At Kilkenny County Council we have just launched a consultative website for the forward planning department.

The new website allows members of the public to comment on and to make submissions to the Local Area Plan. These comments and submissions are considered by the Council in the formulation of the Local Area Plans.

We believe that this site will help to enable enhanced transparency within the consultative process and will also permit a wider group of interested parties to participate in the process.

This site represents an evolution of our planning wiki project , the new site is easier to use and to navigate than the wiki site and allows interested parties to easily make comments on or submissions to the plan.

As far as we are aware Kilkenny County Council is the first Local Authority in Ireland to allow members of the public to make submission to such plans online.

Three additional Local Area Plans, for Fiddown, Piltown and Mooncoin will be published using the same format over the coming months.

Visit Gowran Local Area Plan

All of the presentations were very interesting and will all be online shortly. I will update you on their availability and provide a full report on the event in a subsequent post as soon as the remaining presentations go online.

In the meantime here is the presentation I gave on
‘Working with Web 2.0 (Social Software in the Workplace)’

View fullscreen

The Interview is online as part of Krishna’s hour long podcast at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/PodcampIreland

You can also download an MP3 version of the interview, which is excerpted from the podcast, the interview runs approximately 20 minutes.

In the interview we discuss the recent Kilkenny County Council planning wiki project.

Government 2.0 Symposium in the IRM Government Center in Second Life

The Panelists were

• David Wennergren, Deputy DOD Chief Information Officer (Moderator)
• Bruce Klein, Director of Public Sector Group, Cisco
• Anthony Williams, VP New Paradigm and co-author of Wikinomics
• Mike Bradshaw, Director, Enterprise Federal, Google

The kenote speech was given by David Weinberger, Weinberger is a U.S. technologist, writer, and
Web 2.0 guru. He is the co-author of the “Cluetrain Manifesto”.

The Seminar took place in Washington DC, but through the wonders of technology I was able to attend the symposium at the IRMC Government Center in Second Life.. Second Life participants could view a video feed, chat and interact with each other and could also submit questions to the panelists.

The presentations started with a showing of Shift Happens (watch it if you haven’t already..)

Shift Happens

The presentations will all be available on the IRMC website shortly.Overall, some fascinating presentations, the event was attended by representatives of over 30 US universities, over 15 government agencies, and personnel from NASA and the Library  of Congress and many more.
David Weinberger’s speech was a little marred for Second Life attendees as his lapel mike was malfunctioning and it was a little difficult to hear everything he was saying but essentially he outlined how for big organisations, change is hard, but then in time, a big ‘shift happens’ and that this shift provides a ‘moment of opportunity’ where change is made easier for organisations if they can only surf the wave of enthusiasm and excitement that is  felt by the public during these shifts, and that government organisations internationally currently have this opportunity..

Anthony Williams (author of Wikinomics)  spoke about rethinking public services and urged government  organisations to open channels for feedback, engagement and collaboration , he gave the examples of ChicagoCrime.org   and Fix MyStreet

Williams also discussed the problems that exist around the ‘complex machinery of government’ arguing that there are too many levels in government, and too many agencies, and explained that this was no one’s fault having grown organically over the centuries, but that  now ‘knowledge must flow horizontally’ as an example of this new type of structure he outlined the Intellipedia project,
Another key issue for Williams was that of restoring trust in democracy, in his view democracy internationally has suffered in recent years, the ‘broadcast’ model of politics is dead, he said. It is time to invite participation and to rethink the division of labour, harnessing mass collaboration to engage people in the creation of a better society. ‘ It is important to remember’, he highlighted, ‘that Web 2.0 (and Government 2.0) is not about technology, it is about connecting PEOPLE’.

Next up was Bruce Klein of Cisco who also outlined his view that Web 2.0 is not about technology but rather it is about ‘culture’ and ‘process’ he also spoke of the urgent need to move towards  collaborative and teamwork based organisations. In his opinion the biggest issues are the leadership and the organisational culture. The leaders need to be willing to change and to adapt to these new structures.  He explained how in Cisco the  leaders who couldn’t ‘get this’ were invited to choose another role..
Last up was Mike Bradshaw, Google’s Director for Government Services, who also spoke extensively about Generation Y / The Net-Gen and the difficulties in attracting them to work in government agencies and the need to open up the enterprise to these new social tools..
The Presentations will be available here.. they are well worth watching,  very focused on a collaborative future, and delivered with a real sense of urgency…

Blinkered public sector thinking that blames sites such as Facebook for office time wasting is stunting the take up of web 2.0 in government, according to an association for IT professionals.

“Laggards” in local government are doggedly resisting user generated content, blogging, mash-ups and social networking on council websites, according to the Web 2.0: what it is and why it matters report by public sector IT body Socitm.

It warns CIOs, comms managers and councillors to allow the public to shape their communities through forums and to engage with community websites and blogs or risk being branded “Luddite”….

…Almost 80 per cent said concerns about time wasting was preventing greater use of social networking and wider web 2.0 adoption, with less than half letting staff use social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo and only just over half allowing employees to use business social networking site LinkedIn.

The report says: “With one or two exceptions…those who are laggards find it very difficult to shake off that mantle.

“More importantly, the defensive approach amongst teams and a culture of maintaining the status quo that seems to go with it is difficult to shift.

“The only choice is whether to be in the vanguard, pursuing an exciting path of controlled experiment and learning, or to be dragged along as a reluctant follower with a Luddite reputation in the eyes of your community.”

