Archive for the ‘ Local Democracy ’ Category
Community Planning is talk of the town in some local authorities. The stated aim is to help people get involved in their own governance, moving from being passive consumers to empowered actors. The expectation is that engaging people in public policy deliberations and public service delivery can increase productivity while reducing costs. This is not a [ READ MORE ]
In mid July last year, discussion of the Big Society led to the idea of a Social App Store. Suggested initially by David Wilcox as a means to hold a variety of community tools to support the common good, others have now come on board to step up to the challenge. In this post, John Popham describes [ READ MORE ]
I’m definitely not against decentralisation of power, but am wondering how the 6 steps from Big Society to Big Government illustrated in Decentralisation and Localism: An Essential Guide will pan out in practice. Also thinking some local governments will find it extremely challenging to support decentralisation with fewer staff and funds to enable localism and real [ READ MORE ]
The Bettermeans tool offers an opportunity to move away from outdated command and control structures towards a much fairer system of participatory involvement. Decision-making, project management and governance tools can be used openly, efficiently and democratically, allowing everyone to take part equally. Could be very useful in creating less tokenistic locality working and community planning [ READ MORE ]
The Big Society Network and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) with support from the Participatory Budgeting Unit has launched ‘Your Local Budget,’ a new a project designed to give people a say in how mainstream local authority budgets are spent. Ten local authorities across the country will now develop new [ READ MORE ]
Local authorities, the Police, Fire Service and other organisations in UK might want to consider the following success factors for engaging with local people. Reference: Terry Amsler of the Collaborative Governance Initiative (Canada)[ READ MORE ]
On my Christmas wish list is Tim Davies and Jasmine Ali’s newly edited book Social Media – Youth Participation in Local Democracy‘ which draws on theory and case studies explored during action learning, and highlights some of the issues that practitioners need to consider in exploring the use of social networks and social media in [ READ MORE ]