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Thank you
Thorndon Residents
Association,
Wellington
Wiki, etc for participative
processes, ideas, appreciative inquiry, solutions or policy development
processes that meaningfully engage interested parties.
Note if authorities do move
into these areas, then have to use the technologies earnestly, not
half-heartily ... not a foil or veiled attempt to 'listen' ... rather a
transparently honest and open process that is actioned by all the
collaborators.
The
Thorndon Residents' Association (TRA)
is experimenting with customised free, publicly accessible online maps to
use as collaboration and transparency tools. Council officers generally have
proven to be reluctant (to say the least) about using such real-time
devices; have posed numerous excuses to avoid and resist the use of
contemporary participative, citizen-centric information technology i.e. the
WCC Contact Centre had to even be 'compelled' to view the map example that
follows, and declined to go as far as to 'collaborate' with it ( add
information, such as the WCC job number to each site ). And yet, most
visited of our online innovations would be the Association's graffiti
map. The community can monitor what is going on. It becomes a
transparency tool - to monitor what's getting attention, what is not.
Hotspots and patterns become abundantly clear. The clean-up contractors
applaud it too. Property vandalism gets responded to sooner ... but, the
clean-up laggards also become exposed i.e. the public assets not cleaned in
responsive ways stand out, and this exposes where performance or
coordination problems lurk.
Spatial awareness grows for
people who follow the map; helps them understand more about the nooks 'n
crannies of 'their place' and improves observation i.e. where to 'keep an
eye out'. It improves the possibility that criminals will ultimately reveal
themselves through their trails and patterns of behaviour. In Thorndon this
has directly contributed to property vandals being identified, and
arrested.
It would be so much more
beneficial if local authorities could become proactive about introducing
sustainable information solutions like this. There are limitations as to how
much a community can sustain, on its own, voluntarily, for long life-cycle
community problems like property vandalism.
Yet,
participatory/collaborative mapping has the potential to ultimately provide
more control to citizens and communities than to decision-makers or
officers. Could this be the deep underpinning reason for the apparent
'reluctance' to 'collaborate' with such empowering tools?
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