Dan Slee (Walsall Council) and Stuart Harrison (Lichfield District Council) and myself have compiled some arguments for open local data for people to use when faced with making the case for it.

We’ve also put together the Local Data wiki, so that this work can be continued collaboratively.

Visit Arguments for open local data

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I only organised three and still haven’t managed to blog about two of them yet. Still, they were good: Simon Whitehouse talked about ‘Policy options for geographic information from Ordnance Survey‘ and Ordnance Survey OpenData, I looked at the Hansard Society’s recent report ‘Digital citizens and democratic engagement‘ and Stuart Harrison discussed SOCITIM’s ‘Better Connected 2010′ report on council websites.

So would you like me to organise another set of these? There’s been a suggestion that we look at Digital Britain, although it’s more relevant now to discuss it in the context of the new, controversial Digital Economy Act. We could also look at the digital engagement policies of whoever’s in power after the election.

If I do do more of these I will want to stick firmly to the theme of digital civic engagement, but I’m happy for them to be more focussed on public policy if that’s where people want them to go.

Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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Local council officers, bloggers and activists were brought together to help ‘generate ideas and understanding about what is needed to drive the local public data initiative at a local level’.

The release of raw data allows people to develop tools that the custodians of that data either don’t have the time, skills or remit to, or would never have dreamed of doing anyway. The Crime Statistics Quiz, for example, tests your perception of crime in your local area against the official statistics.

Releasing data also enables members of the public to point out errors, such as incorrectly mapped bus stops. This presents a good opportunity for citizens and state to work collaboratively for the the benefit of society.

Obstacles though are complex and numerous: risk aversion, personal agendas (such as job retention), concerns about quality control and fear of how the data might be used are just some of the challenges that need addressing. But challenges they are, and everyone on Monday seemed more than happy to confront them.

By the end of the day we had come up with a list of things we thought were needed (this list is from my personal notes and not the official record of the meeting):

• Data disclaimer for everyone to use;
• Clarity and guidance on the release of data;
• More clarity on ‘derived data’ (what it is, etc);
• Training;
• Repeats of this sort of workshop event;
• Business case;
• Stories of good stuff being done, that everyone can relate to, and presented accessibly;
• Research on usage and numbers;
• Budgetry incentives;
• New legislation, or better use of existing legislation, to encourage the opening up of data;
• Untangling of overlapping and seemingly contradictory legislation;
• A statutory right to data.

I have set up a blog for those involved to continue collaborating on this work: http://localdata.citizenshipfoundation.org.uk.

This post is a slightly revised version of one I posted on the Citizenship Foundation website.

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It’s not the easiest report to make sense of: I would have liked fewer paragraphs full of percentages and more helpful and meaningful presentations of their findings. But it’s interesting, and I will try to unpack some of it by Monday.

The discussion is being held in Moseley Exchange at 6.30pm on Monday (19 April). It’s free to Moseley Exchange members and £3 on the door to non-members.

Anyone is welcome. If you intend to join us please take a moment to register on our Eventbrite page.

Update

The report’s author, Andy Williamson, has very kindly agreed to be online to answer questions.

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I for one am put off voting at all, let alone for the ‘least bad’ party. But what do you think? Let me know with this poll:

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‘let’s get some interested people together and help design the future of digital deliberative democracy for the government. It’ll be faster, better and, with any luck, more pubby’.

As you know, I’m very interested in looking at how we can be using the internet for effective citizenship; so I’m definitely up for this. If you are too, please leave a comment on Ben’s post.

Visit Building Britain’s Digital Future: ‘a chance to reinvent deliberative democracy for the modern age’

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I won’t re-post it here, as I’m sure the BCS would much rather you read it on their blog than mine. Suffice to say I flag up some useful tools for connecting citizens with the state, but suggest that for those involved to be engaging effectively they need to be doing so ‘with a keenness for rigorous, informed and effective debate’.

Read Using the internet for effective citizenship on the BCS Savvy Citizens website.

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The research was undertaken last week by online pollsters YouGov, on behalf of the Citizenship Foundation. Almost 4,000 young people between 14 and 25 took part in the survey.

In answer to the question ‘How much, if at all, do you trust the following to tell the truth?’, journalists fared poorly. The scores for ‘little to no trust’ make worrying reading:

Or do they? Is it in fact reassuring that The Sun isn’t trusted by its vast readership, or that newspapers don’t necessarily hold as much sway over the public as maybe we believe?

Further information

• Survey results summary (pdf)
• Full survey results (pdf)

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A recent YouGov poll for the Citizenship Foundation interviewed almost 4,000 14-25 year-olds about their attitudes to political participation, politicians and power in the United Kingdom.

• The majority of respondents said they would be likely to vote, with 59 per cent seeing voting as the most useful way of participating in local or national politics.
• 32 per cent said they were knowledgeable about “the way that local and national government works”; of those, 71 per cent said the internet was a source of their news.
• 85 per cent had never joined a campaigning group in their local community (fairly consistent across the age ranges), and 50 per cent thought doing so would make no difference to the issues the tackle (also fairly consistent).
• 51 per cent had never joined a campaigning group on a social networking site, but 42 per cent had; however 65 per cent thought doing so would make no difference.
• 54 per cent said they would be more likely to vote if they could do so online.
• Email was seen as the most effective tool for making a political difference online. This doubles at the top end of the age bracket. Twitter scores very low and only increases fractionally with older respondents; although interestingly there is a significant spike among 16 year-olds (almost treble the score of younger age groups).

Further information

This post was originally published on the Citizenship Foundation Webmaster blog. The research was commissioned to mark the Citizenship Foundation’s 20th year.

• Press releases
• Download the survey results summary (pdf)
• Download the full survey results (pdf)

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