Here are a few takeaway thoughts from my afternoon.

1. I barely knew anyone

It’s years since I was a fish in a geeky pool, active in the free culture movement, the KDE community, software patent activism and other odds and sods.

For the past five years or so I’ve moved onto land, or perhaps a coral reef, to be more involved with issues around the environment, housing and pay inequality. The past two or so have been working as a local government employee at the GLA, supporting Green Party Members of the London Assembly. They have pushed for open data, but it’s not exactly a hot topic in our weekly meetings. My only remaining connection has been OpenStreetMap, my one geeky obsession.

Still, it didn’t matter, go along even if you know no-one at all.

2. It was nice to reconnect with optimistic techies

The event reminded me of one of the things I most like about these crowds: they’re all optimistic about the future and enthusiastic about the common interest.

I’m glad I managed to quickly chat to a few people I did know, sort of… Gail via Twitter, and Giles Gibson from the Herne Hill Forum, but sadly I only said as much as “hello” to people like Emer Coleman and Chris Osborne. That’s what you get for arriving late and leaving early.

3. It’s more meaty than you’d think

That’s “meatspace” as in “the real physical world”, compared to “cyberspace” online. Compared to events a few years ago on open data and technology, most of the discussion I heard was about councils and companies working on staff structures and consultation processes, and then thinking about how technology and data could help.

I used to get frustrated with discussions that started with the assumption that open data and technology was going to revolutionise the world. That seemed upside down to me. So I was pleasantly surprised at this.

4. There’s a lot of “we”

Somebody pointed this out in one session – it’s very easy to apply “we” to the wider population when you really mean “we sort of people in this room”.

Often “we” are innovators or early adopters of ideas that become more mainstream, like using a smart phone to access services. Sometimes “we” are set to be a significant minority, like journalists, bloggers and politicians who use data to enhance their investigatory work. Just as often “we” are a world unto our own.

It’s fine, innocent mostly, typical of any event with like-minded people. It just grated on me when people talked about reconfiguring public services or management around their preferences, as though the rest of the world will thank them.

I might make a badge for myself if I go again, with the slogan “we’re not normal” or similar!

5. Theres a lot going on out there

Cocooned in City Hall, working on affordable housing or the pay gap, it’s hard to keep even a toe dipped in this pool. It was great hearing from so many people in so many walks of work and life doing so many useful things.

Sometimes when I map an area for OpenStreetMap, walking down a street noting house numbers, I feel a bit bewildered by all these people living here! London feels impossibly enormous. I left UKGovCamp feeling similarly bewildered by the enormity of work going on in this field, relative that is to my own small bits and pieces in my job and my free time.

Emer draws on the work of Jürgen Habermas, a sociologist and philosopher whose theory of the system and the lifeworld helps describe the difference between New Public Management and Open Governance. In short, the New Public Management model involves government (“the system”) choosing the tune and forcing the public (“the lifeworld”) to dance to that tune (“colonisation”). You can only hold government to account according to the data that public managers decide to collect and disseminate. Open Governance on the other hand allows for meaningful dialogue between government and civil society, leading to what Habermas called “communicative action” where people talk about complex issues and then act (and hold to account) based on a common understanding.

While the London Assembly has started to embrace open data and social media, I think it has been fairly superficial. Or rather, in Emer’s terms, it has remained within New Public Management model. Scrutiny of the Mayor is carried out by committees of Assembly Members with goals and performance established by public managers and politicians; social media is used for the most part to communicate that to the public.

The London Assembly, for those out of the loop, is an elected body of 25 politicians who hold the Mayor of London to account.

I want to pick up on a comment by Janet Hughes, Head of Scrutiny in the London Assembly, that “media, bloggers, members of the public… should all form part of an overall picture – its not about competing with each other but it’s about all these different parts coming together to ensure maximum accountability and transparency”.

I want to very quickly sketch how committees currently carry out their scrutiny work, then suggest a way in which they might embrace an open scrutiny model that allows for communicative action rather than colonisation. I don’t pretend to have arrived at a complete description of Scrutiny 2.0, but hopefully it will provoke some further comment.

Public scrutiny in the old model

When the Environment Committee carried out two investigations into street trees, first in 2007 and then again in 2011, the subject and the terms of reference for the scrutiny were drawn up by Assembly Members and support staff. In each case the public were invited to submit written evidence according to those terms and further framing questions; the public were already colonised by the system. Invited experts gave evidence at public meetings, with scant opportunity for further public input. The reports were then drafted by support staff entirely within the Assembly, behind closed doors, and when the Assembly Members signed off on the reports the public were offered a finished product.

