Act

Jennie Winhall

Design Strategist Jennie Winhall believes the PSP could be a major new force in opening up public institutions and empowering citizens by creating new tools and platforms that allow people to engage in political, social and personal actions. Her work with the Design Council's RED unit pioneered the concept of co-design and co-creation of public services, ideas she believes will be fundamental to the PSP. In this paper she sets out her vision for the PSP's role in reviving civic engagement in areas such as health and wellbeing, climate change and democracy.

The traditional public service model of social and political activity, where institutions deliver an increasing number of services to a largely passive public, is no longer sustainable. Demand for healthcare services for example, has increased beyond our capacity to supply them, public perception of public services has gone down (though quality and performance have risen); participation in local and national democracy has decreased. New social and economic problems are emerging. Obesity-related conditions, climate change, chronic disease, and antisocial behaviour are complex issues that will not be solved by improvement to the existing public services.

These types of issues need people themselves to play a role, by voting in elections, by eating a healthy diet and by consuming less energy. In a new generation of public services, the emphasis will be on engaging people themselves in co-production. However this type of engagement is not easy to design for. It is easier for the government to build five new nuclear power stations than to get 48 million householders to turn their thermostats down one degree. New ways to engage people are needed and the means by which public services operate must change. We need new tools, systems, mechanisms, and platforms that will allow people to interact with each other and with public institutions in new ways that are relevant and meaningful to them.

The qualities outlined above are characteristic of new media. Systems and networks that have emerged on the web create very different relationships between people and professionals, engaging people in complex social and political issues and in taking personal action.

Social Networking and Public Service

As with other areas of new media engagement - we need to combine gaming, interaction design, open source systems, social networking, feedback-loops, pro-am communities, self-expression, shared experiences and a variety of other rich media in order to tap into people's motivations and willingness to participate.

The majority of people are interested in issues rather than politics; ever increasingly sophisticated web application can already elicit and manage opinions and contributions for the public in such a way as to allow their input to feed into government decision-making processes. Websites like Pledgebank and The BBC Action Network are honourable attempts to use the web's connectivity to link people together around different issues to take action. A PSP could extend the capabilities of these systems with new tools and technologies outside the constraints of a traditional broadcaster.

The ability to share experiences, rather than just information is also likely to enhance engagement. In a networked world, new tools and services will exist to help people join up and action a myriad of disconnected activities and services. Social entrepreneurism and pro-am activity will continue to grow in popularity.

The current demise in civic participation can be attributed in part to a mistrust of politicians and cynicism towards the media. One of the greatest assets of the web is its ability to make data transparent and accessible to all. Many of our public institutions appear shrouded in mystery to the public - there is an argument for a PSP to create interfaces to these institutions that allow people to access the knowledge held in a relevant, user-friendly way. TheyWorkForYou.com has already made Hansard accessible to the general public online. A PSP could create direct ways of engaging with the happenings of local and central government without the media middlemen.

These kind of tools are also likely to be used to address the gap in social and political engagement between people and professionals/professional institutions by designing tools and systems that level the balance of power and allow people to interact with the likes of doctors, MPs and the legal system on their own terms. A tension is likely to remain between institutions wishing to communicate and the general population's desire to contribute/collaborate on their terms, rather than the institution's terms.

The Role of the PSP

In each of these cases, what is needed is a neutral body to commission the tools/platforms/resources in the public interest. The real innovation will come in how these services are commissioned themselves with the full participation of the public. An argument against the need for a PSP in this space would be that the creation and intervention of yet another institution goes against the ethos of currently emerging web-based services which are all about bottom-up innovation, user-as-producer, and co-creation. However, whilst it is relatively easy to create an issue-based forum or web community that involves collaboration between people with common interests, brokering collaboration between people, professionals and institutions is much harder.

Therefore a PSP could have several roles within the remit of social and political engagement: