Links and CoPs

CoP Shop

Interesting things I’ve seen around the IDeA’s Communities of Practice.  You need to be signed in first to www.communities.idea.gov.uk (anyone can register on the site) and I almost always link to public communities which anyone can join.

Freedom to Lead: Policy and Performance CoP

Discussion around the new LGA Group discussion paper Freedom to Lead – our offer and our ask – includes a link to interactive commentary.

Shaping this community | Achieving More With Less: an Efficiency Exchange for Local Government

What kind of efficiency and innovation support would you like? A conversation to develop community of practice support around radical efficiency.

Tom Shakespeare from Localis will be answering questions on improving accountability through engagement in the Better Community Engagement and Empowerment Community.

Webcasting council meetings? Good idea? Does anyone watch? From the Social Media CoP.

Just Say No to Internet Explorer 6 – blog post in the Social Media CoP – lots of interesting comments about why it’s so difficult to shake off this beast.

Social media statistics: IDeA Social Media CoP

Discussion on finding and using social media statistics

Communities of Practice for Local Government | Customer Insight

Good practice guides for customer insight?: Has anyone done any internal guidance?

Linked up

Create a 1-page strategic plan: Church of the Customer Blog

I think this is really awesome. I want to make one. One of the best things I’ve ever heard about in service planning were Durham’s one pager (OK it was small poster sized, but still) service plans. One page, visual, scannable. Brilliant.

Slides from GovCamp: Making the Political Sell | The Democratic Society

Pitching your projects the right way to the right audiences

Links on blogging….

Why James Cousins thinks that politicians and officers won’t be blogging from within the policy formulation process anytime soon. Developing council policy | JamesCousins.com

And why Mark Pack of LibDem voice thinks that councils (i.e. officers) should embrace blogging. It’s better by blog: why councils should embrace blogging

Rethinking Open Data – O’Reilly Radar

Thinking about open data – focus on the useful. But the useful will be different to different groups of people.

Collecting social media practice examples.

Case snippets

This month I started collecting examples of local government using social media using a really easy blogging service called Posterous (I’ve bogged about using it here.)  I wasn’t sure if would keep it up, but I have so far and it’s been relatively easy to post an average of an example a day so far.

So far, it’s been a great way of posting interesting practice.

This past week I’ve posted:

Ross Grant, Online Councillor of the Year

Weymouth Relief Road - a great example of council blogging on niche issues.

Southwark Circle – a face to face volunteering networking supported by online networking and recruiting.

Hillingdon’s Vox Pop videos - Cherry’s story on children’s services.

SEO Councillor

Help me with this post. The following is based off the presentations and comments from councillors on panels I’ve participated in.  With huge, enormous credit going to councillors Mary Reid (LibDem Kingston) and Fiona Colley (Labour, Southwark).  Many of these points are unashamedly stolen from one or the other of them.   I see this post as a work in progress, so please comment and share your thoughts.

Why SEO?  SEO stands for search engine optimisation and is a collection of techniques to make sure that your web content is prominent and easy to find from commonly used search terms.  The points below include a mixture of very basic SEO and some social media integration tips.

***

More and more local politicians will start embracing social media as part of their political profile.   During elections, they will use it to campaign, to organise their supporters, to solicit donations and to explain their positions.  While in office, they will use social media to listen and engage with local people, to provide information to local residents and perhaps to campaign on local issues.

When councillors begin Tweeting and especially blogging, they’ll want to build their readership to extend their impact.  Here are a few tips to make sure that people are taking note of your online presence.

1. Choose your name well.  Your political brand is your name, so make sure that your blog name and user names for networks like Twitter clearly identify you as you.  You may or may not want to identify yourself as a councillor as part of your website address or ID (e.g. www.cllrsmith.com)  But keep in mind that you may not win the next election and still want to remain in local politics.  It’s much easier to change a few headers on your blog than to change its URL.

2. Make your blog search engine friendly.  Most people will be interested in you because of the place you represent.  Make sure that your ward, your council and commonly used neighbourhood names are included in any ‘about’ sections and are frequently mentioned in individual blog posts where relevant. Location, location, location.

3. Be reciprocal. The blogosphere (a term to describe the online culture of bloggers) is built as much on reading and commenting as it is on writing and publishing.  Good bloggers will leave comments on others’ posts and most blogs will allow you to leave your website name in the comments section.  Some local discussion forums have this functionality, too.

But be careful.  You can link to your blog in all kinds of online spaces, but make sure that it’s relevant to the discussion at hand.  If you’re written about a specific issue being discussed, link directly to that post. If you just randomly drop links, it looks desperate.

