87. Redesigning the council meeting: My #Notwestminster pitch

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This post is some initial thoughts for my Notwestminster workshop pitch (by the way - you have until 23 November if you want to pitch something - first batch of tickets are available 2 November @ 11.00 details here).

I want to do something about the local democracy design challenge on social council meetings:

Council meetings discuss many issues that affect people yet they are poorly attended by the public and often pass unnoticed.  How can we get people to take part in council meetings so that they can be involved in debates that affect them?

By Council meetings I mean all of those meetings taking place in town halls that are formally open to the public.  Full council meetings, planning meetings, scrutiny meetings etc etc.  Problem is that the public just aren't that into them.

Lots of councils use webcasting and social media to encourage greater engagement which is great but doesn't quite do it.

I think Dominic Campbell captured the problem when he suggested at a Govcampcymru session that communication is not the issue - It's the product that needs to be changed.

Colin Copus has described council meetings as being theatres of representation.  This neatly captures the way in which councillors 'perform' for the public in meetings. But not that many are buying tickets.

Councils meetings do look a bit strange to the outside world.  Odd rules of procedure, hard to decipher reports and difficult to follow debates take them about as far away from a contemporary media production as you could possibly get.  I think it is safe to say that they would be as recognisable to someone living in the 1930s as to someone living now.

Of course these are meetings bound by a host of legal requirements but there must be a better way of doing things.

The Rock and Roll democracy session I ran at GovcampCymru came up with a few snazzy ideas including meetings like gigs, with tickets and bars and councillors like rock stars.  People can imagine something better given half a chance.

So I am thinking about a Notwestminster session that asks questions like:

• What do citizens need from council meetings?
• What would make people want to get involved?
• How can meetings be (more?) exciting and entertaining?
• What could council meetings be like? Gigs? Theatre? X Factor? Question Time?

It would be great to know what you think.

I haven't worked out how the workshop should run so let me know if you have any ideas about that as well.

UPDATE

Vote in the poll to see what metaphor we should use...

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...

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