92. Design experiments for local democracy

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The notwestminster work we have been doing is seriously great and the folks involved have achieved a lot.  There have been two brilliant events, many ideas generated and lots of new connections made.  From the stuff done so far we have settled on a set of local democracy design challenges to work on - a list of things we want to change.

While this is all good, the next step is to do something practical; to make some stuff.  We had a brilliant Maker Day in February but we need to take it up a notch.

The method I'm suggesting is design experiments.  Here are some notes and first thoughts.

Design Experiments

Recently I have been reading ‘Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think’ by Peter John and others.  A fascinating book - you should read it!  It’s primarily about techniques to encourage behaviour change (e.g. nudge, think) in areas of civic concern such as recycling or volunteering.  It is also about how you test and develop innovations in public service settings.  Specifically it looks at how randomised control trials and design experiments can be used to explore new ways of engaging with citizens.

Stoker and John describe a design experiment like this:

‘…researchers work with practitioners over a period of time to design, implement, evaluate, and redesign an innovative intervention. The group receiving treatment is compared to a comparison group. The aim is to perfect the intervention over several iterative cycles until it is the best it can be [1].

One example in the book is of a video being used to get the voices of the ‘seldom heard’ into the debates at a council's area committee meetings.  The research team asked local practitioners to produce a video that was then shown to different area committees.  Observations at each meeting led to changes to the video and, at the end of the experiment, conclusions were reached about the effectiveness of the approach and how it could be made more effective in future (turns out that the context of the meeting was as important as the video itself).

Along similar lines are some of the experiments being done by Nick Taylor.  See this simple voting machine to encourage community engagement, for example.  Again, a small intervention designed to test the idea that lowering the bar to access improves community consultations (it does).

The design experiment method comes from education where classrooms - a relatively controllable environment - serve as laboratories for experiments.

In the same way the formal process of local democracy in local councils can provide a great laboratory for democracy experiments.  It is a relatively stable and controllable environment and, where you have multiple meetings of the same type, it can support comparisons between interventions and non-interventions.

Design experiments of this type can only tell us what works (or doesn't work) in a particular context and it is important to recognise this limitation. What they can provide, however, is the starting point for experiments on a wider scale in in different settings that might point to more general conclusions.

Advantages

I think there are some real advantages to using design experiments to take forward the #notwestminster design challenges.

1.  It is a manageable approach  
Of course councils don’t have extra resources to dedicate to this type of work but, given that the experiments would be small and hopefully fit with local work that might have been done anyway, I think design experiments are a reasonable proposition.

2.  It will test our assumptions
In our design challenges we have a number of assumptions about how people will behave if different aspects of local democracy are redesigned (people would be better informed if we did this…, people would get more involved if we did that…).  Wouldn't it be great to have some evidence to back this up?  Design experiments, if done robustly, could provide evidence to support our assumptions (or force us to think again).

3.  We can make the most of our network
One of the things I love about Notwestminster is the way it brings together councillors, practitioners, academics, techies and citizens.  Design experiments are a great was to bring people together in small teams to make something new.  We can also share experiments in progress across the network getting valuable input as we go along.

4.  It will give us something to share
By reporting experiments and their outcomes we can contribute to a growing body of knowledge about civic innovations that will be of use to practitioners and researchers alike.  What’s not to like about that?

5.  We can make something worthwhile
Last, but not least, wouldn't it be great to actually make something that makes a difference to a local council and its citizens?  Wouldn't it?

Challenges

In developing the method and approach there are also some challenges to be overcome.  Sarah Cotterill and Liz Richardson [3] have highlighted some of these as they relate to working with local government and a couple are particularly relevant here:

1.  Measuring the difference
If we are serious about research we need to be clear about what ‘outcome measures’ will tell us what we need to know.  Ideally we will want ‘objective’ measures (e.g. voter turnout) but sometimes we will need to rely on people’s perceptions.  The classic concerns about validity and reliability apply.

2.  Mixed methods
If we want a rich picture about what is happening around a particular experiment we will need to invest in a range of sources of evidence.  What research techniques should be used? Do we need a 'tool kit'?

