Ideas for my Council

Submitted by: Guy Dickinson & Simon Wheatley

Describe your idea. What will you do?

It would seem that people have little opportunity to get involved in defining the priorities for their local council (other than at local elections).

Our idea is for a website that enables any constituent to 'suggest an idea for your council'. Other people can engage with the ideas, by adding their comments and rating the ideas. A bit like this site (but with comments and ratings)!

This 'open innovation' model has proved hugely successful for organisations like Dell, Starbucks and their customers (e.g. http://www.dellideastorm.com ) . Why not equip people and their councils with a similar participatory tool?

We propose a base website that has a running 'Ideas for my Council' setup for every council in the UK, e.g.

http://www.ideasforcouncils.org/manchester
http://www.ideasforcouncils.org/plymouth
http://www.ideasforcouncils.org/etc.

When an idea reaches a certain critical mass (e.g. 250 votes), the site will email the details of the idea to the relevant department and for each of the councillors from wards where people are voting, an email in the following format:

===========================================

From: Ideas For Councils - Leeds
T0: councillor@leedscouncil.gov.uk
Subject: Your constituents are really interested in "adding a play area in Western Park"

Hi,

We'd thought you'd like to know that residents in the Western Ward have shown their interest in the idea "adding a play area in Western Park"

The original idea and comments and voting can be seen at: http://www.ideasforcouncils.org/leeds/adding-a-play-area-in-...

We've also e-mailed the department responsible - with this information, and notified the following councillors who also have constituents interested in this idea:

Councillor A
Councillor B
Councillor C

We'll email you again when the idea reaches the new milestone of 100 additional constituents.

Yours etc.

===========================================

Each time the votes hit a certain threshold, another e-mail is sent.

The original page for the idea would be updated with the department and councillors who have been informed by email.

Here's a quick mockup:

http://www.simonwheatley.co.uk/2008/07/09/ideas-for-my-council/

As well as automating awareness of emergent issues to the relevant councillor and department, Council representatives would be able to request logins (based on their email domain) and have rights to post blog updates to discuss the ideas, and also mark ideas as under review, etc.

We've built similar functionality for commercial organisations - we'd love the opportunity to apply our experience and skills, by building an open platform for the public and their Councils.

What will the benefits be?

• Give constituents a place to express and refine the ideas they want their council to do more (or less) of, and to gather support behind those ideas.
• Allow constituents to express their opinions, and proactively push opinions which gather momentum to their councillors thereby making their case more compelling.
• Give Councillors and Council Departments the ability to see current opinion (and the weight of current opinion) on issues in their areas.
• Allow Councillors another opportunity to address concerns and desires within their constituencies.

Who will you target?

Initially we would target a small number of councils around the country, some of whom were actively enthusiastic and engaged, and some of whom might be less so (to see how both situations play out).

Is your idea linked to a particular town or region?

This idea is not linked to any particular town or region.

What kind of assistance would you like from others?

• Relevant Council department's contact email addresses for key categories (e.g. Parks, Recycling, etc.)
• Data allowing the linking of constituents with their Ward Councillor's contact email address, driven by postcode.

Comments

[Guy Dickinson on 30 July 2008 at 01:06 PM]

Probably worth pointing out that we originally submitted this idea to the 'Show us a better way' competition - http://www.showusabetterway.co.uk/call/2008/07/ideas-for-my-co.html

We also thought our idea would make a suitable proposal for this competition, so here it is :-)

[Duane on 30 July 2008 at 04:18 PM]

great idea - nice use of web 2.0!

a lot of issues/gripes people would raise on this platform would be very real, and judging by how available the average councilor is to the general public nowadays, many people would thank you for it!

however having said that, the only difficulty i could see is people using this as a political tool.

there's not the same sense of self-interest that comes with improving a corporate product that you will probably eventually buy.

the system could possibly be up for abuse from people trying to lobby on a specific agenda.

[Guy Dickinson on 30 July 2008 at 06:01 PM]

Hi Duane,

Thanks for the feedback - glad you like the idea :-)

I'm not sure I agree that local people wouldn't get a sense of 'what's in it for me' using this; I think the system would absolutely engender a legitimate sense of self-interest - i.e. hyper-localised (street/ward level?) ideas will almost certainly affect people personally; I'd hope at least as much as ideas for a company whose products someone uses.

In terms of potential for abuse; well, of course there's plain old spam; we've built anti-spam into our other apps, so we think we can deal with that fairly effectively.

In terms of 'abuse' in order to push a particular agenda?

