I thought I’d offer you a bit of an outline of the PICamp (Political Innovation Camp) strands that are making up part of NESTA’s Reboot Britain event next week. You’ll see that the sessions that are planned reflect a lot of the issues that come up on this blog regularly.
We’re offering these because we believe that innovation doesn’t just affect business and public administration. It often offers the potential to break out of a political stalemate.
Like the stalemate that politicians, journalists and bloggers are in. Like the stalemate between declining local newspapers and local authorities.
Every senior politician says that they want to devolve power down to local government. Local government says that it wants more power devolved from the centre.
But every politician also knows that this will never happen as long as the public blame central government for poor local services. Innovators can help local authorities raise their game, create new communications channels and start to address this problem.
Politicians know that they face obstacles when they want their departments to raise their game. Whether it’s the risk-averse veto groups in middle management or procurement rules that reward box-ticking rather than imagination, they know that the easy answers have all been tried.
These are small administrative hurdles rather than big political ones. Politicians and innovators can tackle these problems together.
Politicians also know that – if they yield to demands for a more participative politics – that they run the real risk of disenfranchising large sections of the population that are prepared to vote in elections, but that don’t have the ability or the confidence to fight their corner as active citizens.
Politicians will need to call for help from politically-aware innovators if they are to meet demands for participation while preserving the universal franchise.
In many cases, it isn’t just innovation, but political innovation that is needed. Politicians can offer the leadership, but they need to know that innovators are focussed upon their problems – and not just commercial and administrative ones.
It’s time for innovators to help get politicians out of the political stalemate that they are stuck in. Most of these issues will not simply be solved by a general election and a change of government. They involve the kind of game-changing ideas that have altered so many other sectors of public life.
You can book your tickets for Reboot Britain here. If you’re interested in any of these issues, scan the schedule for more information on them, or please visit www.picamp.org and meet some of the session initiators. I’m hoping to encourage them to just flesh out what they are planning to talk about on this site a bit in advance of the event next Monday.
