about the event, excellent though it was (I've already blogged about my workshop and others are blogging as well - here is the Storify).

This post isn't even about all the brilliant people who came together to make it happen (although they are and they did).

It’s about the #notwestminster hashtag – or, perhaps more accurately, it's about the attitude.

When Carl (@gr8governance), the impresario of the event, told me Diane’s (@72prufrocks) idea for a strap-line, I knew straight away it was perfect.

"We're not in Westminster anymore."

Most people know 'We're not in Kansas anymore' is quote from the film The Wizard of Oz.

It gets used as a saying that means, according to the Urban Dictionary:

When you're in a place or situation that is outside your comfort zone or scope of understanding. Strange surroundings.

By swapping Kansas for Westminster it gives you the sense that local democracy is very different to national government - that it's a very different world.  This post about a recent GovCamp by @emilyaturner illustrates that point very well.

It's also a reminder that democracy happens outside of what is, after all, a very small part of the capital city. As John Popham has reflected, the fact that the #notwestminster event took place in Huddersfield is refreshing to say the least.

My hope is that the #notwestminster hashtag continues to be used.  For me it represents:

• the uniqueness of local democracy
• the fact you need to live it to understand it
• the passion that many of us have for all the good stuff 
• the excitement that there is around change for the better 

Remember, if we are not in Westminster anymore then maybe we are somewhere over the ....

Photo credit: https://flic.kr/p/ot1uRA

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

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