Five (grim) predictions for 2011
Five prediction for 2011 that I really hope I’m wrong about.
I can see people preparing New Year’s prediction lists for tech and government and the two combined. All about how things will change in the New Year. I’ve always been a bit suspicious of these kinds of lists because 1. it seems a bit faddish and 2. they’re way too easy to get wrong. It’s too easy to check back and prove to yourself that you’re not the visionary guru that you hoped you were. The lists are literally hostages to fortune.
So instead of predicting a bright new future, I thought I’d draw on my natural pessimism to identify five things I think might happen in the New Year. And if they don’t – hurray! I can look back at the list and say: “Awesome! I was wrong.” I’m hedging my bets. And if they do, well – I told you so.
1. Local open data stalls.
After an initial flurry of activity in January for expenditure data (see revised LG Group guidance here) and a bit more a little later on related to contracts (new consultation guidance here on publishing contracts and tenders). Local government open data begins to stall. This is a patchy prediction. Some councils are going to be absolutely forging ahead. Places like Bristol (which is hosting the next Local by Social: Apps for Communities), a few places in London and some other bright stars in the data firmament begin using more and more open data and nurture their developer communities to make stuff useful to citizens and to local public services. But the rest slow down, drag their feet and don’t really see the point and fail to get on the bandwagon when pressure from the centre dies down.
Some cool apps are developed in some locations, but because there’s little collaboration on open standards for what’s quite similar data, we don’t see the benefits spread over the sector as a whole.
2. Social media in local gov become the domain of Comms
A lot of comms people in local government have been resistent to social media, but 2011 marks the end of that. Hurray, you say. Danger! I say. Social media works best where it’s a conversation between real people. Comms teams work under a model of communication that facilitated messages going between monolithic entities – the council and the local newspaper. Or where it was a more disperse model, it’s the council and broadcast only mechanisms like advertising and newsletters to a passive public. This is the year that councils comms catches on to the free to use (but labour intensive) social media scene, but attempts to control the messages even more tightly.
Of course central communications must play a role, but the benefits of social media can only really be achieved when there’s a more federated model of communications. Councillors communicating more easily with their constituents. Local people sharing information among themselves and council officers sharing matters of fact and pointers to more information with local people.
3. More councillors get in trouble for using social media.
This one is a shooting-fish-in-the-barrel prediction. Of course a councillor will get in trouble for his/her imprudent social media use. What’s sad about this is that coverage will continue to focus in 2011 on the medium (Twitter, Facebook, etc) rather than the fact that some in elected office has said something rather silly. Or rather than the fact that more councillors are using social media sensibly to engage with residents on matters from gritting to real discussion about the really hard decisions that local government faces this year, which is truly good news. (There’s some good advice here on staying out of trouble online).
4. Collaboration slows
Over the past year in particular, I’ve seen a big shift in the way that people are using Communities of Practice. People are sharing more, working more closely together, using it as a networking platform to get stuff done.
And the need for collaboration will be even greater as local government faces some tough times. So along with a growing trend, greater need and the roll out of the Knowledge Hub a new and much better platform for sharing for local public services - we should be well set to see some really great uses of tech-facilitated collaboration. But instead in 2011 we see practitioners drawing closer in, the value of content creation and practitioner led facilitation being questioned at ‘home base’ and people under threat behaving more like rats in a sack than team players across organisational boundaries.
5. Hyper-what? Neighbourhood and community networking doesn’t expand much.
For all the talk of localism and Big Society, there won’t be much walking the talk happens when it comes to local networks and blogging. Sure more sites get set up, but there isn’t much of an air of seriousness about it all. Unless blogging by local people is taken to heart by local news outlets (i.e. the crumbling papers and whatever happens with local broadcasting) there won’t be the kind of exposure that local blogs deserve. Local papers could easily set up a aggregating feed of local folks and maybe invest a bit of time into monitoring traffic and promoting stories of genuine local interest (letting cute pics of dogs in sweaters find their own traffic). And the more these stories are highlighted and promoted the more genuine local interest blog posts there would be. But that won’t happen.
