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The only difference between engaging someone in public consultation and engaging them in user testing is, as far as I can see, the type of reward they get for taking part.

With user testing it’s easy: the client pays a company an extortionate amount of money to test their product; or, if it’s being done on the cheap, buys lunch for a few folk and tests the product on them instead. People might even do the testing as a favour, but that requires them to have some level of emotional attachment to whoever’s doing the asking.

With public consultation the reward is harder to quantify, but it still needs to be there.

On Tuesday evening I was involved in giving some feedback on a local council web initiative. I wasn’t paid or fed, and I had no emotional attachment to the consultant (the council). I do, however, have an emotional attachment to the group that was being consulted and so I was quite happy to take part. But had I been consulted directly I would not have been happy when told that my suggestions would be ‘added to the log’ and ‘may or may not be used’. In fact I would have been angry: they’d taken up my evening and wouldn’t even be bothered to let me know if and how they used my suggestions. (And no, I see no reward in simply helping the council, as I have little faith in its ability to do things well.)

Many public consultations seem to treat their participants as free user testers, which seems something of a paradox. Some reward (which could be simply the satisfaction of doing someone a favour) is important. If there’s no payback – fee, lunch, feedback, satisfaction, etc – then the participant will probably feel used and alienated.

The same goes for ‘digital engagement’ initiatives; which tend, in essence, to be attempts at consultation.

Last night I went to a panel discussion on ‘Connecting with constituents: MPs and Digital Engagement’, chaired by Andy Williamson of the Hansard Society. On the panel were Jon Kingsbury of Nesta who talked about the new MyMP iPhone app (funded partly by Nesta and partly byPublic Zone), Tim Hood of Yoosk and Paul Hodgkin of Patient Opinion.

All three initiatives aim to listen to people and feed their input effectively into the public processes, while also making them a valued and engaged part of those processes. There are in fact lots of online initiatives trying to do this, but I’m not sure many of them have really grasped the importance of payback. MyMP doesn’t seem to have considered it (I may be wrong of course). When I posed the question to the panel last night, Yoosk appeared to put faith in the conversation developing to the point where the participants felt bonded enough in some way (as part of a network perhaps) for payback to occur naturally. Maybe that will happen, but it seems a bit of a gamble.

Patient Opinion was apparently the only of the three initiatives to have understood the importance of payback (feedback, in this case: they gather stories from people and are starting to post outcomes of those stories). It seems telling that Patient Opinion was set up by a doctor – not a politician, charity or think tank – and was the only initiative last night that didn’t claim to connect citizens directly with elected representatives or public figures.

The problem seems to be that perennial one of the Web: lots of people have great ideas for layering technology on top of society, and rush to deliver them. What doesn’t seem to happen is a questioning of the underlying processes; it’s all very well encouraging conversation, but what do you do with it?

Someone asked why on earth there were all these different tools available when there should simply be one in the obvious place: Parliament’s own website. One reply was that if people don’t trust a site or organisation (or they don’t have a connection with it) they won’t use its tools, and so these third-party tools are crucial to engagement. While I agree with that I also agree with an assertion made by Andy Williamson: people already have social tools (Facebook, Twitter, etc) that they use to talk about general stuff of interest to them, and when those conversations wander into politics it is in those spaces that they’re conducted; in general people won’t seek out a dedicated site or application for holding those conversations.

Last night the old adage seemed to ring truer than ever: meet people where they are. And having a voice is great up to a point, but feedback – or reward – is critical in the end.

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Cross-posted from citizensheep.com.

Note: in this post I use the definition of ‘consultant’ as that of someone who asks questions, not someone who gives professional advice.

Ordnance Survey recently released the boundary data for council wards so that anyone can use it. On Saturday we built a demonstration of what can be achieved by combining it with other public data.

A bunch of us gathered in Birmingham to spend a day looking at data and mapping, at Andrew McKenzie’s Mapitude event on Saturday. It was hosted at Aquila TV and sponsored by Digital Birmingham.

Although there were a number of presentations from the likes of OpenStreetMap, Mappa Mercia and OpenlyLocal, I spent the bulk of the day helping to build a demonstration of what can be achieved by combining sets of data that are available from Ordnance Survey and National Statistics.