Well, I think people lobbying on a specific agenda isn't abuse, but actually what the system could quite legitimately be used for - if a group of *local* citizens can be galvanised into voting and providing feedback on a particular idea, then the system is connecting and give visibility to the council, as their provider and representative.

If it's not too grand a statement, I think this system enables democratic involvement of citizens at a local level, on local issues, on a continuing basis, not just at election time.

A positive example of this would be parents encouraging other local parents to work together and use the site to vote up ideas for a local playground (we used this example in our mockup actually).

In our other implementations (for corporate clients) we've also got 'vote down' buttons, so aggregated community actions (either through ambivalence toward certain ideas or explicit 'I don't link this idea' voting, will reduce the unpopular, spammy, or non-relevant 'political agenda' ideas that may get submitted.

At least, that's the plan!

[Simon Wheatley on 30 July 2008 at 11:00 PM]

To add to what Guy has said, there's also a localised aspect of each user's account: we would envisage each account being tied to a particular postcode which in turn would be linked to a particular council ward. This way we can give direct feedback to any given councillor as to how many of their direct constituents had voted for a particular idea (as well as the aggregate voting of people within their entire council area). We hope this will provide better motivation (and ammunition) for councillors to promote their constituents' wishes.

Of course the localised nature of each account will also remove the possibility for one account to spam more than one council... which will hopefully reduce the amount of general spam, trolling and abuse throughout the site as a whole (at least the trolls will be local to you!) Obviously this system can be gamed, as can anything to a greater or lesser extent, but we think the balance is reasonable.

The site administrators could also appoint individual trusted community members as moderators, and allow them to remove material which is unacceptable for whatever reason.

(P.S. "Troll" is an internet term describing someone who deliberately courts controversy for the sake of controversy... they can create a deal of nuisance on a forum.)

[Helen Cammack on 31 July 2008 at 12:51 AM]

Great idea, and very of the moment. I love those sites like MyStarbucksidea.com which deal in suggestions and ideas, and if you hadn't suggested it already I might have suggested something a bit similar myself.

Only question is, how would this be different to local authorities using Salesforce.com's off-the-shelf ideas product (which I believe MyStarbucksidea is built on), which does some of the things you suggest? This isn't to knock the idea, only to understand the differences. Perhaps one difference is that your platform doesn't require active engagement from the local authority / councillor to manage and moderate suggestions? (Would it be completely unmoderated by the way, or would it require someone to look after it?). Perhaps another difference is that your platform would be free to local authorities? (Indeed would it?). What other differences are there?

[Helen Clipsom on 31 July 2008 at 01:56 PM]

Nice idea but, as others have said, there is already product out there (the online petitions site also comes to mind), and of course councils can build this into their own websites if they want.

Where you would win with local authorities is in the provision of moderation. Having run forums/communities myself, the amount of work needed to keep the trolls under the bridge can be formidable - I've even had to order a group to take a forum down "before we get prosecuted" due to slack moderation. Signing up for your site offloads the risk onto you and away from us, as it were, and may give you a major selling point.

[Sean on 31 July 2008 at 05:45 PM]

I like it, but not quite radical enough, constituents should be able to make councillors instantly responsible for any decisions they take part in at council level (i.e building democracy by actually having more of it!)

ratemycouncillor.com might be a winner too :)

[Simon Wheatley on 31 July 2008 at 06:49 PM]

Hi Helen Cammack,

Thanks for commenting.

Re Salesforce.com's off-the-shelf ideas product, I believe Starbucks, and Dell, use this. It's a nice simple solution, but not tailored to the needs and relationships of a councillor and their constituents. There's no checking that you are within a council area, for example.

Re moderation, I think it would be unwise to leave the forum to the vagaries and trolls of the internet! Some moderation would certainly be required. The key would be, as in any community management, to enable the community to moderate itself... for example through appointing moderators, easy buttons to report abuse, etc. One key thing to remember will be to maintain a neutral political balance in the moderation.

[Simon Wheatley on 31 July 2008 at 07:13 PM]

Hi Helen Clipsom,

Thanks for your comments.

Re similar systems: There are similar products out there to assess the weight behind an idea or suggestion. You mention the Downing Street petitions site, although this is at a national level. I said in the outline above, Harriet Harman mentioned the development for a petitions site for the Commons recently http://preview.tinyurl.com/6czp2r but again this is at a national level. As the email in our outline suggests, we envisage linking user accounts with specific wards and therefore specific councillors, making the accountability more closely linked than it would be with a general suggestions/ideas system wherein anyone could vote for suggestions on any council.