And councils won’t take local blogging and social networks all that seriously either. And why not? See prediction 2. Can’t have someone else running the story can we? Can’t think of allowing bloggers to be emailed press releases, even though these are a) public documents or b) often a good way of getting the information out to a lot of people who live or work locally. And many councils still can’t be bothered to set up RSS feeds or start Twitter feeds to make up the difference where RSS is difficult to implement because of archaic content management systems. So despite some stellar work on online neighbourhood networks sponsored by Capital Ambition – few councils take heed and start to exploit online networks in a good way.
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I hope you’re wrong, but my pragmatic side says you’ll be spot on.
Having spent a sizeable minority of this year involved in promoting and using local government social media and open data platforms, I truly understand the benefits to be gained from holistically embracing them.
However, I’ve experienced numerous frosty receptions from localgov employees who don’t get it, e.g. 1) our social media steering group was folded into web strategy and effectively shut down 2) I set up a demo Twitter account @BCCRentServices and was then told by the management team to drop it, as it was “a low priority”.
I could continue the list, but would only get annoyed and start to rant.
My outlet was the opportunity to speak at the Local by Social in Coventry. You’ll notice I’m missing from the write ups, because I unleashed a torrent of negativity directed at my current employer, in a speech entitled “what not to do”. I presume people either thought I’d loose my job if they documented it or they just thought it was rubbish.
However, one local citizen came up to me the following day and said they liked what I said, agreeing with the feedback I gained from a local councillor the same day.
Maybe its just the post Xmas gloom of returning to work and battling the same incompetent numpties. I hope so, cause our ongoing internal business transformation consultation would be the perfect platform to lay out the business case for social media and open data. I just hope someone inspires me to do it, cause right now, I’m ready to quit and go back to private business.
yours,
Annoyed of Birmingham, UK.
You are of course almost certainly right in a lot of these points. In times of strife – theoretically the opportunity for innovation and lasting change to happen – government has a tendency to lock down and concentrate just on staying still – ie not going backwards.
It’s a shame, but there will always be pockets of good stuff happening and the role for folk like yourself, Ingrid, will be to keep pushing, to keep sharing good ideas and highlighting great practice.
[...] Five (grim) predictions for 2011 – Ingrid expresses a few concerns. Let's work to make sure this stuff doesn't happen! [...]
[...] has published a set of five rather grim predictions for next year. Go and take a look, and make one of your new year resolutions to stop them from [...]
I think that you are pretty much spot on here, however, there will always be the exceptions, the bright spots, the organisations and people that will drive innovation forward.
The immediate general organisational future may well look and be sluggish, but there will always be some bright stars to highlight to encourage the believers to carry on.
Hi Ingrid.
Wise as words, as ever. This is where I drop the shiny, because I think you’re right, but I also think speaking about them and blogging about them means peoples focus will be on preventing them. 2. in particular is interesting to me because it’s something we’re wrangling with at the moment internally, and the strategy I’ve written hedges a bit. In practice, and I do need to be very careful here, we’ve got interesting things happening inside our org, where some people have seen our winter campaign and bombarded me with requests for advice and assistance, but also concerning our winter campaign, there have been some issues as the campaign has run inside Comms and realisations have hit home about how much time nurturing a FB group properly can take. There’s skills issues in communicating across social media as well as untold other pitfalls too.
Um, what I’m trying to say is, it’s a biggie for us and it will be a biggie, I suspect, for others too, because we can’t hold on to communication the way we used to and so culture changes must happen and we must take responsibility for assisting with that. Acknowledge that training is needed.
Bah, there’s too much to comment on here. Epic post of win, in a most ironic way. :O)
I come in from the outside of all this. I don’t know the problems you are up against internally, but I know stuff on the outside. What I see is a few geeky council workers appearing out of the woodwork and trying their best to promote the benefits of the online world. They might not consider themselves geeks in the broadest sense of the word, but they are the early adopters and generally have good connections both at work and at home. Well workable connectivity that is.
