This is what Dominic Campbell, MD of FutureGov, shared with us today at Unicom Web 2.0 about the Future Shape of the (Barnet) Council.  Incredibly interesting for both private and public sector organisations alike!

There is a steady shift from systems thinking to life-world thinking. Systems thinking has resulted in value/performance indicator reports or satisfaction surveys, which indicate nothing because everything falls in the generic 40-60% bracket. Traditional communications like newsletters, bus shelter broadcasts, electronic bulletin boards, leaflets and council branded publications, don't adequately reach their targets. For instance, a bus shelter broadcast about reducing traffic congestion is unlikely to be read by a petrol head speeding past the bus stop in their souped-up Honda.

Engagement, in the past, included civic network, citizens panels, service user groups, area forums, councillor surgeries. But now it's not enough to expect people to come to the council.  Instead, the council has to have a better strategy for going out to community and customers.

Because if you do what you've always done - you'll get what you've always got!

Whilst there's still a role for newsletters and traditional engagement, the audience needs to be properly targeted. Importantly, steps are being made to improve the Council's interactions with people, and towards a mixed-model of communications and interactions. Which includes cracking clips like this:

In the ideal world, the council would seek to understand the climate of community emotion through a "We Feel Fine" style site developed by Jonathan Harris. This is essentially a search engine of emotions on the internet. Aspiring to this type of user engagement can help the council to be more proactive rather than reactive.

Other steps towards more democratic engagement includes leaderlistens.com. By videoing leaderlisten events, and then posting those clips on Youtube, that brings the conversation to people's homes. Just because people couldn't make it from 6-8pm on a Tuesday night doesn't mean the conversation is over.

It also means reaching out into existing networks and embedding the council in those networks, rather than constantly trying to bring people to the council's site (which is something of a cognitive overload!). That approach involves the use of a variety of social tools like Youtube, Flickr and Twitter.

And there's Fix my street - which pings email to that service centre responsible for the area where the problem has occurred like graffiti, fly tipping, broken paving slabs, or street lighting.  In fact this mechanism for interacting with councils caused a flood of  emails reports, simply by lowering the barrier to interaction.  That indicates an enormous latent demand for service, and that previously people simply didn't have the mechanism to communicate directly or effectively with the council.

So what are the implications for this approach?

• Everything is far more open and transparent (they are filming meetings and posting them on Youtube - because someone else will anyway).
• Accepting and working with the complexity.
• Working with social tools and getting a handle on the distruptive types of innovation and interactions they bring.
• Reaching out and embedding Barnet in existing networks.  Dominic gave a great example of how he joined a community on Facebook: Barnet ain't no shit hole.  He just wanted to have a look around and see what people were saying - very transparently.  The group then picked up on the fact that Barnet Council joined and it caused a huge stir in the group. They couldn't believe the council was on Facebook.  But they were happy to engage in a conversation and the fact that a the council had effectively come to them.

Great presentation - thanks Dominic!