Re councils implementing this kind of thing themselves: It would certainly be possible for councils to build this kind of functionality into their websites... but, with respect, they don't seem to be doing so. Now this could be because our idea is crackers, but I don't believe it is. I believe constituents would seize upon an open, neutral and easy to use way to communicate with their councillors. I also think that councillors would find the threshold notifications (as we describe above, the site would only notify councillors after a certain number of people had expressed an opinion) very useful in identifying trends amongst their constituents. Perusing a quick google for "council suggestions", few council seems to have no easily discoverable open and transparent system to submit ideas or suggestions, and to view previous submissions.

Re moderation: As I said I above, I completely take your point that online communities need to be carefully managed... even more delicately managed when they're expressing political points, so as to avoid the smear of bias. Obviously illegal, profane, libellous, etc, contributions could not be tolerated.

Interesting that you identify the separation between site operator and council as a selling point. That's good to bear in mind when we get this off the ground. :)

Apologies for the marathon length reply!

[Simon Wheatley on 05 August 2008 at 12:31 PM]

Hi Sean,

"I like it, but not quite radical enough, constituents should be able to make councillors instantly responsible for any decisions they take part in at council level (i.e building democracy by actually having more of it!)" I'm not sure I quite understand what you're getting at, do you mean that when you float an idea, you are able to nominate it for a specific councillor?

We hope to be able to link councillors with the constituents in their wards, so that a councillor can see a direct link between the people who vote for (or against them) and the votes for a specific idea; e.g. "300 people voted for this idea, 212 of them were in your ward".

[Paul on 10 August 2008 at 08:23 AM]

Simon and Guy

As others have noted, this is an interesting idea – not totally new as a technological concept but with the potential added value of being ‘driven down’ to local (ward) level. It’s interesting to note that FixMyStreet has aleady had an award from the predecessor scheme to this, even though one could argue that this project by-passes democratic process rather than enhances it (I won’t get into this in the interest of relative brevity).

I am an ‘average councillor’, of the type Duane refers (somewhat disparagingly) in his comments. Rather than take umbrage at that, as other councillors might, I’d be interested to explore why Duane feels that the average councillor nowadays is so 'inaccessible', and how this might differ from previously; from my perspective there does seem a tendency to look back on some halcyon age of ‘proper politics’ when your local councillor was always round your house having a cup of tea or meeting you on the street while on the way to a well-attended public meeting. I’m not convinced this age ever really existed, and even if it did the beneficiaries were only one section of the whole ‘constituency’ (albeit in more homogenised populations), with ‘farmer councillors looking to support farmers, ‘trade union councillors’ looking to the interests of working people (usually men).

I actually think that councillors today generally put more effort than previously into being accessible to all sections of their constituency – all three political parties set great store by ‘doorstep activity’ and regular communication, and there is a widespread recognition that when it comes to elections there is a decreasing tendency to vote according to ‘core’ political affiliation, and instead to judge a councillor/candidate by her/his actions and communications. I produce a quarterly 8 to 12 page newsletter delivered to every house in my ward, and while this may be longer than some I am not alone in such activity, and I can safely say that most people in my area know how to get hold of me if they want me. Yes, there are lazy, complacent, inaccessible councillors but they are a small minority, in my experience.

Despite this actuality, views like Duane’s are common enough. Whether they are based on fact, or whether they are media-driven/enhanced perception, there is little doubt that that councillors are less trusted than they used to be, in keeping with the decline of the political party as a perceived vehicle for public good, and the general ‘turn-off’ from mainstream (national) politics. This is why I like your idea – because it accepts (implicitly) that people are often ‘turned off’ by the whole notion of councillors, but also accepts the reality that they need to be engaged, and then proposes a way in which constituents can engage but on their own (technological) terms, in a way that allows to keep all the perceived tawdriness of local politics at arms’ length while still having a voice in the local political machinery.

However, herein also lies the problem, which I’d ask you to consider. In order for your proposals to work, there will presumably need to be ‘buy in’ from councillors, and their political parties (95% of councillors in England are allied to parties). Personally, I believe in the need to ‘meld’ the traditions of elected democracy with newer forms of participative democracy, one model of which you propose here, and I would welcome such a system of idea raising/rating/moderating in my own small area, in the belief that it enhances my ‘offer’ to my constituents; even though I think I am pretty accessible and open to new ideas already, I’m not averse to other routes in especially if they pick up the views and ideas of people who have an automatic distrust of me because I have a ‘politician’ label.

