As reported on Simpl in December, Google have asked FutureGov to team up with the RSA and Livity to deliver another Interactivism Hack Weekend. Back in June the first ever Interactivism took place in Brick Lane, East London, and brought together developers (including from Google), designers, social innovators and older people (from Gransnet) to work on solutions to make the internet more accessible for older people. This time we are inviting you to submit ideas that use digital technology to help young people find the job, education or training that is right for them to the Interactivism: Young People’s Hack Weekend challenge. We will be bringing the familiar Interactivism mix of people together on the 17th and 18th February in Ravensbourne, Greenwich, but instead of older people from Gransnet, young people from Livity will be joining the teams to work up your great ideas into working digital prototypes.

2011 was certainly not a dull year for news, but in many ways, it was a depressing one. You don’t need me to remind you that “global economic crisis”, “Eurozone crisis”, “public sector cuts”, “youth unemployment” adorned many a newspaper headline and newsreader’s reel. But, as Julian Thompson, Director of Enterprise at the RSA, admitted in his blog about Interactivism, these news stories became something that many of us tried to avoid.

I am hoping that now we have leapt into 2012, the new year will bring with it some new energy that will inspire us to think again and tackle, rather than avoid, these big challenges. Of course, most of us are not in the position to set national growth strategies or clear global debt, but I believe that some of the best solutions ultimately come from the bottom up and if we have learnt nothing else from this gloom, it is that we can’t sit around waiting for politicians to work their magic and make everything better for us, we need to do something ourselves. Interactivism: Young People’s Hack Weekend is your chance to do just that.

You can find out more about the Interactivism challenge, including how to enter your idea or register your interest in attending, here. You don’t have to have entered an idea to come along to the two day event – we are looking for designers and developers (including students) to help the teams bring their ideas to life. There are exciting prizes, including Google Chromebooks, lined up for the winning team. So get thinking, be creative, be different and post your idea on Simpl now. The closing date is the 25th January 2012.

To keep up-to-date with the Interactivism challenge’s progress, including the announcement of the winning ideas, please follow the Simpl blog or the Simpl twitter account.

If you want to know more, please get in touch: lucy [at] wearefuturegov [dot] com or rachel [at] wearefuturegov.com.

Join us for some classic Christmas films, some mulled wine and a mince pie or two. There will be merry-making, Dominic in a santa hat*, and more tinsel than you can shake a jingle bell at. Please rsvp to mistletoeandwine@wearefuturegov.com – Christmas film suggestions welcome!

The fun starts at 1pm, and will go on after working hours so drop in any time till late 20th December at Roxy Bar and Screen 128 – 132 Borough High Street, London SE1 1LB (Google Map).

*unconfirmed at time of writing

Image: Paolo Marconi

Talking to a room full of child protection practitioners at the launch of our work with Brighton and Hove City Council recently, I outlined the story of Patchwork to date.  The response was great – I couldn’t have hoped for more enthusiasm and participation from everyone there.  We had a full house and even a potential fire hazard at one point, until we made more space for the nearly 90 practitioners that turned up.

It was a proud moment sharing our journey with Patchwork so far and it’s clear that designing the app with practitioners instead of at them has led to a product that meets their needs.  No one questioned the point of Patchwork – all the questions were asking what it does and what more it could do (answer: plenty!).

As you can imagine, a lot of the questions were about information security.  Is it open to just anyone?  How do you stop people randomly searching for others?  And of course people wanted to know if they could upload their case notes and use it as a multi-agency messaging system.  This is where my heart sinks a bit.  Technically can we do that stuff?  Of course!  In reality will we be able to do that stuff?  Right now it seems a couple of years off.

The problem is Information Governance.  I don’t have the background to go into the detail of it, but our work on Patchwork has introduced us to a moral maze (or is that a legal labyrinth?) of Information Governance issues.  The law (or is it policy? or guidance?) is confusing to say the least, but more confusing is the way that the public sector’s policies seem set up to prevent good working links between different agencies – health, police, local councils, voluntary sector, housing associations, private companies, fire service and even individuals like parents and carers.

