Enable

The role of the Local Authority in the Connected Community is that of steward rather than owner.  The Local Authority’s web properties and systems should provide the right features to enable the people of the community: citizens, businesses, and staff, to do what they need and to connect to each other for civic activity. This entails providing tools that allow staff, citizens and community groups to help themselves, such as collaboration tools, platform access, open data, APIs and other facilities.

Promote

Promotion in this context means making sure that the activity that happens in the community is visible and recognised. The community has a need to promote itself to a variety of audiences and for a variety of purposes. Some of those purposes such as inward investment may have dedicated websites. However, in addition to that, the Connected Community’s digital presence should be a promotional mechanism in itself. If the Local Authority’s websites reflect the activities, connectedness and involvement of the community, then much of the work of promoting the area becomes a great deal easier.

Engage

The Local Authority must do more than serve its customers, the citizens and businesses of the Connected Community.  

To stay relevant, it must engage with them and encourage them to engage with each other.  By encouraging and facilitating involvement, not only will the perception of the Local Authority among the citizens change, but the Local Authority will get the considerable benefit of the effort of its citizens to improve services and solve problems. This entails encouraging citizens and staff to organise themselves into groups that discuss and actually do things. The Local Authority will have to have policies and procedures in place to manage this engagement activity.

Connect

The vision is to create a Connected Community. this will be achieved by joining the Local Authority to the citizens, and enabling the citizens to connect with each other.  The aim is to join information, facilities and resources together to make them greater than the sum of their parts.

The key issues for a Local Authority are providing cost effective joined up communication that engages citizens. This cannot be seen as just shifting as many people as possible into using the web channel as their are still many people who are not connected. There are also those who are restricted in their internet usage at the one place they are regularly connected, work.

How does the community work?

The Connected Community is not a monolithic entity with a centralised command and control structure.

The Local Authority’s web presence should explain what other institutions and partner organisations there are and how they all fit together. Co-operation agreements should be sort that will allow for these relationships to be reflected in the information architecture and search results. Digital channels are ideally placed to allow for low cost provision of links between the Local Authority and other websites so that citizens confused about which agency is responsible for a service can still find it.

Owned, partnered and community sites

Different approaches to integrating with websites must be taken depending on their origins.

The integration of a website into the platform, or of platform services into a website will be managed differently depending on the ownership model of that site. If the site is owned by the Local Authority (as in funded entirely) then a set of integrations can be agreed with the site creator.

A website that is owned and managed through a partnership, where the Local Authority only partly funds the website, will need a more collaborative approach to defining the integration methods. While a website that receives no Local Authority funding will only integrate it the platform where it benefits the site owner.

Connect the external digital community

Allowing services built and managed by the Local Authority to be used by individuals or groups within the digital community will benefit all parties.  Services such as taxonomy and localised gazetteer suggesters will allow local newspapers, bloggers, forums and hyperlocal websites to relate their content directly to Local Authority content and services.

In addition to simply allowing links to form between the web systems in the region, the Local Authority must foster greater connections between them allowing them to find opportunities to share with each other to mutual benefit.

Embed activity and pledges

Involvement is about activity rather than passive consumption.  In order to generate network effects that will benefit both Council and citizens, all activity on the Local Authority’s websites should be made visible, subject to privacy controls and of course with users’ consent. All activity should be presented in a way that encourages further activity by other users. For example, the site can show that an individual has signed a petition, or showing the number of users who have pledged to attend a community meeting or participate in a neighbourhood cleanup.

This activity should also be visible outside of the Local Authority’s websites (again with user consent and privacy considered) and pushed out to users’ preferred social networking sites.

Host conversations

Conversation and debate are good.  They break down prejudices and preconceptions that can create barriers between communities.  The Local Authority should support conversations around any piece of content, whether that is a page, a picture, a paragraph an application form, or a service.

The host of a conversation does not control it. Rather, they guide, foster and nurture it.  Occasionally the host must refocus a conversation, or calm those who have become too passionate, or even eject those who break the house rules and become abusive.  Tools to enable staff to host conversations like this must be available for any conversation on a Local Authority website.

Stewardship

Local Authorities must become Stewards of the Connected Community

We believe Local Authorities must see beyond the use of the web as a delivery channel for their messages and services, and move towards embracing it as a collaborative social space. This is not simply a matter of implementation, but also requires new formulations of purpose, meaning, relationship and responsibility.

1. We believe that Local Authorities must become Stewards of the Connected Community for two key reasons:
2. To stay relevant to civic life and avoid becoming nothing more than a service broker & provider.

We believe it has a duty to act in the best interests of its citizens and protect the community from being connected only in ways that benefit the commercial market.