4. Get linking. If there are other political bloggers, particularly  in your area start linking to them.  Ask members of your own party to link to you.  The more linked you are by web sites with lots of sites linking to them, the more you’ll be found in Internet searches.

5. Cross-linking.  Make sure that all your relevant social media accounts link up.  Does your Twitter address link to your blog and vice versa?  If you have a Facebook political page, you can set it up to be automatically updated from your blog.  Is your website address in your email signature?

6. Leave a paper-trail.  Make sure your political leaflets, cards and so on have your web address or social network details.

7. Your social profile.  If your council allows it, make sure your councillor profile on the council’s website links to your blog.

8. Be a champion for your local area.  Nobody is ever too busy to read good things about themselves or their projects.  When you post a good news story email the people involved to let them know.

9. Be a good host.  A good blog can provide a platform or further discussion.  A good host will encourage comments which are a key driver for repeat visits.  That usually means culling comments which are offensive (e.g. racist, sexist, homophobic) but allowing a healthy and vigorous debate, including disagreement with you.

10. Be realistic. There are tons of great councillor blogs, but even as someone with a keen interest in councillors’ use of social media,  I only read one on a fairly regular basis, and that’s the blog of a councillor who represents me.  Y

Your blog is going to be of interest only to relatively small group of interested individuals.  But those are often precisely the people who are likely to make a difference in your area.  Quite ‘low’ numbers can actually mean a huge reach in a small area.

CoP til you Drop

The following are links to all kinds of community of practice goodness.  You will need to sign in first to www.communities.idea.gov.uk – most of the communities are public meaning anyone can join.

UKGovCamp: Communities of Practice for Local Government | Social Media and Online Collaboration

Vicky Sargent provides and excellent report and links to this past weekend’s UKGovCamp. Fabulous event!

Social media statistics: IDeA Social Media CoP

Discussion on finding and using social media statistics

Advice for Using Facebook – Communities of Practice for Local Government | Social Media and Online Collaboration

Should councils be using Facebook fan pages? If so, how?

Communities of Practice for Local Government | Social Media and Online Collaboration

Dan Slee from Walsall shares his excellent 8 step guide for getting started in social media. It has an interesting combination of stealth and well-evidencedl methods of promoting internal change and adoption.

Communities of Practice for Local Government | Customer Insight

Good practice guides for customer insight?: Has anyone done any internal guidance?

Communities of Practice for Local Government | Policy and Performance

Newcastle shares its review of policy function findings in the Policy and Performance Community of Practice

Structuring an unconference

If you really want to skill up in the area of social media applications in local government, the best place to go is one of the unconferences that are being run by practitioners for practitioners – like UKGovCamp (I attended one over the weekend and it was fabulous) and the forthcoming LocalGovCamp (4 March 2010 – London).

What is an unconference?

An unconference isn’t completely unplanned – but the agenda for the day is set on the day.  The first session – and the only real plenary – is coming up with the agenda for the day – agreed by the group as a whole.  Delegates are asked to think about what they might share on the day through formal and informal presentations and workshops.

It seems to me that attending an unconference – even a free one – is taking a big leap of faith.  It’s not without cost, you’re giving up a whole day of your time and there may be some hefty travel costs for some delegates.

And it’s never quite clear exactly what will happen.  What will people talk about, what will people do? Will I get value out of it? Will it just be barely organised chaos? Will it be too technical?  Will it be a waste of time or even worse – a wasted day where I’ve felt socially at odds to boot.

You gotta come

I could say trust me, I haven’t been disappointed yet.  I’ve been to several unconferences now and they’ve been a great day of networking and creating new professional relationships.   I learned so much this weekend and I actually felt like we were making real progress.   And as far as technical goes – because there are number of sessions running at once – there is always a wide range of interests and skill levels catered for.

I’d love to see some different people, service heads, LocalGov comms folks and policy, performance and efficiency leads in local government and partnerships attending the forthcoming LocalGovCamp.

But until you’ve tried it, it’s a bit difficult to explain.

Advance track

So…would a guaranteed track of workshops and speakers make it easier to commit to coming to LocalGovCamp?

And, if so, what would you like to see in the guaranteed track? (see, we’re still crowdsourcing – we’re just doing a little bit of it in advance).

Some things that come to mind are:

• Social media for policy development
• Free tools for local government (and when to use them)
• Social media for “internal communications” within LSPs and across partnerships.
• Social media and campaigning (for councillors)
• Politics and social media – reducing friction between councillors and officers
• Getting the most out of communities of practice
• Open data and the launch of data.gov.uk and what it means for local government and local people.
• Social media to save money – efficiencies in service delivery and co-production.

