Disconnected democracy? A study of Scottish ... [PDF]

Disconnected democracy? A study of Scottish Community Councils’ online communications

Bruce Martin Ryan Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Edinburgh Napier University for the Degree of Master of Science in Information Systems Development School of Computing December 2013

Bruce Martin Ryan 40070877 MSc in Information Systems Development, 2013

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Authorship declaration I, Bruce Martin Ryan, confirm that this dissertation and the work presented in it are my own achievement. Where I have consulted the published work of others this is always clearly attributed. Where I have quoted from the work of others the source is always given. With the exception of such quotations this dissertation is entirely my own work. I have acknowledged all main sources of help. If my research follows on from previous work or is part of a larger collaborative research project I have made clear exactly what was done by others and what I have contributed myself. I have read and understand the penalties associated with Academic Misconduct. I also confirm that I have obtained informed consent from all people I have involved in the work in this dissertation following the School's ethical guidelines Signed: Date: 2013_12_20 Matriculation no: 40070877


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Data protection declaration Under the 1998 Data Protection Act, The University cannot disclose your grade to an unauthorised person. However, other students benefit from studying dissertations that have their grades attached. Please sign your name below one of the options below to state your preference. The University may make this dissertation, with indicative grade, available to others. The University may make this dissertation available to others, but the grade may not be disclosed. The University may not make this dissertation available to others.


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Abstract In Scotland, Community Councils (CCs) are the lowest tier of government, being representative bodies for small portions of Local Authority areas and having no service-‐delivery duties. They have a number of issues. For example, 16% of potential CCs do not exist, while there is a paucity of candidates for those that do exist. Despite being charged with ascertaining and expressing their communities’ opinions, and despite other tiers of UK government increasing their use of online communications, recent research has shown that very few CC effectively use online techniques. In particular, the proportion using social media is very small. This project investigated the motivations behind some CCs’ use and non-‐use of online communication. Semi-‐structured interviews were used to investigate the drivers and inhibitors behind some CCs’ online presences, while criteria for an ‘ideal’ presence were generated and used to assess actual presences. The most significant drivers and inhibitors found were cost (specifically reduced information-‐ dissemination costs but also increased time-‐costs), increased effectiveness/efficiency, increased visibility, satisfaction of citizen demand and the age-‐related part of the digital divide. The biggest practical problem faced by those who run CC online presences is that they generally have little support, even from fellow CC members. These drivers and motivations are considered through the lenses of models of technology uptake and success, namely Diffusion of Innovations, the Technology Acceptance Model and the DeLone and McLean information systems success model. Of these, the DeLone and McLean model appears to offer the most practical ways forward for both academic research and practical improvement of CC online presences. Recommendations for further work include monitoring of changes in online communication use, gathering of social media data, gathering of demographic data about community councillors and quantitative use of the DeLone and McLean model to investigate maximisation of benefits stemming from CC online presences.


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Table of Contents 1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 11 1.1 Why research community councils’ online communications? ..................... 11 1.2 What is online communication and why should CCs use it? ........................ 12 1.3 Aims and objectives, structure of this dissertation, research questions ..... 13 1.4 Context: CCs are composed of volunteers, and are not alone in having issues with online communication .................................................... 14 1.5 Chapter conclusion ........................................................................................ 14

2 LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................................................... 15 2.1 An ‘ideal’ CC online presence ........................................................................ 15 2.1.1 Tools used to assess local government presences ................................ 15 2.1.2 CPALC advice to English local councils .................................................. 17 2.1.3 Charity websites .................................................................................... 17 2.1.4 A finished ‘ideal’ .................................................................................... 18 2.2 Preparing to answer research questions: potential drivers and inhibitors of CC online communications and their channels ........................ 18 2.2.1 Cost ....................................................................................................... 19 2.2.2 Building effectiveness/efficiency .......................................................... 20 2.2.3 Building independence .......................................................................... 21 2.2.4 Building visibility ................................................................................... 21 2.2.5 Building trust ......................................................................................... 22 2.2.6 Citizen demand ..................................................................................... 23 2.2.7 The digital divide ................................................................................... 24 2.2.8 Potential drivers and inhibitors of channels of CC online communications .................................................................................... 25 2.3 Literature models that might explain uptake of online communications ... 27 2.3.1 Diffusion of Innovations (DoI) ............................................................... 27 2.3.2 Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) .................................................. 29 2.3.3 DeLone and McLean information system success model (DM) ............ 30 2.3.4 Similarities between models, combining models .................................. 31 2.4 Chapter conclusion ........................................................................................ 31

3 RESEARCH METHODS ...................................................................................... 32 3.1 Research method choice ............................................................................... 32 3.1.1 Chosen methods ................................................................................... 32 3.1.2 Advantages, disadvantages and limitations of chosen methods .......... 32 3.2 Data source classification and selection ....................................................... 34 3.3 Interview question generation ...................................................................... 34 3.3.1 Initial interview questions ..................................................................... 35 3.3.2 Open-‐ended interview questions directly based on research questions ................................................................................ 35 3.3.3 Interview questions based on potential drivers and inhibitors, and literature models ............................................................................ 36 3.4 Interview process ........................................................................................... 38 3.5 Interview data presentation and analysis ..................................................... 39 3.6 Chapter conclusion ........................................................................................ 39


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4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION .......................................................................... 40 4.1 Model presence ............................................................................................. 40 4.2 Assessing actual online presences ................................................................. 42 4.3 Initial interview questions ............................................................................. 43 4.4 Open-‐ended interview questions directly based on research questions ..... 45 4.4.1 RQ 1: What are the drivers and inhibitors of CC online communications? .................................................................................. 45 4.4.2 RQ 2: What are the drivers and inhibitors for the different forms of CC online communications? .................................................................. 48 4.4.3 RQ 3: What obstacles have CCs encountered on their journeys to online? How have these been worked around or overcome? .............. 49 4.4.4 RQ 4: Are CC online presences successful? ........................................... 50 4.5 Interview questions based on potential drivers and inhibitors and literature models .................................................................................... 50 4.5.1 Diffusion of Innovations model (DoI) .................................................... 50 4.5.2 Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) .................................................. 53 4.5.3 DeLone and McLean information systems success model (DM) ........... 54 4.6 Comparing the models ................................................................................... 57 4.7 Chapter conclusion ........................................................................................ 58

5 CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................... 59 5.1 RQ 1: What are the drivers and inhibitors of CC online communications? .. 59 5.2 RQ 2: What are the drivers and inhibitors for the different forms of CC online communications? .......................................................................... 60 5.3 RQ 3: What obstacles have CCs encountered on their journeys to online? How have these been worked around or overcome? .................................. 60 5.4 RQ 4: Are CC online presences successful? ................................................... 61 5.5 Relating observed drivers and inhibitors to literature models .................... 61 5.6 Summary of conclusions ................................................................................ 63

6 CRITICAL APPRAISAL AND LIMITATIONS OF THIS WORK, SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER WORK .......................................................... 64 6.1 Critical appraisal ............................................................................................ 64 6.2 Limitations of this work ................................................................................. 64 6.3 Further work .................................................................................................. 65

7 WORKS CITED .................................................................................................... 66 APPENDICES ....................................................................................................... 79 Appendix 1: Text of Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 establishing community councils ................................................................ 79 Appendix 2: Community councils – a brief history .................................... 82 Appendix 3: Definitions of e-‐democracy, e-‐participation and e-‐government ......................................................................... 87 Appendix 4: European local governments: tiers, populations and areas .. 88 Appendix 5: Freeman’s municipal website evaluation tool ...................... 96 Appendix 6: DoI adopter class definitions ................................................. 97 Appendix 7: Standard ethics form .............................................................. 98 Appendix 8: Creation of a model CC online presence ................................ 99


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Appendix 9: Interview data ...................................................................... 107 Appendix 9: Original project proposal ..................................................... 140 Appendix 10: Project diaries ....................................................................... 146 Appendix 11: Feedback on initial report .................................................... 178

List of tables Table 1.1: Objectives and dissertation structure ..................................................... 13 Table 2.1: Criteria for 'ideal' CC online presence ..................................................... 18 Table 2.2: Asgarkhani’s strategic reasons for e-‐government ................................... 21 Table 2.3: Drivers and inhibitors classification ......................................................... 28 Table 3.1: CC classification (May 2013) .................................................................... 34 Table 3.2: Initial interview questions ....................................................................... 35 Table 3.3: Open-‐ended interview questions directly based on research questions 35 Table 3.4: Interview questions based on potential drivers and inhibitors and literature models ..................................................................................... 36 Table 4.1: CC online presence assessment .............................................................. 42 Table 4.2: DoI-‐related interview questions .............................................................. 51 Table 4.3: Drivers and inhibitors classification and findings .................................... 51 Table 4.4: TAM-‐related interview questions ............................................................ 53 Table 4.5: DM-‐related interview questions .............................................................. 54 Table 4.6: Relating drivers and inhibitors to DM input constructs .......................... 56 Table 4.7: Assessing CC online presences according to DM input constructs .......... 56 Table 4.8: Drivers and inhibitors results .................................................................. 58 Table 8.1: European local governments: tiers, populations and areas .................... 88 Table 8.2: Freeman’s municipal website evaluation tool ......................................... 96 List of figures Figure 2.1: Website Evaluation Questionnaire dimensions ...................................... 16 Figure 2.2: Diffusion of Innovations ideal distribution and categories ...................... 27 Figure 2.3: Technology acceptance model ................................................................ 29 Figure 2.4: UTAUT ..................................................................................................... 30 Figure 2.5: DeLone and McLean information systems success model ...................... 30 Figure 4.1: Home page of model CC website, showing blog entries and links to uploaded documents ............................................................................... 41 Figure 8.1: Number of local government tiers against populations of countries ...... 94 Figure 8.2: Number of local government tiers against areas of countries ................ 95 Figure 8.3: Standard ethics form ............................................................................... 98 Figure 8.4: Wordpress visual editor, including text style-‐selector ............................ 99 Figure 8.5: Home page of model CC website, showing blog entries and links to uploaded documents ............................................................................. 102 Figure 8.6: Use of HTML tables in Model CC website .............................................. 103 Figure 8.7: Alternative using heading styles instead of HTML tables ...................... 104 Figure 8.8: Model CC Twitter feed .......................................................................... 105 Figure 8.9: Model CC Facebook page ...................................................................... 106


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Acknowledgements Firstly, thanks indeed to my supervisor, Peter Cruickshank, for invaluable advice, encouragement and support throughout this project, for some very interesting discussions and for attempting the thankless task of turning a died-‐in-‐the-‐wool physical scientist and mono-‐realitist into a social researcher. Thanks also to my second marker, Colin Smith, for support, very useful feedback and ideas. Thanks also to the members of Edinburgh Napier University’s Centre for Social Informatics for their great welcome in summer 2012, and Edinburgh Napier University’s School of Computing for getting me to this point. Thanks are also due to the Community Councillors, Community Council Liaison Officers and others who participated in this research. Without them, it would not have been possible. Finally, a huge thank-‐you to my much better half, Eleanor Emberson, for supporting me through so many things, especially these studies.


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Glossary ASCC

Association of Scottish Community Councils

CC

Community Council

CCllr

community councillor

CCLO

community council liaison officer

CCOP

community council online presence

CCP

community planning partnership

CMS

content management system

CPALC

Communities, Parish And Local Councils

DM

DeLone and McLean information system success model

DoI

Diffusion of Innovations model

ICT

Information and communications technology

IT

information technology

LA

Local Authority

Municipality

A town, city or district enjoying some degree of local self-‐ government, or the governing body of such a unit

NP

Neighbourhood Partnership

Platform

an underlying IT system, such as a blogging or CMS system, a social media provider (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) or a technology such as HTML/CSS, along with the servers and other systems used to create and publish online presences.

RoI

return on investment

RS

Reform Scotland

SG

Scottish Government

SLWG

Short-‐life working group

SMEs

small and medium-‐sized enterprises

TAM

Technology Acceptance Model

Webmaster

A person who maintains a CC online presence, even though he or she may have other CC duties, and though CC presences include Facebook pages and Twitter feeds as well as traditional websites


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Introduction

Community councils (CCs) are the smallest, most local units of democracy in Scotland. They consist of unpaid elected citizens who live in the communities they represent. Created in 1975 to retain the localism of abolished small burgh and district councils, CCs’ sole statutory duty is to obtain and disseminate community opinions. (The legislation establishing CC duties is given in appendix 1.) All government service-‐provision duties in Scotland lie with local authorities (LAs), the Scottish Government (SG), the UK Government and government-‐associated public bodies such as Registers of Scotland, although some island CCs assist their LAs with service-‐provision (Orkney Islands Council, 2012) while other CCs provide other non-‐ statutory services. CCs also have the right to be consulted on licensing and spatial planning. They typically meet monthly, but some have planning committees that meet more frequently. CCs are connected to their LAs via LA officials known as Community Council Liaison Officers (CCLOs). CCLOs’ standings and roles vary from LA to LA.

1.1 Why research community councils’ online communications? This research furthers a personal interest – I was treasurer of St Andrews CC and a member of its planning committee. I am currently minutes secretary and joint webmaster for an Edinburgh CC. My experiences suggest that while there is much that could be improved, CCs are valuable expressions of community feeling and vehicles for community action. Opportunities for CCs to act on behalf of their communities will increase if the Community Empowerment Bill passes (Scottish Government, 2013e). Some CCs use online communication to connect with their citizens, but this is often done poorly. Therefore it seems worthwhile finding what would improve such connections. CCs have ongoing issues. (A fuller history of CCs and their problems is given in appendix 2.) There could be 1369 CCs but 213 do not exist (Cruickshank, Ryan, & Smith, in press, pp. 5-‐6). Many CCs do not have full complements of elected members (BBC, 2011a), (Ryan & Cruickshank, 2012, p. 5). In contrast to increased government, personal and business online communications, CCs do not use online communications effectively: under a quarter of CCs maintain up-‐to-‐date online presences; very few of these facilitate two-‐way interactions between citizens and CCs; planning matters are hardly presented online despite CCs’ potentially significant role in planning (Scottish Government, 1996). Such problems have occurred throughout CCs’ existence (Goodlad, Flint, Kearns, Keoghan, Paddison, & Raco, 1999). This research is designed to investigate CCs’ poor online communications. This research is timely: Scotland’s political systems are due to change soon. A few months before this research began, the UK and Scottish Governments agreed a referendum on Scottish independence (Scottish Government, 2012g), now scheduled for 18 September 2014. Matters have progressed since then with the publication of a White Paper on independence (Scottish Government, 2013f). Even if Scotland votes against independence, change will come from the Scotland Act 2012 (UK Government, 2012). COSLA (the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) recently created a Commission on Strengthening Local Democracy (COSLA, 2013) which has been welcomed by SG (Scottish Government, 2013e). While these Introduction


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developments will mostly affect the Scottish Government and LAs, changes to CCs cannot be ruled out. Hence it is worthwhile taking stock before such changes occur. E-‐democracy, e-‐participation and e-‐government have received much study (Susha & Grönlund, 2012), (Medaglia, 2012). In brief, e-‐democracy and e-‐participation focus on ICT-‐mediated decisions about who governs and what they should do, while e-‐government is ICT-‐mediated government-‐citizen interactions. (Full definitions of these terms are given in appendix 3.) The majority of these studies cover international, national and the top tiers of local government (papers cited in Susha & Grönlund (2012) and Medaglia (2012)). Such affairs affect large numbers of people at once. But while each CC is only relevant to a few hundred people, CCs together are relevant to 5 million people. Hence research into these bodies is per se important, even though CCs do not actually govern. This research provides an opportunity to work with technology uptake and success models. These may help explain the factors underpinning low take-‐up and ineffective use of online communications. Models themselves are worth probing so that they can be improved where possible.

1.2 What is online communication and why should CCs use it? In this project, online communication is defined as open communication via internet browsers. Hence it includes websites, blogs and social media, and documents that can be downloaded from them, that are freely accessible even if citizens have to join such systems. It excludes email communication, because such information is only viewable by specific recipients, and closed systems by which community councillors may digitally communicate only with each other. CCs are part of a democratic political system, yet are potentially unique in the numbers of ‘missing’ members and actual councils (Goodlad, Flint, Kearns, Keoghan, Paddison, & Raco, 1999), (BBC, 2011b), (Ryan & Cruickshank, 2012). There is a lack of interest, which cannot be solved through silence. CCs are often unrepresentative (Scottish Government, 2005). Hence there is a large democratic deficit to be challenged. One solution is better transparency through communication (Kierkegaard, 2009). A survey of community councillors in an urban LA suggests that CCs themselves want to use online communications (Higney, 2013). Lack of skills, resources, ages of councillors and most significantly aversion to using online communications hold back such intentions. The main potential benefit is increasing the reach of CCs’ communications. Printed documents can only reach those to whom they are sent and their immediate circles, while documents on noticeboards reach only those who stop to read them. Emailed documents have similar limitations to printed communication, except that emails can be sent and forwarded to many recipients. It is also worthwhile considering whether different types of people can access CC information. For example, younger people engage more in e-‐participation than traditional representative democracy (Saglie & Vabo, 2009). CCs are tasked with finding citizens’ opinions: consultations work better if they have an e-‐component (Åström & Grönlund, 2011). It may be more cost-‐effective to use online communication (Coursey & Norris, 2008). Finally, CCs have a duty to gather opinions from their citizens. If appropriately configured,

Introduction


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online communication facilitates input from citizens who do not attend traditional meetings.

1.3 Aims and objectives, structure of this dissertation, research questions The factors presented so far inspired the overall aims of this research: to contribute data and ideas about online communication into debates about e-‐participation as it affects the lowest tiers of local government, and about the future of the lowest tier of Scotland’s democracy. The aims inspired the objectives given in table 1.1. Table 1.1: Objectives and dissertation structure Objective 1. Knowing more about CCs, especially their place in Scotland’s governmental system and their ICT history 2. Devising research questions that can probe the known phenomena 3. Undertaking literature research to devise a tool for assessing actual online communications 4. Undertaking literature research to find possible factors underpinning the observed phenomena 5. Undertaking literature research to find models that might help probe the observed phenomena and further explain the underlying factors 6. Devising a research methodology to gather data to answer the research questions 7. Gathering and analysing data on the drivers and inhibitors affecting CC online communications and the models that might explain them. 8. Making conclusions from this analysis 9. Critically appraising this work 10. Stating the limitations of the current work 11. From objectives 9 and 10, making suggestions for further work 12. Presenting the conclusions in ways that allow CCs and their citizens to benefit from the research, as well as in academic publications

Chapter and section(s) meeting objective Appendices 1 and 2

Chapter 1 (section 1.3) Chapter 2 (section 2.1)

Chapter 2 (section 2.2)

Chapter 2, (section 2.3)

Chapter 3 Appendix 8 (creation of model CC online presence) Appendix 9 (interview data) Chapter 4 (analysis) Chapter 5 Chapter 6 (section 6.1) Chapter 6 (section 6.2) Chapter 6 (section 6.3) A ‘good practice guide’ Academic papers

Hence there are two intertwined themes in this research: explanation of observed phenomena (CCs’ online communications) in terms of potential drivers and inhibitors, and an investigation of these drivers and inhibitors through the lens of literature models. This project’s research questions, which sprang from a desire to understand the poor performances discussed in (Ryan & Cruickshank, 2012) and (Cruickshank, Ryan, & Smith, in press), are: RQ1 What are the drivers and inhibitors of CC online communications? RQ2 What are the drivers and inhibitors for the different forms of CC online communications? Introduction


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RQ3 What obstacles have CCs encountered on their journeys to online? How have these been worked around or overcome? RQ4 Are CC online presences successful?

1.4 Context: CCs are composed of volunteers, and are not alone in having issues with online communication While answering these research questions, it is important to understand that CC online presences are generally run by unpaid volunteers. CCs office-‐bearers cannot command other CC members. CCs have small budgets (Bort, McAlpine, & Morgan, 2012) and so cannot afford full-‐time IT or communications staff. Despite this, CCs are more than local pressure groups – they are called into being by legislation. Hence both individual and organisational factors are important, as is distinguishing between them. Similar situations seem to be uncommon around Europe. Most European countries have two-‐ or three-‐tier systems (appendix 4). The only analogy to CCs not needing to be active is Lithuanian ‘sub-‐elderships’ – these exist under the 60 municipalities and 546 elderships (Silutes District Municipality administration, 2013). So far, this introduction may have implied that only CCs suffer online communication issues. This is not true. For example, only 14% of UK SMEs use the internet effectively. The UK does not have perfect e-‐intensity (Kalapesi, Willersdorf, & Zwillenberg, 2010). Other European and some American local governments have issues with IT and communication with citizens (Van Deursen, Van Dijk, & Ebbers, 2006), (Gaulė & Žilinskas, 2013), (Youngblood & Mackiewicz, 2012), (Hansen & Kræmmergaard, 2013) Only half of European city-‐level local governments have active presences in social networks (Bonsón, Torres, Royo, & Flores, 2012). CCs are also not alone in facing the digital divide. Firstly, the digital divide is not limited to Scotland (Townsend, Sathiaseelan, Fairhurst, & Wallace, 2013). Also, Local Authority websites have information that is relevant to elderly citizens but this information is difficult to access, mainly because of elderly citizens’ lack of internet skills (Choudrie, Ghinea, & Songonuga, 2013). E-‐government has basically failed to live up to predictions of vast transformations (Norris & Reddick, 2013). Suggested solutions include government action (Townsend, Sathiaseelan, Fairhurst, & Wallace, 2013), satellite broadband, collective community action (Infoxchange Australia, 2009) and increased roles for public libraries (Bertot J. C., Jaeger, Gorham, Taylor, & Lincoln, 2013).

1.5 Chapter conclusion Community Councils are the smallest units of representative democracy in Scotland and are composed of unpaid volunteers. About 16% of potential CCs do not exist, while those that do exist generally use online communications poorly. Having said this, CCs are not alone in suffering issues with online communication. Research into CCs’ online communications is timely, may contribute to debates on e-‐democracy and e-‐government and provides an opportunity to use models of technology uptake and success models. There are several potential benefits for using online communication: the following chapter looks at these in more detail. Introduction


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Literature review

This chapter explores what CC online presences could and arguably should be. Academic and practitioner literature about local government and charity websites are used to create criteria for an ‘ideal’ CC online presence. These criteria are used later to inform the creation of a model presence and to assess existing CC online presences. Next, grounds for answering research questions 1 and 2 are prepared. Firstly, literature about potential drivers and inhibitors of CC online communication is presented. Secondly, literature models relevant to IT uptake are presented. These models are used later to generate interview questions and examine their responses. Hence this chapter fulfils objectives 3, 4 and 5 of this project.

2.1 An ‘ideal’ CC online presence This section fulfils objective 3 by using academic and practitioner literature on local government and charity websites to develop criteria for an ‘ideal’ CC online presence. This was also inspired by an absence of standards or guidelines for CC online presences. Because CCs have only representative duties, revenue-‐raising and service-‐delivery functions are omitted from these criteria. 2.1.1 Tools used to assess local government presences Website-‐assessment tools are of interest here because their criteria can be included in the ‘ideal’ criteria. There are four methodologies for evaluating websites: (1) self-‐ evaluation, (2) expert evaluations, (3) user tests and user surveys and (4) automated tests, mainly of technical characteristics (Ølnes, 2007). This section generates criteria for ‘expert’ evaluation, i.e. assessment of actual CC online presences. User tests of actual CC presences are likely to be the ones of most interest because they would be the ultimate indicators of success (Wang, Bretschneider, & Gant, 2005). Governments are dissimilar to commercial bodies in that the latter compete in marketplaces but the former are monopolies (Wang, Bretschneider, & Gant, 2005). For example, only the UK government can issue UK passports. There may be several levels of government covering any particular area (see appendix 4) but the levels have different duties. By contrast, there may be several companies producing the same product so each will need to entice people to buy its versions. While there may be competition between companies and governments, e.g. in provision of leisure services, because of the differences between governments and companies, only tools to assess government websites are considered in this section. One of the first methods designed specifically to assess government websites was the Website Attribute Evaluation System (la Porte, Demchak, & de Jong, 2002). This was designed to assess government agencies’ openness as demonstrated by the degrees of transparency and interactivity found on their websites. It did not directly measure performance and or usefulness to citizens. The Quality of eGovernment Services model was designed to form a basis for continuous quality improvement by testing along dimensions related to six factors: forms interaction, service reliability, support mechanisms, portal usability,

Literature review


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information quality and security (Magoutas & Mentzas, 2009). These can be tested using a questionnaire to be completed by government website visitors. The Website Evaluation Questionnaire (WEQ), which was devised to analyse and compare government websites, has seven dimensions: WEQ

Naviga!on Ease of use Hyperlinks Structure

Content

Layout

Relevance Comprehension Completeness

(Elling, Lentz, de Jong, & van den Bergh, 2012) Figure 2.1: Website Evaluation Questionnaire dimensions WEQ is implemented by placing the questionnaire on the government websites under consideration so that users can submit data. Freeman’s (2012) tool for assessing municipality websites includes empirical measures such as the number of operations needed to find a standard piece of information, how quickly a standard question submitted online is answered, and whether the website is organised ‘usefully’. This tool is presented in appendix 5 (table 8.2), along with consideration of whether each criterion is relevant to CCs. Similarly, although gaining information is an important reason for visiting government websites, content and information quality alone are clearly not enough (Hasan & Abuelrub, 2011). Freeman’s tests are relevant to the suggestion that if governments wish to move users from offline service-‐delivery methods to online methods, they need to ensure that websites facilitate easy access to such services (Wang, Bretschneider, & Gant, 2005) Freeman suggests two guiding principles and a warning: • ‘Cities must implement the tools and methods citizens use if they are going to be successful in communicating through the internet’ • E-‐government is about making things more convenient – citizens can do things when and where it suits them (thus reducing delays in paying bills and non payment). E-‐government also reduces demand for civic employees. • E-‐government also provides information – so if there is e-‐government there is more pressure on government to provide information! The above empirical measures of finished websites justify the use of similar measures to assess CC online presences. So a good CC online presence will be easily navigable, have worthwhile content and a clear layout, so that it functions well for its users. Platform-‐choice is irrelevant so long as presences have the desired qualities.

Literature review


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2.1.2 CPALC advice to English local councils Communities, Parishes and Local Councils (CPALC) is ‘an independent body which promotes [English] local democracy by aiding and supporting all whether residents, town and parish councillors or parish clerks’ (CPALC, 2013a). Because English parish councils are the nearest geographical equivalents to CCs and have similar representative functions, relevant recommendations by CPALC are included the completed criteria in subsection 2.1.4. CPALCs advises that local council websites must follow EU ‘cookie’ laws, and must contain councillors’ registers of interests. It lists advantages and disadvantages of online and traditional communications (CPALC, 2013b). These include the expense of disseminating and difficulty in amending printed information, compared with the facile updating and potentially greater reach of online information. For example, online information is easily forwarded and translated to other languages using tools such as Google Translate. CPALC recommends that the following types of information should appear on council websites and well-‐advertised paper documents: • Meeting dates and papers • Contact details for the local council and councillors • Local services such as playing fields, bus routes, sports and recreation facilities, schools, faith organisations • History of the local community • Services (e.g. emergency services, planning) run by higher tiers of local government and other bodies, including all relevant contact details (CPALC, 2013b) 2.1.3 Charity websites Charity websites are considered here because charities are often small bodies of volunteers, focussed on a particular area or topic. Also, many charity websites concentrate on awareness-‐raising and information provision, rather than fund-‐ raising (Goatman & Lewis, 2007). CCs similarly are composed of small numbers of volunteers, publish information and have no revenue-‐raising duties, although some CCs raise funds for charity-‐like causes1. CCs and charities are also similar because they are public-‐facing bodies. There are many charities that are much bigger than CCs (Saxton, 2011). Also charities may compete for attention and donations (Winterich, Zhang, & Mittal, 2012), while each citizen is resident in only one CC area. Charities provide emotional rewards: people feel happy about spending time and money on others (Aknin, Dunn, Whillans, Grant, & Norton, 2013) while CCs are about citizens’ everyday lives. Charities also use their websites to support staff, to communicate with media, professional bodies and other stake-‐holders (Goatman A. K., 2008). Other uses include providing information, feedback mechanisms, links to other websites, online chat and communities, event promotion and campaigning. Some charity websites have staff-‐only areas. Some charities use social media to generate awareness 1

For example, St Andrews CC’s 200 club: http://www.standrewscc.net/200club.php

Literature review


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(Quinton & Fennemore, 2013). Similarly, CCs are tasked with collecting and disseminating community opinions and hence interacting with LAs and other stakeholders. Many CCs aim to inform their citizens and campaign on local issues. Given the similarities between small charities and CCs, and that small charities can use the internet to support or achieve their aims, it is possible that CCs can do similar. Hence relevant features of charity websites can be included in the ‘ideal’ criteria. 2.1.4 A finished ‘ideal’ The following criteria for an ‘ideal’ CC online presence were obtained by listing the recommendations and criteria found for government, municipal, English parish council and charity websites, removing those not commensurate with CCs’ functions, then grouping the remainder, as shown in table 2.1.

Content Qualities

Features

Table 2.1: Criteria for 'ideal' CC online presence Timely, up-‐to-‐date information Relevant documents (e.g. minutes) News CC or community councillor blogs Names of all community councillors Contact information Local area information Systems to report issues Options for citizen input Can solicit citizen input Planning information Links to CC social media presences Easy navigation Mobile version Attractive, consistent design Security/privacy features/policy Customisation for VI users etc

2.2 Preparing to answer research questions: potential drivers and inhibitors of CC online communications and their channels This section fulfils objective 4 by presenting potential answers to this project’s research questions. These are: RQ 1 What are the drivers and inhibitors of CC online communications? RQ 2 What are the drivers and inhibitors for the different forms of CC online communications? RQ 3 What obstacles have CCs encountered on their journeys to online? How have these been worked around or overcome? RQ 4 Are CC online presences successful? The answers to RQ 1 and RQ 2 come from CCs’ stories. To prompt their telling, and to be ready to delve further into them, potential drivers and inhibitors were sought in literature around local government online communication. These drivers and inhibitors are presented under headings naming each posited factor. This research concentrates on ‘corporate’ factors, that is, those that drive and inhibit online

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communications by CCs as organisations. An alternative approach would have been investigation of ‘individual’ factors, that is, those that drive and inhibit individual community councillors’ contributions to CCs’ online communications. RQ 3 is also best answered by investigating CCs’ stories, while the answer to RQ 4 depends partly on CCs’ contexts but mostly on the definition of ‘successful’. In this research, two definitions of ‘successful’ are used: the first is that a presence is successful if many types of information can easily be added to presences and presences can be used to receive information from citizens; the second – an acid test – is that a presence is successful if citizens actually use it to receive and input information. 2.2.1 Cost CCs are responsible for keeping themselves within budget, even though their budgets are mostly set by their LAs. The average CC budget is £400 (Bort, McAlpine, & Morgan, 2012). (Some CCs raise funds to support community projects but CCs have no taxation powers.) In contrast the UK government, the Scottish Government and LAs all have some forms of revenue-‐raising (Scottish Government, 2012h). Hence perhaps the most obvious potential driver is that online communications can reduce communication costs (Scott, DeLone, & Golden, 2011), (CPALC, 2013b). There is no necessary financial cost to using online communication: platforms such as Wordpress are free to use. Given that many libraries provide free access to PCs It is not even strictly necessary for a CC or its community councillors to own computers. On the other hand, a professionally-‐designed website could cost several thousand pounds (Executionists, 2013). Hence it is possible that adopting online communications can increase financial costs, in that CCs need to communicate via traditional as well as online channels. However, online communication can increase the reach of communications, so that the per-‐capita costs may be reduced. For example, approximately half of UK citizens and over 80% of 16-‐24-‐year-‐olds use social media (Office for National Statistics, 2013a) so social media are a potentially massive free channel to citizens. In fact, citizens generally expect e-‐services from (local) government (Freeman, 2012). If blogs offer politicians low thresholds for participation, low communication costs and strong possibilities for mass communications in large networks (Karlsson & Åström, 2013), they could do the same for CCs. (Having said that, it appears that social media are most effective in national elections and fairly ineffective in more local elections (Effing, van Hillegersberg, & Huibers, 2011).) Unfortunately, citizens do not generally use the internet to comment on ‘political’ matters (Cruickshank, Edelmann, & Smith, 2010), (Butkeviciene & Vaidelyte, 2011). Clearly CCs need to undertake cost-‐benefit analyses of their communication channel mixes (Kertesz, 2003). Having said this, traditional return-‐on-‐investment (RoI) is possibly the wrong tool to assess government online communications, especially social media (Comms2Point0, 2013). This is because governments do not generally compete in commercial markets2 and so cannot measure sales. Instead, influence should be measured. For example, effective consultation may contribute to desirable outcomes such as 2

Exceptions include the UK’s National Savings and Investments.

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worthwhile road schemes. A poor scheme might cost just as much to build, but cause large opportunity-‐costs. It is possible to calculate RoI for some online investments. For example, an online campaign to encourage fitting smoke-‐detectors may save lives and property, and reduce fire-‐brigade call-‐outs. The latter two factors could be measured. While CCs do not provide fire services, they can help spread such campaigns. It has been estimated that providing information in public information-‐centres costs £7·∙50 per item, £2·∙75 per item via a call-‐centre and just £0·∙15 per item via the web (SOCITM, quoted in (Comms2Point0, 2013)). So even if CCs do not seek citizen input, they could be part of overall government cost-‐saving exercises. There are necessary time-‐costs to CC online presences. Firstly, time will be spent on set-‐up, including any necessary learning. Thereafter time will be spent adding content and responding to citizen input. While it might be argued that time-‐cost is an individual factor (i.e. calls on individual councillors’ time), it can also be argued that time-‐cost is just another call on the time resources of the CC as a whole, so rational CCs will consider whether the time might be better spent on other activities. Time-‐costs for online communications might be offset against reduced costs of disseminating and receiving information via other methods. For example, putting information online saves staff costs (King J. , 2013). Finally, CCs would still need strategies for contacting offline citizens. 2.2.2 Building effectiveness/efficiency This driver can take several forms and names, such as efficiency, convenience, increasing informedness, ease of information retrieval (Scott, DeLone, & Golden, 2011). Related to CCs’ main duty of ascertaining opinions, e-‐consultations increase deliberation quality and the likelihood of policy impact, without necessarily increasing participant numbers (Åström & Grönlund, 2011). Public consultation should be done as early as possible to allow larger ranges of policies to emerge (Åström & Grönlund, 2011). Early, organised transmission of community opinions might also counteract civil servants’ ambivalence about direct citizen participation in the political process (Bertot, Jaeger, & Grimes, 2010). Similarly, e-‐consultations are most likely to affect policy if done at early stages of policy cycles (Åström & Grönlund, 2011). Multi-‐channel consultations (both e-‐ and traditional channels) succeed better than those based on a single medium (Åström & Grönlund, 2011). This is an argument for having both e-‐ and traditional communications in CCs’ repertoires. Consultations in early stages of policy cycles tend to have fewer respondents than in late stages, thus implying a need for all levels of government to communicate better (Åström & Grönlund, 2011). (Asgarkhani, 2005) gives strategic reasons for e-‐government (table 2.2). The efficiency and effectiveness components would apply to local government websites.

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Table 2.2: Strategic reasons for e-‐government Time Distance Creativity Time Distance Creativity Time Distance Creativity

Efficiency Accelerating business processes and activities Reducing geographical and distance inhibitors/barriers Enhancing existing business processes and activities Effectiveness Improving the flow of information and business intelligence throughout the supply and the value chain components Enabling integrated control of the supply and the value chain processes Enabling new (and/or modified) processes Growth Obtaining early market entry/presence Introducing new products to new markets Developing new products and services

2.2.3 Building independence In this research, the primary facet of ‘independence’ is a CC’s ability to criticise or decide its own policies without direction from its LA3 – there is no suggestion that CCs could or should become independent nations. While each CC is bound to follow its LA’s CC scheme, these schemes provide guidance about statutory duties, elections, meetings, documentation and appropriate behaviour but do not prevent CCs from taking actions that they believe will support their communities (Edinburgh Council, 2009), (Glasgow City Council, 2012), (Aberdeen City Council, 2012). That is, schemes are enabling rather than circumscribing frameworks. Despite this, CCs are largely financially dependent on LA grants and so it is conceivable that CCs may avoid actions that criticise their LAs or do not follow LA policies. The Macintosh report (McIntosh, et al., 1999) stressed the importance of CCs’ independence from LAs. While funded by LAs, CCs may freely criticise LA actions – but LAs cannot simply shut down or ignore CCs as they might ignore other organisations. This ties into the notion of trust: if a CC is seen to oppose an LA activity that citizens dislike, this can engender citizens’ trust in that CC. There are two further facets to CC independence. Firstly CCs may feel they need LA support to use online communication. Despite this, some LA schemes e.g. (Glasgow City Council, 2012) do not mention using the internet. (This is not the case for all LAs (McGill, 2012).) Some CCLOs are not allowed to use social media at work (Ryan & Cruickshank, 2012, p. 14) and so are unable to support their CCs’ social media use. In such cases, CCs’ social media will be developed independently of their LAs. Secondly, CCs may use online communications to raise funds for charitable or community purposes. 2.2.4 Building visibility The need for visibility via the internet comes from decreasing appetite for traditional communication channels. LA schemes for CCs suggest noticeboards, newspapers and mailings as ways of contacting citizens (Glasgow City Council, 2012). However, young 3

The Oxford English Dictionary definitions of ‘independent’ are ‘free from outside control; not subject to another’s authority’, ‘not depending on another for livelihood or subsistence’, capable of thinking or acting for oneself’; ‘not connected with another or with each other; separate’.

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people tend not to get their news from newspapers (Buckingham, 2000), and tend to prefer e-‐participation (Coursey & Norris, 2008), so for CCs to be visible to this audience, they will need to go where it is. Increasingly this audience is online, so CCs need to consider whether young people are civically engaged, and then to show that CCs are listening (Livingstone, 2007). The internet is not yet the final answer to civic disengagement: presence design needs careful thought if it is to speak to the desired audiences (Christodoulides, Michaelidou, & Siamagka, 2013). Nevertheless, having a website can be essential for an organisation to be taken seriously (Goatman A. K., 2008). Also websites, blogs and similar can reach all online citizens, while newspaper circulations are falling dramatically (Butler, Zimmerman, & Hutton, 2013), and a single copy of printed information can only directly reach those who obtain it. Similarly, a 9-‐month-‐old hyperlocal blog run by a single person has 16,000 readers per month while the nearest local print newspaper has a print-‐run of 60,000 (Slee, 2009). Online communication may be a highly unfamiliar context for those who are used to certainty and tribal loyalty: the blogosphere is about ‘open-‐mindedness and knowledge sharing’ (Karlsson & Åström, 2013). Online communication can be seen as an innovation, needing imagination and creativity (Simmons, Armstrong, & Durkin, 2008). Unfortunately, these are not characteristics of the stereotypical community councillor. While there is no reliable data on community councillor demographics, anecdotal evidence such as pictures of community councillors (Maybole Community Council, 2010) do little to suggest that community councillors are likely to be young technophiles. 2.2.5 Building trust There is much concern that local democracy is not working and that there is distrust in traditional participation (Åström & Grönlund, 2011), implying that better participation methods may be needed. These authors note that local democracy is about everyday concerns and that relevant academic literature seems to be about failures of participatory governance, not about what would work. There may be a conundrum to do with trusting government online presences. On the one hand, pre-‐existing trust in the provider of an information system is needed to increase its use (Scott, DeLone, & Golden, 2011). Similarly, trust in e-‐government is an important catalyst of its adoption (Warkentin, Gefen, Pavlou, & Rose, 2002). Transparency increases trust (Åström & Grönlund, 2011). Key factors involved here are ICT access, empowerment (citizens can participate and thus support transparency), social capital and bureaucratic acceptance of transparency. A difficulty for governments is that trust may be uncontrollable (Bélanger & Carter, 2008) – it is affected by people’s life-‐long propensities. Trust in e-‐government is affected by two major factors: trust in the internet and trust in the relevant government agency itself. There is resistance to e-‐government (Ebbers & van Dijk, 2007). UK examples include campaigns against ID cards (NO2ID, 2013) and Universal Credit (Welfare News Service, 2013), a new system of welfare payments that may only be claimed online (UK Government, 2013). On the other hand, provision of e-‐government systems builds trust in government (Weerakkody, El-‐Haddadeh, Al-‐Sobhi, Shareef, & Dwivedi, 2013). Citizen participation through e-‐government may lead to increased trust in public officials Literature review


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(Reddick, 2009). Higher levels of transparency, mediated via e-‐government, also reduce the likelihood of municipal governments gaming budget-‐cycles (Vicente, Benito, & Bastida, 2013). To escape this conundrum that trust in governments is needed to increase e-‐government use but e-‐government is a necessary part of raising trust in governments, it is suggested that governments first emphasise their general competencies and then highlight their abilities to deliver these over the internet (Bélanger & Carter, 2008). This may have been behind the UK government’s openness with online data increasing during 2009-‐10, a period when trust in government was low but expectations of access to online information were rising (Owen, Cooke, & Matthews, 2013). New communication technologies have traditionally favoured those in power (Bertot, Jaeger, & Grimes, 2010). Despite this, online communications are seen as cost-‐effective ways of enhancing cultures of openness and hence trust. For example the Scottish Parliament’s and Welsh Assembly’s (e-‐)petition systems have enabled new groups to influence politics (Bochel, 2012). In Australia, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire supported conservative governments but was effectively opposed by blogs and citizen journalism (Bertot, Jaeger, & Grimes, 2010). To proceed towards openness and trust, governments can develop measures of transparency and transparency-‐readiness criteria. There is no clear reason for such thoughts not applying to CCs, but there are currently no established standards or guidelines for their online presences. This is one of the prompts for devising criteria for an ‘ideal’ CC online presence and investigating the construction of a model presence (section 4.1). Similarly there are no publically-‐available studies of CC online presences apart from (Ryan & Cruickshank, 2012) and (Cruickshank, Ryan, & Smith, in press). 2.2.6 Citizen demand Citizen convenience is the converse of CC visibility: if CCs make themselves visible by providing relevant information this will go a long way to satisfying citizen demand. Public goods are not provided by markets unless there are accompanying private goods such as advertising (Weare, Musso, & Hale, 1999). That is, private organisations will not create municipal websites unless they are commercially viable. Hence public provision of municipal, advert-‐free websites stems from citizen demand and favourable cost/benefit analyses. There is demand for online government information and services (Van Deursen, Van Dijk, & Ebbers, 2006) (Butkeviciene & Vaidelyte, 2011), (Youngblood & Mackiewicz, 2012), (Gaulė & Žilinskas, 2013). 31% of UK adults use the internet to obtain information from public sources (Office for National Statistics, 2013b). Unfortunately for Scotland it has the second lowest e-‐intensity score 4 in the UK, but this is due to its relatively low population density (Kalapesi, Willersdorf, & Zwillenberg, 2010) rather than lower 4

This is a measure of the depth and reach of the Internet in commerce and society, composed of measures of internet infrastructure and access, expenditure on e-‐commerce and online advertising, and active engagement with the internet.

