"Local Government has been Emasculated" (But so has everything else)

From a systemic perspective, the central-vs-local government clash continues to be pretty bemusing.

On the one hand, central government decides how much localism there should be, and giveths and takeths away from local or super-local (regional/LEPs, etc, whichever the trendier?) all the time.

On the other hand, the hierarchy at all levels is being infiltrated by both the private sector, and the "new", networked form of group organisation which has managed to somehow avoid the "postcode lottery" moniker so far.

Lord Heseltine is advocating even more decentralisation away from central government, and offers some small looks into where local-interest power means that Stuff Gets Done, ie. that the hierarchy needs to get out of the way of people just getting together to achieve something.

A few days ago I started thinking about how a community wifi effort (Google Doc) could benefit and be hampered by a "network" approach vs a "hierarchical" approach. (Hint: there's no straightforward answer.) Richard Veryard suggested that the network/hierarchy split (or spectrum) wasn't too useful, which I'm still unpicking, but it did get me thinking about why we organise into different types of group.

It is perhaps most true to say that democratic models are the most complex they have ever been. This is different to saying that "we need to move to a network democracy" or that "it is local government's time".

It is understanding instead that we have a very real situation of multiple, overlapping, integrating models of democracy organisation/objective/philosophy. There is no "one approach fits all" solution because there never was - we just managed to shoehorn the world into the latest mainstream model through a heavy imbalance of power.

Local Government has been emasculated. But so has central government. And perhaps so have ordinary citizens along the way.

I'm going meta. There is no such thing as democracy, but there is such a thing as a democracy network. Which, confusingly, includes networked democracy - but also centralised democracy, European democracy, local democracy and hyperlocal democracy.

Which means there's no point arguing over which one's best, only over how we make sure they all get along.

"Forget the data."

Holy crap, Emma Mulqueeny's (@hubmum) blog from yesterday on the next challenge for Open Data is possibly the. Best. Thing. I. Have. Read. In. A. Long. Time.

In particular:

Open data? Awesome, and we are making tracks.

Open Government? HARD, and we are not banging on that door yet."

and:

So what’s the next challenge for Open Government data?

Forget the data.

Find a way to enable these revolutionary ideas, apps, websites and widgets that save time, money and mind-numbing frustration from those who have to engage with government.

Do that, and only that.

This is the conversation we need to be having. Why? Not to work out "how to do it", but because it questions what is valuable and necessary in government.

Open data isn't a technical thing. It's about relevance. If you could do everything, what would you do? If you were hungry, would you eat, or would you talk about how to find out what the best thing to eat is and what the best way of eating it is?

"Open data" that lacks a medium for turning creative use into real-world change is irrelevant. It's what bad businesses do - they invent a million great things, but never actually want people to use them. Instead they use them as examples to tout how great and creative they are, in the strange hope that a people will think a symbol of progress is as good as progress itself.

Until, that is, someone comes along and not only has a better idea, but also actually builds it. For everyone to use.

Is that difficult? Of course - building stuff requires foresight, management, flexibility and the wisdom of knowing what your goal is. Do people do it all the time? Look around you.

Open data needs to be about other things now - including how it's funded, what the audiences are, and what the future holds. But none of these are about data. None of these are technical. We already have a society that runs on data, so data itself isn't a new paradigm.

We can't keep thinking of open data - and possibly even our entire creative efforts - as some kind of "continual prototype". We need to apply it like we applied sewage systems and electricity.

We need to understand that this isn't just about making the game easier to play, but about a whole new game.

How do you network yours? (Why the medium is not the message.)

Even co-operation is in competition, it seems. Social media has sprung up all over the place, and even those that "get it" are feeling fairly confused. Should we set up a new conversation, or find an existing one? Should we post our thoughts to Facebook or to a blog? Should we be broadcasting or engaging?

For some people, the answers to these will be "obvious". But often what we think is obvious is actually just what's lacking - what we're arguing for more of.

Really, the answer is that there is no answer. Sometimes broadcasting is useful, sometimes listening is useful. Sometimes blogs are fine, sometimes Facebook is fine. It depends. It matters. And yet at the same time, it doesn't matter. Conversation is more than a blog post or what-have-you, because conversation is about ideas - and good ideas will spread across networks, across media.

Stepping back a moment, Louise Kidney does a great job of picking up on digital inclusion/exclusion within existing groups, and takes a practical line of engaging people with the communication tools they need in the modern world.

I think this is vital. It's ridiculous to think that our democracy is limited to pre-defined routes of communication. Imagine if you couldn't phone a council because they were afraid of misusing the telephone. Imagine if you couldn't e-mail them because they weren't sure whether to say "Hi" or "Dear Sir".

But at the same time, I think we need to look beyond this. (Hey, I like big ideas.) We need to look under the hood and ask why there seems to be a continual mismatch between the tools being used by citizens, and the tools being used by authorities. Can we really afford to re-assess every new website as it forms? Following on from that, should all forms of communication be used to engage with citizens? And if not, which ones should be? When should support for old networks get killed off?

(I don't have answers for these. What I do have is a different way of approaching the situation, rather than going in circles. I'm a geek. I abstracterise things. Big ideas come out somewhere along the line. Sometimes these make things clearer. Sometimes not.)

In my mind, the "problem" is not, fundamentally, one of tools - but of how and why we organise ourselves.

Go and read this article on Scotland's social media efforts. Go on. I'll wait.

Now notice - the strapline there mentions social media. The article mentions Twitter and Facebook a couple of times. But really, the core point of it, is not what people are using, but who is doing it, and how. Social media are just one way this manifests.

But the tools are ephemeral. In the real world, groups form around issues, and tools form around groups. Not the other way around. I use many websites and I even go to a few face-to-face meetings. But, largely speaking, the networks are the same across all of these. Sometimes bits of these networks use tools I don't use (e.g. Tumblr) but that's fine - I participate using the tools I find most useful (e.g. Beer).

Learning how to use a tool/interface is useful, but it's not essential. True engagement happens whatever the tool - it comes from getting involved, turning up to meetings, listening to people, feeding back, taking things seriously, having fun.

And I think it's this level of engagement that people are struggling with - new social rules, not new interfaces. People are afraid of turning up to workshops or pubs in the same way they're afraid of using new websites, but if we're to make something that benefits everyone, we have to work out what methods and, more importantly, what networks suit each person best. (That's one to return to in a different post, though.)