Read entire article on Silcon.com

(I am an IS project manager for Kilkenny County Council and this wiki is one of my current projects.)

We believe that this project represents the first use of a Wiki by a government organisation in Ireland as part of a public consultative process.

The aim of this wiki is to enable interested and engaged members of the public to participate online in a collaborative discussion around the development of future Local Area Plans (LAPs). Any interested parties can register themselves on the wiki and can then make changes or additions to articles within the LAPs. Comments can also be made on any of the content of the wiki. When a change, addition or comment is made on the wiki it enters a queue for moderation by a member of Kilkenny County Council Staff. Contributions will be moderated for defacement or for improper use; all contributions made in good faith will be approved and will become visible on the wiki for all visitors to read. During office hours all contributions will be reviewed as soon as possible following their addition. All contributions made outside of office hours will be reviewed as soon as possible on the next working day.

It is intended to leave all valid contributions online and following the close of the consultative period to leave this wiki online (but locked) as a document of record.

We believe that this wiki will help to enable enhanced transparency within the consultative process and will also permit a wider group of interested parties to participate in the process.

A comment on or contribution to an article on the wiki does not constitute a submission to the local area plan, rather the wiki is intended as a mechanism to enhance collaboration and debate with the public and any interested parties and also as a mechanism to enhance transparency.

All contributions to this wiki will however, be considered by the Planning Department in the formulation of the plans.

The Draft Plans of Callan and Castlecomer are being used to pilot the use of a wiki as part of a consultative process. If successful it is intended to use the system with all future local area plans.

You can visit the wiki here: http://wiki.kilkennycoco.ie/

There are a number of very interesting presentations on Government 2.0 available for download from the site.

Speaking at the opening of the Green Party’s annual convention in Dundalk, Co Louth, Mr Gormley said it would deliver the biggest reform of local administration since 1898.

Some excerpts..

Mr Gormley said the new measures, when implemented, would allow citizens to be centrally-involved in decisions taken at local level. “I want to see citizens given a say in budgetary decisions. There is no reason why the people should not decide what the spending priorities should be in their communities. I will be examining the increased use of plebiscites which would allow people shape major decisions to be taken by town, city and county councils.”

Turning to his plans for a petition system, he said it would allow people gather signatures on pressing local issues and present them to the local council. The council would then be compelled to debate and decide the issue.

 Link to Irish Times Article

(Requires paid subscription)

See also some of my earlier posts:

E-Democracy , E-Petitioning and Local Government

MySociety.org E-Petitioning System

Communities of Practice Website for Local Government Employees.

Top boffins have given economic backing to a campaign to relax access restrictions on government-collected databases, such as the Ordnance Survey’s unrivalled stash of UK mapping information.

The Department for Business, Employment and Regulatory Reform (BERR, formerly DTI) released the analysis, commissioned from a team at the University of Cambridge, last week. It refutes the oft-cited government line that allowing free access and reuse of national data assets would harm the economy.

The Free Our Data campaign has been arguing against that line for two years, and now has the sums to back up its smack talk.

In fact, 147 pages of number-crunching led to the conclusion that opening up the data vaults at the Met Office, Land Registry and a host of other agencies could benefit the economy to the tune of net £164m. The vast majority of that sum would come from the Ordnance Survey, however.Subject to a policy review, charges for accessing and reusing reams of data should therefore be dropped, they argue.

It would mean developers could freely access mapping data to create their own location-dependent apps, rather than be reliant on Google Maps, for example.

The Report ‘Models of Public Sector Information Provision via Trading Funds’ is available online.

It’s the same situation in Ireland with the OSI ‘owning’ all of the governments mapping data and licensing it at substantial cost to other government agencies and to private industries.

One can only imagine the amount of innovation that would be unleashed were this data to be made available free of cost to businesses and entrepreneurs.

Another immediately obvious benefit would be public safety.

In Ireland all Counties have a ‘Major Emergency Plan’ in place (The Plan provides for a co-ordinated response to major emergencies arising, for example, from a major road, train, air or river accident; a serious fire; violent storms; flooding or a dangerous incident) , and for all counties GIS assets and mapping data are an essential element of this plan.

In an emergency the emergency personnel may need relevant map data which also displays things like the location of gas pipes , power cables, water hydrants etc. In addition to basic maps of the area.

At the moment it is not clear if a major emergency occurred on a border between two counties, how this would be handled, as each counties mapping assets (licensed from the OSI) literally stops at the county boundary.

This could give rise to a situation where emergency workers have only half a map or two half maps of the emergency area. There is also the possibility that the two adjacent county councils have different (and incompatible) mapping systems, so there may not even be the possibility of easily creating a compound map.

Were OSI mapping assets readily and cheaply available however, each county could also store relevant mapping of adjacent counties, ensuring that in an emergency mapping resources would be readily available.

The Communities of Practice for Local Government website supports professional networking across UK local government and the public sector. It is a freely accessible resource that enables knowledge development and sharing through online communities of practice.

Registered members can join communities, or create their own, connect with their peers and domain experts, arrange meetings, participate in forums, up-load documents and subscribe to conversations. Staff need to register and select their organizations from a pre-populated dropdown list of recognized organisations.

This seems like an excellent idea, and perhaps one to emulate in Ireland, the only possible stumbling blocks being lack of awareness of web 2.o technologies or lack of access to those technologies within Irish Government organisations.

http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/welcome.do