89. Twitter tips for scrutiny teams

Last week we had a good old fashioned tweetchat about how scrutiny teams can make best use of twitter.  We used the #scrutinytweets hashtag if you want to check it out.

It was initially planned as an exchange between the Swansea and Birmingham teams but others joined in - all in all it was a lively and thoroughly enjoyable hour so thanks everyone who chipped in, hope you found it useful.

By the way, if you are thinking about using social media for scrutiny you might also like this piece I wrote after after the Centre for Public Scrutiny ScrutinyCamp event in 2014.

Anyhow, here are the four tips from the tweetchat that I summarised at the time:

1. Twitter is one small part of a wider approach to public engagement for scrutiny 

Yes, use twitter but it is not a panacea and not everyone uses it. However, it is relatively low cost to use so look for the things it does do well.

2. Use team accounts but also look at using individual accounts as well

Team accounts should be the default. They are good for presenting the formal face of scrutiny but there may be times when a more personal touch is required. Use the initials of the individual tweeting in tweets or cultivate 'professional' accounts for team members. As scrutiny officers we know all about being careful with what we put into the public domain - so it shouldn't be a problem right?

(There does seem to be a decline in team accounts recently by the way, it may be that they are seen as an additional cost which would be a shame if true. Even if a team account is not an option I still think that individual scrutiny officers can use twitter to add value to their practice without it being too much of a song and a dance...)

3. Tagging really helps to get stuff out there and is a 'tap on the shoulder' for people who might engage / share

While there is nothing wrong with just 'putting stuff out there'- including one or more twitter handles in a tweet makes sure that it reaches the people that it should.  People follow so many accounts they can easily blink and miss something.

Did you mention an organisation in a meeting? Tag them. Did you want an organisation to complete an online survey? Tag them.  Did you want councillors to share their scrutiny work with residents? Tag them. Did you want an evidence giver to know that the report they contributed to has been published? Tag them.

The people you tag might also be more inclined to share stuff if it is directed at them.

By the way, hat tip to the Essex Democratic Services for the 'tap on the shoulder' metaphor.

4. Scrutiny teams should make more use of twitter to share practice and possible joint projects

Finally we agreed that we all should be much better at using twitter to work together as scrutiny teams.  

Definitely!


Lets do it.

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

66. Using social media for scrutiny: 10 ideas to get started

This post shares some ideas about how those working in scrutiny can get started using social media. It also doubles as a write up of a session at the recent scrutinycamp as part of a @ldbytes discovery day. Well, my take anyway. Feel free to disagree.

Using Social Media for Scrutiny

There are 25 people sat in a circle in a room not far from the Houses of Parliament. "How many of you would like to use social media for your scrutiny work?” Nearly every hand goes up. "How many of you actually do use social media for your scrutiny work?” Nearly every raised hand goes down.

This was the most telling moment from my session at the recent scrutinycamp about how councillors can use social media for scrutiny. Instead of the discussion I thought we would have, we went down a different track and used the time to talk about the difficulties of using social media for scrutiny and, more to the point, how we could overcome them.

There were a number of things I think we agreed on:

• There are some very good reasons for using social media for scrutiny
• Social media is just one channel among many – not a solution to all engagement needs
• Using social media means working differently - not additional work
• Care needs to be taken about what you share but if anyone can operate with tact and political sensitivity then it’s a scrutiny officer!
• There are a number of councillors using social media really well, for executive and ward work for example, but not so many using social media to support their scrutiny role

People also saw a number of barriers:

• Some councils lock down social media for staff (yes really)
• Centralised council comms
• The poor public perception of councillors using social media in meetings
• Lack of knowledge / experience in teams

10 Ideas to Get Started

It’s not all doom and gloom, however, drawing on the discussion, tweets and other conversations during the day here are some initial suggestions about how scrutiny can get started with social media in places where it is not already happening. It’s mainly about officers but this is a conversation that very much needs councillor input as well.

