Its Your Council - Join In (A Positive Footnote)

A few weeks ago I blogged about our webcasting / Tweeting Council meetings experience at Kirklees (Its Your Council - Join In).  The reason for  the post was to share our learning and generate some interest and debate.  Looking back now, I was genuinely surprised at the attention it attracted and the discussions it sparked.  We received enquiries from officers across the sector and were the subject of a case study by those lovely folk at Tweety Hall.


All of this is brilliant in itself, but there is now another dimension to the experience, one that is worth sharing.  You may recall that in the post I wanted to give another perspective on Tweeting meetings, one that differed from the pervading media line that had been reported so regularly elsewhere.  It was the line that focussed on the negatives - councillors not showing respect, not concentrating, using Twitter like naughty schoolboys / girls electronically passing notes across the Council Chamber.  The benefits of opening up democracy, stimulating public engagement and interest, raising awareness around decision making, seeing politicians in action - none of these stories featured.  Where are the positive stories?


Well, here's one - Hundreds Tune in for Kirklees Council Webcasts.   It would have been easy I guess to write more of the same negative stories that have been a feature in the past.  Credit where credit is due - the piece is a very positive one.  

I hope this post provides encouragement to other councils considering exploring social media to open up democracy - there are some good news stories.  Finally, I would add that evidence is invaluable in making a compelling argument - the stats are an important consideration when trying to make the business case.

 

Councillors, Meetings and Banning Technology

I came across an article the other day that I thought added another dimension to the whole tweeting in meetings discussion.  I've blogged previously about this, seeking to present another perspective to the whole debate.


You can imagine that when I stumbled across the headline "Councillor Calls for Blackberry Ban" I was naturally suspecting that this was another re-run of the usual tweeting in meetings story - same dialogue, different cast.  It transpires that the story, emanating from Canada, had another dimension to it.  The main issue causing consternation seems to be that councillors are using their devices to communicate with each other in the meeting, particularly to "debate issues and plan voting strategy".  I'm not sure what to make of this one to be honest.  On the one hand it sort of has the feeling of school children passing notes in class whilst the teacher isn't looking and on the other it begs the question what are the party whips doing.  Party whips, at whatever level of government, have a key role in party discipline, which includes being clear as to voting intentions.  

That said, I think this article poses some greater and more fundamental questions.  Firstly, I'm not sure that "banning" per se is often the answer to many challenges and societal developments.  In this case it feels at least like one step forward and one step back.  Secondly, the most interesting part of the article to me was not the one that attracted the headlines.  A footnote to the article includes a quote from a councillor who defends the use of hand held devices in meetings:


"Councillors use their BlackBerrys to do Internet research on issues that are being discussed and to communicate with their office staff to get information on a file being discussed which might be pertinent to the debate."


There might be a real case for the research argument - informed debate is, one would think, a cornerstone of democracy and political dialogue.  Do tools like Blackberries enhance this?  Furthermore, communicating with staff (presumably those employed by the councillors / political groups in whatever capacity) during the meeting is a fascinating scenario, one that I have not come across before.  I'm not sure what I think about this, there are opportunities and potential pitfalls when applied to our own system of local government.  What do you think?

Its Your Council- Join In

This is a little case study about tweeting meetings. There have been lots of stories in the media where councillors have got a bad press. This post seeks to present a different perspective and perhaps redress the balance in favour of opening up democracy.

The origin of this post goes back to a Summer evening in Cleckheaton, a town in Kirklees. In fact it begins in Cleckheaton Town Hall where I was sat (as part of my job) awaiting the start of our Full Council meeting. The reason we were in Cleckheaton Town Hall (and not Huddersfield) was because the Town Hall in Huddersfield was being refurbished. Bear with me all of this is relevant.

Not being in Huddersfiled meant that we were unable to webcast the meeting. This was a real shame as there had been an interest developing amongst residents and staff in terms of what happened at our council meetings - people were tuning in to watch!! As I sat waiting for the Mayor and Chief Executive to enter and for the formal proceedings to begin I routinely checked my Twitter account on my phone. That was the lightning bolt moment - I'm here, my phone's fully charged, I have a full signal. For the next four hours I tweeted the meeting (using the #kirkcouncil tag), providing commentary as best I could and kept linking to papers and reports on the council web site as councillors discussed the items. As the meeting progressed there was a steady growth of interest as my tweets were retweeted and comments and views began to add to the conversation. Not a big deal really, or so I thought.

The next morning I woke up and routinely checked my Twitter account (a bit sad perhaps, but I bet I'm not the only one). I was amazed to see how many mentions and retweets had been pinging around whilst I slept. I really thought that tweeting a meeting was not such a big deal. Residents were commenting, officers from other councils were interested, a councillor asked for a copy of a report that was discussed and craziest of all a council in Sydney (yes Australia) wanted to speak to me about "how I did it". Just for the record I had a great e mail conversation with colleagues in Sydney about this and other democracy stuff. I think if I ended this post now it would be pretty cool in itself.

Back in the office I discussed this with colleagues @spencerlwilson and @steventuck. Cutting a long story short our next council meeting, back at Huddersfield, had a Twitter Fall sitting alongside the web cast. We have now used this approach twice. We now have a combination of residents, councillors in the chamber, Kirklees council officers and all comers watching and joining in the dialogue. Blending the media of web casting and twitter has proved to be a really good combination.

It is early days but there is no reason why this simple model of engagement and dialogue can't be developed and rolled out to other meeting experiences - some food for tough for me there.

For the benefit of others who might want to try this out I think there are some learning points:

• Having councillors tweeting in the meeting adds value and perspective to the event - they are politicians expressing views on important matters for the residents of their borough. People are interested in this - this should not be a revelation.
• Be lucky enough to work for an organisation like Kirklees Council that is forward thinking enough to give this sort of stuff a go - obvious but true
• Try and answer any questions that are tweeted.
• Make a virtue of the passionate web and democracy folk in your organisation
• Promote internally within your organisation - it is important that staff understand councillors and the democratic organisation they work for. This is a quick and easy way. We are all approaching budget council meetings - this will be important to residents and staff alike.

There's loads more to do with this, I feel we have only scratched the surface. Would love to know what others are doing.