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demand per person. Also, most internet use is for gaining information, rather than conversations or political purposes (Cruickshank, Edelmann, & Smith, 2010), (Saglie & Vabo, 2009), so lack of evidence of online engagement does not prove there is no interest in it. 2.2.7 The digital divide The digital divide may well affect many community councillors and citizens who could benefit from CC online presences. Just over one-‐fifth of Scottish adults (22%) do not use the Internet at all (Scottish Government, 2013d, p. 79) while 43% of the UK population do not use online government services (Low Incomes Tax Reform Group, 2012). The majority of UK adults who do not use the internet are older or disabled. Such digital exclusions increase citizens’ time-‐costs and public expenditure by increasing delivery costs. Socially or financially disadvantaged citizens are more than three times as likely to be digitally excluded than ‘average citizens’ (Low Incomes Tax Reform Group, 2012)., yet such people are the most likely to need or use government services. The digital divide can be seen as increasing power inequalities (Townsend, Sathiaseelan, Fairhurst, & Wallace, 2013). Despite this, the UK Government aims to be ‘digital by default’ (Government Digital Service, 2012), while the Scottish Government aims to be ‘digital first’ (Scottish Government, 2013c). There are significant cost-‐saving drivers to these aims (Information Daily, 2012). The factors behind the digital divide are a mixture of self, financial and geographical exclusion. Ethnic origin, culture and language also affect citizens’ chances of becoming digitally excluded. The main factors are: • Age: More than half of over-‐65s voluntarily digitally exclude themselves. This stems from factors such as fear they might break something and beliefs that technology is not trustworthy. A bare majority of this age-‐group believes that IT improves matters. • Lack of interest, skills and cost: A large majority of excluded citizens have no interest in doing government business online. Another important factor is lack of skills. ‘Disconnected’ citizens tend to regard IT as unaffordable expenditure. • Disability: Approximately 18% of the UK population have disabilities. Over 800,000 UK adults have learning disabilities. Disabled people use the internet about a quarter less than equivalent non-‐disabled people. Reasons include lack of access to computers, websites and content, and the cost of assistive technology. • Geography: Much of Scotland is rural, while rural populations can be mixtures of relatively rich ‘incomers’ and relatively poor ‘natives’ (Townsend, Sathiaseelan, Fairhurst, & Wallace, 2013). Rural populations tend to be older than urban populations. Rural areas have high proportions of slow internet connections. This is understandable because connections require high user-‐density to be cost-‐ effective. Some urban areas of Scotland have concentrations of offline people, while fast internet availability can vary within cities. The relevance of the digital divide to CCs arises in two ways. Firstly, community councillors may be behind the digital divide. While there are no demographic data on community councillors, the stereotype is of older citizens. If this is true, community councillors intersect with one of the groups most likely to be behind the

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digital divide. Hence community councillors may well not have the skills to use online presences. Secondly, citizens who need CCs’ representative services may also be behind the digital divide. If so, CCs may conclude there is little value in using online communications. Further, CCs must be inclusive (Edinburgh Council, 2009). Paper communications can reach any household, while online-‐only policies may exclude the people who most need government services (Low Incomes Tax Reform Group, 2012). Feeney developed a range of classes to investigate digital inclusion and exclusion (Toledo, 2007). This classification, reminiscent of the DoI classification (section 2.3.1 below), implies that investigation into the prevalence of Feeney’s archetypes in CCs may be fruitful. 2.2.8 Potential drivers and inhibitors of channels of CC online communications Online communication is not homogenous – there are several channels, such as email traditional websites, blogs and social media. Channel-‐choice and content-‐ choice may affect each other. For example, Facebook is not conducive to a structured depository of meeting minutes. Websites are the original format of the World Wide Web. Because of this, knowledge of relevant technologies may be more available than knowledge of other internet technologies. Also, if CCs have websites that they believe to be successful, they may prefer to retain these instead of moving to later technologies. CC websites range from simple lists of links5 to fully-‐featured offerings6. Some LAs provide pages to which CCs upload minutes, community councillor contact details and similar (Falkirk Council, undated). Such pages may encourage CCs to take paths of least resistance, or give the impression that they are all that is needed (Ryan & Cruickshank, 2012, p. 14). CCs may escape the limitations of these pages by using social media for two-‐way online communication, e.g. (Larbert, Stenhousemuir and Torwood Community Council, 2011). Inhibitors of using websites include the work necessary to create and maintain them. Originally websites were created by writing code. While web design tools and blogging platforms have removed the necessity to write code, they still require some computer knowledge. Creation of interactive websites requires more skills, while some website hosts do not allow some methods for making websites dynamic (Kyrnin, 2013). Finally, finished websites need to be transferred to servers, while blogs and social media are generally created on their platforms’ servers. Blogs were among the first flowerings of web2.0 (O'Reilly, 2005). Blogs are basically online diaries but they can also have pages containing related content items. They have many possible advantages over traditional websites. For example, blogs offer convenient templates, require little or no code-‐writing and remove many hosting issues. Blogs are often free to use, providers charging only for extended services. Blogs may include systems to automatically notify followers when new content is added (O'Reilly, 2005). Communities of expertise may grow up around blog 5 6

e.g. Currie CC: http://www.currie-‐scc.gov.uk e.g. Juniper Green CC: http://www.junipergreencc.org.uk

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platforms. This is in contrast to bespoke websites, where the original developers may be the only people who can easily maintain them. Possibly the most relevant advantage for CCs who wish citizen interaction is that readers can comment on public posts. A disadvantage of most blogging platforms is that they are reverse-‐chronological: old content is ‘buried’ under the most recent content. There are ways around this, such as tagging which allows readers to access related pieces of content. Facebook is similar to blogs but has only one layout, while most blog platforms support layout choices. Users can add content to their ‘friend’s’ timelines (diaries) and there are many other sharing and networking facilities. For example, A Facebook member can share, i.e. copy to his or her own Facebook page, posts made by one of his or her Facebook friends. This allows the rest of his or her friends to see such information, even though they may not be friends with the originator. Content can be posted and accessed via mobile devices (Palihapitiya, 2010) as well as via desktop and laptop computers. Facebook is far more popular than newspapers (Slee, 2011) and is currently the dominant social medium worldwide (eBizMBA, 2013) and the most widely-‐used social medium in the UK (30 million users) (Ofcom, 2013). This is perhaps the most compelling driver for CCs to use Facebook, taking advantage of its network effect (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007). Facebook offers many of the advantages of blogs, along with related ideas such as community pages (e.g. (Lifescycle, 2009). Embaye, Navratil, Ng and Yang (2012) suggest that for local governments, Facebook, along with Twitter, minimises calls on staff time, technical expertise and public finances and can increase public engagement. It also allows organisations to access what others are saying (Slee, 2011). Facebook induces some fears. Realistic beliefs include being in a permanent public spotlight7, the possibility of public abuse or ridicule – and ignorance of how to deal with these – and even beliefs that Facebook is only used for criticism (Lockhart, 2013). Others may resent becoming part of Facebook’s product (Solon, 2011). Using Facebook well needs some thought and imagination, and ideally requires several operators per instance (Slee, 2011). Facebook content is generally inaccessible to non-‐members. This contrasts with blogs where content is by default public, but individual pieces of content can be hidden from all but specified ‘friends’ or from all other users. Twitter is a micro-‐blogging system, allowing posts of up to 144 characters and links to twitter-‐hosted pictures. It has 10 million users in the UK (Ofcom, 2013). All posts are visible to all members, while any member can ‘follow’ other members and thus become aware of their posts. Members can reply to or retweet posts, i.e. forward message to their own contacts on Twitter. Hence Twitter is something like a public, multi-‐way, multi-‐topic email conversation. It can be used to broadcast up-‐to-‐date information, such as road conditions. It also allows private conversations between individual members. Twitter’s main advantage may be that it can broadcast messages such as links to bigger pieces of content. 7

Facebook supports closed groups but these are outside this research’s remit.

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Arguably Twitter’s biggest disadvantage is its rapidity – individual tweets can rapidly buried by the incoming ‘twitstream’ – combined with no built-‐in way to file or group incoming tweets. While Facebook and Twitter are currently the dominant social media, there are many others. For example YouTube hosts video-‐clips, and is part of many councils’ communication toolkits. There is no need to maintain a separate YouTube presence – video-‐clips can be embedded into traditional websites. It is possible to combine social media: a Wordpress-‐based website can be configured to automatically tweet and email links to new posts and to add content to other social media. Away from the world wide web, organisations and interest groups may use mailing lists to hold multiway conversations, e.g. (Cobweb Publishing, Inc, 1997).

2.3 Literature models that might explain uptake of online communications This section fulfils objective 5 by presenting three long-‐standing models that examine how and why technologies spread or are taken up. 2.3.1 Diffusion of Innovations (DoI) This is the oldest model (Rogers, 1995). It provides an explanation of how innovations spread from individual to individual within a population. It considers the individuals’ characteristics, how innovation adoption would reduce uncertainty, and allows for outwardly ‘irrational’ decisions by considering the effects of social norms. It suggests that normal distributions will model how innovations are adopted – many adoptions have been seen to fit this curve. Areas under the curve can be used to classify adopters:

2·5% Innovators

13·5% Early adopters

34% Early majority

34% Late majority

16% Laggards

(Rogers, 1995) Figure 2.2: Diffusion of Innovations ideal distribution and adopter classes Rogers’ class definitions are given in appendix 6. There is no theoretical underpinning to these classes (Kauffman & Techatassanasoontorn, 2009), and some studies have not found normal distributions in some IT adoptions, thus leading to different adoption classes (appendix 6). Unfortunately, Kauffman and Literature review


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Techatassanasoontorn could only classify the first 30% of the population they studied, while the idea of a spectrum of adopter classes has not been rejected, so Rogers’ classes are used in this project. Other disadvantages of the original DoI model include assumptions that adopters are only affected by other adopters, and that all influences act equally on all adopters (Kauffman & Techatassanasoontorn, 2009) It has been suggested that DoI does not fully explain why small businesses adopt e-‐commerce (Parker & Castleman, 2009). Also, personal and professional relationships will shape how innovations spread (Ceci & Iubatti, 2012). The disadvantage caused by the first assumption can be removed by recognising that there are different possible models of influences: external (where adopters are only influenced from outside their social circles), internal and mixed (where both internal and external influences occur) (Kauffman & Techatassanasoontorn, 2009). This concept is used in this research to probe the influences on CCs’ adoption of online communications. The reasons for classifying the potential drivers and inhibitors discussed above as internal, external or mixed are given in table 2.3. Table 2.3: Drivers and inhibitors classification Potential drivers and inhibitors Reducing cost Increasing costs Building effectiveness/efficiency Building independence

Internal or external Internal Internal Internal

Building visibility

External

Building trust Citizen demand Digital divide factors

External External Both internal and external

Internal

Reasoning CCs are responsible for how their budgets are spent This research assumes that CCs themselves wish to make efficient use of their resources. Desires and actions to build independence would come from inside CCs. This factor is about citizens being able to perceive CCs. Trust comes from citizens Demand comes from citizens outwith CCs Both community councillors and the citizens they serve may be affected by the digital divide.

Another refinement (Carter & Bélanger, 2005) to the original DoI model suggests the following predictive factors are the most important: • Relative advantage: the degree to which an innovation is seen as being superior to its predecessor • Complexity: the degree to which an innovation is seen by the potential adopter as being relatively difficult to use and understand • Compatibility: the degree to which an innovation is seen to be compatible with existing values, beliefs, experiences and needs of adopters (These are Rogers’ (1995) definitions.) DoI is used in this research to probe the influences on adoption of online communications by CCs. For example, it is used to investigate whether CC influence each other, whether external influences act on CCs, and the differences between how CCs perceive themselves and a more objective classification. It is not used quantitatively in this research – that would require a larger data-‐set.

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2.3.2 Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) The origin of this theory was a lack of validated measures of computer acceptance (Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1989). Davis posited that perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEU) would determine attitude towards using (BI) and hence actual system use (AU) of information systems. PU is based on the idea that people use information systems to the extent they believe they can help with their roles. PEU is based on the idea that if information systems are believed to be too hard to use, they will not be used. The complete model is: X1

perceived usefulness a!tude towards using

X2

actual system use

perceived ease of use X1, X2 and X3 represent the characteris"cs of the computer system being assesed.

X3

Figure 2.3: Technology Acceptance Model

(Chuttur, 2009).

Because BI and AU have been found to correlate well, TAM allows early tests of prototypes, before much expenditure has been incurred. TAM has been described as ‘robust and reliable predictive model’ (King & He, 2006). It has been used, along with factors from DoI, in studies of e-‐government adoption in the UK (Gilbert, Balestrini, & Littleboy, 2004). Both adoption barriers (trust, financial security, information quality) and adoption benefits (time and money) were found to predict potential usage. TAM is clearly a simple model: updates have been suggested, for example to ‘include variables related to both human and social change processes, and to the adoption of the innovation model’ (Legris, Ingham, & Collerette, 2003). TAM has been criticised, for example, for not including factors such as self-‐efficacy – beliefs about ability to perform specific behaviours (Cruickshank & Smith, 2009). TAM2 introduces factors such as subjective norm, along with other social influence processes and cognitive instrumental processes (Venkatesh & Davis, 2000). An even more complex model, UTAUT, has been suggested:

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performance expectancy

effort expectancy behavioural inten!on to use

social influence

actual use

facilita!ng condi!ons

gender

age

experience

voluntariness of use

(Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, & Davis, 2003)

Figure 2.4: UTAUT

TAM3 focuses on interventions, by adding an ‘anchor’ (composed of computer self-‐ efficacy, perceptions of external control, computer anxiety and computer playfulness) and an ‘adjustment’ (composed of perceived enjoyment and objective usability) to PEU. This model has 17 dimensions (Venkatesh V. , undated). The TAM-‐UTAUT family may be used by managers researching how their organisations might accept new systems or in detailed research into factors underpinning technology uptake. Such complex models are suited detailed quantitative investigations of known sets of factors included in the models. The original version of TAM is preferred in this research because its parsimony inspires questions about target audience, use and usefulness of online communication by CCs. 2.3.3 DeLone and McLean information system success model (DM) The final model in this research is the DeLone and McLean information system success model (DeLone & McLean, 2003). This model is: System quality Inten!on to use

Use

Informa!on quality

Net benefits User sa!sfac!on

Service quality

(DeLone & McLean, 2003) Figure 2.5: DeLone and McLean information systems success model Literature review


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DM has been rigorously tested, and appears to have been validated (DeLone & McLean, 2003). Concerning the input constructs, system quality measures desired characteristics of such as usability, availability and reliability. Information quality measures content in terms such as personalisation, and ease of understanding. Information quality plays an indirect role in influencing use of community municipal portals (Detlor, Hupfer, Ruhi, & Zhao, 2013). Service quality is the support delivered by a system’s provider. The intermediate constructs allow for the difference between use (a behaviour, which might be mandatory or voluntary, effective or ineffective) and intention to use (an attitude). They also account for use being voluntary (DeLone & McLean, 2002). The output construct, net benefits, is the balance of positive and negative impacts of the system. In this research, the net benefits considered are those to webmasters, other community councillors and citizens. As with the other models, DM is used in this research to suggest interview questions rather than to perform quantitative investigations. 2.3.4 Similarities between models, combining models There may be similarities between TAM and DM constructs:. DM’s intention to use may be equivalent to TAM’s behavioural intention to use, while DM’s user satisfaction may be related to TAM’s PU and PEU. This similarity is not complete: DM includes two feedback loops, namely that increased net benefits lead to increased (intention to) use and user satisfaction. The models may be combined. For example, UTAUT add features from DoI to TAM (Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, & Davis, 2003). A combination of TAM, DoI and web trust models shows that people use government websites because of perceived ease of use, compatibility and trustworthiness (Carter & Bélanger, 2005). A different combination of DoI and TAM shows that trust in the internet, relative advantage, compatibility and perceived ease of use are predictors of intention to use government websites (Alomari, Woods, & Sandhu, 2012). Despite possible similarities between models, and literature examples of their combination, the original models are used separately in this research. This is partly because the originals are parsimonious and inspire qualitative interview questions probing actual experiences and partly because the refined models are for deep quantitative investigation of pre-‐proposed factors.

2.4 Chapter conclusion Academic and practitioner literature was used to create criteria for an ‘ideal’ CC online presence. These criteria cover both the content-‐types and the functional qualities that would add value to a presence. Literature around local government websites was used to posit drivers and inhibitors uptake of online communications by CCs: these factors are cost, building effectiveness/efficiency, building independence, building visibility, building trust, citizen demand and the digital divide. Models of technology uptake can be used to examine the posited drivers and inhibitors. The details of how the potential drivers and inhibitors and the models can be used to probe CC online presences are the subject of the following chapter. Literature review


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Research methods

This chapter sets out development of research methods to probe the reasons behind CCs’ online presences and how these performances relate to literature models, thus fulfilling objective 6 of this project. This project follows on from research into how CCs use online communication (Ryan & Cruickshank, 2012). That research answered some quantitative questions, i.e. questions of the forms ‘what and how much is happening?’. This project’s aim is to investigate why CCs do and do not use online communication. This aim suggests asking CCs and community councillors why they do things, that is qualitative research using a conversational approach.

3.1 Research method choice 3.1.1 Chosen methods The two most conversational research approaches are case studies and interviews. A guide to social research (Denscombe, 2007) regards case studies as a type of research strategy, and interviews as a method that can be used in several strategies. Conversational approaches fit into the ethnography (describing peoples or cultures) strategy (Denscombe, 2007, p. 79). Ethnography proceeds by learning how people understand things, and the meanings they attach to them. This is appropriate for this research, which aims to understand some previous-‐observed CC behaviours. The main method used in this research is semi-‐structured interviews. These are appropriate when insights into opinions, feelings and experiences are desired (Denscombe, 2007, p. 174). They allow examination of ranges of topics, facilitating examinations of the meanings of and factors behind phenomena. In this research, interviews provided insights into webmasters’ roles and tasks, and the perceived benefits and costs – and hence the drivers and inhibitors – of CC online presences. A further method used is examining relevant documents (Denscombe, 2007, p. 216). Documents can be objective, verifiable and authoritative. That is, they can provide checks on phenomena discussed in interviews, allowing researchers to find whether interviewees do what they say, and to see the results of interviewees’ actions. In this research, examination of actual CC online presences provided insights into how they support communication with citizens. The final chosen method was building a model CC online presence, composed of a Wordpress-‐based website on a bought domain, a Twitter feed and a Facebook page. This provided independent information about tasks and costs involved in setting up online presences, to triangulate with interview information about such tasks. 3.1.2 Advantages, disadvantages and limitations of chosen methods Semi-‐structured interviews enable a range of interviewees to speak widely about topics of interest, and researchers to home in on their desired topics. Unsolicited responses can be bonuses, in that they can became useful directions to follow. The other conversational-‐ethnographic approach, case studies, focuses on just a few instances of a particular phenomenon (Denscombe, 2007, p. 52). Case studies are valid where insights that might be gained from individual instances would have wider implications but such insights would not come from other approaches. For example, a case study might have examined a particular CC’s online presence but

Research methods


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insights would not necessarily be generalizable to other presences. In short, case studies might have given depth but would not have been representative. Documents can provide contexts for interviews. For example, a researcher can ask ‘what is the reason for this document?’ Document-‐examination also allows researchers to check interviewees’ veracity. In this research, it facilitated examination of how close real CC websites are to the ‘ideal’ model developed above. The chosen combination has advantages over other strategies such as experiments (Denscombe, 2007, p. 65) and action research (Denscombe, 2007, p. 129) that would involve making deliberate changes to CC online presences, then analysing the effects. This was not possible in this research because the researcher does not control any CC presences. Advantages over other methods include questionnaires being suited to gathering quantitative data but not to providing deep understandings of behaviours and thoughts (Denscombe, 2007, p. 155). Observation would involve watching webmasters at work. This would have been impractical and invasive, harming the naturalness of the setting (Denscombe, 2007, p. 197). The main advantage of using semi-‐structured interviews in this research is that such interviews enable insights into the drivers and inhibitors of CC online communication, while a quantitative approach using the models described above would have at least two drawbacks. Firstly, that approach could not test for factors not included in the models. Secondly, it would involve assumptions that there are objective understandings of these factors and that their interactions can be assessed. Because there are several models in current use, there is no agreed understanding. On a practical level, this approach would need a larger data-‐set than this project could generate. Instead, the models are used to generate interview questions (subsection 3.3.3) and discuss raw findings (section 4.5). A disadvantage of interviews is that they are single events. Hence the ideal interviewer would react fully to what interviewees say as interviews proceed. Also, interviewees react to how they perceive interviewers and interview topics (Denscombe, 2007). They may answer questions that have not been asked. Interviews centre on what people say, not what they do. Interviewees may be honestly mistaken or deliberately untruthful. Disadvantages of interviews specific to this research include interviewees being self-‐ selected. Another possible limitation is that the researcher devised the questions and thus risked eliciting responses limited to the tropes he brought into his research (Jenkins, 1995). This risk was minimised by grounding interview questions in existing models. To minimise said-‐versus-‐done and truthfulness issues, online presences were assessed against the ‘ideal’ model. This also provided contexts for further discussion. To allow freer discussion, interviewees were given complete anonymity and were given standard ethics forms informing them of their rights and the researcher’s responsibilities. (See appendix 7.) It is not certain that this approach will find every driver and inhibitor. There are over 600 CCs using online communications, but only 9 were interviewed. Similarly there around 500 CCs who do not use online communications, but only 1 was interviewed. Only public documents could be examined. Building a model presence revealed likely tasks and costs but does not reveal how webmasters felt about such tasks. This Research methods


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method could not examine planning or maintenance of real CC presences. The effects of the potential limitations inform the following chapters, while suggestions for further work to reduce or eliminate them are given in section 6.3. Having decided to use semi-‐structured interviews, the next steps were to find interviewees and to devise questions that probe the topics of interest. The following section describes how interviewees were sourced, while section 3.3 describes interview-‐question generation.

3.2 Data source classification and selection This research is limited to Edinburgh CCs for practical reasons: face-‐to-‐face interviews facilitate open discussion, while the researcher was based in Edinburgh and had no travel budget. All Edinburgh CCs that had email addresses on http://www.edinburghnp.org.uk/community-‐councils were contacted to request interviews with the members most involved with their online presences. Interviews were arranged with webmasters who were willing to take part. Thus interviewees were largely self-‐selected. Edinburgh has a wide range of settings, from densely urban to almost rural and from well-‐to-‐do to relatively deprived. Fortunately representatives from CCs in both sets of extremes, and the middle grounds were in the final selection. There are two major classes of CC regarding online communication – those that do it and those that do not. Each major class has two subclasses: those that do not exist and those that exist but do not use online communication; and those whose online communications are up to date and those whose are not. This classification is shown in table 3.1. Table 3.1: CC classification (May 2013) Class number and label 1. Inactive 2. Offline 3. Out-‐of-‐ date

4. Up-‐to-‐ date

Class description

CCs that do not exist CCs that exist but have no online presence CCs having online presences to which nothing has been added in the last two months. (CCs generally publish minutes after each monthly meeting, often only after ratification at the succeeding meeting. However CCs often omit June, July or August meetings because of summer holidays.) CCs having online presences to which information had been added within the last two months

Number of CCs in class 5 6 14

21

Number of CCs in this class interviewed 0 1 1

8

3.3 Interview question generation This research’s interview questions came from two main sources: the actual research questions and the models that might help explain the observed phenomena. There were also some minor sources. These are covered subsection 3.3.1, while the major sources are covered in subsections 3.3.2 and 3.3.3. In the tables of questions, CC online presence is abbreviated to ‘CCOP’. Several similar questions were generated because questions about the current state of online communication cannot be asked of CCs that do not use it. Also it was hoped to bring out the journeys to the current states. Hence, while there were over 50 interview questions, at least 7 were inapplicable to CCs that use online Research methods


35

communication. Similarly, over 30 questions were inapplicable to CCs that do not use online communication. Some questions (e.g. 8 and 33) are so similar that there was no need to ask both. Similarly, if an interviewee responded to 13 that the only influence was from family and friends, there was no need to ask questions 14 and 23. The order of asking is given in the # columns in tables 3.2 to 3.4. 3.3.1 Initial interview questions Interviews need a conducive start, ideally explaining the point of the research and confirming interviewees’ roles and the types of questions. In practice, this also allowed quick checks on classification, and interviewees to explain how they became involved with their online presences. The initial questions in this research are given in table 3.2. Table 3.2: Initial interview questions Purpose Verification/classification Classification

1

# 1 2 3

Interview questions What is your role in the CC? Where would you see yourself on Rogers’ scale? (Following brief explanation of Rogers’ classification): Where would you place your CC on Rogers’ scale? Verification 4 Please confirm that your online presence is … 5 Is there a piece of your CCOP that I have missed, such as a Twitter or Facebook account? 1 This column shows the order in which questions were asked.

3.3.2 Open-‐ended interview questions directly based on research questions The research questions introduced in section 1.2 were transformed into open-‐ended interview questions. These were designed to allow interviewees to speak about what mattered to them, and the drivers and inhibitors affecting them. To account for the different CC classes and the passage of time since presences were created, RQ 1 was expressed in 3 ways. Hence the interview questions directly based on research questions were as shown in table 3.3. Table 3.3: Open-‐ended interview questions directly based on research questions Research questions RQ 1 What are the drivers and inhibitors of CC online communications? RQ 1a What benefits and costs of being online do CCs that are planning to go online expect? RQ 1b What benefits and costs did CCs that are already online expect before going online? RQ 1c What benefits and costs actually materialised and how do they compare with expected benefits? RQ 2 What are the drivers and inhibitors for the different forms of CC online communications? RQ 3 What obstacles have CCs encountered on their journeys to online? How have these been worked around or overcome? RQ 4 Are CCOPs successful?

1

# Interview questions 6 In your own words, why are you/aren’t you online? 7 What costs and benefits do you expect? 8 What were your initial thoughts about benefits and costs? 9 Which costs and benefits actually materialised? 10 In your own words, why do you use the format currently in place? 11 What obstacles have you encountered? How have you overcome them? 12 Is your CCOP successful? How do you measure this? 1 This column shows the order in which questions were asked.

Research methods


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3.3.3 Interview questions based on potential drivers and inhibitors, and literature models The following questions were designed to supplement those in subsection 3.3.2 by asking specifically about drivers and inhibitors posited in section 2.2. It was planned to ask these questions if answers to the above open-‐ended questions did not cover these topics. These questions were also informed by the models outlined in section 2.3. For example, Is your presence useful to community councillors and citizens? could lead into discussions around usefulness and ease of use (TAM) and use and user satisfaction (DM) as well as looking at whether a CC online presence improved the CC’s efficiency. In table 3.4, interview questions are grouped firstly by the research questions to which they relate. They are then grouped by the models to which they relate, to facilitate discussion later in this dissertation. RQs 3 and 4 are not in this table because they are covered by interview questions 11 and 12 above. Table 3.4: Interview questions based on potential drivers and inhibitors and literature models

1

This column shows the order questions were asked. 1 # Interview questions (and literature sources)

Relevant models

Relevant potential drivers and inhibitors

RQ 1: What are the drivers and inhibitors of CC online communications? 13 What were the influences on deciding to have a DoI All CCOP? (internal, external, mixed) (Kauffman & Techatassanasoontorn, 2009) 14 Were you influenced by your LA, other local groups DoI All and/or neighbouring CCs (Parker & Castleman, 2009) 16 Was your CCOP inspired by neighbouring CCs? DoI All (Rogers, 1995) 23 Do you have LA support with your online efforts? DoI All 24 How familiar were you and your CC with online? DoI All (Karlsson & Åström, 2013) 25 Where do you and your CC fit in Feeney’s DoI All archetypes? (Feeney, undated), (Toledo, 2007) 19 Is your CCOP useful to TAM, DM Effectiveness/efficiency, -‐ CCllrs citizen demand -‐ Citizens? (Scott, DeLone, & Golden, 2011) How much is it used? 20 What is your CCOP’s target audience? TAM, DM Effectiveness/efficiency, citizen demand 21 Is your CCOP simple and easy to use? (Detlor, TAM, DM Effectiveness/efficiency Hupfer, Ruhi, & Zhao, 2013), (Hasan & Abuelrub, 2011) 22 Is your CCOP attractively designed? (Alomari, TAM, DM Effectiveness/efficiency, Woods, & Sandhu, 2012) citizen demand 15 Do you believe it’s your job to interact with citizens? DM Citizen demand (Karlsson & Åström, 2013) 17 Does your CCOP provide high-‐quality information? DM All (Detlor, Hupfer, Ruhi, & Zhao, 2013), (Scott, DeLone, & Golden, 2011) 18 Does your CCOP have high system and service DM All qualities? (Scott, DeLone, & Golden, 2011) RQ 1a: What benefits and costs of being online do CCs that are planning to go online expect?

Research methods

Bruce Martin Ryan 40070877 MSc in Information Systems Development, 2013 26 Do you expect it to reduce costs? (Scott, DeLone, & Golden, 2011) 27 Do you expect it to increase your effectiveness/efficiency? (Åström & Grönlund, 2011), (Asgarkhani, 2005) 28 Do you expect it to increase your visibility? (Butler, Zimmerman, & Hutton, 2013) 29 Do you expect it to increase trust (in the CC by citizens)? (Åström & Grönlund, 2011) 30 Do you expect it to build the CC’s independence? (McIntosh, et al., 1999) 31 Do you expect it to facilitate citizen convenience? (Carter & Bélanger, 2005) 32 How familiar are you/your CC with online? (Karlsson & Åström, 2013)

37 DM

Costs

DM

Effectiveness/efficiency

DM

Visibility

DM

Trust

DM

Independence

DM

Citizen convenience/demand All

DM

RQ 1b: What benefits and costs did CCs that are already online expect before going online? RQ 1c: What benefits and costs actually materialised and how do they compare with expected benefits? 33 What were your initial thoughts about benefits and DM Costs costs? How do you now perceive them? (Simmons, Armstrong, & Durkin, 2008) 34 Did you expect it to reduce costs? (Scott, DeLone, & DM Costs Golden, 2011) -‐ Did this occur? 35 Did you expect it to increase your DM Effectiveness/efficiency effectiveness/efficiency? (Åström & Grönlund, 2011), (Asgarkhani, 2005) -‐ Did this occur? 36 Did you expect it to increase your visibility? (Butler, DM Visibility Zimmerman, & Hutton, 2013) -‐ Did this occur? 37 Did you expect it to increase trust (in the CC by DM Trust citizens?) (Åström & Grönlund, 2011) -‐ Did this occur? 38 Did you expect it to build the CC’s independence? DM Independence (McIntosh, et al., 1999) -‐ Did this occur? 39 Did you expect it to facilitate citizen convenience? DM Citizen demand (Carter & Bélanger, 2005) -‐ Did this occur? 40 How do you measure the success of your CCOP? For DM All example, have you asked users? (Sørum, Medaglia, Andersen, Scott, & DeLone, 2012) 41 Does your CCOP reduce or increase your DM Costs communication costs? 42 Does your CCOP increase the CC’s DM Effectiveness/ efficiency effectiveness/efficiency? RQ 2: What are the drivers and inhibitors for the different forms of CC online communications? 43 Was the selection of type (e.g. website, twitter DoI All account, forum) influenced by number of users, peers or family? (Kauffman & Techatassanasoontorn, 2009) 44 Was your CCOP developed in stages? (Simmons, All All Armstrong, & Durkin, 2008)

Research methods

Bruce Martin Ryan 40070877 MSc in Information Systems Development, 2013 45 How do you decide your CCOP’s design? (Alomari, Woods, & Sandhu, 2012) 46 Why do you/don’t you put minutes online? (Weare, Musso, & Hale, 1999) 47 Would you welcome standards for CCOPs (Bertot, Jaeger, & Grimes, 2010) 48 49 50 51

38 All

DM Effectiveness/efficiency, citizen demand DM Effectiveness/efficiency

Digital divide-‐related questions Please comment on the demographics of your CC with All relation to those who use or contribute to your CCOP. Please comment on the demographics of your CC area. How easily available is high-‐speed internet in your area? What other communication methods do you use? What is their relative importance?

Digital divide

3.4 Interview process It was originally planned to conduct a pilot interview with a webmaster with whom the researcher works. This would have allowed the webmaster to comment on the planned questions. Unfortunately, this webmaster’s personal commitments prevented such piloting. There were other issues with interview-‐scheduling: one interview was cancelled due to mistakes by the researcher, while another was delayed because the researcher was ill on the original date. During the interviews, the above script was generally followed but it soon became apparent that the answers to open-‐ended questions did not cover table 3.4’s topics, so most of those questions were asked. It also soon became apparent that certain questions were difficult for interviewees. For example, asking about information quality required explanation of DM. Unsurprisingly, interviewees had different definitions of information quality. Some interviewees did not answer actual questions but talked about other CC-‐ related matters. This was useful in that it gave indications of their concerns about their CCs’ online communications. Some questions evolved in response to early answers. For example, an early interviewee mentioned that his presence’s target audience included local councillors, MSPs and MPs. Subsequent interviewees were asked whether their target audiences also included such representatives. Other questions were omitted if they had been answered in previous threads. Other conversational threads were followed when it seemed they might provide interesting data. Finally, some questions were omitted to keep interviews to the promised 60 minutes. With permission from interviewees, all interviews were recorded and then transcribed manually. Verbal ‘ticks’, pauses and other ‘noise’ were omitted from transcriptions, as were pieces that might identify the interviewees and CCs. The first three sets of interviewees were sent transcripts – this resulted in one interviewee requesting some changes to protect anonymity. These changes did not affect the meanings of what the responses. Subsequent interviewees were asked if they wished to receive transcripts – all but one declined. Each transcription was finished up to a week after the actual interview.

Research methods


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Some further questions occurred to the researcher after the interviews. These were emailed to the interviewees. If responded to, these questions and their responses were added to the completed transcripts.

3.5 Interview data presentation and analysis These were based on the Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) method (Zhang & Wildemuth, 2009). This is designed to reduce interview transcripts to an interpretable, meaningful set of results by identifying core consistencies and meanings. Relevant transcript pieces were copied into a table of the full interview-‐ question script. (See appendix 9.) This was a shortcut to coding derived from theory (Zhang & Wildemuth, 2009, p. 310) because most interview questions were ultimately derived from theory. Pieces that directly answered interview questions were also highlighted in the full transcripts to allow easy finding of responses to unscripted questions. Such responses were coded according to the QCA method. QCA then calls for themes or categories to be developed from the coded analysis units. In this research, the units were sentences and phrases, or occasionally groups of sentences that provided complete answers to interview questions. The research questions provided some themes (e.g. drivers, inhibitors, cost) for answers to scripted questions. Several times, questions were answered in more than one way, for example in a direct answer to a question as well as when answering a different question. For responses to unscripted questions, themes were developed from the codes generated in the previous step. To analyse the data, firstly the online presences were assessed against the ‘ideal’ developed in section 2.1. This assessment became the second part of the Findings and discussion chapter. After it was placed the table of questions/themes and responses. Representative and contradictory responses were précised, then the responses were removed to leave just the précises. This material was then edited to follow the research questions and models, bringing in results from the model online presence and analysis of actual online presences, while retaining the meanings found in the interviews. Finally some conclusions were drawn and suggestions for further work were made. (The critical analysis chapter is part of the MSc examining process, rather than the actual research, and so is not further described here.)

3.6 Chapter conclusion Semi-‐structured interviews as part of an ethnography approach allow deep understanding of the reasons and meanings people ascribe to behaviours and phenomena. They are useful when ranges of people or behaviours are to be investigated. They are useful for this research, which aims to investigate the reasons behind CCs’s online performances. They can be triangulated against other approaches such as examination of documents and experiments. The following chapter sets out the findings obtained by using these methods.

Research methods


4

40

Findings and discussion

This chapter presents the findings obtained using the methods described in the previous chapter, thus fulfilling objective 7. Findings from creation of a model CC online presence are followed by assessment of the presences run by the webmasters interviewed in this research. These are used to inform an analysis of interviewees’ answers. (Interview data is in appendix 9.) The analysis has three sections: answers to initial questions, questions directly based on research questions and questions based on models.

4.1 Model presence This section presents the essential findings – details of setting up the model CC presence are in appendix 8. The main facet of the presence was a Wordpress-‐based website containing a blog and static pages. Wordpress is a modern open-‐source blog platform that has the largest share of the blogging ‘market’ (builtwith, 2013). It is also used by several CCs involved in this research. A sreenshot of the blog is at the end of this section. Because the website was based on an existing CC website and the previously-‐described ‘ideal’ presence, the planning needed for a real CC website was not explored. Such planning would affect time-‐costs. The Wordpress website (http://modelcc.wordpress.com) was created in 2 stages. The first stage was creation of the main content, i.e. the blog and static pages. This experience showed that a determined Wordpress-‐novice8 who can use a browser and email can create a website fulfilling many of the criteria of the ‘ideal’ presence. Using platforms such as Wordpress removes the necessity of hiring professional web designers because almost all tasks can be achieved by choosing options within a web browser and typing the textual content. Also, webmasters can avail themselves of Wordpress’ online guidance. Skills such as writing website code are not necessary, but they can help layouts look better. This stage had no financial cost. The second stage was linking the Wordpress website to a bought domain, so that the website appears to be at http://modelcc.net. This stage was more daunting, despite the online help provided by the domain provider and Wordpress. Obtaining a domian enabled creation of an email address ([email protected]). This was used to create a Twitter account (https://twitter.com/contactmodelcc). Finally, the website was configured to automatically tweet links to new blog posts. The only essential skills for this stage were use of email, making online purchases and copying text from one browser window to another. 12 months’ hire of the domain, email address and domain link cost just over £40. Twitter accounts have no financial cost. The other facet of the model presence was a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/bruce.ryan.1690). Setting up this page involved some frustrations, so that the time-‐cost was higher than expected (2 hours rather than 30 minutes). There was no financial cost. Because Facebook pages have only one format, this set-‐up took significantly less time than setting up the website. There was no need to plan the layout because the layout of Facebook pages is fixed. 8

The researcher had not created a Wordpress-‐based website before this exercise.



41

In summary, once the necessary layout planning has been achieved, a determined novice can set up a presence using only email, a browser and online payments, although some steps might feel daunting. Facebook can be used to create an online presence quite quickly and with no financial cost but it does not of itself enable hosting of documents. A full presence can be created for zero financial cost, but the web address will include the platform’s name. If a CC wishes its own web and email addresses, the total yearly cost would be just over £40 per year. This is only 10% of the average CC budget, so it should be affordable for most CCs.

Figure 4.1: Home page of model CC website, showing blog entries and links to downloadable documents



42

4.2 Assessing actual online presences This section uses the ‘ideal’ CC online presence developed in section 2.1 to assess interviewees’ presences and thus contextualise their comments on the strengths, weaknesses and features of these presences. It also brings in the presences’ ages and formats. CC 10 is omitted from the assessment shown in table 4.1 because that CC has no online presence. Table 4.1: CC online presence assessment

Qualities

Features

Content

1 Classification CCOP age (years) Timely, up-‐to-‐date information Relevant documents (e.g. minutes) News CC or community councillor blogs Names of all community councillor Contact information Local area information Systems to report issues Options for citizen input Can solicit citizen input Planning information Links to CC social media presences Easy navigation Mobile version Attractive, consistent design Security/privacy features/policy Customisation for VI users etc 8 Overall score 9

1 2 3 4

5

7 8 6

9

10

Community Council 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 2 4 4 3 4 4 4 4 13 0·∙5 10 10 2 8 2 3 3 Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

8 4 ? Y

9 4 4 Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

-‐

Y

4

Y

8

Y -‐

-‐ Y

-‐ -‐

Y Y

Y Y

-‐ -‐

Y Y

-‐ -‐

Y Y

5 5

Y

-‐

Y

Y

-‐

Y

5

-‐

Y

-‐

5

Y Y Y Y -‐ Y 6 Y

Y -‐ Y Y -‐ -‐ -‐

Y Y Y Y -‐ -‐ Y

Y Y Y Y Y 7 -‐ -‐

Y Y -‐ Y Y -‐ NA

Y Y Y Y -‐ -‐ -‐

Y Y Y Y -‐ Y NA

9 8 8 9 3 4 NA

Y -‐ Y

Y Y Y

Y -‐ Y

Y -‐ Y

Y Y Y

Y -‐ Y

-‐ Y Y

Y -‐ Y

Y -‐ Y

8 3 9

-‐

-‐

-‐

-‐

-‐

Y

-‐

-‐

Y

2

-‐

-‐

-‐

-‐

-‐

-‐

-‐

-‐

Y

1

11

9

11

9

9

12

Average score = 10·∙6

Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y -‐ Y Y NA NA

12 11 11

Number of presences having each feature 9

Platform W P ? F W B F B B 10 DoI classification 1 -‐ 2 2 5 3 5 -‐ 4 Classfication: 1 = Inactive; 2 = Offline; 3 = Out-‐of-‐date ; 4 = Up-‐to-‐date This CCOP was out of date in May 2013 but up-‐to-‐date in September 2013. Next meeting information was out of date in September 2013 In May 2013, this website had up-‐to-‐date minutes. In September, the most recent minutes were from August. In September 2013 these were not listed because elections had just taken place. This link was in an obscure place, not on the home page or the website-‐wide header and footer. This CCOP developed a planning page after September 2013. 1 mark for each ‘Y’ in the above column. Maximum possible score 16. (Links to social media presences are not counted because they do not exist unless the CC has a social media presence.) W = Wordpress, P = package-‐based, B = bespoke, F = Facebook, ? = not known. 1 = innovator, 2 = early adopter, 3 = early majority, 4 = late majority, 5 = laggard (This is discussed in section 4.3.)



