Carla Ross - 05.01.2011
The solution to better public services isn't better technology, it's just enough technology to allow better human contact.
That's what the creators of one of our Reboot Britain projects said, and it sums up neatly the overarching challenge of our programme: how can we use web 2.0 and mobile technologies to design and deliver better public services for less?
There are now twelve projects within the programme each tackling this challenge in one way or another, and here are four I've picked out:
Buddy is piloting a social media radio that connects mental health patients to their professional and social network to help manage and monitor their mood. With an ageing population and an increase in long term health conditions, finding new ways of delivering care is key. Built into the Buddy system is a software platform that collects and presents the data back to health professionals, and allows users and their various communities of carers to view, analyse, comment and share their mood data.
The creators of Buddy recently revealed that the challenge was to adopt the principle of 'just enough technology and no more'. It's a human approach which sidesteps the dangers of frontloading too much technology into devices and services and concentrates on the core mission: the make human contact.
Safeguarding 2.0 looks at how data from across a child’s safeguarding network could be visualised and more nimbly shared across the network.
Features borrowed from web 2.0 such as spark lines of activity, iconography, and word trending will be used to allow more rapid assimilation of data for time-pressed front line workers. With the benefit of a fuller picture on each child, this will hopefully enable problems to be surfaced earlier and allow for more timely intervention, but importantly free up time to be spent with families, as our research found that 'what keeps a child safe is the relationship'.
A key question for us is: how can we use web 2.0 to increase participation from those engaged in public services – such as safeguarded families or families in crisis? The LIFE programme with Participle is doing just that – helping families in crisis to design their own services.
This Buddi pairs miniaturised GPS tagging with a successful rehabilitation programme for repeat young offenders to support the rehabilitation in real time. Data will feed into mentoring and drug rehab programmes to help keep people on track. The data generated from the rehab programme also provides insight into patterns of behaviour that have already been used to innovate policing and crime prevention.
Data presents huge opportunities but also the challenge of how to create and use just enough data, and how to use it in ways that increase participation and enable public services that are done with, rather than, to people.
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