Municipal Ear: A Web Service for Involving Citizens in Political Program Work

’ Municipal Ear’ A Web Service for Involving Citizens in Political Program Work Ville Tapio Fountain Park Ltd 15.12.2008 Contents: Presentation of the service (1-10) Presentation of the results (11-17) Theory base (18-22) Company presentation (23-28)

Project Background
The National Coalition Party carried out a successful campaign with the “Party with Ears” theme in 2007 Finnish parliamentary elections - t he challenge was how to transfer this into the Internet
Fountain Park Ltd has been developing web services for proactive and participative leadership since 2001 (mainly for the sector of big enterprises)
Rich User Experience and Social Networking in Web 2.0 research project of Fountain Park, University of Oulu and Stanford’s H*/Media-X Research Institute
” Many scientifcally well-argued concepts from social network analysis (SNA), which have not been much utilized yet, may be applied in developing Web applications. These incluce e.g. the concepts of weak ties, bridge, cohesion and homophily. These are well documented sociological concepts that influence buying patterns, political choices, self-concept, innovation, productivity, quality and more that have been hard to observe in the off-line world.”

Welcome page - www.kuntakorva.fi

Background variables

Instructions

Proposing themes

Proposing themes from other peoples’ point of view

Evaluating themes proposed by others

One more chance to propose themes

Challenge your network

Statistics
34 130 participants
16 031 proposed themes
82 139 theme evaluations
368 440 themes read
Males 56.6 %, females 43.4 %
Under 30 years 16.9 %, 30-55 years 48.9 %, over 55 years 34.2 %
Students 10.5 %, employees 49.7 %, entrepreneurs 17.2 %, retired 16.6 %, others 5.9 %

Classification of data using SOM “ A self-organizing map (SOM) is a type of artificial neural network that is trained using unsupervised learning to produce a low-dimensional (typically two dimensional), discretized representation of the input space of the training samples, called a map. The map seeks to preserve the topological properties of the input space. This makes SOM useful for visualizing low-dimensional views of high-dimensional data, akin to multidimensional scaling. The model was first described as an artificial neural network by the Finnish professor Teuvo Kohonen.”

Main themes People talked most about Work and Education while Social and health services were evaluated as the most important theme. It’s especially important to notice that themes that weren’t much talked about such as Communality, were still evaluated to be very important by all different respondent groups. Importance (avg) Amount (%) Work Education Health services Municipal economy Housing and construction Entrepreneurship Family Administration and policies Services for senior citizens Traffic and transportation Comfort and safety Sports and hobbies Environment Day care Culture Immigrants Communality

Subthemes of the communality Immigrants’ intregration to the society Prevention of social exclusion Senior citizens Association activity Family and raising childrens Support networks Schools and youth work

Regional variation Immigrants, Traffic and transportation and Environment are evaluated more important in Helsinki than in the rest of the country. Issues related to Entrepreneurship, Services for aging people and Education are considered less important in Helsinki. Work Education Health services Municipal economy Entrepreneurship Family Services for senior citizens Comfort and safety Housing and construction Administration and policies Traffic and transportation Environment Sports and hobbies Day care Culture Immigrants Communality Whole country Helsinki

Comparison of respondent groups (for example Males vs. Females) Work Education Health services Municipal economy Entrepreneurship Family Services for senior citizens Coziness and safety Housing and construction Administration and policies Traffic and transportation Environment Sports and hobbies Day care Culture Immigrants Communality Males Females

Media Visibility

Quantitative research
Good for measuring well known, easy to structure phenomenons that have happened in the past
The challenge is to design valid question patterns, get really new information and take advantage of the results.
Good for structuring complex phenomenons, searching new information, forecasting changes and planning future actions
The challenge is the scalability and the statistical analysis of the results
Qualitative research

Wisdom of Crowds
Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.
Four elements required to form a wise crowd:
Diversity of opinion
Independence
Decentralization
Aggregation
Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations James Surowiecki, 2004

Observation Filters "Implanting Strategic Management” by Igor Ansoff. Prentice Hall 1984 ISBN 0-134-51808-X
Surveillance filter defines the area that we observe, e.g. our current market and industry. The challenge is that discontinuities usually come from outside of our current industry.
Mentality filter is formed of previous (success) experiences and we have a tendency to filter novel issues off, because they have not been important to us before.
Power filter prohibits people to express their ideas to those who possess more organizational power or power based on expertise.

