Increasing broadband Internet access will provide local government
with real opportunities not only to improve citizen engagement but
also to transform its dowdy appearance.
Local authorities have an image problem. A recent survey of the
public showed that when asked what well-known figure local
government most resembled, the most popular choice was Mr Bean.
Despite the parlour-game feel of this well-tried management tool,
it does have a serious purpose: showing how an organisation's image
is pre-conditioned in the public mind.
Simple e-government will help to reduce the continual frustration,
bureaucracy and inefficiency that the public feels, but a
step-change in public opinion will require far more. For years
modernising authorities have grappled with ways of thoroughly
engaging with their citizens and communities, but with very limited
success so far. Big ideas are needed and new vehicles that will
excite the many and not just engage the few.
Engaging the few does have a point though, as it can pave the
e-way. Examples of success here include citizens being able to
apply for passports and complete their tax returns online and
potentially being able to undertake do-it-yourself local government
services. Principal targets in the latter category include planning
applications, land searches, individual care packages and
library-based learning. Hopefully, all of these will be available
before 2005, having been included in councils' recent Implementing
Electronic Government statements.
Interactive broadband technology will improve the speed of access
to all of these services and will thus help to build e-government
credibility, but it can deliver much more.
The success of interactive computer games such as the Sim City
series show that local government can excite and, moreover,
interest the young. Why shouldn't UK local government have
something similar that allows citizens to plan their own locality
for real and have fun while they do it? And how about online
brochures and virtual tours of schools for prospective parents? Or
a traffic management game that allows the placing of road humps,
bus lanes, parking restrictions, pedestrian crossings and then
watching the consequences?
Moving from being the fictional Mayor of Liverpool in Sim City 3000
to a real citizen of one's own town can't be such a large
step.
Off the back of these fun tools, citizens and highly localised
communities could engage with their councillors and seek to
implement the changes and improvements they have modelled. This
would be real and dynamic community governance and would also allow
authorities to consider re-deploying officer resources to
front-line service areas.
Shifting the direction of local government towards a participative
and empowering model requires broadband information and
communications technologies and also the wresting of information
from those in councils who wish to retain it to sustain their own
empires. The solution to the latter problem lies in swift and
proper implementation of the Freedom of Information Act in local
government and being prepared to work with community campaigns to
unblock local obstacles to change.
The current lack of community campaigns in this area should not be
seen as an insurmountable obstacle either. New Local Government
Network experience with elected mayors shows that local campaigning
movements can spring up in the most unexpected of places.
We need visionary individuals who recognise that changing to
elected mayors and empowering individuals and communities are seen
as essentially anti-establishment by those who favour the status
quo. In today's climate there is real power here, as the defeated
existing council leaders in three mayoral selection contests to
date have discovered to their cost.
Similar forces are also at work in the commercial world, with
organisations such as Internet bank Egg realising that being
perceived as anti-establishment can shift consumers from being
fatalistic to choosing self-determination in a very short period of
time.
Taking the mayoral and the commercial experiences together, there
is the real prospect that local movements will develop that aim to
empower individuals and communities using the combined forces of
interactive broadband technology and anti-establishment feelings.
Other methods of promoting the acceptance of broadband technology
in communities generally produce a feeling that they are products
of the problem rather than parts of the solution, and require both
leaps of faith by local authorities and incentives from central
government.
Ian Keys is director of the Transforming Services Programme at
independent think-tank the New Local Government Network