43

This assessment was made in late September 2013. Clearly no presence in this group has all of the ‘ideal’ model’s features. The major content absences are abilities to solicit citizen input and sections on planning. (Links to social media presences are not counted because they do not exist unless the CC has a social media presence.) Planning information may be hidden in minutes. Blogs and local news are also often absent, as are names of all community councillors. There are several online newspapers in Edinburgh9, at least two of which describe themselves as hyperlocal although one covers all of Edinburgh. While CCs may not be able to muster full-‐time journalists, community councillors could be aware of what is happening in their communities. They could also create hyperlinks to news on other sources, such as their Council websites and other community and activist groups, and ask other local groups for information. It would be a matter of luck whether a CC had a member who could regularly write interesting blog-‐posts. All of the presences had contact details. There were assessed as having systems to report issues if they had email addresses or provided links to contact police, local councillors, FixMyStreet or similar. Presences were assessed as having options for citizen input if they had email addresses, even though CCs would need large mailing lists to obtain full community opinions. Such conversations could be facilitated by Twitter feeds or blog systems that allowed open commenting on posts. Presences based on Wordpress can also create polls, while anyone who can use a browser can create a free short survey using SurveyMonkey. Most presences were assessed as highly navigable, the exception being presence 7. This is a Facebook page and hence is a reverse-‐chronological stream of posts. This presence also does not host minutes. It would have been ideal if presences were fully searchable but that might require presences to be completely recreated. Online is becoming more and more mobile (Office for National Statistics, 2013c) but only three of the above presences had mobile versions. Wordpress-‐based websites by default have mobile versions, while Facebook provides mobile access via standalone applications. There were very few security and privacy features and policies. It is possible that the one customisable presence arose because a leading member of that CC is visually impaired. Another CC said that it did not have the financial resources to provide such customisation. Together, the results show that CCs presences do not much support interaction with citizens. They set out to give out information but not receive it.

4.3 Initial interview questions Most interviewees classified themselves as early majority adopters of internet technologies. Working from the ages of the presences, in DoI terms (section 2.3.1) CC 1 would be an innovator; CCs 3 and 4 would be early adopters; 6 in the early majority; 9 in the late majority; and 5, 7 and 10 would be laggards. CC 2 is not classified because it has not existed for very long, and CC 8 is not classified because 9

For example, the Broughton Spurtle and the Edinburgh Reporter



44

the age of its presence was not asked. There are gaps between how these CCs see themselves and the DoI distribution. This may be a result of the small, self-‐selected sample but CC 10 described themselves as early majority adopters despite having no online presence. This is reminiscent of the Dunning-‐Kruger effect (Dunning, Johnson, Ehrlinger, & Kruger, 2003): unskilled individuals overestimate their skills probably because they lack the knowledge to recognise such overestimates. CCs 1 and 4’s webmasters have had programming careers. Such experience would go well with setting up online presences. However, one of these presences is based on Wordpress and so requires very little coding skill. It was set up by an external contractor. The other was set up using a package developed by BT. Its webmaster was able to contribute to the package’s development, and developed a menu system that hides menu items until needed. So IT knowledge can be helpful but is not a requirement. For example, another webmaster had not created a presence before creating his CC’s website. He did ask other CCs for advice on content but had his own ideas about presentation. Also, it is possible to create a Facebook page, Twitter feed or Wordpress-‐based website with no IT knowledge above using email and web-‐ browsers, and keying text. The necessary qualities are the abilities to work around other community councillors’ fears about the internet, and to write worthwhile content. Most interviewees were critical of their fellow community councillors’ IT skills and involvement. The most damning comment was In terms of getting them to use the website? Some of them are scared shitless – I don’t see that on the graph. Let’s say ‘laggards’. While this was from an interviewee who was scathing about many things, its sentiment was echoed in an email conversation with another webmaster about the model CC presence: How many people do you think are capable of doing all the work you describe? The [chair], [vice-‐chair], me, you, [an IT student member] and I reckon that’s it. The other 20 are passive onlookers, happy to raise an issue at the meeting, but generally unwilling and unable to help out outside the meetings… This comment also exemplifies observations that even when other councillors are able to contribute to online communications, they are generally unwilling to do so. This webmaster went on to say that most CC work is done by a few individuals who generally believe they are making enough of a difference already. The reported lack of community councillors able and willing to contribute content to CC online presences, let alone implement and maintain them, confirms an earlier suggestion that CCs communicate online only if they are lucky enough to have an interested, competent member who decided the CC should go online and then undertook this him-‐ or herself (Ryan & Cruickshank, 2012, p. 14). Interview data indicates that webmasters exist in isolation: with the exception of webmaster 2, webmasters have not consulted each other. Nothing forces Edinburgh CCs to go



45

online 10 , let alone improve their presences, so there is no ‘stick’ to enforce improvement, while the ‘carrot’ of citizen demand is conspicuously absent. In short, CCs do not have a depth of online competence to draw on, so even if a CC commissions a professional web-‐developer, it may end up with an unsuitable presence.

4.4 Open-‐ended interview questions directly based on research questions 4.4.1 RQ 1: What are the drivers and inhibitors of CC online communications? The main reason for online communications found in this research is augmenting CCs’ communications reach. In terms of the potential drivers posited in section 2.2, this is to do with reducing costs, building visibility and satisfying citizen demand. Other communication methods such as traditional noticeboards reach small audiences and are not easily kept up to date. Distribution of printed information to the entire community is prohibitively expensive and resource-‐consuming. CCs recognise that the majority of their target audiences are online. But these audiences are not large: I think the average citizen couldn’t give a damn. The average citizen barely knows the CC exists. There is some justification for this belief but measurement of reaches is patchy. One interviewee noted that online communication methods such as Twitter have potentially great reaches: tweets can be easily forwarded by direct recipients to their own Twitter contacts. In turn, these people can forward messages to their contacts, and so on. 4.4.1.1 Costs Most interviewees interpreted ‘costs’ financially, despite the researcher stating that he was equally interested in non-‐financial costs. No interviewee made an unprompted mention of cost reduction, except the offline CC who stated that online communication would save postage costs. In fact, one CC believed online communication could increase costs because CCs still have to cater for offline citizens. Despite this, CCs’ cost-‐benefit thoughts still favour online because of the increased reach. This was typified by an interviewee stating ‘we didn’t communicate before [we had a website]’. Most CCs mentioned that set-‐up financial costs were not high – a typical figure was £300. However, that would absorb a large proportion of the average CC grant (Bort, McAlpine, & Morgan, 2012). One bespoke website cost around £1000. The main quoted factor was the time taken to plan and set up – one CC stated that it took over two months to go online. One CC was concerned that it did not receive enough financial support from Edinburgh Council to run a website and social media, despite 10

A few LAs provide basic online presences for their CCs. This ‘solution’ is not without its own problems, such as those presences generally providing the bare minimum. See (Ryan & Cruickshank, 2012) for a fuller discussion of this issue.



46

the fact that presences can have zero financial set-‐up cost. Another CC stated that £20 per month was a fair price for the system it uses. Cost-‐control and cost-‐benefit considerations were important to a CC that had only recently gone online. This CC is not concerned about spending over 30% of its Council grant on its website – it believes that its grant is sufficient and to be spent, and that that it can obtain other grants. Some CCs, including the offline CC, realise that maintenance and content addition present time-‐costs. This includes responding to input such as moderating comments on social media presences. While maintenance may not be onerous – one interviewee spends about 1 hour per week – creating content can be difficult, especially for those to whom writing does not come naturally. CCs receive much material that can be repurposed, but would appreciate this being streamed in some way, so it would be easier to transfer information to their presences. Also, considerable time can be spent extracting content from intractable sources. Perhaps a solution here is for the Council to put such items on a portal similar to the existing planning portal. One webmaster appeared to be blasé about the costs of his presence – he had not claimed reimbursement of about £600, while the presence is run from his own server. This could the CC in difficulties if he ever chose to claim reimbursement or stop providing the server. Several interviewees mentioned the cost and difficulty of distributing printed information. They see online information distribution as a means of reducing such costs but are aware that other channels, with associated costs, are needed to reach citizens who do not communicate online. Edinburgh Council has also contributed grants and social media training, thus reducing financial and some time-‐costs, but this ‘carrot’ has not been taken up by the majority of interviewees. Some CCs already have presences that they believe to be suitable and so may feel they do not need such training. Others simply could not attend the training at the time it was offered. In summary, CCs often develop presences to reduce information-‐distribution costs. Online is not a panacea because some citizens do not use online communication. Reaching such citizens as well as using online communication may actually increase costs, but the main cost-‐related inhibitor is the time taken to set up and maintain presences. 4.4.1.2 Building effectiveness/efficiency CC online presences are also information repositories, retaining documents long after their creators have left their CCs. One interviewee suggests his CC went online ‘to get some interaction’. However most CC are currently web1.0 operations. That is, despite having contact-‐us forms, office-‐bearer email addresses and other input features they generally do not host discussions or other forms of citizen interaction. (The lone Facebook presence is an exception but it has very few comments on its posts.) The offline CC also does not believe it will host online discussion: For instance if someone makes a series of emails with us, I would phone them because you can do more, deal with things a lot better face-‐to-‐face on the phone.



47

Unfortunately for this interviewee, this approach may well often not work because posts to online discussions generally do not include telephone numbers. In summary, building effectiveness/efficiency is a driver of CC online presences. 4.4.1.3 Building independence Independence was a contested concept – one CC believes that its presence demonstrates to other government tiers what it is doing but this is not seeking independence. Other CCs believe that their online reaches are currently too small to provide democratic legitimacy and independence, so they need more citizen input to prove that CCs provide community-‐based opinions. There is optimism this will eventually occur. CCs do not want to be at odds with their LAs – they want to work with them, providing constructive input. Local councillors, MSPs and MPs are automatically CC members. This puts CCs in slightly privileged positions. Considering that they receive little respect and support from other sources, it is understandable that they do not risk further alienation. In summary, building independence is not a driver of CC online presences. 4.4.1.4 Building visibility Most CCs who already use online communications agree that building visibility is part of the reason for being online, so this factor is a driver of CC online presences. CCs see this factor as bound up with drivers such as increasing citizen demand and effectiveness. For example, by becoming more visible, CCs can elicit citizen opinions on matters such as how Neighbourhood Partnership money should be spent 4.4.1.5 Building trust There was no claim that CC online presences stemmed from efforts to build trust in CCs, and CCs do not ask their citizens about this subject, so trust is not a driver of CC online presences. Organisations can gain trust by being open about what they do. Minutes are the formal records of meetings and decisions, so interviewees were asked their reasons for putting minutes online. Most CCs, even one unwilling to risk receiving online criticism, agree that publishing minutes is a public duty, invoking reasons such as accountability. The CC that uses Facebook only does not publish minutes online. Instead, it informs citizens of many types of event that may be of interest to its community. 4.4.1.6 Citizen demand Most interviewees believe that citizen interaction is central to their duties and hence a strong reason to go online, so this factor is a driver. Such beliefs are contradicted by the small numbers of people visiting CC presences. This contradiction could be unravelled by positing that those citizens who want to get involved actually get heavily involved (that is a few citizens each produce a heavy demand); that CCs are preparing for greater demand arising; and that local authorities, representing many citizen, demand openness in their CC schemes. Perhaps the best explanation for the well-‐developed presences found in this work is that such CCs realise they have duties to their citizens, no matter how little citizens actually use the presences. Demand may be limited also because CCs do not provide services. Many CCs do not provide easily-‐visible planning information. Hence many citizens have no reason to visit their CCs’ presences. Also, lack of engagement by citizens is not proof of lack of demand for engagement (Cruickshank, Edelmann, & Smith, 2010) Findings and discussion


48

4.4.1.7 The digital divide Community councillors – even CC webmasters – are generally older, retired people, so CCs are generally not representative of their citizenships. Some community councillors believe that more modern communications require younger people who are more competent with such methods. Fear, mostly of adverse criticism, is a digital divide component mentioned in several interviews. Local demographics can be mixed. High speed internet appears to be available all over Edinburgh, although not everywhere has cable or fibre internet. Hence the geographic part of the digital divide was not observed in this research but cannot be ruled out for all CCs. Exclusion due to disability was also not observed. It is possible that disability inhibits people from joining CCs and hence indirectly excluding them from involvement in online communications. However disability is not an insurmountable barrier – one of the interviewees has severe visual impairment but is able to take part in his CC’s online communications. 4.4.2 RQ 2: What are the drivers and inhibitors for the different forms of CC online communications? Most CC online presences started as just websites focused on disseminating information from CCs to their citizens. A few CC presences have websites and social media presences. A tiny minority have just social media presences. 4.4.2.1 Websites Ease of use (reminiscent of TAM – see section 2.3.2) was a factor in most choices, albeit in different areas such as initial set-‐up, controlling costs, and content addition. Such considerations previously would have called for bespoke websites but now lead to use of website packages, content management systems (CMSs) and blogging platforms. These also facilitate layout changes. One webmaster pointed out that having a front-‐end facilitated using the same web address when the underlying platform changed. Another webmaster wished to move away from the current bespoke website to a modern platform but felt unable to do so without upsetting the colleague who developed the original website. CC websites are often document repositories holding information for both community councillors and citizens. Publication of minutes is seen as a duty – minutes are readily hosted on websites, as are community councillors’ names, contact details, biographies and interests. Websites can host topical fast-‐changing information. They also provide organised ways of presenting local information, such as details of schools and pharmacies. 4.4.2.2 Social media CCs who use social media generally do so because of the convenience they offer. They offer standard formats with very little set-‐up overhead and corresponding ease of use: one interviewee described Twitter as a ‘no-‐brainer’. Social media also have huge reaches. CCs who use social media believe they can spread information more rapidly than traditional websites. This stems from retweeting and Facebook’s sharing facility. It can be difficult to build up social media contacts. This has put off some CCs from pursuing social media efforts, while older webmasters can feel they are not able to use social media. The interviewees who maintain CC social media presences Findings and discussion


49

are significantly younger than other webmasters. This raises questions about involving younger people in CCs. An inhibitor of using social media is that people may use them to make anonymous adverse comments – one interviewee recalled a cyber-‐bullying episode. For this reason this CC is loathe to set up a Facebook account. While no interviewee mentioned this, Facebook pages are only fully accessible to Facebook members. 4.4.3 RQ 3: What obstacles have CCs encountered on their journeys to online? How have these been worked around or overcome? The most frequently mentioned obstacle is that very few other community councillors are able or willing to contribute to online communications. Some webmasters experience actual opposition. Planning online presences can take months, although this is often due to other community councillors being unable or unwilling to engage with the internet. Webmasters are unpaid volunteers. While CCs may pay for website set-‐up or continued platform use, webmasters often have many other CC duties, and so do not have time to do more. The biggest time-‐cost is set-‐up – adding content thereafter may only take a few hours a week. Set-‐up is not trivial, even with modern platforms. For example, configuring Wordpress widgets has confused an experienced webmaster. Training for webmasters is patchy – the oldest presences encountered in this research were created by IT professionals. There is currently no community of practice that enables webmasters to share skills. As time passes, CC presences host increasing quantities of data, raising questions about how to do so. Content-‐generation can be difficult: firstly items must be found, perhaps by monitoring council and other websites and local newspapers, and talking to local residents. Extracting relevant information from council sources can be time-‐ consuming. One interviewee was extremely scathing about Edinburgh Council for this reason, while recently this researcher spent over two hours working through a Traffic Order to find the streets affected in a particular CC area. Then content needs to be written. Some interviewees freely admit they do not have writing skills. Succession has been an issue. Interviewees mentioned difficulty in taking over presences: previous incumbents had gone away, without providing easy succession paths. This issue may recur as the current generation of webmasters retires. A minority have succession plans – these are the ones lucky enough to have more than one webmaster. By working together, they have been able to share skills. A related problem is that webmasters have other commitments and so are not always able to perform routine tasks. This was ‘solved’ by one CC being lucky enough to have another person who has taken on some web duties. While not mentioned as an active issue, back-‐up is likely to become so for CC presences hosted on their own servers. Fortunately there are few of these. Facebook, Wordpress and similar platforms have their own backup systems. Some social-‐media using CCs have received critical comments from people outside the CC. They have had to learn to moderate such input. To prevent this issue, other CCs have presences that do not allow external input. Clearly this disallows genuine, worthwhile input along with the destructive criticism it is trying to prevent. CCs may Findings and discussion


50

well feel they need support from LAs to improve their online presences, but some LA schemes e.g. (Glasgow City Council, 2012) do not mention using the internet. (This is not the case for all LAs (McGill, 2012).) CCLOs may not be allowed to use social media at work (Ryan & Cruickshank, 2012, p. 14) and so may be unable to support CC online efforts. 4.4.4 RQ 4: Are CC online presences successful? The two definitions used in this research are (1) a presence is successful if many types of information can easily be added to presences and presences can be used to receive information from citizens; (2) a presence is successful if citizens actually use it to receive and input information. Webmasters have developed CC online presences that disseminate many types of worthwhile information, even though no presences fulfil all the criteria of the ‘ideal’. In this sense presences are successful. (The exception is the Facebook-‐only presence which cannot host documents.) However, this definition of success speaks about the platforms chosen by webmasters, and the tasks involved in adding information to presences. In terms of other community councillors using the presences, CC online presences are unsuccessful. Most community councillors are reportedly unwilling or unable to use or contribute to CC online presences. This may be partially due to lack of need – adding prepared minutes and agenda documents should not tax webmasters. But adding other content or referring to previously-‐added content is not done by other community councillors. It may well be that documents are emailed to community councillors, so they do not need to refer to presences. Regarding the acid-‐test definition of success, CC online presences suffer a resounding lack of success in attracting public interest, let alone input. Webmasters’ comments on analytics show that most citizens do not visit CC presences. Similarly, there are very few likes for and comments on CC Facebook pages. This lack of success may also be due to CCs being perceived as irrelevant by most citizens, but DM information quality construct suggests that lack of success may arise the hosted information not being what citizens want. CC webmasters are not alone in not finding out users wishes (Sørum, Medaglia, Andersen, Scott, & DeLone, 2012).

4.5 Interview questions based on potential drivers and inhibitors and literature models Data and discussions in this section are grouped into subsections for each model described in section 2.3. A reminder of the research and interview questions from section 3.3 starts each subsection. 4.5.1 Diffusion of Innovations model (DoI) The questions shown in table 4.2 are relevant to all potential drivers and inhibitors discussed in this research.



51

Table 4.2: DoI-‐related interview questions RQ 1: What are the drivers and inhibitors of online communication by CCs? What were the influences on deciding to have a CCOP? (internal, external, mixed) Were you influenced by your LA, other local groups and/or neighbouring CCs Was your CCOP inspired by neighbouring CCs? Do you have LA support with your online efforts? How familiar were you and your CC with online? Where do you and your CC fit in Feeney’s archetypes? RQ 2: What are the drivers for the different forms of online communication? 43 Was the selection of type (e.g. website, twitter account, forum) influenced by number of users, peers or family 13 14 16 23 24 25

Use of DoI usually involves surveys to find how many of each archetype exist within the population. The original DoI model has 5 archetypes, from innovator to laggard. While there is disagreement over the archetypes and labels to be used (Kauffman & Techatassanasoontorn, 2009), the idea of a spectrum of adoption is unchallenged. It is clear from table 4.1 that such a spectrum exists in the ages of CC online presences. (Some variation is due to some CCs not having existed as long as others.) There is some discrepancy between how CCs place themselves on the original DoI spectrum and an objective measure of how long the CCs have been using online communication. The most obvious case is a CC that does not use online communication describing itself as ‘early majority’. This may be an example of the Dunning-‐Kruger effect (Dunning, Johnson, Ehrlinger, & Kruger, 2003): unskilled individuals over-‐estimate their skills, probably because they lack the knowledge to recognise that they are unskilled. This area might be fruitful for further work. An extension to DoI shows that influences do not flow solely between population members. Influences can be classed as internal (in this research, factors originating within CCs), external and mixed (Kauffman & Techatassanasoontorn, 2009). For the drivers and inhibitors posited in section 2.2, the classification shown in table 4.3 can be made: Table 4.3: Drivers and inhibitors classification and findings Potential drivers and inhibitors Reducing cost Increasing costs Building effectiveness/efficiency Building independence Building visibility Building trust Citizen demand Digital divide factors

Internal or external Internal Internal Internal Internal External External External Both internal and external

Found in practice Yes Yes Yes No Yes No Yes Yes

Thus there is a complex mixture of factors. External influences include webmasters’ families and use of IT in other areas of their lives. Edinburgh Council recommends but does not insist upon use of online communication (Edinburgh Council, 2013). It provides grants that may be used to pay for online presences. CCs mostly do not influence each others’ presences – the sole exception is a very new CC whose webmaster asked other webmasters for advice. Most webmasters believe that they and their peers are digital immigrants (Feeney, undated), (Toledo, 2007). This fits with most webmasters describing themselves as early majority adopters but does not fit well with observations that most community councillors are laggards. Findings and discussion


52

The major external driver felt by CCs is citizen demand, even though CCs believe that direct citizen demand is low. That is, firstly, webmasters do not often assess demand and, secondly, where such assessments are made, they suggest very few visits to presences. There is obviously a contradiction: some CCs invoke citizen demand but then say such demand is nearly non-‐existent. This contradiction can be escaped in three ways. Firstly CCs feel a duty to use online communications, so that they can serve the potentially huge audience should it ever turn its attention to CCs. Secondly, there may be some citizens who are very interested in what their CCs do, even though the majority are extremely uninterested, so CCs cater for the interested minority. (This has not been proven – analytics and user-‐surveys may help here.) Finally, there is indirect citizen demand: local authorities, representing large numbers of citizens, oblige CCs to be open, specifying that they must publish minutes and agendas. Another DoI-‐based application of the terms ‘internal’ and ‘external’ to drivers of technology uptake is to consider the individuals concerned. That is, are the individuals who influence CCs to use online communication members of the CCs concerned? The most common specific answer is ‘external’, but the most common actual response is that CC presences spring from webmasters’ own visions. Given that webmasters are generally CC members, the balance is hence ‘internal’. It is possible that the binary (internal/external) model should be replaced with a trinary (internal/’me’/external) model. This would be useful in situations where individuals are free to act how they see fit on behalf of their organisations. (CCs office-‐bearers cannot order other members to do anything.) Building on DOI’s predictive factors (Carter & Bélanger, 2005), it is possible to class complexities of underlying platforms by assuming that a bespoke or package-‐based website is complex to set up, that setting up a Wordpress-‐based website is less complex and setting up a Facebook page is least complex of all. This has been done in table 4.1 but there is no obvious correlation between complexities and scores. In addition to DoI’s predictive factors, once a certain platform is in use there may be ‘friction’ in transferring content to a new platform. Similarly, one interviewee mentioned that upgrading her CC’s presence to a modern platform would upset a colleague. There will be time-‐costs learning how to use a new platform. Such friction occurs in other facets of technology adoption. Taking a cue from studies of cellphone adoption (Kauffman & Techatassanasoontorn, 2009), once a person has a cellphone, he or she may be locked into a contract, thus slowing down adoption of new advances in cellphone technology. Also, cellphone providers may delay changes, especially moving from to another provider. This suggests that a ‘friction’ predictive factor could be added to the DoI model, to be used especially if the innovation is taking up an upgrade to an existing technology. This friction factor would be based on the practical difficulties in moving from one type of a certain technology to another. In summary, DoI has helped posit some potential drivers and inhibitors of online communication by CCs. It can be used to classify these factors but in this research, a complex mixture of internal and external drivers and inhibitors is at play. There are discrepancies between different ways of classifying individuals. Interview data Findings and discussion


53

suggests that the current version of the DoI model ignores the practical difficulties of moving from one type of a certain technology to another. 4.5.2 Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) The relevant questions and the related potential drivers are given in table 4.4: Table 4.4: TAM-‐related interview questions 19 20 21 22

RQ1: What are the drivers and inhibitors of online communication by CCs? Is your CCOP useful to CCllrs and or citizens? Effectiveness/efficiency, How much is it used? citizen demand What is your CCOP’s target audience? Effectiveness/efficiency, citizen demand Is your CCOP simple and easy to use? Effectiveness/efficiency Is your CCOP attractively designed? Effectiveness/efficiency, citizen demand

The original version of TAM is based on two input constructs: perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived ease of use (PEU). The posited drivers and inhibitors related to PU are reducing cost, building effectiveness/efficiency, building visibility, building trust, building independence and citizen demand and factors related to the digital divide. As seen previously, webmasters do not consider building trust and independence to be reasons for adopting online communication. A few CCs believe they are already trusted by their communities, while others more realistically know that most citizens simply do not care what CCs do. PU informs the basic choice of whether to have an online presence – webmasters believe that presences are desirable because they help their CCs fulfil their duties. PU also informs some instances of platform-‐choice. For example, Facebook is used because it can connect with the millions of existing Facebook users. A CMS-‐based website is used by another CC partly because this enables searching through the many documents that website hosts. PEU informs platform-‐choice: even webmasters who have strong IT skills understandably choose platforms that should be easy for their successors to use. Investigation varying the constructs might help understand what, if anything, entices other community councillors to use CC presences. The above considers PU for citizens and CC office-‐bearers. What about PU for ordinary community councillors? The evidence is that they do not make much use of their online presences. Nevertheless, online discussion and management features have been shown to be useful in the CC context (Whyte, Macintosh, & Shell, 2006). Since then, free online management tools such as Doodle (http://doodle.com) have become available. These tools can be used across organisation’s boundaries. One CC uses Doodle to schedule ad-‐hoc meetings. The other input construct in TAM is PEU. The posited drivers and inhibitors relating to PEU include the fear aspect of the digital divide, and may include geographical aspects – poor internet connections would make any CC online presence more difficult to use but such differences were not observed in this research. Arguably, PEU would apply to three phases of presence evolution: initial development; maintenance and content addition; use by community councillors and citizens. Ease when developing a presence would be related at least partially to webmasters’ prior experience. The two interviewees who have had programming careers are Findings and discussion


54

responsible for two of the oldest presences, while CC 7’s use of Facebook is determined largely by that webmaster’s perception that Facebook is easy to set up and maintain while websites are not. Wordpress is used by another webmaster because she can easily add new information to this platform, while a packaged platform has been chosen by a new webmaster who has no previous online experience or coding knowledge. Hence PEU is a factor in platform-‐selections. PEU in the maintenance and content-‐addition phase is complicated by the fact that most presences in this research are maintained and run by their original creators. In part, they will have set up their presences to suit themselves, according to their individual skills. (This is not entirely pervasive – the webmaster of a long-‐established presence deliberately chose a menu-‐driven platform to enable easy succession.) PEU in the use phase is not considered by this research. TAM’s descendants posit investigation of the social factors that may modulate behavioural intention to use. Such factors include gender, age, experience and voluntariness of use. Edinburgh CCs are entirely free to use any platform – or none at all. Hence all platforms have equal voluntariness in Edinburgh, unless cost is part of voluntariness. Other local authorities such as Falkirk provides information pages for its CCs (Falkirk Council, undated). This does not prevent Falkirk CCs from using other systems but very few actually do (Ryan & Cruickshank, 2012, p. 12). 4.5.3 DeLone and McLean information systems success model (DM) The relevant questions and the related potential drivers and inhibitors are given in table 4.5: Table 4.5: DM-‐related interview questions RQ 1: What are the drivers and inhibitors of online communication by CCs? 15 Do you believe it’s your job to interact with citizens? Citizen demand 17 Does your CCOP provide high-‐quality information? All 18 Does your CCOP have high system and service qualities? All RQ 1a: What benefits and costs of being online do CCs that are planning to go online expect? 26 Do you expect it to reduce costs? Costs 27 Do you expect it to increase your effectiveness/efficiency? Effectiveness/efficiency 28 Do you expect it to increase your visibility Visibility 29 Do you expect it to increase trust (in the CC by citizens)? Trust 30 Do you expect it to build the CC’s independence? Independence 31 Do you expect it to facilitate citizen convenience? Citizen convenience/demand 32 How familiar are you/your CC with online? All RQ 1b: What benefits and costs did CCs that are already online expect before going online? RQ 1c: What benefits and costs actually materialised and how do they compare with expected benefits? 33 What are were your initial thoughts about benefits and costs? Costs How do you now perceive them? 34 Did you expect it to reduce costs? Did this occur? Costs 35 Did you expect it to increase your effectiveness/efficiency? Did Effectiveness/efficiency this occur? 36 Did you expect it to increase your visibility? Did this occur? Visibility 37 Did you expect it to increase trust (in the CC by citizens?) Did this Trust occur? 38 Did you expect it to build the CC’s independence? Did this occur? Independence



55

39 Did you expect it to facilitate citizen convenience? Did this Citizen demand occur? 40 How do you measure the success of your CCOP? All For example, have you asked users? 41 Does your CCOP reduce or increase your communication Costs costs? 42 Does your CCOP increase the CC’s effectiveness/efficiency? Effectiveness/ efficiency RQ 2: What are the drivers for the different forms of online communication? 44 Was your CCOP developed in stages? All 45 How do you decide your CCOP’s design? All 46 Why do you/don’t you put minutes online? Effectiveness/efficiency, citizen demand 47 Would you welcome standards for CCOPs? Effectiveness/efficiency Digital divide related questions 48 Please comment on the demographics of your CC with relation to those who use or contribute to your CCOP. 49 Please comment on the demographics of your CC area. Digital divide 50 How easily available is high-‐speed internet in your area? 51 What other communication methods do you use? What is their relative importance?

DM has three input constructs: system, information and service qualities. High values for these constructs should promote (intention to) use and user satisfaction, which should then lead to higher levels of net benefits. This research does not investigate quantitative aspects of relationships between input and output constructs but contains qualitative investigation into which drivers and inhibitors are present in reality and whether these can be related to model constructs. This is in line with an investigation into whether criteria for judging government websites can be allotted to DM input constructs (Sørum, Medaglia, & Andersen, 2009). That investigation suggests that system quality is increased by having accessibility features, high ease of use, high navigability and search features, while information quality depends on the actual content, and service quality is based on the judged websites offering digital services, follow-‐up and administration. These judgements are made on the finished websites, not on the ease on which they are built from packages or raw code. The drivers and inhibitors posited in section 2.2 are cost (reduction or increase), building effectiveness/efficiency, building visibility, building trust, building independence, citizen demand and factors related to the digital divide. While these drivers and inhibitors might be classified as pertaining to system, service and information qualities, this classification is tenuous and does not appear to lead anywhere. However, it is possible to classify assessment criteria for CC online presences under the DM input constructs, as shown in table 4.6:



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Table 4.6: Relating drivers and inhibitors to DM input constructs System quality Easy navigation Mobile version Attractive, consistent design Security/privacy features/policy Customisation for VI users etc

Information quality Timely, up-‐to-‐date information Relevant documents (e.g. minutes) News CC or community councillor blogs Names of all community councillors Contact information 1 Local area information 2 Planning information

Service quality Systems to report issues Options for citizen input Can solicit citizen input Links to CC social media presences

Hence the assessment of CC online presences can be reworked to score them according to how well they support the DM input constructs, as shown in table 4.7. Table 4.7: Assessing CC online presences according to DM input constructs

System quality Easy navigation (Maximum possible score Mobile version = 5) Attractive, consistent design

1

2

Community Council 3 4 5 6 7

8

9

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

-‐

-‐

1

-‐

-‐

1

-‐

1

-‐

-‐

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

Security/privacy features/policy

-‐

-‐

-‐

-‐

-‐

1

-‐

-‐

1

Customisation for VI users etc

-‐

-‐

-‐

-‐

-‐

-‐

-‐

-‐

1

System quality score

2

3

2

2

3

3

2

2

4

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

-‐

1

1

News

1

-‐

-‐

1

1

-‐

1

-‐

1

CC or community councillor blogs

-‐

1

-‐

1

1

-‐

1

-‐

1

Names of all community councillor

1

-‐

1

1

-‐

1

-‐

1

-‐

Contact information

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

Local area information

1

-‐

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

Planning information

1

-‐

1

1

-‐

-‐

-‐

-‐

1

Information quality score

7

4

6

8

6

5

5

5

7

Service quality Systems to report issues (Maximum possible score Options for citizen input 1 = 3 ) Can solicit citizen input

1

1

1

1

1

1

-‐

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

1

-‐

-‐

1

-‐

-‐

1

1

-‐

-‐

Links to CC social media presences

1

-‐ NA NA

1

-‐

NA

2

2

Information quality Timely, up-‐to-‐date (Maximum possible score information = 8) Relevant documents (e.g. minutes)

Service quality score Presence type 1 2

2

1

-‐ NA

3

2

2

3

2

2

2

W P B?

P

W B

F

B

B

Links to social media are not counted because they do not exist unless the CC uses social media. W = Wordpress, P = package-‐based, B = bespoke, F = Facebook, ? = not known.



57

Just as the awards in (Sørum, Medaglia, & Andersen, 2009) only consider the finished websites and how they benefit users, the above assessment is of the finished presences from a citizen point of view. Information quality is the most important factor. CC presences are generally set up to disseminate information, so failure to do so would remove their raisons d’être. Providing services via CC presences is unsurprisingly secondary. No further conclusions are made from this table – partly because of the small number of presences in this research and partly because the next step of researching how input constructs affect the benefits of CC presences has yet to be undertaken. Information quality is mostly the responsibility of both those who write and those who add content to CC presences, in that information quality can be affected by the way it is presented. It can be assumed that where CCs use the same platform, system and service quality are equal, so the important independent variable would be the information on the CC presence CC online presences are generally attractively designed, with good navigation. The exception is Facebook which has only one format. Given the vast number of Facebook users, that format cannot be too bad. No CC has asked its citizens for comment about the format of its presence, let alone redesigned its presence in the light of such input. Interviewees are in general happy with their presences, so long as these are maintained. Answers from the CC that intends to begin online communications show that cost-‐ reduction, building effectiveness/efficiency and building visibility are the reasons for this intention. Members of this CC are not uncomfortable with basic internet technology but the advantages of other online communication channels have not yet spurred action. This is reminiscent of most interviews – eventually a Community Councillor just decided to build a presence, sometimes in the teeth of opposition from colleagues. Answers to historical expectations questions were generally not forthcoming so conclusions must be drawn from the benefits actually experienced. In relation to DM, these are cost-‐decreases and effectiveness/efficiency increases. So CC work is enhanced by online communication. They also prevent accusations of secrecy (Owen, Cooke, & Matthews, 2013). Given that most citizens do not visit CC presences, it may be worthwhile enquiring whether those that visit are satisfied. Answering this question would not just appease academic curiosity – CCs could use the information given to change their presences so they are truly useful to as many citizens as possible. It is not surprising that webmasters have not yet done so, given that a majority of government webmasters have not performed any sort of user-‐ testing (Sørum, Medaglia, Andersen, Scott, & DeLone, 2012).

4.6 Comparing the models Of the models considered above, only DM offers clear ways forward for research in this area. It is designed to ascertain contributes to the benefits of taking up technical innovations. DM has been tested many times since it was first described. Criticisms have helped improve the model but it has not been disproved. DoI has some predictive factors but of those currently favoured, only the complexity of platforms underlying CC presences is relatively easy to order. However this ordering is based on assumptions. It would be possible to investigate the relative Findings and discussion


58

advantage of using online communication as opposed to not doing so, but investigations into the advantages of different channels would be hindered because some choices were not available when some CCs began using online communications. Also, this research indicates that few CCs have moved from one channel to another. Only CCs who have done so would be able to comment validly on the advantages of one channel over another. Similar considerations would apply to compatibility. It might be possible to research how these predictive factors affected original channel choices but again the history of channels would complicate matters. DoI also has received criticism about its lack of technical underpinnings and also because recent results do not agree with the ideal distribution. TAM has frequently been used as a predictive tool but it has been criticised for not including social and personal factors such as self-‐efficacy (beliefs about ability to perform a specific behaviour). Successors such as TAM2 and UTAUT do include some social factors but the models have become very complex.

4.7 Chapter conclusion There is no technical barrier preventing community councillors who can use email and web browsers from building online presences that present information clearly and facilitate citizen input. There is no necessary financial cost associated with such presences but more professional-‐looking web and email addresses can be obtained for around 10% of the average CC budget. No presence in this research had all the features of the ideal presence: the most common content absences were means of obtaining citizen input and easily accessible planning information. There are some interesting discrepancies between how webmasters classify themselves on the DoI curve and the ages of their presences. The results for the posited drivers and inhibitors are given in table 4.8. Table 4.8: Drivers and inhibitors results Potential drivers and inhibitors Reducing cost Building effectiveness/efficiency Building visibility Building trust Building independence Citizen demand Increasing costs Digital divide factors

Internal or external Internal Internal Internal Internal External External External Both internal and external

Found in practice Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes

Ease of use is a factor in most channel choices. Generally CC online presences are built and maintained by individual community councillors, occasionally in the teeth of opposition from their colleagues. Hence there are almost no succession plans. The models presented in section 2.3 have provided some useful questions to probe the factors behind CCs’ online communications. There is a complex mixture of internal, external and mixed factors behind CCs’ online performances. DM can be used to classify the ideal CC presence criteria, potentially leading to an understanding of which have the most effect on CC online presences’ net benefits.



5

59

Conclusions

This chapter summarises the conclusions derived from the findings and discussion in the previous chapter, thus fulfilling objective 8.

5.1 RQ 1: What are the drivers and inhibitors of CC online communications? Community Councils are motivated to use online communications to reduce costs, build effectiveness/efficiency, build visibility and satisfy citizen demand. These factors had been suggested by literature around technology uptake and e-‐participation. Literature had also suggested desires to build trust and independence might be drivers but these factors were not observed. The model CC presence shows that financial cost need not prevent CCs from using online communication. Websites such as modelCC.wordpress.com are free, and there are a number of providers of free email addresses. Twitter accounts are also free, as are Facebook pages and groups. Obtaining a domain and related email addresses may cost around £40 per year, while CCs receive annual grants averaging £400 to cover running costs, including online communication. Literature had also suggested that CCs might be inhibited from using online communication due to increased costs, along with factors of the digital divide. Increased cost does inhibit some advances in CC online presences, as does exclusion due to age of community councillors. Geography-‐based exclusion was not observed but cannot be ruled out. Exclusion due to disability was also not observed. However disability is not an insurmountable barrier to involvement in online communication. Time-‐costs are an inhibitor of online communication – CCs have been put off from developing online presences by the time needed to create and maintain them. There are three parts to creation time-‐costs: skills development, planning then setting up presences. It is possible for a novice to set up a CC website fulfilling most of the requirements of an ‘ideal’ CC online presence using modern tools. The skills needed are minimal – being able to use a web browser and email, but it can be helpful to know some HTML techniques. Linking a website to a domain is more challenging, and has financial costs. Once the link and associated email set-‐ups have been accomplished, automatic tweeting about new posts to the website and subscription facilities can be implemented. This requires no more than selecting options in a browser and copying and pasting text. Some CCs have reduced set-‐up time-‐costs by using package-‐based websites or by commissioning bespoke websites. A package-‐based website can cost over half of the average CC annual grant. A fully-‐featured bespoke website can cost more than twice the average grant and so may need budget to be set aside prior to set-‐up. Bespoke websites may require redesign or extra code to enable citizen-‐CC conversations and automatic dissemination. Maintenance consists of adding new content and responding to incoming comments. This time-‐cost is exacerbated because CC online presences are generally created and maintained by volunteers. Such people generally already have CC commitments. However, adding new content may not be onerous. Conclusions


60

Although not actually inhibiting online presences, lack of succession arrangements has affected at least one CC involved in this research. Many CC presences are run by individual volunteers. If such a webmaster ceases this role there can be difficulties.

5.2 RQ 2: What are the drivers and inhibitors for the different forms of CC online communications? Most CC online presences are traditional websites focused on disseminating information from CCs to their citizens. Websites are generally the first form of online presence to be created, driven by the factors listed in the previous section. Websites offer a number of advantages: firstly they can be organised, searchable information repositories. Once set up, they can be easy to maintain, especially if based on a CMS or blog platform. Using platforms such as Wordpress, traditional-‐ looking websites can contain blogs, facilitating addition of up-‐to-‐date information. Such updates can then be automatically disseminated via social media. Blogs also support comments, although actual use of this citizen-‐to-‐CC channel is rare. Citizens cannot initiate discussions on such presences, and may not be able to see some information unless they are members of the underlying platform. Continued website use is driven by a number of factors. The strongest of these may well be ‘inertia’, that is having maintained a website for a number of years, CCs are satisfied with what they have. Also there are costs associated with moving from one form of online presence to another. At a minimum there will be time-‐costs in moving setting up the new form and moving data to it. Finally, some CCs find other forms of presence are too demanding or fearsome or simply not suited to their needs. Facebook is often chosen because of the convenience it offers. Firstly, there is a large number of Facebook members, leading to a information readily being shared. It is relatively quick to set up and maintain a Facebook page. There are no formatting choices to be made – all that is needed is an email address and the ability to use it and a web-‐browser. Facebook does inspire some fear among some CCs and citizens, generally due to experiences of adverse comments. Facebook content is not directly accessible to people who are not Facebook members. Twitter is seen by those CCs that use it as an easy way of disseminating information. However, some CCs see Twitter as inappropriate to their needs. Because information can be ‘retweeted’ users believe that information can reach people who do not actually follow the original CC feed. No measurement of tweet-‐reach for CCs was undertaken in this research. The biggest generic format choice is that CC generally use one-‐way communication formats and channels. They are not comfortable with using online means to gather and receive community input.

5.3 RQ 3: What obstacles have CCs encountered on their journeys to online? How have these been worked around or overcome? The biggest obstacle is that so few community councillors participate in online communications. Webmasters generally work alone, sometimes in the face of opposition from their peers, and are unpaid, as are all community councillors. Lack of training is also an issue, even though some free training is available, but in general Conclusions


61

webmasters rely on their own knowledge and information from platform-‐providers. CCs generally do not consult each other on online communications. Occasionally the platforms on which some CC presences are based have changed, but this has been advantageous when it has facilitated remodelling of presences. While externally-‐ imposed standards might spur webmasters to develop CC presences, such standards are generally felt to be unwelcome because they would add to webmasters’ burdens. Setting up a CC online presence is not trivial, even with modern platforms. For example, set-‐up can benefit from specialist knowledge, while Wordpress widgets can be ‘bewildering’. Hence it is not surprising that two of the oldest CC websites in this research were created by webmasters who were professional programmers. Nor is it surprising that one of the youngest CC presences, set up and maintained by one of the youngest webmasters, uses only Facebook. Once CC presences have been created, the vast majority of content is added by webmasters. It can time-‐consuming and difficult to extract relevant content. Then such content may need to be ‘translated’ into accessible language. The current ‘solution’ to such issues is webmasters spending more time than they would prefer on these tasks. Because webmasters often have other CC duties, it is not surprising that they do not have much inclination to evolve online communication formats. CCs that use Facebook have faced issues with others posting unwanted material and adverse comments. They have had to learn how to moderate incoming content.