The brief, which had been suggested by Gavin Wray, was to choose a ward and layer information over it. Dan Slee was keen to map St Matthew’s in Walsall, and the group agreed that we should try and compare it against an adjacent ward if possible. While the others searched for datasets, I threw together a web page; Stuart Harrison and Chris Taggart worked on the hard task of writing code.

We ended up with this: http://mapitude.pezholio.co.uk.

Now this might look like we’ve simply drawn a boundary on a couple of Google maps and embedded them in a web page; and in a way we have: the difference is that the plotting of points and drawing of lines is done automatically, and the information about the wards is pulled in automatically.

In other words, Stuart wrote some code that automates the tasks of:

1. finding the boundary coordinates from Ordnance Survey OpenData;
2. plotting the boundary on a Google map;
3. interrogating National Statistics for our choice of data.

Then the map is simply embedded in a web page. Which, in a fully working application, would also be done automatically (or rather, on the whim of whoever visits the web page).

There are loads of other things I’d like to see, such as users choosing boundaries based on their own understanding of geography (administrative boundaries for religious groups or sports organisations, for example) as well as the official civic ones, and comparisons over time.

But remember this was just a demonstration: surprising as it may sound, this hasn’t really been done before. Prior to 1 April 2010, UK ward boundary data were simply not available for public use; groups of fools like us could not have spent our free time building this tool for the public good.

We’re not the only people exploring how we can make good use of public data, plenty of others are too. The point is that this stuff is game-changing, and it’s being done by volunteers for the sake of it (and a free lunch, if one’s available). People are creating their own ways of making sense of the world around them, of understanding and engaging with civic society, and offering it to others. As a result it is even harder these days to pin down where people are getting their information from, how critical they are in analysing it and what level of engagement they have.

The opening up of public data is not a magic bullet of course, but it is an exciting development. With public data now freely available I suspect civic engagement will become much messier and harder to define than it was before: and arguably a lot more democratic.

On Monday the Local Public Data Panel held a workshop in Birmingham with local council officers, bloggers and activists to address the challenges of releasing local data for anyone to use.

The aim of the workshop was ‘to generate ideas and understanding about what is needed to drive the local public data initiative at a local level’.

When people get their hands on raw data they can develop tools and services that the custodians of that data either don’t have the time and skills to do or would never have dreamed of anyway. DayNurseriesUK, for example, has built a tool for people to find full-day child care, and Adrian Short has built a tool for people in Sutton find their election candidates.

Releasing data also enables members of the public to point out errors, such as an incorrectly mapped bus stop, which - if fed back effectively - enriches that data to the benefit of society. Although there will always be people who want to point the finger, it creates a wonderful opportunity for citizens and state to work collaboratively on issues of social concern.

Obstacles though are complex and numerous: risk aversion, personal agendas (such as job retention), concerns about quality control and fear of how the data might be used are just some of the challenges that need addressing. But challenges they are, and everyone on Monday seemed more than happy to confront them.

By the end of the day we had come up with a list of things we think are needed (this list is from my personal notes and not the official record of the meeting):

• Data disclaimer for everyone to use;
• Clarity and guidance on the release of data;
• More clarity on ‘derived data’ (what it is, etc);
• Training;
• Repeats of this sort of workshop event;
• Business case;
• Stories of good stuff being done, that everyone can relate to, and presented accessibly;
• Research on usage and numbers;
• Budgetry incentives;
• New legislation, or better use of existing legislation, to encourage the opening up of data;
• Untangling of overlapping and seemingly contradictory legislation;
• A statutory right to data.

I have set up a blog for those involved to collaborate on this work: http://localdata.citizenshipfoundation.org.uk.

There has been a concerted effort over the last couple of years to encourage local people to get their voices heard and to take control of local issues.

As a result of this burgeoning ‘hyperlocal news‘ movement, more and more blogs and community websites are springing up: people are finding and reporting on local stories that mainstream media wouldn’t be interested in, challenging and engaging with local civic organisations, and motivating their communities by virtue of being relevant.

With this comes a set of new challenges for them: what do they do when faced with the threat of crippling – though often baseless – legal action; how can they get the most meaningful response from their elected representatives; what tools are available for sourcing stories and enabling engagement; etc.

On Saturday I attended Talk About Local’s second unconference, this time held in Leeds. The last one - in Stoke-on-Trent - was full of enthusiastic people wanting to do great things; now people are finding their feet, a solid sense of purpose and determination has set in, and the enthusiasm to share knowledge and experience is as strong as ever.