This post is not a rant about how bad the policies are, or how the law should be changed.  It’s a call to local authorities and other public sector agencies to invest in their Information Governance teams.  Investing in anything right now is a tall ask but if there’s anything that can save money in the medium to long term it’s having an all-star, red-hot Information Governance team.

I know what it’s like – you see ‘Information Governance’ on a budget line and think ‘That’s got ‘cut’ written all over it’.  After all, who really knows what those guys do?  Didn’t we just invest in Sharepoint?  Wasn’t that supposed to solve all these problems and mean that information is flowing round the organisation like a well oiled machine? (How’s that working out for you by the way?).

Here’s what a top-notch Information Governance team should be doing:  working out how local authorities can share information with other agencies (and vice versa) without compromising people’s privacy and security; thinking about how to work with cloud computing and the security and information implications of having data hosted outside of the council; helping staff in services understand how to use the web safely; helping you figure out how you can stop investing in big expensive systems and start running lightweight web-based apps.  I’d like to see more suggestions in the comments…

Most local authority Information Governance teams are only a couple of people strong if you’re lucky, and those we’ve encountered in the NHS seem to be about the same.  They’re overworked, under-resourced and operating in a world that is rapidly dying.  No wonder their default position is to say ‘no’ and to operate an approvals-based system that leaves you guessing at what might satisfy their standards.  They don’t have time to work together to find solutions and ways to break through the barriers, they only have time to highlight risk.  Furthermore they work in a field that is tabloid heaven.  If something goes wrong it’s their responsibility (legally) and their name in the Daily Mail.  The fear of blame is endemic in the public sector and leads to restrictive practice all over the place.  But that’s another post for another day.

The point is that it’s easy to blame Information Governance teams for not being progressive enough or for constantly blocking innovation.  But good information governance is essential to keep services running in a web-enabled world, and it’s the last thing that should be running on a shoestring.  It’s time to invest in professionals who know their stuff, have in-depth knowledge of web technology and security, and have time to support the organisation in how they use technology and use it right, not whether to use it at all.

If this post had any influence at all we’d see 400 councils rushing out to recruit their own Information Governance teams.  But in reality a district probably doesn’t need its own team, and in many ways even a county doesn’t.  It would be way more interesting to see local authorities and other public agencies investing together in a shared Information Governance resource, perhaps at county or city level.  They could afford more and better advice and the advice would be applicable to a region rather than a fragmented agency-by-agency basis.  That would put organisations on an equal footing and create the conditions for multi-agency working to be successful.

Meanwhile, back at PatchworkHQ we’ll be spending the next 6 months trying to work through the information governance issues associated with letting practitioners from different agencies just see who else is working with their cases.  The title of this post is a quote from a social worker who refuses to let the absurdity of current Information Governance rules dictate her practice, and we’re fortunate to work with many others who feel the same.

Onwards!

Cllr Andrew Povey, Kate Day and Rishi Saha

The final Local, Social, Digital fringe meeting took place at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester on Sunday 2nd October.  Our panellists – Risha Saha (former Head of Digital Communications at 10 Downing Street, now at Hill & Knowlton), Kate Day (Social Media Editor at the Telegraph) and Cllr Andrew Povey (Surrey Council Council) – listened to Conservative politicians and activists, and assorted others, come together to talk about the good and the bad (although mainly the good) of using social media and other methods of innovative engagement in a political context.

After facilitating some lively group discussions, our panellists shared their own experiences with the audience. Nathalie McDermott from On Road Media (who joined us and OPM in hosting Local, Social, Digital) recorded the panellists delivering their speeches and you can watch them below.

Rishi Saha:

Kate Day:

Cllr Andrew Povey:

You can also check out our Storify collection of the Tweets from the day here and see the photographs of the event on Flickr here.

We will be following up the Local, Social Digital fringe meetings with Local, Social, Digital – a Manifesto for Innovative Engagement. If you would like to get involved in contributing to this, please fill in this short online survey here by the 18th October 2011 (OPM are conducting the survey).

