As the new statutory duty to "inform, consult and involve" residents makes us look again at how we provide information about public services, opportunities arise to move from a traditional 'active provider/passive recipient' model to an information flow which is interactive and driven by the personalised needs of the consumer.
We know from experience that as citizens, we often feel powerless when there is a lack of information, but with the amount of content on the web, we don’t necessarily feel more informed. We also know that social media tools have the potential to dramatically change the way people interact and behave, but with the number of these applications available, we don’t necessarily feel more empowered.
For many citizens, this information and technology overload is at best confusing and at worst disempowering. However, tackling these issues addresses deeper challenges on how our citizens feel they can influence their lives
Tools such as mashups make it much easier for people to "pick" a wide range of content and tools and "mix" them together to produce their own solutions. These aren’t only freely and publicly accessible, but connect up citizens in their neighbourhoods or around their interests, such as parenting.
People use these "mashups" depending on what they need at any given time or place. They pick what suits them. They may only want to use a mashup someone else created earlier or they may want to create their own.
What people create for themselves can benefit others, whether it’s to find out about local schools, access to consultations or business rates.
It not only develops more active and informed residents, but also harnesses their creativity and energy in a way which meets their aspirations and recognises the different talents they can bring to the community. It would also show everyone the diversity of Kent and of people's lives.
Citizen's needs are paramount. Pic n Mix supports the enthusiasm of our residents and local communities. We believe it is the small-scale innovations to daily challenges we all face that make a real difference.
Engaging and empowering communities is central to everything the Council and its partners do. Indeed, in our community strategy ‘Vision for Kent’ we recognise this as one of the seven challenges for the county over the next 20 years.
Kent County Council is committed to work in collaboration with its local partners on delivering concrete actions to improve engagement and empowerment, as a basis for developing a comprehensive strategy.
The pilot will fit with other projects and initiatives in the area. Indeed, to develop this idea, we applied the learning from innovations we tested during the Kent Year of Innovation. We notably piloted and rolled out the Improvement & Development Agency’s Communities of Practice to test social media tools. We then reviewed how we could use these types of engagement of tools with the public. We have been working with the University of Kent to explore the risks and opportunities in developing tools that support citizens to create user generated content and mashups.
There are also synergies with other innovations which represent how we are transforming the way we work with residents, such as the:
What we learnt is that people probably know what they want to do and have some idea about how they can do it. Most of the resources they require we probably already have, we just need to make it easier for them to access and use in an easy and meaningful way.
If we are to develop the general wellbeing of our local communities, we have to find ways that not only meet increasingly complex needs and demands but also support their ability to be the experts of their own lives, whether that’s creating solutions for themselves, joining up with other people or debating issues.
It’s not about the technology, it’s about allowing people to carry out the activities that suit them rather than making assumptions about what people will want to do. In other words, showing what people can do for themselves and each other.
We understand that without the commitment to make information more freely available, our capacity to empower our residents is limited. Kent County Council prides itself on its strong focus on continuous learning and innovation.
In terms of strategic commitment, the County Council and our Chief Officer Group (COG) have recognised that improving the use of its information is critical in the delivery of the council’s services. Indeed, in a recent internal review RSE Consultancy carried out, it states that for KCC "information has become as important a corporate resource as finance, infrastructure and staff and can be used as the generator of innovation, transformation and change".
The Council is also working with various government departments to share information and knowledge in order to jointly keep abreast of emerging policy and influence direction of travel, as well as taking forward recommendations on using the relevant licences to enable re-use. These include:
We will also obtain Information Fair Trader Scheme Accreditation as part of this.
The pilot has full operational commitment by the business units responsible not only for the design and delivery of the concept but for the outcomes it aims to achieve. In fact, these teams below have been jointly developing the concept:
We submitted the concept to the LGC Innovate08 competition which would reward the most "creative solutions that harness technology to tackle social and economic problems". We were selected to go forward to the finals and arranged for Microsoft to mentor the team on presenting for the "dragons den" style panel at the finals. After strong competition, we won the overall competition.
The objectives of this pilot will be to:
The Project Manager and Steering Group will be responsible for managing the pilot in liaison with Communities and Local Government who have part funded the project and will evaluating the whole "Timely Information to Citizens" pilot scheme of which Pic & Mix is part of.
The type of collaborative working that led to winning the competition was enabled through the Kent Year of Innovation, where the Council has transformed how it tests new ideas and embeds innovative work with local stakeholders - public services, universities & schools, chambers of commerce, businesses, enterprise hubs and the voluntary sector.
The pilot will gather knowledge and make it available in a way that will encourage sharing and further collaboration. This will include combining the design and execution of the project with the involvement of the project board, pilot cohort and a wider advisory group of who can access and influence the development of the project in an open and collaborative way (using Communities of Practice and other mechanisms[1]). ).