I joined three discussions during the course of the day: one on finding stories, one on covering the General Election and one on legal issues.

[What follows is a lightly edited version of posts from my personal blog.]

Finding stories

A brainstorm of the room (and subsequent discussion) came up with an abundance of ideas for finding local stories:

• Speak to people on the streets, in the community, cafes, pubs etc;
• Cycle around the area;
• Read up on local history, for example using:
  • the Old Bailey proceedings from 1674 to 1913, online and searchable (free);
  • the British library’s digitised, searchable archive of 19th century newspapers (£10 subscription);
  • Google Books (free);
• Attend council meetings (the agendas might be boring but the meetings can be lively);
• Read the minutes of council meetings;
• Attend other local meetings (eg NHS, Police and Fire authority meetings);
• Attend inquests;
• Read Freedom of Information requests;
• Read planning applications;
• Read news feeds (eg RSS feeds via Google Reader);
• Scan community websites;
• Subscribe to email forums, discussion groups etc;
• Use Wikisplash, a new guide for helping journalists find UK stories;
• Read the births, marriages and deaths columns of local papers;
• Request press releases from local organisations;
• Attend Family Courts (it’s hard to find out what’s on beforehand, but courtserve.net might help);
• Walk a dog.

It was also mentioned that the government is apparently looking to publish outcomes of magistrates’ court cases online in the future, which would be very useful to local bloggers.

The baton then passed to Tom Steinberg, who went into a bit more detail about how online tools can support the sourcing of news, and how to filter out stuff that interests you from the overwhelming amount of information available.

• Google Alerts will send you email or RSS updates of anything you ask it
  • be creative when you’re putting in search terms
• FixMyStreet alerts for local problems.
• WhatDoTheyKnow lets you subscribe to alerts for when someone asks a Freedom of Information request of your council. (Even though the council may not answer, the more people subscribe the less easy it is for the issue to be ignored.)
• TheyWorkForYou feeds: rich data about the work of individual MPs.
• PlanningAlerts notifies you of local planning applications (although it’s currently limited to what it can do with postcodes due to action by Royal Mail).
• Flickr enables people to geotag photos, which means you can subscribe to a feed letting you know of new ones near to you.
• OpenlyLocal has a Google gadget for accessing local council data, and a Ning application (although sadly Ning is phasing out its free service). I think Chris said he’s also just made available some javascript for forthcoming local council meetings, which you can use on your sites.

For the more technically minded, most of the services listed above make it easy to develop your own tools for re-using their data.

Freedom of Information requests

Tom (as Director of MySociety, the organisation behind WhatDoTheyKnow) was asked to clarify the issues around submitting Freedom of Information Requests. His advice:

• Be faultlessly polite in all your correspondence. The people reading your correspondence are rarely those responsible for the information you seek;
• If you don’t get a response from an organisation, follow through the sanctioning process with the Information Commissioner. Make it clear that you are doing so and that you know what is expected of the organisation legally;
• Be careful not to get labelled as ‘vexatious’. Although there is no hard and fast line about how you become labelled as ‘vexatious’, don’t give anyone the chance do so: once they’ve blacklisted you they will never reply to you again. So be minimalist in your approach.

Election coverage

We heard that whereas it used to be the case (in broadcast journalism at least) that each political party had to be given exactly the same coverage, that is no longer the case. If a party has no history of election success, you are apparently within your rights not to cover them.  Just make sure to list all the candidates who are standing.

Independent reporters should have no extra restrictions for reporting on polling day, although it might be worth trying to get press accreditation.

‘Declaration of Financial Interest’: guideline is apparently now for MPs to make that public, so you can ask if they will give you the same statement that they give to others: they might well see it as in their interest to, particularly in light of the MPs’ expenses scandal.

Some election sites

• TheStraightChoice: uploaded election leaflets
  1. Get your readers to upload theirs
  2. Show them interesting stuff that happened as a result;
• ElectionChampion: a game to find the election billboards that are springing up around the country;
• Democracy Club: ‘working to build the definitive guide to where all candidates stand on major issues, nationwide’;
• yournextmp.com
  • The goal is that after the election what the winners said will be compared with their voting record over the next five years.

Legal issues

Problems faced by people in the room had included: unfounded but effective demands to have comments removed from websites; moral dilemmas about balancing legal rights to publish with social implications for individuals; the threat of crippling court fees.