5.4 RQ 4: Are CC online presences successful? Although webmasters have developed ways of presenting information, even though no presence in this research fulfils all the ‘ideal’ criteria, ultimately CC online presences in this research are not successful: very few citizens or other community councillors use them. This may be due to lack of need because documents are emailed between councillors, because citizens do not know about CCs, because CCs do not provide information that citizens require or because CCs do not provide many services, rather than CC presences themselves being poor.

5.5 Relating observed drivers and inhibitors to literature models The original Diffusion of Innovations (DoI) model includes 5 classes of adopter, ranging from innovators to laggards. While these classes been challenged, the idea of a spectrum of adopter classes remains. There is some discrepancy between how CCs place themselves on the original DoI spectrum and the objective measure of how long the CCs have been using online communication. This may be an example of the Dunning-‐Kruger effect (Dunning, Johnson, Ehrlinger, & Kruger, 2003). An extension to the original DoI model suggests that drivers and inhibitors can be classed as ‘internal’, ‘external’ and ‘mixed’. This research classes costs and building effectiveness/efficiency as internal; building visibility and citizen demand as external; and the digital divide as mixed. (That is, both community councillors and citizens can be caught behind the digital divide.) The internal factors driving and inhibiting CC online communication are cost, effectiveness/efficiency, and the digital divide as it affects CC members. The major Conclusions


62

active external driver felt by CCs is citizen demand, even though direct citizen demand appears to be low. There seems contradictory but can be escaped in three ways. Firstly webmasters perceive a duty to serve the potentially large online audience. Secondly, CCs cater for those that are already actually interested in CCs’ activities. Thirdly, there is indirect citizen demand via LA requirements. It is also known that online citizens often lurk on websites, rather than using participation mechanisms (Cruickshank, Edelmann, & Smith, 2010). Building visibility is an also active ‘external’ driver. Citizens being caught behind the digital divide may have some contribution to the average citizen currently not ‘giving a damn’ about CCs Another extension to the original DoI model suggests predictive factors such as complexity. There is no correlation between number of features on the presences in this research and the assumed complexities of their platforms. This may be because the sample was too small. The other DoI-‐based application of the terms ‘internal’ and ‘external’ to drivers of technology uptake is to consider the individuals concerned. This research suggests that the binary (internal/external) classification could be replaced with a trinary (internal/’me’/external) classification, especially where individuals are free to act how they see fit on behalf of their organisations. The original Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) gave rise to some interesting questions centred on perceptions of CC online presences’ perceived usefulness (PU) and ease of use (PEU). The observed drivers and inhibitors relating to perceived usefulness are cost, building effectiveness/efficiency, building visibility, citizen demand and some aspects of the digital divide. Concerning PEU, the digital divide can be both a driver and an inhibitor. It is a driver because delivering printed information throughout CC areas is challenging and hence expensive. But it is also an inhibitor in that age makes councillors less likely to take on new technologies. PU and PEU could be used to investigate three phases of a CC online presence lifecycle, namely setup by the webmaster, use by the webmaster and other community councillors and then use by citizens. PEU in the first phase has been investigated in this research: it is modulated by individual webmasters’ life-‐stories. For example, some of the oldest presences in this research were created and are run by former programmers. PU informs the choice of whether or not to have an online presence – webmasters believe that presences are desirable because they help their CCs fulfil their duties. PU also informs some instances of platform-‐choice. For example, Facebook is used because it can connect with the millions of existing Facebook users. PEU also informs platform-‐choice: for example, even when webmasters have strong IT skills, they understandably choose platforms that should be easy for their successors to take over. Investigation of how the constructs would apply to other community councillors’ use of CC presences would be worthwhile. The DeLone and McLean information systems success model (DM) has three input constructs. The ‘ideal’ CC online presence criteria can be allocated to the input constructs, so that scores for each construct can be generated for a range of CC online presences. The next stage would be to find how the varying the amounts of Conclusions


63

each construct affect use, user-‐satisfaction and net benefits of CC online presences. Similarly, assessments could be made of the underlying platforms to understand how the constructs affect platform-‐choice.

5.6 Summary of conclusions In summary, the drivers and inhibitors affecting CC online presences in this research – and hence online communication – are cost (specifically reduced information-‐ dissemination costs but also increased time-‐costs), increased effectiveness/ efficiency, increased visibility, satisfaction of citizen demand and the age-‐related part of the digital divide. CC’s low use of online communication fits with relevant UK, Scottish and European findings. Most CCs online presences are websites, although these are often based on blog platforms, while a small minority use social media in addition to or instead of websites. Such choices are driven by ease of set-‐up and/or management of presences, inexperience with or fear of social media. These add up to a kind of inertia, while there may be a form of ‘friction’ preventing uptake of more modern platforms. Drivers and inhibitors can be probed using models of technology uptake and success. The stage is now set for further work using these models, especially DM. The results of such work would indicate worthwhile ways to improve CC online presences and hence online communication between CCs and citizens.

Conclusions


6

64

Critical appraisal and limitations of this work, suggestions for further work

This chapter constructively criticises the strengths and weaknesses of the project outcomes with reference to the aim and objectives given in section 1.3. It also highlights the limitations of the work. From these sections, ideas for further work are brought together. Hence this chapter fulfils objectives 9, 10 and 11 of this project.

6.1 Critical appraisal The aims and objectives of this project have mostly been achieved. The exception is publishing the results. However, writing a good practice guide is scheduled for 2014. There is room for improvement in any historiography. In the history of CCs (appendix 2), more could have written about CCs’ successes. The research questions centred on drivers and inhibitors, while a large number of the interview questions centred on costs and benefits, to make interview questions more understandable. However, it might have been better to ask questions such as ‘what inspired …?’, ‘what drove …?’, ‘what slowed…?’ and ‘what prevented …?’ There were issues with scheduling, some of which could have been controlled better. The literature review took too long to create, hence delaying the fieldwork. Also, the planned pilot interview fell through – the webmaster who had agreed to be in the pilot was actually interviewed after other interviews had taken place. While this was due to the interviewee’s personal commitments, if the literature review had not over-‐run this interview could have been scheduled sooner, thus reducing the chances of postponement until other interviews had occurred. The number of interview questions was too large. Even though both ‘online’ and ‘offline’ CCs were interviewed, and their answers to the open-‐ended questions did not provide much detail, it may well have been better to use a prompt-‐sheet of potential drivers and inhibitors instead of scripting specific questions. This would also have helped the researcher keep track better and might have shortened interviews. Also, the researcher might have done more to keep interviewees on track. Duplicate questions should have been eliminated from the script, while questions on Feeney’s archetypes and the digital divide should either have been better or removed. A belief that CCs should be online may have affected interviews, although the researcher took pains not to give this impression. Some transcriptions were not completed until a week after the interviews. If scheduling had been better, it would have been possible to complete each transcription before the following interview. This would have allowed insights to be taken into succeeding interviews more successfully. Despite these issues, the project has been successful. There are clear conclusions about what drives and inhibits CCs online presences. There is a wealth of interview data to back up these conclusions. There are clear ways forward, given below.

6.2 Limitations of this work Firstly, this work was limited to 10 CCs in a single LA. CCs in other LAs may face different issues. In particular, the geographical and disability aspects of the digital

Critical appraisal and limitations of this work, suggestions for further work


65

divide was not covered. Only one ‘offline’ CC was involved – and that CC intends to set up a website – so the factors that actually prevent CCs from using online communication may have been under-‐researched. The research only involved webmasters: it did not look at the motives and other factors affecting other CC members, nor did it thoroughly investigate citizens’ use of CC online presences. The view of community councillors throughout the work is a stereotype – hard data may have been useful, although obtaining and analysing such data for all existing CCs would be a painstaking project. The research only considered public websites and social media. It did not consider closed communication such as email or closed Facebook groups. Finally, it is certain that the researcher’s lack of experience has affected this project’s set-‐up, process and outcomes.

6.3 Further work Suggestions for further work, some of which are collected from preceding chapters are presented here, thus fulfilling aim 9. Firstly, this work springs from a survey of CC online presences in 2012. Ideally the survey would be periodically repeated to find how the situation is changing. Such work could consider whether individual LAs’ CCs are changing and the factors behind any changes found. It could also delve more into how CCs present their planning work. Also, the survey did not focus on social media use. Investigating how far CC tweets and Facebook posts spread would be a way forward in this area. Now several drivers and inhibitors have been revealed, quantitative work using a larger sample is worthwhile. Having developed criteria for an ‘ideal’ presence, these could be used to assess differences between LAs’ CCs. The possibility of CCs not having computers or basic internet skills was not covered, yet it is known that some CCs refuse to use email (Ryan & Cruickshank, 2012, p. 15), Research into email and other private communication would enhance the picture of CC internet use. There is research into why citizens use government and municipal websites. Example factors include availability of resources, motivation and whether citizens are ‘recruited’. Similarly, people who already take part in politics by conventional means are most likely to e-‐participate (Saglie & Vabo, 2009). It would be interesting to find out whether use of with CC websites matches such findings. Using model presences with varied information, system and service qualities may be a way forward here, as would investigating CCs’ analytics. Action research around the creation of a website for a CC that does not yet use online communication could provide more insights into the issues affecting CC online communications. Such a project is scheduled for early 2014. Insights from this work would enhance the planned good practice guide. Almost nothing is actually known about the composition of CCs. This gap could be filled by obtaining data from LAs and CCs themselves. The models’ predictive factors and input constructs offer ways to test potential improvements to CC online presences. In particular, now that the criteria for an ‘ideal’ presence have been allocated to DM input constructs, this would allow investigation of the mammoth in the room: whether CC online presences actually improve CCs’ processes and outcomes! Critical appraisal and limitations of this work, suggestions for further work


7

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Vicente, C., Benito, B., & Bastida, F. (2013). Transparency and Political Budget Cycles at municipal level. Swiss Political Science Review , 19 (2), 139-‐156. Volan, I. (2012, September 9). Norway: Almost 40 percent of municipalities use Facebook. Retrieved June 20, 2013 from http://socialmedianordic.com/2011/09/09/norway-‐almost-‐40-‐percent-‐of-‐ municipalities-‐use-‐facebook/ Vraibie, C. (2011). European Integration Realities and Perspectives: a longitudinal assessment of municipal websites in Romania. Digital Governance in Romanian Municipalities, (pp. 906-‐926). Wang, L., Bretschneider, S., & Gant, J. (2005). Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Evaluating Web-‐based e-‐ government services with a citizen-‐centric approach (p. 129b). Big Island, Hawaii, USA: IEEE. Warkentin, M., Gefen, D., Pavlou, P. A., & Rose, G. M. (2002). Encouraging Citizen Adoption of e-‐Government by Building Trust. Electronic Markets , 12 (3), 157-‐162. Weare, C., Musso, J. A., & Hale, M. L. (1999). Electronic Democracy and the Diffusion of Municipal Web Pages in California. Administration & Society , 31 (1), 3-‐37. Weerakkody, V., El-‐Haddadeh, R., Al-‐Sobhi, F., Shareef, M. A., & Dwivedi, Y. K. (2013). Examining the influence of intermediaries in facilitating e-‐government adoption: An empirical investigation. International Journal of Information Management , 33 (5), 716-‐725. Welfare News Service. (2013, May 20). The truth about Universal Credit. Retrieved June 20, 2013 from Welfare News Service: http://welfarenewsservice.com/the-‐ truth-‐about-‐universal-‐credit/#.UcSD5Ra6VbA Whyte, A., Macintosh, A., & Shell, D. (2006, February 24). An e-‐Democracy Model for Communities: Final Report of the e-‐Community Council Project. Retrieved Sepember 26, 2012 from http://itc.napier.ac.uk/itc/Documents/e-‐ community_council_final_report.pdf. Winterich, K. P., Zhang, Y., & Mittal, V. (2012). How political identity and charity positioning increase donations: Insights from Moral Foundations Theory. International Journal of Research in Marketing , 29 (4), 346-‐354. Youngblood, N. E., & Mackiewicz, J. (2012). A usability analysis of municipal government website home pages in Alabama. Government Information Quarterly , 29, 582-‐588. Zafiropoulos, K., Karavasilis, I., & Vrana, V. (2012). Assessing the Adoption of e-‐Government Services by Teachers in Greece. Future Internet , 4 (2), 528-‐544. Zhang, Y., & Wildemuth, B. M. (2009). Qualitative analysis of content. Applications of social research methods to questions in information and library science , 308-‐319.

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Appendices Appendix 1: Text of Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 establishing community councils 51 Establishment and general purpose of community councils (1) Every local authority within the meaning of this Part of this Act shall, before 16th May 1976, or such later date as may be agreed by the Secretary of State, submit to the Secretary of State, in accordance with the provisions of this Part of this Act, a scheme for the establishment of community councils for their area. (2) In addition to any other purpose which a community council may pursue, the general purpose of a community council shall be to ascertain, co-‐ordinate and express to the local authorities for its area, and to public authorities, the views of the community which it represents, in relation to matters for which those authorities are responsible, and to take such action in the interests of that community as appears to it to be expedient and practicable. (3) In this Part of this Act, except subsection (2) above, " local authority " means an islands council or a district council. 52 Schemes (1) Every local authority shall give public notice of their intention to frame a scheme for the establishment of community councils, and any such notice shall invite the public, within a period of not less than eight weeks from the date of the notice, to make suggestions as to the areas and composition of the community councils. (2) After considering suggestions made under subsection (1) above, the local authority shall prepare and give public notice of a draft scheme which shall contain— (a) a map showing the boundaries of the proposed areas of community councils and their populations, and the boundaries of any area for which the local authority consider a community council to be unnecessary; (b) where a local authority consider that a community council is unnecessary for any area, a statement of their reasons for arriving at this conclusion; (c) provisions relating to qualifications of electors, elections or other voting arrangements, composition, meetings, financing and accounts of community councils; (d) provisions concerning the procedures to be adopted by which the community councils on the one hand and the local and public authorities with responsibilities in the areas of the community councils on the other will keep each other informed on matters of mutual interest; and (e) such other information as, in the opinion of the local authority, would help the public to make a reasonable appraisal of the scheme.

Appendix 1: Text of 1973 Act establishing community councils


80

(3) The notice mentioned in subsection (2) above shall invite the public, within a period of not less than eight weeks from the date of the notice, to make to the local authority representations as respects the draft scheme. (4) After considering any representations made under subsection (3) above, the local authority may amend the draft scheme to take account of those representations and shall submit the scheme to the Secretary of State for his approval along with any outstanding representations and their comments upon them. (5) The Secretary of State, after holding, if he thinks fit, a local inquiry in relation to the whole scheme or any part thereof, may approve, with or without modifications, a scheme submitted to him under subsection (4) above, or may refer the scheme back, in whole or in part, for further consideration by the local authority concerned. (6) After the Secretary of State has approved a scheme, the local authority shall give public notice of the scheme in its approved form together with public notice of such a scheme as it applies to each proposed area, by exhibition in that area, and any such notice shall contain an invitation to electors in the area concerned to apply in writing to the local authority for the establishment of a community council in accordance with the scheme. (7) Where not less than 20 electors apply as mentioned in subsection (6) above, the local authority shall, within not more than six weeks from the date of the application, organise, in accordance with the scheme, elections or other voting arrangements for the purpose of establishing the community council. 53 Amendment of schemes (1) Having regard to changing circumstances and to any representations made to them, every local authority shall from time to time review schemes made and approved under section 52 of this Act and, where they consider that such a scheme ought to be amended, they shall give public notice of their proposals, inviting any community council concerned and the public to make to the local authority representations as respects the proposals. (2) Where no representations as respects proposals are made under subsection (1) above or any made have been withdrawn, the scheme shall have effect as amended by the proposals. (3) Where representations as aforesaid are not withdrawn, the local authority may amend their proposals to take account of those representations and shall submit their proposals to the Secretary of State for his approval along with any outstanding representations and their comments upon them. (4) The Secretary of State, after holding, if he thinks fit, a local inquiry in relation to proposals submitted to him under subsection (3) above, may approve the proposals, with or without modifications, or may refuse to approve them, and where he approves the proposals, the local authority shall give public notice of the proposals and the scheme shall have effect as amended by the proposals.



81

54 Default powers of the Secretary of State under Part IV (1) If, contrary to section 51 of this Act, a local authority fail to submit to the Secretary of State a scheme for their area or any part thereof, he may himself prepare a scheme, carry out any consultations which seem to him to be appropriate, and, if he thinks fit, hold a local inquiry in relation to the scheme. (2) After considering those consultations and the result of any local inquiry, the Secretary of State may confirm the scheme subject to such, if any, modifications as he thinks fit, and may organise, in accordance with the scheme, elections or other voting arrangements for the purpose of establishing a community council or councils for the area or areas concerned. (3) If, contrary to section 53 of this Act, a local authority fail to review a scheme or make proposals in pursuance of such review, the Secretary of State may propose amendments to the scheme, carry out consultations and hold a local inquiry as aforesaid. (4) After considering those consultations and the result of any local inquiry, the Secretary of State may confirm the amendments subject to such, if any, modifications as he thinks fit. (5) Where a scheme or amendments are confirmed by the Secretary of State under this section, he shall give public notice of the scheme or amendments as confirmed. (6) Any expenses incurred by the Secretary of State by virtue of this section, which he certifies as having been incurred in performing the functions of a local authority, may be recovered by him from that authority. 55 Assistance to community councils Regional, islands and district councils may make such contributions as they think fit towards the expenses of community councils within their areas, may make loans to those councils and may, at the request of such community councils, provide them with staff, services, accommodation, furniture, vehicles and equipment, on such terms as to payment or otherwise as may be agreed between the councils concerned. (UK Government, 1973)



82

Appendix 2: Community councils – a brief history ‘Something [was] seriously wrong with local government in Scotland’, according to the 1969 Wheatley Report (Turnock, 1970). There were 33 counties, 4 ‘counties of cities’ (Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow), 21 large burghs, 176 small burghs and 196 districts, with confused functions. For example, small burghs were responsible for housing but not for related health and welfare services. Wheatley recommended a two-‐tier system of 7 regions, between them containing 37 districts. After consultations and amendments, the final version of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973) created 9 regions and 3 island areas, containing 53 districts (UK Government, 1973). This Act, implemented on 16 May 1975, made regions responsible for ‘wide-‐area’ services (e.g. policing, fire services, consumer protection, education and transport) while districts were to provide local services such as local planning, housing, libraries and licensing. The 1973 Act established Wheatley’s recommended ‘hyperlocal’ community councils, stating that their main duty would be finding and expressing local community opinions. (See appendix 1 for the relevant text in the Act.) CCs did not have to be established everywhere: Local Authorities (LAs) could nominate areas where they considered CCs to be unnecessary. Also, establishment of a CC in any area needed 20 or more electors to apply to the relevant LA. There was no call for LA schemes to be consistent with each other, except that the 1973 Act made it clear that CCs were to be community representatives, not service-‐ delivering bodies. CCs were given the power to object to licensing applications in 1976 (UK Government, 1976). The Local Government etc (Scotland) Act 1994 (UK Government, 1994) reversed some of the centralisation from the 1973 Act. In addition to creating the current 32 Scottish unitary LAs, it gave CCs a statutory right to be consulted on applications for planning permission (a role in spatial planning rather than community planning) and to comment on LA decentralisation schemes. CCs were to appoint planning contacts, and were allowed 14 days to comment on planning applications. This 14-‐day period was likely to have been an impediment to genuine community consultation: it would have been very difficult for CCs to hold full consultations with their communities and then report back to their LAs, not least because CCs generally meet only monthly (Ryan & Cruickshank, 2012). Personal experience suggests that CCs planning committees, if these exist, rely on individual community councillors’ local knowledge and personal opinion when commenting on planning applications. Other than planning and licensing consultation rights to CCs duties, the 1994 Act (implemented 1 April 1996) added nothing new to CC duties. However, dependent legislation and government advice, e.g. (Scottish Government, 2011b) tried to add professionalism, invoking the Rio Earth Summit and Local Agenda 21, and calling on LAs and CCs to work closely together, building on the framework of Planning Advice Notes. CCs were also untouched by devolution legislation: the Scotland Act 1998 (UK Government, 1988) and the Scotland Act 2012 (UK Government, 2012).

Appendix 2: Community councils – a brief history


83

Within LAs, CCs may be part of local community planning arrangements (Edinburgh Council, undated). Some LAs group CCs into areas reminiscent of districts (Highland Council, 2006). Relations between CCs and LAs generally hinge on LA officials known as Community Council Liaison Officers (CCLOs) who represent, oversee, and obtain and implement LA services for their CCs. For example, one CCLO’s responsibilities include: • ensuring the efficient and effective delivery and development of services to CCs within the terms of LA schemes • liaison with LA development teams, or similar, on matters relevant to CC representation in their LA hierarchies • conducting business relationships with elected members and LA officials on all aspects of CC activities. • facilitating CC events, such as discussion forum meetings. • being responsible for the development of CCs; providing information, support and advice to enable them to represent their communities effectively; liaison with their LAs, its elected members and officials; development and delivery of training courses for community councillors. • ensuring all legislative and procedural compliances are met; facilitating effective CC engagement with their LAs, other public bodies and private agencies. • within the context of election procedures, as referred to in LA schemes, acting as returning officers for CC elections. (anonymised CCLO A, 2012) The CCLO who provided this list also stated that he attends CC meetings (3 meetings per CC per year: this LA has a relatively small number of CCs) and that such meetings ‘invariably’ throw up issues for him. He also carries out Group Needs Assessments with CCs to enable him to be aware of their needs and development potential. CCs are seen as the bodies to consult on important local matters (Scottish Institute for Policing Research, 2011), (Cotton & Devine-‐Wright, 2010), although relationships between LAs and CCs over local matters can be very strained (Falkirk Herald, 2013), (McCann, 2013), while community engagement is ‘central’ to the Scottish Government Community Planning policy (Paterson, 2010, p. 77). Some CCs provide transport for elderly and disabled people, and regenerate civic amenities (BBC, 2011b), CCs have also made valid contributions in emergency situations (Bonney, 2010). The McIntosh Report (1999, pp. 38-‐39) made much of CCs’ special place in local government – they were not simply pressure groups that LAs could freely ignore, but were a valuable pool of local expertise and enthusiasm. Despite all this, CCs have not been without problems. For example, the McIntosh Report (1999, pp. 38-‐39) noted that CC elections were ‘very poorly supported’ and recommended that CCs should renew themselves, specifically addressing how effectively they establish public opinion in their own areas. The Report suggested that responsibility for initiating renewal lay in the first instance with Local Authorities. A publication created to inform the McIntosh Report gives much detail on the history of CCs up to 1999 (Goodlad, Flint, Kearns, Keoghan, Paddison, & Raco, 1999). At this time, potentially 1390 CCs could exist but only 1152 were active, covering 83% of the Appendix 2: Community councils – a brief history


84

Scottish population. It is interesting to note that the ‘missing’ CCs were concentrated in two local authorities (LAs) that were slow to set up CC schemes – unfortunately Goodlad does not say which two. The number of Community Councillors was found to be around 65% of the potential number. Elections were infrequent, due to candidate numbers very often being less than the number of places available. This was seen by many as reducing CCs’ democratic legitimacy and influencing some LA councillors to ignore CCs, although some CCs saw lack of candidates as evidence that current CCs were satisfactory. Others regarded it as an expression of apathy or disillusionment with CCs. There was also disagreement over CCs’ powers – such as whether they could enter into contracts – and whether local authority duties could or should be delegated to them. (At the time this had not occurred.) Community Councillors were generally aged over 40, and often were not representative of the demographics of their areas. In 2005, the Scottish Government published research into what it could do ‘to help CCs fulfil their role’ (Scottish Government, 2005). Suggestions relevant to the proposed research included • CC elections using postal and/or electronic voting • finding means to increase community councillor diversity • better dialogue (including use of email) and more consultation between LAs and CCs (and between CCs and other public bodies) • better funding of CCs’ communication (computers, photocopies, etc). This report also noted that only 55% of CCs were members of the Association of Scottish Community Councils (ASCC). That body was established in 1993 but closed down in 2012 (Shannon, 2011). Later, a Scottish Government Short-‐Life Working Group (SLWG) active in 2007-‐08 developed a ‘Good Practice Guidance for Local Authorities and Community Councils’. That guidance included ‘Create a website, or get a section on the Local Authority website. Collate a database of e-‐mail addresses for constituents. Ask for permission to send them e-‐mail bulletins seeking their views and reporting your actions.’ (Scottish Government, 2009) In 2011, the Scottish Government published details of five CC pilot schemes that focussed ‘on budget management, elections and asset management’ (Scottish Government, 2011a). Another SLWG was instituted in November 2011 to ‘look at ways to build the resilience and capacity of Community Councils, in order to strengthen their role as voices for their communities’ (Scottish Government, 2012d). The SLWG’s remit did not directly include use of IT to facilitate CC-‐citizen communications (Scottish Government, 2011c) and noted that its Community Councillor members saw ‘word of mouth and local newspapers’ as ‘useful [CC election] promotional techniques’ (Scottish Government, 2012a). Later, the SLWG noted ‘a lack of overarching evidence relating to … CCs’ and proposed to rectify this by seeking data from LAs’ CC Liaison Officers and producing a questionnaire for CCs (Scottish Government, 2012b). Other recommendations included • exploring whether CCs could have some control over relevant parts of LA budgets



85

CCs and LAs (continuing to) work in partnership LAs giving CCs better feedback on submitted representations Better training for Community Councillors ‘That Community Councils are encouraged and supported to engage, communicate and network in a wide range of different ways, including digitally and via various social networking mediums to enable them to embrace a wider community audience.’ • A national online portal to CC information and guidance • Sharing of good practices by CCs. (Scottish Government, 2012f) • • • •

Fairly recently, the Scottish Government consulted on its proposed Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill (Scottish Government, 2012c), (Scottish Government, 2013b). Consultation questions included ‘How can CCs do more to have their say about how local services are run or managed?’ (Scottish Government, 2012e). Responses included suggestions that CCs should have more duties and powers, and should consult better with citizens, e.g. by having street contact-‐points and that CCs should foster local engagement and influence. (Scottish Government, 2013a). In 2011, it was found that only four-‐fifths of CC areas had functional CCs of any form (BBC, 2011a). Of the 1514 possible CCs, only 1215 were active while elections were frequently uncontested. Further, community councillors tend to be demographically unrepresentative (Scottish Government, 2005). One solution, according to the then head of the now-‐defunct ASCC, would be to give CCs ‘a sense of purpose’ and ‘more legislative teeth’ (BBC, 2011b), The pressure group Reform Scotland (RS) published a report (Thomson, Mawdsley, & Payne, 2012) calling for a rejuvenation of local democracy. RS suggested that devolution should carry on ‘down’ to more local tiers of government, for example giving CCs more powers, along with relevant support, training and resources. In Reform Scotland’s surprisingly small survey (just 117 respondents), respondents also suggested better publicity, payments for community councillors, more control over LAs, and CCs forming their own local caucuses. RS also claimed that CCs needn’t be homogenous – instead they should be developed to ‘best suit their area and circumstance’. Most relevant to this research, one respondent said: ‘The internet opens up a lot more channels to communicate with people – I'd like to think Community Councils could tap into this. The unfortunate thing just now is that they need to know someone who can help them set a website up ….’ On the socialist side of the political spectrum, the Jimmy Reid Foundation claimed that the current system leads to low interest and involvement in local politics (Bort, McAlpine, & Morgan, 2012). It noted the disconnectedness between, for example, citizens in the far north of Scotland and their LAs, despite the ‘superhuman efforts’ made by LA councillors. It also recognised the ‘need’ for CCs (and local democracy in general) to be heterogeneous and called for further devolution of powers to



86

‘affected communities’, noting that technological change can allow things to be done differently and more efficiently. Further research has confirmed the number of inactive/non-‐existent CCs (Ryan & Cruickshank, 2012). It has also confirmed that the majority (73%) of active CCs do not use the internet to speak to citizens, while only 14% of the functional CC online presences (those based on Facebook, other blog/social media systems or online fora) enable online 2-‐way engagement. A limited number of interviews suggested that CC online presences are generally fragile, being the work of individual ‘inspired’ community councillors, There is no duty on CCs to use online methods to communicate with their citizens, despite their statutory duty to ‘ascertain, co-‐ ordinate and express … the views of the community which [they] represent’.



87

Appendix 3: Definitions of e-‐democracy, e-‐participation and e-‐government E-‐democracy can be defined as ‘the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) in support of citizen-‐centred democratic processes, such as the act of voting for elected representatives,, ongoing relationships with elected representatives, ongoing relationships with the executive, processes through which policies are formed, decisions on service delivery and resource allocation, processes by which legislatures may hold the executive to account and a wide-‐range of non-‐ governmental and voluntary activities’ (Kearns, Bend, & Stern, 2002). E-‐participation can be defined as ‘the use of ICTs to support information provision and “top-‐down” engagement, i.e. government-‐led initiatives, or “ground-‐up” efforts to empower citizens, civil society organisations and other democratically constituted groups to gain the support of their elected representatives’ (Macintosh & Whyte, 2008). E-‐government can be defined as governments using ‘the most innovative information and communication technologies, particularly web-‐based Internet applications, to provide citizens and businesses with more convenient access to government information and services, to improve the quality of the services and to provide greater opportunities to participate in democratic institutions and processes’ (Fang, 2002).

Appendix 3: Definitions of e-‐democracy, e-‐participation and e-‐government


88

Appendix 4: European local governments: tiers, populations and areas Table 8.1 presents data and some notes about European local governments’ online presences, along with the countries’ areas and populations. Information on local government tiers, areas and population is from Wikipedia, except where otherwise stated. Divisions used only for statistical purposes are not mentioned below. Countries’ areas and populations were graphed against numbers of tiers of local government (figures 8.1 and 8.2 below). No obvious correlation was seen. Table 8.1: European local governments: tiers, populations and areas Country

2

Area (km )

Population

Albania

28,748

2,821,977

Andorra Armenia

468 29,743

85,082 3,262,200

Austria

83,871

8,414,638

Azerbaijan

86,600

9,356,500

Belarus

207,600

9,457,500

Local government tiers 12 counties 36 districts 373 municipalities 7 parishes 11 provinces (+ Yerevan) 915 municipalities 9 Länder (federal states) 80 Bezirke (districts) 2,354 Gemeinden (parishes) (In Vienna, there are just Bezirke.)

59 districts and 11 cities (plus 7 districts and 1 city in Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic) 6 provinces (+ Minsk)

Appendix 4: Some data on European local government

Information about local government

-‐-‐-‐

-‐-‐-‐ -‐-‐-‐

Gemeinden provide services such as water, sewerage and recreation facilities. According to the Österreichischer Gemeindebund’s press officer, Gemeinden are funded from federal taxes, local taxes and charges (Kozak, 2013). Gemeinden have consistently punched above their weight since WW2 (Österreichischer Gemeindebund, 2003) and have a strong voice in European matters (Österreichischer Gemeindebund, 2013) In 2008, 93% of Gemeinden had websites. Of these, 80% were under the ‘.gv.at’ domain, 95% had antivirus features, 88% had firewalls but only 55% had back-‐up. 94% followed WAI-‐ A standards. Austria has http://www.kommunalnet.at ‘the municipality intranet [for Austria]’ i.e. a supporting body for Austrian Ms’ online presences. (centre for eGovernment, 2009) -‐-‐-‐

-‐-‐-‐

Bruce Martin Ryan 40070877 MSc in Information Systems Development, 2013 Country

2

Local government tiers 127 raions (districts) 1548 selsovets (rural councils) 3 regions 10 provinces (+ Brussels) 2 entities

89

Area (km )

Population

Belgium

30,528

11,035,948

Bosnia & Herzegovina Bulgaria

51,129

3,839,737

110,879

7,364,570

Croatia

56,594

4,284,889

Cyprus

9,251

1,117,000

Czech Republic

78,865

10,436,560

Denmark

43,094

5,602,536

Estonia

45,227

1,294,455

15 counties 226 municipalities

Finland

338,424

5,180,000

France

640,679

65,350,000

Georgia

69,700

4,555,911

19 regions 70 sub-‐regions 320 municipalities 22 regions -‐-‐-‐ 96 departments 342 arrondissements 3883 cantons 36,569 communes 9 regions -‐-‐-‐

28 provinces 264 municipalities 21 counties 429 municipalities 6749 settlements 6 districts 143 municipalities 13 regions (+ Prague) 76 districts 5 regions 98 municipalities


Information about local government

-‐-‐-‐

-‐-‐-‐ -‐-‐-‐

Kelemen and Mekovec (2010) assessed county websites using a modified form of WAI. They found that higher investment does not correlate with higher quality. -‐-‐-‐

-‐-‐-‐

Of the municipalities, 87% have their own website 46% are easily found (sensible URL, up to date) 71% publish minutes 60% publish information on ‘local nonprofits’ 28% publish ‘electronic periodicals’ (Bachmann, 2012) E-‐voting was for the first time used in local elections 2005 and in 2007 (March) nationwide parliamentary elections (Ruus, 2011) Estonia ranks among the most wired and technologically-‐advanced countries in the world. (Freedom House, 2012) -‐-‐-‐


2

Area (km )

Population

Germany

357,114

80,219,695

Greece

131,990

10,815,197

Hungary

93,028

9,937,628

Iceland

103,000

321,857

Ireland

70,273

6,399,115

Italy

301,336

59,685,227

Kosovo

10,887

1,733,872

Latvia

64,559

2,070,371

Liechtenstei n Lithuania

160

36,281

65,300

3,043,429

Local government tiers 69 districts 16 Länder (federal states) 402 administrative districts (295 Landkreise, Kreise [rural districts] + 107 Kreisfreie Städte, Stadtkreise [urban districts]) 12,141 Gemeinden (parishes) 7 decentralised administrations 13 regions 74 regional units 325 municipalities 19 counties (+ Budapest) 7 regions 174 subregions 23 counties 75 municipalities 34 county/city councils 80 town councils 20 regions 110 provinces 8100 municipalities 7 districts 38 municipalities 110 municipalities + 9 cities 11 municipalities 60 municipalities 546 elderships (Norvaisaite, 2008)


90 Information about local government

-‐-‐-‐

Greece lags behind other EU countries in e-‐Government (Zafiropoulos, Karavasilis, & Vrana, 2012)

-‐-‐-‐

-‐-‐-‐

-‐-‐-‐

-‐-‐-‐

-‐-‐-‐

-‐-‐-‐

-‐-‐-‐ Example of Lithuanian eldership facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SilainiaiL T (No others found) Gaulė & Žilinskas (2013) investigated correlations between external factors and Lithianian municipality websites’ development factors. They note that


2

Area (km )

Population

Luxembourg

2,586

537,853

Macedonia

25, 713

2,058,539

Malta

316

452,515

Moldova

33,846

3,559,500

Monaco Montenegro

2 13,812

36,371 625,266

Netherlands

41,850

16,788,973

Norway

323,802

5,063,709

Local government tiers

3 districts 12 cantons 106 communes 84 municipalities 68 municipalities 32 districts + 3 municipalities + 1 autonomous territorial unit + 1 territorial unit 1681 localities 10 wards 23 municipalities 12 provinces 408 municipalities 19 counties 430 municipalities (+ Svalbard and Jan Mayen) (Some municipalities are divided into municipal districts or city districts.)



local government does most of the work in federated countries. Their findings indicated that drivers for REPT (Rutgers e-‐governance performance test) values are foreign investment, employment, economic activity, tourism and higher wages, total population and presence of higher education institutions. Butkeviciene and Vaidelyte (2011) found that there is little in interest and few opportunities for political discussion online in Lithuania. Even habitual social media users tend not to do political discussion. -‐-‐-‐

-‐-‐-‐ -‐-‐-‐ -‐-‐-‐

-‐-‐-‐ -‐-‐-‐ -‐-‐-‐

Civic involvement varies between large and small municipalities: hence there may be a territorial digital divide (Saglie & Vabo, 2009). Municipalities provide information well but do much less to encourage and enable citizen involvement. Most provide opportunities to contact council and officers by email. In 2003, 80% of Norwegians had internet access of some kind, but most used it rarely or not at all for local politics. Those that did so were more likely to look for information (12%) than to debate (1%). At that time, half of Norway’s politicians used email for politics, mostly for contacting other local politicians and


2

Area (km )

Population

Local government tiers

Poland

312,679

38,544,513

16 states 379 counties 2478 municipalities

Portugal

92,090

10,562,178

Romania

238,391

20,121,641

8 administrative regions 18 districts (this level is being phased out) 308 municipalities 4257 civil parishes 41 counties (+ Bucharest) 103 municipalities,+



council staff but a quarter used it once a month or more to contact public. Haug and Jansen (2003) found that 42 of Norway’s municipalities do not have official websites, thus Norway lags behind other Nordic countries. (All Swedish and Danish municipalities have websites.) The focus seems to be on information provision rather than online interactivity and political participation. Volan (2012) found that 38% of Norwegian municipalities have Facebook pages. 83% of these are open, 17% are closed. Owsiński, Pielak, & Sęp (2013) considered whether knowledge, informal, cultural networks (measured by weblinks on municipal websites) are an important factor in local development. They concluded that quality of municipal websites (as measured using WAES) do not correlate with an urban/rural scale but that distance from the state/country capital does matter. Look at distance (in physical terms and in socio-‐economic terms) from city centre (Edinburgh CCs) and from Edinburgh (selected pan-‐Scotland CCs – perhaps CCs of city centres and CCs in remote areas of LAs) Biernacka-‐Ligieza (2011, p. 124) found that both Norwegian, and Polish municipalities do not provide information about what results from discussions and conversations on municipal fora. -‐-‐-‐

Moraru (2010) found that for the 10 biggest municipalities in Romania, only 2 had online events calendars, none had emergency management or


2

Area (km )

Population

Russia

17,098,24 2

143,400,00 0

San Marino Serbia

61 88,361

32,576 7,186,862

Slovakia

49,037

5,397,036

Slovenia

20,273

2,055,496

Spain

505,992

46,815,916

Sweden

450,295

9,555,893

Switzerland

41,284

7,954,700

Turkey

783,562

75,627,384

Ukraine

603,500

44,854,065

UK

242,900 (England: 130,395 Northern Ireland:

63,181,775 (England: 53,012,456; Northern Ireland:

93

Local Information about local government government tiers 217 cities alert mechanisms and few had online 2856 communes discussion fora. Very few had 12,955 villages accessibility and security features A year later, the following data was published (Vraibie, 2011) Classification Number 5age Very good 3 2·∙9% Good 28 27·∙2% Satisfactory 46 44·∙7% Poor 16 15·∙5% Very poor or 10 9·∙7% non-‐existent 83 federal -‐-‐-‐ subjects differing types of subdivision 9 municipalities -‐-‐-‐ 29 districts -‐-‐-‐ 150 municipalities + 24 cities 8 regions -‐-‐-‐ 79 districts 211 -‐-‐-‐ municipalities 17 autonomous -‐-‐-‐ communities 50 provinces 8112 municipalities 21 counties -‐-‐-‐ 290 municipalities, 2,512 parishes (Statistiska centralbyrån, 2007) 26 cantons, with -‐-‐-‐ differing types of subdivision 81 provinces -‐-‐-‐ 957 districts 27 regions -‐-‐-‐ 608 raions (districts) 11,515 city/town/villag e councils 3 countries English councils are introducing England has 83 facilities on their websites for counties + members of such communities to London, divided register and be pro-‐actively informed into district when the issue is due to be



2

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13,843; Scotland: 78,387; Wales: 20,779)

1,810,863; 5,313,600; Wales: 3,063,456)

Local government tiers councils and parishes Northern Ireland has 26 district councils Scotland has 32 Local Authorities and potentially 1369 community councils Wales has 22 unitary authorities


investigated in the future (Griffin & Halpin, 2005)

Not including Russia, and counting England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales as separate countries, there are 12 European countries with 1 tier of local government, 19 with 2, 15 with 3, 3 with 4 and 1 with 5. Populations and number of tiers are graphed in figure 8.1. There is no obvious correlation between either population and number of tiers of local government. Figure 8.1: Number of local government tiers against populations of countries 5

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Appendix 5: Freeman’s municipal website evaluation tool Table 8.2: Freeman’s municipal website evaluation tool WHAT A MUNICIPAL WEBSITE SHOULD % DOING IT RELEVANT TO CCs? HAVE/BE General website structure easy-‐to-‐use search engines 38 Yes – or at least a site-‐map a news section 97 Yes contact information for major departments 96 Contact info for CC and/or office-‐ bearers payments for bills, permits, fines, and fees 100 No – unless the CC is doing specific available online fund-‐raising activities mobile phone browser display options 53 Yes blogging 22 Yes YouTube videos 72 Potentially – videos of meetings or activities RSS 56 Yes – to inform citizens of when new documents have been added to site e-‐mail subscriptions options for different 78 Maybe news and information Access, usage, and transparency easy to navigate 88 Yes make it easy to find commonly requested 1·∙5 clicks to Yes – an acid test of whether the information quickly standard CCOP presents records efficiently document post commonly requested documents 85 Yes and information online encourage and promote computer access 50 Maybe and usage provide free Wi-‐Fi in public buildings 56 No – not CC’s role offer comprehensive online 56 Yes – e.g. links to fixmystreet request systems for citizens to report issues and make requests Social media Facebook 91 Maybe – useful for 2-‐way conversations and multi-‐ Twitter 88 participate conversations Text-‐messaging subscription 50 Maybe – depends on CC activities and time CCllrs can devote Use smartphone applications – crime 44 Probably not reporting, library catalogs e-‐participation and e-‐democracy Chat with employees 3 No Message boards 19 Yes Options for citizen feedback 72 Yes – this is CCs’ statutory duty Allow comments on news posts 0 Yes Tools (e.g. polls) to gauge public opinion 22 solicit information online regarding 3 Yes current relevant topics or items policy documents online to gather 0 Yes, e.g. responses to planning feedback applications, minutes

Appendix 5: Freeman’s municipal website evaluation tool


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Appendix 6: DoI adopter class definitions Rogers (1995) • Innovators (first 2·∙5%) are obsessed with new things. They depart from normal social circles and form cliques which may be geographically dispersed. Innovation may require financial resources and an ability to understand technical issues. Being able to deal with uncertainty is also requisite. Innovators may not be respected by their neighbours but play important roles in importing new ideas from outside their immediate circles. • Early adopters (next 13·∙5%) are more locally integrated and are leaders, being respected by many of their circle. They may well be sought by change agents to be missionaries for speeding diffusion. They decrease uncertainty for their neighbours by adopting new ideas and conveying evaluations to their neighbours. • Early majority (next 34%) adopters interact frequently with their peers but are seldom leaders. They provide connections in social networks. They may well ponder innovations for relatively long periods before adopting them. • The late majority (next 34%) consists of those who have been sceptical about the new idea. They may not adopt it until forced by financial circumstances and/or overwhelming peer pressure. • Laggards (next 16%) appear to be rooted in the past. They may well be suspicious of new ideas and be isolated socially. However, their resistance may well be rational in that they lack resource to gamble on new things and so need certainty before changing. ‘Laggard’ should not be seen as a bad name – it is natural that someone will be last. (Rogers, 1995) Kauffman & Techatassanasoontorn (2009) • Innovators (first 2%) • Early adopters (next 7%) • Breakthrough adopters (next 6%) • Mainstream adopters (next 15%) (Kauffman & Techatassanasoontorn, 2009) were unable to classify the remaining 70%.