Weak Signals “ A weak signal is a factor for change hardly perceptible at present, but which will constitute a strong trend in the future.” Michelle Codet 1994 “ A weak signal is a sign which is slight in present dimensions but huge in terms of its virtual consequences.” Pierre Masse 1965 Trends Weak signals

"Committing to change" (146-160) in Conner Daryl R., Managing at the Speed of Change; How resilient managers succeed and prosper where others fail. John Wiley & Sons 1992, 1998 ISBN 0-471-97494-3 Conner, Darryl R. & Patterson, Robert W. “Building Commitment to Organizational Change.” (18-30) Training and Development Journal 36, 4 (April 1982). Awareness Interest Understanding Acceptance Commitment Internalization Action Requires personal reflection and sharing with others. Result Building Commitment to Change

Fountain Park Ltd
Fountain Park offers web services for:
Helping new leaders to understand and get acceptance of their new organization
Participation of crowds to the planning of strategies and programs to increase the level of interest and commitment
Analyzing customer and other stakeholder insights to increase organizations’ competitiveness
Established in 2000, owned by the staff, office in Helsinki, 20 employees, growing rapidly (52 % in H1/2008 compared to H1/2007)
Creating a new market between the established software, training, consulting and research markets:
Software companies Consulting companies Research companies Training companies Fountain Park ”Web services for proactive leadership”

UK’s public sector customers
Department of Innovations, Universities and Skills, Alex King
Online brainstorming for DIUS scenario process
The National Trust, Alex Hunt
Online brainstorming for internal and outernal stakeholders
Department of Trade and Industry, Alister Wilson
Two online brainstromings: CBI Horizon Scan & FAN Club Meeting Scan
NIACE National Institute for Continuing Adult Education, Simon Mauger
Online brainstorming for NIACE scenario process
REGENworks, Marion Cooper
Online brainstorming for regional development strategy
Foresight’s Horizon Scanning Centre Three year framework contract for Futures projects ( www.foresight.gov.uk/Horizon%20Scanning%20Centre)

Other international customers
Deloitte (USA)
Strategic agility online dialogues
Technology Forecasters Inc (USA), Pamela Gordon Scanning change signals from global operating environments
Singapore Goverment
Several online operating environment scannings to support goverment’s foresight work
CERN (Switzerland), Markus Nordberg
Online human risks analysis for commissioning of the new particle accelarator
Prometeus Association (France), Kari Mikkelä
Online evaluation of future challenges of e-learning
City of Tartu (Estonia)
Youth health survey

Case British Telecom
Efficiency improvements by listening to the employees
The challenge 2007 was to collect and evaluate the most pressing ”hygiene issues” inside BT Retail. This means the systems, processes and behaviors that cause the most internal friction in people's everyday work and have the biggest impact on corporate performance. Hundreds of employees participated, and over 500 answers were given to the question "Things I'd like to see changed". The participants also evaluated issues submitted by other respondents. The results identified clearly the action priorities, and allowed new and existing actions to focus on issues with the biggest business impact. The Fountain Park tools and expertise were an invaluable part of an ongoing process, through which management is committed to delivering accountable and measurable results that make BT Retail function better.

Case Finnish Innovation Fund
Creating the national natural resources strategy
The Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra invited participants from industry, government, universities and media to brainstorm ideas on what needs to be taken into consideration when preparing the national natural resources strategy. The work is coordinated by Sitra. The results will be presented to Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen in the spring 2009. When the strategy is finished, the crowds will be invited again to propose projects which should be initiated to implement the strategy.
Brainstorming new programme ideas
Sitra wanted to increase transparency of its programme preparation phase by inviting its stakeholders to take part in the preparation. Fountain Park's online brainstorming was the method chosen. The closest stakeholders were first invited to give ideas on the themes that could be important for the future of Finland, to evaluate the significance of others' ideas and to invite members of their own networks of visionaries to participate.The invitation reached 2 150 people in a few weeks, making 2 474 suggestions and evaluating others' suggestions 13 636 times. On the basis of the results, the board of Sitra selected five topic areas for further development.

Do you need an Ear?
Call or email to me:
Ville Tapio +358 40 590 9385
[email_address]
Fountain Park has carried out more than 200 research and communications projects like ‘Municipal Ear’
Our software has been used to do more than 15 000 research projects and to involve almost 2 000 000 people in decision making processes
Our biggest projects have had up to 19 language versions and tens of thousands of participants from all over the world
A project such as Municipal Ear costs 20 000 euros
Euro elections are coming. How will you find out the real thoughts of potential voters and get them interested about the Euro politics?

Municipal Ear: A Web Service for Involving Citizens in Political Program Work

by Ville Tapio

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