Opportunities for collaboration between local gov and the voluntary and community sector

I’ve been asked to take part in the IDeA event “Councillors connected: social media online conference” to talk about the opportunities for local government / voluntary sector collaboration, through new media.  This is how I’ve started off my session, come and join the discussion at www.communities.idea.gov.uk/login.do if you’ve got other thoughts …

With the introduction of the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) there is even more emphasis on local authorities to show they are working effectively with partners, including their local voluntary and community sector (VCS).  The growth of new media tools brings exciting opportunities for this, but also some significant challenges.  Have you thought about how new media tools might help you to work more collaboratively with the voluntary and community sector (VCS) and what you can do to enable that?  What can be learnt from how the VCS are using new media?

The local VCS will always be a key partner for local government.  Working directly with the local community gives the VCS a unique insight into the needs of your residents, particularly those who are reluctant to access public services.  The CAA asks local government to demonstrate “how well do local priorities express community needs and aspirations?” how better to do that than by working collaboratively with the VCS?

Here are just a few of my initial thoughts on how new media tools can be used to work with – and learn from – the VCS, I’d love to hear your experiences and ideas: 

• Intelligence gathering – are you listening to what organisations in your area are saying on the web?  Some organisations are starting to use the web to talk about what matters to them, what is working well and what isn’t.  Listening to these conversations can give you valuable information about what matters to local people.  Tools like Addict-o-matic and Google blog search can make getting started with listening easy.
• Sharing data – local government has valuable data about its area (demographics, needs, business, crime, education) and the services it provides.  This kind of information can help voluntary and community organisations do their work more effectively but accessing it is often difficult.  Why not use applications like Google Maps to present this information in an easy to understand way; one example from the VCS is this map of volunteering opportunities from Hillingdon Volunteer Centre.
• Seeking opinion – are you using comment features or discussion forums to get feedback from voluntary and community organisations on key issues and consultations?  Many organisations are volunteer led, opening up these discussions online allows people to respond at a time convenient to them.
• Collaborative working – the low cost / free and easy to use nature of online collaborative tools make it easier than ever to work with others across traditional organisational boundaries.  Joint working between local government and the VCS can only get easier. 

Despite the obvious opportunities it’s not as easy as announcing a start date and expecting an immediate return; the reality for voluntary and community organisations is that many are still struggling with even the most basic ICT.  Almost 50% of registered charities have an annual income of less than £10,000, have significant support from volunteers and are just struggling to do what they do every day.  Technology is a low priority and most organisations do not have access to ICT expertise to see how it can work for them.  Time needs to be invested in promoting and explaining these tools to organisations, new media isn’t going to totally replace traditional communication channels any time soon.

But will the fact that more and more people are using new media in their social lives (social networking, sharing photos, listening to podcasts) increase the speed at which they use them in their professional lives?  I guess it all depends on the individual, and because of that it’s difficult to predict how the VCS will take up the new media baton.

Local government needs to consider its own role in helping voluntary and community organisations make the most of new media.  What are your thoughts?  What are you experiences?

(David Wilcox has also written an interesting blog post on this topic, which can be read at http://socialreporter.com/?p=557).

I’m going to be online between 3-5pm on Monday 6^th if you want to discuss this further or you can contact me at http://twitter.com/LouiseBrown or at louise.brown@ncvo-vol.org.uk.

Collaborative working conference – closing

[Again, apologies for this being super late]

By this point in the conference I was running on empty, a banana was all I managed for lunch, I was pooped and my head was killing me so I ditched the laptop.

However, Simon Berry – Chief Executive, ruralnet uk - achieved the unenviable task of inspiring at the end of the day with his practical and successful examples of collaboration, from working on the open innovation exchange bid, using open, transparent and free ICT tools, to the ColaLife campaign which is making huge strides towards using the Coca Cola distribution networks to save the lives of children in developing countries.

Many of the speakers at the conference talked about collaboration (in all of its forms and levels of formality) as vital to the ongoing success of the sector and it was great to see so many people fired up about the opportunities it could offer them.

Collaborative working conference – web 2.0 session

[apologies for this being posted a bit later than it should have been]

Into the first workshop … Michelle McMahon from Ammado is asking us all about if and how we are using web 2.0.  The experiences vary from users who are passionate to users who are sceptical to people who don’t know yet if it’s for them … my only thought at the moment is that I hope that I’m not annoying anyone with my continuous tapping

There’s an interesting range of what people what to get out of this session; there is talk of using web 2.0 to interact with members, to communicate internally and also to get a better general understanding of what all of these tools are and how they can be used.

So, what is web 2.0?  Web 2.0 is participatory, it is about people creating and sharing online.  At the start of the internet it was talked of as the information age, now it should be thought of as the participatory age.

An interesting thought to start the session, how do people communicate with a ketchup bottle online?

