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2. Case Study: UK <- Back to categories
A Deliberative Future? Independent Evaluation of GM Nation
The GM Nation? public debate which took place during the summer of 2003 was, for the UK, an unprecedented experiment in public participation. Here was an attempt to generate widespread interest and considered discussion about complex matters of science and policy amongst relatively large numbers of the lay public. Such a development would have been unthinkable in policy circles a decade ago.
Bringing Citizen Voice and Client Focus into Service Delivery
A Case Study by Stirling Council Civic Assembly.
Carpenters Connect IPTV Newham, London
This project provided residents of a public housing estate with a closed Interactive Television service which residents could use to communicate with each other. They could also make short films on topics of interest and the estate itself to share with other residents. The technology was also used in a consultation on the future of the Estate.
Casting the Net Wider
To coincide with Local Democracy Week 2003, Casting the Net Wider was published as an executive briefing providing examples of e-participation initiatives that reflect the wide range of activity in councils across the UK.
Wolverhampton Partnership’s experience with an e-panel and co-ordinating participation
A consultation website was set up for the Wolverhampton Partnership and an e-panel of citizens recruited to take part in consultations. These facilities are used to run consultations by individual partners and by the Partnership as a whole, and to co-ordinate consultation work across the Partnership and support collaboration.
Lewisham SMS
'InLewisham' is a web based SMS messaging system. It allows the council to effectively communicate with its community via SMS text message. It can be used to reach those members of the community who do not have access to the internet but have a mobile phone. Research shows that over 94% of text messages are read making SMS one of the most effective ways of communicating in today's society.
Partnership Working and Consultation - Case Study - Norfolk County Council, Co-ordinating Participation in Partnership
Work Stream 2 of the project addresses the objective of Strengthening Existing Democratic Practices. One of these practices is consultation and public involvement. As part of work package 2.4b a taxonomy has been created to help enable organisations to share consultation information. The taxonomy sets out agreed terms for describing consultations, for example, it provides a list of consultation methods and target audiences.
Partnership Working and Consultation - Case Study - North East London Regional Partnership - Integrated Electronic Democracy
IEDISS (Integrated Electronic Democracy Information and Support Service) was developed and implemented by the North-East London Partnership (NELP), made up of six London Boroughs (Newham, Barking & Dagenham, Havering, Redbridge, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest). One of the more fundamental aims of the partnership was to meet the requirements of e-Government priority outcome R5: ‘Local Authorities must provide online facilities for public access to reports, minutes and agendas from previous council meetings’ through bedding in a new and comprehensive e-Democracy system for North-East London. However, the scope of the project goes further than that. IEDISS streamlines the processes supporting Councillors’ decision-making and increases accountability and transparency. The major innovation has been in ambition – IEDISS covers all aspects of the processes by which Councillors make decisions – and in approach – the benefits of partners working together have been exploited to the full.
Partnership Working and Consultation - Case Study - Reading 2020 Partnership, Strengthening Existing Democratic Practices
Reading’s Local Strategic Partnership (now called the Reading 2020 Partnership) has been praised by the Government Office for the South East for its progress in developing a multi-sector partnership without the benefit of Neighbourhood Renewal funding. The Partnership identified a clear need to improve communication in order to facilitate community engagement to build capacity, better accountability and credibility for its work.
Partnership Working and Consultation - Case Study - Wolverhampton's Partnership e-Panel and Co-ordinating Partnership
In Wolverhampton, a partnership approach to public involvement and consultation was well established, as an aspect of the Wolverhampton Partnership. This is the Local Strategic Partnership for the city, with stakeholders including the City Council, Primary Care Trust, West Midlands Police, University of Wolverhampton and Community Empowerment Network. A city-wide group and groups within the larger agencies existed to co-ordinate the participation activities of partners, and to organise Partnership-wide activities such as consultation on the Community Plan. Information on forward plans for participation and the results of consultations was collated on paper, and there was a recognised need for ICT facilities to manage this information and make it more widely available.
Playocracy: A Case Study of Demgames
Demgames are a selection of democracy games developed as part of the Local e-democracy National project. Three games were developed as part of Demgames project: Councillor Quest II, Captain Campaign and Money Manager. Each of the games are accessible via a number of different media channels (e.g. the internet, CD-ROM and mobile phones).
Working with BBC iCan Case Study
BBC iCan and the Local e-Democracy National Project share common aims – to encourage and enhance civic participation online. This project explored ways for local authorities to work with the BBC to build local online engagement through the iCan website.
Four local authorities trialled ways to increase democratic content on iCan, encourage local use of the site and increase its links to local civic activity. This led to presentations with councillors and council staff, iCan outreach workshops and awareness raising events in public venues. The activities in early 2005 demonstrated strong interest in iCan within the community, and have generated an increase in activity and registrations on the local areas of the iCan site. Some strong community partners have been developed as a result of the iCan activities, and local use of iCan as a civic tool is expected to build over time.
