Collective Action Labs — a way for civil society to ensure there’s“Just Enough Internet” in Greater Manchester
In my previous blog post I explained why this work is starting with a focus on civil society across Greater Manchester, and why civil society needs to have a particular role in this agenda. I ran an initial workshop at the end of last year with a small group of civil society organisations from across Greater Manchester to start discussing why this is an important agenda for them to be a part of.
I’ve written about this a lot already, here, and here and made a film about it as well, which I’d recommend watching. In summary, we talked about the huge power shifts being created by data and digital technologies that are playing out in real time, the outcomes of which are still largely unknown, but because of which, an unease is growing. This is particularly true when a piece like this, describing how Greater Manchester is “doing digital differently” doesn’t mention anything about power or justice, or the climate implications of technology. I heard three main points from that initial workshop —
- Civil society organisations in Greater Manchester don’t see themselves represented in the narratives about the city and it’s digital economy — and they are concerned by the primary focus being on the economy, rather than a strong, just, equitable society
- There needs to be greater awareness and understanding of what the potential challenges are of technology in civil society organisations across Greater Manchester
- Organisations don’t have the capacity to engage with this kind of work, or feel confident to do so — but they would like to.
Learning from the past
Thinking about ways to do this well, I looked back on some previous work I’d done in Manchester five years ago that was exploring similar questions. Back in 2015, when I was working P/T at the Future Cities Catapult, I did two different pieces of work that related to Greater Manchester. The first was some research for IOT UK (part of the Digital Catapult) about how to engage the public in shaping the city’s decisions about technology. The IOT UK site doesn’t seem to be working anymore but the films we made are here, minus one which I can’t find about how to create real-time accountability between citizens and the City, based on the technology procurement decisions it was making. As part of the same piece of work I wrote a report about how Cities can be more responsible “demonstrators” for technology.
The second was with Future Everything and CityVerve. For Future Everything I was asked to design some tools for citizens to use in shaping their views about technology and its impacts. Looking back at it now, 5 years later, the questions are still very relevant. The blog wasn’t published by FutureEverything but the work is here, including the tools.
There were many reasons why that whole programme of work wasn’t particularly successful — one being that many of the decisions about the technology had already been made without the input of local communities, and this was an attempt to retrofit participatory design in to the process. The other was that it was an attempt to put the onus on individuals (often with very low levels of understanding about the power dynamics of technology, and with many other pressures on their time and in their lives) to hold tech and the City to account. Whilst I believe communities should be shaping the decisions about technology and how it’s procured in public services and public spaces, the responsibility can’t only sit with communities to decide. What they need in terms of building their capabilities to give informed input, and when and how they are brought in to the process, really matters.
More recently there are all kinds of efforts happening to “engage the public in making decisions about tech” — see this work by the RSA and funded by DeepMind, the Ada Lovelace Institute is also exploring aspects of this, as is Doteveryone — who bring a much more plural and pragmatic view.
“The public should not be expected to shoulder the burden to tackle challenges — from tech elsewhere — alone. It also requires action from government and industry to ensure the public have support as they navigate a tech-enabled world.”
Bringing together “Just Enough Internet” with a collective approach
Whilst these public engagement efforts have varying degrees of success, what hasn’t been tried yet, as far as we know, is bringing together a group of civil society organisations (charities, community and voluntary organisations) to act together.
Between now and the end of 2020 we are going to be testing out how a Collective Action Lab might work in this context. A focus on the collective feels particularly fitting for something being powered by the Co-op Foundation too — cooperation is at the heart of collective action.
“What can we do together, that we can’t do alone?”
“More powerful together.”
We’re also going to be using the framing of “Just Enough Internet” because it’s a simple but powerful way of articulating something important— What if we don’t need to digitise everything? What if that is in fact the wrong thing to do? And conversely what might we need to pay more attention to? Most of all, what is important, is that civil society organisations know how to work out what “Just Enough Internet” is for them and for the communities they serve. Rachel is going to write a follow up blog post explaining the idea in more depth — what might it mean and look like for a whole region to adopt a “Just Enough Internet” way of designing it’s growth, shaped in part (or perhaps primarily) by those organisations representing our social sector and our communities.
How to get involved
The programme of work will start with two workshops, one in April and one in May, where we will be inviting civil society organisations across Greater Manchester to come and define for themselves, what “Just Enough Internet” means for them. By the end of those two workshops there will be a set of co-designed principles that the civil society community in Manchester want to stand by and get behind. These principles will then be explored as actions in the Collective Action Lab.
The first two workshops will be on April 21st and May 12th, so save the dates — details for signing up will be shared soon and we have budget to cover for some time and expenses.
Look out for Rachel’s blog post in the next fortnight.
And lastly, when I talk about “we”, the team working on this is myself, Rachel Coldicutt previously CEO of Doteveryone, and Iona Lawrence previously CEO of the Jo Cox Foundation. We’re also looking for a designer to work with us, and would love one based in Manchester, so please get in touch!