Some very good scrutiny products, I should add. But to the extent that they could be involved further, the public were left to comment on the committee’s work and press Assembly Members if they wished the committee to follow any aspect up.

At times, there is even an understandable but worrying tendency to think that the public’s input isn’t particularly helpful. Committees often scrutinise complex technical subjects such as the housing market, and so highly trained support staff look to highly trained experts for input. No effort is made to engage in a wider discussion with the public; it is more time consuming and, compared to expert discussion, does little to advance scrutiny according to the terms and frames set within the system by support staff and politicians.

Now, the second report on street trees was particularly interesting because it identified lack of data as a major barrier to the committee’s being able to hold the relevant public bodies to account. In the New Public Management model, the system wasn’t enabling proper performance management.

It also carried a case study on the local community in Elephant & Castle crowdsourcing their own data to bolster their case for saving the “Heygate forest”, something I’ve blogged about here.

Darren Johnson, Green member of the Assembly visiting the Heygate Estate to meet local activists

The activists didn’t map the trees and estimate their financial value as part of an antagonistic anti-council and anti-developer campaign; they are trying to engage in a meaningful dialogue with both before the council and developer draw up plans behind closed doors that decide the fate of the trees. Planning consultations at that stage are a perfect example of the system colonising the lifeworld.

If only the council and developers would really embrace the activists’ open approach it would be a wonderful example of Habermas’ communicative action.

Open scrutiny

Now then, what would the Assembly committee’s next scrutiny on street trees look like if this process really was “adaptive and iterative”, if the committee sought to “come together [with the public] to ensure maximum accountability and transparency”?

The second report published this year was iterative in that it updated the findings of the first, and adaptive in that it looked at new issues such as open data. But that iteration and adaptation was done within the system, by Assembly Members and support staff.

Perhaps in the next four years we will see more examples of activists using data to record and communicate their stories just like the Heygate activists – about trees being cut down, ruined by overzealous council pollarding or damaged by weapon dog training. If the support staff were to pick up on this not just as an indication of issues it should examine but as data and perspectives to be analysed then the iteration and adaptation between reports would start to be more open without needing a costly and difficult public consultation exercise.

Maybe social media like Twitter will also be so widely used by Assembly Members, support staff and activists that the work in between public meetings will be communicated and therefore in part conducted online, in public. Assembly Members might discuss terms of reference with activists; support staff and activists might discuss initial findings and potential recommendations. Bloggers from avid Mayor watchers to tree huggers would contribute their own more developed thoughts as the scrutiny process unfolds, offering useful new data, questions and perspectives for the committee to consider. Iteration and adaptation would be rapid, throughout the process of a single report than rather than in the years between reports.

In this model, the committee doesn’t assert itself outside the lifeworld, part of the system that scrutinises another part of the system. Instead, the committee conducts its scrutiny in partnership with the lifeworld, with the public.

The London Assembly remains relevant at least because of its well trained and managed staff, and necessary in view of its democratic function.

What do you think?

I’m no futurologist so my sketch of open scrutiny is probably deeply unadventurous. It is conceived from within the New Public Management model of a committee of politicians scrutinising a topic and producing a report. But I think it takes us beyond that model in an important sense, seeing scrutiny as a kind of communicative action where the committee, bloggers and activists come together to, in Janet’s words, “ensure maximum accountability and transparency”.

What do you think?

The main misconception I want to address is that all policy advocated by elected politicians can, or should, be found in our written party policy. Another way of stating this myth is to say that the policies we debate and pass at conference provide the bulk of the detailed policy used by elected politicians.

Some examples in housing policy

Housing policy is pretty complex, especially in a metropolis like London

Here are some questions that our London Assembly members have tried to answer in the past year:

• How much of the affordable housing grant should we spend on social housing and how much on low-cost home ownership products? Would we prefer to see a greater priority for social homes, even if it meant that we built fewer affordable homes overall, given that social homes require a greater subsidy?
• Should we press for co-operative home ownership to replace the main “shared ownership” offer?
• Would we rather see all social homes brought up to a minimal Decent Homes standard, or a smaller number brought up to a standard that also addressed energy and water efficiency?

