From e-government to we-government
Communications and consultation are the watchwords of local government today. In the UK, there have recently been a number of central government announcements about e-government becoming we-government. Citizens, we are told, will have more involvement in health and social care decisions in their local areas, and in the design and delivery of public services.
All well and good. The trouble is, the public doesn’t believe it will ever happen. Government consultation does not always have a very good record for translating into measures that the public has asked for.
WebsEdge has just conducted a survey of 1,000 UK citizens to find out what they think local government’s top neighbourhood priorities should be. Not rubbish, as you might be forgiven for thinking if you read the acres of newsprint in the UK devoted to the subject (waste management came a mere fifth). It’s neighbourhood crime. And what’s interesting, is that there is a real appetite for helping to solve it – by using local government websites more, by posting photos or videos of the results of anti-social behaviour to speed up local government decision-making.
At the moment, there isn’t a lot of incentive to use the website – only 6% of people mostly get their information about local government from the council website. But imagine if you made these sites dynamic and interactive, using the combination of visual (photos and videos) and text content that they asked for in the survey. You could build real online communities, and use them to engage residents to participate in real decision-making. With that, you might just find citizens and local government working more closely together after all.
Read How Councils Communicate: Feedback from Stakeholders GfK NOP here.