Home of boats, bridges and now barcamps, last week the team headed south-west to Bristol for Local by Social: the apps for communities edition. The event was pitched as a chance for us to ‘get real’ about apps and open data, moving beyond apps as the shiny new kids on the block to thinking through how they might be best used for community activism in our bigger than ever society.
Stephen Hilton from Connect Bristol kicked things off ably supported by Councillor Babara Janke who did an excellent job of setting the tone for the day. Both emphasised how proud Bristol is of its digital heritage and how the council recognises the huge impact the web could have on their communities if used the right way. As Stephen explains:
I think the web is a revolutionary thing, not just for Bristol but for the world… It was very important for me to host this event in the main council office as I believe we need to bring apps right to the heart of local government. At the moment potential is limited by understanding rather than the technology – it’s about a new mindset and creating new relationships between councils and communities by using all the resources available.
Ingrid Koehler and Brendan Harris from the Local Government Improvement and Development introduced both the thinking behind Local by Social and the soon to be launched Knowledge Hub – a place for those in local government to share good practice and ask new questions (you can view their full presentation here). Following from this Carrie Bishop from FutureGov rounded up the preliminaries giving her view on the bigger picture on why all his stuff matters, providing examples that are helping to change the way local services are designed and delivered. Specific projects name checked included FutureGov’s Safeguarding 2.0 project, as well as new venture Simpl, a social innovation marketplace that makes it easier for councils to be introduced, and implement innovative ideas.
Emer Coleman, Director of Digital Projects from the Greater London Authority’s presentation opened for the line up of guest speakers, framing the possibilities and challenges around open data by telling the story of the London data store so far:
This provided the perfect setting to hear about specific examples for how apps can have impact. Particularly interesting was the emerging theme around apps can begin to help make government and public services more human and the relationship more personal:
Rich Watts explored the potential of location based social media such as foursquare in improving social care. You can read his presentation, and write up of his overall Local by Social experience here. He noted that service users don’t have the information they need to be able to successfully navigate the social care system to make use of the resources. Could the web, or specifically a tool like foursquare help? Rich put forward some examples of how he sees social media could become a tool to build a rich real time resource around social care, from opening times for day centres to the prices of residential homes.
Clare Reddington from iShed brought to life how social media can be used in developing our relationships with our local areas by sharing with us an incredible amount of projects the company have supported to use the web to tie together people, places and interests. Clare focused on the playful entrepreneurial uses of data that can help enrich communities such as Mobile Pie’s Blossom Bristol and Mudlark’s Chromaroma.
Mike McCarthy from Hills Are Evil explained how their app, developed in Bristol, hopes to create a tool that can extend individuals independence by creating a dynamic map overlay that gives people with restricted mobility (cyclists, the elderly, wheelchair users) the chance to identify the most appropriate route between two places.
Tim Davies provided an opportunity to take a step back and rethink apps altogether, giving the audience food for thought around the need for ‘data education’. Tim’s Open Data cook book might be just the way to do this, providing a place where people who might not be quite so at home with data to have a play and see what works for them. The two main themes that come to light through all the talks were accessibility and making government human, and Tim’s presentation demonstrated a practical way data could achieve this.
View more presentations from Tim Davies.
Turning ideas into action
After a quick bite to eat, participants were asked to scribble down apps they wish existed that could benefit the Bristol community. The ideas wall was quickly covered with suggestions ranging from library services to nautical information (arrr!). The room broke up into small groups to work up these ideas further. It was during this time we had a quick chat with those working inside local government to see what all these thoughts, projects and aspirations meant to them. Councillor Jon Rodgers, a local Bristol politician, was a particular highlight:
“I’m a really strong believer of open government and actually getting information out there – if you try and keep things covered up it actually undermines democracy and undermines the way people feel about themselves and their communities. There are risks and people in local government are anxious…. my feeling is that we should embrace the incorrect – it’s not possible to think that we in local government can be correct all the time…. we should be open to comments, suggestions and criticisms at all times.”
You can listen to the interview in full below, where Cllr Rogers talks about life as a local politician and what being open meant to him, repeating his excellent comment from the question and answer session about the need for local government to learn from its mistakes. To hear this from someone who is on the hard edge of local democracy working to make politics more human was truly inspirational and will hopefully encourage others to follow in his steps:
Likewise, Louise Kidney, officer at Blackburn and Darwen Council (who coincidentally will be hosting a Local by Social event this March – see what we did there?) provided some excellent points about what this all means when working in a council. She mentioned how events such as the Local by Social series helped provide a safe space for those in local government to explore, ask questions and be encouraged to experiment with the data and the web. She also reiterated the need for local government to strengthen its capacity when it comes to being able to take risks. Again, a unique insight and well worth a listen:
As things came to a close, each group reported back their app idea to the room, with ideas benefiting from the rich feedback available from the diverse expertise and perspectives from the participants in the room. To finish the day off, our judging panel decided on the top three main app ideas to bring forward for the second half of Local by Social South West:
A system for making it easy for allotment holders to give their surplus food to a good home! The group explained that whilst it was sometimes possible to pass surplus food to charities, the process could be fiddly and time consuming. The allotment surplus system would make it easy for allotment holders to advertise their surplus food to people who want to eat it. The project team also envisaged a strong social element, with allotment holders earning prestige based on what they have grown and shared.
This project is designed to improve the system for reporting issues to the council. The project team identified two key problems. Firstly, current systems for reporting do not always sufficiently capture ‘community intelligence’. Instead, official channels may be used by the ‘vocal minority’. Secondly, issues reported are not always followed up effectively, particularly when the issue falls between more than one team or department. Democracy Bot would provide a means for council officers and the public to report issues using a range of technology, from text messages to Twitter. The system would then record and categorise the issue and assign responsibility for following it up. Members of the public as well as officers and councillors could log in and view the status of reported issues.
This app is designed to provide surfers and other beach users with reliable and up-to-date information on beach conditions. The app would pull in data from a variety of sources, such as tidal predictions and weather forecasting. The project team spent time discussing issues with obtaining data, as tidal data is not currently freely available to the public.
We left day one enthused and inspired, with some neat ideas to work with on day two’s hack day. Want to know what happened? Check back here very soon!
Thanks for the great write up of the day. The democracy bot idea did indeed get evolved on day two and we would like to invite readers to follow the progress of the day via the new project website at http://democracybot.org where we will advertise any further opportunities to get involved with the project