Connecting before, during and after the UK government barcamp

Social media and the public sector - third sector relationship

This is just a set of fairly ill-formed ideas at the moment, but... I work for the Commission for the Compact, which is a Cabinet Office-backed organisation that tries to promote better working between the public sector and the "third sector" (or voluntary and community sector, as it's usually called).

I'd be happy to run a session around whether either side of that relationship makes good enough use of the online tools at their disposal to promote better communication and information sharing, and how it could be better... just a thought.

Any interest? Any ideas?

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Phil Green on October 18, 2009 at 5:16pm: Hi Nick, sounds promising. Could it include how social media might help make the relationship more inclusive - ie on the community and voluntary side to draw in and involve more of the community sector, the perhaps smaller, newer, less formal groupings and networks, rather than just the usual suspects - the bigger, more traditional and establishment organisations which perhaps have tended to predominate?

Vaguely related article here - talking about cities, but would suggest the pattern is a more general one.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Nick Drew on October 19, 2009 at 10:07am: It could include absolutely anything! I don't claim to be an expert on this agenda, but it would definitely be great to see if social media can bring the smaller, informal groups into the fold - after all, local authorities are obliged by law to involve "representatives of local persons" in their decision making now, so they've got to find a way of tapping into the 'hyper-local' bit of the VCS somehow...; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David Newman on January 14, 2010 at 3:18pm: Well, there is quite a lot of experience of engaging the Third Sector in Northern Ireland, both formally, though groups like NICVA, on-line through sites like CommunityNI, and to a certain extent in local Bebo groups. This goes back to the first voluntary and community groups to use the Internet, in the mid-1990s (see Beyond Access and Awareness).

Right now, I'm involved in expanding this into a distributed discussion model - getting groups to discuss an issue on their own choice of social network, entirely outside government, then collect their conclusions on a hub website to be read and acted upon by politicians and officials, in the HUWY project.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Paul Webster on January 17, 2010 at 11:17pm: I think organisations from both sectors are still finding their way - there are some great leading lights, but many are still yet to grasp the importance of social media tools both in working with their audience and with each other.

Later this year we're running an event looking at how community organisations can help find their voice. Whilst not a "social media" event we'll be using Twitter and Video to collaboratively build some answers, both from within and outside the venue.

Also as part of my "day job" the ICT Champions are developing resources for supporter organisations in their work with groups.

I can't be at UKGovCamp, but Nick, i'm sure your session will generate some interesting views!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Dave Briggs on January 18, 2010 at 2:36am: Sadly I don't think Nick can make it either any more - can someone else volunteer to lead on this?; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Michele Ide-Smith on January 18, 2010 at 8:25am: I'm not sure I know enough about the 3rd sector to lead on this but I can certainly feedback experiences from a project I'm currently working on. I work for a local authority and we're working in partnership with other service providers to develop a social media solution to enable residents to have their say. We're hoping to transfer the day-to-day management/governance of a social media solution to a community based organisation. The principle reason is because certain hard to reach groups (e.g. migrant communities) are wary of 'official' engagement mechanisms. But also because political issues would be diffused by transferring the governance to the 3rd sector. We've been using a Community of Practise very successfully to manage the project and share information.

We've also got a separate project under way at our authority to investigate using a social network to improve partnership working between public service providers and the 3rd sector. However I'm not involved in that. But could probably find out more from the project lead.; ▶ Reply to This