As I’ve spent a lot of time recently banging on about visual representations of policy issues, this post on the GOOD website is something of a feast.

Further to my previous post on why visualisation of data matters – and what the potential abuses are in the hands of pressure groups.

I’ve just seen this video by an American pollster and data visualiser @alexlundry – he covers the deceptive use of visualisations and the way that lobbies use them.

He covers the reasons why this is a much more powerful way of presenting information.

He also covers …. oh, just watch the whole thing. It’s only a coupla minutes and it’s very good.

(via Tom, Tom and Russell).

I draw one hefty conclusion from it. We need to find a way to increase public awareness of how this data can be abused, manipulated and misrepresented using the devices that Alex has outlined here. This is an important bit of civil literacy that could counteract many of the threats that I outlined in my previous post here.

Perhaps a Tumblr-type website where any mashups that anyone sees are submitted, then people who know about it (or are prepared to read a few of the books in this presentation) give the mashup points based upon the provenance and honesty of the data and it’s use?

It’s Christmas. That means that you have to indulge bloggers in their little obsessions.

Mine is an interest in the way that data can be presented in a way that changes our perception of an issue and clarifies a problem.

This one, for instance from Good Magazine:

You can zoom around and explore it here. (Via Information is Beautiful)

I’ve been reading Cass Sunstein’s ‘Going to Extremes‘ lately – it’s worth a look.

Sunstein’s conclusion – that when we are filtered into like-minded groups that we reinforce each other’s prejudices and tend to reach more extreme conclusions than we would if we were on our own – is not a particularly startling one in itself.

What is interesting is Sunstein’s discussion of how that polarisation happens and what the consequences of it are. He’s also very good on the question of  how extremism isn’t always a bad thing.

More of that another time though. The reason I’m drawing attention to it is that I think Cass would be interested in this exercise that I kicked off yesterday – almost on a whim.

Slugger O’Toole is a site that I contribute to occasionally, as well as working with it’s founder on some offline projects. The site is largely devoted to issues in Northern Ireland’s politics, and Mick has often noted a phenomenon called ‘Whataboutery.’

It’s something of a conversation killer.  A recent example that I found was where someone from Sinn Féin outlined views on violence against women. One of the first comments that appeared under the blog-post discussing this was that Sinn Féin members had no place discussing violence against women – after all, hadn’t the IRA killed lots of women in it’s time?

As points go, it’s not irrelevant, but neither was it designed to take the conversation about domestic violence to a productive place. (A clever commenter replied that Protestants had no grounds to speak about violence against women either – after all, Henry VIII beheaded two of his wives!)

Therefore, the reason I thought it would be a good idea to use debategraph to map ‘Whataboutery’ is because all of that enthusiasm for presenting one narrow exclusive point of view could be used to create something that the rest of us can use. Use the ‘hive mind’ comprised of the users of a large-ish website to construct a working model of a complex problem.

It also illustrates, I think, how active citizenship can be harnessed for the greater good. In the past, I’ve argued that consultations are often objectively undemocratic because they massively over-represent the views of people who feel strongly on specific issues and / or have more time on their hands than the rest of us.

The self-styled classical liberal blogger Tim Worstall has coined ‘Worstall’s Law of Organizations: “All and any organizations will in the end be run by those who stay awake in committee …”

But active citizenship works – I would suggest – when these people – often time-rich fanatics – have to compete with each other for the privilege of representing us for a few years at a time. As this debategraph illustrates, they may also be useful recruits to a hive mind mapping exercise. Perhaps we can learn a lot by listening to their general buzz of fanatics and busybodies even if we’d prefer to ignore their individual voices?

I’d like to show you this video for two reasons.

Firstly, it’s an interesting talk that I found very instructive. It is worth watching it right to the end.

Secondly, it shows how a creative use of illustrative tools can help to improve policymaking. If all evidence given to elected representatives was of this quality, I suspect that the quality of governance would be a good deal higher. I’m sure that the tools that were used to illustrate these figures have become cheaper and easier to use – I pointed to another example of this – in this case, software that can be used collaboratively.