Michelle’s favourite examples of web 2.0 sites at the moment are http://wetellstories.co.uk, a Penguin site which used popular authors to create new stories online, with input from the public.  The site had the effect of raising the profile of both Penguin and the authors involved.  The second highlighted site was for the Obama ‘08 campaign http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hqblog/, rallying support of people online – the site featured an Obama ringtone .. I’m interested to hear what that sounded like.  http://worldwithoutoil.orgis a site which simulated what might happen during a global oil crisis.  For once at a conference the internet is working and Michelle is showing some footage from You Tube from the World Without Oil site.

Some of the other examples of web 2.0 in action included …

• Organisations such as the NSPCC using fan pages on Facebook to attract supporters 
• Ebay, working with Mission Fish to administer donations from items sold on Ebay
• Community pages on the Ammado site for various causes, promoting calls to action through widgets which can be shared on other social networking spaces
• The Born in September twitter campaign, raising money for Charity Water by targeting people who were born in september
• powergramo - allowing you to create podcasts using skype
• Kiva - a site which uses donations to fund micro loans around the world

Some of the delegates had their own experiences of web 2.0, which included …

• Using a blog to answer questions that you’re constantly asked so that you don’t waste time repeating yourself – you can also link to other sources of useful information
• Blogging about work which can attract local newspapers in search of a story
• Smaller charities using free blogs (like wordpress.com or typepad) instead of a website, there is some of the basic functionality of websites

As with all workshops in every conference ever we started to run over time and my stomach was becoming quite vocal as lunch approached.  Michelle looked briefly at future trends affecting web 2.0, such as the increasing visibility of charity – company online relationships.

Off to lunch …

Collaborative working conference – opening

Today’s the annual NCVO collaborative working conference and as the techie member of the Collaboration and ICT team I’ve volunteered to try and capture a bit about what’s happening.  I’m also updating Twitter over at http://twitter.com/NCVOcollaborate if anyone is about to comment!

Stuart Etherington,  Chief Executive of NCVO, has just opened the conference.   Stuart talked about the scope of collaboration, from organisations sharing back office functions right through to full scale merger.  Whatever the scale of the collaboration it is always about organisations achieving more together than they could on their own.  Stuart went on to highlight some of the current drivers for collaborative working such as the delivery of public services and the current economic situation.

Siv Vangen, from the OU Business School, has also delivered a presentation on research carried out by the Open University on why and how organisations collaborate, and don’t.  “The theory and practice of collaborative advantage“.

It may be early but one of my favourite quotes has already popped up in Siv’s presentation, (it’s a shame it’s a negative view of collaboration) … “we have been cuddling each other for 10 years but so far we have made no progress“.  I quite like the idea of that, I’m not sure how it would work practically :-)

One of the points that has struck me so far is about the need to build trust incrementally between the individuals and organisations involved in a collaboration.  We often hear that the success, or failure, of a collaboration is dependent on the individuals involved so this issue of trust is key.

In response to Siv’s presentation , one of the delegates raised the issue of the importance of transparency within a collaboration, which was generally agreed by all.

The last spot before tea is taken by Nigel Newton Sawyerr, the manager of bassac’s collaborative working national support service.

Collaboration is important for the success of the sector. 

Collaboration = Surviving and thriving

Nigel shared some of the learning from bassac’s SWiM (sharing without merging) work programme, again highlighting the need for mutual trust and understanding.

The bassac work programme breaks down in to three key areas; resources, skills and action and there are opportunities for organisations to get involved as the work programme develops.

One of the delegates asked a question which highlighted the different terms at use around collaboration,  In the case of this conference collaboration is being used to describe the full range from informal networks through to merger.

As a final thought, a number of delegates raised the issue of how bassac aims to reach community groups.  Nigel felt that the network of the Community Alliance was the key to the success of reaching these types of organisations.

Right … off to get some tea and biscuits!

Let’s collaborate

The changes here at work have meant that I’ve joined up with the lovely people in collaborative working and from the first minute I started to inflict inspire them with the potential of ICT.

The third annual collaborative working conference is happening on the 22nd October and I’m keen as mustard to enable people before, during and after to engage with it.

One of the sessions at the conference, lead by Michelle McMahon @ Ammado, will explore the new relationships and new engagement made possible between organisations and individuals using interactive Web 2.0 technologies.

Inspired by the successful use of technology at Ruralnet conferences to facilitate collaboration and networking , I’ve set up a twitter feed for the conference @NCVOcollaborate and will also try and blog it as it happens.  I always wanted to blog the ICT Hub events as it makes a really useful record of the day but organising events and then blogging them was just too much for me to handle.

The great thing about these tools is that they’re free to use, they just need someone to set them up and promote them to your networks / delegates.

Beth Kanter does a useful roundup about Twitter if you want to find out more.

You can book on to the conference at www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/collab08 but in the meantime, make sure you follow @NCVOcollaborate.