Our Big Society: the next chapter begins

This week marks a watershed moment for the Big Society for several reasons. Firstly because as the PM affirmed on Monday, it is here to stay. Government remains committed to it not just because it is the sensible thing to do, but because it is the right thing to do to bring about a social and not just an economy recovery. Second, because despite its broad appeal across party lines it is now a battleground between those who favour the false (and expensive) comfort of statism and bureaucracy, and those who yearn for a better, more sustainable and community-anchored way of life in this country in which citizens have more control over their lives. Third, because a barrage of the key policies and legislative bills that underpin and enable it are now launching after months of planning which has taken up much of my time and that of countless others inside and outside government to refine over the last year – from the Big Society Bank and vision for social investment, to Community Organisers, to local funds and endowments for building social capital, to National Citizen Service and the focus on employee-owned mutuals. But this flurry of policy also marks a shift because from now on the baton will start to be handed over to us to share in the building of it, whether as individuals or in our groups, as representatives from the voluntary, business or local government – harnessing the new opportunities, tools, and information that government has started to release. Big Society, rightly, is leaving the confines of Whitehall and Parliament (though in truth, it never was confined to it in the first place).

This is the reason why I have rebalanced my own time, because from now on, Big Society is about more than what happens in government. We have an opportunity to cultivate it not just in Westminster, but in our communities, families, and workplaces, building upon the great work that has been done by others all over the land over many years past. It will not be easy, but I’m excited about this next phase, which will be forged in the struggle between the dying vested interests who know that their time is up, and born in the rise and rise of the civic entrepreneur, people who know that the future belongs to citizens and who make it their calling to make it easier as pioneers to build bridgeheads and platforms for others to follow the trails they blaze. My main focus moving forwards will be to help these citizens, these civic entrepreneurs, from the heart of government, across the land, from Shoreditch, and in my own family. To help them make the most of the opportunities, tools, and information that are now being released for the benefit of every community in ways that make it easy for the rest of us in turn to engage.

I saw a number of such civic entrepreneurs at work powerfully recently at a visit last week to TechHub in Shoreditch, one of the projects I plan to put more time into as a volunteer both online acting as a guest blogger on TechCrunch and in person on Fridays. TechHub hosts technology start ups and businesses, providing a community for them all and affordable space, and is a key part of the move to create a Silicon Valley movement in East London. There is also a real commitment among those working there to ensure that the benefits of their investment and time spills over into the wider community and society as well. If you look closely, tech entrepreneurs are choosing to also be civic entrepreneurs, builders of the Big Society, making it easier for others to get involved. Three examples highlighted this for me during my visit. The first was in a start-up called Housebites. This model, developed by a successful tech entrepreneur, enables citizens to advertise their dinner parties online, which has the effect of connecting people who would not otherwise meet. But more than this, their aim is also to encourage the parties to easily raise funds for local and other charities, making giving both easy and fun. The second start-up that stood out is called Squadify. This business, whose site is still in alpha though you can sign up to be invited when its beta starts, seeks to simply and take away the hassle of organising sports matches, whether football, or cricket, or many others old and new, and make it possible to source last minute teams and communicate with people who may be around or have the time and skill to get involved. Again the social benefits of the model is one of mixing people who would not otherwise associate with each other, but there are also health benefits as well since the technology means fewer matches will get cancelled at the last minute for lack of players. In many ways, the model takes power away from professional clubs since it allows citizens to self-organise fixtures, though it is also possible for sponsors and clubs to communicate with members using it as a tool, creating a symbiotic relationship. The third initiative that stood out was one designed to help train up kids from as young as twelve from council estates to become software developers with mentoring from leading technology firms. The companies concerned did not feel the state-sponsored or university-based way of training up developers alone was giving them the flow of talent they needed so they simply decided to get more directly involved in nurturing local talent earlier. What is really interesting about all these models is that they harness the power of collective action, to do more any one of them could do on our own, and seek to weave civic action into daily life – not as something to be outsourced expensively to politicians or bureaucrats, but as something fun, linked to something we would want to do anyway for our own or our own organisation’s benefit.