Thank you once again to everyone  who spoke at, attended or watched  Local, Social, Digital from afar. We enjoyed the three meetings, learned a lot from the people who came along and we hope you did too.

Hywel Lloyd, Cllr Catherine McDonald, Mark Ferguson and Tom Watson MP

The sun was shining on Liverpool for Labour Conference last week, but that did not stop Labour activists from heading inside and filling up the room for our second Local, Social, Digital fringe meeting. You shouldn’t doubt their judgement though, they were promised Tom Watson MP (and a free lunch of bacon butties).

Tom, as we had expected, captivated the audience with his opening speech. Tom is a self proclaimed “champion for the digital community” and his passion for digital technologies and open government drove much of his work when he was a government minister (as we mentioned about in a previous blog post). But he used this speech to focus how these issues have shaped his campaigning activities in opposition, including using the Freedom Information Act to obtain information about the contents of the Government’s wine cellar. He spoke with optimism as he described the latest intake of Labour MPs as “the most innate users of digital media” and challenged Labour activists at the meeting to form their own group and help Labour devise one of the most radical digital manifestos for the next general election.

Mark Ferguson is the editor of LabourList, but also drew on his experience from his previous role as the Islington Labour Borough Organiser in his remarks. Mark suggested that using social media and e-mails might help Labour increase its campaigning power in rural areas, where it is difficult to maintain two-way communication with voters using traditional doorstep methods. He said that if activists collected e-mail addresses and mobile phone numbers whilst surveying voters in remote locations, it would be easier to continue a relationship with them, without having to visit them at their homes each time. Using innovation to build these relationships is key to Labour being a “truly national party”, he said.  Mark also remarked that Twitter is not a great way to reach the average voter – you have to “fish where the fish are”  - which is on Facebook and e-mail in his opinion.

Cllr Catherine McDonald spoke to the meeting about her experience of using social media as a local councillor and cabinet member in Southwark.  She encouraged councillors to work on gaining a following of local people on Twitter, because it is only an effective way of communicating with local people if they are following you. Catherine said: “Once you engage with a community about one issue [by using social media], it is easier to engage with them on others.”

Nathalie McDermott, from On Road Media, told the meeting about her experience of using the internet as a tool to engage some of the most excluded individuals. She told the meeting: “We need to make sure that the most excluded groups are using the web in the same way as people in this room.” Hywel Lloyd from OPM said that councillors should forget about Town Halls and find other ways of reaching out and engaging with the people they represent. Following a discussion within the audience, where many shared their concerns about controlling the message and not giving information to opposition parties when using social media, Dominic closed the meeting with this challenge to the Labour activists and politicians present: “Are you going to be very cautious and PR driven or more human and open online?”

Thank you to everyone who came along! We have captured the tweets from the day in Storify below. You can also see more photographs from the event in this Flickr set.

Anna Turley is the Editor of ProgLoc and a Labour Party activist. Anna was unable to speak at our Local, Social, Digital Labour Party fringe meeting yesterday due to a conflicting engagement, but she wanted us to share with you the speech that she would have made.

Today’s Local, Social, Digital fringe will make an incredibly important contribution to what is a crucial debate. The world around us is changing, and the message to local authorities when it comes to social and digital media is ‘get on board’ – this revolution is happening and you need to be part of it.

So why does social and digital media matter to local government? Well society is communicating in new ways, and the conversation is already happening. Many will have commented on this, but you only have to look at the riots this summer to see the way this new conversation takes place, and the speed at which it does so. If the state is not to become obsolete, it must be part of this conversation.

Moreover movements such as WikiLeaks are encouraging new expectations of accountability of those in power. The public are better informed, and less deferential to authority – they want to ask the difficult questions and demand answers. Social and digital media enables this new form of conversation, new ways of sharing information directly and without perversion, and enables the public to receive information in an immediate and direct way, as they now expect.

And the local public policy and democratic context is changing. The Government’s approach to public services as set out in the Open Public Services White Paper is emphasising the devolution of power down to individuals, increasing transparency and accountability. Local government needs to make sure it is open, accessible, and empowering in the way it works, or it will be bypassed, and the new groups such as neighbourhood councils will be vying with them for legitimacy. Councils must work with them, not see this as a threat to their power, and must use social and digital media to take a more bottom-up approach to working with communities.