1. Be clear – start with exactly what it is you want to social media to do. Identify the specific practical ways that social media can help your scrutiny work. Sharing details of meetings? Gathering evidence for inquiries? Live tweeting events? What?
2. Start small. You don’t need a social media strategy – you just need a pick one or two things to start with and make those work. Find out what others have done and copy shamelessly.
3. If you do have an enlightened comms / digital team – talk to them. They can offer advice on how to get things up and running.
4. If your comms team are a bit more, er… centralised then talk to them anyway about what you can do. Make use of the corporate accounts if you can – they will no doubt have a wide reach. Not everyone thinks that team twitter accounts are a good idea (although I do) – there are other ways to get things out there.
5. Find out which of your councillors are using social media and talk to them about using it more for scrutiny.
6. Make sure your content is shareable. You might not control the social media channel but you probably control your content. Councillors like @cahalburke in Kirklees tweeted that they do use social media to publicise scrutiny webpages but these pages need to be right. Talk to those who use social media about what works for them. Or check out this checklist here.
7. What about personal accounts? We talked about the blurring between professional and personal when it comes to social media - if you tweet as a ‘semi professional’ outside of work why shouldn’t you tweet the link to the latest inquiry report or meeting? We are all citizens as well.
8. Organise training and support sessions – as one councillor tweeted in: ‘the best training can be informal, as and when, from friends and colleagues’ (@fionamgordon)
9. Are you going paperless and giving councillors ipads for meetings? Well that’s a great hook you can use to hang a conversation about social media in meetings
10. Use social media to learn about how to use social media for scrutiny.

The final point is perhaps the most import. You need to be talking to your colleagues in other councils about how to do this stuff. There is no perfect set of rules and things keep changing. Social media is the best way to share and, as the best way to learn social media is to do social media, you’ll be gaining new skills at the same time. Sorted.

Start with twitter. Follow @cfpscrutiny or @ldbytes for general digital democracy tips, or even me (@localopolis). See you there!

Photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/davemckenna/14403592001/

Thanks to Andrew from @cfpscymru for live tweeting

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

55. Democracy Bytes

Just as a byte is a unit of digital information so a democracy byte is a unit of digital democracy.

If we want to make traditional representative democracy more open, engaging and vibrant by digitising it (and we do) then we need to be clear, conceptually speaking, about what the stuff of democracy actually is. Democracy bytes are that stuff – democracy, broken down into its constituent atoms, so that it can be digitised and shared.

The argument here, which is about how we use digital to enhance local democracy, comes in four parts:

• We should be talking about the local decision making process rather than meetings, organisations or even elected representatives although they are all relevant and important of course.
• The local decision making process can be broken down into many separate democratic conversations that lead to decisions.
• Democratic conversations can themselves be broken down into four basic and distinct types of democratic statement; questions, opinions, proposals and decisions.
• Democratic statements can be digitised and shared with citizens as democracy bytes.

This post is a development of the ideas I’ve previously shared on Social Council Decision Making and is an aspect of the wider Digital Democracy Framework developed with Carl Whistlecraft. Carl and myself are part of the Localgov Digital Steering Group, where we are majoring on ‘redesigning local democracy in digital world’ and this is a part of our contribution to that work.

 

Democratic Conversations

If we want the public to be engaged in the local decision making process then we need to offer people simple routes into the decision making conversations that interest them. One big problem with the process at the moment is that local politics is, without an investment of time and effort, a mystery to most people. Lawrence Pratchett uses the metaphor of jazz to argue this point:   

The argument here is that the institutions of local politics have become like jazz: without a high level of concentration they are incomprehensible to most people.... This is not an argument that says that most people are stupid and that politics needs to be ‘dumbed down’. Rather, it is an argument that most people are too busy doing other things to worry about the institutions of local politics: they do not want to work that hard to understand something that is often deemed peripheral to their lives (1).

As Pratchett notes, Jazz was effectively superseded by rock and roll, a form of music that ’stripped back this sophistication to a much simpler sound that was easier to follow and understand’. Not that Pratchett is arguing for simplification at the expense of the necessary subtleties of a political system but rather that the answer might lie with intermediary bodies such as the media or voluntary groups who might act as interpreters.

Democratic Statements

To define a democratic conversation we have to break it down into its constituent parts. In short we can say that a democratic conversation starts with a question, ends with a decision and includes opinions and proposals. Questions, decisions, opinions and proposals are all basic types of democratic statement where:  

• Questions are the start point of conversations. They are a statement of a problem and an invitation to an audience to participate (they may not always have a question mark). They can originate from anywhere but must be adopted by a decision making individual or group. Examples would include scrutiny topics, consultations or planning applications.
• Opinions are statements that set out the view of a particular person or body in respect of a question. They will normally be supported by evidence or at least clearly stated reasons. Opinions belong to a named individual or group (e.g. Citizen, Cabinet Member, Council, Scrutiny Committee). They can be presented anonymously as part of a conversation but somewhere it must be known that they are owned by someone entitled to present them. ‘Facts’ enter the process as opinions, partly as every ‘fact’ has some element of subjectivity but more because the relative importance of a ‘fact’ for a question certainly is down to opinion.
• Proposals are statements that make a recommendation about what an individual or group, responsible for a decision should do. They are directed to the specific individual or group who has the power to make the decision. Proposals are promoted by questions in as far as closed questions limit the range of possible proposals down to a minimum of two whereas open questions are less prescriptive.
• Decisions define the ends of conversations. They are statements about what the council will do and relate to policies and services for which the council has responsibility. Decisions will be taken only by the individual or body that has the legal responsibility for that decision – the decision maker.