What stops population growth? from Gapminder Foundation on Vimeo.

Technical developments can make research evidence more accessible. I would argue that this is the most undervalued and under-noted form of e-democracy.

Further to the occasional series here looking at ways that people are using open data and visualisation tools to help clarify complex issues, here is the ‘where does my money go‘ application:

The authors say that it’s not finished yet and you can look at their underlying data – they’re looking for feedback.

In terms of the delivery, for an alpha release, it’s very good. My minor beef is the same one that I have with ‘They Work For You’ – the notion that politicians work for us, or that government spending represents ‘spending our money’ is on that is allowed to go unchallenged too often. Framing an argument along these lines is, however, a good weekend’s work at least.

Local democracy: Not being pitched very hard on council websites

It seems that The Electoral Commission have decided that it is a basic human right for us to have ballot papers that make sense to us. Usability – not just regulatory box-ticking is, it seems the key here (I posted on ballot design here a while ago)

Measuring usability may also be the key to ensuring that a big opportunity on the horizon is taken seriously.

As I mentioned the other day, the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill (pdf) (text version) is likely to get royal assent in the not-too-distant. I covered the question of petitions the other day (and I’ll come back to this element briefly in a moment), but there is a bigger – even more interesting question about how far local authorities may thwart this obligation by a resort to box-ticking.

In summary, councils have to promote an understanding of…

• the functions of the authority and other local authority bodies that are connected to it
• the democratic arrangements that govern it
• how members of the public can take part in those democratic arrangements and what is involved in taking part
• how to become a councillor
• what members of the principal local authority do
• what support is available for councillors
• the functions of authorities which are connected with the principal local

It’s something of an indicator of the level of self-confidence within local government that such a role should be mandated by central government, and I suspect that – when we look back on how these obligations have been implemented in a few years time, we may see just how enthusiastically local authorities actually embrace this opportunity.

As every civil servant knows, you can either give your political masters what they want, or what they say they want. You can understand their aims and seek to meet them, or you can tick the boxes that they put in front of you.

A glance at many local authority websites will give you some idea of this. Here’s a way of looking at it:

Give some schoolkids a look at their local council website. Then ask them to do a comprehension on it – and see how enthusiastic they are about getting involved in local democracy at any level.

OK. This is a big ask. But I’m certain that some council websites would get much better results than others – so to check this hunch, I had a look at a few:

Here’s the first three I looked at – purely randomly (I picked the local council of the last three people I spoke to on the phone – choose your own method and pick three of your own?)

Colchester Council: ‘There’s a council meetings and decisions’ occupying one of the less prominent parts of the website. If you click on it you’re offered a range of unstructured unprioritised pages in alphabetical order. If you know what you’re looking for, you may click on the Your Council link, but even then, there’s no attempt to offer any structure, any narrative or to persuade visitors that there is a worthwhile democratic process in place. Information on Councillors is poorly laid out and hard to navigate. If there is a postcode search that allows you to find out who your councillor is if you don’t know the name of your ward, I can’t find it. If you click on the ‘how to become a local councillor’ page, the result can best be described at regulation-speak. 3/10

Broxtowe Council: If anything, it’s a good deal worse. None of the language matched what I would expect to look for if I was trying to find out about my council decision-making processes. The front page has a link to ‘Cabinet and Committees’ but you have to dig around in the ‘About Us’ section to find any reference to councillors. The information provided is sparse and grudging (I suppose that the small amount of info is as good as Colchester’s site which offers more info, but renders it almost useless by it’s structurelessness) 2/10

Camden Council: Much better. There’s a ‘Council and Democracy’ link in the main menu and it takes you through to a not-bad set of information that has plainly been written for purpose, rather than patched together in a document-management-system-to-content-management-system way (information techies will know what I mean here, and what shortcoming I’m alluding to. Once you’re in, there’s a big webcasting link that shows you how to view council meetings and reasonably well-written content on how decisions are made. It could offer more of a sales-pitch, but the intent is there. You are left with the definite impression that Camden wants to promote it’s democratic practices and that the forthcoming bill may even get them to raise their game further. 8/10

These are, admittedly, snap audits. But in many cases, perhaps there is a case for the provision of this content – the information – it’s structure, layout and language – to be taken out of the hands of permanent officials at local authorities. I don’t want to re-open the question of whether it is in the interests of council officers to do anything that increases the prestige of elected members, but…. maybe it could be done better by schoolkids who have looked at Camden’s site than the people who were paid to write content for Broxtowe?