Appendix 6: DoI adopter class definitions


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Appendix 7: Standard ethics form Figure 8.3: Standard ethics form Version 1.1 (April 2012)

Informed Consent Form Community councils online Edinburgh Napier University requires that all persons who participate in research studies give their written consent to do so. Please read the following and sign it if you agree with what it says. 1. I freely and voluntarily consent to be a participant in the research project on the topic of community councils’ online presences to be conducted by Bruce Ryan, who is an MSc research student in the Edinburgh Napier School of Computing. 2. The broad goal of this research study is to explore the types and drivers of CCs’ online presences. Specifically, I have been asked to discuss my Community Council’s position on, and use of, online communications (e.g. websites, social media), which should take no longer than 60 minutes to complete. 3. I have been told that my responses will be anonymised. My name will not be linked with the research materials, and I will not be identified or identifiable in any report subsequently produced by the researcher. 4. I also understand that if at any time during the interview I feel unable or unwilling to continue, I am free to leave. That is, my participation in this study is completely voluntary, and I may withdraw from it at any time without negative consequences. 5. In addition, should I not wish to answer any particular question or questions, I am free to decline. 6. I have been given the opportunity to ask questions regarding the interview and my questions have been answered to my satisfaction. 7. I have read and understand the above and consent to participate in this study. My signature is not a waiver of any legal rights. Furthermore, I understand that I will be able to keep a copy of the informed consent form for my records.

____________________________ Participant’s Signature

_________________________________________ Date

I have explained and defined in detail the research procedure in which the respondent has consented to participate. Furthermore, I will retain one copy of the informed consent form for my records.

____________________________

_____________________

Researcher’s Signature

2013_08_13

Appendix 7: Standard ethics form


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Appendix 8: Creation of a model CC online presence The main facet of the model presence was a Wordpress-‐based website (http://modelcc.wordpress.com) including a blog and some static pages. Screenshots of the blog and some static pages are towards the end of this appendix. The website was partially based on an existing CC website to which the researcher contributes, but was designed to include as many features of the ‘ideal’ presence (section 2.1) as possible. This obviated much of the planning that would precede development of a real CC website. Some HTML (hypertext mark-‐up language) tables from the existing website were re-‐ used but knowledge of such techniques was not strictly necessary because heading and text styles could be chosen from a menu in a visual editor. Screenshots of a page containing HTML tables and an equivalent page containing pre-‐defined heading styles are towards the end of this appendix. Figure 8.4: Wordpress visual editor, including text style-‐selector

The documents uploaded to the website were: minutes, based on actual CC minutes, created in Microsoft Word; a logo created in Adobe Illustrator; and a map, based on a screenshot of Google Maps that was then enhanced in Adobe Photoshop. Creation of the Wordpress site, including the minutes, logo and map, took around four hours. It is not claimed that a real CC Wordpress-‐based website would be created in four hours. Firstly, a webmaster would need to decide which platform to use and whether he or she would create the presence or employ a professional web designer. Secondly, planning of layout and content will take much longer than was needed for this model. Thirdly, the documents uploaded to the model site were based on documents immediately available to the researcher, while the logo and map were created using professional illustration software that webmasters may not have. (The logo and map could have been created using a word processor, screenshots and free software included in basic Windows and Macintosh installations but this may have taken longer.) Despite this, creation of the model shows that a determined novice11 can create a Wordpress-‐based website that fulfils many of the criteria for an ‘ideal’ presence. Using platforms such as Wordpress removes any necessity of reliance on web designers because almost all tasks can be achieved by choosing options within a web browser and keying the text of actual content. Also, webmasters can avail themselves of Wordpress’s thorough online guidance. 11

The researcher had not created a Wordpress-‐based website before undertaking this exercise.

Appendix 8: Creation of a model CC online presence


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To make the website’s web address more professional and to avoid using the researcher’s own email address in connection with the website, a domain (modelcc.net) and a single email address ([email protected]) were bought from GoDaddy (http://uk.godaddy.com). A year’s use of the domain cost £6·∙61 + VAT, and a year’s use of a single email address cost £23·∙88 + VAT. The total for these components was £35·∙27. Cheaper options were not investigated. Buying a domain and email address would be straightforward for anyone who already buys online, requiring only the ability to use email, a browser and a payment card. The next step was linking the bought domain to the Wordpress website, so that it appears to be at http://modelcc.net instead of at http://modelcc.wordpress.com. To achieve this, firstly domain name-‐server records needed to be updated at the domain-‐provider, i.e GoDaddy. Wordpress has a link to GoDaddy’s instructions for this step but the researcher felt it necessary to ask GoDaddy’s technical support to guide him through the process. Secondly, to make the email address work the domain-‐link needed to be registered at Wordpress. This involved finding the appropriate MX records from GoDaddy’s records and then entering this data, along with the domain name, at the Wordpress dashboard. Wordpress charged $13 (around £8) for using an external domain. With these steps achieved, the email address was used to set up a Twitter account (https://twitter.com/contactmodelcc – see screenshot towards the end of this appendix). Twitter has no financial cost but it took about 15 minutes to work through the set-‐up. Once the Twitter account had been set up, Wordpress widgets enabling the site to be searched, display of a tag cloud, useful links and recent Tweets were added to the website page design. The next widget added allows visitors to subscribe to the site, i.e. when a new post is added to the home (blog) page, subscribers are automatically emailed a link to this post. Finally, a Twitter widget was created so that new posts would be automatically tweeted. This domain-‐buying and linking, Twitter-‐feed creation and linking and widget-‐ configuration steps took another four hours. Part of this time was due to domain information taking time to propagate across domain name-‐servers but part of this was due the researcher’s inexperience and hence attempting steps in a non-‐optimal order. Again, it is not claimed that novices would routinely achieve these steps in four hours. It is claimed that a complete, flexible CC online presence can be set up by a determined novice using only the skills needed to use email software and make online purchases. By contrast, in this researcher’s experience, it can take weeks to design and set up a much less flexible website based on HTML, CSS (technology for achieving consistent, flexible formatting) and web-‐database software such as PHP and SQL. Wordpress and other blogging packages offer relatively secure presences, while defending a ‘raw-‐code’ site from attack requires much more knowledge and constant vigilance against new attack vectors. The other facet of the model presence was a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/bruce.ryan.1690 – see screenshot at the end of this section). Creating this page took about 2 hours. There was far less development involved, mainly because Facebook has only one format. Setup and adding information required only knowledge of how to use email and a browser. There was no financial cost. Appendix 8: Creation of a model CC online presence


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There were some surprising frustrations during the Facebook set-‐up. For example, working through the profile-‐creation stage required entry of some personal details that would not be relevant to a group but only to an individual. Turning off unwanted notifications and setting other permissions took some time. The URL for the Facebook page is based on the researcher’s name, rather than modelCC. This Facebook page, in common with all other Facebook pages and all blogs, is a reverse-‐chronological set of pieces of content. Documents cannot be uploaded to Facebook, but links can be made to other online documents. Thus of itself Facebook cannot be a document repository. Also it cannot be viewed except by people who have and are currently logged into Facebook accounts. This experience shows that Facebook can be used to get online quickly, without any need for coding skills, but that alone Facebook does not fulfil the requirements of a full CC online presence. In summary, once the necessary layout planning has been achieved, a determined novice can set up a CC online presence using only email, a browser and online payments, although some guidance from providers might be needed and some of the steps might feel daunting. The total cost would be just over £40 per year.



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Figure 8.5: Home page of model CC website, showing blog entries and links to uploaded documents



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Figure 8.6: Use of HTML tables in Model CC website



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Figure 8.7: Alternative using heading styles instead of HTML tables



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Figure 8.8: Model CC Twitter feed



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Figure 8.9: Model CC Facebook page



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Appendix 9: Interview data Transcripts do not include pauses, verbal ticks etc. Irrelevant threads are indicated [in square brackets] but are not fully transcribed. CC and interviewee names and some pieces have been [redacted] to preserve interviewee anonymity. Interviews are shown as numbers preceding the actual responses, with letters to indicate who was speaking if there was more than one interviewee. The following abbreviations are used: ASCC CC CCllr CCLO CMS FB LA NP

Association of Scottish Community Councils community council community councillor community council liaison officer content management system Facebook Local Authority Neighbourhood Partnership

Initial interview questions 1. What is your role in the CC? 1a Chair/Webmaster 1b FB-‐master 2 Secretary 3 Chair 4 Treasurer/Webmaster 5 Webmaster 6 Webmaster 7 FB-‐master 8 Secretary 9a Vice-‐chair 9b Chair 9c Secretary 10a Chairman 10b Secretary 10c Treasurer 2. Where would you see yourself on Rogers’ scale? 1 [not asked] 2 [not asked] 3 Probably [early majority]. 4 [not asked] 5 On the borderline between early adopter and early majority 6 Probably somewhere up there – early adopters nearer innovators, given that the curve is pretty steep. 7 In some cases I would probably be early majority. Wait till I see something works. 8 Personally – probably early majority. I use technologies but I’m not excited by them. They come along eventually. 9 [not answered] 10a I would say early majority. 3. Where would you place your CC on Rogers’ scale? 1a We were possibly about there [early majority] – maybe 1 standard deviation from the norm. rd 2 Around about the 3 one, early majority. 3 Probably here [early majority] – I hope we’re here rather than there [laggards]. 4 I think you’re more able to tell me that me telling you. I guess it might be in that area [early majority] but I’ve said that we’ve had a website for 10 years, so you can tell me how that compares with the others. 5 [CC secretary] has steadfastly refused to put up anything – the whole Wordpress thing freaks him out… I’m very fond of him and he’s a great guy but the internet is just – he doesn’t get it.

Appendix 9: Interview data


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6

In terms of getting them to use the website? Some of them are scared shitless – I don’t see that on the graph. Let’s say ‘laggards’. 7 In general I think we are laggards. A few people who joined the CC recently are younger, like my age, and they are more keen on using technology like computers. It’s probably changed to early or late majority. I’m not very sure. There are members who are not using computers at all. 8 In terms of the CC, the CC is slightly odd in that it had a web presence back in 2003 and they got an award which contributed a small sum of money for setting up a community website. So they actually at that point were sort of in the lead, and then for various reasons they turned against it and it just fell into disrepair. They had particular web pages and they just didn’t update them and they were years out of date. They turned their back on it and it’s only just in the last year, maybe, that it’s started. They set up a new website about a year and a half, two years ago and there’s a Twitter feed and there’s a FB page, but they’re all very tentatively used. They’re laggards really. R Let’s say, how many of them do email and view the web? 9a All of them – they all use email. R I’m guessing they’re in one of the majorities. It’s hard to say because if you’ve only formed about 4 years ago, they could have been anywhere. 9a Our oldest chap is 80 and he is an avid user of email because he uses Photoshop a lot so he’s very familiar with doing things on computers. 10a Let’s do this by elimination of the easy ones first. We’re not innovators and we’re not laggards. Early adopters – no. I would say we’re somewhere between early majority and late majority. [10a reads out definition of early majority.] I would say early majority. 4. Please confirm that your online presence is … [Interviewees 1-‐9 confirmed their main web presences.] R OK. Now if I’m right, and this is where I might get highly embarrassed, you don’t yet have a CC website? 10a No, to our eternal shame. We’ve got a domain set up. It sort of appears on the agenda. Sometimes [10c]’s not there to speak about it and it goes away again but we must make an attempt. It is our intention to have one – as I say, we have a domain. 5. Is there a piece of your CCOP that I have missed, such as a Twitter or Facebook account? 1 [not asked] 2 We have a blog. 3 [nothing missed] 4 [nothing missed] 5 There is [also] a Twitter account. 6 We do have a Twitter account – I confess that we have never, well, no, it’s a difficult one to explain. I personally can see the value in Twitter in terms of how the CC functions. I personally think Twitter is the spawn of the devil in that it has been repurposed from its original purpose, in the sense that the amount of garbage you see on Twitter actually works against it in terms of its perception by fellow CCllrs. For example, I would see our website before I gave up the whole idea, we were trying to get people to sign up are you in area A, B or C in terms of you don’t want all the garbage that comes across our desk, but if there are roadworks planned for your area then we’ll tell you. R Understood. Just for confirmation, you have FB and now you have started tweeting? 7 Yes. R (to 8) You’ve just answered my next question, which was ‘what have I missed?’, because I’ve found the website but I don’t think I have found the FB page and I know I haven’t found the Twitter feed, so obviously I have not looked properly. 9a We were trying to get to grips with Twitter and haven’t really done so yet. The most successful thing I’ve done with Twitter is actually get through to the Edinburgh Reporter and say ‘look, CC elections are coming up. Apply by, etc’ and they retweeted it, which I was thrilled about. 10 [NA]

Open-‐ended interview questions directly based on research questions 6. 1a

1b 2

In your own words, why are you/aren’t you online? Well I think in this day and age you’ve got to be online, haven’t you? Because an awful lot of the audience, if that’s the right word, for what the CC does is looking online. So if you’re not there, you miss out an awful lot of people. 80% of households in the UK are supposed to have internet access. I don’t know whether that’s true in [CC area] but it’s a major form of communication. Basically I forced them to. It was a case of that I was attending meetings as a CCllr and I was asked to be secretary. I wasn’t even looking for a position. Numbers were quite low for attendance and what I wanted to do was try to reach more people as to what the CC were doing and why they’re there. Also the roles



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that they have within local government are quite important now. But they’re underused and I think that suits a lot of political movers that they don’t have too many people to answer to. No, that’s it. I wanted people to be aware of the CC and what they could be asking the CC to do. And also the old stop moaning at the bus stop and either write to your MP or your councillors or use a body like the CC to get things done. to increase visibility and coverage and get some interaction. Everybody’s got a website, and it is a very convenient way of [inaudible] information. We’ve got quite a scattered community in [CC area]. It’s strange – it’s not a concentrated village. It never was a village so we’ve got quite a few new developments round it – almost mini-‐villages. It’s a matter of making sure we can be seen because… we, we have church and we can put notices up there. We don’t have a library, so it’s one way of making sure. We can put things up in [supermarket], we can put things up on a community noticeboard and another near to the post office but we can’t get to the other outreaches, so the website means we are available when we’re wanted. It’s a way of putting not just current agendas and minutes, it’s a way of people having access to previous minutes and agendas and history of news items. So it’s about general accessibility for people to see what the CC is doing and has done? Yes. As far as I’m concerned it’s simply finding things. Things start of as paper but the paper will get recycled but the electronic information is there. And if someone does want to go back to minutes of 5 years ago, they’re invited to make contact. They’re still in the archives but I just don’t want to clutter up the system with decades. In order to reach the kind of audience that we need to reach, and to market ourselves, to give out news, to give out information about what’s going on in the neighbourhood. Just to provide people with local news and information. I know we’re meant to be serving everyone but it is really handy when you meet other people who say ‘oh yeah, I understand all that’. The ones who are on the internet are just more likely to be able to active members. It’s like Twitter – they are more likely to have other followers – a sort of domino effect that you get. We have about 180 followers on Twitter – I’ve been on since 2009 maybe – for the CC I have 180 follows and have maybe sent 50 tweets maximum. So people can say ‘that is good’ – it makes sense. Because I said so. Well, let me expand on that. Traditionally before the web you would have had a noticeboard onto which you’d put the message. I personally do not have the time to go by the noticeboard, or noticeboards plural, so therefore a website seems to me to be the obvious way to go. It also means that you can change the notices on your electronic noticeboard-‐website without any great problem to keep it fresh and relevant. That’s the ideal. We have three noticeboards, one of which has not got anything on it at all, one of which is only rarely changed and the third one is the other end of the area so I’ve not got a clue what goes on there but I guarantee you they are not up to date. In that sense they work against CCs – they’re stale. We do have a Twitter account – I confess that we have never, well, no, it’s a difficult one to explain. I personally can see the value in Twitter in terms of how the CC functions. I personally think Twitter is the spawn of the devil in that it has been repurposed from its original purpose, in the sense that the amount of garbage you see on Twitter actually works against it in terms of its perception by fellow CCllrs. For example, I would see our website before I gave up the whole idea, we were trying to get people to sign up are you in area A, B or C in terms of you don’t want all the garbage that comes across our desk, but if there are roadworks planned for your area then we’ll tell you. So you’re subdividing the flow? Yes – and in that sense I can see great utility in it. But the reality is that we really, for it to work effectively, in fact for the whole website technology communications thing to work effectively, you have to devote a lot more time to it than I can personally do and other people are prepared to do. So in that sense we started off with great intentions. We didn’t do Twitter because Twitter didn’t exist when we first started the website. But somebody came along, it was a journalist from, er, I’d be lying if I said it was The Guardian who was doing work in terms of trying to enable CCs, and I went along to the meeting to see, and in terms of being 2 pages ahead in the manual as opposed to 2 pages behind. But, you know, you don’t a Twitter account and therefor you are shamed. So we started one up but the reality is we had no followers so I saw very little point in actually putting anything out there. Not a problem. So you’re online basically to reach people? Yes. When we first started it was quite interesting because we had somebody who joined the CC 3 months after we had started – he fetched up at a meeting and we co-‐opted him. He was desperately keen that we got a website because he ran the local rugby club website and again possibly the fascist in me could see the whole can of worms appearing from someone who didn’t know how to use an HTML editor and bugger-‐all else. So there was a bit of a debate – we could use the website to raise funds and everything else. Now as far as I was concerned a website is an information portal, hence the way the website actually works. Your website is about sending information out?


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Absolutely. It’s also got a contact form so you can get in touch with all the members but first and foremost it is an information bucket into which we pour everything. All that goes in there so everyone can see it. Because I said so. Well, let me expand on that. Traditionally before the web you would have had a noticeboard onto which you’d put the message. I personally do not have the time to go by the noticeboard, or noticeboards plural, so therefore a website seems to me to be the obvious way to go. It also means that you can change the notices on your electronic noticeboard-‐website without any great problem to keep it fresh and relevant. That’s the ideal. We have three noticeboards, one of which has not got anything on it at all, one of which is only rarely changed and the third one is the other end of the area so I’ve not got a clue what goes on there but I guarantee you they are not up to date. In that sense they work against CCs – they’re stale. That was my decision, because when I joined about two and a half years ago, there were just seven members and we were needing new people… Yes. …just to keep going. It was a way to spread the word. OK. Also, there were no signs of other people. Residents were saying that ‘oh, they haven’t heard about such-‐ and-‐such a thing’ like events or people were meeting on something. So it was a way of making the CC more visible and spreading information? Yes. Actually, we started a newsletter, paper copies, and then once I think I got into FB myself privately, then I joined the CC. Now I think businesses wouldn’t exist without it – it is something really essential. They can’t afford to miss a trick? Yes. People are creating fake accounts to find out about things when they don’t want to use it. I have a few friends who are not keen on FB but they have fake accounts just to be able to check [inaudible] The CC is probably quite mixed. In line with lots of others I suppose it’s got a fairly high proportion of elderly, retired or semi-‐retired, maybe a bit more reluctant to use technology. There’s a degree of fear about technology and internet and one of the things, the fear with the website is they didn’t want comments. They don’t want people to be able to comment because they are worried about what people will say, if it will be slanderous and how are we going to cope with this and cope with that. There’s this basic fear that it’s all going to be horrible and nasty and people will be vicious – which is possible, to be fair. To get messages out to people. To tell them about events that are happening in the local community. [9a gives examples.] Planning issues, which people get really upset about. We also keep all our agendas and minutes – the usual housekeeping. I’m going to ask a slightly leading question: do you use it to get input from the community? We have tried but it’s not very forthcoming. When we do the analytics and look at how many people are accessing it and what pages they’re reading, the most popular pages are the photographs. So each event we do is photographed and I think people look to see if they’re on it. It’s strange that that’s by far and away the most popular side of the website. So you would like citizen input, you’re ready for it but it’s just not yet coming forth? It’s a question of how to get messages back. 9b has a huge distribution list – 3 or 4 hundred names. The problem there is you can’t email them all in one go. It would just be so much easier if people visited the website and picked the information up for themselves. The first thing I would say is that we were sending out our minutes first class. How much is a first-‐class stamp these days? 60p And that was to 16 members plus others as well – we have ex officio members. I think we were probably sending out about 20. Everyone’s connected up on email – all our communications are done by email and occasionally by phone. We had two members who were not on email but that’s reduced to one. So you are in the position just now that you can take minutes and send them out by email? Yes

10a R 10A 7. [To CCs who are not yet online, i.e. interviewee 10] What costs and benefits do you expect? 10 I would think just a point of reference for the public. They would know where the CC is, who the CCllrs are, where they meet, when they meet etc. And obviously they would see the minutes, know what we’re up to. 10b It would have to be maintained. 8. What were your initial thoughts about benefits and costs? 1a Yes, it cost us a little bit of money. It was £300 or something. It took the two of us 2 to 3 months, probably, of fairly regular work getting it all done. 2 [re benefits] Access to many more people in the local community through emails. 2 [re costs] I had a look at free sites and also using a company called [name redacted] who are one of the


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huge range of companies that provide websites. £10 a month. [not answered – interviewee wasn’t involved in setup] CCllrs as you know are not remunerated in any way so I’ve got to consider it partly as a hobby and partly as a service to the community. As far as my time is concerned, that’s not been an issue. I spend an hour or so here and there – I might not do anything for 1 week or I might have to spend a couple of hours another week – it just depends on whether there’s any particular news item that has to go up or whether we’re getting minutes. Well, at 4 o’clock today I’ll be along at a min-‐CC meeting where we’re setting the agenda for the next full CC meeting so once that agenda’s set, it’ll take me 20 minutes or so to set up the website with revised links and that’s that. So it’s not a chore and that’s the way I want it to be. I could spend considerably more time and effort but as far as the CC is concerned it would have minimal return. Also, I just don’t want the site to get complicated – I want it to be really, really easy for people to navigate. There is a search function. So the costs were basically time and the benefits were making the CC more connected? It’s just availability of CC information to our entire catchment area. [not answered – interviewee wasn’t involved in setup] To be honest, before the CC was born, we had a local community association and I did a website for them. The website I did for them ran using the same database that I used for my business. And at that time the database was quite new and one of the developers had cobbled together a web interface and created this prototype content management system. We used that but of course it was very early days. It was not a nightmare but the functionality could have been built out except for the fact that a database is a very esoteric piece of software. Incredibly good piece of software but that’s by the by. So when the community association folded and the CC came along it was obvious to me that to do anything properly you needed some form of database-‐driven software, because if you were going to stick up flat HTML pages, you would so quickly have your knickers tied round your neck. You would be in trouble and some poor bastard somewhere down the line would be cursing your grave and spitting on you as you passed them in the street. So we ended up for the first year we had a holding page while I did a certain amount of work. At that time was the start of Mambo – it’s a content management system. [R and 6 discuss their previous experiences with CMSs.] We ended up at the time looking and Mambo, Joomla and something else – can’t remember. I ended up deciding on the Mambo system as possibly the friendliest on the back end and front end in terms of it being able to be carried on and we’ve basically stuck with the Joomla system through all its iterations. We’re actually now 2 generations behind and that’s going to be the next big interesting development task. Did you think about what the website would give you and what it would cost you, both financially and in terms of time? Cost was basically nil. That’s actually a lie – cost was quite high if you start counting your own time. My company put up the money for the CC name and we basically supply free server time on our server, all for the tag line of the company name buried along the bottom of the front page. There was a certain amount of discussion when I first proposed this: ‘this is advertising – you shouldn’t be doing this.’ until I told them it’s going to cost X, Y and Z if I didn’t. I could at least justify it to my accountant on the grounds that we are advertising and this is part of my advertising budget. In terms of return, there has been zip return for the business, which is fair enough, But if we were actually doing it commercially I shudder to think what it would have cost. Yes, it doesn’t cost anything but time. At the beginning, that was before I had [my child]. I had a bit more time. I was working full time but a baby does take a bit more energy and time. You need time to be up to date with things happening in the area. I probably haven’t thought about it properly, and there was no-‐one else who could do that at that time. And what benefits did you think it would bring? The social media? Yes. I thought it would attract a few new members who were not aware about the CC in the area. Mostly, attention – not attention… Communication? Communication as well, yes, and just for people to be aware of our existence. That was a concern, certainly. There’s a theme that comes up that as CCllrs, there’s all this that’s expected of us. We get deluged with consultations and have to do this, have to do that. We don’t get support from the Council. We don’t get help. The idea of taking on the additional responsibility of running a website and a FB page is all too much. So there’s a recurring theme that we don’t have enough support. A lot of them aren’t terribly interested. Did anyone think about what benefits it would provide and, if so, what were they? I pushed quite hard. When we presented the website – it was a subgroup which had gone away to look at the website. Well, one of the things – I think with the website we didn’t think about too many security issues or whatever but in thinking about possibly setting up Facebook, we were a bit wary about that because we



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knew, for example, that [another Edinburgh CC] had tried that and had had to shut it down when they were overtaken by a bunch of teenagers We didn’t set up a FB page. In terms of the web, the initial investment was there to have a presence on the web. I said I don’t think as many people come to it as we’d like. [NA] Which costs and benefits actually materialised? Probably – again, since we don’t measure it, we can’t say for certain. People do sometimes say that they downloaded our papers from the website. So we know that some members of the public do use it Yes -‐ £10 a month is really good value for an easily accessible format and the opportunities that offers for getting out to people. It allows us to capture as many emails in the local community as possible and then just tap these on a regular basis with a newsletter and an update as to issues. Hopefully have them going into the website at least once a month. Well [name] became the secretary probably 10 years ago. That’s why I think the website is at least a decade old. But she talked about how she received wodges of paper from the previous secretary, which was in a completely shambolic state, and she has managed to maintain a much better organisation of information. The secretary didn’t mention any set-‐up problems. What I understand from [her] is that she has some arrangement with a guy called [name] who hosts it, or we get space. So the costs were basically time and the benefits were making the CC more connected? It’s just availability of CC information to our entire catchment area. You’ve said the obstacles you’ve had were basically having to rebuild the site every now and then. That’s a sort of mixed blessing. Yes, it’s a distinct nuisance at the time but it does give you and opportunity to do a little bit of rethinking and remodelling… I’ve got a separate domain name which is just [CC area name].org, so that keeps it really simple for people. From that, I just seamlessly link into whatever the current website name is, which means that each time I’ve been forced to change onto a different back system the address has stayed constant. [not answered – interviewee wasn’t involved in setup] The only financial cost to the CC would be the [domain] name, which is registered in my name, as opposed to the CC name, which was possibly a mistake but it’s very difficult for a young CC to get a bank account, let alone a credit card which you need to do anything on the net. And has that come true? Yes, in the last few months, we’ve got four new people, who have links to our FB or someone told them or they had seen something on FB. So they’re coming to the meetings now? Yes. The website doesn’t get a huge amount of traffic. I get sent the analytics. I don’t know how it compares to others but it doesn’t seem particularly big. Very short lived visits, as well. It doesn’t generate much and you can’t interact with it. It doesn’t even have an e-‐mail address: it has one of these contact submission forms so you have to go through that route. The FB page sometimes gets a decent reach. I wrote the FB page. None of the rest of them have even worked out how to like it, so I can’t make them admins, but I’m only allowed to do neutral things. It’s a ‘next meeting on Monday, here are the minutes from the last meeting’, so it’s sporadic, you’re talking one or two posts a month. Absolutely. You mentioned money. Can you tell me something more about that – about the money you paid to set it up? £1000, I think it was. And that was to a private web-‐developer? Yes. OK – that’s possibly the most I’ve heard but I can see where it’s come through in terms of your website looks very organised. I can find stuff on it. And the links work. Yes! There’s a search facility. Search is good – I like that. [The web-‐developer] has also done things for us to keep the site up-‐to-‐date as well. I think you can do all these things yourself if you are prepared to spend the time looking around ‘oh, how do I do that bit, how do I do this bit?’ It’s a lot of work. So it’s a balance of your money or your time? Yes. It takes us a lot of time and energy-‐investment, not just the money but the use of it – keeping it up to date.


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[NA] In your own words, why do you use the format currently in place? [re FB] it seems a good way of notifying people out there of information the idea was to have something simple to use and that a number of people could drop into and change or update, but do it without having technical knowledge. First off, I had a look at other people’s websites and how they were set up and actually emailed other secretaries who were running websites and found out what their problems were. A lot of the problems were local person who was relied on to update things. There was one especially who was about to disappear said ‘I’ll do it for a small stipend’ and we really weren’t interested [in that]. Whereas with a company we know exactly what we’re paying each month, we can do any amount of updates, we can put up any amount of pages, any amount of pictures, issues, backdate things, save things online so that the pages don’t have to appear – they can disappear but all the information’s still there. It just gives us a nice presence. So the cost was important, the accessibility was important, as was the control. … The other thing is that I was looking at free sites who were constantly filled up with adverts, most of them inappropriate for CCs. [R gives examples.] … Whereas if we get a nice clean site with only our information on it. It also means it’s easy to pass on… Even the chairperson, who was dead against it 6 months ago, loves it. That’s why he can’t wait to get on and start doing stuff. He’s seen how easy it is and effective it can be for getting the message across. Well [the blog is] a bit of a pain. The area has a newspaper called [name redacted] which has been starved of funding so it’s about to die. But they were always looking for a role for themselves so running the blog was one of the things they were doing to try to keep people interested in the [name of newspaper]. Nobody looks at it. The newspaper was very successful and very popular but the blog doesn’t do anything and the kind of people who read the [newspaper] and the older generation so they weren’t looking at blogs. So the blog is being maintained to a certain extent. Whoever writes it is the person looking at it – nobody else. My [close relative] works in computing and … says that there are a lot of websites that you can get that are ready-‐made: Wordpress and stuff like that, where you can update content – an idiot could do it. [Relative] said that would be a lot better that the current arrangement that we’ve got, but I didn’t want to hurt [secretary’s] feelings. I wouldn’t want to go down [the advertising-‐sponsored] route, because it looks like you endorse that product. Most products are OK but it just seems to undermine your authority, because the advert has more authority than your content. The background was that I’m interested in photography so I went on website evening classes at [educational institution] so I could put up a little photography website. I was a member of the CC and felt that the CC were not very good at communicating, so I suggested that I set up a website for the CC… I started off life 40-‐50 years ago as a machine code programmer, so using HTML and other languages doesn’t worry me but I felt it was important for a CC website that it was just a menu-‐driven thing that someone else non-‐technical could pick up and set up by cut and paste from Word or whatever, so I want to stick with the BT route. No it was done by somebody else in the past – this is why it took so long to get hold of it, because I am in fact able, just about, to do a Wordpress set up from scratch. … who was doing work in terms of trying to enable CCs, and I went along to the meeting to see, and in terms of being 2 pages ahead in the manual as opposed to 2 pages behind. But, you know, you don’t have a Twitter account and therefor you are shamed. So we started one up but the reality is we had no followers so I saw very little point in actually putting anything out there. To be honest, before the CC was born, we had a local community association and I did a website for them. The website I did for them ran using the same database that I used for my business. And at that time the database was quite new and one of the developers had cobbled together a web interface and created this prototype content management system. We used that but of course it was very early days. It was not a nightmare but the functionality could have been built out except for the fact that a database is a very esoteric piece of software. Incredibly good piece of software but that’s by the by. So when the community association folded and the CC came along it was obvious to me that to do anything properly you needed some form of database-‐driven software, because if you were going to stick up flat HTML pages, you would so quickly have your knickers tied round your neck. You would be in trouble and some poor bastard somewhere down the line would be cursing your grave and spitting on you as you passed them in the street. So we ended up for the first year we had a holding page while I did a certain amount of work. At that time was the start of Mambo – it’s a content management system. [R and 6 discuss their previous experiences with CMSs.]. We ended up at the time looking and Mambo, Joomla and something else – can’t remember. I ended up deciding on the Mambo system as possibly the friendliest on the back end and front end in terms of it being able to be carried on and we’ve basically stuck with the Joomla system through all its iterations. We’re actually now 2 generations behind and that’s going to be the next big interesting development task.


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OK, why a website? Anybody can do and it can be distributed. The Joomla system – any CMS – can granularly access the back end. The concept of restricted access – in other words, I can open the website, or I could if we wished, to anybody to put stuff up. So you have literally a community noticeboard to which people can post. We can dial it back to CCllrs – you know, it’s the concept of public, authors, editors, administrators. And you need to have appropriate levels of control? Yes, exactly. That comes with CMSs, because purely I know personally that information explodes. Unless you have some way of nailing or systemising how it’s stored, it rapidly becomes and exercise in… Just take for example minutes. You can store these as single HTML files. But how do you then order these HTML files within an HTML system of single pages? How do you dive in there and mine the data? With a CMS it’s quite easy because the data is siting in an SQL database. So all you do is send a wee trawler through it. If you want a particular [example], you just put that in. It will run through the minutes and give you every instance where [example] is has appeared in the minutes. You couldn’t do this in an HTML system without a lot of work. So the SQL is searching through the text? Yes – it’s very simple algorithms. It comes out of a command-‐line editor. I have some experience with SQL and with making dynamic websites using PHP to get at data. You’ve just described Joomla, and Drupal for that matter. My SQL and PHP with a human-‐friendly end? Yeah. So that is useful – to be able to search within content rather than for titles. it also means that content can be sorted and shuffled any way you like, while if you’ve got a hard and fast HMTL system, it becomes rapidly – well if you’ve got a page up with all the minutes on it, that page just grows each month. While it looks great for the first year, then the second year you’ve got to either leave them all and the page keeps growing or hive them off to an archive. I suppose FB is quite easy. You can do it in your free time. I chose it because I knew I would not be able to update a website. It’s easier than running a website. I feel like a website would need a lot of updating and more information than FB. Plus, I always think that I would need someone who is British or very good in English to run a proper website. Yes. But we have a lot of local organisations which have time, so we share a lot – updates and so on. So it’s about networking and information spreading? Yes. Our members want to be involved in other organisations or vice versa. They are involved in charities and so on. But there’s a real fear about that. They were very suspicious of the FB page when that was set up, really not keen on that. Twitter they don’t really use. The Twitter feed ran for well over a year before they found out it existed. It was the previous Secretary who set it up. All it really was was retweeting local events. We followed local people and retweeted it. Pretty much all it was used for – that, our next meeting and here’s the draft minutes, nothing really… Well, we can switch comments off, we don’t have to use that but if you had something that was turnover, so people looked at it regularly then there is that opportunity if you want to put in surveys or ask people or polls. They were not remotely interested. They didn’t want to know. They wanted the static. [to 9a] No offence, but I think we need a young person who is doing this sort of thing already and therefor knows the triggers. I think [9b] put it in a nutshell when he said that we need someone who knows exactly what the various triggers are. You need somebody with a phone that isn’t stuck up with sellotape. [9b shows his phone – an old and battered ‘feature-‐phone’.] We are the generation that still has to embrace Twitter in any meaningful way. I probably have a philosophical reason for not embracing it – I can’t see the point of somebody telling me what they had for breakfast and if I had to read that before I got to the one bit that will probably appear on the local news anyway, I’m philosophically opposed to it. [NA] What obstacles have you encountered? How have you overcome them? Then we discovered that other people were putting things on [FB], which was quite worrying because we didn’t know how to get them off. So the public can do what I do – they can see it but they can’t interact with it. Well I rejoined the CC – and was told for 18 months ‘we’re going to get a free website’ and after 18 months I just said ‘this isn’t going to happen so I decided to take up a free offer But there’s a huge amount of stuff we get sent, and a lot of what we get is electronic. We should really start putting it all online, or somebody should be editing it. It’s a full-‐time job being a CCllr. You’ve said the obstacles you’ve had were basically having to rebuild the site every now and then. That’s a sort of mixed blessing. Yes, it’s a distinct nuisance at the time but it does give you and opportunity



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to do a little bit of rethinking and remodelling. But because it was already there and nobody could remember what the passwords were. It was just so pathetic … Writing doesn’t come to me naturally. My colleague [at a local environmental pressure group] will put 4 posts out in an afternoon if he has to and it’s just not me. I find it quite difficult and if somebody said ‘I’m a budding journalist – can I do some?’ I’d be more than delighted. There are often little things where I have no idea how it works. For example, I understood that the domain name had run out and I don’t think it matters hugely because you just get a different name in your Google bar. But for example, the connections between FB, Twitter and Wordpress – widgets, I think they’re called – I just look at them and I think I don’t know what on earth this means. I’ve tried downloading them and it gets easier and easier because now when you look at them, all you have to do is click a few things but the early ones to connect yourself to Twitter, I just got totally stuck. Cost was basically nil. That’s actually a lie – cost was quite high if you start counting your own time. My company put up the money for the CC name and we basically supply free server time on our server, all for the tag line of the company name buried along the bottom of the front page. There was a certain amount of discussion when I first proposed this: ‘this is advertising – you shouldn’t be doing this.’ until I told them it’s going to cost X, Y and Z if I didn’t. I could at least justify it to my accountant on the grounds that we are advertising and this is part of my advertising budget. In terms of return, there has been zip return for the business, which is fair enough, But if we were actually doing it commercially I shudder to think what it would have cost. Have there been any other obstacles on your way to getting online? No. I mean, to be honest, I was probably an early adopter of the web, so when the CC came along I had a fair idea how things worked, how they slotted together, how they could be done. [not asked] [not asked] [not asked] [NA] Is your CCOP successful? How do you measure this? It’s probably hard to know. I don’t actually monitor the usage. I know I could do – with the old one we had Google Analytics but I haven’t got it in this one and I’m not sure I know how to get it. I don’t think they’re as successful as they could be. So the public can do .what I do – they can see [FB] but they can’t interact with it. A little – people comment every now and then, and post, but I have to say that I’m slightly disappointed. It’s a double-‐edged thing: too much conversation is a burden – if something comes back to the CC it places an onus on them to do something and yet it seems right because it’s a form of communication that a lot of people use. It’s taken time just getting the name out there. [service provider provides analytics] And [secretary’s] … keeps telling us about the number of hits we get. A lot of people visit our website… I don’t think [the site does all it could], but I don’t want to offend [secretary]. There’s a site-‐meter on it. I just printed that off this morning. I’ve haven’t actually reset the site-‐meter since the …, so this is cumulative over 3 years but you can drill down into this by ever so many different routes. So this is just top level and it then goes on. I’m actually amazed – there are people down in England who look at it, people in Canada, people in Australia, so it’s used not just by the community but people who are maybe researching ancestors or are interested in [local historical feature] or whatever. I don’t know what brings them in – the system doesn’t tell me that but it certainly tells me there are people worldwide that are dipping into it from time to time. Does the system tell you the individual pages that they visit? Yes – you know where they’ve come in and you know where they’ve exited. It’s not on this one but it’s on the actual BT system, if you go in as an administrator, you know how many hits that your pages have had Do you use that information to redesign things? No but it’s gratifying. I know what I wanted to achieve and I feel I’ve achieved it but it might be that people on the other side have got a different view of things. No-‐one’s complained to me about anything. You can in general do analytics? The details aren’t important. Yes [5 shows analytics.] I think a lot of people look at it but not many join. If they joined the blog, whenever I put I post up, they’d get it. I should set that to once a week at the most because at the moment I put out two and they get two emails, which is a bit boring. But I know it can be done. Yes, I have looked at them and my question is ‘how can I make more people subscribe’ and I can’t work out how that can be done. There’s a list of people on there and in every meeting I’ve said please subscribe to this blog because that would be useful and they kind of go [pulls a face] and they think it’s a sort of ego-‐ trip that I’m on. Oh yeah we did. I had for long enough a pretty advanced qualitative programme. It’s one of the things that gets on my tits – ‘Hi. Thank you for visiting our website. Could you please fill in this survey telling us



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what you thought?’ before you’ve even got anywhere – that irritates. There was a weird one – I forget the name of the company now – but they were a start-‐up. I signed up and it was brilliant, really interesting albeit not enough members to make get relevant feedback in terms of how easy it was for people to find things, how was their user experience – the sort of things you’d ask commercially on a website. I think it could be better. I was just checking how many likes we have and it’s, I think, only 119, which could be better. The website doesn’t get a huge amount of traffic. I get sent the analytics. I don’t know how it compares to others but it doesn’t seem particularly big. Very short lived visits, as well. It doesn’t generate much and you can’t interact with it. It doesn’t even have an e-‐mail address: it has one of these contact submission forms so you have to go through that route. The FB page sometimes gets a decent reach. I wrote the FB page. None of the rest of them have even worked out how to like it, so I can’t make them admins, but I’m only allowed to do neutral things. It’s a ‘next meeting on Monday, here are the minutes from the last meeting’, so it’s sporadic, you’re talking one or two posts a month. No, we haven’t, so maybe that’s something we’ll add in to the next thing we do. [NA]

