If you’re reading this, you’re probably a regular lurker around the blogosphere and the longer, cleverer articles on media websites. You may even go further than that and comment occasionally, “Digg”, share or “like” postings on Facebook. And if you’re very clever with your RSS reader, you may have found a way of getting some of the better quality content to come to you – almost unbidden – by some smart “collaborative filtering” technology.

Google Reader users, for instance, know when other people who share their interests have chosen to share something worthwhile.

Blogging can, in itself, be an improving experience. But is it as improving as it could be? Is there anything we could learn from the way that the Internet pushes other media at users based upon their known preferences?

I’d suggest that Last.fm is a good place to start. If you’re not already familiar with it, it’s a music website where the music is not only legal and entertaining but also, if you want it to be, mind-stretching and educational.

Scrobbling is at the heart of Last.fm.  Because Last.fm can see what music you’re listening to on your iPod or PC (perhaps also on Spotify), it gradually builds up a profile of what you like. It then builds a profile page for you that others can look at.

Some of the most fascinating and educational features of Last.fm are the different radio stations, especially the “neighbourhood” and “recommendation” radio stations. The “Dashboard” shows you music that it thinks that you haven’t heard but that you may like. It allows you to find people who have similar tastes to yourself and use their playlists to fill gaps in your own. It uses a system based upon a collaborative filtering algorithm so users can browse and hear previews of a list of artists not listed on their own profile but which appear on those of others with similar musical tastes.

Last.fm allows us to passively recommend music to people we have never met, and the site also calculates what suggestions will be met favourably. But the interesting possibility Last.fm offers to consumers of written content is that it moves listeners, little by little, from the known to the moderately unknown, using a series of automatic and manual tools – thus expanding the users’ knowledge of their chosen area of content.  Imagine if every newspaper article or blog-post that we read contributed to a similar system that sought to find new interesting material that was able to fill our knowledge gaps?

Last.fm creates a kind of musical inkblot which broadens in an entertaining and educational way and creates objectively better and more intelligent listeners.  What’s more, by being able to “ban” or “love” content that users listen to, interactivity with future recommendations is maximum – as is the ability to influence and mould such recommendations.

Let us now apply the above to political blogging and commenting.  If we could do for articles what we Last.FM does for tunes, we could potentially have a tool that promoted self-learning. We’d be creating a self-educating website of political DNA, the like of which we have never experienced before. Except, that is, to date, in the field of music.

The ability to trawl a substantial database of all kinds of political thought, in order to support, substantiate and argue different points of view and positions, would help bloggers and commenters of all shades of opinion generate more effective, accurate and constructive levels of communication in the field of political endeavour and exchange.

In addition, the social media features of sites like Last.fm, where people build sustained relationships on a one-to-one and group basis, could contribute usefully to generating that sense of engagement and empathy that much of Internet discourse seems to have lost, as it continues to take place in the distancing ether and on either side of defensive computer screens.

As it happens, such a database exists in prototype – thanks to a previous “Political Innovation” essayist.

I have sketched this idea out as one that can be applied to politics/policy-related content – mainly because it is my personal enthusiasm. But there’s no reason to suppose it couldn’t be applied effectively to any area of human knowledge in which a large proportion of the content is available on the open web.

There is no question that it will be a significant challenge to work out how such a database can develop the critical mass of users and reactions to such content. This is where the next level of investment is needed. But it doesn’t seem to me to be showstopper, especially as the rewards – in terms of human understanding – are potentially huge.

I’ve been following the Political Innovation project quite closely over the last month or so and the innovation that I would like to propose represents a synthesis of many of the other ideas in this series.

I work in the field of Education and in particular School Design. With a decade of significant financial investment by government (and emotional investment from teachers and parents) there’s a pressing need to ensure all of that energy and ambition is not driven out of the system by this summer’s BSF cuts.Of course money is a huge issue. But thinking about education in this current climate is arguably more valuable. What is needed to unlock a small-c conservative education system is a mixture of creativity, participation and a focus on what works. The spontaneity of parents, teachers and communities can be mined in new ways to ensure we are getting the best out of limited resources. We need a National Clearing House for Schools that shares real time knowledge about what works, – one that uses clever information tools to pool the wisdom of grassroots professionals.

