Engaging with the Future

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In late October, Barnet Council voted their ‘Future Shape’ model of service provision into reality. Dubbed by the media as the easyJet service model, it’s one of a growing number of local authority projects that aim to radically re-engineer local service delivery - both to save costs and to meet growing consumer demand for more personalised services.

The council’s vision is to make tasks like arranging parking permits or planning permission more straightforward, while ensuring that those who need a lot of support from the council are able to shape packages of support that better suit their needs.

Such programmes raise questions about how to really involve citizens in decisions about service delivery – not just large ones like whether to proceed with a programme like Barnet’s, but the multitude of small decisions that need to be made to improve service delivery.

Most local authorities have significantly improved their consultation and engagement strategies in recent years. Most run online consultations, some webcast their council meetings, and others have experimented with social networks like Facebook and SecondLife - perhaps most notably, Manchester City Council who used SecondLife to talk to young people about their Building Schools for the Future programme.

Many have online simulators that allow citizens to decide how budgets should be spent and examine the impact of their choices. Westminster City Council’s was the first in 2004, and sadly no longer seems to be online; Barnet has a similar tool.

But while there is a lot of engagement between councils and citizens in the form of surveys and consultation exercises in which citizens can participate, often on single issues, there doesn’t seem to be an agreed tool set for facilitating ongoing and representative dialogue between residents of a local authority area about priorities and changes to local services.

Perhaps Westminster were on the right track in thinking about gaming as a possible engagement solution. In the US, public authorities are starting to engage with Foursquare, a location-based social network that encourages people to explore their neighbourhoods and then rewards them for their activities (for example, winning  a badge for visiting the gym more than 10 times in a month). Users can also compete to be the 'mayor' of an individual place by visiting it the most.

The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit system recently announced a tie-up with Foursquare to encourage residents to use public transport, and make better use of the businesses and facilities that surround their stations.   Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley said he intended to take Foursquare’s influence into broader areas, including encouraging residents to get more involved in their communities.

Whether it’s possible to use Foursquare or similar tools to engage citizens about more serious issues like priorities for local services remains to be seen. The London Foursquare launched in early October and it will be interesting to track whether it achieves the critical mass needed for local authorities to trial it as a method for engaging citizens.

But with universal access to broadband just around the corner, it would seem that now is the time for local authorities to experiment more widely with methods to generate meaningful and ongoing dialogue between citizens, as well as with citizens, about the services and facilities they use.