Around the country, local government is moving away from the command and control, top down delivery approach, and beginning to work more in co-operation and collaboration with residents. For example, co-operative councils are looking at how they can work better with our communities, harnessing civic resource, and creating a new relationship between the state and the citizen a result. Social and digital media can enable and support these conversations.

And the reality is, we have to do things differently – we are in a different financial world right now – we can’t keep doing things the way we have done them, or simply making quick cuts to the easy service options. We have to fundamentally reshape the way we deliver services, and the real savings, as we learnt from the Total Place pilots, are in the joining up around individuals and families. The waste in local public services is when you don’t respond or flex, when you duplicate services because of poor co-ordination and when you don’t listen to the public. Social and digital media can play a key role in facilitating this relationship.

So how is local social and digital media enabling local government to rise to these manifold challenges? The most immediate benefit is through the direct and immediate communication. For example, we saw widespread use of the ‘gritter twitter’ in the heavy snow last year when councils like Essex and Kirklees kept people informed of the closure of roads, or the routes of school buses.

And it can help build civic capacity. By connecting people together it can help them share who they are, encourage conversation and build trust, as well as harness the potential to build the ‘good society’ we want to see. For example, again when the snow caused problems for transportation, Brighton and Hove used social media to call for 4x4s to get vulnerable people to hospitals.

And it allows a local authority to listen and respond in a rapid, and targeted way. How much better is it to have an army of people reporting on local environmental issues than to rely on your council workforce on patrol? The Love Lewisham programme allows people to instantly report environment problems online and gives immediate response and feedback – something which we know has a strong impact on greater resident satisfaction with the council.

And we are beginning to realise, from a democratic perspective, the power of social media in campaigning. It’s proving a great way to engage people, get numbers out for campaigns, link people together, and share information. Which is vital at local authority level where election turnout averages 30%.

It can also play a key role in galvanising the left in local government – the one place where we are in power and where the Labour fightback will begin. Setting up ProgLoc in an online space, rather than a traditional think-tank model, was an attempt to draw together the best thinking on the left in a way that didn’t require local authorities paying vast membership sums to be part of a formal organisation. It is supposed to be an open-source approach that gives Labour in local government a space to think and share and learn from other local government colleagues.

This quiet, but forceful, revolution is taking place across society and across public services. As the closest part of the state to local communities, local government, and particularly Labour local government, must be at the forefront of this movement.

Local, Social, Digital hits Manchester on Sunday for the final of our three party conference fringe meetings, this time to join the majority Coalition Government partners, the Conservatives.

At the Liberal Democrat and Labour Local, Social, Digital meetings our line up of top speakers drew in the crowds and resulted in a buzzing atmosphere, and the names that we have booked in for Sunday promise to make that event equally rewarding to attend.

Some of my colleagues at FutureGov have been spending a lot of time in Surrey recently, working with Surrey County Council on Future Surrey, a programme that combines service design and social technology to bring about organisational change. Cllr Dr Andrew Povey was instrumental in instigating this work and he will be joining us as one of our speakers on Sunday.  Cllr Povey is currently the leader of Surrey County Council.

Our next speaker, Kate Day, is the Social Media and Engagement Editor for the Telegraph. She also blogs about photography. She will be sharing her experiences of using social media as a journalist.

And finally, we a really chuffed to have Rishi Saha, Regional Director (Australia, Middle East, Africa, South & Central Asia), Hill & Knowlton to be joining our panel. Rishi was, until recently, Head of Digital Communications at Number 10 (under Cameron) and Head of New Media at the Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ). Rishi has also stood as a parliamentary candidate for the Conservative Party.

The meeting on Sunday will not be following the same old traditional fringe meeting format of speeches from the front, followed by questions from the audience. It will driven by the audience. Our speakers will be listening to everyone share examples of “innovative approaches to engage citizens and communities in democracy” – the ones that excite them and the ones that they hate – before sharing their own thoughts and experiences. We hope you can make it to Manchester at 6pm on Sunday and join in. No conference pass needed, and (in case any further incitement is needed) drinks will be provided.