For too long, public policymaking has been a top-down process that has been monopolised and codified too tightly. Not all of the great ideas we hear about are expensive in cash terms – but the potential value of many of them is huge.

How do we do this? Well, take Ivo Gormley’s idea on making short documentaries about the impacts of social policy. This has an obvious application at the grassroots level to education and school design. Similarly, Lauren Currie’s ideas around how you can involve everybody – not just the self-selecting active citizens – to participate in decisions around the future direction of schooling.

In the public sector, there is a real cultural resistance in being forthcoming and conversational about these issues. A small number of QUANGOs are still (even now!) licensed to manage such work, and they have a track record of imposing rigidly defined methods and of stifling innovative thinking.

Tim Davies’ idea on building a consensus among public sector management that interactivity is a good thing, really needs to be promoted among the staff in local government who deal with education policy – and a clear message needs to be sent to QUANGOs such as Partnerships for Schools – telling them that frankness will be rewarded and not punished.

Dominic Campbell’s idea on making procurement a great deal more interactive – a process that could and should involve teachers, parents and local communities – can ensure that a more energy goes straight to the front line where it is needed and ensuring that procurement isn’t a wasteful dialogue between detached professionals or a budget-maximising private sector.

The National Clearing House for Schools builds on this and has already been hugely successful in the US through websites such as Edutopia (funded by the George Lucas Foundation) and the National Clearinghouse for Education Facilities (a more techie site – literally about the nuts and bolts of school buildings).

As David Hargreaves said in ‘Education Epidemic’ – we need to create meaningful engagement amongst professionals using the latest peer to peer technology. Our proposed Clearing House would provide a collaborative resource to every parent and organisation that participates in the management and development of a school and be made available in an open source way to all local government professionals teachers and pupil – so that they can own the ways the education system and schools are specified, bought and delivered.

All of this needs to be politically-driven. It’s not an expensive idea, but it has an obvious appeal to all sides of the political spectrum.

If the big political innovation of the moment is to give power back to people, then a good place to do it is with personal data.

Whose data is it anyway? Whose health, whose education, whose identity, whose shopping history, bank details, travel plans, creditworthiness? Yet all these personal details, which affect us, are stored on hundreds of state and private-sector databases.

If I said there were 50bn personal records for the UK’s 50m people no-one would know to contradict me, and whether in truth there were more or fewer.What we can all agree is that it’s a major, right old pain for the individual to update every single organisation we deal with each time our circumstances change, when we move house or just lose our wallet. People’s attitudes towards what happens with their personal data lies somewhere between depressed and in denial. Many undervalue their personal data. Most behave irrationally about it, and inconsistently.

It wastes untold amounts of money, public and private and a huge amount of our time. It’s a logistical mess. It’s an affront to human dignity as well as business efficiency.

The political response is pretty easy. Stop assuming that large central databases will solve health, education, obesity. Stop assuming that only the organisation has the ability or the right to store, manage and transmit personal data. The cancellation of the National ID Scheme and of the ContactPoint databse is a good start. Note to Chris Huhne: commissioning a centralised smart-metering system at this moment would be a folly. There’s a different, much better way to do it.

The US Veterans health administration (a bigger health service than our own NHS) shows an alternative way. President Obama recently unveiled a “blue Button” for vets. It’s marked “Download my data”. The patient self-identifies online, then downloads their electronic health record in structured format. Let’s have those buttons for the health record, for education, for jobseekers as well as from banks, supermarkets and credit bureaux.

The missing element is the secure personal data store, under the control of the individual. The are various options for his, but the one we’ve been working on at the Young Foundation is called Mydex. It’s a social enterprise – a Community Interest Company – designed to help individuals realise the value of their own personal data. Live service starts next month. It will show that when individuals store and manage their data, with external verification of their claims, they can, if they so choose, help organisations towards cleaner, more accurate records.