We have also been keen to extend knowledge on existing good practice and policy (from within[2] and beyond the sector, as well as from abroad[3] ) and develop our pilot in a way that enables sharing of knowledge and peer learning. As such, we engaged with) and develop our pilot in a way that enables sharing of knowledge and peer learning. As such, we engaged with
We also raised awareness of the Pic & Mix concept itself across the:
We have agreed that Communities and Local Government can publish the description of the Pic & Mix project on their website and that we will post updates on the "Timely Information to Citizens" forum.
Engaging with other organisations to widen the reach of the pilot
Kent County Council has been trailblazing in its work with other organisations to provide citizens with useful information and engaging them, notably through the use of new media through Kent TV and Second Life.
Although we will focus on releasing public information from the Council, we will be working with local organisations so they can also take advantage of the platform to allow their information to be "remixed".
By "mixing" the content provided from public service providers in Kent and nationally, people can choose how the information from these different organisations is put together on a particular issue (i.e. childcare).
For example, if they mixed information about health/childcare services with content from Patient Opinion, they would be able to find out where their nearest hospital was but also feedback their experiences on it.
We have initially engaged with a cohort of small to medium-sized enterprises to empower them to, in collaboration with us, to develop tools that make it easier for them to support their target audiences - whether these are communities of interest, such as parenting or communities of place, such as neighbourhoods.
We will work with this cohort during the pilot in such a way that the skills development by the participants will be rolled out to other groups.
We are aiming to enable third party organisations - in the private and voluntary sector - to make as much as possible use of our publicly available information. As part of this, the Council will also work with innovators in the field of re-use of public sector information and social media to build on existing practice and expertise in these areas (notably through Media Tree, a Kent based creative networking organisation), but more importantly involve them in the pilot itself through taking part in the advisory group. This will ensure that the benefits and reach of the pilot are sustained beyond the initial group.
As part of this, we have already sounded out people across the public sector who are already working in the areas that Pic & Mix focuses on, such as UKGovWeb. This gave us a better understanding on how to engage the community of innovators in this field. We also wanted to tap into the experience of intermediary organisations, such as the Social Innovation Camp. This helped us work out what was the most appropriate approach when introducing disruptive technologies into processes.
Click here to activate the graph and make it dynamichttp://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/new/bubble-chart/stakeholder-engagement-matrix-3
Naturally, we are aware there is a lack of knowledge about the re-use of public information through new technologies. Very few, if any, local authorities have yet enabled their residents to combine their own information via online tools so they can "mash" it with other content. As such, we want to make sure the pilot benefits those that need it most, the information we provide is mashable and that the technologies work for the people that will use them:
Making sure the pilot benefits those that need it most
We engaged with various groups to see whether they would be well suited to pilot re-using information through innovative technologies; such as the "Just Coping" families working with SILK in Parkwood[6] ; Local Boards in Gravesham, Headspace at Café IT in Folkestone, Kent & Medway Citizen’s Panel, and KCC Members. We also mapped[7] out what was already being discussed online about the re-use of information and mashups by people in Kent themselves.out what was already being discussed online about the re-use of information and mashups by people in Kent themselves.
Eventually, we decided to pilot the concept with small to medium sized businesses to align with the "Backing Kent Business" initiative that was launched during the course of researching the potential pilot groups.
As such, we tailored the examples and benefits of mashups to the businesses taking part in the stakeholder workshop we jointly hosted with Sittingbourne Enterprise Hub.
Making sure the information we provide is mashable
To ensure the information & datasets used for the pilot are re-usable and mashable, we:
Through enabling people to use the mashups on their own websites we will ensure continuous access to the amalgamated data sets by residents living within and beyond Kent - especially given many of the online tools they will be able to "mix" the information with are universal and free.
Metadata standards
The current state of play for KCC in this area is that we conform to the IPSV metastandard and the UK Gemini V1 metastandard for geo-spatial data (as used by the GIS Team). In light of this, we propose that the PIC & MIX project considers the progress planned to be made to "update and expand" the e-Government Metadata standard in light of the "Open Source, Open Standards" action plan recently published and for this to be taken forward by the Web Team. KCC also owns an Information Asset Register which is a structured metadata catalogue of its key information assets. KCC’s IAR can be found here alongside its publication scheme.
Managing the information governance
The Council has also been developing its information provision. It has in place processes that encourage effective information sharing across the council and with other key partners:
There is also strong information governance, particularly with individuals responsible for managing information across each directorate as well as a Kent & Medway Information Governance Programme Board - which brings together a wide range of public sector agencies[9]. This makes it easier not only to link in public information from other partners, but also to engage information owners within our Council to enable quicker and effective access to information they release publicly.
