I’m in Washington at the moment and all the talk is about green shoots. Like in London everyone is keen to put the bad news behind us and move on and listening to Chief Executives from all walks of like you’d think it had never happened. The credit crunch is just a blip.

But it’s not that easy is it? For one thing what about unemployment? The number of people out of work continues to rise. It’s all right calling it a lagging indicator but what good is that to someone out of work now. What good is that to millions of families throughout the western world without incomes?

And what about debt? Sure the downturn isn’t as bad as it was. But that’s hardly surprising given the amount of government money thrown at it. Just this week President Obama admitted that the US Government was just plain out of cash when it came to bailouts.

Which brings me on to local authorities – city governments in all the major countries. In many ways the recession has re-defined the roles of local government. People are looking to councils for leadership in an unprecedented manner. Councils are now getting involved in building homes, lending money and providing jobs to their communities. It’s leading to a whole new relationship with constituents. Another area where this is happening is communications. Given the explosion in the use of the internet and the demise of the local newspapers councils are at the heart of a completely new way of civic engagement.

And there’s the rub. These changes have been brought about because of need, not choice. People need help with homes and jobs and they’re turning to the council for that. And yet the various government bailouts have burdened us with unprecedented levels of debt. So the next few years are bound to see heavy spending curbs coming from central government just when the need is at its greatest. Which is going to force on councils not just new ways of working but new economic models to support them as well.

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.