Why e-empowerment is just as good for councils as for residents

A new report from the Cabinet Office highlights international examples of citizen-empowerment and talks about the empowering effect of online data and information e.g. crime maps, school exam results, services provided by nurseries etc. We agree, and that’s one reason the NANM team are big fans of the UK’s own Fix My Street website which lets users report local environmental problems, then tracks what gets done to fix them (there’s even an iPhone app to let you report things as you’re out and about). The website automatically passes the message onto the right council and let’s you know when it’s been fixed.

Having information about public services (in this case problems in your street), being able to see real-time information (when it gets resolved, comments from other residents), and being able to interact with the information (report it yourself as fixed, or uploading a photo) – is empowering stuff for local residents and holds services to account. But isn’t it more than this?

A recent local press story got us thinking. Angus Council in Scotland are reported in their local newspaper as not too keen on Fix My Street, believing local people should use their own one-stop contact centre instead. But isn’t the independent website helping rather than hindering? This is more than just empowerment – surely it’s of direct benefit to the council too. For starters, Fix My Street’s website is taking the burden off councils and going by the number of users is doing a pretty good job - its popularity no doubt due to it being well designed and maintained. Then what about all the information being gathered? Typing in my local street (Burlington Road, New Malden – see my screengrab below) I could straight away see a hot spot for fly-tipping and vandalism – again, valuable operational info which would be costly for a council to gather itself.

Plus digging further in the user comments I noticed that there is clearly a sizeable bunch of local residents (most give their full names) who are bothered enough to act as look-outs for problems which affect hundreds of their fellow residents. If you wanted to recruit a team of volunteer neighbourhood surveyors or hold a community clean-up, then going straight to these people would be a much better start than going door-knocking or (heaven forbid!) commissioning a community engagement study!

So yes, online data is empowering and that’s important and good in itself – but far from being something for councils to worry about, these kinds of technologies can actually help public services develop models of genuine co-delivery, and crucially, deliver more with less.