Now, let us look for guidance in Green Party policy. In the section on housing we find:

HO103 The Green Party seeks a balanced mix of housing tenures, to meet the diverse needs of the community. These include individual and shared home ownership, leasehold, and others. […] The Green Party seeks to increase the amount of social housing and commonly owned housing as representing the best way of ensuring an availability of affordable housing.

In answering the first question we face a quandary. Party policy supports both social housing and low-cost home ownership (of which “shared ownership” and “leasehold” are two forms). How do we prioritise between the two?

Reading through the rest of the policy, it is clear that there is a much greater concern with social housing than other models, and with addressing housing need than demand. So it isn’t a great leap to suggest that our Assembly Members should be more supportive of social housing.

But advocate a drop in the number of affordable homes built if it means more social homes?

How about support for co-operative housing models such as Community Land Trusts? Party policy has a number of supportive statements, so we can assume that promoting them is probably OK. What about practical measures? Until the autumn 2010 conference, we only had this idea:

HO415 A new Co-operative Housing Agency would be set up to promote, support and fund housing co-operatives. It will be run according to co-operative principles with membership drawn from existing co-operatives.

So the Mayor could establish some sort of support service or agency for housing co-operatives in London. But actually when we did some detailed research into the barriers facing housing co-operatives we developed four other solid policy recommendations (along with a slew of more technical points that were pursued through committee work, formal questions to the Mayor and meetings with his housing officers).

Finally, let us turn to Decent Homes. This programme was designed by the Labour government to bring all social housing up to a basic standard – kitchens, bathrooms, windows and the like. There are also calls to include decent energy and water efficiency standards, but that would drive up the cost and so reduce the number of homes you could improve with the available grant. You might expect that Party policy has a lot to say in this area, but this is what we have for guidance:

HO417 Priority will be given to the maintenance and improvement of existing properties before new house building is considered.

HO502 All new housing will be designed for low energy use, and the same standards applied retrospectively to existing houses where practicable.

EN505 Building Regulations for energy standards to be applied to existing as well as new buildings, except where this would compromise listed buildings; Landlords will have a responsibility to ensure that their dwellings be brought into line with prevailing energy standards at their own expense.

We gather that the Party is concerned with improving existing housing, and giving a certain priority to energy performance. But on the question of how best to allocate the inadequate money provided by central Government, Assembly Members are left to come up with their own answers.

Housing is thankfully an area where our policy is relatively helpful, at least in steering our politicians in the most general sense. In most policy areas, the detail of how you insulate every home or improve cycle safety will never be the same across every local area of England and Wales. In areas such as policing, where issues burst into the political space and dissipate within a matter of weeks, politicians have to think on their feet.

The policy process

To develop new party policy takes at least one conference, and for significant changes two or three. This makes our core policy document – Policies for a Sustainable Society – too slow to keep up with the rapid developments in policy that occur in local and regional government up and down the country.

Members vote on policy at the Spring 2008 conference in Reading

What we in effect work with is a hierarchy.

At the top, the Policies for a Sustainable Society provide a sacrosanct policy framework agreed by members at conferences. No Green politician should be advocating policies that contradict it.

Beneath that, we produce manifestos for national, regional, and sometimes local elections. These elucidate a selection of policies that are most relevant to the politics of the time; they conform with the Policies for a Sustainable Society, though at times it is necessary for the member of the national executive (GPEX) responsible for policy to develop new ideas that significantly extend our policy statements with the involvement of the Policy Committee, the Regional Council, relevant experts and our key elected politicians. For example, in the May 2010 General Election manifesto we proposed to cancel all local housing revenue account debts, freeing councils up to build and maintain council housing. This was debated and agreed by policy wonks and politicians; they couldn’t wait until the autumn conference to put the motion to the Party conference.

At the bottom of the heap you will find politicians and the public servants that support them – usually employees of their local authority rather than the party. In the cut and thrust of politics, we public servants look to our politicians for policy direction and trust that they avoid erring from the Policies for a Sustainable Society and recent manifestos. On occasion we will search party policy for more detailed guidance, but we rarely find satisfaction.

So politicians and their support staff develop policies that represent a significant chunk of their work, detailed policies that you will not find in any conference motion or party manifesto.

Sometimes they find their way back, as happened with a motion on co-operative housing models that I brought to the autumn 2010 conference in my capacity as a party member. Mostly, they briefly reach for effect and then wither amongst the ephemera of daily politics.