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What were the influences on deciding to have a CCOP? (internal, external, mixed) [actual answer redacted at 1a’s request] family, i.e. external Well I rejoined the CC – and was told for 18 months ‘we’re going to get a free website’ and after 18 months I just said ‘this isn’t going to happen so I decided to take up a free offer – a month free – set it up, then went back and said ‘there’s a website, that’s how to do it, it’s going to cost £10 a month. What do you think?’ Most people liked the website but it’s more the way I’ve gone about it that caused a bit of upset. [not asked] Depends where you think I fit into it. There wasn’t a particular demand from the CC. There was a feeling on my part, with my computer background that it was something the CC should make more use of, and at the same time it fitted in with Edinburgh council wanting to – I can’t remember what the strapline was – make the city a ‘smart city’ Well, I was always part of the people saying that we need to be online, and I think for the past 4 years we’ve been saying that. I’ve been tweeting for quite a long time and it’s quick and I can see how it works, so it was really a no-‐ brainer to just set it up. Of all the things that you do on a computer, Twitter is just ‘whoosh – done!’ I’ll take that as external then, because it wasn’t the CC? No, no, no – they’d just heard of it. Not really. Because we were relatively new, and the CC when it was formed, it’s core is still pretty much the same as today. The influence to have a website was myself. So it’s difficult to answer because there wasn’t any other. Also, there were no signs of other people. Residents were saying that ‘oh, they haven’t heard about such-‐ and-‐such a thing’ like events or people were meeting on something. So it was a way of making the CC more visible and spreading information? Yes. Actually, we started a newsletter, paper copies, and then once I think I got into FB myself privately, then I joined the CC. Now I think businesses wouldn’t exist without it – it is something really essential. They can’t afford to miss a trick? Yes. People are creating fake accounts to find out about things when they don’t want to use it. I have a few friends who are not keen on FB but they have fake accounts just to be able to check [inaudible] With the website, there was a long, on-‐going [period when] people were saying we should have a website or we should at least use the webpages we had got. I think they set up a website because they had to, because they kept on getting grief. They’re not terribly interested in the website which is why it is the way it is. With the FB page, I set it up without authorisation which caused… [laughter] You stuck your head above the parapet. I had a meeting with one of the other CCllrs and we just decided, oh, we’ll set it up on a trial basis, we’ll see what they like. They were not happy, the Chair was not happy but when it actually came to the meeting it was like, well, we’ve got it up and running, people are using FB – but there’s this thing of being very nervous about how things are used and wanting to control things. That was my move, FB. With Twitter, the Secretary before me, who liked Twitter, set up a Twitter feed and it was very innocuous. It had been running for well over a year, maybe a couple of years, and none of them had noticed. Then we had a meeting, I can’t remember how it came about but it was about consultation, because we were getting grief that we had to consult more, the communications… To get messages out to people. To tell them about events that are happening in the local community. [9a gives examples.] Planning issues, which people get really upset about. We also keep all our agendas and


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minutes – the usual housekeeping. [NA] Were you influenced by your LA, other local groups and/or neighbouring CCs? We got a grant to pay for the guy who helped to set it up. And they run the occasional social media course. We get a grant every year so we may as well spend it on something. We get a grant of about £800 per year and that’s to cover us for admin, the website, everything else. No – I think as far as CCs are concerned we were really in at the infancy in Edinburgh and so there were probably only half a dozen other CCs that were involved in the MyEdinburgh project but when it had its launch in the museum, they used our site as the demo site. Really, through [the pressure group which 5 chairs]. I just learnt there, because [my colleague] is so competent. We’re developing an app – he and this other guy – it’s not quite there yet but it will do all kinds of things. So there are just little bits you pick up along the way. Not really – to be honest, I can’t recall anyone showing an interest except this other member of the CC early on who saw it as ‘I’ve done HTML, I know HTML therefore I know a website’. Just general need. We needed people and we needed to spread the word. It wasn’t like they pointed at me but there were five or six people and me and all of them were not online at all, not on FB or even on the Internet, so I was the only person. The only non-‐British person is doing minutes and newsletters! When I joined, the person who helped us from Edinburgh Council, he said ‘oh, you can do the newsletter’ and then ‘what about FB’? It wasn’t like they said ‘oh you need to do it’ but I think it was his suggestion to start with newsletters and from there we moved to FB. Oh, no, the City Council don’t care: it’s just arm’s length. The grief was coming from people in the community and some of us on the CC. [not asked] [NA] Do you believe it’s your job to interact with citizens? Oh yes, that’s what we’re there for. It’s written into our constitution, more or less on line 1. the whole point of the website and [our] online effort is to … get some interaction [not asked] [not asked] [not asked but citizen input/interaction would be welcome: see the following and the use of Twitter which is naturally a mechanism for citizen input] But it’s very difficult to get people to make the commitment, and personally I have just suggested something to the NP which I think they’ll take up: that if the CC had influence in budgets, we’d have a complete change. The way I see it, because I also sit on the NP funding panel, which is £100,000 per year from Edinburgh Council which can be spent on neighbourhoods. I sit on this because I’m the chair of [health-‐related forum]. I was shocked at how arbitrarily this budget gets spent and what the decision-‐ making process is. Everyone’s aware of this and everyone wants to improve it, so it’s not that the NP is trying to pull a fast one. They haven’t got enough citizen input? No, because what happens is that some random person says ‘oh, we’ve got £50,000. Now what can we do with this? Oh, there’s a neighbourhood which doesn’t look very good – let’s give them some new whatever’. £50,000 spent. Without thinking strategically? And they say ‘we’ve done a consultation process’ but once you’ve decided that you’re going to do somewhere and send out 50 letters saying ‘would you like new tarmac?’ or whatever, the likelihood is that people say ‘yeah we would like new tarmac’ and so it’s just an arbitrary and random method that I can’t really get my head around. We all know it should be slightly different but the processes haven’t really been decided. So what I’ve said is we need to build into the CC meeting, on the agenda, the question is asked ‘NP budget – has anyone got any suggestions as to how this is spent?’. This gets minuted properly – I can think of 10 things that I’d like money spent on – then that goes forward so you’ve got 50 potential projects from which you choose 10. So it’s actually coming from the community? So the CC is forced to say ‘is there anything you think needs improving?’. You give them financial responsibility and there’ll be more people. Because if they know that if all they have to do is turn up and hold their hand up and say ‘I’d like my road tarmacked’ or whatever. And what you’d do is have, because it’s coming from the CC which is the statutory representative body, then it’s coming into the NP with democratic legitimacy? Yes, exactly, rather than the housing officer saying ‘these people need X, Y and Z’. [not asked]


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Hmm. Not really, I think the Council has more responsibility, but the council should listen to residents and then do what they want. Of course, not everything but they should work for us, not the other way. And so we need to give our opinions and influence other residents. The reason I ask that is that I have seen some other CCs just sit and meet and don’t try to get involved. I think we were like that before but there are still campaigns in our area, and some are quite successful. Obviously your CC is not like that. We could do more, but slowly. The CC is probably quite mixed. In line with lots of others I suppose it’s got a fairly high proportion of elderly, retired or semi-‐retired, maybe a bit more reluctant to use technology. There’s a degree of fear about technology and internet and one of the things, the fear with the website is they didn’t want comments. They don’t want people to be able to comment because they are worried about what people will say, if it will be slanderous and how are we going to cope with this and cope with that. There’s this basic fear that it’s all going to be horrible and nasty and people will be vicious – which is possible, to be fair. Yes. By the CC – till maybe 2011. You’re talking five years, and then it was a general what’s [this area] like, any issues, what could be improved? It was a hermetically sealed little group. They didn’t have any great desire to communicate or consult or anything like that. That’s what you’re supposed to do -‐ you’re set up to be the voice of the community. Yes – it’s just that I’ve seen some others outside of Edinburgh that seem to be hermetically sealed. We shouldn’t be hermetically sealed! We’ve tried through leaflets and newsletters to get round that but it is a two-‐way street and you do need the public to interact with you as well. So it was good when that lady came up – we can engage and find out what they like and what they don’t like. [NA] Was your CCOP inspired by neighbouring CCs? I think we were ahead of most of them. I couldn’t say that for certain – you’ll find out when you talk to them. We were started around 2000. First off, I had a look at other people’s websites and how they were set up and actually emailed other secretaries who were running websites and found out what their problems were. Probably No – I think as far as CCs are concerned we were really in at the infancy in Edinburgh and so there were probably only half a dozen other CCs that were involved in the MyEdinburgh project but when it had its launch in the museum, they used our site as the demo site. Really, through [a pressure group, of which 5 is chair]. I just learnt there, because [my colleague] is so competent. We’re developing an app – he and this other guy – it’s not quite there yet but it will do all kinds of things. So there are just little bits you pick up along the way. [not asked] When I joined, the person who helped us from Edinburgh Council, he said ‘oh, you can do the newsletter’ and then ‘what about FB’? It wasn’t like they said ‘oh you need to do it’ but I think it was his suggestion to start with newsletters and from there we moved to FB. No. I don’t think so. They’re pretty hermetically sealed. It’s [this area]. They’re not interested in neighbouring CCs. You are on the edge of [Edinburgh LA area]. I’m wondering if there is any cross-‐border contact to the CCs in [neighbouring LA area]. Are you in any contact with whatever CC that would be? No, never. I occasionally go along to [neighbouring CC within Edinburgh] but there has been twice [neighbouring CC] has invited [us] up for a social. [We] and [neighbouring CC] are the same NP. [Neighbouring CC], because of their background – community activists. They’re very good at applying for pots of money and they know all the pots of money. They were acutely aware that they were gobbling up the money because [we weren’t] applying for anything. There were a couple of times they invited [us] up for a social and basically only two of us ever turned up – the rest weren’t interested. [not asked] [NA] Does your CCOP provide high-‐quality information? I’m not sure I’d call minutes and agendae high quality information – it’s very basic and kind of lowest level and a bit boring as well. Strangely, for the last two CC meetings, I’ve put on snippets about odd items that were discussed at the meetings and you can tell the viewing is better – OK there are only 42 likes. Yes, and we’re continuing to try to improve things. Even the police page, it’s not just new number 101 – they haven’t provided me with the information yet – I’d like to do a page on your car to stop it being a target for being broken into, or look after your sheds so that people can’t use your garden tools to break into your house.



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Well, the thing they look at the most is the minutes. All sorts of people look at the minutes. Some of the minutes have been very detailed. I’m sure journalists look at them, because it will give them a flavour of what local people are talking about, what the issues are, what we put on the agendas and things like that. So if they want to get a feeling for what’s happening in the area, that’s what the minutes are for. We don’t know who’s reading these things – she’s got a counter but she doesn’t know who the people are. She knows how many hits we get, and since there’s about a dozen of us, she reckons that a lot of people who aren’t on the CC are reading the minutes. [not asked] So then you’ve got the information quality, which is entirely up to me. I think, in terms of information, the information I put on is fine. Probably no more than that. For example, I failed to put on the agenda and minutes last month, so that isn’t fine. The problem is that [the secretary] will come up with the agenda almost on the same day, email it to me. He has the same access passwords and he just doesn’t. There is no safety net, so if I. The [last meeting date] was still holidays – I have guests and family to stay, I had to go to [family event]. I guess I should have been more organised but the minutes and agenda didn’t go online and to me that is a serious failure, which is entirely up to me because I did get it 5 minutes in advance. When the minutes were sent to me, which was well in advance, I get 200 emails a day and you know what, I’m going to hang up a bit of washing. So I don’t think I’m exploiting more than about 10% of what a Wordpress website could do for us, because I feel swamped. I’m more or less back online. But for the CC, I deal with planning, I do the website if I can think of something to say and I’m also involved with getting these elections going. So there’s a whole lot of email that people don’t really see, other things that take place. Meetings are easy because you’ve go so many fingers in different pies. It depends what you would call high-‐quality information. I spent 2½ hours last night updating the website. That involved putting on the minutes and agenda for the next meeting, which involved repurposing the whole bloody lot because they keep sending them over as Word files which of course contain a vast amount of redundant information if you do copy and paste. I confess that at times I just do a copy and paste and stick it up. They’ve saved the Word files as HTML? No. If you get a .doc file over and you just take the text into Joomla, it carries over a huge amount of invisible formatting which of course then goes into your system and the CMS looks at and goes ‘hmmm, whatever’ and it just outputs terribly. The information is there and correct but in terms of how it physically looks, it offends my eye dramatically. Purely because I don’t have time to go into every bloody document we get, strip it out, repurpose it and then put it back. Much as I would like to encourage people to actually input the minutes and give me them as just plain text or rich text, it happens once in a blue moon. But that said, the quality of the information is that the minutes are good – that is good information. We put up things like, yesterday I spent ages chugging through a traffic order which came from the Council. By the time I’d found anything that was relevant to our particular area and I really seriously hate the Council for their inability to put out things in a consistent format. The PDF that was put out was totally unsearchable, would not copy and paste into a text editor, would not do anything, I couldn’t crack it open with any of my tools, then thank you Google Docs because once I got it there I was at least able to grab the text. So that’s good information if you live in [relevant road]. There was information from the NP on Septemberfest, which is timely. You can only put up what you’re actually getting, so we try to put it up in time. The secretary has a Google account with a calendar and will put events on it, which the website can wonder across, scrape off and throw up on the front page. The information you put on – what information are you putting into FB? Mostly information on the next meeting. We share information from other local organisations if they have AGMs, meetings or we put information about events happening in the area. Right now with the elections I think I haven’t updated it for a week as I’ve been really busy, but just general life in [this CC area]. Sometimes we reach other areas if it’s something that is common for us as well. [not asked] [not asked] [NA] Does your CCOP have high system and service qualities? [not asked] Yes. You can meet a lot of techie people who will say ‘oh that’s rubbish’ and I can say ‘well, what you’re offering isn’t as good. You’re offering lots of bits and pieces which are very expensive and we’re relying on you.’ They don’t have the ability to look into things and change them while I can look at something and see it’s wrong and change it right now, but they’ll just put up whatever you send them. It’s like dealing with a machine – whatever you put into the machine comes out the same the other end. [It never goes down.] It seems to [have good system quality] – she seems to take seconds to do it. I would say so. The original MyEdinburgh one was distinctly clunky. The two BT systems have been professional ones. Both of them had minor early problems, certainly lack of documentation but that’s par



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for the course with almost any computer system. But now I would say it’s very stable and I certainly haven’t needed to go onto their help line in the last couple of years. Possibly I’m not pushing the boundaries of it but I’m content with what I’ve got. As far as the end-‐users are concerned – the people in the community – I’ve not had any complaints from them for things within the system. I think [Wordpress] provides a perfect system. I think if you ever try and work out, if you press the help button you immediately want to slash your wrists. You enter into some weird system with forums and I have yet to find a Wordpress question asked online… No, I’ve never not been able to access it. The way I use it is probably not very sophisticated but in my little pedestrian website way I’ve always got it to work. Yes, somebody should be able to step in. It’s so easy to put information up but you’ve got to remember that sadly I probably represent the younger set in the CC and when it comes to ‘magic is technology that is beyond peoples’ understanding’, a lot of them look at it and it’s still magic how a digital watch works. They’re quite happy with a mobile phone because of the utility it gives them – they will invest the time and effort. But to actually get them to put the information on themselves, vis-‐à-‐vis the minutes which is the obvious one, there is I suspect not the driver because there’s a sense that I will always do it. People learn how to work mobile phones because it works for them. I confess I don’t have a mobile phone. When I do have need for a mobile phone, my daughter gives me her old one. When I try to text her, I get garbage every time because it’s got some sort of auto-‐spell thing. Do I actually care? No, because I do not want a mobile bloody phone, therefore I’m not going to learn. I get the feeling from my fellow members that there is a certain amount of ‘I don’t need to do this-‐because [webmaster] will do it’. But the system quality is there in the sense that they could do it. Service quality is things like ‘would the server go down?’ We have a little digital canary that puts a flag up. It’s actually rented space on a shared server – we don’t have our own server. In terms of service quality, does FB ever go down, stop working? I haven’t had that case but it probably does if you have problems. I don’t put things on. What I would say is that it’s clunky, it’s slowing down, it doesn’t work on mobiles very well. It’s pretty amateurish. It’s not brilliant… It doesn’t go wrong as such, but it’s got various add-‐ons like tabs and things which sometimes show up on your mobile phone and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you can’t get to where you want to go if you’re logged on from a mobile phone. [not asked] [NA] Is your CCOP useful to -‐ CCllrs -‐ Citizens? How much is it used? I think the average citizen couldn’t give a damn. The average citizen barely knows the CC exists. [it is useful to citizens, CCllrs] and also the Councillors, MPs, MSPs that we contact. They‘re having a regular look at the website now. That’s a big question. [fellow CCllrs] should be – there’s a lot of good information there. If [local citizens] read it I think they would find a lot of interest, but what I would like to do is – we get emails sent to us all the time, say from NPs, and a lot of it’s to do with grants for community groups, not just CCs but for anyone. It’s fantastic information – you’ve got to give the money to somebody and I just wish there was some way we could capture all that information and have it on our website. It’s just availability of CC information to our entire catchment area. Yes, if only they would use it I would be delighted. Maybe not everyone but if there were two other people with access to it, I wasn’t always where the buck stops. What I mean is, if you post stuff there do other CCllrs read it? The 25 subscribers or whatever I’ve got presumably take a look and they tend to be people who are not swamped with email, so to them it’s interesting. I would imagine so, in the sense that I know it’s my first port of call. I have all the stuff on my computer or network-‐attached storage but do I actually go there and look for it? No – I can search the website because the search facility will zip through the whole set of minutes and say we did something on this. Do you think other Cllrs do that? I have no idea – I will ask them! Do you think that citizens do that sort of thing – that they get information from it? From the time I actually had the survey running – it was quite clever because it identified when you were about to leave the website and at that point it would say ‘hi, I know you’ve been, could you just answer a couple of questions before you go?’ So it’s doing it after they’ve got what they wanted? Yeah, which is the only way to do a survey on a website! Yes, it did have a utility but as I say the numbers really weren’t high enough for you to be able to say this is statistically relevant. But from the people who


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responded it seemed to be more so than no, let’s put it that way. Do your other CCllrs… Members Do they make use of the Facebook page? Not much. A few of them like the page and I’m sure they see the updates. If they really need it, I send a lot of e-‐mails as well. I’m not sure how useful they have found it. But there’s a real fear about that. They were very suspicious of the FB page when that was set up, really not keen on that. Twitter they don’t really use. The Twitter feed ran for well over a year before they found out it existed. It was the previous Secretary who set it up. All it really was was retweeting local events. We followed local people and retweeted it. Pretty much all it was used for – that, our next meeting and here’s the draft minutes, nothing really. And the website was just about getting information out? It really is just ‘here are our minutes; our next meeting is then’. There has been increasing pressure on the CC in many ways to communicate more and they have done more. They have set up the website, accepted the FB page, accepted the Twitter feed but it’s one way – we’ve done this, we’re doing that. They’re not asking for people’s opinions. They don’t trust it as a two-‐way communication. It’s one-‐way, definitely. [not asked] [NA] What is your CCOP’s target audience? [not asked] The local community. The people who are not using the CC at the moment. All sorts of people look at the minutes. Some of the minutes have been very detailed. I’m sure journalists look at them, because it will give them a flavour of what local people are talking about, what the issues are, what we put on the agendas and things like that. So if they want to get a feeling for what’s happening in the area, that’s what the minutes are for. We don’t know who’s reading these things – she’s got a counter but she doesn’t know who the people are. She knows how many hits we get, and since there’s about a dozen of us, she reckons that a lot of people who aren’t on the CC are reading the minutes. I get a feeling it’s probably councillors and journalists and maybe officials from the Council who read all this stuff. I’d be interested to know if it was actually the residents we’re supposed to represent. So it’s not just for local citizens but is trying to reach out to the rest of the world? Yes, and it’s an excellent way of getting out notices of meetings, agendas, minutes and any other documents. On thing I do is whatever format I get documents, I turn them into PDF files for the website because I’ve been finding increasingly, even with email-‐type communications between CC members, they’re having fun between their different versions of Word and OpenOffice and DOC files and DOCX files and different file formats. So I say ‘right, we’ll go for PDF’. Anyone that wants to tap into it can tap into it. Everyone in [this CC area]. The key exercise is to have people on the CC who are representative of the community, and of course at the moment it’s just a few random people who have turned up and are happy to make a noise. We haven’t achieved a democratic ideal of there having to be an election to decide who is on this CC. Now people say ‘I don’t want to be on the CC because it’s not really fair, is it?’ and I say ‘yeah but if there were more of you…!’ So it’s a chicken-‐and-‐egg to get this democratic ideal. Anyone resident in the local area, any member of the public. Another possibility that other people have mentioned is that it’s also to show Edinburgh Council and your local MSPs and whatever that you’re doing things. Is that part of the plan as well? To be blunt, no. I can see why people might adopt that approach but that would imply a somewhat infantile approach to the website. As I see it, the website is for the community – if you’re actually insecure enough to show Edinburgh Council you’re doing something and the MSPs you’re doing something then that implies (1) that the Council and MSPs are slightly sad individuals that they need to be shown and wouldn’t assume. There’s a wonderful Philip K Dick quote: ‘any government or institution that assumes the worst of its customers/citizens has automatically lost the right to govern because they do not trust the populace’. Basically, if the government doesn’t trust you, then they shouldn’t be the bloody government. The prime purpose of the website is to inform the public. MSPs should be in the loop – they get all the information anyway. Edinburgh Council is the source of a lot of the information anyway. There is a certain amount of territory-‐defending as far as websites go. I don’t know if you’re going to get round to that in a later question, say around NPs and CCs. People who want to be involved or who care about their area. No, we didn’t think about that to be honest. I would expect more young people being on social media, but I think we have older people on FB as well. Who they are aimed to get? I don’t think there is any real thought of that behind the website. With the FB page, it was really just the fact that there had been a sort of explosion of [this area]-‐related FB pages. Again, I don’t know how widespread that actually covers the community, but there was a lot of them.



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There was all this going on and it was a route to get into that. There has been a repeated thing about exclusion, digital exclusion – not everyone is on FB. That is used as a reason not to consult. I say we could consult people, we could do a poll but ‘not everyone is on the internet’ – so don’t consult at all. How much that is a genuine concern and how much it is that we can’t consult everybody so let’s consult nobody, which is something of a recurring theme as well. People in the surrounding area. Any residents. You don’t try to target your MPs, MSPs or city councillors? They probably get separate emails. [NA] Is your CCOP simple and easy to use? [not asked], although 1a did explain how easy was to copy and paste an existing part and then edit it to make a new post [not asked] [not asked] I’m basically quite happy with the size and form – but I would be, having created it. I think [Wordpress] provides a perfect system. [not asked] I think FB is quite easy. Maybe because I have my private account before so I could learn how it works but still we could reach more people. I’m not sure there is a way to invite random people living in the area to like us. You said that you find FB reasonably easy to use? Yes. Much easier than if you were trying to do a full on website for yourself? Oh yes. I have no knowledge about website design. What I would say is that it’s clunky, it’s slowing down, it doesn’t work on mobiles very well. It’s pretty amateurish. It’s not brilliant. [not asked] [NA] Is your CCOP attractively designed? [not asked] I try to make it more of a newspaper-‐style design. I was looking at quite a few other CC websites and they’re just lists. I wanted a newspaper look that’s a bit more attractive and maybe draws people in to read it. I would redesign it. Actually, [secretary] asks us constantly for feedback, and I have said that I think the meetings should be the most prominent thing – you should get to the website and it should tell you when the meeting is. And then also information about who are we and what [our area] is. That’s what I want to know – whenever I go to a website, I want to know who on earth these people are. I want to see names and maybe a wee something about them, at least their organisation. I don’t like the way she’s got all her buttons. I used to be a graphic designer so I have a visual sense. That’s what’s important to me – the hierarchy of titles should pope out at you more but again I don’t want to offend her. But she does ask us what content we want put on, and do we want anything changed. I think that the rest of the CCllrs are disengaged from the process. [not asked] Skills gained from [career thread] are used in what I do for the website. [5 mentions design software experiences.] That’s where fiddling around with websites is quite fun. [not asked] [not asked because FB has a standard format] [not asked] [not asked] [NA] Do you have LA support with your online efforts? We got a grant to pay for the guy who helped to set it up. And they run the occasional social media course. We get [an administration] grant every year so we may as well spend it on something… I haven’t really looked. I’ve only looked at the grants side but I’m not aware of anything else. I can go to our go-‐to person on the Council. I should tap into her more often. We get a grant of about £800 per year and that’s to cover us for admin, the website, everything else… I’ve often asked the Edinburgh CCLO if there’s any training available. I’d like to know how to put a website together and update things, who I can edit it. There was a time but I wasn’t able to go to it – something


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else came up and I couldn’t go. [See 4’s answers about MyEdinburgh foundation for this CCOP.] No, but I think if I asked for it I could have. [not asked] We get the annual grant but that’s for the CC. You don’t really need money for FB. Probably if we wanted a paid website we would need money to pay for the domain. They were not asked. When I’ve spoken to this girl [name given], she’s been keen. There are certainly people in the Council who are keen to help as they can. The idea of building capacity for consultation – if we try to consult from where we stand, it’s a standing start because people aren’t used to us consulting, we’re not used to consulting. From the Council’s point of view, if you want help with consultation or you need resources or there is something that can make it easier for you to build capacity so that it’s easier in the future, there are people and the Council’s willing to help with that but we have not really approached them. [not asked] [NA] How familiar were you and your CC with online? Mine is very far in the past because fairly early in my career I was a programmer so that got me into computing. It wasn’t the only thing I did but that got me into computing in the days of punched cards and paper tape. So I’ve always had an interest. (to I1b) You said you had a background in computing. I’d done stuff at work – I was helping out there but it was an outside agent who came into to do the website. And your CC – before you just went in and did it, did they have any familiarity with online? No [not asked] I started off life 40-‐50 years ago as a machine code programmer, so using HTML and other languages doesn’t worry me [not asked] Now our CC would have signed off a truly excrescent and unuseful website because they don’t know any better. Again that sounds terribly snobbish and terribly arrogant but the truth is you do not let children play with bullets for a damn good reason and you should not let half the public play with websites for the same reason. [not asked] [not asked but see answer to Q3] [not asked] [NA] Where do you and your CC fit in Feeney’s archetypes? [not asked] So they’re digital immigrants – they’re not born to it but they’re living that way? We’ve only got [name] who is rather old who isn’t online. I think they’re immigrants. One or two of them are refugees but most people are reasonably techie – they can operate email. Quite a few of them have Twitter and FB. There is no way that you can speak of an average CC member because I feel it would cover than entire spectrum. A retired city councillor has played an active part in our CC for 10 years now and he is proud of the fact that he has nothing – he’s got a notebook and a pencil and he’s got not mobile phone, he’s got no computer in any way, shape or form. At the other end of the spectrum you’ll see folks coming along and they will set up – one of our members, he’s got his iPad in front of him. If there’s a question asked in the meeting, he will immediately say ‘so and so will attend to that’, type and send an email there and then. I don’t think I can honestly answer that. I guess as far as I’m concerned, I might be in the digital native area. There were a number of years where I was at what I might call the sharp end of computer technology. [not asked] I’m too old for this! I do prefer hard copy. One thing that drives me insane is online manuals, online minutes, anything like that. There is nothing to beat a sheet of A4 to read the information from. I keep saying to people who phone us up ‘look, put your proposition on a single sheet of A4 and I’ll read it. If it takes more than that, your arse is in a sling’. The number of people who don’t get that because they cannot focus down what they’re proposing to a single sheet of A4, from which I might subsequently ask questions – no-‐one’s saying it has to have everything in there, just the outline of the germ. And similarly, I like hard copy minutes. Minutes online drive me distracted. So in that sense I’m a digital refugee possibly. Am I an immigrant? Well I willingly use the technology – yeah I would say I’m somewhere between the native and the addict, depending on the technology. Do I have a mobile phone? No. Do I use Twitter and Facebook?



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No, I have no desire to use those technologies. Am I aware of social media? Absolutely. I read screeds on social media – I can give you social media until it’s coming out of your arse but I don’t personally do social media because it’s like pregnancy – you can’t be partly pregnant. If you’ve got to do social media, you’ve got to do it properly. If you do it wrong, you are in deep doo-‐doo. That’s my concern with CCs. Twitter accounts are really, it wasn’t going to go the way it should go. I think it was our choice to use it but we need it to function. We are not addicts, we are probably immigrants. [not asked] [not asked] [NA]

RQ1a: What benefits and costs of being online do CCs that are planning to go online expect? These questions are only relevant to interview 10. 26. 10a 27. 10a 28. 10a 29. 10b R 10a 30. 10 31. R

Do you expect it to reduce costs? We have done, because we’ve sent it out by email for a number of years now. Do you expect it to increase your effectiveness/efficiency? Difficult to say. Unless someone contacts us, we’re going to be in blissful ignorance, aren’t we? Do you expect it to increase your visibility? I would think so because obviously our adverts would be showing the web address. Do you expect it to increase trust (in the CC by citizens)? I would hope we have the trust anyway. That’s about you as people? I mean we’re residents [here], we’re concerned about the area just like anyone else is. In fact you’ve got to be within the area. Do you expect it to build the CC’s independence? [not asked]

Do you expect it to facilitate citizen convenience? So you’re committed to this area. And I think you’ve already said that you expect it to make things more convenient for your citizens, in that they can look things up online. 10a Yes 32. How familiar are you/your CC with online? 10a Everyone’s connected up on email – all our communications are done by email and occasionally by phone. 10a We had two members who were not on email but that’s reduced to one.

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What were your initial thoughts about benefits and costs? How do you now perceive them? [not answered] Whereas with a company we know exactly what we’re paying each month, we can do any amount of updates, we can put up any amount of pages, any amount of pictures, issues, backdate things, save things online so that the pages don’t have to appear – they can disappear but all the information’s still there. It just gives us a nice presence. So the cost was important, the accessibility was important, as was the control. Well [name] became the secretary probably 10 years ago. That’s why I think the website is at least a decade old. But she talked about how she received wodges of paper from the previous secretary, which was in a completely shambolic state, and she has managed to maintain a much better organisation of information. What I understand from [secretary] is that she has some arrangement with a guy called [name] who hosts it, or we get space. So the costs were basically time and the benefits were making the CC more connected? It’s just availability of CC information to our entire catchment area.


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You’ve said the obstacles you’ve had were basically having to rebuild the site every now and then. That’s a sort of mixed blessing. Yes, it’s a distinct nuisance at the time but it does give you and opportunity to do a little bit of rethinking and remodelling… I’ve got a separate domain name which is just [CC area name].org, so that keeps it really simple for people. From that, I just seamlessly link into whatever the current website name is, which means that each time I’ve been forced to change onto a different back system the address has stayed constant. [not answered – interviewee wasn’t involved in setup] [not asked] And what benefits did you think it would bring? The social media? Yes. I thought it would attract a few new members who were not aware about the CC in the area. Mostly, attention – not attention… Communication? Communication as well, yes, and just for people to be aware of our existence. And has that come true? Yes, in the last few months, we’ve got four new people, who have links to our FB or someone told them or they had seen something on FB. So they’re coming to the meetings now? Yes. That was a concern, certainly. There’s a theme that comes up that as CCllrs, there’s all this that’s expected of us. We get deluged with consultations and have to do this, have to do that. We don’t get support from the Council. We don’t get help. The idea of taking on the additional responsibility of running a website and a FB page is all too much. So there’s a recurring theme that we don’t have enough support. A lot of them aren’t terribly interested. Yes. My idea was that we could do that and we could also link to local events, so you could actually have a stream that would be genuinely useful. It wouldn’t be too much work because you are not generating the content – the content comes to you. You’re being a mouthpiece? Conduit. And then they were always nervous, because it was a blog type format, they were worried about comments. Well, we can switch comments off, we don’t have to use that but if you had something that was turnover, so people looked at it regularly then there is that opportunity if you want to put in surveys or ask people or polls. They were not remotely interested. They didn’t want to know. They wanted the static. Well, one of the things – I think with the website we didn’t think about too many security issues or whatever but in thinking about possibly setting up Facebook, we were a bit wary about that because we knew, for example, that [another Edinburgh CC] had tried that and had had to shut it down when they were overtaken by a bunch of teenagers. [NA] Did you expect it to reduce costs? Did this occur? [not answered] Basically for £20 a month we can have a decent website and a FB page. Generally it’s administered for you and it takes all the hassle away for you. If there’s a grant available for that. We’ve discussed getting leaflet droppers in. We’d pay £1000 for so many leaflets but we can avoid all that if we get a decent email. If you get a subject that’s right on people’s tongues it’s very quick to get the information out. [could not answer because she was not involved in setup] [not asked] [not answered – interviewee wasn’t involved in setup] To be honest, our CC is in a huge surfeit of money – unlike most CCs – because we get a grant and I have a happy habit of just paying for things. I think the CC owes me something like £600 that I just haven’t bothered to claim for. In terms of communication costs, the website is neither here nor there. It costs nothing to run – my company just pays for it. It just sits in spare space on our server. Not really, no. There are still costs when we use things other than social media, more the traditional way, letters etc. We didn’t communicate, so it wasn’t an issue [laughter]. If you look at the history, they had pages on the old website going back to 2006 and it was ‘we’re the CC, the Chairman, these are the members’ and the minutes always went up, so not brilliant but the basics – contact us here. They did a consultation in 2005 which was a questionnaire in the library. Something like 90 people filled it in. Probably a quarter of that was CCllrs because they knew it was in the library. From 2005 there was no attempt at consultation on anything until… [not asked]


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[NA] Did you expect it to increase your effectiveness/efficiency? Did this occur? [not asked] We didn’t communicate before… the whole point of the website and [our] online effort is to increase visibility and coverage … and get some interaction [not asked] There’s a strapline which says that all minutes are subject to ratification. Understood. And that enables you get things out straight away? Obviously, the person that’s taking the minutes circulates them within the members of the CC for feedback or correction. It’s very rare that we have any comments arising. [not answered – interviewee wasn’t involved in setup] [not asked] Yes, and we were campaigning, which I think was for the last 12 months, or more, maybe two years. Now we are campaigning for a new bus stop because there are buses going near the new [above-‐mentioned project]. For people who cannot cross or go on the stairs they can take a bus and then it will stop somewhere near but of course the Council never thought about that. They haven’t planned a bus stop there so, again, you have to fight. Does the FB help with that? I’m not sure. We put some information up but I don’t have time do that a lot. If there was an important meeting, like recently the meeting about the public transport access, we put information up saying ‘come along to this meeting, it’s important for us’. I don’t know how much it helps. You don’t get much feedback. You can see how many people saw your post but you don’t know how many people saw it on FB or maybe heard from their neighbour. I think with the online, we have it so it’s ‘oh look, we have a website, oh we have a FB page, oh we have a Twitter account’ – but they’re not remotely interested in those three things, or significant numbers of them are not interested in those three things. I think the motivation was more about being dragged kicking and screaming because they couldn’t not, they were getting too much grief. They’re not terribly interested in it. [not asked] [NA] Did you expect it to increase your visibility? Did this occur? I think the average citizen couldn’t give a damn. The average citizen barely knows the CC exists. [use of hosted site is] also about being a bit more individual, not a big conglomerate – there’s loads of CCs and I think you lose a little bit of individualism and ‘this is who we are’. We get a grant every year so we may as well spend it on something. [not asked] [not asked] But it’s very difficult to get people to make the commitment, and personally I have just suggested something to the NP which I think they’ll take up: that if the CC had influence in budgets, we’d have a complete change. The way I see it, because I also sit on the NP funding panel, which is £100,000 per year from Edinburgh Council which can be spent on neighbourhoods. I sit on this because I’m the chair of [health-‐related forum]. I was shocked at how arbitrarily this budget gets spent and what the decision-‐ making process is. Everyone’s aware of this and everyone wants to improve it, so it’s not that the NP is trying to pull a fast one. They haven’t got enough citizen input? No, because what happens is that some random person says ‘oh, we’ve got £50,000. Now what can we do with this? Oh, there’s a neighbourhood which doesn’t look very good – let’s give them some new whatever’. £50,000 spent. Without thinking strategically? And they say ‘we’ve done a consultation process’ but once you’ve decided that you’re going to do somewhere and send out 50 letters saying ‘would you like new tarmac?’ or whatever, the likelihood is that people say ‘yeah we would like new tarmac’ and so it’s just an arbitrary and random method that I can’t really get my head around. We all know it should be slightly different but the processes haven’t really been decided. So what I’ve said is we need to build into the CC meeting, on the agenda, the question is asked ‘NP budget – has anyone got any suggestions as to how this is spent?’. This gets minuted properly – I can think of 10 things that I’d like money spent on – then that goes forward so you’ve got 50 potential projects from which you choose 10. So it’s actually coming from the community? So the CC is forced to say ‘is there anything you think needs improving?’. You give them financial responsibility and there’ll be more people. Because if they know that if all they have to do is turn up and hold their hand up and say ‘I’d like my road tarmacked’ or whatever.


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And what you’d do is have, because it’s coming from the CC which is the statutory representative body, then it’s coming into the NP with democratic legitimacy? Yes, exactly, rather than the housing officer saying ‘these people need X, Y and Z’. [not asked] Also, there were no signs of other people. Residents were saying that ‘oh, they haven’t heard about such-‐ and-‐such a thing’ like events or people were meeting on something. So it was a way of making the CC more visible and spreading information? Yes. Actually, we started a newsletter, paper copies, and then once I think I got into FB myself privately, then I joined the CC. Now I think businesses wouldn’t exist without it – it is something really essential. Yes. There used to be this community website but basically everything seems to have shifted to FB. Everything is happening on FB, which is not ideal but it does have reach. So I think there are fresh faces who want to be on the CC, and it’s partly the effect of technology because five years ago people didn’t know the CC existed. If the CC had wanted to consult people, how do you do it? It’s not that easy. Now, I think there’s more of an expectation that we’re all online so what do you mean when you haven’t consulted? Five years ago people probably didn’t know the CC existed and now they do. It’s partly driven by the issues as well but there’s more of an expectation that if you’re going to represent the community you have to interact with it, to communicate more. It might deflect criticism but for a long time it was [argued that] we should wait and see the effectiveness of the new display area in the library. It’s a shelf unit with a poster. Did you expect the website to increase the CC’s visibility? Yes [NA] Did you expect it to increase trust (in the CC by citizens?) Did this occur? I think the average citizen couldn’t give a damn. The average citizen barely knows the CC exists. [not asked] No idea – I’d love to know. I know that I read other CC websites from time to time, and I find that useful. Then I know about CCs and I know about their websites. [not asked] [not asked] [not asked] Have you asked any citizens what they think of your FB presence? No, we haven’t. So, you can’t tell whether or not it helps them trust you more? No, I don’t know. It might deflect criticism but for a long time it was [argued that] we should wait and see the effectiveness of the new display area in the library. It’s a shelf unit with a poster. I don’t know about the trust bit but certainly to increase the profile – things that we’ve done are all there. [9b gives examples, including planning issues.] But, as [9a] says, not as many people go there as we’d like. [NA] Did you expect it to build the CC’s independence? Did this occur? [not asked] [it is useful to citizens, CCllrs] and also the Councillors, MPs, MSPs that we contact. They‘re having a regular look at the website now. [not asked] I think you know there’s a hierarchy there of CCs and NPs and city councils so I would say that the NPs are the ones that have problems with technology and keeping websites up to date. I have to say I’m a bit disappointed in how few people have subscribed to the blog and I think that’s mainly because they don’t understand that it is just a transfer of information. They’re just a bit afraid of subscribing – they think bad things will happen. Is that what you mean? What I’m thinking of is that by being online, the CC are saying ‘here, we’re us, we’re different, we’re not Edinburgh Council’ The problem is it’s still too small to have any impact. I was hoping that the other members would get this and say to their neighbours ‘please subscribe’ because if we had 150 people subscribing, then you get more democratic legitimacy – it makes a bit more sense because 25 people who I speak to anyway, and it can be argued that because I manage the whole thing that they’re just agreeing with what I’m saying, so I think the legitimacy and the independence only come from more people saying their say and commenting and coming back. So once there is a discussion or a dialogue… So it has potential but it’s not reached it yet? Yes. [not asked]



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I think recently we are like that. There’s a lot of things happening in the area. I don’t know if you’ve heard about the new project [name given]? They built it recently and there are a lot of campaigns, as there is no wheelchair and buggy access to the place. [not asked] No, I don’t think we did and I don’t think it would be a good thing. We have our arguments with Edinburgh City Council but we want to work with them. If they make sensible decisions, we’ll applaud them. It’s our job to say ‘that’s good in our area or it’s not good in our area’ and that’s what we try to do. [9b describes how the CC’s work on local history is presented on the website.] There’s still information that comes in – we get emails from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, America looking for relatives. [NA] Did you expect it to facilitate citizen convenience? Did this occur? [not asked] If you get a subject that’s right on people’s tongues it’s very quick to get the information out. [not asked] Anyone that wants to tap into it can tap into it. I would say that peoples’ interest in CCs goes in waves, depending on whether there are any contentious issues. We’ve got a core of maybe 20-‐odd people that will come to our CC meeting because they go to CC meetings but there could be, on the [big development] scenario I think about 50 people came to the meeting where there was concern about the redesignation of the biodiversity of the area. It was about 100 people when it came to the formal consultation on it, so numbers can vary considerably. People seem to have many pressures on their time but unless there is something that they directly want to ask about or speak about they don’t bother coming out of a night. What I’m thinking of is that by being online, the CC are saying ‘here, we’re us, we’re different, we’re not Edinburgh Council’ The problem is it’s still too small to have any impact. I was hoping that the other members would get this and say to their neighbours ‘please subscribe’ because if we had 150 people subscribing, then you get more democratic legitimacy – it makes a bit more sense because 25 people who I speak to anyway, and it can be argued that because I manage the whole thing that they’re just agreeing with what I’m saying, so I think the legitimacy and the independence only come from more people saying their say and commenting and coming back. So once there is a discussion or a dialogue… So it has potential but it’s not reached it yet? Yes. [not asked] So we’ve had to fight with the Council. The Council wanted to build a ramp but the residents didn’t want to have a ramp because it’s a new building, they spent £12million on that building, they ought to have made proper access. It should have been done at the start, in my enraged opinion. Yes, and we were campaigning, which I think was for the last 12 months, or more, maybe two years. Now we are campaigning for a new bus stop because there are buses going near the new [above-‐mentioned project]. For people who cannot cross or go on the stairs they can take a bus and then it will stop somewhere near but of course the Council never thought about that. They haven’t planned a bus stop there so, again, you have to fight. Yes. My idea was that we could do that and we could also link to local events, so you could actually have a stream that would be genuinely useful. It wouldn’t be too much work because you are not generating the content – the content comes to you. [not asked] [NA] How do you measure the success of your CCOP? For example, have you asked users? It’s probably hard to know. I don’t actually monitor the usage. I know I could do – with the old one we had Google Analytics but I haven’t got it in this one and I’m not sure I know how to get it. [service provider provides analytics] And [secretary’s] … keeps telling us about the number of hits we get. A lot of people visit our website… I don’t think [the site does all it could], but I don’t want to offend [secretary]. There’s a site-‐meter on it. I just printed that off this morning. I’ve haven’t actually reset the site-‐meter since the …, so this is cumulative over 3 years but you can drill down into this by ever so many different routes. So this is just top level and it then goes on. I’m actually amazed – there are people down in England who look at it, people in Canada, people in Australia, so it’s used not just by the community but people who are maybe researching ancestors or are interested in [local historical feature] or whatever. I don’t know what brings them in – the system doesn’t tell me that but it certainly tells me there are people worldwide that are dipping into it from time to time.