I have met many of these people online on twitter, facebook etc.
The rest I have met in real life. At parish council meetings. At public meetings, and in my analogue social life. (yes I do have one of those too).
Speaking to them it is obvious to me what a good half of the problem is. Many of these people (especially the ones higher up the tree) do not have computer skills or decent internet connectivity. Yes they can use the ‘in house’ programmes, and read a pdf – but most of their info is delivered on dead trees. They can’t install new programmes on their work machines, and often not on their own either. They say they can’t get a connection at home despite engineer visits, and their mobiles don’t work at home unless they go outside. They say most of the people they talk to in their area say the same, they think its hopeless and don’t know what they can do to get a connection at home. So they manage without it and poopoo anything to do with computers as ‘not for me’.
They believe most social media is time wasting and they don’t care what somebody had for breakfast.
I don’t think you can be trained to use it at work unless you use it at home too. I think it becomes part of your life, just like phones did. If you are locked out at work and have limited connectivity at home then it is just too much trouble to persevere and you pick an analogue method of communication instead.
I don’t think people realise just how bad connectivity is in so many areas of the UK. Until everyone has a fit for purpose connection that simply works I agree with this post, the brave new world is not going to happen, and initiatives will stall until somebody grabs the bull by the horns and gets some investment in the infrastructure. There is no point in flogging a dead horse, or an obsolete phone network. Real connectivity comes through fibre, it gets to everyone, it is always on and fast, and it delivers what it says on the box.
We wouldn’t have people washing, bathing, cleaning half as much if they had to carry the water from the well.
Same with the internet. It has to be piped to everyone for us all to be clean.
Bring on the fibre. Bring on the digital revolution. Lets get out of this slow lane and get this country rocking, instead of dawdling around letting other countries get a head start on us. The brave new digital world awaits the brave.
chris
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Fiona Campbell-Howes, John Popham and others. John Popham said: RT @LouLouK: A very thought provoking post from @ingridk on fears for 2011 http://bit.ly/hXlHlc every #localgov employee shld read #lgovsm [...]
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Very interesting stuff; if content was always king – be it for local newspaper sites or, indeed, those of local councils – collaboration *has* to be queen…
http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/
…Which is why we’re working so hard to engage with local government bodies, the engineers – see Chris’ point above – to try and join some big, big dots here in terms of Local ‘TV’, digital inclusion, rural connectivity, etc etc.
The biggest challenge – as ever – will be funding; if BT snaffle up the biggest slices of the BDUK money and the LEPs finally arrive to replace the RDAs with no real money of note up their sleeve, then 2011 could indeed be the Year of Retrenchment.
At best.
R
A few quick comments…
Local open data: stalls in the sense that I don’ think you’ll see the majority of local authorities opening up datasets. Because the only exposure most authorities will have had to open data is the £500 expenditure dictat. Few people can see the return on investment in that kind of exercise. And, I think that scepticism will carry over when evangelists try to promote opening up other data. That will lead to the “we’ll only publish if we’re told to do so” mentality.
SocMed and Comms: I don’t see any problem with social media being seen as a comms tool. But, you’re right that the use of social media should not be reserved for the Comms team. But, then that’s part of the problem in organisational cultures. A lot of people don’t appreciate that comms skills are now a job requirement, just like IT or customer service skills. It’s taken more than half a decade here to get people thinking about comms. On the other hand, I like to think that the Facebook generation sees the value of using socmed to engage as well as promote.
[...] my five grim predictions for social media and open data in local government, turns out the one on the comms takeover of [...]
My father just shared a heartwarming article denoting how an everyday couple employed the desire for fresh fruits and vegetables to join together the people in their neighborhood. Perhaps we should use gardening to bring our neighborhood together.