But it does not all have to be about technology. Civic entrepreneurs include social entrepreneurs who have found ways to help others replicate their models and fund them sustainably and resiliently, business people who make their business and facilities a means for citizens to take action and greater control over the lives, the community organiser who builds a local movement online and offline, the group who took over the pub and who wrote it up for others to learn from their experience, the large charity that realises its assets, brand, and balance sheet could be used as a tool to empower local citizens to help achieve their mission, the public sector worker who engages in creating a mutual and then creates an intermediary that helps others do the same, and the cultural leader and trendsetter who decides to use their influence to drive fashions that also benefit society. And as new opportunities presented by the shift in power from Whitehall to localities present themselves, exciting platforms become possible which we can only dream of today. Such as outpatient hotels in reformed NHS hospitals and mutuals that make it easier for relatives to care for their recovering loved ones using online booking tools, made possible because the provision of such services have been opened up through the Public Services Reform Bill. Such as out of the box toolkits that make it easy for communities to take control over and have the access to finance needed to manage their local libraries and facilities using powers and information made possible by the Localism Bill. Such as websites that help to plan school trips which take the hassle out of doing all the planning, linked to more streamlined CRB regulations. And many many more such platforms for action.

As the past months have shown, the way forward will continue to be challenging. But we have now embarked on the journey and there is no way back – history and an ageing population resulting in fewer tax payers are on our side – forcing us to find a different, more local, more empowering way of running our society. Big Society is too big for Big Government, that attitude which says government and the bureaucracy must do, fund, and support everything. Those who want to bring Big Society down must now contend with the fact that it is and always has been all around us, growing all over the country, presenting no one obvious target, and at work even within their own ranks. Once you start to find ways of doing things more locally, with others around you, with only the most essential support from outside – once you start to take more control – it is infectious, and hard to resist long term. There will of course continue to be attacks and cynicism, and I and others may have to bear the brunt of it. But my family and I are willing to endure it, since we have nothing to lose, and the sacrifice will be worth it if it leads to the real improvement we all deeply desire in the villages, towns, and housing estates that media and politicians alike have struggled for so long to transform through action from the centre alone.

So join the movement, lead it where you live, let us build those bridgeheads that make it easier for citizens to get involved whatever their constraints and backgrounds. Get in touch; I and many like me are here to help and encourage you. If you are building a platform for change harnessing the information, opportunities, and tools that are coming on stream, or want to find out how they can be harnessed for your platform, get in touch at GovAdviserBigSociety@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk. Together we can make it happen.

Local Authorities and Big Society in the Age of Austerity

One of the consequences of Labour’s huge deficit is the need to make savings on a range of fronts, including in local authority expenditure. This has consequently created many challenges for local voluntary and charitable groups, who have often enjoyed extraordinary levels of government grant support over the last few years. There are however still things that local authorities can do, even at this late hour, to manage the transition.

The first is to focus not just on the 10 percent of their budget relating to voluntary sector grants but also look at the 90 percent of expenditure on services they procure. One charity I have come across recently, Aspire Community Works, represents just the kind of organisation councils ought to be thinking of and inviting some of their grantees to potentially emulate. The charity seeks to employ people resident in housing associations or council estates to provide services to help maintain and develop those estates competitively versus other private providers and uses its profits to help seed other residents to set up local small businesses. It is not looking to local government for grant support but bidding for small local contracts. By looking at such opportunities, councils could open up billions for voluntary organisations, as well as socially responsible firms and employee owned public sector mutuals.

The second action local authorities can take is to have a serious look at their core costs – not just the salaries of middle management and their CEOs but also what hours they do. One of the major surprises of the recession in the private sector has been how low unemployment has been given the severity of the downturn. One reason is because many firms invited staff to go part time. Middle and senior staff in local authorities can be invited to go to three or for days a week, and even be connected to opportunities whether to be self-employed, run and franchise business, or get involved in their local community, alongside working part-time. This would have the additional benefit of bringing in expertise from other worlds and drawing the local public sector and other sectors closer, as well as potentially creating jobs in externally run organisations which local authority staff become involved with or start up.

The third opportunity lies in partnerships. In an era lasting at least two years in which local authorities will find it harder to fund local voluntary action, now is the time to work with local and national businesses (perhaps linking in with business connectors), and philanthropy and social investment not only to help the local VCS transition but also to innovate and become more resilient long term with a more diversified set of funding streams. Match funds in particular, matching not just money but time, could be a powerful tool in this regard. Community Organisers could also be an ally in building such bridges.