What do you think?

local-data.gov.uk

Yesterday I attended the launch of data.gov.uk, held in the impressive headquarters of The Guardian who are certainly doing more than a bit in the field of open data.  It was opened by Stephen Timms, MP and Minister for Digital Britain and inspirational words were spoken by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt about the importance of it all and how much had been achieved and how much remained to do (that’s the important bit so stay reading).

It was pretty much exactly as I thought it might be.  At least 80% male, a higher proportion of beards and long hair than you’d expect to see at the usual kind of government confab. (See Paul Clarke’s excellent photo set)  There was a big assumption that the audience would understand some fairly specific technical jargon and the importance of publishing data in very specific formats.  And for the most part, people did all understand that at least to some level (like me) or quite deeply (just about everyone else).

But there was one thing that was a touch unexpected – and that was the lack of local government representation in the room.   Why should that matter, you say, if this all about a project releasing central government data?  Well, because they’re coming for us next.  Professor Nigel Shadbolt is leading a panel of the great and the good in data in local government and it’s all about releasing that data.

As I wrote yesterday, this is not entirely unexpected.  Local data is what matters to local people, and let’s face it we’re all local people.  If open data is to turn into some really useful applications and that are really used, addressing the real problems of real people then local data is all where it’s at.

But I was a little surprised by the brazenness of the “we’re going after the local government data”.  Maybe I shouldn’t have been.   Professor Nigel Shadbolt was quite explicit about it in his Radio 4 interview.

Chris Taggart of Openly Local, a motion blurred Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Prof Shadbolt and Richard Allan of Facebook

The final panel made oblique and direct references to local government, including some of the data that the IDeA has involvement with – such as the data and reference sets held by the ESD Toolkit and all the addressing data which is administered through the National Land and Property Gazetteer by the Local Government Information House.

Tim Berners-Lee predicted that for any given [non-personal] data set, there’s a 50% chance it would be online as open data by this time next year.   This is a guy with a lot of vision – so there 90% chance he’s right.

So for local government this means that we’re facing some clear choices.  We can command this agenda (and thankfully we’re well represented on the local data panel) or we can let it happen to us.

Fortunately, there are some good reasons for opening up.  There are efficiency gains – we can rationalise data middle-men and re-interpreters and stop paying for having data thrown back at us (except where it adds real value).  We can eliminate much of the cost of FOI requests – we’ll just be able to point people to the URL.  And we can get a much better picture of what local performance looks like, better than OnePlace, so we can use this data to better address the really tough issues in the LAA set.  And if the data is used for really useful things, there will be all kinds of improvement and efficiency around helping people to manage their own neighbourhoods and care and access to services without expensive contacts and interventions. And that’s before we even look at issues of transparency and accountability.

But there are some truly big barriers to be overcome as well.  First off, we’re local government.  There are a lot of us.  We have our own politicians and we have our own local priorities.  We have legacy systems and outsourced services covering everything from bins to potholes to equipment for the disabled.  We have a culture of concern – a fear of being done to and being raked over the coals for a bit of bad data or good data that reflects poor performance. And we have mandates for publishing data in not very handy formats – like pdf – which seemed like a good idea at the time.

That isn’t to say those barriers can’t be overcome or there aren’t some people already working tirelessly in local government to achieve consistent data standards to share data (like all those unsung Local Information Systems and data obversatory heroes).

So, we’re living in those proverbial ‘interesting times’, but it’s not a curse.  It’s a challenge and an exciting and rewarding one at that.

Data.gov.uk live!

The Guardian is reporting that the data.gov.uk website is expected to launch tomorrow – but apparently it’s already live – so everything’s in place bar the ribbon cutting by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the guy who invented the world wide web.

So what’s the big deal about this? Well – it’s a huge step forward in terms of public accountability – just making government data open and available for the public is the essence of transparency and democracy. But because of where we are in the world of web development, it’s also ensuring that some really useful applications are being made of this data for very little or no public money. Data.gov.uk features both the open data sets and showcases some of the very useful applications or ‘apps’ that were made with one or more sets of data.   Apps that will help you find a job locally or understand how public money is spent.

This is excellent work by the Digital Engagement team and I know that Richard Stirling has been working tirelessly on this.  I’m really excited about the possibilities.

Local Data for Local People

I’m more excited about the possibilities of local government data being thrown into the mix.  This is the information that has the potential to make the huge difference in people’s day to day lives.  The US Federal Government has been doing a lot with open data, but some of the most exciting uses of data has been coming from local government in places like Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Chicago (see Apps for Democracy).