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Does the system tell you the individual pages that they visit? Yes – you know where they’ve come in and you know where they’ve exited. It’s not on this one but it’s on the actual BT system, if you go in as an administrator, you know how many hits that your pages have had Do you use that information to redesign things? No but it’s gratifying. I know what I wanted to achieve and I feel I’ve achieved it but it might be that people on the other side have got a different view of things. No-‐one’s complained to me about anything. [see 5’s answer to Q12] [see 6’s answer to Q12] Have you asked any citizens what they think of your FB presence? No, we haven’t. The website doesn’t get a huge amount of traffic. I get sent the analytics. I don’t know how it compares to others but it doesn’t seem particularly big. Very short lived visits, as well. It doesn’t generate much and you can’t interact with it. It doesn’t even have an e-‐mail address: it has one of these contact submission forms so you have to go through that route. The FB page sometimes gets a decent reach. I wrote the FB page. None of the rest of them have even worked out how to like it, so I can’t make them admins, but I’m only allowed to do neutral things. It’s a ‘next meeting on Monday, here are the minutes from the last meeting’, so it’s sporadic, you’re talking one or two posts a month. No, we haven’t, so maybe that’s something we’ll add in to the next thing we do. I think it’s essential that you have something like that and the people who do look at it, shall we say, tell us it’s a good site. [NA] Does your CCOP reduce or increase your communication costs? [not asked] We didn’t communicate before. [not asked] [not asked] [not asked] To be honest, our CC is in a huge surfeit of money – unlike most CCs – because we get a grant and I have a happy habit of just paying for things. I think the CC owes me something like £600 that I just haven’t bothered to claim for. In terms of communication costs, the website is neither here nor there. It costs nothing to run – my company just pays for it. It just sits in spare space on our server. Not really, no. There are still costs when we use things other than social media, more the traditional way, letters etc. We didn’t communicate, so it wasn’t an issue [laughter]. If you look at the history, they had pages on the old website going back to 2006 and it was ‘we’re the CC, the Chairman, these are the members’ and the minutes always went up, so not brilliant but the basics – contact us here. They did a consultation in 2005 which was a questionnaire in the library. Something like 90 people filled it in. Probably a quarter of that was CCllrs because they knew it was in the library. From 2005 there was no attempt at consultation on anything until… No, because you still need to maintain a website. You’ve got to pay for the hosting and we knew we’d have to improve it as well as time goes by, so no. I saw it as one of the ways – you can’t just do one communication method. You have to do lots. You know these are very handy. [9b shows small flyer about local events.] We put them in shops, which tells them either what they’ve missed or what’s coming up. [NA] Does your CCOP increase the CC’s effectiveness/efficiency? [not asked] We didn’t communicate before. [not asked] [not asked] [not asked] [not asked] I’m not sure. We put some information up but I don’t have time do that a lot. If there was an important meeting, like recently the meeting about the public transport access, we put information up saying ‘come along to this meeting, it’s important for us’. I don’t know how much it helps. You don’t get much feedback. You can see how many people saw your post but you don’t know how many people saw it on FB or maybe heard from their neighbour. [not asked] [not asked] [NA]



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Was the selection of type (e.g. website, twitter account, forum) influenced by number of users, peers or family? [not asked] [not asked] [not asked] [not asked] I am in fact able, just about, to do a Wordpress set up from scratch. But [because] it was already there I’ve been tweeting for quite a long time and it’s quick and I can see how it works, so it was really a no-‐ brainer to just set it up. Of all the things that you do on a computer, Twitter is just ‘whoosh – done!’ [not asked] That was my decision, because when I joined about two and a half years ago, there were just seven members and we were needing new people… With the website, there was a long, on-‐going [period when] people were saying we should have a website or we should at least use the webpages we had got. I think they set up a website because they had to, because they kept on getting grief. They’re not terribly interested in the website which is why it is the way it is. With the FB page, I set it up without authorisation which caused… [laughter] [not asked] [NA] Was your CCOP developed in stages? [actual answer redacted at 1a’s request] Several iterations, from ‘too useless to words’ to a version that is easy for 1a to maintain [No] It’s only 6 months old [not asked] I was a member of the CC and felt that the CC were not very good at communicating, so I suggested that I set up a website for the CC. But totally coincidentally, this tied in with an initiative by Edinburgh Council to set up something called MyEdinburgh, not MyEdinburgh which has resurfaced in the last year or two, but an early MyEdinburgh which was to give community groups access to a menu-‐driven website creation tool. I was a founder-‐member of that and did about 6 months of debugging a ghastly tool to get it into a semi-‐ useable state. So things came together: I felt that the CC was missing a trick in not being online and the city council at the same time felt the same for CCs generally and other community organisations. So that system lasted I think a couple of years and then the funding ran out but it was taken over by BT with a community fund as a website creation tool. Unfortunately, another 3 years later BT’s funding ran out– or the software house started asking for double the fees – I don’t know precisely – so BT ditched that system and there was panic mode all round for quite a few months until BT actually came up with an alternative package. I have always wanted to actually stay on the packaged route, on the basis that I started off life 40-‐ 50 years ago as a machine code programmer, so using HTML and other languages doesn’t worry me but I felt it was important for a CC website that it was just a menu-‐driven thing that someone else non-‐technical could pick up and set up by cut and paste from Word or whatever, so I want to stick with the BT route. There were a couple of transitions where it was necessary to rebuild the system but the most recent one has been around now for 3 years and I’m basically quite happy the size and form – but I would be, having created it. [not asked] I ended up deciding on the Mambo system as possibly the friendliest on the back end and front end in terms of it being able to be carried on and we’ve basically stuck with the Joomla system through all its iterations. We’re actually now 2 generations behind and that’s going to be the next big interesting development task. [first FB, then Twitter] Personally – probably early majority. I use technologies but I’m not excited by them. They come along eventually. In terms of the CC, the CC is slightly odd in that it had a web presence back in 2003 and they got an award which contributed a small sum of money for setting up a community website. So they actually at that point were sort of in the lead, and then for various reasons they turned against it and it just fell into disrepair. They had particular web pages and they just didn’t update them and they were years out of date. They turned their back on it and it’s only just in the last year, maybe, that it’s started. They set up a new website about a year and a half, two years ago and there’s a Twitter feed and there’s a FB page, but they’re all very tentatively used. They’re laggards really. [not asked] [NA]


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How do you decide your CCOP’s design? [not asked] I try to make it more of a newspaper-‐style design. I was looking at quite a few other CC websites and they’re just lists. I wanted a newspaper look that’s a bit more attractive and maybe draws people in to read it. 16, 17-‐yearolds – they’re going to look at a website that’s just lists of documents and information and find it dull and boring. So people won’t go any further unless there’s a specific thing they’re looking for. The area that we’re in has maybe not the best-‐educated people – there’s a low level of education whereas when you go over the road to [neigbouring CC area] they’re used to looking at documents and working that way – and that’s one of the key reasons why I’ve got the photographs instead of just info, info, info. [not asked] Just out of interest, going back to when the MyEdinburgh system started, because of my long-‐time computer background, I started off by drawing a chart of what I wanted the pages to be, what I wanted the structure and substructures to be. And that highly amused other people creating their websites. They just wanted to create a page, then create another page, then create another page and maybe then think about a link. To some extent, it’s a matter of making the best use of the tools you have. I wanted to keep a limited number of buttons visible at any time. If you click on the local news button or click on the photo gallery button then immediately there’s another expanded series of buttons that comes up. It’s not cluttered. If you go into one of these areas then you do want to see expanded information but the moment you go into some other pages then that just closes up again. Skills gained from [career thread] are used in what I do for the website. [5 mentions design software experiences.] That’s where fiddling around with websites is quite fun. I do it so that I only have to have one look at it. Funnily enough I changed something only yesterday [5 explains this.] I had some graphic training so I’m not perfect but I fancy myself as someone who can make it look… I often find dense text hard to read so I do look at it. That’s probably why my writing skills aren’t so great but I look at it from the point of view of ‘how can I find the information really quickly?’ so you’re only one or two clicks away. Yes, everything that goes onto the site will go on that column. I had a personal debate – things have got to be different or varied – they’ve got to change all the time – but the reality is who the hell wants them on the front page of a website. I do have difficulty with that layout – I’m not absolutely 100% happy but it does have all the bullet points you need – next meeting, a list of meetings, a calendar, a list of everything that’s been put on the website. We’ve got planning and traffic at the top. So it does that – it’s not glitzy but it does give you the core information front and centre. [first FB, then Twitter] It was a member of the CC who did web design as a sort of spare job. He’s done various local websites for various groups. But that was after several years of suggesting that we should have a website. There are a few people who really said, well, if you’re not using the pages you have on the community website, we should have a website and it was fairly reluctant. And there was quite a big debate about the website when they decided they would have a website, but they went for a very static type page. We had a meeting and brought as many people together as we could, talked about what needed to go on it and how that structure would evolve into a website. And then I knew people at [inaudible] who would put the website together for us. So you used community decisions to brief your designer? Yes. [NA] Why do you/don’t you put minutes online? [not asked] [not asked] I think that’s an obligation. We have to have minutes, and they have to be available for public inspection. It’s a public duty – I think it should be recorded. You’ll know as a minutes secretary that you don’t have everything absolutely word-‐for-‐word, you just summarise the key comments made and actions to be taken. I think the reason for putting minutes online is just to have your own legitimacy, so people can see what happened at the meeting. That’s why it’s so good when the minutes are well written rather than ‘we met and we all had a good time’. It’s a public organisation so we need to be accountable for what we say, and that’s funnily enough one of the things people look for. Also, we don’t send them out to anyone, they’re not available anywhere else. [not asked] No. I think I have once or twice used an application called something like Zoho, where you can upload documents. In the past, at the beginning when I started FB, I’ve put [some documents? Minutes?]. [The social media advisor] said that some information shouldn’t be public, although the meetings are public.



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[Conversation about the application] They say that I should control what I’m putting up, although we think they are public so everything in those minutes could be. They always used to do minutes and that sort of persisted, even when the CC stopped updating the pages on the old community website. The draft minutes still got sent out to interested parties so the draft minutes always appeared anyway, even without an official sanction. Probably because it’s traditional, they don’t have a problem with minutes going out online most of the time. They’re put in the libraries, so [online] was another way of making them available, to get to as many people as we could. [NA] Would you welcome standards for CCOPs? I can’t see why not. I can’t imagine that in our case it would lead us into doing things we’ve not already done. That maybe sounds like boasting but I think we have tried to be as outgoing as possible. We do provide phone numbers. In fact we provide phone numbers on our noticeboards as well. We have a post address as well, which is admittedly not very often checked. I think it’s a good idea. Obviously who makes those decisions – there’d be a lot of toing and froing on that but I think fairly basic stuff would be a fairly accessible website not just one that points you to Edinburgh Council website and says ‘if you want to find anything, go there’. That’s a bit of a cop-‐out. Things that are local, relevant issues. Again, it’s involving younger people as well. I’d not object to it in principle. It’s the practical details and the fact that we’re all unpaid volunteers with not much budget and a vast amount of things to be involved in, Well again it comes down to resources. I’m with you with making the members’ names visible. I feel quite strongly about that. I think there’s an issue of privacy whether those individuals want someone like this particular character coming to their doorsteps – privacy and their own security. But certainly if you stand as a CCllr your name should be known and there should be some way of contacting you, even if via the chair or secretary. In terms of making things available to people with disabilities, again that’s a great idea. So great stuff but somebody’s got to pay for it, and we don’t have the resources to do that. I don’t just mean money but somebody who would make things available in [formats appropriate to disabled people]. The City Council already does set some basic standards as to what has to be. It’s common sense – I don’t see why national government should bother get involved with such things. I would be surprised if they did it. I mean, what else can you put on apart from what you’re doing? You could have links to planning applications, you could have clickable links to email each office-‐bearer… That’s what we’re going to do – office-‐bearers are going to have their own emails. At the moment, the contact email comes to me. That is a loaded question. Absolutely not would have to be the answer, from gut feeling. But having said that it depends what you mean by standards. I appreciate the devil is in the details. I mean if you have standards, you will never ever get innovation. Basically, standards are brilliant but they can act as a straightjacket. The sort of standards I’m on about – I’ve looked at a lot of research into municipal websites, which are fairly analogous to what CCs do, except most towns have tax-‐raising powers and CCs don’t. What I’d want to see are, first and foremost, names of all CCllrs and clickable contacts for all the office bearers; minutes; planning;… There’s a planning section on that website. There is – so you’ve got some of that things I’d want to see. It’s interesting – I half agree with you and half disagree. When we first started, there was a lot of discussion about how the CC would be addressed, in that shall we make everyone’s name there, shall we domestic addresses, shall we have phone numbers? Basically it boiled down to us having the secretary’s contact details and that was it. Yes, if you’re a CCllr your name should be available on [the] website. Whether your personal details should be there, well I wanted everyone to have a separate CC [email] address. When I stopped being secretary, I handed over the whole Google account so she had access to everything that had ever been done. Our chairman uses his personal email address, and try as I might – because there is a chair@[CC].com address available, he doesn’t use it. If he’s no longer chairman or he drops dead tomorrow, then we have no way of knowing who he has been in communication with. In that sense, yes, a standard has to be imposed so that you’re able to hand over that vast knowledge body. But for a lot of people in CCs to go down that line, you can see them running a mile and having to get professional assistance. When I set it up, I used Google and the website, and the two run side-‐by-‐side. As long as Google’s free it does allow a huge number of advantages. If Google wasn’t free and we had to develop a back end, it could be done now because Joomla has moved on. I don’t know. I would probably resign from Twitter as I don’t have time to do more things than I do. If they would require some more work, maybe I would keep Facebook. It depends. Yes. They have just revised the new scheme for the CCs in Edinburgh and a fair amount of the changes are



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because of [this CC]. Quite a lot are directly because of the issues that have been raised in this CC area. You should do this, you should do that, be more explicit, report on what you have done, be able to justify what you have done – all those things were already in the guidance but they are trying to beef them up. I’m against top-‐down design. I think you should leave things to the sense of individuals in their area. Usually you find that people on the ground are the ones that make good decisions. It’s the people at the top who make the silly ones, that lead to people getting cross, [inaudible], causing a bit of pressure and stress. I’d say no, let the individuals do what they want. Let the people in the community say ‘no, that doesn’t make sense here.’ Absolutely fair enough. My reason behind that question is that some CCs do absolutely nothing online and I wondered if that would be a way of stimulating them into doing something. I think it would be like saying everyone has to use FB. We don’t have the experience or knowledge. My guess is that CC websites are in that position, but one stage further back so you’d put extra stress on them and they’d walk away from the job. It’s hard enough to get people to [inaudible] anyway, and I would try and make it easier rather than harder. [NA]

Digital divide-‐related questions 48.

Please comment on the demographics of your CC with relation to those who use or contribute to your CCOP. 1a On the whole [our CCllrs] are [retired], yes. Thankfully not all of them but very many are. 2 [not answered] 3 [not asked] 4 a lot of the population in [this CC area] is, shall we say, older generation and a fair number of them struggle with PC technology itself and smartphones are things they definitely want to keep at arm’s length. 5 I would say – of course we haven’t got any really young people. We’ve got some really old ones. We haven’t got anyone who isn’t white. The CCllr demographic is still very limited. 6 Our chair is required, our treasurer is retired, the secretary still works but is due to retire. Most of the other people are retired but some new people joined. I confess that this time last year, I got involved in [something else] which mean that there’s a clash between it and the CC and when push came to shove, I thought about which required more effort to keep going and it was the [something else] so the CC took a back seat. So I’m probably somewhere about the middle. In terms of education I haven’t a clue! 7 How typical? There’s no drug addicts. There is one older [woman?], I think she is in her 50s. There is a guy who came from South Africa. There are a few Scottish people. There is a French guy. When I joined, I think there were 5 or 6 Scottish people. [Some chat involving child] 8 There’s all kinds of sections of the community. It tends to be middle class, older, retired or semi-‐retired… R Is that the [local] people or the CC? 8 The CC. I’m one of the younger people. I’m probably the second youngest person and I’m 42. There’s lots of voices missing. [This area] is quite active because of the groups – [someone is] the Chair of that, the Treasurer of that, the Secretary of that and you’re all mixed up. There’s lots of people who mix together who live in this [particular small part of the CC area]. It’s actually quite a wide geographic area. There’s no representation at all from some areas. That’s not likely to change come the election. It’s still going to be based in this [particular small part of the CC area]. It might be a slightly younger demographic, probably a bit too male but it’s not representative. 9b She’s top-‐notch. She can turn her hand to lot of things. She prints these [flyers]. She goes to lots of meetings on health and is our representative on the neighbourhood where she speaks for us and is the vice-‐chair. If I’m away, she takes over. R And is she about typical in age, gender and income and things like that? 9b Yes – we’re a middle-‐class, over-‐60s SAGA group. 10a I would certainly say that I compare favourably – white, middle-‐aged. 10c I’m probably second-‐youngest person and I’m 49. The next youngest is probably in his early 20s. The gap up from me is probably 5 years. 10a I’m 61. 49. Please comment on the demographics of your CC area. 1a [This CC area] is probably a relatively older area: quite a lot of retired people, quite a lot of widows and widowers. But [local primary school] is one of the most oversubscribed schools in the city. Therefore there are younger people – and there’s another primary school, which admittedly takes from a much wider catchment area. And there’s [another primary school] which is just outside our area and that’s pretty oversubscribed as well. So there are lots of young families but I would think that on average, may a bit older than some areas. R Your area, you’ve said it’s not so well educated. What about things like age – is yours a younger area? 2 I’m not sure what it is now. We’ve got a lot of younger families moving in. In the economic climate at the



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moment, suddenly these houses are affordable and attractive because mortgages are easier to get. We did some research – it’s about 98% white, British-‐born people between the ages of about 40 and 65. [not asked] There’s a big Asian community, there’s a polish community, there are lots of other people who we don’t have much of a connection with. I’ve tried, through [the pressure group] to get more diversity. R So there’s quite a number of demographics that aren’t yet represented? 5 No, and it’s very hard to reach them. It’s well-‐known that it’s hard to reach them because they often don’t feel they belong. R Demographics of your area – is your CC representative of the area? 6 I doubt it – I doubt whether any CC is truly representative of the area. [6 describes the typical housing and the development of the area since the 1930s.] 7 It’s really amazing how many different nationalities there are. It’s nice to see that diversity. In our area there are people from all over, especially the black community and Polish people. 8 [not answered] 9b Not well. We are, as most parts of the country are, an aging population but we have now got, I would say, a group that are all over 60. We’ve just had the elections – there are 7, maybe 8 people coming on. What we’re missing are the young working families. We’ve had 3 of them in the past but each of them has had to step back because the work became too much. We’re still in touch with them, and one of them, their daughter comes to give us young people’s input. What I would like to do, now we’ve got the elections over – it didn’t even need to go to elections – is we’ll look around and see who we can nobble, see who we can say come on and be co-‐opted onto the CC, so we’ll see. We might try it at the AGM but we don’t want to frighten people off. R The area itself – is it mostly white middle-‐class? 10a By and large – there is some council housing [describes where]. By and large owner-‐occupied. [discussion of where ownership around CC area, looking at map of Edinburgh CC areas on R’s laptop, and how to cycle to and from this area.] Our population is around the size of Falkirk. Edinburgh’s population is 476,000. th R So this CC area is about a 10 of Edinburgh? 10a Don’t take it as absolute gospel but 30-‐40,000 roughly. 50. How easily available is high-‐speed internet in your area? 1a No problem. There is a telephone exchange in [street name], bang in the middle of [this CC area]…. there’s a lot of cable. I don’t have it but a lot of people do. 2 Very easy. 3 We’ve got really slow broadband. They never put in any fibre-‐optic cable in this area. 4 Cable – I don’t have cable, there isn’t cable if you’re speaking of Virgin or whatever, it doesn’t come into the section of the road that I’m on. But high-‐speed internet connection is not an issue. If I wanted BT infinity I could have it because fibre-‐optic does come to a box just across the road from me, so we would have a very short copper cable link to the house. So we would be getting high-‐speed internet. I’ve got YouView, the catch-‐up system, so I can get high definition no problem, just with my ordinary internet connection. In days gone by, it was very clunky through the telephone system but they’ve been gradually upgrading it so I’m not feeling I’m missing anything with not having cable. 5 Very easy, I’ve got 100Mbps though Virgin. When they installed it, they showed it actually is that. 6 Cable, as in Telewest, Sky or as in BT? R I mean any of the cable or fibre providers. 6 I know Telewest went down our street. I know we could get fibre through Virgin but I wouldn’t touch that company with a bargepole. R But for people who don’t have your scruples? 6 Yeah, I know it’s down our road but I can’t say I’ve actually looked. I cannot see Telewest having put their cable down our road without doing the entire area. [Conversation about internet providers and broadband versus listed buildings.] 7 I don’t know. I think quite easy. R To get a decent internet service? 7 I think it’s OK. When we moved in, two or three years ago, we just phoned the company. 8 Don’t know. 9b It’s here. 10 [NA] 51. What other communication methods do you use? What is their relative importance? 1a I think what we’ve always got to be aware of is that electronic must not be the only means of communication. It’s very easy just to shove out emails and assume that everybody’s going to read them, and probably most of our members do read them. We email more than just our membership. We’ve got quite a large list. The secretary keeps a pretty large list of interested adherents, you might call them and 3 4 5



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some matters go only to members and others go much wider. But you’ve got to remember there are people who don’t so you’ve got to have other methods. We’ve one member who is not on email and has to have everything delivered directly to her, which [CC secretary] meticulously does. [summarising 1a’s answers] there’s the online stuff, the 4 noticeboards and your maybe once a year newsletter We have posters and there’s a noticeboard outside the church. We did place 6 noticeboards but they mostly just got vandalised. Thee was talk of renewing them but we voted against it as a waste of money – they’ll just get re-‐vandalised. So we’ve tried. If there are campaigns coming up, like in [a certain area] there was something about parking and so everyone received a [physical] letter... through the council. It was a CC-‐backed thing but the council sent out the letters, asking for feedback and what they wanted. The only danger with that is if you get a low return then the people who reply are the ones who dictate to everyone else. That’s a thing – people aren’t engaged any more. If they get an email they can reply straight away whereas a physical letter goes on the mantelpiece, then in the bin, then that’s it. [not asked] There are 2 CC noticeboards, where we can put up posters. We mainly put notices and agendas for the meetings, or if there’s some local event on [gives examples] then we try to put up other posters just to keep something happening on the noticeboards. On the community noticeboards at [supermarket] you’ve got to fight for space. We put up the minutes there beforehand. So really that’s it as far as communication is concerned. We have a regular rule for when our meetings are held – we fix the dates a year in advance. If there was a need to have a special interim meeting, that would go on the website and noticeboards. Do you do anything like printed flyers or newsletters? We have done that but it’s a very expensive and time-‐consuming process. So at this moment it’s not something that is planned. Having said that, one thing I did miss, [local parish church] – although we can’t put up notices there – their own newsletter which is distributed to all the households in the parish whether they’re church-‐members or not – and the CC has a page in that. So in that we summarise our minutes and maybe put them in to more of a PR mode, saying ‘here’s what we have achieved as a CC’. That goes into it. We make a contribution to the church’s fund but they have an ideal distribution system because they’ve got the elders so people will take a dozen or 20 of these things from the church on a Sunday and distribute them just to their immediate neighbours. We’ve gone piggyback on that. Also the church has a system of welcoming new people to the neighbourhood so there’s a little information pack new people get and we’ve got an entry in that. The church newsletter – how frequent is that? Every couple of months. I would say almost no other. It is very difficult to put any notices up. There’s usually more than one page, so to have a notice with all the pages would require a large public noticeboard. There is one in the [supermarket] where I suppose you could dangle it from the side, which might be a way to try but it is for every voluntary organisation ‘how do you reach your public?’ I’m not going to print off 500 copies and post them through letterboxes. I suppose the idea of having one in the library is a good one but practically, the internet makes it so much easier and no matter how much certain people complain about old people not having access to the internet I think there are plenty of old people who know someone who has, and that’s how they get through. Having said that, I do think it is an issue that is not going to go away because I would say most people over the age of 65 would still find it difficult to get hold of a copy. But [they are emailed ] only to people who ask for it? Yes. We, er I, had them create an annual report – we printed 5000 copies and distributed them and, again, that was all my doing. I had to write it, typeset it, do the graphics and everything else. I did that 3 times and I’m not doing it again. To do something like that takes 24 hours worth of solid work and I have a business to run. OK, I did it because I have the full Creative Suite. [Conversation about DTP applications.] You’ve mentioned you have some noticeboards but they’re falling by the wayside? Not so much that but our local supermarket changed. Before that we had a noticeboard – just a cork mat – but when the redid the store, they rejigged where the noticeboards were. They said ‘we’ll put up a new noticeboard for you – can you supply one?’ So I made an industrial-‐grade cork noticeboard and they put it up just behind the security desk. This means that no-‐one looks at it and if they did they couldn’t read it anyway. The former community association noticeboard at the church was handed over to the CC. But it is updated infrequently – you need a security torx drive and it’s a pain in the arse. There’s one at the school but I’m never there so I don’t know. Do you do any flyers or leafleting? We’ve done leafleting [at a big annual community event] and last year I insisted we do a leaflet and that we all turn up but the reality is that no-‐one gives a monkey’s so this year I did nothing, so nothing happened. The only thing we put up is for very important meetings or the usual every six week meetings, we bring posters and put them in the library, the medical centre, the shopping centre – there are a few places where we can put posters. 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Actually we do. It’s not to every household. We would print probably 150 copies and leave them in the library, the community centre because there are about 7,000 houses so there is no way that we would have the money and people. Possibly we could pay someone to put it through each door but it’s too much. R That’s a very common issue. I know that someone worked out that the average CC grant across Scotland is about £400. 7 We get about £500. That would cover probably about one newsletter. 8 There’s a suggestion box in the library which I don’t think has ever had a suggestion. There was a survey in the library which was just put in the library – I don’t think it was even advertised – and that was in 2005. We did a consultation that was a general one that I [set up] to get them used to consultation, don’t frighten the horses, how have things improved, etc. It was fine. It didn’t get a huge response. R How did you put that out – on paper? 8 Online and paper, but online gathered most responses. The paper was not really worth it. Even that took a year from proposing it to finalising it largely because of obstruction. Once the CC agreed that they should do it since [I] was volunteering, they set up a subgroup, and all the people who weren’t keen joined the subgroup. We had six meetings to finalise the survey form and this was a non-‐controversial survey form: ‘what’s [this area] like, how could we improve it, any other comments?’ – that was the level of survey. 9b We have used door-‐to-‐door leaflets, we have used newsletters, and that’s probably it. What else can we do? R Noticeboards? 9b Sorry, we have noticeboards. We introduced 2 new ones so we have 4 that we use. R How often do you do the newsletters? 9b We haven’t done any now for a couple of years. What we do use is the local [newspaper], so we always get an article in there very month. A lot of people round here will pick that up. 10a The minutes are put on 3 noticeboards. [10a says where these are.] R As well as the noticeboards, what other forms of communication do you use? 10a Occasional articles for the local newspapers. We always have an advert. 10b We use [a bimonthly local magazine] – we always have an advert there.

Other data These tables record conversational threads that were not part of the question scripts but provided potentially relevant and useful information. How long have CCOPs been going? 1a I think we were ahead of most of them. I couldn’t say that for certain – you’ll find out when you talk to them. We were started around 2000. 2 It’s only 6 months old. 3 The website? That I can’t say. I would say well over 6 years, maybe 10 years. I don’t know, something like that. 6 That is a damned good question, which I wouldn’t like to answer for our CC. I know we’re probably relatively lucky in that we’re a new CC and when we were set up, let’s think, 2 election cycles ago… R About 6 years? 6 Aye, thereabouts – 6 to 8. I became the secretary and I said quite categorically I am not taking minutes, I am not updating signposts and I am not doing – I can’t think what the third one was. But at that time we didn’t have any noticeboards anyway. R How long has your FB site been going? 7 I can check that but I think about two years at least. R Before that, was there a CC website? 7 No. 9a In effect, I’m the only person who manages the website. We knew it would be good to have an online presence almost immediately we came into being. R When was that? 9a 4 years ago. [9b] had connections with a web developer, and we had a meeting of our publicity group. We told her what we wanted, and a lot of people were trained but I’m the only one who ever actually updates it and keeps it on the go.


Bruce Martin Ryan 40070877 MSc in Information Systems Development, 2013 5. 2

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Backup

I’m not sure. Generally, I try to put stuff onto either a Word document [discussion of word processors for Macintosh computers and file-‐format incompatibilities]. So that’s my backup at the moment.

Succession and reliability R This reminds me of a slight side question – for the website itself, is there a backup of the access codes so that if, God forbid, something happened to you, could someone step in and immediately take over the role? 1a Not entirely, I suppose. They could probably pick about and with a bit of help from the [person who helped set up the website]. [The secretary] would probably be very good at picking back into emails and finding out who it was set it up, then going back to him and he would certainly be able to help unscramble it. But there isn’t anybody else on the CC. It ought to be possible for all of the office-‐bearers to put things like minutes directly on. R Or if you decided you needed to add another page or something, would someone else be able to do that? 1a Even if we had them all putting on minutes or things, that would be a big step forward. So the answer to your question basically is ‘No’. If I were not longer around, I suspect it would effectively die, possibly to be resurrected in another format after a bit of a struggle. This makes me realise that I ought to do something about that. I’ve thought so for quite a long time! 2 [The hosted format] also means it’s easy to pass on… If for some reason I get voted off, which is highly unlikely because there’s not enough members anyway, or if I get run over by a bus, somebody can immediately take over and the skill set isn’t just with one person. R You can pass on the control? 2 With your dying hand. R If both of [the CClrs who contribute to the website], say, managed to get salmonella from the tea at the meeting and so both pegged out, what would happen then? Could the CC go to [your service provider] and say ‘we are who we are, please let us in?’ 2 One good thing is that we can stop at any time – just stop payment and the website disappears. That would happen if nobody took it over. Because I started the website, I did it on my own credit card. I’m trying to get the CC to have a card to put their details on and they can fully take it over and the idea is I’m trying to get people on slowly. Again, if you’re bringing in new people who have found you on the web and are looking at the website, you can say to them ‘we need someone to do this section of the website’. If they’ve got a password to get in, they can do that.’ 4 At the moment, no. There was someone, a backup, but the backup has become unavailable before the prime suspect. But ideally it would be the secretary but that’s a problem in itself in the moment. R Something we’ve touched on – succession. What happens if you suddenly say ‘I’m not doing this any more’ or you fall under a bus? 6 Ooh, that’s a good question because that’s the one I’m wresting with right now. Actually the real driver behind this was the other CC website I mentioned earlier. After spending the better part of an hour writing a treatise into why they should look at a CMS, the hassles involved, how it could be done etc, he totally ignored me and I got an email back saying we’re going with someone who’s charging us £25 a month. It was an exercise in ‘well, sod it!’ Certain things recently at the CC, well we’re back to the sports day. If don’t say ‘enough, someone is going to have to learn to do it’, then nothing will happen. It is relatively easy and I am quite prepared to do it but I’m getting to the point where if other CCs are prepared to pay for it then fine, let’s put this on a commercial basis. I will give you a CD containing the entire download of the website and everything else, and I will leave it sitting on our server as it currently is but that is as far as I’m currently prepared to go. If you wish to gild my palm with silver then I might take a little bit more interest into what this website is costing. This is a debate we are actually about to have. What it will be like I do not know but based on my experiences it is not going to go well as far as I can see in terms of the utility of the website because people do not get it. If they cannot update a noticeboard, then the odds are we are going to have a chronically bad – again I’m just being a snob. If people are happy with other things, that’s fine – why should I care? R So there isn’t at the moment an actual succession plan. 6 There never has been. Well, there was in the sense that when I was secretary I set things up in such a way that I could hand over the entire secretary account without actually having to do anything. That was just a case of ‘there’s the password – if you want to change it, do so.’ The website is a Joomla website – if someone makes the bloody effort then it is not difficult. All the difficult work has been done in the sense that all the modules are in place. What will be difficult, as with all things digital, is the website is dynamic in two ways. It’s dynamic with the content and it’s a CMS. Now the CMS in itself is dynamic. 6 The one flaw in our CC website is that it runs on my company server but that can be changed in a heartbeat. We changed the company server recently. Would I trust the Council? I would trust the Edinburgh CCLO because I know her. Would I trust anyone else? To be blunt, I do not trust the Council – I do not trust officialdom. But that’s a personal foible. No, that should be part of the standards that a suitable system is adopted that works for the CC concerned.



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There are some free domains as well, but we would need to have someone who would be happy to do that, to create it. Someone offered that before but then he disappeared and then he came back again.

Who contributes content? 1a We should probably, as a group, not leave it to [1b] to decide. The whole CC or the office bearers should be getting together and saying ‘this is something that we want to say on FB’ but we don’t. We leave it to [1b] to decide what to say and nobody gives her any information or indeed any thanks. It shouldn’t just be left to [1b] – it should be the whole CC saying ‘we will report this, we’ll write it up on FB’… Even if we had them all putting on minutes or things, that would be a big step forward. 2 It’s basically me. I’ll put something up, say, something about bins, do the links to Edinburgh council People generally react once something’s there rather than write something themselves. 3 No, [secretary] still is [main contributor]. She’s no longer a member of the CC but she’s the one of us who’s got the most computer experience and she’s very diligently agreed to just keep updating the website for us. R So it’s just between yourself and the secretary? 3 Yes. 6 Oh, no, absolutely – it will quite happily carry on chugging away just doing things. The problems start happening when the calendar plug-‐in, for example – it reads the calendar from the secretary. The secretary is so pleased that he or she can change the website. It doesn’t work that way. All she knows is she goes into her diary, changes the dates and lo and behold they appear on the website. R So does anyone else have the passwords to get in and do stuff? 6 I gave everyone a password to get in. They’ve probably all lost them. I have the god key, as it were. 8 I said if we use [FB], there’s lots of information that flows through CCs so it’s fairly easy to update. You don’t have to generate content, Content is generated for you – all those planning applications, consultations. R And you say here is a PDF of something, up it goes? 8 Yes. My idea was that we could do that and we could also link to local events, so you could actually have a stream that would be genuinely useful. It wouldn’t be too much work because you are not generating the content – the content comes to you. R You’re being a mouthpiece? 8 Conduit. And then they were always nervous, because it was a blog type format, they were worried about comments. Well, we can switch comments off, we don’t have to use that but if you had something that was turnover, so people looked at it regularly then there is that opportunity if you want to put in surveys or ask people or polls. They were not remotely interested. They didn’t want to know. They wanted the static. External factors 3 A lot of the stuff that gets sent to us is gobbledegook – you have to sift through it to translate what it actually means in plain English. R What sort of things are those? 3 Well you get things from NHS Lothian, health boards – there was this merger of health and social care. [Conversation about this merger and the Community Empowerment Bill, the need for interpretation of relevant documents, and dissemination of ‘translated’ information.] R So what you’re needing is to get this information in human-‐friendly form and onto the website? That’s your aspiration for it? 3 Yes. We could simply put up what we get but it would be as impenetrable to whoever reads it as it is to us. I suppose it’s a level of public service that we’re achieving at the moment but it’s still not going really far enough. 4 One thing I do is whatever format I get documents, I turn them into PDF files for the website because I’ve been finding increasingly, even with email-‐type communications between CC members, they’re having fun between their different versions of Word and OpenOffice and DOC files and DOCX files and different file formats. So I say ‘right, we’ll go for PDF’. 6 By the time I’d found anything that was relevant to our particular area and I really seriously hate the Council for their inability to put out things in a consistent format. The PDF that was put out was totally unsearchable, would not copy and paste into a text editor, would not do anything, I couldn’t crack it open with any of my tools, then thank you Google Docs because once I got it there I was at least able to grab the text. Fear of abuse 3 [We don’t have FB because] The other thing is we had a member who was extremely troublesome – she never even met us but she started getting the emails we sent out because she was a member and started reacting to them and being a cyber-‐bully. I kept saying to everyone ‘she’s an attention seeker – just ignore her, don’t let her wind you up’. But they listened to her and got all riled up, and attempted to rationalise



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and respond. We couldn’t cope with anything like that. She got to the point of starting to threaten us with legal action. I kept saying to people ‘this is ridiculous – we’ve not done anything wrong. It’s not going to happen’. It’s happened in other CCs. [Conversation about another Edinburgh CC suffering similar issues.] In our case, we did a wee bit of research and apparently she’d been a member of [a certain pressure group] and we knew someone else in that circuit who said ‘oh no, she’s not come to you, has she?’ Inter-‐CCllr discussion channels 3 we’ve discussed having a members’ page where we can discuss amongst ourselves particular issues but I do this at [my employment] and online discussions don’t work. You get people who write messages that are like mini-‐essays and everyone else goes ‘I can’t wade through that’. They’re not conversations in the ordinary sense -‐ I don’t think it’s a very good medium for discussion. Additional benefits of CCOPs 4 before we had the website, there was considerable doubt for people – were they in [our CC area] or [another neighbouring CC area] or [neighbouring CC area]? So one of the first things I did when we were setting up the website was I went back to the Edinburgh CCLO, and said ‘I want a map showing our boundaries’. It took me a wee while to do that but they did it for us and they’ve now done it for all the other CCs. Potential obstacle-‐avoidance tactics 4 I’ve actually got a front end to the website, partly for ease of addressing and partly because it gives me – you understand that going through one of these packaged routes you can’t choose your complete address. It’s got some part of the address name that’s the service provider, so I’ve got with 1&1 a separate domain name which is just [CC area name].org, so that keeps it really simple for people. From that, I just seamlessly link into whatever the current website name is, which means that each time I’ve been forced to change onto a different back system the address has stayed constant... if need be I can put up on the 1&1 site a message, so if for some strange reason our main site went down I can put a message up ‘service problem, please come back tomorrow’ or I could put up a special seasonal message that doesn’t muck up our home page. ‘Merry christmas and happy new year’ and then 10 seconds later go to the home page. Planning 5 I do think I’ve made quite an impact and the thing is that when I say I’m going to do something, I tend to do it. People just sitting on their hands – that just drives me mad. [5 talks about fellow CCllrs who she feels have contributed.] I realised we don’t need to look at wee details – we need to look at the local plan. It is no good saying ‘why will this building be built here?’ because that was decided 10 years ago. If we want real say, we need to make comments on the local plan and go through the channels, those 5-‐year, 10-‐year plans, because then you can do something. And also we have been really active in the PAN system – that’s pre-‐application something. Any developer has to come up with a rough plan and present it to the CC before they can actually apply for planning permission. We have pushed the boundaries as to how that process works because it’s no good the council just saying ‘here’s how we’re going to do it, would you be interested in getting this legislation moving?’ As a CC we have actively shaped how the planning system deals with these applications because it is our interest to understand and control that process because it’s no good someone when an application comes in – you ‘ve got two weeks to write a letter. Working with neighbouring CCs 5 We’ve done stuff together – it’s just about waking up to what’s possible 7 We meet sometimes, random meetings organised by [inaudible]. Each area has [inaudible]. Our area runs to [a neigbouring CC area] and [another neigbouring CC area], so we meet people from those CCs Spectrum of online abilities 7 A retired city councillor has played an active part in our CC for 10 years now and he is proud of the fact that he has nothing – he’s got a notebook and a pencil and he’s got not mobile phone, he’s got no computer in any way, shape or form. At the other end of the spectrum you’ll see folks coming along and they will set up – one of our members, he’s got his iPad in front of him. If there’s a question asked in the meeting, he will immediately say ‘so and so will attend to that’, type and send an email there and then.



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Appendix 9: Original project proposal EDINBURGH NAPIER UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF COMPUTING MSC RESEARCH PROPOSAL STUDENT DETAILS Last (family) name First name Napier matriculation number

Ryan Bruce 40070877

DETAILS OF YOUR PROGRAMME OF STUDY MSc Programme title Year that you started your diploma modules Month that you started your diploma modules Mode of study of diploma modules Date that you completed/will complete your diploma modules at Napier

Information Systems Development 2011 January Part-‐time 2013

ACADEMIC ELIGIBILITY TO CONTINUE TO THE MASTERS DISSERTATION MODULE Please confirm that status of your module completions by ticking the appropriate box: I have a minimum of 7 15-‐credit module passes and 1 x F1, or 5 20-‐credit module passes and 1 x F1, and so I am already eligible to proceed to the MSc dissertation module. My academic eligibility to continue to the Masters dissertation module is subject to the outcome of module results to be presented at the next exam board.