Other councillors (and local parties) may think differently. My experience is that many councillors feel somewhat threatened by these new forms of direct democratic input, because they think it removes their legitimate power. There is a very strong feeling amongst councillors of all political hue that, because they are the only ones elected at the ballot box, they are the only really legitimate representative of their constituents; to the argument that they may have been elected with a 30% turnout and with perhaps only a bit more than a third of them actually casting a vote in their favour, you will get the response that at least people had the opportunity to vote. Then will follow the line about ‘self-appointed’ community ‘wannabees’ (often referred to as the ‘usual suspects’) who are only in it for their self-aggrandisement, as opposed to the selfless public service that elected councillors offer…….

As I’ve said above, I don’t buy these arguments myself, but I do retain a commitment to the worth of elected democracy, at least in the absence of any better overall system of government to date, and therefore understand the strength of feeling when councillors feel their legitimacy is being threatened. My question to you therefore is how your approach will ‘manage’ councillor concerns so that they do ‘buy in’ en masse to your proposals both at policy decision level (and I think it would need crosss party support) and then on a day-to-day ‘actually logging on to pick up ideas’ level. Turning this around, what are you offering to councillors that they won’t think they can and should do for themselves within the time available to them (and herein lie some thorny issues about how many hours a councillor should be putting in, in a way which, in totality, facilitates people with full time jobs/carer or parent responsibilities to be councillors rather than the usual glut of retired blokes)?

Allied to this, how will you respond to the following questions/comments you might get from councillors about how your ‘system will work:

a) How will you avoid the risk of the system creating demands that can’t be met because of limited resources? Will the system you develop also incorporate views on whether new ideas should be funded through council tax rises in the event that they can’t otherwise be afforded, notwithstanding the difficulties associated with fnding local development through necessarily wider Council tax rises?

b) How will your ‘system’ of ideas generation/rating deal with the fact that in some wards you’ll be dealing with councillors who are members of the controlling party and may therefore have access to resource allocations through the annual budgeting process, and in other areas with opposition councillors who have no ‘claim’ on resources and for whom any such ‘victory’ in attaining such might be seen as unwelcome by the controlling party for electoral reasons?

c) How will your ‘system’ deal with multi-councillor wards, especially those wards which have councillors from different parties in them

d) How will you ensure that your ‘system’ does not increase the ‘digital divide’ such that only those with access to IT are able to articulate their needs, wishes and ideas?

I hope these comments are at least a bit useful. As is often the case, I’ve gone from what was intended to be a few brief notes/questions to a bit of a treatise, and apologies if you’re bored by now.

As a final suggestion, you might want to look at www.fredome.org. This organisation (in Watford) appears to have very similar ideas to yourself, though not focused on local councillors, about using the power of the net to garner and then rate ideas; a quick look suggests it’s not particularly content-heavy yet, with a slant towards younger people’s big ‘change the world’ ideas – laudable in itself – but the IT processes seem to be similar (and developed by a defence industry IT consultant, coincidentally enough – I’ve had a glance at Simon’s blog.

In addition (and this really is final) you might want to look an interesting essay by Geoff Mulgan on some of the issues I’ve referred to above about the ‘melding’ of elected and participative forms of democracy. It’s an essay as part of the Hansard society’s democracy series at http://www.democracyseries.org.uk/booklets (the Democracy and Political Parties one). You might also want to look at http://nevertrustahippy.blogspot.com/2008/08/more-on-political-parties.html for some recent quite intelligent ‘blog’ thoughts on the need to maintain the integrity of elected democracy (albeit the focus here on the national level).

And really, really finally, honest, you‘ve shown me yours so I’ll show you mine, as it were. My own ‘floated’ idea is submitted as ‘Democracy in Health’ and your comments would be welcome given the thought that’s gone into yours. As you’ll see, I refer there to some of the issues I’ve picked up in these comments, especially the acknowledgment that local elected democracy can be a strange and hostile world, especially where elected councillors feel the legitimacy of their position is under threat. I suggest a new ‘space’ for democratic growth which can then feed towards the more traditional area of democracy, and in this respect I think your and my proposals compliment each other. Whaddya think? You can comment here or on my website (or both).

Best

Paul

ps I don’t quite understand Sean’s point either, but I think he might be advocating some form of IT-based referendum on all decisions taken by a local councillor, on the basis that an opportunity once every four years to vote on overall performance is not sufficient. I understand and sympathise (see above) with the political disenchantment with the likes of me that drives this, though I’m not clear how it would be practically implemented given that individual councillors don’t actually take decisions on their own (unless they’re a directly elected mayor). Like you I’d be happy to know more. In any event I think it’s a post-hoc judgment thing, rather than the more forward looking (in time) process that you propose.

Right, I really am going this time, I’ve got to go out and further poltically alienate some constituents who’d rather use IT kit to tell me stuff……only kidding.