This is of course pretty much how it works already just stated in a more generic way. The intention is to define a language that applies whether we are talking about cabinet, planning, scrutiny or any other council function. Cabinet ‘conversations’, for example, operate within a clearly defined policy framework. Questions, often triggered by officers, lead to consultation processes that gather opinions and proposals before decisions are finally taken. Scrutiny inquiries follow the format of questions, evidence gathering, conclusions and recommendations. For planning process, applications are questions, objections are opinions, proposed amendments are proposals and decisions are, well, decisions.

The idea is that, by using a common language across all of these processes, we can generate one single flow of democratic conversations before providing them to citizens in a bespoke way; we can move from an approach that is committee centred to one that is citizen centred.

 

Democracy Bytes

Democratic statements linked in democratic conversations and made available digitally in a form that people can share and comment on, become democracy bytes. In one sense we can say that these are ‘digital minutes’; they are the open data of local democracy (the word minute actually means ‘chopped small’, which is exactly what we need the decision making process to be if we are going to make digestable it to the public).

How democracy bytes are shared is a matter for local debate – it could be a single site or a range of apps. Great examples already exist of course. Check out Ask Bristol or the Friction Free Democracy project for example.

By clarifying what democracy bytes are we can at least have a common understanding of what the stuff of local democracy actually is and a clear assignment for developers to work with. The challenge for local councils is to find the technical ways in which these democracy bytes can be shared. The day to say sharing of a democracy bytes will be, in the first instance, a role for democratic support staff. No, actually this will be an entirely new role for democratic support staff but that sounds like another post.

Update:  A suggestion from @gr8governance that there is a fifth type of democratic statement - Outcomes - makes perfect sense to me.  Outcomes describe the consequences of conversations that follow (or not) after the decision has been taken.  In the scrutiny world we might call these 'follow ups'.  Similarly decision trackers are concerned with outcomes and 'delivery' is a word that gets used in this context.  Care needs to be taken of course with the word outcome as it has a range of different meanings - here it means the immediate impact of a decision on the service or organisation to which the decision relates.  The wider social, economic and environmenatl effects are another story for another day!    

(1) Pratchett, L (2004) Making Politics Work in Stoker and Wilson (Eds) British Local Government into the 21st Century, Palgrave Macmillan

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smithsonian/2551172370/  

53. Local Government Blog Clubs

There are many great local government blogs out there.  If you don't believe me then check out this post from We Love Local Government.  These blogs contain a wealth of ideas, thoughts and feelings.  I'm not sure, however, if we are making as much of all of this as we could.  In particular I wonder if enough local government people are blogging, if the right people are reading the right blogs and if bloggers are talking to each other enough.

I am writing this post as the author of a OWSAB (Occassionally Written Single Author Blog).  Unlike multi author and frequently updated blogs it is more challenging for OWSABs to connect with an audience so clubbing together with other OWSABs seems like a smart thing to do.

It is partly for that reason I have been having a look at Triberr recently.  Essentially the idea is that bloggers with similar interests 'tribe' together and agree to promote each others blog posts through social media and in particular twitter.  The potential benefit is that you can extend awareness of your posts far beyond you own followers.  The site automates this process in various ways.  It is an intersting idea although I'm not sure the site itself works so well.

A better approach I think is the brilliant Weekly Blog Club which I came across recently.  The way this works is that people tag links to posts on their personal blogs and they are picked up by the site and published incluiding as part of a weekly list.  It's like a specialised local government blog aggregator although with human components (the site itself relies on different volunteers each week I think).

Three Wishes for Local Government Blogging

All of this is great, and there isn't really much to fix, but, if I had three wishes they would be:

1.  Better Sharing inside Councils

In my council we just have started to use yammer and people are using this platform to share interesting blogs from elsewhere and I hope this develops.  Even better, perhaps would be blog clubs for individual councils.  Perhaps even internal aggregators for sharing (maybe even through intranets).  Hey people could even meet up in real life to swap tips and give encouragement.

