Citizen juries - another daft idea dreamed up in Whitehall

What, I hear you shout! How can the idea of "giving communities a more direct role in decision-making" be a bad idea? Surely this glowing world of empowered and engaged citizens is precisely the point of democracy - harnessing modern technology to transform the way we govern, what could go wrong?

The ideas around citizen participation in the government's new "Civil Society Strategy" sound good:

The Government will also launch an ‘Innovation in Democracy’ pilot scheme in six regions across the country, which could include Citizens’ Juries or mass participation in decision-making on community issues via an online poll or app.

Brilliant stuff! The problem is, of course, that this decision-making would be determined by those who turn up (or in modern terms, download the app, set it for notifications and respond when those notifications pop up). And most people don't turn up leaving the field to activists and the wronged - imagine making planning decisions in a world where angry NIMBYs with an app can flood the system?

Even for less contested decisions the app would be biased. When one US city trialed a clever app people could download that measured road impact (and therefore things like potholes and surface quality) they discovered that all their worst roads were in the wealthy quarters of town. The thing is that, using the only "engineer goes and looks" approach they knew this wasn't true, the big data from the app was wrong because people in poor neighbourhoods didn't use the clever app.

It's already the case that political decisions are disproportionately affected by representation - "he who shouts loudest wins" is an old local political adage. As a councillor, I constantly remind myself that my "full inbox" does not really reflect opinion but rather the opinion of a few people motivated enough to write. Nothing wrong with this until these minority opinions become the basis for policy decisions - "we must do something about X because I've had so many people raise it with me". Here, of course, "so many people" might mean a couple of dozen.

What happens with participatory systems is that, because of the bias, we don't actually decide on the basis of what the citizen panel says but rather treat it as a 'consultation'. The problem here is that, having consulted, it can get tricky to ignore the consultation without undermining the whole point of your whizzo participatory systems.

So let's not do this. We already have a tried and tested system for making political decisions in communities (called 'electing local councillors'). Perhaps we should look at ways in which this can work better - more community councils, a return to the committee system, scrapping party whips - rather than introducing systems that ignore local democracy in favour of app-based participation. Especially when, even the most intensive of participatory approaches gets low levels of engagement - in Porto Allegre where participatory budgeting is something of a religion they still only get 3% of citizens involved (and perhaps unsurprisingly these tend to be the older, home owning, wealthier citizens).

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Participants or customers - the people and public services

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I was prompted to thing about these two different relationships by the publication of the "Smart Cites Health and Wellbeing Discussion Draft" by some folk called the "Smart Cities - Health and Wellbeing, Leeds Task and Finish Group" who are, it seems part of the wider "Smart Cities Forum". First lets get the biggest problem out of the way.

We recommend that we rapidly explore and then build city scale facilitated networks, focused equally on well-being and health, the terms of reference for the networks being clearly established to identify and deliver the benefits of smart technology – for all parts of our community applying the concept of Solution Shops & Value added Services, within the boundaries of new institutional thinking which aligns interest. 

Now forgive me if I'm being a bit thick but this recommendation is simply gibberish. I mean what is a "city scale facilitated network" and, more to the point, what on God's earth are "Solution Shops". Now I'm sure the folk who wrote the report - and the names of the guilty are listed (including not just one but two 'Smart Cities Policy Leads' from the Department of Business, Industry and Science - and they say there's no scope for savings) - meant well in writing their jargon-ridden, barely-comprehensible 'summary' but they have revealed again that public service design is an echo chamber that completely fails in the aim of getting the wider public involved in the 'co-production' of those services.

During the subsequent interaction on Twitter, one participant provided a link to the 'Our Cities Network' and pointed out that in Rio de Janerio over 150,000 people are involved in this network. Which is fine until you appreciate that the population of greater Rio is over 13 million (and within the old city limits, some 6 million) meaning that this brilliant participation only engages between 0.1% and 0.2% of the populace.  Nearly everyone in Rio isn't part of the network, aren't part of the in-crowd who:

...(put) pressure on decision-makers, contribute their ideas and share their talents in order to build cities that are more inclusive, sustainable, creative, collective and that are always becoming better places to live.

