A couple of weeks back I attended NCVO’s seminar on the Future of Citizenship. Building on a recent report by The Henley Centre that developed four scenarios of how notions of citizenship and civic involvement may change over the next twenty years, the workshop-based afternoon was focussed on the challenges and opportunities that such changes will present to voluntary organisations. It was a fascinating afternoon and I’d highly recommend taking a look at the full report (PDF) and checking out the follow up questions on the Third Sector Foresight website.

Not working directly for a voluntary sector organisation I was definitely in the minority, but it was abundantly clear that whatever direction society moves in, the role of online services can only increase and that it is necessary for those of us building such services to be actively helping those working on the ground analyse the strengths, limitations and possibilities available.

A key concern arising from all scenarios was the likelihood that the coming years will see an increase in levels of social exclusion. Whether we are resource rich or resource poor, active or apathetic, the requirements of the population at large to work out their own access to services and manage their inclusion in society are highly likely to increase and some will be left behind.

In one conversation I had with a representative of an organisation working with an easily identifiable group of contacts I was told that they are increasingly concerned that by putting a heavy emphasis on online support for their constituency, the less tech-savvy are being left behind and it can be hard to see who they are. In such contexts it seems fairly trivial to add a reporting layer to their online services which will identify which of their contacts are not using the system and so should be offered extra support, but with decisions frequently being made based on small budgets and limited IT expertise, there is often little space for such thinking or expertise to customise the off-the-shelf packages that allow for a quick and cheap setup.

It was also clear from the research of the Henley Centre that most people see citizenship as primarily a “horizontal” concern—how we relate with our neighbours—rather than being about the “vertical” connection with government. For those in attendance, working on social issues every day, the need for those two axes to be connected was clear, but that message is not generally understood and in some cases is met with hostility. It’d be interesting to see how more use of tools such as those built by mySociety can make those connections, blur the divide, or maybe even break down the dichotomy to develop new ways of relating between government and society.

Most in attendance foresaw a future where physical resources and access to transport are harder to come by. Between global warming and peak oil we are likely to see far more constraints than we are used to. Many in the voluntary sector are ideally placed to help society through those situations, but will themselves feel the pinch. New ways of working together, sharing resources and optimising travel are needed and will have to go beyond efforts such as Virtual Bali to address more day-to-day issues.

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I’ve been casually following updates over at NetSquared (”remixing the web for social change”) for a while but hadn’t really focussed on their Innovation Award, which is seeking projects that use the web to make a social impact. The 20 top projects selected by their readers will be invited to a conference in San Jose at the end of May, and a lucky few will receive funding from the NetSquared Technology Innovation Fund.

You can see the proposal list here and anyone who signs up to the site can join in the voting. The projects run the gamut of media awareness, geographical tools like Open Street Map, websites to help people make a difference “in 5 minutes a day” (an approach I have very mixed feelings about, as I think we have enough of such strategies and need to be looking for deeper integration), and a lot more.

My favourites tend to be those which are looking to build infrastructure for the rest of us to use, mainly because I’d love to have that there to play with. But regardless of which projects win it’s good to see such a range of approaches and goals, and the impact that “Web 2.0″ tools are having in the non-profit world.

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Wikileaks (via plasticbag) looks likely to be a really interesting site. Designed as a wiki that will let citizens of oppressive regime post leaked documents “anonymously and untraceably” it’s been set up by “Chinese dissidents, mathematicians and startup company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.” The idea is to provide an online space where people can leak sensitive documents free of the fear of being found out and persecuted.

The site isn’t clear about how they’re getting around the array of firewalls in use in countries such as China, but that’s most likely a deliberate move. Perhaps a more telling indicator will be how they ensure the quality and authenticity of submissions. One only has to look at the history of the current war with Iraq to see how certain Iraqi dissidents living abroad manipulated the information getting out in order to push for a regime change from which they would personally benefit.

Nevertheless, the challenges ahead don’t prevent this from being a project well worth watching, and most likely supporting.

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I’ve refrained from blogging much about Yahoo! Pipes, mainly because everyone else seemed to be. It’s definitely an interesting development, and shows how far we’ve come with open data, but also how far we still are from that really making an obvious impact for non-geeks.

Two of the more interesting pieces on the use of Pipes that I’ve seen so far are two blog entries that Tim McGhee pointed out on the govtrack list. He’s done some work using Pipes to repurpose various feeds about government activity, and they’re worth a look. Check out: Managing the volume of content from Congress and Geek Out: Mashing Yahoo! Pipes and the Congressional Record over on his blogs.

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I’ve been waiting for quite some time to see Open Congress in action, so it was a little frustrating that various commitments mean it’s taken a few days to really explore it.

The site gets much of its data from govtrack.us, but provides a more intuitive interface. The index of what’s going on in the US Congress can be explored in a variety of ways, going through bills, senators, representatives, committees, industries, and issues. The senator and representative navigation works pretty well, and its nice to have a feed for each one, but it would also be good to be able to navigate using a map or other visual device rather than having to switch to the state view and then scroll down to find the representative I’m interested in.

There’s integration with technorati to pick up blog chatter around given bills, and a ‘contact all sponsors’ feature is on its way which could be a nice feature for those looking to take action on specific bills.

Categorization by issue was always going to be the hardest thing to cover. According to the site:

These issue areas were created and assigned by the Congressional Research Service, a government agency created by Congress to provide non-partisan research. With over 4,000 issue areas to browse here on OpenCongress, there are lots of ways to connect a general issue you care about to a specific bill in Congress.

Which does help with navigation, but it would be good if there were more ways for those using the site to contribute to that categorisation and I tend to agree with Jon Lebkowsky when he says (in a review of BillHop) that:

I think we need an AI engine for analyzing legislation, facilitating that zeroing in on issues I mentioned above, and it would be great to see a budget simulator on the site

Beyond that, what I’d really love to see someone put together is a US politics site that shows how issues move up and down through the levels of government and how they move across its different branches. Few issues are ever fully addressed by just the federal government and for concerned citizens (or even just residents, like me) to be able to see where the issues they care about lie in a holistic way would be very powerful.

Maybe if enough government-related sites use open data and clean APIs we’ll eventually see that become an easy mashup to produce? In the meantime, Open Congress is a very nice addition to the range of open government web applications available in the US.

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