There are checks on this. The London Federation scrutinises our Assembly Members’ monthly reports, and an Elected Members Liaison Committee provides an opportunity for further detailed discussion about any points of contention.

This process of policy elucidation and innovation enables our politicians to be relevant, to press for and at times achieve real change in the spirit of Green Party policy, as defined by its members.

His vaguely interesting idea here is basically that really big changes come about when people with strong social ties are willing to stick it out in a nasty battle to win the day. Social networks with weak ties (e.g. just following each other on Twitter) will fall apart if they try to take on power to make a really big change because in the process they will probably have to suffer a loss of income, physical injury, etc. Twitter messaging won’t motivate them to stick out the hardship.

But by pitting Twitter against a political movement as momentous as American Civil Rights in the 1950s and 60s, he obscures a much more fundamental point. In fact, by obsessing on the tools and tactics employed by activists he fails to notice that the Twitter mythology and failures he describes are really to do with an absense of good strategy.

Ineffective online activism is better exemplified by 38 Degrees, the spam service for angry people looking for a quick fix. Their recent spat-in-a-teacup with an MP exposed the curious importance some put on being able to “send a message to the man” no matter how little impact that might have.

If you want to vent your angrer in reaction to events that piss you off – for example, to attack the Government’s agenda of cuts – then Tweeting angry messages and starting Facebook groups are a great way of satisfying your emotions. But so are marches through city centres, rain-sodden rallies outside town halls and petitions on street stalls. Being ineffective isn’t an online phenomenon.

In discussing a reaction to the Government’s cuts agenda there will be endless calls for petitions, marches, lobbies, speeches, stalls, and blogs. Policy platforms will be formulated without any regard to whether they would actually help, by for example lobbying councils to pass illegal budgets. Lessons from the past will be brushed aside or even return from the grave because the idea of venting, of making a “clear statement”, will be more appealing than the business of working out how we can actually shift the agenda.

Twitter, Facebook, blogs and the rest can be very useful tactics if put in the context of a wider strategy that convincingly describes how those tactics will bring about your aims.

Gladwell takes his vaguely interesting idea too far by suggesting that “the revolution won’t be tweeted”. What he really means is that “tweeting won’t cause a revolution.”

My principal objection to the “do-ocratic” model is that it excludes “those who can’t” from setting the direction of the project, and that as a consequence OpenStreetMap is unlikely to meet the needs of a great many people.

Did I mean that developers are lazily or selfishly ignoring others’ needs? No, I am aware of and indebted to the efforts of many volunteers working to make OpenStreetMap more accessible and usable. Only a handful of community members refuse to engage in grown-up debate.

Do I mean to whine because I am excluded? Not at all. I consider myself to be very technically skilled and sufficiently time rich tohave contributed a lot over five years. I’ve dropped off mailing lists because I’m not that time rich and I’ve not got the skills to develop many tools I’d like, but that’s life.

So do I want developers to be subject to the force of a governing body, to dance to a top-down tune? No, I am a great fan of communities that harness the energy and enthusiasm of people who choose of their own accord to hack on things that interest them.

Do I think OpenStreetMap will fall apart if it doesn’t address my concerns? No, Tom Hughes rightly pointed out that a legitimate path for the project would be to remain a haven for the technically skilled and time rich, leaving others to step in and enable a wider community of enthusiasts or create business opportunities just as MapQuest have recently announced.

Am I suggesting that none of this is being discussed elsewhere? Not at all, I’m aware that some Foundation members are trying to tackle these sorts of issues.

My objection to the do-ocracy boils down to thinking that it’s a shame. I think OpenStreetMap could be much more, and that it stands in danger of being forked or ignored (as it already is) by a great many who would find it useful and add a great deal to the community. So long as key decisions and discussions are dominated by the technically skilled and time rich who can “just fucking do it”, the project will continue to reflect their preferences.

Giving the OpenStreetMap Foundation a wider and deeper remit, putting a corporate fundraiser at the top of the priority list and making an effort to include a variety of Board members from backgrounds other than core OSM hacking will all help. I’m glad that Mikel Maron, Thea Clay, Harry Wood and countless others are actively working to make this happen.

