From notice board to message board

Come what may, in terms of political allegiance or policy thinking, everyone is advocating that there should be more participitation from the ‘ordinary’ citizens in the matters of the state.

I must admit, I dislike the term ‘ordinary’ citizen, it smack of elitism from the political classes who swim in the shark infested waters of the Westminster village. Rather randomly, it is like the phrase coined by the so-called actress Liz Hurley about non-celebrities, she called them ‘civilians’.

In a recent edition of LGC, www.lgcplus.com, there was an interesting piece by Leo Boland, chief executive of the Greater London Authority, and Emer Coleman, London Alliances project director of the Greater London Authority, on managing public services. 

At the heart of it they coined a rather management school term of  ‘communicative governance’. Now don’t let that put you off and switch off. It is the meaning of the term that is important. They argue, as countless others have, that public service delivery has to move from the position of communicating in a top-down somewhat Stalinist style to one of proper engagement with the end users of these services – local people.

If you look at the example of local (parish and town) councils, now I know they are by no means major public service delivery agents, but they run a wide range of services from environmental to transport to leisure and tourism, they are following this trend. Traditionally, and in the past the only forms of public participation they engaged in was a flyer on a notice board to inform residents of a meeting and a parish newsletter. But as Boland and Coleman say for true public participation we need to move from ‘broadcast’ to ‘dialogue’.

And this is where social media has a role to play with interesting opportunities; where people exchange views, share, rate and rank in real time on a daily basis. You only to have to visit Cllr Tweeps’s, website, www.cllrtweeps.com, to see that many parish and town councilors are engaging in a meaningful way with social media and this is a significant step change.

But all of these different forms of communications can actually lead to lower levels of satisfaction among residents because their expectations become much higher, as research from the University of Exeter has shown. So, although it might appear to be a negative, councils that wish to have higher levels of satisfaction are those who dampen down expectations or manage them better. 

Will all this different methods of communications lead to a ‘communicative governance’ utopian model contract between the state and the citizen? I think it is a wait and see game.