The assumption here - and it is a common one - is that greater levels of 'participation' result in better policy-making. Those defending the 'Our Cities Network' will, I don't doubt, observe that the 0.1% participation is better than the 0.01% participation before the initiative. But is it? I'm making a guess here but probably a safe one - the members of the 'Our Cities Network' are better educated, older, wealthier and more likely to work in public service, academia or the 'creative industries' (plus those who make a living from selling things to the other members of the network). The demographic profile of those participating is completely different from that of the City as a whole. So the process of participation becomes, rather than 'co-production', an extension of the existing echo-chamber around public policy. We get policies that these middle-class people want themselves or think that poor people (who aren't in the network) might want.

The second aspect of participation is around the exploiting of data - the Smart Cities work stands and falls on the government permitting this:

We recommend the government considers changes to data legislation to enable appropriate data sharing and linkage between different government departments, health and social care bodies and statutory agencies based on more proactive and explicit consent models.

This is a long way from government acting through consent and with the willing participation of the public it serves. More to the point is raises some more questions about the use of 'Big Data' in designing public interventions. Now this isn't just about Vince-Wayne Mitchell's research into horoscopes but also reflects the fact that, just as the participation in Rio seems good but isn't, the data is not structured - there's just a lot of it. By way of illustration we have Boston's 'Street Bump' app which used a smart phone app to identify damage to road surfaces in the city - loads and loads of data all to be crunched thereby allowing the City Council to respond better. What could go wrong?

“Why?” Jake asked the audience gathered in BAM’s Harvey Theater. Why were there more potholes in rich areas? A few answers came from the crowd. Someone suggested different traffic patterns. Then the right answer came: wealthy people were far more likely to own smart phones and to use the Street Bump app. Where they drove, potholes were found; where they didn’t travel, potholes went unnoted.

Just because you have lots of data doesn't mean you have better information, it just means you have lots of data. The health and social care system generates lots of data. But it's data about old people and ill people and most of us aren't old or ill right now. Just as the liver doctor thinks liver disease is a massive problem because that's all he sees, the use of Big Data in health runs the risks of policy-decisions about all-population health or wellbeing issues being determined by analysing only the part of the population who are ill or old (or, indeed, ill and old).

So the use of modern technology to create 'facilitated networks' and manipulate 'Big Data' doesn't actually extend participation even if the process is designed (as with the Our Cities Network) with the specific aim of securing participation. To use a local, mundane example in Bradford - for the current consultation on budget options I was told officers were 'pleased' that 30 people had turned out to a public meeting in Bingley. It's not that I think these processes are without value but they are the city level equivalent of a focus group and should be treated as such. The problem is that people 'participating' are led to believe that their 'engagement' means they can influence the policy-decisions being considered. No focus group participant knows anything other than they get £20 of M&S vouchers in exchange for an hour or so chatting with a dozen others about something.

The real point here is that the population are not participants in public service delivery let alone 'co-producers' - they are customers and see little difference between the behaviour of the council or government department and any of the many large private businesses they buy from. We pay our local taxes and we get our bins emptied, the litter picked up and the potholes fixed. We pay taxes and receive education for our children and a health service when we're ill. We do not consider ourselves participants in the provision or delivery of these services - we are customers of those services.

If you want people to participate in creating, designing and delivering public services then you have firstly to do so at the scale of their understanding (this isn't to dismiss them but to observe that they aren't usually interested beyond securing what they need or want - and who's to argue with that). This means working as close to the individual level as you can.

Secondly people have to be in charge. Not in the 'empowering communities' manner but really in charge. The problem is that most people don't want to be 'in charge' of bins or schools or doctors any more than they want to be 'in charge' of the supermarket, the electricity board or the train company. What we want is for those services to work for us, to allow us to have what we need (and most of what we want) without us having to fuss and bother about it. And most of the time public services do just that and we are happy to carry on being a customer.

If we want to fuss about how to use smart technologies to get people better services that's great. But it isn't about getting more participation, it's about customer service, developing and extending the services we provide and behaving a lot more like Waitrose and a lot less like old-fashioned public agencies.  This means changing how we speak - dropping the management babble and academic over-elaboration, using short sentences, words with fewer syllables and phrases that folk might have a fighting chance of understanding. Imagine if the John Lewis Christmas ad was written by public sector professionals!

And we need to start treating the public as consumers - asking them (with real research using proper samples and good design not a self-selected audience in a draughty community centre) what they want and what it should look like. Rather than trying to pretend we can create some sort of on-line agora - bear in mind the demos of ancient Athens was only about 30,000 at most - we should build a relationship with the audiences we serve using the communications techniques that successful big consumer-focused businesses use.

