Inclusive Social Media for Civic Engagement Evaluation Report, May 16 Webinar, New Knight Grant and Locals Online Community

[Steven Clift]

CfA Folks, We are definitely interested in what technology ideas you
have for making online civic engagement far more inclusive. To date
our civic tech movement is far better at attracting those who already
show up, look like us, and as a result are inadvertently creating a
politics further isolating the voices less likely to be heard. While
all of our technologies have the huge potential to democratize,
without aggressive outreach to diverse communities we will only
empower the most wired. So, it may not be that our tech is wrong, but
our "build they will come" hopes which cause us to under-invest in
outreach or leave it to our 2.0 phase. - Cheers, Steven Clift


Greetings,

I wanted to let you know we've published our 60 page evaluation report
on inclusive online community engagement in lower income, highly
diverse, high immigrant neighborhoods. The Inclusive Social Media
pilot project was funded by the Ford Foundation.

Read the executive summary and full report here:

  http://blog.e-democracy.org/posts/1420

RSVP for an online event/teleconference on May 16 for a Q and A discussion here:

  http://inclusivesocialmedia.eventbrite.com

Also, we've just launched a "take it to scale" project in St. Paul
with major funding from the Knight Foundation! Our goal is to
_inclusively_ engage 10,000 residents ~daily across a network of
online neighbors forums. By inclusion we mean forums that reflect the
local racial and ethnic diversity in each of the 16 neighborhood
forums we host with local volunteers. Reaching lower income residents
is important as well. St. Paul is 44% people of color. It is all about
creating _bridges_ among diverse neighbors.

  http://beneighbors.org - Public outreach
  http://e-democracy.org/inclusion - Dry project info, grant details

  http://e-democracy.org/se - Example Minneapolis forum with about
1,000 members or 20%+ of households

Part of the three year grant also includes lesson sharing. We are
planning future webinars and exploring e-training options for 2013.
While we will host neighbors forums based on volunteer capacity in
communities beyond the 17 we currently serve (US, UK, and NZ
currently), we see sharing lessons for independent adaptation as key
to our mission.

Our "free" option for peer to peer knowledge sharing that is open now
is the Locals Online community of practice. I encourage you to join us
if you either host a local online group, blog, social net, etc. or if
you'd like to start one and have access to 300+ of your peers.

   http://e-democracy.org/locals

We also host the global Digital Inclusion Network online community
which is related:

  http://e-democracy.org/di

We look forward to your input and questions on the report.

Sincerely,
Steven Clift
Founder and Executive Director, E-Democracy.org

[Wjhonson]

Other than Social media, forums and wikis, what does CFA do?
I don't see those areas as driving the bottom line for public entities.
From a core perspective those are "nice to have if I can afford it", they don't pay the bills.

We look forward to your input and questions on the report.

Sincerely,
Steven Clift
Founder and Executive Director, E-Democracy.org

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[kevin curry]

+1

But keep in mind, Steve, that deep inclusion in neighborhoods/communities for the poor and disconnected is one segment among many in which our intersecting communities of practice work. Blocking & tackling bad and/or underutilized use of tech inside city government is another segment, and really where CfA started. All the same, build/create tech vs. teach/connect tech is a key issue in these and other (all?) segments.

I think you will find that the CfA Brigade program is now responding to this need for both practical and philosophical reasons. Practically speaking, for example, once an open data catalog/repository or a local wiki are deployed the build/create part is mostly complete. All of the sustainment and engagement is around making sure they work for people; via curation, good old fashioned business process analysis, focus groups, marketing, and the like. (Yes that means hackathons, data dives, skill shares, unconferences, and all that cool stuff.) Philosophically, I think there is something fundamentally important about supporting architectures of participation for the civic web, where participation also means creating by using, not just creating by coding. To do that we have to teach and connect.

Civic Commons and specifically the Engagement Commons section (http://civiccommons.org/engagement-commons) are were I go to find existing civic tech that I think is a good fit for communities (neighborhood, league, gov, civic non profit) in need. Then we rally folks around an opportunity to suss it all out and see what can work. This assumes that we're connecting to the right communities in need because ultimately it's needs based.

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[Sheba Najmi]

Steve, I think you're absolutely right, and you're raising an issue that we don't yet have a great solution for. But it is really important to ensure that we are being inclusive and not creating technology solely for the elite / those who already have access to technology.

Perhaps a starting point would be for us to consider some small inclusions. A couple of ideas are:

- creating solutions to empower non-profit organizations that cater to the needs of the disadvantaged

- making sure there's an alternative lo-fi SMS-based solution for any citizen-facing app we create

Any others?

Sheba

CfA Fellow 2012

---

From: kevin curry <kmc...@gmail.com>
To: cfa-...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, May 9, 2012 7:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Code for America Labs] Inclusive Social Media for Civic Engagement Evaluation Report, May 16 Webinar, New Knight Grant and Locals Online Community

[Wjhonson]

Why is SMS lo fi?

Why not lower fi.... telephone... snail mail.

Sign up for our newsletter to be *mailed* to your house.

 

It still surprises me how high tech orgs like cfa don't realize that 50% of city customers only interact with the city by walk in, or by letter.