Making sure the technologies work for the people that will use them
However, as a result of winning the Innovate08 competition, we have secured free Microsoft consultancy to help develop the architecture of the project. This is essential to gain the degree of technical ability required to design, develop and manage these tools. We will also working with locally based suppliers, developers and other experts in this field - to build on and bring in their expertise in the development of the pilot.
Microsoft have provided guidance on what actions we should take to design of the technical architecture; map high level requirements to technology product and solution capabilities; develop architectural and functional specifications for solution; achieve high-level solution design and vision/scope for a proof of concept (PoC); presentation, review and exploration of proposed design; design assessment of technical implications and ramifications of proposed design; business impact and ramifications of proposed design; review, revise and agree solution design; high level discussion of the PoC, its objectives and goals and plan for getting to PoC". KCC Innovation Unit subsequently produced a guide to what we would need to do get a demonstrator of the solution off the ground[10].
To work out how our concept could be practically developed in a way which could build on existing tools, we engaged with various suppliers, not only Microsoft, but also taking part in IBM’s LotusTechJam workshop on their Lotus Mashup Hub.
We realise this will be as much a shift in culture for our residents as it will be for our staff. We also understand that people use the internet in different ways and some can’t or don’t use it at all, evidenced through the Social Innovation Lab for Kent project with the Digital Inclusion Team in understanding how families use digital technologies.
In line with our corporate communication standards and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, there will be a focus on accessibility - not only in terms of standards that we comply with (level AA of the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) guidelines), but also in terms of making changes to the way the site is viewed for people that have low vision and other practical solutions here, assisting those with low literacy and reading skills, those where English is not the first language, dyslexic people and those with mild visual impairment. The training of the pilot will not only match different learning styles, but also those with diverse accessibility needs - using a mixture of text, spoken word and visual aids.
As such, we will start piloting this concept with existing outreach projects in the community, where people are already working with citizens to better understand how they use digital technologies, better support them in influencing the way we’re run and better help co-produce services. As part of this, we will create opportunities for "bridging" between the different types of users, with a particular focus on:
To enable all citizens to be able to take advantage of this re-use of information, we will develop training and peer mentoring that builds on learning from existing schemes in the Council - such as the Time2Give "computer buddies/web wizards" scheme.
To enable the council to make the best use of the knowledge that has been created as a result of residents "mashing up" different types of information to meet their own needs, we will:
We will use the research carried out by Henley Management Insight on entrepreneurs from the priority groups to make sure the pilot benefits those groups across the board and doesn’t discriminate or create inequality. These include equality & diversity groups around age, gender and ethnicity, as well as around behavioural types[11] and employment status of entrepreneurs[12].
Understanding the different profiles & behaviours of entrepreneurs will help us avoid the temptation to make assumptions on the needs of different groups. Understanding how various groups use different channels to access information (not only in terms of the technology - i.e. by internet, mobile, etc - but also between informal and formal channels - i.e. local councils or mentors) will help us better target how to support such groups in creating mashups. It will also enable us to identify the information sets they have the greatest need for.
It will also help reduce if not prevent disconnecting particular groups from feeling excluded or disadvantaged because of a lack of understanding on our part.
What are the project’s success measures and what monitoring and reporting arrangements will you have in place to evaluate how well these have been met? (NB - this will also need to tie in with the central evaluation of the whole pilot scheme currently being developed by CLG)
Costs
Process
Just as this idea is designed to make the information re-usable, so will the technology and specification/architecture for re-using information. The technology and web platform will use "off the shelf" hardware and software configured to be easy to use and available to all. In other words, it will be adaptable to the IT systems of other local authorities so they can allow residents to re-use their information too. Each implementation of the concept has the potential to deliver a unique and therefore apparently bespoke service delivery. This is because although the data sources may be very similar, the degree to which each community reworks the data through mashups will vary to the needs of that community.
The evaluation of the programme (as well as the training) will provide learning for KCC and other councils wishing to enable their citizens to create mashups re-using their information.
Piloting & development
Rather than simply create the technology platform and hope that residents take it up, we are committed to developing and refining the idea in one or two pilots, so that from the outset our ideas are shaped by the needs of users.
Our initial pilot will focus on local small and medium sized enterprises, primarily from the Enterprise Hub network across Kent. They will be co-developing a mash up system that will be able to collate socio-economic data and public service information to better support their needs.
We have invited businesses to take part in pilot:
A second pilot with families in a disadvantaged neighbourhood in Parkwood, Maidstone, alongside another project they are taking part in relating to ‘Digital Inclusion’. This will hopefully identify ways in which the Pic n Mix approach can help them develop tools and products which create compelling reasons for using digital technology.
In both cases a specific lead post will work alongside the pilot group - a full-time equivalent, spread between two or more current posts.