Finally, on the question of petitions: The take-up of these e-petitions (and the measurements of how many people arrived on the ‘petitions’ page and how many completed the process), will provide us with metrics. Comparative metrics. We will be able to see which councils have used all of the resources at their disposal to drive up interest in local democracy. I wonder if anyone will pull this information together?

Just a short observation, in the light of Matthew Taylor’s post about the RSA’s work in Chelmsford that is being launched today.

“….a vision for the town centre must be based on a rich understanding of how people see and use the area and how they might be willing to change that view if the centre itself changed. We need to explore what could the town centre’s identity could be, and from that answer to develop ideas for embedding this identity in the physical and social fabric.”

It’s interesting that democracy is often understood to mean an engagement in party / pressure-group politics, or the clash of ideas and opinions. Local authorities will shortly have a statutory obligation to ‘promote democracy’ – which we are expected to understand as voting in elections. It means a promotion of the work of councillors and our right to participate in their decisions (and sometimes, our ability to force things onto the agenda with petitions).

We are told that we have a right to be consulted more often in more creative and professional ways. In other spheres, we see decentralisation and even the very word ‘democracy‘ conflated with the promotion of local councils. The democratic innovations are often around ‘citizens juries’ or ‘participatory budgeting.’

Most of this is, of course, a good thing. But it seems to me that the most valuable expression of democracy is our ability to shape our immediate environment. Our streets, housing, hospitals, schools and so on. The one where every one of us has something valid to say, and has experiences of having done so. Where the process of shaping our surroundings has created conversational networks that we can return to in order to solve new problems. Where there is less of a legitimacy gap between the general public and the professional or the expert practitioner.

It’s the one area where we can be guaranteed to know things that the experts don’t. Where we can bring them great ideas that they would never dream of, and that we can add the caring dimension that – with the best will in the world – town planners and architects will never have.

There’s my argument in a nutshell: Town Planners. Architects. See what I mean?

The RSA are looking for a number of other local areas to work with them in this way – it’s a great idea, and one that I hope will shape the whole question of ‘democratic renewal’ more than it does currently.

In preparing for a session at PICamp / Reboot Britain on Policymaking in the future, my friend Logan Wilmot (who I’m attempting to persuade to speak) sent me these YouTubes – examples of how the scale of change can be rammed home to an audience that may not be able to conceptualise what is being talked about.

I don’t know about you, but there were things in there that have changed the way I look at some questions. The ‘exponential world’ one is particularly interesting.

And on a slightly more trivial note, there’s this.

Both examples are here primarily to illustrate the way that WE are able to influence and help decisionmakers to conceptualise issues. I’ve done a number of posts on this blog about ‘visualisations’, looking at the way that issues can be explained with an attractive graphic.

The session – Policymaking in the Future – will look at ways that the old direct democracy problem can be solved. Policymakers generally don’t want to hear a torrent of opinion. They do, however, want to have the issues modelled for them. By presenting people with strong design, or other ways of conceptualising issues, we may be able to unearth new evidence in their responses. Debategraph and Mixed Ink go one step further and encourage people to actually start the process themselves.

I while ago, I also posted here on ‘eavesdropping’ – there is a growing body of evidence that shows how patterns of  internet use in response to a current issue can tell us things we didn’t know. Ways of finding out what people think without actually asking them may help to avoid a number of common biases.

The old monopsonies – think tanks, pressure groups, academics, newspaper owners, civil servants – have led many areas of policymaking into a cul-de-sac. Perhaps changes in the way we communicate can offer alternatives to the groupthink of the ‘official channels’ and bring a lot of creative minds in to work on the issues that concern us all. In the process, very many more people can be involved in policymaking, the product may be better, and this approach may also show a way to avoid the ‘tyranny of active citizens’ problem?