2.  More Local Government Niche Blogging

As the number of bloggers increases it will be harder focus on the things that are of real interest.  Hashtags are a great way to create smaller groups so maybe we need to be smarter about these?  So for example we might want us #localgovHR #localgovSocServices etc.  There may be better ways to do this of course.

3.  More Inter Blog Conversations 

Comments are great but I'd love to see more lengthy and considered responses turning into posts in their own right.  In the academic world it is socmmon to see articles written 'in reply to' and I think there is scope for more of this sort of thing.  As well as creating richer conversations it would strengthen relationships between bloggeres and takes people to blogs they might not ahve previously been to.

Have I got this wrong?  Is it happening already?  Let me know!

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/4727573694/

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/

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

29. A Community Approach to Supporting Social Media

Here is the result of some thinking I have been doing for my own Council on how we can best support social media internally.  It seems obvious to me (and to others) that the traditional response of writing a strategy just wouldn’t do for this purpose.  Trouble was that it wasn’t obvious what was the best way to do this corporately so this, for what it is worth, is the approach I have come up with – I did promise I would share it.   

The approach is based on three things:

• The idea of a social bureaucracy that I have posted up previously where the central organising principle is the community rather than the hierarchy, newtork or market.
• Ideas I have borrowed by good souls such as Dan Slee and Carl Haggerty 
• An internal workshop held for staff

The workshop was one I facilitated following the broad principles of appreciative inquiry – in other words focusing on ‘what do we do well and how can we do more?’ rather than ‘what are our problems and how do we solve them?’  The seven proposals that came out of the workshop were:

1. Review the access / permission policy to provide clearly defined different levels
2. Market social media use to the organisation to raise awareness
3. Provide basic training for all staff (including induction)
4. Provide an integrated corporate website (and intranet) that provides social media in a form fully visible to staff 
5. Support an internal community of social media ‘enthusiasts’ / pool of expertise (online, via yammer)
6. Provide training for the social media ‘enthusiasts’
7. Review software / network to ensure fit for purpose, up to date  and capable of updating

Building from all this here is my first stab at a community approach to supporting social media in local government.

2.      Assumptions

Underpinning the approach are the following assumptions:

• Levels of customer satisfaction, the effectiveness of public engagement and the overall reputation of the Council are all now influenced by social media use – getting this right matters
• Effective social media use requires an environment in which people are supported to innovate within clearly defined boundaries – it means ‘opening the doors for bight people’ (via Dan Slee)
• Social media is never an end in itself – its use always supports clear business goals (via Carl Haggerty)
• All staff are affected by social media in some way
• Social media blurs the traditional boundaries between the private and public roles of staff

3.      The Community Approach

The Community Approach means organising support, access and training for a community of users with three levels:

 

       Basic Level 

• Includes all staff
• Requires awareness of guidelines on personal use of social media
• Includes access to a basic list of sites
• Should have awareness of potential of social media and benefits of increased involvement
• Requires visibility of all of Council’s social media activity via ‘passive’ channels (viewing tweets / videos etc through internet / intranet where direct access is blocked)

      Corporate Users “A licence to tweet”

• Includes those who actively use social media on the Council’s behalf
• A registered list with entry via application
• Responsibility for social media may be included in job description
• Required training probably through e-learning
• Working within guidelines on representing the Council on social media sites
• Access to all approved sites
• Supported through a sub community of corporate users both online and face to face events

      Account Managers

•  Must be a corporate user
•   Responsible for an official Council account
•   Responsibility linked to a post and included in job description
• Aregistered list – entry is linked to approval for Council account
• Working within account management guidelines
• Supported through a sub community of account managers

The intention should be that, over time, an increasing proportion of staff become corporate users until eventually everyone is! Some organisations, such as Monmouth CC (via @helreynolds), have been much bolder and have opened up social media staff to all staff.  I actually think that this the best way to go but not everyone is going to be comfortable with that so this approach allows for a more evolutionary rather than revolutionary route - albeit to hopefully the same destination.

4       Key Roles

Responsibility for supporting the community needs to be embedded in a number of key roles which may be added to existing posts:

Customer Service Champion(s) – Either corporately or by department, responsible for:

• ensuring a consistent approach to social media contact with the public through monitoring and review and referring where necessary
• review and updating of guidelines
• facilitating the sub community of corporate users (this could be one champion or a team approach)
• availability of training for corporate users
• awareness training for basic level staff

Account Coordinator - responsible for:

• monitoring the management of accounts and maintaining a corporate register
• applications for new accounts
• facilitating the account managers sub community
• availability of training for account managers 
• review and updating of guidelines

       

Technical Support Specialist – responsible for:

• maintaining the lists of basic / blocked / approved sites
• secure and effective operation of the network in respect of social media use 
• ensuring appropriate systems in place to update software
• troubleshooting as necessary

and that is as far as I’ve got so far……

Please feel free to borrow, add, amend and comment. 

