Stone Soup

[Darryl Collins]

There is one aspect of the operation of 4IP that I'd like to highlight - the ability to use 4IP's leverage to bring lots of interested parties behind a common cause or project.

I have long been an advocate of the Stone Soup model of co-operation - to get a result for maximum benefit, everyone who wants that result should contribute.

Take the location of recycling centres throughout UK & Ireland for instance. It is clearly the job of local councils, environment departments etc. to publicise and highlight where the existing facilities are. Of course we all know that they are generally pretty useless at doing that, often working in isolation to other councils or departments and duplicating effort and resources, so there's an opportunity for someone outside to do it right for the public good.

The same with many areas of public data/information/service - there is often more than one department, council or agency that should be willing to contribute. By taking a lead, 4IP has the potential to create many Stone Soups!

So, my question: What role does 4IP play in bringing these interested parties to contribute?

[Darryl Collins]

I couldn't make my mind up if you were or weren't winding me up! Thanks for putting my mind at rest. :-)

Entrepreneurs are stone-carriers almost by definition - I certainly feel the weight of the stones I carry at times!

[Ivan Pope]

Darryl, my comment was a bit tongue in cheek - but thanks for the elaboration. Now I'm starting to think that, if 4iP are bringing tangible content to the soup (never thought they weren't), then someone else must be the traveller with the stones. Maybe that's me. And you! Us.

[Darryl Collins]

I'm sorry if I wasn't clear Ivan. 4IP bring a bit more than co-ordination - money, contacts, promotion etc.

If 4IP producers (?) are creating projects for the 'public good', there is almost certainly some agency, department or council that could or should benefit from the finished work (reducing mailout costs; reducing development costs in multiple places etc.) So they should be encouraged to support the projects from an early stage.

In my case, I have a project that is cross-departmental i.e. the data is from multiple sources and the result will conceivably be useful to multiple agencies. It would be great to have a degree of 'buy-in' to the project from these agencies at the beginning (even if it is only to offer the necessary data without a fight!) rather than have to face the task of fighting for support every step of the way.


To elaborate where I'm coming from...

It appears that many of the things that have been advocated or done in the interests of "public service" (Showusabetterway, fixmystreet, theyworkforyou whatdotheyknow etc.) are often compensating for lack of innovation, openness or interest from statutory bodies.

Often there appears to be costly duplication - do we really need every council reinventing the wheel when it comes to the publication of information about recycling centres? A 'stone soup' model in that case would be to acknowledge the fact that every council has a responsibility to inform their constituents about recycling centres and get them to back a common way to do that, either within government or with a third party. Putting the location on the map. Adding opening hours. Adding details about what can be recycled, where. And better still, agree to make that data available as a definitive and maintained feed so others can innovate confidently. So if someone says "I'm going to put all the recycle centres on a map" the response would be "great, saves us the bother, what do you need from us" rather than "you can't, we created it, we own it, that's our job, thanks for your ideas".

Fixmystreet should have been created by local councils for goodness sake. Theyworkforyou should have been created by the political parties. Recyclenow should have been created by the councils. At the very least they should be encouraged to support them now that they exist.

But this is IMHO ass-about-face - they should be actively supporting innovation by 4IP producers by granting access to good data, providing funding, reducing duplication, acting on public feedback loops.

If councils/departments/agencies are not contributing in advance, they should at least be encouraged to:

* Maintain definitive open data feeds (support the 8 principles of Open Government Data);
* Support making UK mapping data freely available for public non-commercial use (it not an accident that developers prefer OpenStreetMap and Google Maps to Ordnance Survey);
* Support innovation in business models around commercial uses of pubic data;
* Pay to continue innovation (e.g. contribute to ensure future of fixmystreet etc.) ;
* Route and act on all data feeds ("their's a pothole in my street" - "dear citizen, it is now fixed");
* Organise events, competitions and workshops aimed at exposing public data;

[Ivan Pope]

But by your analogy 4iP itself brings nothing but a co-ordinating role to the party. In fact, by this analogy it tricks others into creating the 'soup'. Is this what you think C4 should be doing?