How do we want to learn?
How can learning networks help innovation in civic tech?
Innovation means learning. Karl Marx famously criticised philosophers for restricting themselves to understanding the world when the point was to change it. But to change the world you need to understand enough about it to know what innovation applied where could make change happen. And that takes learning.
We created the Civic Tech Innovation Network as a learning network for people using digital technologies in governance, in monitoring public services, in publishing government data and in an ever growing list of other areas. The network grew out of a Making All Voices Count Community of Practice that has met a few times a year in Johannesburg since 2014. This community is mainly made up of people working on digital technologies in civil society organisations. Working with the Gauteng Cities Regional Observatory, we have now been able to link up with other learning networks including SA Cities Network and the Economies of Regions Learning Network both of which are made of professionals in the public sector at national, provincial and local levels or at other public institutions.
I’ve written elsewhere about why learning is so important in this field and suggested that unless the communities of people working in civic tech invest more efforts in systematic learning, especially around what doesn’t work and why, we are likely to keep ‘re-inventing the flat tyre’.
Creating a culture of learning
Recently Jesse Harber from GCRO and I attended a meeting at the headquarters of StatsSA of around fifty people working on data — many of them on open data, and most of them working in local, provincial or national government. The official name of the group is the ‘Data Technical Working Group’ of the Economies of Regions Learning Network which has been running since 2012. The goals of the network are to support innovation by sharing ideas and approaches and developing the capacity of public organisations to innovate.
Applying the principles of agility
In a workshop that Jesse and I led, we had a group of people from local, provincial and national government as well as researchers and people from civil society organisations. The discussion was about ‘agile procurement’ — how to align public sector procurement systems and rules with the need for ‘agile development’ of digital technologies which requires high levels of flexibility in planning, development and implementation of new software and digital tools. It was a very productive session that generated some ideas and energy for thinking about learning.
So what kind of learning went on, and why?
First, we were engaged on a problem that some, if not all, of those in the room recognised as important. This wasn’t accidental. It was the result of a number of preparatory discussions that helped identify the issue as something pressing and relevant to a number of people in the network.
Second, the diversity of experiences of participants helped clarify the problem and also point to directions of how to address it. One person in the room worked at SITA, the agency responsible for procuring ICT for government, so she had extensive knowledge of procurement rules. A few people in the room had been responsible for implementing civic tech initiatives and had relevant experiences that helped identify where the issues were. One person had sat on a number of municipal panels where new technologies were being procured. This mix helped the group to identify a number of key issues to focus on as well as possible opportunities for addressing them. Changing or improving specifications in the procurement process (avoiding over-specifying) was one such example. Another was researching available open source tools that might avoid building new ones.
Third, our breakout session gave us just enough time to find out who was in the room; to gather up some very interesting experiences and ideas, and to begin to map the problem. The problem-solving was only started, not completed. The meeting did agree that gathering up some written case studies and possibly a written toolkit would be worthwhile outputs.
5 takeouts
I’ve drawn up five tentative conclusions from the session that may be relevant for our future activities, especially within the broader Civic Tech Innovation Network:
- Action-led learning
The ‘curriculum’ for professional learning needs to be driven by questions and problems that practitioners recognise and face in their day to day work. Researchers have a role to play, but the learning agenda needs to be led by those who are trying to solve real problems.
2. Learning needs networks
Learning alone is hard. Learning with others is better. First, because someone in the room may have an answer to your question. Second, because if its a difficult problem (and many of the problems in civic tech are difficult problems) you may need people with diverse experiences and knowledge to address it. As the philosopher Pierre Levy wrote in his book Collective Intelligence : “No one knows everything, everyone knows something,”
3. Learning needs (documented) evidence
At school you have text books. In civic tech, we need to create our own. That means gathering evidence from each other and other sources. The Civic Tech Innovation Network online magazine aims to build up a curated set of such evidence and link to other sources of it.
4. Learning takes time
We didn’t ‘solve the problem’ in the room. We did help clarify it and set an agenda for going about addressing it. So the learning won’t be complete unless that group — or at least some of them — take up the work that was done and ‘run with it’ or at least unless some of us write up the discussions in an accessible form so others could enagage with it. Keeping learning processes active in between meetings needs people who take responsibility for curating and organising a learning network. ERLN is supported by a small team at the National Treasury who play a crucial role in maintaining the network. The Network Society research programme and GCRO at Wits have undertaken to play a secretariat role in the Civic Tech Innovation Network for now.
5. Learning what you need to know
In the MAVC Community of Practice, we have discussed what might be the greatest barrier of all to learning: not knowing what you don’t know. Civic Tech is full of experiments, start-ups, and trial and error. And that’s not a bad thing. Innovation requires all these approaches. But one risk is that people and organisations don’t recognise knowledge gaps or the available ways to fill them. A network that can contribute to building a learning community can help.