-----Original Message-----
From: Sheba Najmi <sheba...@yahoo.com>
To: cfa-labs <cfa-...@googlegroups.com>

[Sheba Najmi]

Believe me, having recently returned from 5 weeks in city governments throughout the country, we completely realize and understand that. But since in-person walk-ins cost citizens time, effort, and money, there are better time and effort saving solutions we want to encourage.

In Honolulu, which is the city I'm working for, the vast majority of the population, including the large homeless population, has a basic SMS-enabled cell phone. Hence my suggestion. Telephone calls are a good idea too, and I've been working on some telephone based interactions for the City of Honolulu. For instance, we saw an 85% reduction in customer service requests due to an implementation of a small phone tree for Honolulu's city line. Snail mail, on the other hand, has an environmental impact I wouldn't condone.

Warmly,

Sheba

---

From: Wjhonson <wjho...@aol.com>
To: cfa-...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, May 9, 2012 10:28 AM

[Wjhonson]

Explain what you mean by a phone tree for the city line ?

 

And I'm not saying I would condone snail mail, I'm saying that people request it, and we always have to be aware that we need to satisfy the population with any solution otherwise they won't use it at all.

 

That's what we see if we try to restrict them too much, they just stop using it.

[Michelle Koeth]

I agree that it's important that "web 2.0" government apps to benefit
citizens follow a "greatest common medium" approach to the engagement
layer - be that even a paper leaflet - which I often had to resort to
when notifying people on my block (as block a captain in Oakland) of
our neighborhood watch meetings. I lived next door to a public housing
unit and many of those folks did not have email addresses.

On the other hand, purely digital/software based notifications are
cheaper to "send" out or manage. Compare the cost of snail mail vs.
email.

The "what is the appropriate level of "low-fi" for an engagement
medium" question is a slippery slope also. There are people in every
city that can't read, that are blind, that are physically and mentally
disabled. Are we able to satisfy these segments of the population?

I feel like at least one approach to how to find a greatest common
medium lies in education and awareness. But people have to want to be
educated, or similarly have to want to be aware of the challenges
facing their cities. Maybe it's the job of cities to incentivize
technical literacy to use the digital tools they are making available
to their citizens. Some of these incentives already exist - such as
getting a discount for using a smartcard based card for public
transit, or having an RF tag (E-Zpass on the east coast) for highway
tolls.

What if there was a "tax rebate" for citizens who enrolled in digital
literacy programs and went "paper free."

-Michelle

Michelle M. Koeth
Code for America Fellow Alumna
http://www.codeforamerica.org

[Wjhonson]

I like the idea of a "benefit" for citizens to enroll, I would like it more if it were some kind of periodic or continuous benefit.

Cities however, cannot have a "tax rebate" benefit, because generally citizens don't pay a tax directly to a city, and I don't think we'd want to give back part of a cities sales tax in the form of a voucher for example because that adds expense without adding revenue.  And it would be hard to track.

 

Generally however, all citizens of a city pay directly to the city certain costs like water, sewer and garbage.

What is the incentive to sign up for paperless billing for example?  And can we legally give people an incentive to do that?

Can we give people an incentive to sign up for automatic payment ?

 

I was really hoping that CfA would tackle some issues about inter-city communication on issues like this which are real issues we're actually facing :)

[Steven Clift]

Thanks Sheba, Michelle, et al,

I do think that awesome and usable tech is a huge starting point.

This can cut both ways - for example simple e-mail publishing is key
if you want to engage anyone over 50 while if you don't have decent
design you are probably turning off immigrant youth under 25 ...
balancing the many interface aspects and providing a bridge building
experience is easier said than done.

One of the reasons our non-profit is very interested in sharing our
lessons in this evaluation is to see what others with greater
technical talents can and will do with the knowledge. And we want to
learn from others too!

There is no use trying to include people in something where the tech
doesn't work well.

Cheers,
Steven Clift
E-Democracy.org

P.S. We are very interested in how folks with various skills might get
involved with our current platform and future efforts as we do have
over 10,000 participants in the Twin Cities (who we reach ~daily) to
leverage for civic tech. Let me know if you would like more
information. Check out:
http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/post/7AdnLJ3Sa5WZPPYUd09zQ8

[Tracy Viselli]

+10000 to everything Steven said. Technology solutions for civic
engagement should budget twice as much on outreach as they do on the
actual tech. I've watched a lot of high profile civic engagement
projects produce disappointing results because of insufficient
outreach. It's unfortunate. I wish I could spend twice as much time on
it myself.

Tracy Viselli
ACTion Alexandria

[kevin curry]

Twice as much? Tech is practically free. It's only not free when you have to pay someone to assemble the tech.

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[kevin curry]

Which is NOT to say that people shouldn't or don't need to be paid to assemble tech!

[Tracy Viselli]

In a perfect world, where all civic engagement projects can assemble a civic hacking core, it may be true that platforms are virtually free. However, that is not the reality many of us work within--particularly if you're not a developer and you don't happen to be working in a large city or on a high profile project. Many of civic engagment projects are grant funded with strict timelines which adds another wrinkle.

But if you're not spending any money on your project for tech or staffing, double whatever your original budget was for outreach ;-)

Yours, Tracy Viselli

Website:  http://www.actionalexandria.org
Twitter:  http://twitter.com/myrnatheminx