We’ve got a great opportunity to do great things in the UK, locally.  London launched its data store very recently. And there’s a panel of the great and the good working on the issue of data in local government.  Looking at what types of data should be focused on and how we can support the local government sector to open up data. Will Perrin, a member of the panel, has been asking what types of data we should be looking to expose (list of really interesting responses here).  But just as interesting a question is what are the blockers standing in the way of opening data and what are the things we need to make that data really useful for the sector and the public.

The Knowledge Hub

The IDeA’s Knowledge Hub will have an extensive data layer – not holding, but taking advantage of and helping councils and their partners use open and linked data.  And since our focus is as much on how practitioners, partners and Members can use data – we’ll be linking conversations and communities (of practice) as well as information.  You can help us shape how we do that by joining in the conversation.

Lotta links

Interesting links I’ve been saving over the last week or so, covering KM, efficiency, and social media in government.

Knowledge Management

• Knowledge sharing: it may not be what you think it is « Enlightened tradition
  via @davidwilcox and @davidgurteen
• A Better Way to Manage Knowledge – John Hagel III and John Seely Brown – Harvard Business Review

Efficiency

Leadership Centre: Bold Steps for Radical Ref …

Kent’s bold steps for radical reform to empower local government and save a lotta, lotta money.  (the link takes you to a tweet which then has an automatic pdf download– sorry it’s so convoluted, but better to warn.)

‘Force councils to share back office’ | News | Local Government Chronicle

• “In light of the current budgetary constraints facing the public sector Deloitte believes there is a compelling case for legislation that would require local government to share back office functions.”

Poor websites could be costing millions | News | Local Government Chronicle

• Results of the SOCITM survey estimate that around 40% of people aren’t finding what they’re after on council websites in part or in full. If this means that they then seek more expensive contact channels.

Social media and public policy

The great Delib debate « Town Hall Matters

John Craig-Sharples provides reflection on whether it will be social media or policy wot matters. Interestingly, the BBC folks thinks it will be tv. Hmmm… Anyway – interesting that it seems to be the media and not the message

Unleashing a Government response

Steph Gray writes about publishing the government response to a consultation.  Sound dreary? Not really, it’s all about presenting information accessibly online.

The state of the UK gov blogosphere

Crikey, how did I miss this one? Oh, yes, I know – that’s the day a project imploded. Then Christmas…and stuff.

Social media resources

The 3 Rs of Social Media Engagement « Stop, Collaborate and Listen

A training pack for social media using a comic book approach.

Measuring the inside leg… – Rob Dyson beta

• Using free tools, some time and some thought for measuring social media engagement and growth. Good stuff from a small charity.

Good CoP – Good CoP

A round up of interesting links and things that caught my eye from communities of practice.  Most (but not all) of them are from the IDeA’s Community of Practice platform www.communities.idea.gov.uk – and require registration.

Local innovation: collecting examples of best practice – Social by Social

Andy Gibson calls for interesting practice examples of social media, local government projects.  I’m also starting to collect examples here.

SOCITM are collecting examples of interactive, innovative or just plain informative uses of council websites and social media during the recent snowy weather.

Communities of Practice for Local Government | Web Improvement and Usage Community

The IDeA’s Knowledge Management and CoP team are now blogging. Good stuff using a WordPress blog.

From the Social Media Community of Practice – John Craig-Sharples shares his lesson on facilitating an internal CoP

Social media usage statistics? What metrics would councils find useful?  Interesting discussion here – and an event focusing on similar issues here.

In the Policy and Performance CoP there’s an interesting discussion about  the review  (and possible centralisation) of policy functions within a council.  As we face tough budgetary choices – will this be something many councils start doing?

Friday funday: Potholes and mastermind

The lighter side of local government

Now we know just how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall

If you work at a council then you know that what follows snow and ice is potholes!  The roads will be torn up. We even had an explanation of the science of potholes in our daily internal communications email.

But a simple freeze-thaw explanation didn’t satisfy me.  There must be something about the structure of roads that makes this more likely.  And there is – thank you Virginia Department of Transportation for this excellent explanation and diagram.

Ripped from Virginia DOT - click for original

It’s not so much about the surface as it is the SUB-surface.

Mastermind

This week Councillor James Cousins blogged about Mastermind.  An urban planner chose the London Borough of Wandsworth as his specialist subject.   James, an Executive member there, wasn’t able to answer as many as the contestant.  I live there, too – and I think I just got the first one right.

• Wandsworth on Mastermind | JamesCousins.com

The YouTube clip is worth a look just for the explanation of not quite complete overlay of the borough as a political entity and as a place in people’s mental maps.   Something I suspect is true for many councils.