Sources of funding: workshop for CLG capital fund bids
Ingrid Koehler
I've received lots of follow up questions re. the CLG Transformation and Efficiency fund for customer insight and social media and lots of really interesting information about potential projects.
We're going to be hosting a half-day workshop about getting bids into shape to for a September review of funding. This workshop will take place at the IDeA offices near Faringdon station (Layden House) - on either a morning workshop on 12th August OR an afternoon workshop on 13th August. We know this is a rubbish time for a workshop - but in order to make a September review...it's the only way. Obviously we'll share out key points from the day...and maybe some examples of really good bids.
Please let me know IMMEDIATELY which date you prefer (we'll go with whatever's greater). And your interest in general.
Who can come? You have to be from local government. If you're an independent and you've been working up an idea with localgov colleagues, please alert them to this opportunity.
More information about it on the blog here: http://ideapolicy.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/social-media-funding-for-councils/ (also has links to another, smaller source of funding)
Ingrid Koehler
ingrid....@idea.gov.uk
www.twitter.com/ingridk
Nick Booth
I'm booked for can't shift work on both days!
Nick
Ingrid Koehler
Nick Booth
Nick
Black, Martin
Martin (Camden)
Toni Prug
> Nick, you can't come anyway... just /anycouncil.gov.uk
Hi Ingrid,
small intro, i wasn't at a localgovcamp, and i don't work for local gov.
However, i built tools and organizational frameworks for collaboration
in both political activism [1] and corporations [2] for ten years, i
study it too (currently doing PhD on this topic), and most important of
all, i live in a local gov run area (Brockley/London SE4).
I've read your post on the blog about this funding, and i read this too [3].
my simple question is: if what you want to build is open participation,
why exclude [4] from the process of building ways to achieve this the
very people you want to include by building it? It think it is
counter-productive to do so.
I understand that people working in local gov are not used to open
participation, open documentation, rough consensus decisions making, but
localgovcamp is a positive step in that direction. I'm puzzled why stop
there, and why not have the same principles for you workshop. Why not
have anyone who wants to come and who thinks she/he he contribute, to
come? Perhaps with an introduction of what person wishes to contribute
with.
For example "Open local committees- Use social media to bring people
into local decision making, currently conducted at meetings with low
participation, usual suspects" [3] is precisely what i suggested
recently to my local councilors for Lewisham citizen assemblies (we're
meeting soon to discuss details) and there are friends siting on a
social housing resident committee for the entire Hackney council who
will be proposing the same thing there (open participation via web tools
to bring residents into decision making).
Models you want to build (open and volunteer based participation) have
been developed in hacking communities for the past several decades,
exploding in new forms with the invention of the Internet and WWW. Good
for all of us that the Guardian knows this, so they hosted and support
http://rewiredstate.org/ recently, which recognizes that the idea of
participatory State will develop best if involves hackers (in a
volunteer capacity to the large extent) to do for the State
organizations what they did for the world: build open cooperation,
participation tools and frameworks based on volunteer desire to be
productive in communities, and not based on coercion of a waged job.
If you open your workshop, and if you put on your blog the projects that
will be presented on the day (ie agenda in advance), i might turn up. So
might others from this list. I even might invite some fellow hackers
(social and tech hackers) to join me. If you keep it closed, you loose
input of some motivated people who think they're skilled and want to
participate (of course, you can moderate and lead such open
participation), and people like me loose the opportunity to contribute
and figure out why is it so hard for the State organizations to do the
simple thing: open participation, documentation and decision making
processes to the people on whose behalf the State and its organizations
exist.
It's fantastic to see this mailing list and localgovcamps, but the
openness has to be transferred into the organizations as well. And all
that is standing on the way, it seems to me, is willingness of people
working in State organizations to embrace openness and allow volunteer
participation and collaboration within. As the Guardian Rewired State
event has demonstrated, there are plenty of us who practice openness,
collaboration and volunteer participation happy to join you. All that it
takes at this stage is for you to be open.