Some tips from the room:

• Make interaction/commenting guidelines clearer;
• Always check your story with more than one source;
• Consider removing first-post moderation: if you moderate comments you are legally responsible for their content. Instead add a ‘report this comment’ button and ensure you have a tight take-down policy;
• Ensure you have clear terms and conditions are on your site, and review them regularly.

Please remember:
This post is a report of information gleaned at an event, which I may unintentionally have misunderstood or misrepresented. Please do not presume anything here is accurate: check against a reliable source first.

It seems that every day the internet is giving us new ways to test the relationship between the citizen and the state. In a recent article for the BCS’* Savvy Citizens website I argue that we should be exploiting these new tools to encourage a more responsible and effective civic engagement.

I highlight a few of the useful online services, and even touch on how they can be used for subverting some aspects of civic life.

However, I then go on to suggest that for people to be engaging effectively they need to be doing so ‘with a keenness for rigorous, informed and effective debate’.

Read Using the internet for effective citizenship on the Savvy Citizens website.

*BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT

There has been a lot of noise lately calling on local authorities to embrace social media. Clearly this is only useful if it’s an effective way to engage with citizens, and if the authority learns from it to improve that engagement. A number of tools can be used to measure this, but now there’s one that does it for them.

Council Monitor (currently in beta) scours the internet to find what people are saying about your local authority. It shows at a glance the topics that those people are discussing and how positive or negative those discussions are, making it easier to monitor and compare the reputation of councils online.

This is an interesting tool because it allows anyone to see this information for free, and for a fee the councils themselves can fine-tune the data to strengthen the quality of the feedback they are receiving.

So the information is at once transparent (councils can’t hide behind rhetoric quite so easily and are encouraged to engage better) and useful (councils are given valuable data on which to build their engagement strategies).

On Tuesday I shall be attending the Digital Engagement Event, wearing my Citizenship Foundation hat and (probably) banging on about the importance of critical reflection.

I’m going to try live blogging on CoverItLive (time and energy permitting), so keep your eyes peeled.

There is a lot of exciting work being done in regards to using technology for civic engagement. Most of it though seems to be about access to information, more efficient and effective public services, and enfranchisement of citizens to hold decision-makers to account.

These are all laudable of course. But there does seem to be something missing: effective civic engagement - or more specifically, effective citizenship - requires critical reflection by all involved, and not simply the release and management of data by one party and the exercising of rights by another.

There are lots of tools and services now that exploit public data to help citizens understand their environment in meaningful ways, and expose the workings of local and national government. For example, MySociety offers a number of useful engagement tools: FixMyStreet enables people to monitor and lobby their council on issues such as pot-holes; WriteToThem makes it easy to contact your local MP; WhatDoTheyKnow aids the writing and delivery of Freedom of Information requests.

What these approaches don’t do - and it’s not their remit to - is encourage critical reflection on the part of the people involved. Councilors could, in theory, respond to complaints made via FixMyStreet, which in turn could lead to reflective discussion between themselves and the complainant: but this will only happen if both parties are so inclined; the tool itself doesn’t nurture that level of engagement and responsibility.

And neither should it: its job is to open up the data and put power in the hands of citizens. But for that power to be effective and useful it needs to be coupled with an understanding of the process, and a willingness on the part of the citizen to accept they may be wrong; and by citizen I mean anyone: council officers and politicians are citizens too.

In his Digital Britain Final Report Lord Carter proposes that:

“The changes that digital technologies bring require us to develop a new level of participation for a competitive digital knowledge economy and a modern democratic and fair 21st Century society”.

‘Participation’ suggests more than mere interest: it suggests a sharing of responsibilities in working towards a common goal. This, I think, is missing from much of the work that I see in the Digital Engagement field.

One tool I know of does go some way towards this, by encouraging more thorough investigation of an issue. Help Me Investigate enables people to pose a question - such as ‘Does the Job Centre check out employers when it advertises vacancies? - and collaborate to find the answer. The process helps to expose the intricacies of policies and the nature of things as being anything but straightforward or black and white. Although it doesn’t explicitly strive to highlight responsibilities of everyone rather than just the targets of investigations, Help Me Investigate does encourage critical analysis and collaboration in a way that many of the other tools don’t.

This is an area that I believe the Citizenship Foundation is well qualified to input to, and I shall be working a little to put the issue of critical reflection more visibly onto the government’s Digital Engagement agenda.