The logistics are self-evident: individuals know their own data better. They know things about themselves no amount of CCTV or behavioural psychology will ever grasp. They are the single and only rational point of integration for their own lives. One plank of a Big Society (as Geoff Mulgan argues in his new essay Investing in Social Growth) is restoring right and control over personal data. It’ll save money, restore efficiency to processes cripples by bad data logistics, and create immense new wealth.

For too long, policymaking has been monopolised by civil servants, self-serving pressure groups and sensationalist journalists. We get a vote once every four or five years and we’re expected to be satisfied with that.

Public services are too important to get lost in headline issues, and too big to leave to those who have the time and energy to write letters or sit on committees. The best communication happens when it’s easy to do, and when it’s a conversation, not just a complaint.For this reason, in 2009, a group of us created MyPolice. It was a collaborative project that came out of the Social Innovation Camp. It’s an online feedback tool that enables the public and police to have a conversation. It facilitates three things.

• It’s a neutral space where people can find out more about who their local police are, and what they do.
• it allows people to send feedback about their experiences with the police, good or bad, which then gets delivered to the right force.
• it collects empathic data based on real customer experience and feeds it back to the police, which creates a deeper understanding of what the public wants, bringing police and public closer together.

We help communities identify weaknesses and opportunities in police services. In providing analysis and data for the police to act on, it challenges and helps make policy decisions, ensuring that service users have an active part in changing the police for the better. People can give their opinion at a time when they feel strongly about an encounter with the police or feel that the service offered by the police could be improved. It’s the place where people can see how their thoughts translate directly into action.

We have a funding model that is politically acceptable to both left and right (Labour as one of the most innovative social enterprises in Britain, and the Conservatives say it is ‘potentially transformative’). We charge a small annual fee to every force that takes part and provide the software and methodology that makes it work for them.

The cost is far outweighed by the benefits in terms of efficiency and quality. The people for whom the police exist get a better and more inclusive service.

The idea of a ‘candid friend’ – neither a hectoring simplifying journalist / pressure group, nor spinning apologist for an unresponsive service – isn’t entirely new. The excellent Patient Opinion project achieves exactly the same ends in a way that is tailored to the services provided by the NHS.

This brings me to the political innovation that I would like to propose: Let’s set a target whereby significant sections of the public sector aim to replace all self-produced information about themselves with content that is generated by the users. This can’t simply be a crude ‘have your say’ exercise – but I think that MyPolice and Patient Opinion both show that it’s possible to get good fair descriptions of public services authored by all of us.

That’s better than just a one-size-fits-all X in a ballot box every five years, isn’t it?

Although Government claims to want our participation and wants us to appreciate its policies, it hides the evidence on which it bases its policies in fat documents and reports that are hard to read and only available free at special events at think-tanks around Whitehall.

If we want participation in politics in a way that goes beyond choice we need to share policy research in a way that engages people and invites their comments, ideas and understanding.

Responding to our consultation? Excellent! Here's the background reading.... (click pic for credit)

I propose that as part of the development of a white paper which is likely to result in a social impact, an ethnographic documentary exploring the lives of those who will be affected should be produced. This documentary would be based on existing research and would allow a more accessible and jargon-free way of engaging with the issue.

Following the television or web broadcast of the documentary there would be a defined period of time for public debate and feedback. The documentary and the public feedback would then be inputted to a policy design meeting at which the policy’s stakeholders could also be present.

The process would bring transparency and participation to an area of government that appears very closed.Numerous governmental organisations, from the Department of Health to local Government, are starting to put more of an emphasis on qualitative research. Organisations are becoming aware of the importance of understanding their users and are commissioning research in order to do so. Yet still, most of this research is kept private or is not designed to be consumed by the public.

By focusing on the existing experiences of the user, or those affected, an ethnographic documentary commissioned from inside government departments, could provide a platform for informed public debate and collaboration between state and citizen in a way that would side-step party-political leanings.

The approach will both qualify and invite comment at the same time: a publicly aired exploration of the real lives of those who will be affected by a policy provides a level playing field for comment and idea generation. To an extent, it also educates viewers in the policy context and so qualifies them to comment. Crucially, it would often bring useful evidence into the process from sources that are not usually involved.

