How can coucil staff get invovled and how can this lead to more open and transparant information sharing within council?
What needs to be done to create councils that are fit for the future? I suggest a practical approach that could help councils align more closely with the communities they serve and help motivate the community to provide feedback. I look at how this could impact positively on the decision-making approach in councils and on the capabilities and performance of staff. I use moonshoots, outlined in the MIX and principals of the Management 2.0 approach around openness, collaboration, transparency of information and self-determination to describe how this can benefit those involved in council. There are numerous policies and papers written suggesting theoretical ways to capture the attention of the community in order to motivate people to interact; many commenting how quality information has a positive impact on performance. This is my practical approach to the problem.
Planning within New Zealand councils is based on a hierarchical top-down management approach where senior staff and elected councillors are charged with developing plans, budgets and performance measures that encompass the needs and outcomes of the community they serve. Councils struggle to motivate the public to provide opinion and feedback needed for planning. Council staff who are arguably the best conduit for gathering information about the community’s needs are removed from the formal decision-making process but are charged with implementing the plans, budgets and policies established by Council. This management approach is being challenged today following the introduction of legislation aimed at motivating councils to develop plans to get more public involvement in decision-making and the planning process. Councils need to be able to show that decisions were made as a result of a democratic process and that the needs of all sectors of the community have been understood and considered.
Councils need to “create a democracy of information” (Moonshot: Distribute Power) to get what it needs from the community, councils have to provide something that the community needs, thereby creating a reason for people to give something back. A common goal or cause that people can identify with and that captures attention is vital. One such goal is minimising waste and thinking about the impacts that we have on the communities that we live in. This topical issue is included in Government and council strategy and it is weaved through the curriculum taught in New Zealand schools. Councils are uniquely placed to pull together information on the topic for each household, property or business and guidelines and formulas from International Global Reporting Standards (GRI) could be used to establish the carbon footprint measure for each property.
Carbon footprint information is readily available to most councils and could be collected for each property with some changes to processes. Typically councils are responsible for water and waste management and have links to electricity distribution networks. Data could be collected for landfill and recycling waste by placing barcodes on individual landfill and recycling wheelie-bins and by installing a barcode reader and weight scales on the rubbish removal trucks. Water usage data from water meters can be collected and reported. Electricity use data can also be reported by property either via the Installation Connection Point number from the electricity industry Registry or property owners can receive this information directly from their electricity retailer. This information, together with travel data, forms the key areas associated with measuring a carbon footprint and after collection could be stored on a database at the local council. Business intelligence software could manipulate and convert the data based on the GRI formulas and individual household and business results could be reported via a dashboard onto the council website. Property owners could have access to log into the council website with a password to find their information displayed on a dashboard specific to their property across each waste category and their carbon footprint total. Council targets could be added and averaged comparative info from properties in the vicinity could be included so that property owners could compare their results against council targets and other properties.
A demand for the information needs to be developed so that there is a reason to log onto the council website. Environmental management information is threaded throughout the curriculum in New Zealand and there are a number of groups that have sprung up around this topic in the education sphere. Specific carbon footprint information would be very useful to teachers for use at school and this would develop the impetuous needed for parents or students to log onto the site to download their information, or withstand the wrath of the teacher – negative reinforcement at its best! This info is also useful for businesses who wish to complete triple bottom-line reporting. Council staff could promote the concept to schools and businesses and this may have the added benefit of promoting council in a positive way. To capture the attention of other sectors of the community, positive reinforcement methods distributed on a variable ratio could be introduced by offering rewards to property owners if they view their site and add additional data.
Additional data could include information about personal air-travel and private vehicle use. Data fields could be set up to easily gather this data including whether private vehicle/s are petrol or diesel, the cc rating, and the approximate odometer reading at the beginning and end of the year. The starting and end destination is the only data needed for private air-travel (domestic and international). Council software would convert the vehicle data into approximate fuel usage, and air travel into approximate air kilometres, to add to the carbon footprint measure. Incentives could be included for people who log-on to check their information, and further rewards or incentives could be awarded if data, as described above, was added. Initially incentives could include rewards where a predetermined number of households or businesses would go into the draw to win either free property rates for that quarter or a luncheon in the mayoral lounge with the Mayor, councillors and council staff. The latter reward could double as a ready made focus group. After this practice was established the councils would be expected to ask their community what rewards they would value and implement these, if feasible.
The real benefit to council is the ability to include additional messages onto the dashboard page after it has been established. A tab with key council issues could be added inviting feedback via a Google form or an email link or similar. These messages need to be kept to a minimum, written in innovative language that speaks to the target audience and council need to be clear about the outcomes that are required. This page must be kept free of advertising or council selling initiatives or personal agenda items. The community will be turned off from commenting if this medium is used for anything other than a trusted, open and honest forum for disseminating and gathering information. Having said that, the space should be used to display annual and longer term targets or outcomes, along with quarterly and annual results so that the community can comment on the performance of the council.
An automatic response thanking people for feedback is important to acknowledge their involvement. The response can be saved into the database with metadata linked to the property so that when the consultation period is complete a further response can be posted back to the dashboard pages of the people that commented, summarising key feedback and any actions or planning that resulted. Staff must be careful that the feedback, when summarized, captures the intended meaning and is not diffused by “putting their own spin” on it or used to serve their self-interests.
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