What research has mySociety been doing internally? - Alex Parsons, mySociety
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This was presented by Alex Parsons from mySociety at the Impacts of Civic Technology Conference (TICTeC 2018) in Lisbon on 18th April 2018. You can find out more information about the conference here: http://tictec.mysociety.org/2018
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What research has mySociety been doing internally? - Alex Parsons, mySociety
- 1. Service Surveys 10 Years of asking simple questions on FixMyStreet and WriteToThem @alexparsons @mysociety
- 2. FixMyStreet Service Surveys — @alexparsons — @mysociety — #TICTeC 1. Is this the first time making a report? 2. Was the problem fixed after a month? Survey
- 3. FixMyStreet Service Surveys — @alexparsons — @mysociety — #TICTeC Reports by Year
- 4. FixMyStreet Service Surveys — @alexparsons — @mysociety — #TICTeC % of first time reports
- 5. FixMyStreet Service Surveys — @alexparsons — @mysociety — #TICTeC First Time Report Types 1. Parking 2. Abandoned Vehicles 3. Dog Waste 4. Street Lighting
- 6. FixMyStreet Service Surveys — @alexparsons — @mysociety — #TICTeC Serial Report Types 1. Graffiti 2. Litter 3. Fly Tipping 4. Street Cleaning
- 7. WriteToThem Service Surveys — @alexparsons — @mysociety — #TICTeC 1. Did the representative write back? 2. Was it your first time writing to a representative? Survey
- 8. WriteToThem Service Surveys — @alexparsons — @mysociety — #TICTeC Different Institutions
- 9. WriteToThem Service Surveys — @alexparsons — @mysociety — #TICTeC Different Representatives For: Scottish Parliament, National Assembly for Wales and London Assembly Constituency Representatives reply to proportionally less messages that Regional Representatives
- 10. WriteToThem Service Surveys — @alexparsons — @mysociety — #TICTeC Different Demographics
- 11. WriteToThem Service Surveys — @alexparsons — @mysociety — #TICTeC Different Demographics
- 12. WriteToThem Service Surveys — @alexparsons — @mysociety — #TICTeC Different Demographics
- 13. WriteToThem Service Surveys — @alexparsons — @mysociety — #TICTeC Different Demographics
- 14. WriteToThem Service Surveys — @alexparsons — @mysociety — #TICTeC Different Demographics
- 15. WriteToThem Service Surveys — @alexparsons — @mysociety — #TICTeC Different Demographics
- 16. WriteToThem Service Surveys — @alexparsons — @mysociety — #TICTeC Lessons ● There are different patterns of use for different parts of civic tech websites. ● That different people do different things reflects importance of usage reflecting society. ● But also that this is hard to do because the differences appear far before people see the site.
- 17. Exploring Research Service Surveys — @alexparsons — @mysociety — #TICTeC
Editor's Notes
- We've been asking if this is the first time someone is making a report, and if the problem was fixed after a month. The second is used to power metrics of local authority responsiveness to problem reports - but the first we haven’t really much with - until now. There are around 173,000 responses to these questions over the last 10 years, so we have enough data to m
- Here is what the number of reports year on year looks like: So not all years are created equal, and the first few years had very few reports compared to the current volume. When we look at the percentage of surveys in each year that said it was a first time report, we get this:
- For the first few years we’re picking up more people already engaged with reporting problems (but there are fewer reports), and this declines as the pool of users expands to include more first time reporters. So ignoring the early few years, between 40-50% of reports are coming from people making reports to their council for the first time. Similarly the first few years are also outliers in the under-representation of women. 2007 and 2008 had reports by women trailing men by 10-20 percentage points, after that point that gap has stayed fairly consistently around 5 percentage points.
- Using a chi-square test, problems with parking, abandoned vichines, dog waste and street lighting are more likely to be from first time responders.
- There is another set of reports that is more likely to come from people who have reported previously. Graffiti, Litter, fly tipping, issues with street cleaning are examples of this set.
- For a sense of scale at the national level, the hansard society survey shows that about 12% of people contacted their MP in previous twelve months, and doing some very back of the envelope calculations For WriteToThem we've been emailing people two weeks after they sent a message and asking them two questions: If that representative wrote back in two weeks, and if this was their first time writing to a representative. The first question helps you understand differences in representative behaviour, the second in citizen behaviour.
- Looking at all the different kinds of body covered by WriteToThem, we can see that the response rate is different in different instances: Most letters to local councillors are being written by people writing for the first time - whereas 70% of people writing to Lords have written to a representative before.
- Just as differences in responsiveness inside a institution is structured, certain kinds of representatives are more responsive than others. We have a forthcoming paper exploring this in Parliamentary Affairs ,but for a short version. In the electoral system used for the London Assembly, National Assembly for Wales and Scottish Parliament there are two kinds of representative. The majority are elected directly from constituencies with additional representatives elected from party lists to 'top up' and keep the overall result proportional. Using our survey, we found that list members proportionally responded to less messages than constituency members in all three cases. Looking at Wales and Scotland (where we had enough details to control for other factors), this difference remains when controlling for other factors. This echoes other evidence in the Scottish Parliament that list representatives spend more time dedicated to committee work rather than constituent-facing work. So to be clear, it’s not about list representatives doing a worse job, this is just further evidence that they see their jobs differently and do things different. There is also the possibility that this reflects different kinds of representatives receiving different kinds of communication.
- As in FixMyStreet, we can get vague demographic data from name and postcode, and similarly examine different profiles of users writing to different kinds of representative. This tells us that people writing to their national MP reflects the kind of story we usually tell about the demographics of civic tech - it’s quite male, and people tend to be writing from better off postcodes.
- IMDs
- However, this isn’t the case for all the ways people use the service. If we just look at messages sent to local councillors for instance, we see very near gender parity and that more reports are coming from areas with greater deprivation.
- In fact, there is an incredibly clear pattern when reports are mapped against crime deprivation. And this might be a false jump in logic, but that seems like a pattern that is suggestive of the kind of problems people are writing to their councillors about.