3.  Organisational commitment
Cotterill and Richardson point to organisational difficulties as a reason why many experiments in local government fail.  How can we ensure that experiments won’t get neglected when other pressures and priorities come into play?

Design experiments also require a different way of working and participants need to be clear about that at the start.  As John et al suggest:

'Design experiments favour small-scale innovation, in a relatively controlled environment, where the dialogue can take place with a small range of policy-makers and workers, all of whom have signed up to a new way of doing business and to intense researcher-practitioner interactions.' [2] 

But what should this commitment look like and how can we make sure that it sticks?

4.  Good governance
Design experiments in councils would be managed by ‘design teams’ involving councillors, practitioners, researchers, practice advisors and others.  Being clear about roles and how decisions are made will be important – but how should this look exactly? How should the different experiments be linked together and managed as a whole (if at all)?

So, some initial thoughts.  Let’s see what can be done with them.


[1] Stoker, G and John, P (2008) Design Experiments: Engaging Policy Makers in the Search for Evidence about What Works, Political Studies, Vol 57 (2).
[2] John, P et al (2013) Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think, Experimenting with Ways to Change Civic Behaviour, Bloomsbury, London.
[3]  Cotterill, S and Richardson, L (2010) Expanding the Use of Experiments on Civic Behavior: Experiments with Local Government as a Research Partner, the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol 628

88. Civic Starter

Councils facing increasing difficult budget decisions are looking for new ways to fund services that they simply don’t have the budget to support anymore.  They are also looking to involve the public in these design processes, partly for their ideas, but also as they want to involve those people who may well be contributing their time or making services sustainable by using them.

In the Notwestminster maker day we build a mock up of ‘civic starter’ as a way to invite people into these conversations.  Based on the principles of kick starter it invites people to pledge that they will be involved in a discussion.  Once enough people pledge then the discussion goes ahead involving all the people who have pledged by the closing date.

If not enough people pledge then the default decision goes ahead (e.g. ‘close the library’).

The council will then have a group of committed citizens that they can involve in discussions in whatever the best way is.  Obviously there should be a public document at the end of the process hopefully outlining a proposal that can then be presented to council for decision.

Those getting involved also qualify for rewards.  This provides a thank you for those taking part and an incentive to encourage a wider pool of citizens to participate. Rewards could include things like free swims or badges for example.

Each issue listed on the site comes with an updates section and a comments section so people can follow progress and instantly add views if they want.

Issues being discussed would be searchable by topic, area and closing date for example.

One challenge we didn’t resolve was how to ensure everyone was aware when issues affecting them went up on the site.  Another maker day perhaps...

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...

84. The Local Democracy Publication Stream

Inspired by the recent Local Democracy Maker Day and LocalGovCamp, the suggestion here is that all council ‘democracy’ publications should be provided in a single stream (rather than by individual committee) on the Council website.  Each publication would be tagged and described by a short summary (snippet).  These snippets would provide a source of open data that could be used to build third party websites and apps to connect citizens with the local decision making process.

As Carl Whistlecraft says the Local Democracy Maker Day was something that seemed unlikely even 12 months ago.  Even though I wasn't there it got me thinking - the long distance power of the GovCamp!

It was particularly good to see the interest in one of our Local Democracy Design Challenges; making local democracy more digestible.  In particular people are asking to see local democracy publications being made more accessible via short summaries – or ‘snippets’.   These are issues we started discussing at the notwestminster event last year.

Following that Notwestminster event we have been using short summaries for all of our scrutiny reports, letters and agenda packs here at Swansea Council. These are all published via our scrutiny publications page.  We put the summaries at the top of all of our documents and in the web page that we publish them in.  Each webpage is also tagged so that the single stream list of all of our scrutiny publications can be filtered by the user.

Here are some examples of short summaries from Swansea’s Scrutiny work:

This is an agenda pack for a meeting for the Schools Performance Scrutiny Panel taking place on the 21 September 2015. The main item being discussed relates to the School Improvement Service. 

