Listening in – better than asking for opinions?

A sneaky listening device. It would be wrong for Councils to use them for consultations, but...

They say that eavesdroppers never hear good things about themselves. This may be true, but they probably get a more honest appraisal than the more direct forms of feedback can afford.

For me, this raises the question: Should we be asking people what they think about anything?

Or should we be encouraging conversations and finding (non-intrusive!) ways of eavesdropping on them?

No-one seems to be across the whole subject of local government’s use of read-write technology than Dave Briggs – and here, he’s found an example of how local activists can humanise a consultation that has been started by a local authority. In this case, the problem that is solved is the LocGovSpeak one. They’ve humanised the text and put it in a way that is intended to stoke up a conversation.

This is exactly how eavesdroppable conversations can work well. The only qualm I’d have  about it is an instinct that – the more you point out that councillors and local government officers are going to act upon the results of the conversation, the lower the overall quality of the conversations will be.

(contentious statement alert!) So maybe it’s worth finding a way of not using direct policy input as an incentive? I’m arguing here that the only way that policy-makers can find a conversation worth listening to is to pretend that you’re not listening to it in the first place.

In his elevator pitch earlier this month, Steph Gray urged governmental bodies to be seen to respond to online comments so that those making them will feel that feedback is worthwhile. From the point of view of improving the takeup and the quality of feedback in the delivery of services, this seems fine to me.

But surely being able to eavesdrop on a conversation that is not intended for policy-makers ears will ensure that you have access to a more conversational discussion? One that lacks the poisonous certainty and the hectoring huckstering voices of the vested interests and fanatics that I posted on here recently?

Aside from the problems caused by shouting competitions, I’d suggest that there are other reasons for local authorities not to be seen to initiate consultations.

There appears to be a growing consensus that government isn’t very good at specifying, procuring, developing or customising tech. When it does, it either does it on the cheap, or gets ‘cheap’ sold to it at expensive rates. I’d also argue that it allows bureaucratic priorities to trump the value of interactivity and to eclipse the need to ensure that elected representatives can interact with anyone they like easily.

For a long time, I’ve been trying to get local councillors to simply go through their council’s website and find information that they can re-purpose in their own (human – not institutional) voice, and I’ve had some modest successes with these councillors (among others) – but there’s huge scope for improvement.

For this reason, I’d say that the Big City Talk website is a fantastic idea, and that it’s originators deserve congratulating. But it would be even better if they could find a way of getting people to discuss local policy without any expectation that anyone would take any notice of what was said.

It’s hard to see how people could be incentivised to do it in the first place, but if this awkward circle could be squared, it would be well with taking notice of!

PS: For the avoidance of doubt, I’m NOT suggesting that councils should spy in the public. Just that fostering a conversational local polity may yield better content than bureaucratic consultation methods would.

PPS: In the US, the DIY idea seems a good deal more established. Here’s a post listing the things that Americans can do to make things better. Note, waiting for the government to do something isn’t one of them.