The Grittier Side of Life: What Snow Can Do for Citizen Engagement

User Generated Content in full effect

As someone who is passionate about social media and its power to give citizens and communities a voice I was pleased when a tweet I sent last week about Birmingham City Council's efforts to grit the roads and pavements of England's second city was picked up by the BBC News. While it is easy to be sniffy and dismiss stories about snow and gritting as nothing more than banal 'local interest' I believe my experience offers some useful insights into how social media can support citizen engagement.

Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans (to blog about stuff)

  

'Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans'. Photo: Swerdlow

 The other Lennon

I believe it was John Lennon who sang ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans to blog about stuff’. Regardless of who said it, it would seem a universally acknowledged truth that the more blog-worthy stuff you’re up to, the less inclined you are to find the time to blog about it. All of which is a very round-about way of apologising for failing to keep this blog up-to-date in recent weeks. (What do you mean you hadn’t noticed?)

Policymaking in the Cloud: Increasing the Quality of Citizen Engagement

Clouds: a metaphor for our increasingly connected lives, apparently. Photo: Jhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/48813704@N02/5740160774/in

Since attending my first Political Innovation event earlier this month I've been thinking about the potential new technology such as social media and other digital engagement tools have to transform the way policy is made.

So far , much of the debate has tended to focus on how technology will change the way policy professionals (politicians, civil servants and assorted policy wonks) engage with citizens from static consultation windows to a more dynamic, conversational form of engagement. You can read a good summary of these developments by Dr Andy Williamson on the Political Innovation website.

While any progress towards  a more conversational form of engagement in policymaking should be celebrated, I feel in our excitement to 'do' crowdsourced policymaking we must not lose sight of the need for an attendant increase in policy literacy. Without us as citizens having a mature understanding of the wider context in which policy is developed and how our views on different issues relate to each other, there is a danger that new technology will simply add to the 'noise' which already surrounds policymakers.