Given the difficulties of transition in this period you would be surprised to hear that I recently attended last Friday a really encouraging event called Local Society attended by Chief Executives and other representatives from a cross section of councils from across the land and was struck by how people were pragmatically moving forward and open to many of the ideas and opportunities offered by Big Society, despite the challenges presented by austerity. There was a recognition that we have to get on with it and make the best of a tough situation, and I took away five things that I said I would bring back to colleagues in government: the need for culture change inside and outside local government (both between ministers and local bodies, as well as between the latter and citizens); the need to build capacity in voluntary sector to rise to the procurement opportunities (including via consortia) as well as internally (to manage risk and rules in a more balanced fashion) as well as in citizens own lives (stories were told of parents teaching their kids not to pick litter because that was the “council’s job”); recognising there will be unevenness (ensuring deprived areas do not fall behind, different models will originate in different authorities some focussed on outsourcing, others on mutualism, between departments); the powerful role councillors can play as community leaders and facilitators and in holding unelected groups to account; the need for transparency mechanisms to catch up whether through intelligent use of web transparency, mechanisms akin to chapter 11 to deal with failures quickly with authorities as providers of last resort able to quickie re-tender, and through stronger democracy locally (Mayors, local referenda, stronger parishes).

All in all it was clear that many authorities will benefit from the greater freedoms they will have and that many will be striving to grow the Big Society despite the challenges that lie ahead, and for that I can only salute and applaud them.

Dispelling a few Big Society myths

Those who know me know that I remain committed to the vision and principles that underpin the Big Society. The news stories circulating at the moment are instructive for several reasons and give an opportunity to clarify several myths that have been circulating about Big Society as well as my involvement in it to date.

First, there is a myth that Big Society is all about volunteering and taking on more than you can bear or have time for relative to family and work commitments to help serve society. In reality, it is more about having the tools, information, and opportunities in place (partly as a result of government and other reforms) to play your part, with however much or little time you have – but where collectively these actions by citizens add up to represent something ‘big’. At different times in life one will have more or less time. At the moment, alongside my work in the Lords, serving the Chinese, faith, and other communities as a peer, my family, and earning a living, I have slightly less time than I did last year. Thankfully the structures in government are now in place to harness my time better so I do not have to put in the long hours over and above the two days a week I agreed with the government in June 2010. I put in extra time when I first started, which impacted on family life and finances. My duty must be to my family first, then the communities of which I am a part, as well as to the country.

Second, there is a myth that somehow Big Society will happen overnight and be really easy to conjure up. David Cameron said in his Hugo Young lecture at the end of 2009 that it would take one or two Parliaments, if not a generation, to effect the culture change that we have embarked upon. I echoed this in my Maiden Speech in the Lords last year when I said that this would be a long journey and involve many setbacks. In truth, we have only just begun, first by changing government so that it can be more of an enabler of Big Society rather than an inhibitor of it. The next phase is to work with civil society to create and strengthen intermediaries, tools, platforms that can transform the raw power and information and opportunities that have been transferred from the state, and make them accessible to time and finance constrained citizens. For example in being able to access a toolkit, social finance, and the right support to create a chain of citizen-led libraries. The last stage is to see the innovation unleashed that citizens will bring as they combine and use these different tools and platforms and apply them to their lives, communities, and services.

Third, there is a myth about my role. Some may consider it to be flattering to be nicknamed a ‘Tzar’ and ‘Mr ‘Big’, but those who know me know that I prefer to remain quite understated in my approach, and am not superhuman – I am only a humble Advisor. I even said in my Maiden Speech I would have much to learn – about politics, about the country, and about the media. There is something quite un-Big Society in thinking one person alone at the centre of government can magic it into being. I have learnt that I am a small cog in a big machine. Indeed government can only itself do so much. As I have said before, it will take all of us over time contributing in whatever way we can to make this a reality. So alongside spending most of my time last year in government seeking to reorientate parts of the machine to better enable Big Society, I have also recently been working on online and other tools to help establish a community of activists who can champion and help create Big Society where they live. More on this will follow in the coming months. But as I have said before, this year is the one in which citizens and social entrepreneurs and even the media will have the chance to take the helm and support the creation of the Big Society, and I am looking forward to helping play my part where I can in my own small way.