In the end most people, in the manner of Ms Garbo, just want to be left alone. They have no interest in being 'consulted', in 'empowerment' or in 'participation'. What they want - and what we should try to give them - is high quality services that meet their needs and go some way to satisfying their wants. Emptying someone's rubbish bin or treating their bad back isn't a question of ideology but one of efficiency and effectiveness. Instead what government fusses about is variously saving the planet, reordering society, scaring the socks off people and coming up with new and innovative ways to waste the money people hand over in taxes. Instead of trying to get people participating when they really don't want to participate, we should should be doing the much simpler task of asking - through good research - what people want and setting about giving them just that.

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“We’ll give you one of those clicky things…"

…..and you can vote on what you like or don’t like”

So spoke a Council leader when asked about choices, Big Society and the delivery of services by anyone other than the local authority. This, we’re told, is ‘participation’ – you’ll be consulted once we’ve decided what we’re going to consult you about. You’ll be herded into making forced choices with a ‘clicky thing’ but what is important is that everything is ‘coherent’ and ‘co-ordinated’. Which of course is your council’s role.

On another day at a different council, a leading local councillor – having said that Big Society makes her sick, then tells the assembled supplicants that the council will decide on the basis of ‘consultation with the sector’. No innovation, no creativity – above all no untidiness.

I could cite other examples – dozens of them – as local councils thrash about following the Spending Review. And in every case there is an absolute desire to keep control. To dictate, to order things, to plan, to strategise. While there are examples of councils making radical decisions about services they are the exception.

Yesterday, I was looking at the impact of “the personalisation agenda” on the delivery of local authority – and voluntary sector – services to the elderly and disabled. And it struck me that this agenda – introduced by the last Government – should represent a substantial and significant shift in the way we deliver these services.

Or rather that we (by which I mean local councils) should stop “delivering services to vulnerable adults” and instead start acting as the carer of last resort. The point of personalisation – and I guess the point of the Big Society – isn’t to give people a clicky thing but to give people the power to decide who they get services from rather than have someone else do that for them.

And we don’t need tidiness to make this work. We just need to allow the people who actually make and deliver the services for ‘vulnerable adults’ to sell their services to those – hopefully more empowered and less vulnerable as a result – adults. By all means quality assure. Certainly take on the role of carer where people don’t have others to do this. But stop second-guessing what people want.

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We really are idiots. And we like it that way.

What the Big Society could look like?

Alasdair Palmer, writing in the Sunday Telegraph wonders about David Cameron’s “Big Society” idea (and I’ll forgive him his rather huge statistical faux pas). Not for once about whether it’s a good idea or not – I guess like me that Alistair sees it as essentially a good idea harking back to the Burkean roots of Tory thinking. Instead he heads with this observation:

“I wonder if Mr Cameron actually knows what ‘being a member of an active neighbourhood group’ involves for someone whose day job has nothing to do with politics, and whose life does not revolve around it. The first thing it involves is giving up large chunks of your leisure time. Instead of spending it with your family or your friends, you have to devote it to arguing about administrative procedures with people you don’t know and may not like.”

Yet again we have the prospect of the “politically engaged” berating those with better things to do. ‘You are all idiots’ is the inference we draw – but that’s how we are. It’s very English of us, as Alistair points out with reference to Rousseau:

“The 18th Century political theorist Jean-Jacques Rousseau despaired of the British precisely because we were content with the pursuit of our own private happiness and weren’t interested in devoting our lives to serving the community. He noted that the city-states in the ancient world were true democracies in the sense that every…adult participated directly in every major political decision. But then, as he pointed out, the slaves did all the work.”

So yes we are idiots – good idiots. We will ‘participate’ when it is in the interests of ourselves, our families and our friends. The social capital of modern English society isn't constructed from political engagement but from private activity – from the village scarecrow festival, from the am-dram society, from taking the kids to play football, from drinking in the local (if the smoking ban hasn’t closed yours down yet), from a host of activities where the only role for government appears to be to get in the way, to ban, to regulate and to prevent.

I want a big society, I want people to be active and engaged – but that doesn’t have to mean sitting on committees, worthy ‘social action projects’ or attended mind-numbingly dull community forums. It also means enjoyment shared with friends and neighbours, it means the sponsored walk round the park or the garden trail. It includes the dinner party and the kids’ party. And it includes sitting with a pint and a cigar chewing the fat with your mates (or even - if you insist - playing dominos).

