Peter Cruickshank
Bruce Ryan
Centre for Social Informatics
The Communities of Practice model for
understanding digital engagement by
hyperlocal elected representatives
What are community councils
• Their purpose is to represent small areas within Local Authorities
• Powers are limited
– Mostly, the right to be consulted
– Some more direct input into planning processes
• Community Council members are unpaid volunteers
• Small to non-existent budgets
– Average annual income is around £400
– enough to hire a monthly meeting room, pay for some stationery
(Arrangements vary across the United Kingdom between England, Wales and
Scotland and Northern Ireland but share a common model)
IFIP EGOV EPART 2015
Not very active online
Inactive
CCs
Active with online presences…
Total
CCs …missing
…out-of-
date
…up-
to-date
Total 213 498 351 307 1,369
% of all 16% 36% 26% 22% 100%
%of active NA 43% 30% 27% 100%
IFIP EGOV EPART 2015
Worse:
A high level of churn: 223 (34%) online presences degrading or disappearing altogether
Not very active online
• This level of use of websites compares adversely with the 98% of Austrian Gemeinden and 90% of Norwegian kommuner.
• Only 38 CCs (12% of active online sites) had information to support engagement with the planning process • despite this being core to their mission.
• Official support is one factor but not the story
• Low level of use of Facebook & Twitter – No simple relationship between urban/rural characteristic of LAs
and CCs’ online effectiveness
– Profile of the community councillors (eg age) is probably also significant
IFIP EGOV EPART 2015
Challenge
• Essentially, Looking at a failed part of the political system
…an edge case
» Technology will not solve this problem
– BUT: It is interesting to look for cases where technology does make a difference
• Can models of practice be found and shared?
IFIP EGOV EPART 2015
The project
This is e-participation:
• Focus on those who engage with citizens
– Representatives as content creators
– If this is not effective, then a link with representative democracy is broken
• Looking at online activity
– We are aware of multichannel context and importance of F2F communication in
local communities
• Framing the situation as a knowledge management problem
“How are the community councillors learning to use the internet?”
IFIP EGOV EPART 2015
What is a CoP • What is a CoP
– “A CoP is a self-organized group of individuals concerned with a specific practice, who are learning how to improve this practice through regular interaction” (Brown & Duguid)
– It is “tightly knit” – with legitimation process (Lave & Wenger)
– Has process of introducing new members
– Has boundaries
• Conceived around a core-periphery model – Parallels with pyramid of participation
– Core members set agenda, act as facilitators / knowledge brokers
– Others move towards centre
• Provides a model for understanding how – learn how to do things
– create a community to share & build on this knowledge
Here: community councillors are acting in an open network with voluntary participation
IFIP EGOV EPART 2015
The project approach
• Ethnographic / action research pilot
• Interviewing & working with three CCs
• Around 20 participants
• One intervention
• Gathering data on links and support networks
IFIP EGOV EPART 2015
Results
• Mix of individuals and bodies
• Reliance on small number of key players
• Very weak or non existent links between many community councillors
• No intentional KM: CCs are (small) knowledge silos
• Links tend to be vertical, not horizontal
• We’re either looking at a proto-cluster – or ‘beyond the periphery’
• Impact of project: participant education
IFIP EGOV EPART 2015
The optimistic view
IFIP EGOV EPART 2015
Boundaries and transitions
IFIP EGOV EPART 2015
Community of interest 1:
Interested in CCs
Community of learning:
Teaching and learning on how to use
digital comms for CCs
Community of interest 2:
Interested in digital comms
Potential Community of practice:
Using digital comms for CCs
Interested in digital comms and CCs
Transition into the CoP (via legitimated
peripheral participation?)
‘Churn’: individuals ceasing to engage
?
Need more understanding of transitions
• Results show that there are some links – But many features of a CoP are missing
– Another example of a project where the ‘dark matter’ of non-engaged participation matters
• Good example of need for caution on using the label “CoP” – It’s not an online forum
– It’s not people talking to each other
• Challenges – More to understand what’s going on & why this isn’t leading to links
– Can we design interventions?
• Next step: bigger, longer project
IFIP EGOV EPART 2015
THANK YOU
Peter Cruickshank
@spartakan
IFIP EGOV EPART 2015
Top Related