Unsubscribe

February 11, 2012

Since I’m now preparing to leave my job, having placed my head on the block of voluntary redundancy*, I need to tidy my life. Having worked for my current employer for a long time I have accumulated a lot of paper but regular office moves have ensured that this has been reduced occasionally; however I can’t say the same for my Inbox. As fast as I’ve unsubscribed from spam email I find others are spamming me and it became quicker to delete rather than ask to unsubscribe.

Now, I feel I have to unsubscribe to leave my remaining colleagues with as little crud as possible to dig through, so am actively unsubscribing, and what a pain it is. First, find the reference to ‘unsubscribe’ in the email – they can be anywhere, frequently displayed in some ludicrously small font and near invisible colour, if it’s there at all. Then, click on the link and, if it works, try and work out the different options so one doesn’t end up subscribing to even more spam email.

Now I don’t always mind ‘cold calls’, and I don’t always object to spam emails – frequently a new product or service that may be of use one day but what I do object to is the difficulty one has to go through to get them to cease and desist. I’m just glad I started this project in early January so that I might have it all done by 31 March 2012…

* any offers of employment gratefully received, my CV and contact details can be found on the About Me page

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Acronym wars

February 9, 2012

Two EU projects, two challenging acronyms! The OCOPOMO Open COllaboration for POlicy MOdelling website and the COCKPIT. The first is described as a European research project developing an agent based model with the support of stakeholders, the latter is modelling service delivery.

I tried to register on COCKPIT but it s limited to those living in Greece, Italy or the Netherlands and a utility bill may be required as proof of residence. Another ‘seventh framework programme’ is the MOSIPS one, which is given the aim of Modelling and Simulation of the Impact of Public Policies on SMEs and so to develop a user-friendly policy simulation system allowing forecasting and visualization of the socio-economic potential impact of public policies.

So many acronyms, so many programmes…I certainly can’t keep track of them but hope someone is?

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Evaluating citizen participation

February 7, 2012

One of the major difficulties accepted in the discussions around citizen participation was how do we measure it. This was presented more recently in the post ‘Participating in a Democracy’. Whilst being fully referenced and including her a new paper from the IBM Center for The Business of Government probably owes a great deal to the late Sherry Arnstein’s work on the Ladder of Democracy.

The paper entitled ‘A Managers Guide to Evaluating Citizen Participation’ (56 pages, 2.6Mb) is written by Tina Nabatchi of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs focuses on revising a modified version of the Ladder of Participation that was published in 2007 as the ‘IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation’. The paper clearly identifies that there are no easy routes to evaluation and the methods outlined require time and effort tu fulfill and although there are mentions of using new media to consult there are no solutions as to measuring with them. In fact the one clear link to anything electronic from the White House website is to the proclamation that protects personal data.

However, as I’ve stated, the big thing is to get participation right, then e-participation will come naturally (with trust), so this is a good start.

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New democracy

February 4, 2012

Having discussed the topic of participation a lot recently, it was amusing to read the editorial of the current edition of Philosophy (Volume 87, number 339, January 2012) on the subject of ‘Greek Democracy, Old and New’. The New Democracy in question is the Nea Demokratia party in Greece that agreed the EU bail-out and denied a referendum. Professor O’Hear then goes on to compare old-style Athenian democracy where the assembly was open to all entitled to vote and its council made up of 500 citizens drawn by lot annually and not permitted to serve more than twice. O’Hear suggests that with modern means of communications something analogous should be possible and suggesting a new political party – Archia Demokratia – Old Democracy – to pave the way for it.

What is clear is that democracy may be the best we have but it could certainly do with increasing representation and the tools we are developing may assist, if only they were used by the politicians.

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Ninging up York

January 31, 2012

With all the recent debate about e-participation, tools to do it, along with the why’s and wherefore’s of whether it can actually work, it’s a coincidence that the local authority where I live has implemented Ning to do some consultation. In the sites own words “GeniUSYork is our chance to generate and develop lots of ideas around about how to make York a better place. Many brains generate more ideas.” The project is part of a nationwide project funded by NESTA, and the City of York was one of 17 councils to get to this stage. If they make it to stage 2 in April they receive support and funding to roll the best ideas out nationally.

I hope something comes of it. It’s not the only Ning community I’m a member of but like many such places they have a tendency to become talking shops with little practical resulting. It’s OK if you wish to spend your time looking into a computer rather than delivering practical change or if the suggestions made actually are implemented in some fashion, but how many times does that happen?

The operators, implementors or whatever need to consider the suggestions that were made following the discussions earlier about participating in a democracy i.e. for a start, how will the outcomes be measured, implemented or reported?

According to Heather Niven who is one of those behind it, the “main criteria are sustainable, scale able to other places, good for everyone involved, viable with resources we’ve got. Pilot length can be as long as it needs to be but a range of short-long term solutions would be good. We are flexible and open to all ideas and our forum section has a section on all things innovative. For other suggestions if people want to raise other ideas. Outcomes we want are 1. A culture change in the way the city solves its problems and develops/evolves through introducing a channel to communicate and develop relationships with the motivated creative problem solvers in our world who want to make a difference. 2. To use a series of challenges to focus our efforts and show ourselves how much better we can change things through working together and to try the process out. 3. To record and share the whole project including what didn’t work for others to learn from. All of that will be shared here too.”

My personal challenge to them is to rationalise the dark magic that is government bean-counting – if we could do away with all this cross-charging, recharging, offcharging and focus on customers, particularly where they aren’t able to deal with such bureaucracy the better! Avaunt thee CIPFA and all thy complications…

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