Photo credit:  Computer Party - http://www.flickr.com/photos/oneras/80574135/

27. Social Bureaucracy

I've posted before about how social media practices and technologies might transform council decision making.  Here I want to apply the same thinking to the other side of what local government does - the administration of services.  Social media has changed many aspects of council business but these changes are in many ways on the periphery, the fundamental way that local authorities work is unaffected. The task of this post, therefore, is to attempt to imagine some principles on which a truly social administration might be based. 

Part of my reason for doing this is because I am helping to develop a social media framework for my own council and I'm wondering if  social media might require something different to the corporate strategy and policy approaches that have been used for other 'cross cutting' issues. 

Anyhow, to business.

Bureaucracy

Bureaucracy, as discussed famously by Max Weber, will be familiar concept familiar to most people who have done a management course.  Classically it means a rational system of administration associated with, amongst other things, a single hierarchy of supervision and command, compliance with a clear set of organisational rules, professional status, objectivity and a premium on experienced workers -bureaucrats. 

Of course this is an ideal type and in practice things don’t always work out this way.  Michael Lipsky’s famous study of street level bureaucrats, for example, highlighted the ways in which public servants on the front line devised coping strategies as a response to the impossible task of allocating limited resources in the face of seemingly limitless demand for public services.

More recently the old notion of bureaucracy has been challenged by a whole range of ideas associated with the private sector.  Both networks and markets have been suggested as organising principles that could replace traditional hierarchies.  Much of this has gone under the heading of the New Public Management although I’m not sure anyone really knows what that means.

Although the term comes with a lot of negative vibes these days, ultimately bureaucracy simply means organisation by bureau (department).  It has certainly been updated over the years and the idea here is that it can be updated again – and made social.

The Social Bureaucracy

Instead of the hierarchy, network or market, the fundamental organising principle for the social bureaucracy is the community.   This is the idea of community that is applied to online activity.  So, in the sense I mean it here, a community has the following features:

• A clear purpose decided by the elected side of local government
• A limited number of members as defined by the organisation
• Named individuals performing essential community roles e.g. admin, facilitator etc
• Defined responsibilities for members describing how they contribute to the purpose of the community
• Assets such as shared knowledge, equipment or facilities
• Mechanisms for active dialogue between members; online and off

Communities would replace departments, sections, teams and units.  Communities can easily overlap and individuals would have multiple memberships.  In fact job descriptions would in effect be a list of memberships.  The beauty of communities is that they are fluid and flexible.  They can be created and closed, increased and reduced according to what the organisation requires and can support.  Neither do they need to be contained within the organisation.  Communities can cross organisational and professional boundaries, they can include national and international contributors and crucially they can involve the public.  

Some communities, such as those providing social care or planning services, for example, would require some or all of their members to have professional qualifications but, underpinning this, would be a generic set of skills and competencies.  There would, of course, be communities for training and development to support this.

Permissions

Rather than concepts of seniority and regimes of line management, in communities it is the application of permissions that mark out the different responsibilities of community members.  So, for example, the permission to speak on behalf of the community, to use particular resources and of course to add and remove community members would all be granted at an organisational level.  This might also have implications for what people get paid.  Perhaps pay would be linked to the communities a person belongs to, the permissions they have been granted or a combination of both.

Collective Responsibility

Instead of compliance with rules or performance management regimes, the social bureaucracy would be driven by collective responsibility.  In other words, at an organisational level, it is the success of communities that is judged.  For individuals the incentives to do well come from peer pressure, from the desire to be associated with successful communities and from the ethos that drove people to want to be part of any community in the first place.  One of the important aspects of a community is that it implies an emotional as well as a rational aspect – passion as well as professionalism.

Community Co-production

For the social bureaucracy the relationship with the public is a co-productive one.  I’ve posted before about a co-productive decision making process, here it is all about the partnership between public servants and the public to provide services (here is a lovely description of how this relationship can work by Simon Pickthall).  For the social bureaucracy the idea goes a stage further.  Rather than partnerships with individuals or groups the idea is to build communities to achieve specific outcomes that contain both professionals and the public.  In the social bureaucracy the public are understood not as clients or customers but as co-producers, as fellow community members.