This is a letter from the Child and Family Services Scrutiny Performance Panel to The Cabinet Member for Services for Children and Young People following the meeting of the Panel on the 10 August 2015. It is about the Child and Family Services performance report. 

This is the report by the Social Care at Home Scrutiny Inquiry panel about support for older people to remain in their own homes. It contains conclusions and recommendations.

I've written about the scrutiny publications page and how it was developed here.

What if all council publications linked to the democratic process were published like this, in a single stream with all the documents tagged and each with a short summary?

Not only would it be easier for people to find things but it would provide a stream of open data that could be used for third party sites and apps.

I like the idea of a democracy dashboard, suggested at the LD Maker Day, to help people navigate the democracy data.

I'm also imagining an Amazon style ‘democracy recommendations for you’ app…

Or a facebook style democracy timeline made of things recommended by friends and councillors..

Or a ‘Medium style’ ‘top democracy stories’ reflecting my chosen tags.

It’s not quite the democracy bytes idea that we've outlined before (I still think that’s the ideal).  But it would be a great step in that direction.

Anyone want to build it?

Photo: https://flic.kr/p/q9h3YZ

82. Design Challenges for Local Democracy - Take 2

Along with some of the #Notwestminster gang, in particular @72prufrocks and @gr8governance, I've been developing a set of design challenges for local democracy.  At this stage we just want to capture a high level list that can be used as the starting point for some serious redesigning.

The raw material came from the Notwestminster event and some of the work we've done previously around local digital democracy.

The first version of the list was shared on twitter and sparked some lively debate - this second version is our attempt to respond to some of that.

All comments very welcome.

Design Challenges for Local Democracy

1. Connected Candidates: High turnouts in local elections are a mark of a healthy democracy and yet many people have no motivation to participate.  How can we get people connected to their candidates so that they will see a reason to vote?  
2. Real Representation: The job of the local councillor is to represent their constituents yet their wards can include as many as 25,000 people, all different, all special.  How can councillors better reach out to people in their community so that everyone can be properly represented?
3. 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?
4. Social Decision Making: Councils make many important decisions yet the people who are affected rarely have their say.  How can we get people involved in local policy making so that they  can influence the decisions that affect them?
5. Community Campaigns: In a healthy democracy change comes from the bottom as well as the top and yet it is nearly always the politicians that set the agenda.  How can we get people to talk more to each other about the issues that concern them so they can build campaigns and change things? 
6. Community News: The more people talking about their local democracy the better and yet local councils are not always best placed to tell people about what's happening.  How can we help journalists and bloggers to know about local political stories so that they can share them with their readers?  
7. Democracy Alerts: People don't spend their time studying council agendas and forward plans so it's no surprise that they don't know when decisions are being made that affect them.  How can we ensure that people know about decisions that affect them so that they can get involved if they wish? 
8. Open Democracy Data: The details of local council decision making affect everyone's lives and yet they are often obscured within agendas, minutes and reports.  How can we better share the data of local democracy so that it is open to be seen, used and shared? 
9. Young People: The young people of today are the voters of tomorrow and yet many see local politics as irrelevant.  How can we get young people involved in local democracy so they have a voice, both now and in the future?
10. Inclusive Democracy: Everyone has the right to participate in local democracy and yet many have barriers placed in their way whether because of poor health, impairment or disability.  How can we ensure that all local democratic activities provide a fair chance for everyone to participate?
11. Democracy Clubs: If local democracy is to be more than what happens in the town hall then a wider range of interested citizens need to be involved in keeping it up to date.  How can we help democracy enthusiasts to work together so they can help each other, switched on councillors and councils to redesign local democracy?
12. Uncontested Elections: Healthy debate during elections is a cornerstone of democracy and yet too many local elections are either uncontested or one sided in the minds of the voters.  How can we encourage more people to stand so that that everyone gets to be part of a lively and contested local election?
13. Voter Information: If democracy is to work then voters need to be properly informed about their candidates and yet much of what they receive is biased and sometimes even inaccurate.  How can we ensure that voters in local elections get the facts and figures that they need to make an informed choice?

