Hack Devon County Council

As a Council we are at the beginning of our Open Data Journey.

We have used and reused others peoples open data, we have experimented with a hack weekend supported by students from Plymouth University we have set up an Open Data forum on 27th February and now we are taking the next step and taking part in Rewired State’s Hack the Government.

It is happening on the 8-9th March and for more information about the event and the challenges check out the Hack the Government Exeter page

To contact the NHTG Exeter team email: nhtgexeter@rewiredstate.org  or follow them on twitter:  @nhtgexeter

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The capabilities for digital local public services – hardware and software

Continuing the development of my thinking around the Framework for Digital Local Public Services and following quickly on from my previous posts on Connectivity and Education. This post focuses on Hardware and Software and some of the opportunities to think differently around this area.

The framework outlines the following:

Hardware : every citizen requires the capacity to connect to the Internet and tap into the full range of its resources and content.

Software: that meets the needs of individuals, families, businesses and communities.

Taking all the capabilities together can be seen a like looking at a whole system and we are essentially trying to change the whole system.

Nesta recently published a Systems Innovations discussion paper and I highly recommend it.

The description states:

Over the past few years there has been growing interest in systemic innovation. We are defining this as an interconnected set of innovations, where each influences the other, with innovation both in the parts of the system and in the ways in which they interconnect.

Yet rather than simply theorising, we want to make this practical. We want to explore the potential of systemic innovation to help tackle some of the key challenges the UK currently faces, from supporting an ageing population to tackling unemployment.

I’ve found this discussion paper helpful in defining some of the challenges these framework wishes to address also.

On page 39 of the discussion paper it states:

System innovation involves a powerful combination of new:

• Products, services and technologies (tablet computers, containers, stamps, digital projectors);
• infrastructures that make these innovations widely available;
• alliances of partners who provide complementary services, software and assets;
• consumer norms and behaviour, which often emerge peer–to–peer, through a process of social learning, copying and emulation.

these basic common ingredients of systems innovation, however, can be combined in many
different ways.

The first two points are really what the hardware and software components are looking to foster and address, whilst the rest are also picked up by other areas of the framework.

Hardware:

Like connectivity if we focus on public sector organisations, we currently all provide staff with a range of computers and those inevitably need recycling or replacing and we need to start questioning where those are going – this would be PC’s laptops; smartphones etc.

We should think about how we can capture the needs within communities around access to appropriate hardware and we should prioritise the needs of our own communities first and connect the devices and equipment with them.

As a new system of local public services emerges communities and individuals will need adequate hardware to access and connect to that system in order to be able to engage with it.

This pretty much leads into the next area of software…

Software:

The software that underpins any new system of local public services has to be open and available for communities and individuals to create new services and opportunities to access and deliver local services. This links very much with having access to open and linked data, but critically means that we need to be able to ensure that people have the ability to connect to the system of local public services.

If we see public services as a system, we can’t simply do more within the current system as that won’t work – we need to change the purpose of the overarching system of public services and do things differently.To re-purpose and re-frame local public services we have to open it up in order to allow it to change.

It can be seen like the android or apple ecosystems – Apple and Google provide a system for which stuff can be created, developed and delivered and it only requires people to resolve the connectivity and education aspects in order to actively participate with those ecosystems in order to gain the wider benefits and value that being part of them brings.

We all need to start questioning how these things can start to be realised and not wait for other people to make them happen as i don’t believe that will be the case. What we need to do more of and quicker is open up the system to be challenged and disrupted as well as allowing people to take ownership of parts of the new system of public services.

Open Data Network

This a post really pointing people somewhere else…

I’ve written a blog post over on Re:Work Digital about looking at trying to facilitate and promote a south west open data network.

Using data to generate conversations, is one of the key ideas in the 5 stars for open data engagement and this is something that a network can start to address as well as the other ideas listed below.

1. Be demand driven
2. Put data in context
3. Support conversation around data
4. Build capacity, skills and networks
5. Collaborate on data as a common resource

Check out the post and let us know your thoughts and ideas on how we can take this idea forward.

Proving concepts with Open and Linked Data (and wordpress)

I love finding excellent examples of stuff, more so when you find them in your own council and especially when they actually prove some concepts to other people.

So I was very excited to hear and actually see what a colleague here at the council Mark Painter has been doing with WordPress and linked data.

Mark has been doing lots of work on understanding open and linked data and recently put together a proof of concept site for area profiles, which brings together mosaic data (as an xml file), neighbourhood statistics and IMD data from CLG support by swirll.

I love this proof of concept because we need to do more of this here in Devon and it also supports and proves the concept around my content strategy…one other reason I love this is because this was all done through good old WordPress 🙂

I must reiterate this is a proof of concept and may break at any time as mark continues to explore how to make this better…he has already started to look at how he incorporates the Crime Data into this as well…

 

Reflecting on the Social Media Forum #DCCSMF

Updated 12/10/11: added QR codes summary discussion

Last Friday was the Social Media Forum#DCCSMF.

It was very well attended with over 70 people from across the council and partner organisations. It went very well, a few technical and timing issues but nothing major. Everyone wants more but better next time…so an interesting challenge.

Even the Head of our Press Office attended and found it valuable…

http://twitter.com/#!/MBombers/status/122330044961005568

Overall I couldn’t be happier with how it went…I’ve included the presentations from the day below.

I was also very pleased with the action on the hashtag #DCCSMF  – my expectation was that only a few people would participate but it surprised me…It was also a bit unfamiliar for some to do this within a formal council meeting and I did receive some feedback, where some people thought it was rude that people were looking down at their phones…however I had given people permission at the start, but a cultural challenge nonetheless.

http://twitter.com/#!/allyblue22/status/122248608673312768

and we even had people who couldn’t attend joining in the discussion.

http://twitter.com/#!/SgtGaryWatts/status/122262578813616128

Presentations…

Welcome and Introduction

Open and Linked Data

QR codes

Social Media Campaigns

FOI and twitter

The internal use of Social networking tools

Nurturing Online Communities

Crisis Communications

Social Media Risk Assessment

And a copy of the Draft Risk Assessment

Summary of the afternoon discussion sessions.

Not all received as of today, so i’ll add the others in when available:

Crisis Communications

Areas discussed were more general:

1. How we got started
2. How we got/get permission to tweet/FB at will! “But what about sign off?!” there is none….
3. Start doing it – better to apologise after than just keep waiting to be allowed to begin
4. What’s the resource requirement – and what about in a crisis? 24h nature
5. How do you get followers – and that followers are not the be all and end all…Content is king
6. RT is the aim – how far does your tweet actually go?
7. How do you make a judgement call on what to respond to
8. Management tools such as hootsuite and tweetdeck for keeping an eye on the conversation
9. Peaks and troughs – and how to manage them
10. The power of hashtags – getting in there early and first, identifying with a prefix e.g. #CCxxxx for Cornwall Council

In the future it would be useful to talk about some of the toolkits that we all use to manage the social media elements and some of the more practical elements for people just embarking on the social media journey.

Open Data

The main point to come out of the open data discussion was the potential conflict between open data and ‘control’ of communications, and the reputation issues that could follow. Some suggested that if we didn’t like the press that would follow a release of data, then we should change the way we work rather than suppress the data.

Also discussed was the different ‘levels’ of data:

1) the simple stuff – officers’ salaries, organisational structures etc. The FoI related stuff.

2) useful data that we could put in to the public domain and see what people did with it – accident locations, pot hole enquiries, timetables etc.

3) the difficult stuff – making our systems open and exposing the raw data – with the obvious data protection measures.

Internal Social Networking

There is a lot of nerves around FOI despite it not being an issue

People are looking for critical mass and one tool to rule them all

Concern around signal to noise ratios especially if using multiple comms channels

Top quote “people are reluctant to be interesting online”

Discussion of Devon learning Network as an internal social platform

We actually need an extranet as DCC fractures into partnerships

Social Media Risk Assessment

Risk is linked to culture of the organisation

Finding the balance between those interested in social but not trusted and those trusted but not interested

Comms interested in risk to reputation and ICT interested in Risk to systems and information

How can you harness and manage the energy and innovation as well as the risk

Provide a training package “passport” approach to support and mentor people through the learning process

QR Codes

The discussion on the table concerned whether or not the use of QR codes was appropriate for particular services. One example was a training team who’s material is all online and they don’t produce any printed leaflets. For them a QR code would not really benefit their service as they have no means of distributing them.

There was also some discussion about the life time of a QR codes, how long will they be used for and when will something better come along. It was explained that there is already better options out there for creating attractive campaign materials but these are at a higher cost and are not as wide spread as QR.