What about Now?

Ok, so this is not something that is going to happen soon, if ever, but as an ideal I do think it points towards some of the ways social media use might be supported corporately right now:

• Use the Language of Communities – Start talking about communities, not tools, as a way to get things done.  So, for example, it’s ‘a community working to improve support for foster carers has set up a facebook page’ rather than ‘a facebook page has been set up to help carers’.
• Promote Your Communities – You already have some, work out who they are and tell people about them – show how a community can make a difference through real examples.
• Corporately Support Communities – Create an environment where communities can flourish.  Make sure senior officers are leading by example, redesign the intranet to be your community hub, provide social media surgeries and drop-ins for interested staff etc etc 
• Clearly Define Roles and Permissions – make sure everyone knows what they can and can’t do and why.
• Build a Community of Community Builders – There are many people already make great use of social media whether supported or not – they need to be recognised and supported.

These are just some initial thoughts – I hope others will build on them.  I’ll finish with @danslee’s tweeted adage about supporting social media corporately which sums it all up rather well:

Best #localgov #socmed advice? Help open the doors for bright people.  That’s all.  

Update:  I have just come across this similar (but much more developed) idea of Communities of Practice from Etienne Wenger - it's from a management and learning perspective is more empirically and theoretically substantial. Check it out!

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 :-)

11. Facebook Style Democracy

This idea may be the first of many drawn from the world of social media.

Whilst some see social media as an enhancement for local government and democracy for example, others may see it as a more effective alternative, especially for organisations.  It is not difficult to see why given both the level and extent of participation in sites such as facebook compared with involvement in local democracy.  No doubt the rise of social media presents a challenge for democracy at many levels.  The important point for me, however, is that people are crystal clear about what democracy is, and what social media is, and not to blur the distinction between the two.

Another way of looking at things is to see social media platforms such as facebook as useful metaphors for how local democracy might work.  In other words taking the successful structures and patterns of participation of something like facebook and applying them to democratic practice.  Behind this is the belief that social media platforms have much more successfully tapped into natural modes of human interaction and political behaviour than local governments, and therefore hold useful lessons for democratic practice which was perhaps better suited to very different times.

Facebook Style Democracy is my own 'thought experiment'. I'm taking what I believe to be the successful attributes of facebook (feedback, affiliation, networks) and thinking how they might appear in local democratic form.  I'm also trying to imagine it offline as well as online (although online is the most likely form offline forms may be required for inclusion and choice)

Facebook Style Democracy, then, would have the following features.

• Bespoke individual accounts where people can set their own democratic preferences to receive information and interact with only those issues they chose to (customer management systems in many local councils can already suggest services and benefits to customers based on known intelligence - a democratic version of this would ask for opinions on policies etc in the same way)
• Preferences and allegiances visible and open (Citizens could display theirs on front doors as well as on their online profiles)
• Policy development conducted on fan pages with polls, comments and discussions providing opportunities for citizen interaction (this could be a physical location - a policy shop in the town centre, for example)
• Citizens establish their own policies by setting up fan pages (policy shops) and campaigning for support
• Decisions made through 'like button' referenda.  In other words local laws would be passed if a given percentage of the population approved (this could also be done physically through more traditional means)

Government in Facebook Style Democracy is made up of a number of different officials:

• Facilitators: Setting up pages, running referenda, sharing issues, spotting opportunities for bringing different campaigns together, closing pages etc. 
• Moderators: Ensuring rules are complied with e.g. offensive language, abuse, privacy etc.
• Capacity Builders: Providing education, training, support for individuals etc.
• Implementers:  Running services and enforcing local policies

Officials would be elected - again through the use of like buttons.  People would put themselves forward for posts and those most 'liked' would be elected.  Elections would be a continuous process as citizens would have the right to 'unlike' whenever they felt the need.  Hence officials would be assessed by citizens in real time - there would be no need for election campaigns and no real role for political parties either.

Note that elected officials are not representatives - this form of democracy is purely participative - officials have a technical not a democratic function.

The structure and form of Facebook Style Democracy would be dynamic not static.  Citizens could change the way their democracy works.  (Facebook themselves are tentative steps in this direction - see this discussion for example.)

Facebook Style Democracy seems highly suited to our 'postmodern' world.  Perhaps an ideal way to support people swarms and a truly sovereign citizenry.


Update:  Here is another post in a simlar vein flagged up by Carl Haggerty.