Update:  Lots of suggestions for new challenges so here are an additional five - absolutely free!

• Digestible Democracy:  Local democracy needs to involve the widest range of people and yet the format of reports and the use of jargon puts off all but the most dedicated.  How can we present local decision making so it's less obscure like modern jazz, and more popular, like rock and roll?
• Understanding How It Works:  Local government represents communities and makes decisions on their behalf and yet very few people know how it works.  How can we make local government understandable for ordinary people so that they have a better chance to influence? 
• Agenda Setting:  It's important that local policy makers focus on the right issues and yet it the public often has little say in what is chosen.  How can the public be involved in setting policy topics so that they can see why chosen topics are important?
• Access to Voting:  The importance of a high turnout at local elections is widely recognised and yet the practical process of voting can sometimes be difficult.  How can we ensure that voting in local elections is simple so that everyone can easily have their say?
• Candidate Diversity:  Local councillors represent the whole community and yet they are overwhelmingly male, white and middle aged.  How can we encourage a greater diversity of candidates so that councillors reflect the whole community?  

Photo: https://flic.kr/p/qNWdKF

80. Four ways to make council reports more digestible

This post is a further follow up from the excellent Notwestminster event.  Check out the website to see how other stuff is progressing.

Specifically this post is about the number one ‘something we need to fix’ from the User Stories for Local Democracy workshop:

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

Here are four suggestions that we might want to work on and develop.  I would love to hear your thoughts.  I would particularly love to hear examples of people doing any of this already.

1. Use video for reports

This is a suggestion from John Popham who discusses it on video here in true ‘be the change you want to see in the world’ style.

2. A style guide for council reports

While style guides are a normal part of providing content for the web, it's less obvious that people refer to them when writing council reports.  Often we forget that we are writing for a public audience and instead have councillors and fellow professionals in our minds.

Common gripes include:

• Use of jargon (either unnecessarily or without explanation where technical terms do need to be used) -Councillor David Harrington mentioned this one.
• Acronyms (for some reason Education reports seem to particularly suffer from this)
• Saying ‘members’ instead of ‘councillors’
• An unnecessarily wordy of formal style (often people assume this is how reports should be written as it’s the way that they always have been)

There are corporate style guides that councils use but these but I'm not sure how widespread they are or how much attention people pay to them.  What’s needed, perhaps, is a consistent set of golden rules that are used when writing reports.  If these were visible then the public would be clear about what to expect.

As Sarah Lay suggests, we could build on the LocalGovDigital content standards to do this.

3. Short summaries

Linked to the idea of a style guide, a short summary at the top of every report (and agenda pack, letter etc) that explains in plain language what the report is about might help people to understand quickly and easily what is being discussed.  This was suggested by Diane Sims.

This is nothing new in terms of writing for the web but it’s not often part of council reports.

Following the Notwestminster event we have introduced summaries for all of our scrutiny publications in Swansea.  We write them all to the same format and place them at the top of the documents and on the webpage when they are published..  A couple of examples:

This is the review report by the Children, Young People and Learning Overview and Scrutiny Board about literacy in children and young people. It contains conclusions and recommendations. 

This is the agenda pack for a meeting of Schools Performance Scrutiny Inquiry Panel taking place on the 19 February 2015.  The main items are update on Casllwchwr Primary School, school categorisation, and how schools have used their Pupil Deprivation Grant. Background reports are included. 

This is a letter from the Schools Performance Scrutiny Panel to the Cabinet Member for Education following the meeting of the Panel on the 11 December 2014.  It is about Annual Education Performance.  It includes conclusions and proposals.

4.     Policy pages

Rather than simply inserting summaries into reports we could produce public summaries of entire policy areas making it easy for people to see what the issues are about and understand the decisions being made.  This was suggested by Ed Hammond from the Centre for Public Scrutiny.

This is something that gov.uk already do - you can see an example here.

The advantage of this is that we can cook up an appetising meal of reports rather than leave people to digest them one by one.

Whaddya reckon?

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