This will be in addition to an overall Pic n Mix Programme Manager who will co-ordinate between the pilots and the technology platforms, liaise with data providers, promote the concept amongst public service providers in order to widen the range of data available and ensure that the learning from the pilots is successfully mainstreamed as part of the wider Kent public service information ‘offer’.
Technology
A dedicated resource will be required to manage and refine the underpinning technology to enable the pilot groups (and ultimately the wider Kent public) to mash-up the information they need. There will be a specific element of the role focusing on supporting and training users within the pilot groups. This will require a full time Project Development post. Making the mash-up tools available to the pilot groups and platforms for the ‘mashed-up’ products, wikis and blogs to operate on will also require additional resources.
As mentioned above, we received 7 days free consultancy from Microsoft. This included an envisioning session, which focused on how the concept would change KCC’s relationship with our citizens, what content we would use, who would be hosting the services, what would be the legal issues, who else is exploring the mashups area and what would be the potential risks. They subsequently produced a proposal based on the outcome of this initial session. As a result of this proposal, we documented the basis of the Pic & Mix platform architecture with the suggested components and how they interact at a high level[13].
Training
An "action learning" approach will be used for the training element. We would involve local trainers/facilitators to work with an 'expert' to research and put together the course. This would include a full day induction for pilotees to meet the programme manager, trainer and each other - and take part in an intensive introduction to the pilot. The 8 week course would include weekly sessions. This would be a mix of face-to-face tutorials, peer sharing and learning, and online learning. For the online aspect, we would bring in outside experts to introduce particular aspects of mashing up possibly via web link if not present at face-to-face sessions). These web-based sessions could be recorded and turned into good online resources later. We would build up the toolkit inside the action learning platform, led by the local trainers/facilitators with 'guest editors' from a wider community of experts.
A Programme Management Group will be established, initially involving officers/members from KCC and representatives from the pilot projects. Over time this group will expand to include representatives from other public service partners. Its task will be to develop standards against which the progress of Pic n Mix will be judged and to identify opportunities for the Pic n Mix approach to contribute to the wider access agenda.
01622 69 683007515992174noel.hatch2@kent.gov.ukwww.kent.gov.uk/innovationnoel_kcc (skype)
[1]In a similar way to that used by http://www.digitalmentor.org/ for the CLG Digital Mentoring scheme
[2]Example of how Worcestershire Hub advises the public on re-using its information
[3]Such as the District of Columbia Data Catalog or the NY Times Visualization Lab
[4]Responsible for developing the Number 10 Petitions website, FixMyStreet and TheyWorkforYou amongst other projects
[5]Please find a definition of screen scraping by Dextrous Web "Scraping is a technique that allows structured data to be gathered from an unstructured source. In essence, you have to write a program that understands the structure of a specific document, and knows where to find the bits of information that it needs. If the data you need is scattered all over the web, you need to write one of these programs for each place you’re looking. As well as needing one program for each place, you need to update each program when one of those places changes. It can all get a bit time-consuming, but the benefits, we think, are worth it."
[6]Particularly the ideas that they gained from the families they worked with: "A website to gather a range of information relevant to local residents. Services could post information and links to relevant websites, application forms etc. Information about local events or community projects, such as time banks, could also be publicised here...Training and equipping frontline workers to help them introduce clients to the internet and support them to use it effectively; training young people to act as community ICT mentors; E-learning schemes supported by mentors from relevant trades or professions."
[7]Using tools such as http://www.netvibes.com/ and http://www.addictomatic.com/
[8]http://www.opsi.gov.uk/click-use/system/licenceterms/CCWPS03-00.pdf
[9]Kent County Council, Medway Council, District/Borough Councils, Strategic Health Authority, Ambulance Service, Primary Care Trusts, Acute Trusts, NHS & Social Care Partnership Trust, Police, Fire & Rescue Service, Probation, Prisons, Crown Prosecution Service, Court Service, Youth Offending Service, Crime & Disorder Reduction Partnerships and Learning & Skills Council
[10]See DemoBuild document
[11]What drives them to be entrepreneurial, how confident they are of making things happen and how much they feel they need support - such as information - or don’t
[12]Full/part time, semi-retired/retired, redundant/unemployed
[13]See PlatformHardware document
and employment status of entrepreneurs.
; Local Boards in Gravesham, Headspace at Café IT in Folkestone, Kent & Medway Citizen’s Panel, and KCC Members. We also mappedout what was already being discussed online about the re-use of information and mashups by people in Kent themselves.
, to get a better understanding of what steps we needed to take around in the areas of work we knew the Council had limited experience in, such as re-using information and screen scraping. We notably met Tom Steinberg, Director of and author of the .
and beyond the sector, as well as from abroad) and develop our pilot in a way that enables sharing of knowledge and peer learning. As such, we engaged with