BeLocal workshop game

The other day I ran a game at a BeLocal workshop on 'Building and engaging local communities using digital technologies,' organised by Simon Grice.

The intention was to use fiction to create a local context and bring a touch of reality to the fresh excitement of 'freeing up information' for the citizen. 

Time to refer to the recent Power of Information Taskforce Report (beta) report which recommends that UK central government should create the capability for others to re-use and innovate with 'official' datasets. They quote the Prime Minister:

‘Public information does not belong to government, it belongs to the public on whose behalf government is conducted'

- but of course we need to go further. Most people aren't going to be too interested in whether or not information 'belongs' to them, if it doesn't help them or is not pertinent. If we can create information services, personalised or not, that advance the engagement and empowerment of people who experience disadvantage and exclusion, then making them relevant to others is not likely to be too problematic.

And invariably, as Simon noted during the workshop, discussions among information professionals tend to drift away from 'community' to reflect a precoccupation with the systems.

So the objective of the game was to devise an information system, but it had to be based on a neighbourhood context - invented and described by participants; and on the day-to-day lives of individuals - also invented and described by participants.

In the end I over-prescribed some of the conditions but each of the three groups rose to the increasing challenges of complex neighbourhood environments and awkward personal circumstances for their character. The outcomes, when they came to describe their proposed systems, were inventive and sincere: given some of the IT 'solutions' in which local authorities have invested serious money, you might think they had a ready market.

The potential value of the game was summed up for me in the narrative developed by one of the groups about their character - a 51-year old gay formerly married self employed tradesman with no computer skills, who became the driving force for a locally-grown information service that addressed exaggerated and stifling perceptions of the fear of crime.

Lots of new services are going to emerge in the post-Taskforce context and in the slipstream of the Timely Information Initiative, and it may start to feel like a bewildering frantic dash. Reflecting creatively on the environment in which people need and seek information is surely essential for getting this right.

Much of the content of the BeLocal workshop has been captured here by Carl Haggerty.

Comments

[newport driving school]

That is really useful.

I am in the process of thinking this through in Stafford, so you have probably saved me a lot of time.
But i am very much impressed by this point"
a 51-year old gay formerly married self employed tradesman with no computer skills, who became the driving force for a locally-grown information service."

Thanks.