Networking London’s public sector leaders
By Carrie Bishop • Jan 6th, 2010 • Category: FeaturesIt’s nice to start 2010 with the launch of a project - today we’re giving 400 people access to Network London, a site we’ve worked on for the London Collaborative, a programme that brings together the top people in London government to get to grips with some of London’s future challenges.
As well as developing a new public-facing site for the programme, we’ve worked on building a private space for the top 400 people in London local government to talk about The Future. By which we mean stuff like how on earth will London survive the public spending pressures ahead? Should London government be ‘nudging’ people to change the way they live? What other big things do London’s leaders need to be thinking about now in preparation for the future?
I’m not normally a fan of closed networks, especially when it comes to public sector stuff, but our discussions with the convenors of Network London and potential members showed us very clearly that those working at senior levels in the public sector in London (and I suspect this is a national issue) just aren’t prepared to have these conversations openly yet. There are big fears about thinking out loud in case ‘the media’ jump on a tentative idea and present it as concrete policy, not to mention the political implications. Part of the point of Network London is to encourage these issues to be aired behind closed doors (which is not even happening at the moment) with a view to making things more open in the future. Baby steps etc.
Not withstanding a tight budget and a difficult timetable we’ve worked really hard with some great developers to make the site intuitive and workable, but we’re still looking at an adoption challenge - the top 400 people in London local government aren’t really a cohesive group at the moment so there’s going to be lots of offline work and events to start to bring brains together, supported by the online place where the conversations can continue.
No doubt it’s an *interesting* journey, but as part of our work to design the site we invited views from users and they gave us some great insight into what makes London leaders tick, including this wordle of responses to the question ‘What’s the best bit about your job?’:
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Great work on this, chaps, looks a great initiative and one that ought to be replicated in all the other regions in the country too.
Thanks Dave appreciated. Looking forward to seeing it get moving under the guidance of London Councils. Plenty of challenges ahead but some good people behind it.
That’s bloody brilliant. The network in itself has huge value and I’d be really interested in the learnings from it and how it can be transported into other groupings and organisations.
Great stuff - but I think you’ve done the easy bit (technology). Based on our experience in cultivating new communities on the IDeA CoP platform I anticipate much work to be done to encourage on-line conversations and build a trusted network. The 80:20 rule is a good rule of thumb. Hope there will be lots of rich content in the RSS feeds so that we can join up conversations in the Knowledge Hub!
Thanks for the comments!
Dave - cheers! we think/hope it could be replicated elsewhere too
Mark - I agree there is the potential for huge value and while we’ve handed over the day-to-day running of the network to London Councils and the Young Foundation we hope to hear how it develops and transfer some learning.
Steve - if only the technology had been easy! the budget was ridiculously tight so there’s lots we’ve not been able to do with it, but hopefully it will grow and develop. On that note, thanks for highlighting the key point of the post, which is that technology does not a community make. Also, as the post says, there won’t be any public RSS feeds as it’s a private site. We have shared with you the data that we gathered as part of our scoping work for the project, though, so hopefully that will be used in your development of the Knowledge Hub.
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