And perhaps the key missing link is revealed in this comment on the
Rewired State website by David Dinsdale (Programme Director of
businesslink.gov.uk): "We have assumed that no one is that interested. I
will need to re-vist that "[5]. It's an entirely mistaken assumption.
best,
toni
----
PhD student at School of Business and Management,
Queen Mary, Univ of London.
[1] http://www.open-organizations.org
[2] i worked last tens years as a software and networks engineer
[3
http://ideapolicy.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/social-media-funding-for-councils/
[4] "If you have a great idea and are not from a council – send a
council partner if you’re already in negotiation. If you’re not yet
at that stage, we anticipate that there will be another round of bid
reviews a bit later in the Autumn."
[5] http://rewiredstate.org/buzz
Ingrid Koehler
I don't disagree with you. The funding process is established in such a way that money has to go to an accountable body - personally I've got no problem with that at all. It's public money and it also allows us/CLG to disburse this money faster and more efficiently than if we went to a kind of full open tender process and people were delivering stuff that WE thought councils wanted when maybe it wasn't really.
And as for this workshop, I wish I could make it a bit more open as there are a lot of really innovative folk out there who are working with local government but not for local government. In fact, people like Nick above. Their ideas and collaboration would enhance the process.
But on this one, I didn't make the rules.
The best that I can do is share as much as possible through lists like these and online more generally so that we can take advantage of this community some of whom have .gov.uk email addresses and some who don't.
Hope that makes sense,
Ingrid
Martin - that's really a shame. We'll miss you.
Toni Prug
> Hope that makes sense,
Thanks for the quick response. Some of it does, some of it doesn't. It
is fine with me that funds are for local gov, to an accountable body. I
also have no problem with that, and i didn't have any full open tenders
on my mind. Just to open up to citizen volunteer participation.
But maybe your workshop is the wrong place to ask for that, and it
should go the way i'm trying to it now here in Brockley, with local
councilors.
Perhaps you could pass the points i'm raising to whoever sets the rules
for this. Show them Rewired State, the variety of concrete projects and
responses it got.
best,
toni
ps. Where i disagree is that current state organizations are
accountable. Why should i care to vote every 4 years, if i can
contribute to improving what state organizations do on regular weekly
basis, like people do with Wikipedia, or with Free Software and Open
Source projects. Allowing such participation would be a sign of
accountability to me, while elections and what follows -- given today's
level of technology for collaboration and co-management of projects --
are mostly a denial of it.
Ingrid Koehler
I've had equal numbers of people saying they could only make one date or the other - so I flipped a coin. We'll be meeting from 10:30 to 1pm at Layden House on Wednesday 12 August. You need to reserve a place by emailing me ingrid....@idea.gov.uk AND alexandr...@idea.gov.uk
It will work best if you can go ahead and fill out the form (even at a fairly high level - so we can identify similar projects that can work together on the day) and send it to us beforehand, if you haven't already.
You can find the form here in the Social Media and Online Collaboration CoP: (I didn't want to send an attachment to everyone's inbox) http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/c/13317/doclib/document-display.do?id=1667928 - free registration required.
Ingrid Koehler
posted some of the key points here:
http://ideapolicy.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/capital-funding-for-social-media-how-to-get-it/
On Juw 23, 9:09 am, Ingrid Koehler <ingrid.l.koeh...@googlemail.com>
wrote:
>
> I've had equal numbers of people saying they could only make one date or the
> other - so I flipped a coin. We'll be meeting from 10:30 to 1pm at Layden
> ingrid.koeh...@idea.gov.uk AND alexandra.pal...@idea.gov.uk
> It will work best if you can go ahead and fill out the form (even at a
> fairly high level - so we can identify similar projects that can work
> together on the day) and send it to us beforehand, if you haven't already.
>
> You can find the form here in the Social Media and Online Collaboration
> - free registration required.
>
> On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 6:18 PM, Toni Prug <toni.p...@gmail.com> wrote: