bmwelby's blog

Thoughts from the mind of Ben Welby

Tag: engagement

We need more participation in policymaking, we certainly don’t need less

July 25, 2024 / / 5 Comments

I started writing a comment in response to today’s essay by James O’Malley but it quickly became outsized so I’ve turned it into a blog post instead.

The source for that essay is a new whitepaper from Demos that offers up a roadmap for embedding greater public participation in national policy making. James isn’t a great fan of it and in making the URL for his essay “James vs Demos” he’s clearly writing from a place of provocation. But he’s not alone. It also drew the ire of several commentators on Twitter. What’s strange is that I think in different times all of them would have probably been at the vanguard of enthusiasm for greater openness and engagement from government, not less.

But I can sympathise with their point of view. Some of that is concern that such efforts simply create an open buffet for cranks and extremists to push their agendas because they’re the ones who show up. But overall I sense a tired frustration that the country is just really bad at delivering the things we need. And that the feeling is that the sclerosis in this aspect of modern Britain comes from inviting external voices into the process which delay and obfuscate from what needs to be done because they hold too much sway.

A good example of that could be that some of the ballooning costs of HS2 that ultimately led to its cancellation for the country as a whole coming from efforts to satisfy the concerns of certain local communities and residents. While on the flip side to that, the new government has rapidly pressed ahead with a number of energy initiatives with national (if not international) outcomes in mind that had been being held up by local objections.

But focusing on these issues is to absolve those who govern for their deficiency in leadership. We can say that in either case it’s been a face off between individuals and communities (bad) and government decisiveness (good). But that’s such a bad place for us to end up when it comes to thinking about the sort of society we want to live in and the sort of public discourse we want to engage with.

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Open data: magic from the inside out

April 27, 2012 / / 1 Comment
This entry is part 5 of 6 in the series Open data: magic from the inside out?

Over the last week I’ve been thinking about my experience of seeing an understanding of open data emerge within Hull City Council. Having considered ‘open data’ in part 1; the need to start internally in part 2; the importance of magicians in part 3 and recent developments in Hull in part 4 this concluding post hopes to tie those threads together.

The quantity of data which we have within local government is vast. In Adam’s pitch to the developers of Hull he mentions 150-300 disparate systems within our council, most of which will produce some kind of metrics. Whilst we all want an approach to open data which means the public sector is more transparent and active citizens are able to access that data the National Audit Office has said that attempts so far have been expensive, and haven’t engaged. Continue reading

Open data: of illusions and conjuring tricks

April 26, 2012 / / 2 Comments
This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Open data: magic from the inside out?

This is part 3 in a series thinking about whether the magic of open data in local government might be found from the inside out. In part 1, I considered the phrase ‘open data’ and pointed to thoughts elsewhere and part 2 suggested we needed to start from inside our organisations. In today’s third part I’m thinking about those who make magic.

Of illusions and conjuring tricks

In the last post I said that thinking about open data needed to start with how it improves what we do within our organisations because then we might understand it, recognise the value people might add to it and therefore properly champion the concept of ‘open data’.

It’s all very well saying that but if the narrative about exposing public data is difficult then an internal conversation which talks about what data could do for us is perhaps going to be thwarted before it gets off the ground anyway.

Part of the issue is that without concrete examples conversations can tend far too often towards the technicalities. The most helpful conversations aren’t comparing SOAP and RESTful APIs or talking about integration, nor will they bring up open standards or this protocol or that data format with the layman. Phil Jewitt recently wrote a couple of blog posts (1, 2) about how those beyond the project team didn’t need to know about SCRUM they just needed to know what was necessary. The most helpful conversations have at their heart somebody enthusiastically committed to sharing the secret of what’s possible.

Arthur C Clarke’s third law of prediction says that

“any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” Continue reading

Open data: Square One

April 25, 2012 / / 3 Comments
This entry is part 2 of 6 in the series Open data: magic from the inside out?

In Part 1 of this series, I considered the phrase ‘open data’ and pointed to thoughts elsewhere about whether it’s an unhelpful phrase, how communities are engaged to use it and how the government approach has been judged thus far. Today, I’m wondering about Square One.

Square One

It is great that the focus around ‘open data’ may be shifting away from simply getting us compliant and pushing data out to instead think about how engagement can be structured around its use. It’s also brilliant to see twitter buzzing about Saturday’s National Hack The Government Day which wouldn’t have been possible without the data that is there already.

I have no doubt at all that the public sector as a whole is sitting on a goldmine of information that can help make democracy flow and services perform better. But I think there’s a danger of being excited about the cart to the forgetting of its horses.

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Open data: concepts

April 24, 2012 / / 4 Comments
This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series Open data: magic from the inside out?


redkid absolut data by Libertic, from Flickr

redkid absolut data by Libertic, from Flickr

My time at Hull City Council has coincided with an emerging Open Data movement leading calls for greater transparency in the public sector. That has raised questions for my organisation and led to a lot of circular conversations. Recently things have started to change in a way that has got me thinking that perhaps the magic of open data is found from the inside out. Hopefully this series of posts will explain what I mean.

‘Open Data’

In some circles these two little words ‘open’ and ‘data’ have prompted much debate and discussion. Touted as making the public sector more accountable. Seen as an opportunity that excites because of tools it might make possible. But in other circles it’s an alien subject and a phrase that can be a little bit obtuse to those outside the choir.

Yes it is a phrase that means everything to the data evangelist but perhaps, as Graham suggests, it’s actually an idea that needs to die?
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