Bringing the public exploration of policy context – from the point of view of those affected – into the process of developing and proposing a new policy could have significant affect on the relationship between government and citizens.  It would allow more creative ideas to come from a wider range of sources and allow a formal and powerful opportunity for citizens to influence government. It would also help to create a mandate which may lead to faster implementation of those policies.

By inviting the public into the process of developing policies I believe we can get better policies and more efficient government.

Most political bloggers are motivated to fight what they see as bigotry, prejudice, and ill-informed, unjustifiable assertion. This is a fine and noble cause, because the spreading of false beliefs – without the evidence to support them – is bad for all of us, as is the displacement of informed argument by mere rhetoric. All the more so when the perpetrator is powerful or influential.

However, bloggers – regular journalists too, and political representatives such as MPs – are only human, and frequently counter the prejudices and assertions of their political enemies with those of their political friends.We need a solution that allows writers to write and thinkers to get their thoughts into print, but that gives the ultimate power of scrutiny over blogs, online newspapers, and think-tanks – whether they like it or not – to their millions of readers. A service that makes it easy for readers to flag-up the unsubstantiated assertions that bloggers and journalists make – in a seamless, a structured, and a visible way – so that they may be held to account, and asked to back up their claims. Addressing public concerns is good for politics, as well as for one’s reputation. Not responding would give out a less desirable signal…

I believe that a centralised service like this would encourage more thoughtful blogging, reward the best bloggers, and penalise those who are the most shrill, the most partisan, the least constructive, and the least conversational – all without the need for ‘codes of conduct’. Do you agree?

If you do, you’ll be pleased to hear that a solution is just around the corner. I run a site called Poblish.org that aggregates all kinds of political content, creating a central, searchable hub for the output of 2000 (and growing) of the most popular and influential bloggers and journalists. In other words, it’s the perfect place to find political bigotry, prejudice, and assertion.

Once a reader has identified an article – or just a section – that they feel needs substantiation, Poblish will guide them through a very easy-to-use process describing their request, passing the request to the original author (by email, or via TheyWorkForYou for MPs), handling their response, asking the reader to review it, adding or subtracting Brownie points as necessary, and recording the results so that other readers and authors can learn from what happened.

Most of the work has already been done to create this system. There’s even an API for accessing the results. The next stage is for bloggers and political representatives to commit to being part of this; for their readers to start flagging assertions, confident that their efforts will be rewarded, and that online politics can improve; and for developers and the political data community to help perfect Poblish’s solution.

Well, you wouldn’t still be reading had I called it the politics of procurement now would you? (no, stop – don’t go!). No-one who engages with government procurement comes away impressed with it. It’s a process that wastes £billions and rewards process over outcomes.

Yet we all know that, deep down, it’s a symptom of a political problem. It is a system set up to manage risk in retrospect and trace blame for failure, rather than create a partnership between supplier and customer that allows us to prototype, innovate, and on occasion, fail (well). Because it’s a top-down process, the top are primarily concerned to shield themselves from criticism rather than to be the parents of success.

The risk of failure is very real, but worth the risk as long as failure happens quickly, cheaply and is learnt from with no same mistake being allowed to happen twice.

Procurement is currently about getting people at the top to define a problem that suppliers can solve. Surely it’s time that this process was turned on its head? Politicians and management alike need to let go, to accept they may not have all the answers but by working with colleagues, suppliers and citizens they may be able to develop and deliver solutions to problems better than ever before.

In many ways the government’s procurement process encapsulates everything that must change in the age of New Politics.  Slow, burdensome, anti-innovative and risk averse, it rewards anyone who can parrot the language of the procurer. It rarely takes account of the wider policy objectives that underlie the whole exercise. It scores against lateral thinkers (often smaller, creative suppliers).

It’s no wonder therefore procurement has been singled out on both sides of the Atlantic as a key signifier of change in government culture. Change procurement and you can change much of what is wrong in public service delivery.

In the UK we had the Conservative Party place emphasis on procurement within their Technology Manifesto (it must now extend well beyond this), whereas in the USA the General Services Administration (GSA) are pushing forward on a host of procurement modernisation projects.

