Driving innovation to Driving innovation to improve participation improve participation
Jan 28, 2015
Driving innovation to Driving innovation to improve participationimprove participation
How do we fix a problem like…How do we fix a problem like…
making the best use of our knowledge to unlock innovation
reaching out & connecting communities
enabling customers to solve their problems together
adapting to new tools and great expectations
Are you using it?Are you using it?
What are the benefits?What are the benefits?
understand
your customers
involve your communities
uncover your innovators
When & where we want toWhen & where we want to
o What can we learn from the needs & attitudes of our citizens and how they influence each other?
Making feedback that starts with the user and focuses on outcomes
o Introduce engagement tools when customers “check out” of transactional services
o Pinpoint problems in your area on a virtual map and find services
o Develop feedback between users and professionals in real-time, location-based and adapted to internet behaviours of customer group
o Enable citizens to turn feedback into structured proposals on policies for specific groups, areas of expertise, products & large scale projects
o How can our customers better understand their local needs to help shape their future?
Turning customer involvement back into customer insight
o Use virtual reality to assist in planning, consultation, construction and marketing with audience response capture
o Enable citizens and businesses to share insights and experiences on local facilities, needs, tourism or towns
Linking up stakeholders to better connect with citizens
o Provide general and specialist advice whenever you need in hard-to-reach areas using video access points
o Join up stakeholders to plan neighbourhood disaster management and provide emergency communications tools
o Use deliberative polling to gauge public opinion help people reach consensus
Do it yourselfDo it yourself
o Personalise your councilo Let people upload and share tours of local townso Employee generated video programming to help roll out
initiatives, reinforce corporate values, or share best practices.
o Allow job candidates to experience potential employers through online profiles, video and audio clips that tell each company's story and show why it's a great place to work.
o Let users take pictures of everything they eat, and send them to their own dieticians
From virtual reality…From virtual reality…
o Use virtual whiteboarding that visitors can sketch and scribble on
o Automated 24/7 conversationo Broadcast cabinet meetings on virtual worlds
…to mobile reality
o Mobile lens: Mapping and sharing of social knowledge around small geographical areas, focused through the perspective of “place shaping” lens
o Connects citizens with mobile workers ono content delivery relevant to location o customer contact between council and citizens o reporting/feedback relevant to location
Empower our local innovators…Empower our local innovators…
o How do we encourage local people to help find innovative solutions to improve our services and communities?
o “When enough people can collect, re-use and distribute public sector information, people organise around it in new ways, creating new enterprises and new communities.”
Opportunities for userso Access and share advice and guidance and “being a pro-am”o Develop skills in enterprise, innovation and community
building
Opportunities for local government
o Share, store & rate ideas and innovations to generate income
o BBC Backstage encourages innovation, and helps to develop
‘niche applications’ that it itself might not develop.
Power of Information, Cabinet Office, 2007
Turning individual ideas and skills into community solutions
o Identify and develop innovative solutions to common challenges o Work together to improve wellbeing through activity sharing,
resource sharing, time trading and matchmaking users and providers, collaborative fundraising, collaborative translation
Influencing behaviours to encourage participation
o Lead citizens directly to online transactional serviceso Influence behaviours on democratic participation through
viral marketing o Enable citizens to build coalitions of support on specific issueso Develop collaborative media within a neighbourhood,
housing facility or for young people
Who will use it and how?Who will use it and how?
o Social network analysis and long tail feedback
o “If you liked this, you may like that”
o “Other people who used/did this, also used these services”
What about internally?What about internally?
Opportunities for youo Validate existing knowledge and co-produce new knowledgeo Develop and archive your reflective learning and peer reviewo Discover and network with colleagues with common needs and
skillso Share your collective wisdom to identify and develop innovative
solutions on key themes
Opportunities for local serviceso Facilitate knowledge continuity and flow across organisationo Capture learning and practice on demand & real time
Examples from pilotso Sharing best practice & lessons learned from workshops,
mapping out research & practice on specific theme, updating emergency contacts listing, creating “how to” toolkit, Comparison of metrics, invitation for job shadowing, call for volunteers, co-design of assessment tools & major event, Project for a local government glossary
After…After…
o “Professionals could benefit by having a space to put down ideas before they got lost, write down things that have inspired them – say a speaker at a conference, make suggestions and get ideas”*
o “People who find it hard to share skills face-to-face could see their ideas and knowledge being passed on and feel they are part of a community”*
o “We will enable users to work with other users and their workers…to develop advice, mentoring and collaborative production, enabling them to make comments in a way where they’re not being shouted down and they can contribute. In other words, getting users to contribute in a professional setting.”
* quotes from participants of the Kent Communities of Practice pilots
What are the risksWhat are the risks
o“I don’t know how to collaborate in this way”o“The bottom line is that this is a new concept to the majority of people”o“I don’t go online to collaborate”o“Some people aren’t likely to change unless there is a problem.”o“The more content we produce, the harder it becomes to use clearly”
What are the challenges?What are the challenges?
define needs
choose tools
create solutionsdevelop networks
share learning
Build trust Invite stakeholders, customers and residents to create critical mass
Allow time Allow different levels of participation
Build interest Facilitate, empower and value activity
Select the tools Streamline the balance between online and offline activities
Define the relevance of the tools
Involve people in the design of the services and understanding how they work
Choose the technology Access specialist software and technical expertise to operate free software
Know your audience Customise to needs and skills of individuals or group and agreed outcomes
Keep the environment flexible
Knowledge must be built on in real-time and customised to meet outcomes and develop skills
Communicate clearly Attention must be given to how online activities are displayed
Would this benefit you?Would this benefit you?
o Project or flexible working teams: particularly if you are thinking or already working flexibly
o Training cohorts: trainees, apprentices, participants in diplomas & courses
o Customer/user groups: user groups, citizen panels & customer communities
o Partnerships: multi agency project teams, local strategic partnerships & local trusts
o Thematic groups: focused on corporate outcomes that impact across the organisation, i.e. corporate units and staff boards
o “More people than ever before can be involved in innovation. Thanks to the falling costs of technology, cheaper communications, rising educational attainments and longer life spans, more people have more time and capacity to be creative, if only in small ways, than ever before. Ideas do not just flow down the pipeline from the back room boys to consumers. Increasingly ideas are flowing the other way: consumers are increasingly a source of creativity…We need to encourage a wider culture of ‘citizen innovation’ in which many more people see themselves, if only in small ways, as potential contributors to innovation.” (NESTA)
NESTA forms part of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS)
““You did it, we shared it, you solved You did it, we shared it, you solved it”it”