Demos Project : Cool Tools for Government

Mashup politics - when everyday democracy meets the web

molly.webb@gmail.com ( Molly Webb ) — Mon, 21 May 2007 03:06:53 -0100

The personal democracy forum conference (and unconference) are over until 2008.

Two main things struck me. First, the younger generation (as Danah Boyd pointed out) don't think of the internet as 'not real' - it is an indivisible part of their social lives. It follows that the virtual/physical divide won't be as obvious in the next elections either. The Pew survey on politics and the internet shows how quickly things are changing. In 2006, 23% of people who are using the internet for politics are creators - not only consumers - of content.

This brings us to video. If in 2004 the Dean campaign showed us the mobilising power of the internet, then 2006 showed us that YouTube's power has a part to play in making or breaking the reputation of candidates.

Andrew Rasiej (founder of PDF) put it this way: "We're going from a literate to 'viterate' society, where video becomes one of the main media for communication - how will it be part of our lives?"

So 2008 will be the remix and mashup election. Here are some of the websites letting your create your own video channels to support candidates.
http://www.ourmedia.org/
http://splashcastmedia.com/

But it wasn't all about the US presidential elections. On Friday, I spoke (download the talk) during a session on 'E-lessons from overseas' along with Jeremy Heimens of avaaz.org and Jaime Aparicio, former Ambassador of Bolivia to the US, representing NewLink Political. Most interesting was to hear Jeremy's view that there may be even more innovative online political tactics outside the US. But avaaz.org does face a huge challenge in creating an international political culture.

Luckily we were able to follow up on Saturday thanks to Pete and Niamh, who boldly put Everyday Democracy up as a topic for discussion. This was the discussion where people really warmed to the topic. Micah Sifry challenged our group to think about how we could expand the area of what Yochai Benkler calls 'social production' over the next year - before the PDF conference 2008. Some ideas were: open source voting, geographically-oriented myspace (or pledgebank), developing new stories about what everyday democracy online looks like, and tools to 'manage my politics'.

Other cool stuff:
The Sunlight Foundation - Micah, Andrew and Greg Elin (who also came along to the unconference ED session) are technology advisors at Sunlight. Founded in 2006, it's aim is to explore using technology to enable citizens to be more active in politics.

Foneshow was there - think twitter for voice? And there is lots of content to subscribe to

The Front Porch Forum - an online neighborhood forum, helping people organise activities in their neighborhoods started in Vermont.

Daylife: A news website but more crucially, it provides an open API that would give you the power of LexusNexus for your own website.

The Medium is the Message?

peter.bradwell@demos.co.uk ( Pete Bradwell ) — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 09:37:59 -0100

What better way to dispel the accusations that you're vacuous and policy-lite than to air your very own video podcast, or vodcast or...webcameron - noting your whimsical and more sincere policy insights and firing them into the open-access heaven of the internet? Talking straight to the people, wired straight into the public consciousness - no middlemen, no journo agendas, no spin; just your ideas with the ecover, some washing up, drying underpants and breakfast with the wife and kids.

Are the days gone when we should bother trying to distinguish between party political ingenuity and public opinion management (spin, public relations etc)? Is this the start of a beautiful friendship between Dave, the Tories and the public? Can we expect webcameron to be an honest forum for Conservative policy ideas? Is Dave, and his team, just pressing the right PR buttons? Is this the 'real' David Cameron - and do we want to see behind that curtain?

Should we shelve the cynicism and read this as another means to connect people and polticians? Should I be excited that party politics is finding new ways to talk to people?

So many questions. I'm not really sure, although the sight of Dave musing with his washing up certainly got my spidey-senses tingling. But I'll be subscibing to that feed...

Be interested to know what other people think.

collective action?

molly.webb@gmail.com ( Molly Webb ) — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 18:35:01 -0100

I think pledgebank is one of the best examples of connecting individual's social concerns with wider action. This happens on the individual's terms -- you make a pledge and hope that others sign on.

Tom Steinberg says "We all know what it is like to feel powerless, that our own actions can't really change the things that we want to change. PledgeBank is about beating that feeling..."

Of course this doesn't mean that the pledges necessarily link individuals to government, but that is always a possibility. And it's empowering to see that other people want to join your pledges.

The question is how to scale it up?

GIS systems

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 11:30:17 -0100

May be old news, but worth remembering the significance of GIS systems. Be great to know who in the UK has got furthest with this kit.

311

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 09:48:17 -0100

There's a lot of talk of the single non-emergency line number. Introduced by Michael Bloomberg in New York in the form of 311, Demos is now recommending that the government of New Zealand try it out. With a population that's less than London's it may just work. Our own government here in the UK is also exploring the idea of a single phone line for non-emergencies. First mooted in Transformational Government in 2005, it is now being considered as part of the channel review that was announced in the 2006 Budget. That's due to report in autumn, so watch this space. For an interesting discussion, see Stephen Johnson writing about 311 in Wired. Concerns about such a service being 'captured' by particular groups of people are discussed on Accidental Deliberations.

Recyclebank

duncan.oleary@demos.co.uk ( Duncan O'Leary ) — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 11:53:16 -0100

I’ve just come across what looks like a brilliant recycling scheme in the US. It’s called RecycleBank and it works like this:

1. Each house gets a recycling container with a barcode on it, that allows the recycling truck to identify what your household in recycling
2. The amount your home recycles is translated into RecycleBank Dollars (paid for by the council through the savings they make on landfill sites)
3. You can spend your RecycleBank dollars at any of the 100 participating stores as and when you accumulate them
4. The more you recycle, the more Recycle dollars you get

Genius. Has anyone has heard of similarly creative ideas/projects in the UK? If so I’d love to hear about them – seeing as the comments are still not working, drop me an email and I’ll post them up if you’d like me to...

Update: Nick Temple at the School for Social Entrepeneurs spotted this last week.

...and Andy Polaine says: "Interesting idea and I'm all for people recycling more, but the problem in the UK is that you can't recycle that much. Here in Germany you can recycle almost all your packaging, even plastic bags and cellophane and polystyrene. That makes a big difference as we all see when we put our 'Gelber Sacs' out once a week and see just how much household packaging waste there is. This, incidentally, is a separate recycling operation from paper (also recycled) and bottles (most of which have 'pfand' or a deposit which means they're re-used for a very long time instead of recycled).

Would paying for people recycling make it more expensive to recycle and the resulting goods more expensive though? Re-using the material is crucial to the process otherwise it's just a feel-good factor.
Recycling tends to be down-cycling anyway (things becoming lower grade goods) which just slows down the journey to the landfill by one or two stops. Working out what to do with the material or upcycling is the key (as the authors of Cradle to Cradle, William McDonough and Michael Braungart, explain)"

Web 2.0 and democracy

molly.webb@gmail.com ( Molly Webb ) — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 18:23:36 -0100

'Web 2.0' isn't just about citizen media. Is it a new way for companies to sell to consumers? An opportunity for consumers to take control of the corporate communications channel? A metaphor for a new kind of democratic social interaction? A tool that allows well-networked elites to increase their networking capabilities? All of the above?

We're hosting an event with a visiting US social software consultant Elizabeth Albrycht, Livio Hughes from Headshift and Tom Steinberg from mySociety.

Minding the gap

molly.webb@gmail.com ( Molly Webb ) — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 13:29:49 -0100

We call it everyday democracy - minding the gap between people and the institutions designed to deliver public services. I'm finding more examples of practioners in a variety of fields turning to social software tools - in the process they are re-inventing individuals' choices and re-framing the ways each of us involve ourselves in social outcomes.

Patientopinion.org is making the space for a constructive conversation about the provision of health services that doesn't happen within the current NHS institutional arrangements.

And I just came across Global Giving. This model aims to connect the leaders of development projects directly with funders, offering an alternative to World Bank or government charity models. (more info in the Washington Post article "Aid Recipients Might Have the Best Ideas About Allocation")

Online tools can enable new models of engagement toward delivering social outcomes. I can't help but be inspired by the 'let's fix it' approach.

Gadgets for doing good?

molly.webb@gmail.com ( Molly Webb ) — Mon, 23 Jan 2006 10:56:00 -0100

In November, Fast Company noted that CNN is airing a documentary about North korea with the footage and information gathered from dissidents using video cameras and mobile phones.

"With new technological wonders every month, it is easy to get caught up in Apple's newest iPod or Microsoft's new Xbox 360 or the next Motorola RAZR. It is more difficult to remember transformative technologies that do more than provide entertainment--they change lives."

If it's possible to do this under Kim Jong Il's nose, what are people doing all the time in less restrictive circumstances to change their governments? One example is patientopinion.org, built by our friends at Headshift, and started by GPs who want to give patients a chance to improve the NHS through their personal stories. And luckly for us in the UK it's possible for government to get involved in the project - at least enough to respond to the results of communication enabled by the tool.

Global ideas bank and mySociety (see past posts on mySociety projects) allow users to identify and contribute to solving everyday problems. But I also think people are using gadgets or web tools without realizing how much they're contributing to social change. I want to find them! Email me (molly.webb at demos.co.uk) if you have other examples - I'm always on the lookout.

The wonderful Wired

paul@paulmiller.org ( Paul Miller ) — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 10:54:08 -0100

Wired Magazine is firing on all cylinders this month with a load of interesting articles. My favourites are James Surowiecki's article The Decline of Brands which charts the rise and fall of brands as indicators of business success (as he finishes the article "The aristocracy of brand is dead. Long live the meritocracy of product.") and Steven Johnson's piece about the implications of the 311 service in New York. On his blog, Steven says he thinks 311 is one of the two most sigificant innovations in urban information technology - the other is London's very own congestion charge.

The mag also comes with a free CD where artists have licenced there music using the same 'some rights reserved' copyright licence we use for our pamphlets.