General
Our Society was an informal online initiative during 2011 to help people share ideas about local action. This ideas platform was one activity.
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let citizens assess public services - eBay style performance management
we could design a system which lets people rate public services as is used on Amazon, eBay, TripAdvisor etc.
This would be transparent and so everyone could see what others thought of a service. It could also be used to involve people in designing and improving services and holding local government (and others) to account.40 votes -
invest in boring but necessary services that make a sustained difference from day to day
There are loads of great new ideas for things we could do. But there are also many things that work - but that suffer from short-term funding. Finding out what those services are in our local areas and investing time, money and effort in supporting them turn out to be one of the most effective routes to positive social return.
6 votes -
Skill citizens and communities up to be constructively critical of engagement p
A comment on my blog (http://oursociety.org.uk/profiles/blog/list?user=3d7y1gav51y5g) on Our Society got me thinking.
One of the risks of the Big Society is that it fragments into lots of Little Societies all pursuing their own ends, probably in conflict with one another. At the same time, the risk is that local government will engage with communities to legitimise cuts already decided on rather than in ways that give them real voices.
Can we skill up communities and citizens to be constructively critical of engagement processes (both within the sector and those run by government) to push them to be more…
5 votes -
Squeeze extra value out of energy subsidies to fund or drive community projects
Community support is critical to making much of the green economy viable. At the same time, the grants and programmes behind the new low carbon industries are a great source of funding or even impetus for big society initiatives. I've outlined some examples here: http://bit.ly/communityenergy2
4 votes -
Run a series of local polls to see what things are the priorities to sort out in each area
Our Society needs to create solutions - and when people have consensus and are focused they'll have the energy to find them, whether it's through reskilling, hacking or convening
2 votes