You can sign up to Local, Social, Digital – Conservative Party event here or by visiting our Facebook event page.

You can sign up to the event here or by visiting our Facebook event page.

The Local, Social, Digital tour of the party political conferences joins Labour in Liverpool tomorrow lunchtime, with another impressive line-up of speakers. Tom Watson MP, Mark Ferguson (Editor of LabourList), Cllr Catherine McDonald (Lead Member for Children’s Services, London Borough of Southwark) will be joining Local, Social Digital hosts: our very own Dominic Campbell, Nathalie McDermott (and her video cameras) from On Road Media, and Kai Rudat from OPM.

Tom Watson MP, in his role as Parliamentary Secretary at the Cabinet Office under Gordon Brown, championed digital affairs. He promoted policies for open data and for the use of open source software within Government and created the post of Director of Digital Engagement.  In the May 2010 election, Tom stood on a platform that called for reforms of the UK’s digital policie and these Digital Pledges are listed here on his blog.

Tom is well known for his blog and regular tweeting and has recently played a major role in the News International phone hacking scandal through his questioning of Rupert and James Murdoch, along with former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks, as a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.

Tom Watson's Blog - Teens page, a parody of politicians trying to connect with young people

Mark Ferguson is editor of LabourList, the Labour Party’s biggest e-network.  Mark is also well known in the Twitter political landscape. He was previously a campaign organiser for the Labour Party in the London Borough of Islington.

Mark Ferguson's article on LabourList

Cllr Catherine McDonald is the lead member for Children’s Services at the London Borough of Southwark. Catherine was formerly the special adviser to Jim Knight (now in the House of Lords) when he was Minster for Employment and has worked at Ernst & Young and the National Audit Office. Catherine uses Twitter and other social media in her role as a local Labour councillor.

Cllr Catherine McDonald's Twitter page

We hope that this line up of speakers tempts you. However, this fringe meeting will not be following the traditional format of listening to the speakers talk and then being able to ask them a few questions from the floor. Local, Social, Digital meetings are audience led. The speakers will be sitting on tables with audience members discussing innovative ways of engaging citizens in democracy before any of the speech making kicks off. Interested? If you are at conference tomorrow, do pop in and join us. (The meeting is in the conference secure area, so a pass will be needed.)

Our final Local, Social Digital meeting will be held at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester on Sunday at 6pm. Rishi Saha (former Head of Digital Communications at 10 Downing Street) will be speaking. No conference pass needed. Please sign up for this event here.

Last Sunday, we held our first ever meeting at a party political conference. Local, Social, Digital hit Birmingham for the Liberal Democrat conference, and despite running up against a meeting where Hugh Grant was speaking, the room was packed out and the energy was buzzing.

We started off the meeting by showing everyone this short video. And determined not to run just another same old “fringe” meeting, we experimented with the format, making it more audience focussed and this little experiment paid off.  The audience sat around tables, each with one of the speakers (Julian Huppert MP, Mark Pack and Cllr Daisy Benson) present. They then discussed examples of innovative ways of engaging voters, particularly using social media. A flipchart was used to dump negative and blocking comments to enable the dialogue to remain positive. The speakers then fed back from their groups and followed on with a short speech about (in the case of the politicians) their own experience of using social media in their political work and (from Mark Pack) observations about how local councils are way behind others in their use of e-mails, let alone social media.

Nathalie McDermott, from our Local, Social, Digital partner, On Road Media, has posted some of the video clips shot during this meeting on her blog here and Phil Copestake from our other event partner, OPM, wrote this blog about the meeting: “Using social media for engagement: more than ‘just another tool in the box’?” Photographs are also available in this Flickr set and tweets from the day are captured below in a Storify page.

If you are up at the Labour conference on Wednesday (1pm) in Liverpool (you’ll need a conference pass) or the Conservative conference on Sunday (6pm) in Manchester (you can get into this one without a conference pass) we hope you will drop in to one our Local, Social, Digital events there – it would be great to see you.