The session to explore this will take place at the PICamp strand of Reboot Britain on (next) Monday the 6th. So far, I’ve had confirmations from David Price (Debategraph), Steph Gray (Department of Business Innovation and Skills), Nick Buckley (GfK NOP) and Deborah Szebeko (Think Public). They will help to kick off the conversation on this issue, and if you can come along, it’d be good to see you there.

*apologies – I’ve just noticed I posted up two instances of the same vid by mistake. Fixed now….

If you’re hanging around Westminster between 7 and 17 July, pop into Westminster Hall to check out what sounds like a fun exhibition. The Royal Institution of British Architects have run a competition for schools to design a new Houses of Parliament. The nine shortlisted entries will be on display in the oldest part of the Parliamentary estate.

Joseph Swan School, Gateshead: A Palace for Northern Democracy
The jury was impressed with the schools imaginative approach to relocating the new national Parliament to the site of the Angel of the North and using this as a focal point for a home for Northern Democracy. The iconic structure and demonstration of design quality were exemplary.

St Robert of Newminster Catholic School & Sixth Form College, Washington: St Robert’s Design Team
The schools proposal to relocate the new Parliament to Newcastle upon Tyne and transform the existing Parliament into a new hotel and holiday attraction won approval from the judges. Working with Ryder Architecture at Stage 1, St Robert’s provided detailed information on cost, design and sustainability in preparing their submission for the new £87 million Parliament of the 21st Century. The judges were particularly impressed at the quality and detail of the submission which included a specifically designed brochure for the new Parliament as a technical document to be submitted as part of the planning process.

Southmoor School, Ryhope: Vintage Construction
Southmoor School from Ryhope proposed a number of sites outside London to re-locate the existing Palace of Westminster and placed great emphasis on the requirement for a new Parliament to be environmentally friendly with solar panels and wind turbines as well as calculating an estimated acceptable carbon foot print for the new Parliamentary building. The judges were impressed with the teams proposal to develop the existing Parliament into a new museum to celebrate the history and culture of Britain.

The Trinity Catholic School, Aspley: Designing a 21st Century Parliament – Sherwood Forest
Central to the schools submission was to relocate the new Parliament to Nottingham based on the importance that Sherwood Forest has to the Midlands region. The judges were particularly impressed with Trinity Schools’ emphasis on energy efficiency and sustainability and the community benefit that a new Parliament would offer the city of Nottingham.

Eastbourne College, Eastbourne: Designing a 21st Century Parliament – Ashford site
At the heart of the submission was the proposal to relocate the national Parliament to Ashford in Kent on an existing brownfield site. The judges were impressed that the team had met with local MPs to inform their submission and design and felt that their design demonstrated an understanding of an iconic building for the country as well as symbolism across the European Union.

Torquay Girls Grammar School: Designing a 21st Century Parliament for the West Country
The judges were particularly impressed with the team’s design plan and initial drawings for the new Parliamentary building and commented on the teams level of accuracy in determining the costs of the new Parliament in the West Country.

Eastbourne College, Eastbourne: Designing a 21st Century Parliament – Seven Sisters site
Eastbourne College’s team proposed a series of new and exciting proposals for the existing Parliamentary building in Westminster, whilst the new home of democracy is moved to a new site at Seven Sisters. The judges were impressed by the team’s use of development sketches and that they had met with local planners near the site to inform their building design and discuss wider planning issues.

Colyton Grammar School, Colyton: Designing a 21st Century Parliament
The judges were particularly impressed with the team’s initiative and research and their organic use of a new site to house the new Parliament. The school’s entry had demonstrated an excellent understanding of the sustainability agenda and had taken into account the need for new security measures set in a newly designed landscape.

Tavistock Community College, Tavistock: Designing a 21st Century Parliament
The judges were impressed with the innovative use of new methods of technology and their scientific research approach to design. The judges also commented on the ambitious proposal to power the new Parliamentary buildings through the use of wind turbines, and the team’s proposal to use regional building products.