While still trialing new ways of working themselves, the GSA (previously seen as the procurement problem not the solution by many) are intent on opening up procurement and bringing in notions of transparency and collaboration. Take the Better Buy Project for instance, where the GSA have developed a space online (a uservoice and a wiki) to co-create the specification for certain goods and services with their suppliers (and presumably their citizens too in the future if not already). Or the new and exciting Challenge.gov, where US government agencies are crowdsourcing solutions to identified problems.

No longer are requirements handed down from on high, but instead developed through an acceptance that ‘many brains are better than one’, they are developing far more honest and achievable set of requirements and saving money with it.

Similarly, FutureGov is developing a social innovation marketplace (Simpl) intended to provide the government with answers from citizens and social innovators to problems it may never knew it had. If it works, procurement will be transformed from the bottom up, with citizens identifying needs and recommending solutions to government rather than merely acting as passive recipients of services.

Clearly while none of this is easy, change is beginning to happen. We can’t hide behind old ideological divides between those who think the state should be doing less or more. Most of us agree that the state has to do something – and all sides of the political spectrum surely want that something to be done well?

This is an idea that needs to be understood and adopted by politicians of all colours. It’s a political innovation rather than a managerial one.

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The communication revolution that we’ve undergone in recent years has two big impacts:

• It changes what’s possible. It makes creating networks between people across organisations easier; it opens new ways for communication between citizens and state; it gives everyone who wants it a platform for global communication; and it makes it possible to discover local online dialogue.
• It changes citizen expectations of government. When I can follow news from my neighbour’s blog on my phone, why can’t I get updates on local services on the mobile-web? When I can e-mail someone across the world and be collaborating on a document in minutes, why is it so hard to have a conversation with the council down the road? And when brands and mainstream media are doing interactivity and engagement – why are government departments struggling with it so much?

Right now, government is missing out on significant cost saving and service-enhancing benefits from new forms of communication and collaboration. But the answers are not simply about introducing new technology – they are to be found in intentional culture change: in creating the will and the opportunity for interactive government.There are three things we need to focus on:

• Culture change. Although there are pockets of interactivity breaking out across the public sector, it’s often counter-cultural and ‘underground’. Most staff feel constrained to work with tools given to them by IT departments, and to focus on official lines more than open conversations. Creating a culture of interactivity needs leadership from the top, and values that everyone can sign up to.
• Removing the barriers. There are literally hundreds of small daily frustrations and barriers that can get in the way of interactive government. It might be the inability of upload a photo to an online forum (interactive government has human faces…), or consent and moderation policies that cover everyone’s backs but don’t allow real voices to be heard. Instead of ignoring these barriers, we need to overcome them – to rethink them within an interactive culture that can make dialogue and change a top priority.
• Solving tough problems. Public service is tough: it has to deal with political, democratic and social pressures that would make most social media start-ups struggle. We need to think hard about how interactive technology and interactive ways of working play out in the tough cases that the public sector deals in every day.

The Interactive Charter is a project to explore how exactly we go about making government into interactive government. It’s got three parts:

• Creating a pledge – The ‘Interactive Charter’ will be a clear statement that any organization (or senior manager within an organization) can sign up to say something along the lines of “I want my organization to get interactivity; and I’ll commit to overcoming the barriers to interactive ways of working”. With a promise and commitment from the top removing the barriers should get a lot easierOf course to just hand down a pledge wouldn’t be very interactive, so we’re drafting it on Mixed Ink.
• Naming the problems…and overcoming them – We’ve already made a start over on the Interactive Charter wiki, but we would love you to join in suggesting practical challenges, and practical solutions, to interactive and digital working in government.
• Putting it into practice – We want to pilot the approach: getting top-level support, and removing the barriers to interactivity from the ground up. Could your organization be part of that?

So, if you’ve got a vision for more interactive government, you can share it by redrafting the current pledge. And if you’ve faced or solved problems around interactive government, help shape the body of knowledge around each of the barriers and their solutions on the wiki. Of course, you could also just drop in comments over on the Political Innovation blog…