John’s Idea

Commentators are now echoing the claim made by the Sun newspaper when it stated that it secured the win in the 1992 General Election for the Conservative Party. Yesterday’s media however has now been replaced by Web 2, and instead of the Conservative Party it’s Barack Obama who is the beneficiary.

There has been lots of analysis on the topic but I found the Guardian’s Tech Podcast particulary helpful.

So did the internet secure an election victory for Barack Obama?

If it did what are the lessons for UK local government and indeed local government improvement?

The basic proposition is that Barack Obama used the internet to manage his campaign. There seems to be at least three elements to this: fund raising; supporter and voter engagement; and voter generated content.

The fund raising element of his success is perhaps his best known use of the internet but remarkable non the less. It’s worth remembering that he was up against what was previously the most powerful fund raising Democratic Party machine, the Clinton family, and the extent of his success meant that against McCain he was completely free of the constraints of federal funding. The internet model meant that, in addition to traditional large funding donations, the campaign benefited from a huge number of small sub-hundred dollar contributions which, in addition to financing, strengthened support and created a sense of ownership. An American friend and contributor testified that once registered in the system you were constantly kept in touch with what was going on with further requests for funding (money bombs) hitting you at specific points in the campaign.

Supporter and voter information is key to the whole process and the very first thing you see when you go the Obama website is the registration page. A limited amount of information is asked for, but it provides the campaign with the essentials for supporter and indeed voter mobilisation. The website is impressive but behind it are a whole series of Web 2 features including: mybarackobama.com; facilities to organise your own local campaigning; and mobile phone sign ups and feeds. All these tools are designed for one thing - to get Barack Obama elected. A supporter can go onto the site and get a list of potential voters and start campaigning. As one contributor to the Guardian podcast pointed out it takes $1.50 to get a voter out using a mobile phone compared to $20 to $30 using traditional methods.

Numbers bear witness to the success of the approach. The site generated 1.5 million members who self organised into 35,000 activist groups. The scale of the success will clearly transform thinking for American elections and will inevitably have a impact worldwide. The opportunities are obvious. New forms of political interaction, liberation from the constraints of traditional media (not least in this country highly centralised media ownership and control) and connecting with a whole generation who, until this election, appeared lost to participative democracy. The threats are also apparent however. While the generation of “digital natives” find the new media appealing its not equally familiar and accessible to all groups. It also provides an obvious and already sadly well used route for groups of extremists not sharing the democratic ideals of the Obama campaign.

The election should provide a boost to the work the IDeA has already done on e-democracy and the work of pioneering authorities like the London Boroughs of Richmond and Redbridge (see Redbridge for a particularly interesting example of what can be achieved in this area).

The new community of practice (COP) based approach to knowledge management is providing the IDeA with a radical stimulus, forcing us to rethink the delivery approach to a number of our core programmes.  A good example is the Beacons Scheme.
 
The Beacons Scheme is now 10 years old and its impact on local government improvement has been significant and quantifiable.  It is however tired in format and interest in it from councils is declining.  While the objectives of the scheme remain relevant; identifying and sharing best practice, the methods used now feel outdated and slow.  The process is linear and involves agreeing improvement themes, developing best practice criteria, inviting bids, evaluating bids, awarding beacons status and then sharing the practice.  It is therefore long winded and expensive both to participate in and administer. 
 
So how do we re-envirogate the scheme and deliver the original objectives more efficiently?
 
What we are proposing is literally a Beacons Scheme “revolution”.  We intend  to completely flip the current process on its head with “shared learning” at the start rather than finish .  To achieve this we intend to make “communities of practice” the central feature of the new scheme.
 
So how will it work?
 
Through Local Area Agreements, and other sources of information, we now have a much better understanding about what council priorities are (see my last blog).  We know which councils are interested in which policy outcomes and these councils can then provide the basis for a COP.  By working with the COP to develop ideas about what constitutes best practice (perhaps using a wiki to develop criteria) we can build practice sharing into the process from the beginning.   While we still want to celebrate and promote best practice, awarding beacons status is an output from the process, almost a by-product, rather than the objective.  The award grant associated with beacons status could then used in a more focused way - perhaps through an “agreement” with the COP - to deliver a programme of practice sharing or even development.