The Lane 2010 election results

To get an idea of how much of a difference having the national and local elections on the same day had in London, look at the black lines. I’ve drawn those into to show, roughly, where the votes were in the 2006 local elections. The increased turnout was massive, and it almost all went to Labour/Lib Dem/Conservative candidates. Across Southwark their vote increased between 50-300% whilst the Green vote was up much, much less; we just got left behind.

In The Lane, the Lib Dems didn’t even campaign. Their candidates didn’t attend the hustings, they only really put out general election leaflets in the area, they didn’t door knock, they’re not particularly active in local groups and their 8 year rule of Southwark Council didn’t do much for the area (to say the least). Yet their vote more than tripled to surge past us. We have been active in the area since 2006, campaigned hard on the doorstep and involved ourselves in lots of local campaigns and community groups, but even doubling our vote wasn’t enough to stop paper candidates overtaking us. That sucks.

It raises the old question: should general and local elections be on the same day? With the Brown/Cameron/Clegg show on TV and all the papers, two years of a Tory Mayor, eight years of a Lib Dem/Tory council for Labour activists to be angry at, and so many voters being unaware of the local situation, how could we ever compete?

For my part, it’s back to the local groups and streets to fight on. Next up: GLA elections in 2012!

I suspect I’m like the majority of people in that I really get put off by politicians saying “don’t vote for Party X or you’ll let Party Y in”, as though they’ve nothing more compelling to offer voters than “we’re not that lot”. Ultimately I would always want people to vote for the party they most support, give or take some tactical voting if they prefer. So if the Pirates are your bag then get involved with them.

But the Pirates are an unashamed single issue party. Their manifesto lays out a radical agenda for copyright, patents and online privacy. That’s an interesting proposition for an MEP who can take that militant approach in a very large Parliament. But MPs and councillors are constituency politicians, they need to represent and support people on every issue on the books with an open statement of their approach. If I were to vote for a Pirate, I’d want to know that they are concerned about the need for affordable homes, better partnership working to improve my town centre and urgent action on climate change. Even if I weren’t a committed Green, I’d want a local Pirate candidate to set her/his personal stall on those issues before they got my vote.

We Greens also have some good policy on these subjects, tying them into our wider approach to the economy, culture and government. When their grassroots and youth wing mobilise, the Lib Dems sometimes take these issues up, the Conservatives sometimes talk the talk and the split personality Labour government have made some good recent moves. I’d much rather vote for a candidate from a rounded party who also took the Pirates’ concerns seriously in these elections.

Great, so why have they been party to a state that has taken ever more power away from people, replacing citizenship with shallow consumer rights? How do you get beyond slogans and soundbites to genuinely empower local people?

In a recent blog entry I wrote about the money side of the equation – how you can enable local people to directly invest in projects that will improve their neighbourhood, a topic Matt Sellwood has some interesting thoughts on. You could also use tools like participatory budgeting, made fun by the unsurpassably brilliant The People Speak, or really make the most of the Sustainable Communities Act. But what about the people themselves?

Labour have too often confused the voluntary sector with community groups. A lot of people depend on and benefit from the work of the voluntary sector – just look at the fantastic Peckham Voluntary Sector Forum, for example!

But what about those of us who would just like to be a little more involved in our neighbourhood, who would like to start a group to grow some food, or a knitting club, or a campaign to improve some cycle lanes? For us, the voluntary sector is too unweildy, slow and offputting. Who has the time to establish a constituted organisation to apply for funding and hire a venue for a public meeting? Who has all the right local contacts to hand?

Local hero Eileen Conn mentioned the idea of Community Development Officers to me recently. On reflection I think she’s spot on. You need people who can be visible at a very local level, running training events on basic organising skills, helping local people to lead rather than trying to lead them, signposting sources of support, getting them to build co-operative relationships, encouraging them to take risks, and linking them up with councillors who will make the council system work for them (as opposed to just “representing” them). London Citizens do this quite brilliantly with existing schools and religious groups.

The final piece of the puzzle is a community-run community centre. Eh? Well, a place that’s bit more like Access Space, the Rising Sun Arts Centre and CRISP than your typical council-run building with their rules, regulations and detached staff. Mix a settlement up with freecycle to provide rooms, computers & photocopiers and you’re half way there.

Real life, real local campaigns and clubs, are far more fluid than council bureaucracies. Rather than offering us false consumer choices in public services, whilst introducing timid reforms to open those bureaucracies up a little to citizens, why not do it the other way around? Give local people the skills and financial tools to make a difference their own way.