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Idiots revisited....

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As you all know I wrote in praise of idiots a while ago pointing out that we should not condemn people for not “participating” or for being “apathetic”.

Yesterday someone told me about how she came to be a parent governor of a large secondary school. More for curiosity than eagerness for the task this woman had put her name in the hat for the upcoming election of parent governors. And you’ve guessed – only two names were submitted for four places on the governors.

The usual response to this occurance is the throwing up of hands in horror, Guardian-reader stype: “what have we become that just two from the parents of this school’s 1000 plus pupils put themselves forward!” Well I don’t agree – I think it shows a robust customer-supplier relationship. Parents at this school (which is oversubscribed and serves a reasonably well-off catchment) are probably pretty satisfied with the education their children are getting, they get to see teachers when they want, they read reports and know where to go if there’s a problem. Why on earth would they want to spend loads of their precious time sitting at governors’ meetings doubtless supplemented by sub-groups, training days and all the paraphernalia of modern bureaucracy.

So no, it just shows how our society is maturing. And anyway, why do we have boards of school governors?

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On participation...(and why people don't)

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I have written on diversity, on the idea of the progressive and on markets (although I was rather snarky). Since this has become an ongoing theme, I thought I’d set out a few thoughts on another oft-raised “matter of importance”: participation.

Some while ago I wrote a piece entitled “In Praise of Idiots” where I argued that voter abstention wasn’t such a terrible thing.

“Now the good left-wing liberals at the Guardian think this grumpiness, this disengagement, this disinterest is a problem. And that’s where I disagree – the core consideration is the extent to which we are able to live as Greek idiots. Quietly, privately, without bothering our neighbours with our problems – and when such people want change they will get up from their armchairs, walk away from the telly and vote. The idea that not being bothered with voting most of the time makes them bad people is a misplaced idea – they are the good folk.

Above all we should listen quietly to what this “apathy” calls for – it is less bothersome, less interfering, less hectoring and more effective government. Such people want government to be conducted at their level not to be the province of pompous politicians with overblown and lying rhetoric. And they want the language of common sense, freedom, liberty and choice to push away the elitist exclusivity of modern bureaucratic government.”

Which brings us to participation. There is a presumption in policy-making that increased levels of participation result in better policy, more accountable government and variations of society being “fairer”, “more equal” or “more democratic”. So when organisations like the Joseph Rowntree Foundation discuss the issue there is no questioning of that basic assumption – it is axiomatic that higher levels of “participation” are good.

The problem I have with this is echoed in the JRF report:

“Many attempts at community participation fail because organisations promoting involvement are unclear about the level of participation on offer. Limited consultation ,with few real options, which is presented as an opportunity for active participation is likely to result in disillusionment.”

So let’s look at what the typical opportunities for “community participation” encompass:

There’s voting – we get a say in who toddles off down to Brussels, Westminster or the Town Hall but no say over what they do while they’re representing us. We are not participating but passing across our rights to participate to our “representative”

There’s the local forum – nearly everywhere has them plus extensive and expensive bureaucracies supporting such activity. And they’re very useful – for the policy-maker since they are consultative rather than participatory. More importantly, such forums get low turn outs because folk have something better to do on a wet Wednesday evening than sit watching patronising powerpoint presentations in some drafty community centre

There’s the survey – usually self-selecting rather than representative and mostly limited to “yes/no” boxes. And this clearly isn’t participation but opinion research (however badly conducted it may be)

Or how about “participatory budgeting” – a great idea but even in Porto Alegre where it’s something of a religion fewer than 3% of citizens take part. And those taking part ore disproportionately older, richer and better educated than the average

So either we are taking the horse to the water and it is stubbornly refusing to drink or else people think it’s a waste of time. And I’m pretty sure that the problem is the latter rather than the former. Most people do not want to participate in a highbrow discussion about investment priorities, regulatory options and other matters of bureaucratic importance.

If you want people to participate, you have to give them something – not a £5 voucher for filling in a survey but real control over the things that matter to them. And that means the schools, the local health centre, the community centre, the sports hall, the park and the cops. If you make people responsible for something they will participate. If you merely consult – or worse pretend that their input really will affect the policy choices of bureaucratic decision-makers – then people will, quite sensibly, stay at home watching whatever rubbish the telly is showing that evening!

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