Improving Transparency of Decision Making
Evaluation of a pilot system for electronic access to the democratic processes within Barnsley MBC.
Introducing e-Enabled Citizens' Panels
Bristol City Council, Wolverhampton Borough Council, St Albans District Council and the Black Country Knowledge Society set up pilot e-panels as part of the National Project on Local eDemocracy. This case study will show some of the key lessons learned – particularly with respect to recruitment, promotion and integration within existing consultation strategies.
Issues Forums: Local Online Citizen Engagement in the UK
Online local Issues Forums engage citizens and strengthen democratic practices. The communities of Brighton & Hove and the London borough of Newham launched ongoing vibrant online discussions about important local issues. These citizen-based forums attract the participation of local councillors, civil servants, the local media and community leaders. As pilots established by E-Democracy.Org, Issues Forums make effective use of ICTs based on a structured democratic design approach. Combined with common sense facilitation techniques built on civility and respect, the forums bring out a cross-section of community voices on a sustained basis.
Each community met or exceeded recruitment goals with over 30% of subscribers posting public comments on a diversity of local issues. In a preliminary survey of participants, a 46% said "I've found the forum more interesting or useful than I expected" and 42% said already "recommended or plan to recommend the Issues Forum to others."
Once established, Local Issues Forums provide "any time, anywhere" opportunities for local citizens participate in their communities on a sustained basis based on citizen interest. Along with the initial forums, outputs from the project include new open source GroupServer online forum technology, a 60 page guidebook on Issues Forum, and a multimedia experience on Issues Forums lessons from Minnesota, USA.
Log On Icon and Sound Directory Project
The project produced a directory of icons and sounds to increase the participation of people with learning difficulties in e-Democracy. A set of guidelines on how they should be used has been produced to accompany the icons.
Online Petitioning
The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames and Bristol City Councils each trialled an online petitioning service to run in addition to traditional paper petitioning processes. The new service aimed to increase transparency, accessibility and strengthen the petitioning process through creating an online service for starting and joining petitions, and a central location where petitions can be viewed and their progress tracked. Immediate impacts included making it easier for people with mobility issues, people who are time poor and new residents to start and join petitions.
Online Surgeries for Young People: Case Studies
Online surgeries were trialled as a method to increase political engagement among young people. The surgeries allow for private online chats with elected representatives across all tiers of Government.
Through five surgeries, young people across Kingston raised issues directly with their representatives on topics including graffiti, crime, Iraq and careers. The surgeries proved an effective and popular event, resulting in the young people involved demonstrating a greater interest in politics and their politicians.
Visible Voices: Video Consultation of Young People in Surrey
Short videos made by young people for young people enabling them to participate in planning and decision-making. Finding ways to involve those who are difficult to reach or have special needs and live webcasts to encourage democratic participation.
Webcasting Formal Council Meetings - A Lincolnshire Case Study
This piece of work is a companion to the main case study on “Webcasting: A Community Focus”. The aim of the project was to carry out some more in-depth interviews with the Officers and Members involved in the project. The intention is to provide some detailed feedback on the webcasting process for other Local Authorities thinking of webcasting any formal meetings. The project talked only to Officers and Members from North Lincolnshire and did not speak to any of the other Local Authorities who are currently webcasting.
Democratic Communities - A Case Study
This project focused on the role and potential of key community leaders and influencers. It developed a resource toolkit including an annotated database, a series of guides for sessions or handouts and a PowerPoint presentation for use with local groups. These were then discussed assessed and commented on by a group of local leaders. The toolkit, a set of questionnaires to assess impact and the lessons from the process are captured to assist other authorities.
Swindon BC MicroDemocracy Project
MicroDemocracy is an innovative approach to supporting engagement between a Council and its stakeholders. The toolkit allows users to focus on very specific communities and groups in a timely and responsive manner whilst offering substantial cost efficiencies. It also ensures that those communities and groups are provided feedback from the consultation process thus making them feel that their voices are both valued and valuable.
The project was run by Swindon Borough Council and its partners in the Athena Consortium between August 2004 and March 2005 and has now produced an open licence software toolkit for local authorities who also wish to use MicroDemocracy.
Over 50's Website Case Study
To deliver an open source website aimed at people aged 50+ to boost participation in local democracy. The site will offer forums, information about the 50+ Network, questionnaires, and user defined web pages.
Webcasting: Developing a Mobile, Wireless Enabled and Interactive Webcasting Suite
The existing market systems offer a mobile webcasting unit but this is fairly bulky and depends upon the remote venue having ADSL telephone connections available. The emphasis on connecting the community to the democratic process needed to ensure that this system was usable more broadly. Given that wireless broadband is being developed in Lewisham, this opportunity for more universal use was taken by developing 3 different mobile, and wireless-enabled models.
A notable success of this mobile system is the ability to be interactive, incorporating an SMS Gateway.
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