9 August 2004

Social Software and the Enabling Council

By Anna Randle

What could councils learn from dating websites? Certainly they might have something to offer those colleagues who count local government as their first love. However, as a new report from NLGN - 'Invisible Villages: technolocalism and the enabling council' - argues, the social trends and the new technologies which make websites such as LoveAndFriends.com or FriendsReunited effective and popular, could also point the way to the next stage of the e-local-government agenda.

What these increasingly popular forms of 'social software' demonstrate is that people will interact online around shared interests. However, rather than just connecting people on the other side of the world with an unusual passion for first editions of Local Government White Papers, we are increasingly seeing social software being used for the development of voluntary, bottom-up social networks around the common interest of the locality. In short, the internet is becoming more local.

At the same time, the demands upon councils are changing. The New Localism agenda reflects a growing consensus that the needs of modern communities cannot be delivered through centralist, 'one size fits all' approaches. As we therefore seek to devolve decision making and service delivery to more local, levels, the expectations upon local authorities are changing.

As multiple recent initiatives and policies from the ODPM and elsewhere demonstrate, the Community Leadership role of councils is becoming ever more important. Beyond straightforward service provision - which has been the prime focus of the e-government agenda so far - community leadership requires councils to use their uniquely local and overarching democratic legitimacy to join together with local partners and respond to complex sets of local needs.

Councils need new ways of understanding their citizens' shared interests

This developing role requires councils to balance very local action with strategic leadership, and to prioritise the engagement of both other agencies and local people in doing so. However, in order to do this, councils need new ways of understanding their citizens' shared interests - and citizens themselves need ways of making their common concerns more evident. This is not just about soft notions of building social capital through local interaction. As our communities become increasingly complex and mobile, councils genuinely need to find new ways to understand and respond to their needs. What social software shows us is that technology offers new ways for the real shared interests that do still exist within localities - the 'invisible villages' of our pamphlet - to become more visible.

Websites such as BBC iCan and UpMyStreet.com already recognise this market for local interaction and the role of technology in helping shared interests to become more evident. People are engaging online about local issues, and coming together to address challenges and problems. Although neighbours might not chat to each other over the fence every morning - or attend Town Hall meetings in person - they may go online at home in the evening with local issues in mind. In effect, the social trends that make online dating and socialising work, also make online interaction about local issues both possible and welcome.

Invisible Villages argues that councils should also be looking to these examples and considering what they might offer them in their role. They could consider this 'techno-localism' the future of online local government beyond the limited 2005 targets - and a means of supporting their own new role as they move beyond straightforward service delivery into a wider strategic role. Councils can play an important part in enabling this techno-localism; for example helping facilitate contact between citizens, providing access, and acting as brokers or supporters of local initiatives and conversation.

This is about real interaction between councils and citizens - and between citizens themselves - in ways which make sense to the changing ways people live and interact. E-government and online dating? Clearly a partnership made in heaven.

Invisible Villages - techno-localism and the enabling council by James Crabtree, William Davies and Anna Randle is available from NLGN, priced £10 (plus £1.25 P&P) at network@nlgn.org.uk

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