✔

FEES/DEBT STATUS Please confirm that you have no outstanding debts to the University by ticking the box below. (Students who owe debts to the University, e.g. for fees, library fines, cannot be accepted on to the Masters dissertation module. You should not submit a proposal if you cannot clear your debts in time for the proposal deadline.) I confirm that I have no outstanding debts to the University

✔

PROJECT OUTLINE DETAILS Please suggest a title for your proposed project. If you have worked with a supervisor on this proposal, please provide the name. NB you are strongly advised to work with a member of staff when putting your proposal together. Title of the proposed project Name of supervisor I do not have a member of staff lined up to supervise my work

Community Councils online? Peter Cruickshank

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE RESEARCH AREA -‐ BACKGROUND Please provide background information on the broad research area of your project in the box below. You should write in narrative (not bullet points). The academic/theoretical basis of your description of the research area should be evident through the use of references. Your description should be between half and one page in length. Community councils: origins, duties and issues Community Councils (CCs) were introduced by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973. Their purpose is to find, express and act on the views and needs of their communities (Scottish Government, 2005). However, not all Local Authorities (LAs) Appendix 9: Original project proposal


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have a full complement of CCs: in 2011, of the 1514 possible CCs, only 1215 were active and elections are often uncontested (BBC, 2011a), (BBC, 2011b). Further, Community Councillors tend to be demographically unrepresentative (Association of Scottish Community Councils, quoted in (Scottish Government, 2005). Despite these issues, CCs are seen as the bodies to consult on important local matters, and community engagement is ‘central’ to the Scottish Government (SG) Community Planning policy. Some CCs provide transport for elderly and disabled people and regenerate civic amenities. CCs have also made valid contributions in emergency situations. Following a critical report, the ASCC was closed down early in 2012. In late 2011, the SG instituted a Short Life Working Group (SLWG) ‘to [look at how to] strengthen [CCs’] role as voices for their communities’; it reported in late 2012 and will act as the CCs’ voice in consultations on the Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill (Scottish Government, 2012f). It recommended, inter alia, that Community Councils are encouraged and supported to engage, communicate and network in a wide range of different ways, including digitally and via various social networking mediums to enable them to embrace a wider community audience. Recent comment on problems with Community Councils Two further recent reports have called for a rejuvenation of local democracy, carrying devolution on ‘down’ to more local tiers of government, for example giving CCs more powers, along with relevant support, training and resources. The Jimmy Reid Foundation (Bort, McAlpine, & Morgan, 2012) notes the disconnectedness between, for example, citizens in the far north and their LA, despite the ‘superhuman efforts’ made by Councillors. It also recognises the ‘need’ for CCs/local democracy to be heterogeneous and calls for further devolution of powers to ‘affected communities’, noting that technological change can allow things to be done more efficiently. Reform Scotland (Thomson, Mawdsley, & Payne, 2012) made similar points about Community Councils, noting in the words of one respondent: ‘The internet opens up a lot more channels to communicate with people – I'd like to think Community Councils could tap into this. The unfortunate thing just now is that they need to know someone who can help them set a website up.’ Can the internet solve CCs’ communication and engagement problems? In 2006, Edinburgh Napier University’s International Teledemocracy Centre (ITC) published research into how the use of the web by Community Councils (Whyte, Macintosh, & Shell, 2006), concluding that • ‘web-‐based tools enable and encourage more people to have their say’ • ‘there is significant appetite … for such tools’ • ‘electronic documentation is readily assimilated and disseminated by CCs where members each have access to the web and are able to use it effectively’, while budgetary restrictions effectively prevent CCs from disseminating such information by post. However, few CCs and Community Councillors (CCllrs) at the time had the technical Appendix 9: Original project proposal


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skills necessary to create and use CC websites: hence ‘Local Authorities [needed to] take a proactive stance in disseminating e-‐democracy tools.’ This echoes a conclusion by (McIntosh, et al., 1999) that ‘responsibility for initating renewal [of Community Councils] lies … in the first instance with [Local Authorities]’. More recently, an SLWG active in 2007-‐08 developed a ‘Good Practice Guidance for Local Authorities and Community Councils’ (Scottish Government, 2009). This guidance included ‘Create a website, or get a section on the Local Authority website. Collate a database of e-‐mail addresses for constituents. Ask for permission to send them e-‐mail bulletins seeking their views and reporting your actions.’ There is a free but poorly used DIY CC website service at http://www.community-‐council.org.uk, which illustrates the problems faced by community councils in finding a place to make themselves visible. The most significant development since the publishing of the reports by ITC and the SLWG has been the rise of social media and online communities, Facebook in particular, which has now reached nearly 50% penetration of the UK population (van den Beld, 2011). Additionally, research into ‘hyperlocal’ news sites has claimed that ‘new media actually reinforce local community engagement’ (Hadge, 2011). Conclusion Community Councils can have important roles in Scotland’s democracy, some duties being statutory and others having evolved according to local need and circumstances. However, CCs are not ubiquitous and may be poorly provisioned. Further, communication between CCs and constituents may be very poor, thus making some CCs almost irrelevant. There is great discrepancy between CCs that use online communication well and those that either don’t do so or do so poorly. This research would begin to answer what makes the difference, so that journeys from no or poor use of online to full use of online can be easier. PROJECT OUTLINE FOR THE WORK THAT YOU PROPOSE TO COMPLETE Please complete the project outline in the box below. You should use the emboldened text as a framework. Your project outline should be between half and one page in length. In brief, having shown that the majority of community councils do not communicate online well (Ryan & Cruickshank, 2012), I intend to investigate • what enables some CCs that do online • what prevents some CCs that don't do online ideally using case study/action research of a CC going online, to find and publicise pitfalls and lessons. The idea for this research arose from: As noted above, a number of recent reports have focussed on politics and policy issues but there is a gap in the understanding of the use and pitfalls of technology to support CCs. Further, having been a Community Councillor (CCllr) in St Andrews in 2004-‐5, acting as treasurer and being a member of that CC’s planning committee, and having attended at least one Scotland-‐wide CCllr training session, I am aware of some of the frustrations and accompanying apathy constituents felt towards CCs and CCllrs. Appendix 9: Original project proposal


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The aims of the project are as follows: This project will be a study of innovation processes around ICTs in relation to local democracy and community empowerment. It will follow a local CC as it begins to use online tools to communicate with citizens and investigate the drivers behind use (and non-‐use) of online means to communicate with citizens. From this, pitfalls on the journey to online, good practices and drivers will be gleaned. These would be published so that other CCs who wish to go online, or who wish to improve their online offerings, may use the findings to make their journeys smoother. It will contribute both to the academic research into the relationship between Scottish hyperlocal democracy and e-‐participation and to some steps towards enabling discourse between representatives and constituents at CC-‐level, in the hope that this will allow CCs to begin to play fuller and more meaningful roles in Scotland’s democracy. It is not anticipated that this will automatically happen – it depends on the relevant social networks. For example, (Newig, Günther, & Pahl-‐Wostl, 2010) found that ‘highly centralized networks may be well suited for the efficient transmission of information, they are less suitable for enabling deliberation’ and that ‘network structure and learning appear to mutually influence each other’. The CC network in a Local Authority may be highly centralised around the Community Council Liaison Officer (CCLO). Deliberation, in this context, would be CCs deciding for themselves how to improve their online offerings, considering their own skills and aptitudes.) Also, personal and professional relationships will shape how innovations spread (Ceci & Iubatti, 2012). This project will follow up on the findings of the ITC’s previous e-‐community council project and on research from summer 2012 in which CCs’ websites were investigated. The main research questions that this work will address include: • What are the drivers for use (and non-‐use) of online communication by CCs. For example, o What benefits of being online do CCs that are planning to go online expect? o What benefits did CCs that are already online expect before going online? o What benefits actually materialized and how do they compare with expected benefits? • What are the drivers for the different online communications tools (e.g. Websites, Facebook, Twitter, email)? • What obstacles have CCs encountered on their journeys to online? How have these been worked around or overcome? The software development/design work/other deliverable of the project will be: • Presentation of findings (especially good practice findings) as a report. • Posts in a public blog about significant findings. Both the blog and the report would be publicised to Edinburgh CCs, all CCLOs and the relevant unit of Scottish Government.

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The project will involve the following research/field work/experimentation/ evaluation: • Interviewing CCllrs and other stakeholders to ascertain reasons why different CCs have and haven’t (yet) used online, and what issues they have encountered. • Identification of examples of good practice This work will require the use of specialist software: N/A (possibly survey software) This work will require the use of specialist hardware: N/A The project is being undertaken in collaboration with: participant/interviewee CCs REFERENCES Please supply details of all the material that you have referenced in sections 6 and 7 above. You should include at least three references, and these should be to high quality sources such as refereed journal and conference papers, standards or white papers. Please ensure that you use a standardised referencing style for the presentation of your references, e.g. APA, as outlined in the yellow booklet available from the School of Computing office and http://www.dcs.napier.ac.uk/~hazelh/gen_ho/apa.pdf. BBC. (2011a, November 14). Community Councils in your area. Retrieved May 25, 2012 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-‐scotland-‐15540699. BBC. (2011b, November 14). Scotland’s community council network ‘dying’. Retrieved May 25, 2012 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-‐scotland-‐15545566. Bort, E., McAlpine, R., & Morgan, G. (2012, April 29). The Silent Crisis: Failure and Revival in Local Democracy in Scotland. Retrieved May 24, 2012 from http://reidfoundation.org/wp-‐content/uploads/2012/04/The-‐Silent-‐Crisis1.pdf. Ceci, F., & Iubatti, D. (2012). Personal relationships and innovation diffusion in SME networks: A content analysis approach. Research Policy, 41 (3), 565-‐579. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2011.10.003 Hadge, K. (2011). Networked neighborhood: hyperlocal media and community engagement in Columbia Heights, Washington, D.C. Retrieved May 28, 2012, from https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/bitstream/handle/10822/552918/hadgeK ara.pdf?sequence=1 McIntosh, N., Alexander, A., Cubie, A., Leicester, G., Mackay, E., Millar, M., et al. (1999). The Report of the Commission on Local Government and the Scottish Parliament. Edinburgh: Scottish Office. Newig, J., Günther, D., & Pahl-‐Wostl, C. (2010). Synapses in the network: learning in governance networks in the context of environmental management. Ecology and Society , 15 (4), 24. Ryan, B. M., & Cruickshank, P. (2012, October). Scottish Community Councils -‐ a survey. Retrieved February 26, 2013, from http://www.iidi.napier.ac.uk/c/publications/publicationid/13373555 Appendix 9: Original project proposal


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Scottish Government. (2005a, October 31). What can we do to help community councils fulfil their role? A discussion paper by the Scottish Executive. Retrieved May 27, 2012 from http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/10/31132008/20095. Scottish Government. (2009, November 25). Good Practice Guidance version 2. Retrieved May 28, 2012 from http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Government/local-‐ government/CommunityCouncils/GoodPracticeGuidanceVer2. Scottish Government. (2012, October 3). Report and Recommendations. Retrieved October 4, 2012, from: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/0040/00403921.pdf Thomson, B., Mawdsley, G., & Payne, A. (2012). Renewing Local Government. Retrieved May 24, 2012 from http://reformscotland.com/public/publications/Renewing_Local_Government.pdf. van den Beld, B. (2011). UK most Facebook users in Europe, Monaco biggest penetration. Retrieved May 29, 2012, from http://www.stateofsearch.com/uk-‐most-‐ of-‐facebook-‐users-‐in-‐europe-‐monaco-‐biggest-‐penetration Whyte, A., Macintosh, A., & Shell, D. (2006, February 24). An e-‐Democracy Model for Communities: Final Report of the e-‐Community Council Project. Retrieved Sepember 26, 2012 from: http://itc.napier.ac.uk/itc/Documents/e-‐ community_council_final_report.pdf. ETHICS If your research involves other people, privacy or controversial research there may be ethical issues to consider (please see the information on the module website). If the answer below is YES then you need to complete a research Ethics and Governance Approval form (available on the website). Does this project have any ethical or governance issues related to working with, studying or observing other people? (YES/NO)

YES

SUPERVISION TIMESCALE Please indicate the mode of supervision that you are anticipating. If you expect to be away from the university during the supervision period and may need remote supervision please indicate. Weekly meetings over 1 trimester Meetings every other week over 2 trimesters Other

✔

SUBMITTING YOUR PROPOSAL Please save this file using your surname, e.g. macdonald_proposal.doc, and e-‐mail it to the module leader in time for the next proposal deadline.

Appendix 9: Original project proposal


146

Appendix 10: Project diaries 2013_04_29 EDINBURGH NAPIER UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF COMPUTING PROJECT DIARY Student: Bruce Ryan Date: 29/04/2013

Supervisor: Peter Cruickshank Last diary date: N/A

OBJECTIVES

Finalise planning Start lit review work

PROGRESS Planning & management

Have completed proposal

Starting to put planning processes in place

Research None SUPERVISOR’S COMMENTS Planning & management

Need to see a plan with key milestones (and tasks and start/end dates) Will start work on this on 7 May Maybe think about building public sharing of work progress etc into your process – check out http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/ / Beltane Network for ideas

Research • Start thinking about how you will gather the data (and what data can be gathered) – eg Denscombe (2008) – books are in 300.72 in the Library • Other concepts are around Diffusion/acceptance of technology (Rogers is the ur-‐text) Technology adoption models (TAM, UTAUT) Self Efficacy (Computer & Political) (Cruickshank and Smith, 2008)

NEXT MEETING 13 May, 3pm

Appendix 11: Feedback on initial report


147

BRUCE-‐NOTES Milestones

nd

Interim review – before or after establishing research methods – with 2 marker as well as well as PAC Chat up Ella re data gathering But don’t overscope – few, pertinent questions MAYBE 30,000 words Diffusion of innovation – ideas need to jump across weak links between identity (sub)nets.

A geek has no friends.

A weak link between (sub)nets. So how are CCs linked? Tech adoption curve Early adoptors (geeks, thin leading edge) Then bigger and bigger classes under bell curve, until the curve begins to descend to the flat-‐earthers. Models of drivers To understand answers and create relevant questions Look for Denscombe (2008) classmark 300.72



148

2013_04_30 to 2013_05_13 EDINBURGH NAPIER UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF COMPUTING PROJECT DIARY Student: Bruce Ryan Date: 2013_05_13

Supervisor: Peter Cruickshank Last diary date: 2013_04_29

OBJECTIVES

Start lit review work


Created timetable

Wrote PRINCE2-‐style project initiation stuff To be sorted Bruce’s regular MSc days: prefer Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday (also do MSc stuff on Thursdays and Fridays if no other commitments) Regular date/time for meeting Peter (Bruce happy with Monday afternoon, but maybe later. Very happy to work to Peter’s schedule of course) NB nd

th

Bruce away Wednesday 22 to Monday 27 May hope to do Tour of The Borders route one day during 28-‐31 May: dependent on weather!

Research

Potential research questions Take up of websites (own), blogs. Facebook, twitter, other socmed: when/how long (Position on 12 Rogers adoption curve, e.g. innovators, early adopters etc with respect to CCllrs in Edinburgh , CCllrs in Scotland, age/social class, amount of political/Political activity Drivers for in terms of CC business: perceived, materialised (positive/negative impacts) Personal drivers – personal use of online at home/at work, demographics Pitfalls/difficulties Relation to amount of CC work they do. i.e. are folk who are committed to CC stuff more likely to do online, even if naturally they would be technophobes Does amount/type online CC activity relate to other activity Try to elicit networks, how central CCLO is How does this all compare to theory/literature? Does theory need updated? (Discussion chapter[s])

12

Confine research to the 40-‐odd Edinburgh CCs?



149

SUPERVISOR’S COMMENTS Planning and management

Basic project plan looks reasonable – I’d have separate milestones for completing literature review & refined RQs from one which defines the RMs to answer them

Need to start thinking (already) about who you will involve and likely timings (so you can schedule around holidays)

Research

More work needed on RQs to make sure they match what you want to do and achieve and bring in overarching model (eg innovation diffusion, technology adoption): eg motivations for use of new technology, how success is measured, whether achieved, success/failure factors? Use these to articulate your current aims and objectives & plan out the literature review chapter Be clear about the kind of study you want to do (eg case study? Survey? Any elements of action research?) Don’t write your detailed research methods yet… Random search term “innovation diffusion democracy technology”

NEXT MEETING 28 May, 11am



150



OBJECTIVES

Start lit review work


Devised RQs, sorted plan, read more of Rogers

Research SUPERVISOR’S COMMENTS Planning and management Need to maintain momentum

Research

Try to write up at least one of section of the LR dealing with one research question For future consideration: choice of explanatory framework (or selection of one from the literature you find) http://istheory.byu.edu/ can be used as a starting point. Question: how will you balance focus on individual CCllr against structural/organisational perspectives of CC and LA (and the role of the CCLO)? In background: Look out for research methods used and explanatory frameworks used – later, you’ll be deciding what you’ll be using.

NEXT MEETING 10 June, 11am



151



OBJECTIVES

Continue lit review work

PROGRESS

Starts in various directions of lit rev – some reading into background theory (and ideas it would underpin what I want to research), some new data on Europe, ideas of what a CC website should/could contain and how to measure it. Current writing has many holes but I’m more aware of what and how big they are. Better, this reading has given me ideas on what I want to ask CC webweavers to make my results relate to underlying theory. These ideas are currently in the rough lit rev draft – in the final document they would be moved to better homes (e.g. research methodology discussion, discussion of results) Still to do: Peter’s question re individual CCllr webweavers versus CCs en masse/CCLO To talk about Expand brief history -‐ I think it goes first because it sets the scene for the following research. (Wednesday) Update/critique DM success model (Thursday/Friday) TAM and DoI -‐ decide whether to include either/both these today. If so, do up-‐to-‐date reading & writing (Sunday, Monday) Build in thoughts about personal drivers (Tuesday) Begin to compile questions for online and offline CCs. (Wednesday) Continue obtaining interviewees Fill in other identified holes for this time a fortnight hence The way I see it, DM model can be applied to individual CC presences, or a complete LA's set of CC presences, or bunch of CC FB/twitter presences (to eliminate the service and system quality variable), or (if I was doing a PhD) all of Scotland's CC presences (or a representative sample) I reckon I can do 3-‐4 of individual CCs interviews to get quantitative info on drivers, DM model variables I can use one of the analysis methods on all extant Edinburgh CC presences to do stuff about info quality. To simplify, ignore presences which re just an infer-‐sheet on NP website. Then assume presences using same platform (FB, own, blog) have same system & service quality. Then look at information presences provide to see net benefits. Then find representative interviewees to dig into use/user satisfaction TAM/DoI would come into play to explain history of acceptance and the laggards/non-‐users.



152


Have a look at your plan. How are you doing? Keep organising interviews and other engagement activities for later this summer Try to write up one RQ in full

Research

Keep things structured by RQ – and try to write up literature review relating to RQs Be clear what you’re getting out of international/EU comparisons: what questions/expectations are they bringing in to your work? Is channel choice relevant to what you’re doing? Community Councils as hybrid charity/3 sector and local government? (in which case discussion of charity sites makes sense – as does hyperlocal media, etc) – will you follow this up?

NEXT MEETING 24 June



153



OBJECTIVES

Continue lit review work

PROGRESS

Sections on DM, TAM and DoI bigger, possibly better These give rise to a list of potential interview/research questions. Also, reading shows plenty of ways to ‘properly’ assess CC online presences (CCOPs). Realisation that DM, TAM and to some extent DoI call for quantitative, survey methods – can I do this? (I’d need to learn how to do statistics and currently know absolutely nothing.) Section on European counterparts still very poor. Group v individual CCs – would need to to ask CCs what was the CCs’ motivation to have a CCOP, as opposed to CC webweavers’ motivation to actually do it. (I suspect individual volunteer was main motive for CC to have CCOP.) To do in next fortnight More on European counterparts, esp UK parish councils and their immediate superiors, to make baseline More on Scottish Government use of online – background such as EDRM? Firm up interview questions for CC web-‐weavers Write survey that would handle TAM/DM questions. Online survey? How would I get this to offline CCs? (via CCLOs?) • Reconsider charities section (Community Councils as hybrid charity/3 sector and local government? (in which case discussion of charity sites makes sense – as does hyperlocal media, etc) – will you follow this up?) Lesson of the fortnight 1: look at the project diary and plan every day – do not rely on my patchy memory! Plan revamped to take account of very slow progress so far. Lesson of the fortnight 2: I don’t naturally write academic English. Need to improve this (tone, balance between clarity and accuracy). Also, replace In a study of XYZ (Smith & Jones, 1842), it was found that ABC with ABC (Smith & Jones, 1842) unless XYZ is strictly relevant.



154


Have a look at your plan. How are you doing? Keep organising interviews and other engagement activities for later this summer Keep your work focussed. Try to only show me product you want me to review.

Research

Q: Do I have a clear statement of what you think your research questions are? NB You literature review should be structured to address each of the RQs in turn, identifying sub themes for investigation Glossary for acronyms! In response to questions: “how can I make my thoughts more distinct from material paraphrasing others’ research?” with phrase like “This means that” “in conclusion etc” – for immediate conclusions from what you’ve just been discussing “The solution to this chicken-‐and-‐egg conundrum is likely to be a spiral of trust-‐building. Firstly, CCs would consult about what their CCOPs should be like (seeding initial trust), then populate then with trust-‐raising content. -‐ PETER – how do I make it clear that the last two sentences are my thought?” Sounds like you need to find more trust literature “And that will happen if I can survey a significant number of people/sites and then do the statistical analysis. AND I DON’T UNDERSTAND A BLIND WORD OF STATS.” à not relevant for a case study Anecdotes don’t belong in the literature review. Choice of framework: TAM is about individual choice – is that your perspective or how an organisation adapts a technology? Remember to caption and cite your diagrams Local government online presences section – move the summary to an appendix

NEXT MEETING

presume 8 July. Bruce on holiday 13-‐27 July, so should the next-‐but-‐one meeting be 4 August?



155



OBJECTIVES

Continue lit review work,

PROGRESS

Very little achieved – too many external commitments. Lesson of the fortnight – plan and manage better! Drivers research question lit rev about 1/3 revamped


Remember to look for Jaffar’s thesis Need a revised plan? Remember need to show reasons for revisions and how you’re responses. Keep organising interviews and other engagement activities for later this summer Have made more progress in engaging people Research Good to see refocused progress. Structure wise – try to stop at Themes within research questions Need to be clear if perspective if from CC or CCllr? From our discussion it seems you prefer CC perspective Don’t forget the glossary

Local government online presences section – Remember to move the summary to an appendix (ditto extended quotes of legislation) Send me an update before you leave and I’ll give you feedback to read while you’re on holiday…

NEXT MEETING

5 August. Happy to meet briefly 29 July if that would help



156



OBJECTIVES

Continue lit review work, arrange some interviews (Holiday 13-‐28 July)

PROGRESS

RQs revamped – looking forward to feedback Interviews: 5 interviews firmly arranged 4 interviews TBC 9 ‘yes – in principle’ Firm/TBC include 1 website-‐out-‐of date Facebooker 1 website out-‐of-‐date tweeter 2 website-‐up-‐to-‐date tweeter

Schedule Item research methods: interviews spread of online innovations: (innovation diffusion) facts re online use in UK/scot govt, EU lowest tiers bring it together Interim report

Original date 2 June

Current date 2 June

16 June

23 June

30 June

7 July

7 July

18 August 25 August 20 Oct

4 August

Gather data

Why has it changed? Bruce’s inability to get going with literature review – blind alleys and not understanding this task!

29 September Write up 1 1 Dec December Need to change the above to include ‘write up research questions’, ‘write method chapter ’


Done?


157


Look at initial report forms on Malcolm’s site and make sure you have the content together Missing from plan: Completion of research methods section Design and test questionnaires and other data gathering instruments as an explicit step Aim to draft

Research

Chapter 2/3: Suggest selecting explanatory framework before exploring the potential drivers etc (Current) Impact of digital divide (on CCs) needs to be covered – could help to explain the obstacles encountered We discussed

Brought forward

Don’t forget the glossary

NEXT MEETING 5 August.



158



OBJECTIVES

(Freelance work 2013_07_29 to 2013_08_03, cycling event 2013_08_04)

PROGRESS Interviews arranged

Active but not online

1 firm arrangement, 1 TBC

Online, out of date

2 firm, 1 TBC

Online, up-‐to-‐date

3 firm, 3 TBC

Is this enough? (I have agreements in principle from several others.) Glossary started. Completeness check needed

Quandries

We’d discussed the following order Why research CCs? What is a good model for CC websites – literature on municipal and charity websites How can CC websites be assessed? Conformance with model developed in item 2 Spread of models – TAM, etc RQs (from perspective of CCllrs) • Drivers and inhibitors • Channel choice Research methods. (I presume this should include a section on how RQs become interview Qs) Findings, discussion, conclusions, refs, appendices I realised late on Tuesday that I’m not going to be assessing CC websites, at least not in any great detail. So I’m unsure of the point of item 3. (Item 2 sort of works, in that it gives a skeleton around which to discuss CC websites in general and hence an ‘ideal’ model for a CC presence.) I’m not yet convinced the models section works – it does give rise to some interesting questions, and of course I need a link to existing literature. For example TAM has inputs ‘perceived ease of use’, ‘perceived usefulness’ and these could give rise to interesting discussions. But I’m not going to test a complete model – doing so would need a huge survey, probably of citizens who use CC websites, while I’m going to do interviews with CCllrs. Advice on making this bit flow would be appreciated. Individual v corporate: interviews will be with individuals, which is why I had thought I should come at this from an individualist angle. But my RQs are about benefits and costs experienced by CCs, i.e. a corporate angle, as was the RQs section. (I’m not sure I can face rewriting this – it would mean starting it from scratch again, I think.) Also, I can ask reps to speak on behalf of their CCs – ‘How does the website benefit the CC?’ (Even if it helps an individual CCllr do his or her individual tasks, that’s a benefit to the whole CC.) So my final answer is corporate.



159

Interview questions: my gut instinct is to ask the research questions pretty much as-‐is, to let CCs tell their stories. (See the green type on page 31.) But this wouldn’t allow tie-‐back to models and discussion of potential drivers. I had devised some literature-‐based questions but these feel too prescriptive. My solution would be to ask the ‘green’ question, then pick out themes and answers to prescriptive questions in the discussion. Does this sound sensible?

Initial report

Please see questions in accompany draft thereof.

Schedule Revamped quite a lot! Item Introduction Literature review Bring it together Interim report Research methods Designing and testing tools Gather data Findings Discussion

Original date

Current date 2 June 23 June 18 August

4 August

19 August 17 August 24 August

29 September 1 December

28 Knocked on by inability to get going September 5 October Hadn’t been explicitly planned End October mid November 1 December

Conclusions Appendices, references, final formatting and tidying

Why has it changed? Bruce’s inability to get going with literature review – blind alleys and not understanding this task! Not included in original plan Not included in original plan


Remember to send Colin the initial report before he gets back from hols

Research

B/F: Impact of digital divide (on CCs) needs to be covered – could help to explain the obstacles encountered To be done 8-‐9 August Need to be clear you can explain the results-‐ whether TAM, DOI or DM Make sure that there is a clear link between identified themes and the interview questions Apart from interviews, are there any other data sources you can use to validate your findings? (eg minutes, websites, citizens) “benefits” implies some thinking about success indicators (and hence intended audience)

NEXT MEETING 16 August



160



OBJECTIVES Progress

New/revised pieces are commented ‘New in V7’ Question I’ve seen a research method section about how literature references were found. Worth emulating? From previous diary B/F: Impact of digital divide (on CCs) needs to be covered – could help to explain the obstacles encountered To be done 8-‐9 August Need to be clear you can explain the results-‐ whether TAM, DOI or DM Make sure that there is a clear link between identified themes and the interview questions Apart from interviews, are there any other data sources you can use to validate your findings? (eg minutes, websites, citizens) “benefits” implies some thinking about success indicators (and hence intended audience)

IQ source Most frequent one is DM – I need to think more about whether to drop/minimise the others. Next step Trial interview


Remember to send Colin the initial report before he gets back from hols

Research

B/F: Europe Appendix and mention thereof in main text

NEXT MEETING: 12 September


Done Done Done Done Done


161



OBJECTIVES

Do interviews, transcribe as much as possible, arrange more interviews with not online CCs. On track-‐ish (1 interview will be late, transcription not as fast as I’d like) Item Introduction Literature review Bring it together Interim report Research methods Designing and testing tools Gather data Findings Discussion Conclusions Appendices, references, final formatting and tidying

Current date 2 June 23 June 18 August 19 August 17 August 24 August 28 September 5 October End October mid November 1 December

Notes 2nd marker’s comments Done All interviews but 1 arranged for this period. [interview with offline CC 1 October]

PROGRESS

New/revised pieces are commented ‘New in V8’ 8 Interviews and 1 meeting with interested Glasgow CCllr so far 3 more interviews to do (2 of these are with not-‐online CCs so are most interesting) nearly 6 interviews transcribed (balance to be transcribed over the weekend) No analysis yet

Questions

I think I should have a piece on my research biases – in methods chapter, critical appraisal or both? Your reaction to Colin’s comments? Glasgow CC stuff? Out of scope but I’ve begun wondering about CC being siloed within LAs – the one border CC I’ve seen has nothing to do with its neighbours in East Lothian. But that’s because it doesn’t communicate anyway, I think.

SUPERVISOR’S COMMENTS Planning and management Still on schedule

Make sure you have addressed Colin’s feedback (look for discussion of positivism in a textbook on social science research – and also different places of research in setting agenda – ie research can have an explicit political agenda and still be good research)


Bruce Martin Ryan 40070877 MSc in Information Systems Development, 2013 Next mtg: a list of possible issues/questions emerging from the transcriptions

Research

Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by the transcription and coding process – keep the scale appropriate to a dissertation project Keep a list of unexpected funding Make notes of what you’re doing – use these to update your RM section (so you talk about data gathering issues and how you resolved them and/or their impact on your results)

NEXT MEETING: 26 September


162


163



OBJECTIVES

More interviews, finish transcription Make notes of what you’re doing – use these to update your RM section (so you talk about data gathering issues and how you resolved them and/or their impact on your results) Get a good way into Findings piece Address Colin’s feedback Keep a list of unexpected funding a list of possible issues/questions emerging from the transcriptions

SCHEDULE Item Introduction Literature review Bring it together Interim report Research methods Designing and testing tools Gather data


Findings Discussion Conclusions Appendices, references, final formatting and tidying

Notes nd 2 marker’s comments Done All interviews but 1 arranged for this period. [interview with offline CC 1 October]

PROGRESS

New/revised pieces are commented ‘New in V9’ All interviews so far transcribed -‐ The one interview planned for this period was postponed due to my illness In progress – mostly done. May need to add more as I finish coding interviews Not got as far as I’d have liked due to illness – 4½ interviews out of 8 coded just now. I more working day to finish, then up to 2 working days to create Findings chapter. So still on track! Have put in Aims & objectives and hence topped and tailed chapters 1-‐4, have put in R&C (2012) in relevant places, have dealt with rationalist approach, research biases, generally sorted chapters 1-‐3 Should this have been unexpected findings? Have added interesting bits that aren’t directly related to questions at end of Answers grid Some interesting thoughts – makes sense to me to pull these out when coding is finished.



164

Questions

Let’s talk about Glasgow stuff Please feed back on how I’ve addressed Colin’s feedback! I don’t like the current flow. I think • Ch 1 should set the scene for the project (why am I doing it, what are its aims and objectives) • then chapter 2 (lit review) should begin with CC history section (fulfilling the objective ‘know more about CCs), continue with other lit bits (ideal model for CC online presences, models of tech uptake, research questions) • then chapter 3 (how the research will be/was done) • etc In practice this means merely moving the history bit from ch 1 to the beginning of ch2. It would also allow me to make the dissertation structure bit much closer (perhaps meld with) the aims and objectives bit .Also, should certain bits of the ‘models’ pieces move to the RM chapter. I’ve commented to show the bits I mean Tense issue. • As I see it, any publication contains conclusions made at that time. However, without talking to Smith and Jones right now we don’t whether they still currently conclude this way. So ‘Smith and Jones find that X, Y and Z are needed to make A, B and C happen (Smith and Jones, 2011).’ did not seem correct at 23:05 on Friday 20 September 2013.’ – and still seems incorrect at 23:07 on 25 September • I have no problem with ‘Smith and Jones found that X, Y and Z occur and that D, E and F are needed for G, H and I’ because that states the current, on-‐going state of our knowledge – unless later research has contradicted the original finding: ‘Smith and Jones concluded that D, E and F were needed for G, H and I. However, later Stephenson and Atkinson showed that also J is needed’ or ‘Smith and Jones concluded that D, E and F were needed for G, H and I. However, later Stephenson and Atkinson showed that G, H and I were spurious data artefacts and that J is the only necessary precursor.’


Still broadly on schedule. Knocked back a bit by illness

Other points from last meeting addressed (Out of scope: Think about potential funders of ongoing work – eg Jimmy Reid Foundation)

Research

Discussed was need to keep biographical elements out of the dissertation – it needs to be a self-‐ contained piece of work Need to consider the feedback from Glasgow in context of the dissertation (eg as future work) From discussion of documents from Andrew Higney – these sound like they could be an area for discussion of future Tense issues resolved

NEXT MEETING:

10 October: Completed findings and your thoughts on the discussion chapter (and whether it’s better to merge them).



165



OBJECTIVES 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Get biographical elements out of the dissertation (research philosophy and bias section)– it needs to be a self-‐contained piece of work Consider the feedback from Glasgow in the context of the dissertation (eg as future work) Make a heading in conclusion/further work chapter to discuss of documents from Andrew Higney – these sound like they could be an area for discussion of future Implement tense issues resolution Complete findings and your thoughts on the discussion chapter (and whether it’s better to merge them). Rearrange flow as discussed in previous diary/management meeting (Out of scope: Think about potential funders of ongoing work – eg Jimmy Reid Foundation)

SCHEDULE Item Introduction Literature review Bring it together Interim report Research methods Designing and testing tools Gather data Findings Discussion Conclusions Appendices, references, final formatting and tidying


Notes nd 2 marker’s comments Done All interviews but 1 arranged for this period. [interview with offline CC 1 October] Finished 9 October – 4 days behind schedule.

PROGRESS

New/revised pieces are commented ‘New in V10’ 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Done – can’t omit physical science comparison completely Not yet done – still mired in findings/discussion Done Done but leaving ‘CC history section’ in past tense because it’s a history! Findings in place – ignore the chapter headings for now. On the whole, I favour a separate discussion chapter. While stating a finding and then discussing it has a good flow for each bit, it breaks up the discussion into lots of bits. Also, as I’ve currently laid out the findings, there is no natural way to discuss them with respect to models and ideas in lit review in the same chapter. (I did initially try presenting findings in orders that suited the different models but because several findings related to 2 or more models, this would have meant repetition or several ‘see section X’ for this question’s findings. I think the best way forward is to repeat the headings of the literature review in a separate discussion chapter, then note whether the relevant factors were found in



6. 7.

166

practice. It may be possible to mix headings such as the different drivers into the input parts of DM, TAM etc. Done In progress

Questions/notes

Do I need to describe how I/we devised RQs section 2.4.1? à Yes Peter: full interview transcripts will disappear when I’ve got everything useful out of them à ASAP please Is appendix 4 (local government around the world) currently justified? If not, justify or remove? à Jaffar appears to have very few direct quotes in his Findings chapter.

SUPERVISOR’S COMMENTS Planning and management Broadly in line with original plan

Gave some feedback on draft V10 – mostly around restructuring existing content to make the flow clearer, but also making sure terms are defined (references thereto given) Overall – it’s coming together nicely!

Research

Need to move from description of what was said to analysis of what it means – and present that in the dissertation This is probably a good point to revisit your favourite RM textbook to see how your process matches expectations

NEXT MEETING: 24 October:



167



OBJECTIVES 1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Need to move from description of what was said to analysis of what it means – and present that in the dissertation Describe how RQs in section 2.41.1 devised Remove full transcripts Keep Europe appendix (but justify better) Restructure existing content to make the flow clearer, but also making sure terms are defined (references thereto given) This is probably a good point to revisit your favourite RM textbook to see how your process matches expectations


Current date 2 June 23 June 18 August 19 August 17 August 24 August 28 October

Findings Discussion Conclusions

5 October End October mid November 1 December

Appendices, references, final formatting and tidying

Notes nd 2 marker’s comments Done All interviews but 1 arranged for this period. [interview with offline CC 1 October] Finished 9 October – 4 days behind schedule.

PROGRESS 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Not yet done – still mired in chapter 2 Done Done Done – at least 1 more justification in main text In progress – see question Done

Questions/notes

Quandry about section 2·∙4·∙2 (What are the drivers and inhibitors of online communication by CCs?). This section has subsections about potential benefits (cost-‐saving, increased efficiency etc) then a subsection on potential inhibitors, including a lengthy spiel about the digital divide. I don’t think this works very well, because potential cost-‐savings and potential for increased costs are separated by several pages and so I’d like to put them together. But the digital divide bit is fairly stand-‐alone. I guess the best thing is to amalgamate related drivers and inhibitors and then have stand-‐alone subsections for the digital divide and any themes that can’t be amalgamated.



168

SUPERVISOR’S COMMENTS Planning and management • You need to make sure you get a decent discussion section done – don’t get carried away with the lit review! (you can always come back to)

Research • Have you defined what drivers & inhibitors are and why they are important to study?…are they there in DoI. • Why not use DoI external/internal drivers/inhibits to classify the digital divide • BUT: You need to move on to findings & discussion.

NEXT MEETING:

7 November – aim is to cover progress with findings and discussion



169



OBJECTIVES 1. 2. 3. 4.

You need to make sure you get a decent discussion section done – don’t get carried away with the lit review! (you can always come back to) Have you defined what drivers & inhibitors are and why they are important to study?…are they there in DoI. Why not use DoI external/internal drivers/inhibits to classify the digital divide BUT: You need to move on to findings & discussion.



Findings Discussion

5 October End October

Conclusions

mid November 1 December


Notes nd 2 marker’s comments Done All interviews but 1 arranged for this period. [interview with offline CC 1 October] Finished 9 October – 4 days behind schedule. First draft completed 2 November – behind schedule

PROGRESS 1. 2. 3. 4.

First draft done – it’s poor Not sure I’ve done this Done – not sure it works See 1

Questions/notes • My main criticism of the findings and discussion chapter is that it merely describes the findings without enough analysis, insight or links back to literature. It also probably says the same things too many times. I guess the cure for this is to ruthlessly drag all the merely descriptive stuff into the models-‐discussion section, then chop out the repetition, then make sure that each insight is checked against literature preferences. But I'd appreciate your comments before I start such hacking. • Want to fit in parts of this this comment on my model CC, especially bold bits (my emphasis) If you look around the table at the cc meeting, how many people do you think are capable of doing all the work you describe in 4 hours? [Chair], [Vice-‐chair], me, you, [name] from the spurtle and I reckon that’s it. The other 20 are passive onlookers, happy to raise an issue at the meeting, but generally unwilling and unable to help out outside the meetings. This sounds harsh, but in my 5 years of cc I see it again and again, people think that attending a meeting is sufficient. About 2 years ago we Appendix 11: Feedback on initial report

Bruce Martin Ryan 40070877 MSc in Information Systems Development, 2013 were given some help to set up the website but it was treated like a pan of boiling oil; no one wanted to come near it; uploading documents was seen as really complicated and it didn’t go anywhere until I agreed to maintain it. rant on rant on… the way I see it is that the current lot of good and able people who are willing to serve on ccs are usually also involved in many other things and are unwilling to learn these new skills as they are managing to make a difference quite well as it is. Unfortunately the generation for whom all this web stuff is easy is years away from retiring…

SUPERVISOR’S COMMENTS Planning and management 1. 2.

Research 1. 2.

NEXT MEETING:

21 November – aim is to cover progress with findings and discussion


170


171



OBJECTIVES

I’ve made these up based on discussion last time 1. 2. 3.

Shorter, on message Get conclusion done, then work backwards to ensure narrative consistency Better academic references

SCHEDULE Item Introduction Literature review Bring it together Interim report Research methods Designing and testing tools Gather data Findings Discussion Conclusions



Notes

nd 2 marker’s comments Done All interviews but 1 arranged for this period. [interview with offline CC 1 October] 5 October Finished 9 October – 4 days behind schedule. End October First draft completed 2 November – behind schedule mid First draft done 16 Nov. That’s on schedule. But November earlier parts still need attention. So still behind schedule 1 December

PROGRESS 1. 2. 3.

In progress Conclusion done – other parts in progress To be done as litrev sorted

QUESTIONS/NOTES 1. 2. 3.

4. 5.

See headings and brief notes in otherwise currently empty chapters. Do they bode well for narrative? Use of consistent headings (even if forced to level 4), intro sections and chapter summaries OK so far? Word count. More than half is appendices. Actual dissertation will end up about 35-‐40,000 words. Size of appendices (40,000 words) seems inevitable given project diaries and other must-‐ do stuff. So I’m no longer worried – are you? Horrified by how slow I am! Other things to talk about o Any feedback from funding bid submitted recently? o I’m still working on another funding application. (Attempts to work on train failed). I’ll send you what I have achieved at early tomorrow afternoon. o Bruce-‐thoughts about post-‐december



172

SUPERVISOR’S COMMENTS Planning and management 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Better… OK Aiming for around 20000 words of main text Yeah – o Apply for CeDEM Krems -‐ http://www.cilip.org.uk/cilip/membership/benefits/advice-‐and-‐support/grants-‐and-‐ bursaries/john-‐campbell-‐trust/john-‐campbel-‐2 o CCN+: aiming for submitting early 2014 o IS might come through…

Research 1. 2.

Finished? Make sure your lit review is grounded in refereed academic publications (as far as possible/practical/realistic).

NEXT MEETING: 5 December



173



SCHEDULING FINAL ACTIVITIES Date 22 Nov 23 Nov 24 Nov 25 Nov

26 Nov 27 Nov

28 Nov 29 Nov

30 Nov 01 Dec 02 Dec 03 Dec 04 Dec 05 Dec

6-‐16 Dec

Planned activities Personal Cycling/personal Travel funding application 1. 2. 3. 4.

Write day-‐to-‐day schedule. Plan chapter work count. Total approx. 20,000-‐25,000 words Complete conclusion (chapter 5). Check conclusion is completely supported by Findings and discussion (chapter 4) – is there anything extraneous to or missing from either? 1. Complete item 4 above 2. Check research methods (chapter 3). Remove extraneous stuff 1. Complete item 2 above 2. Attack LitRev (chapter 2). Make sure it only has stuff referred to later, unless small pieces are need to show knowledge of context 1. Press home attack on litRev 2. Meet Peter re tomorrow’s IS meeting. NB travel arrangements 1. IS meeting 2. Matters arising 3. Press home attack on litRev 4. CCN+ Funding application (can drop this – deadline 30 Nov, 28 Feb) Weekend Finish attack on LitRev Read other folk’s critical appraisals Do critical Appraos Introduction (chapter 1) Critical appraisal Check everything! Check everything again! -‐ Is each chapter at a passable state? -‐ Does it all hang together? Supervision – use above questions Implement suggestions from supervision Final check of actual content Check everything v university requirements and guidelines Final check of spelling, grammar etc Assemble chapters into 1 document Sort references Make PDF version. If time, do this in InDesign so references are/contain hyperlinks Print and bind 2 copies Burn Word doc and PDF to CD Submit Xmas shopping! Try to relax over Christmas



174

OBJECTIVES 1. 2.

3.

Make sure all work is finished! Make sure your lit review is grounded in refereed academic publications (as far as possible/practical/realistic). Have a submittable version of everything! To do so, Bruce intends o To create a day-‐by-‐day achieveable schedule and section word-‐count o Stick to it!

SCHEDULE Item


Introduction Literature review Bring it together Interim report Research methods Designing and testing tools Gather data Findings Discussion Conclusions Appendices, references, final formatting and tidying

Notes nd 2 marker’s comments Done All interviews but 1 arranged for this period. [interview with offline CC 1 October] Finished 9 October – 4 days behind schedule. First draft completed 2 November – behind schedule First draft done 16 Nov. That’s on schedule. But earlier parts still need attention. So still behind schedule In my dreams!

5 October End October mid November 1 December

Word-‐count CHAPTER

SECTION

target

actual %*used

frontmatter

NA

NA

Introduction

1500

1363

LitRev

6500

6832

Methods

2500

2697

Fundings8and8discussion

8000

8689

Conclusions

2500

2612

Critical8appraisal,8 limitations,8further8work

1500

1144

22500

23337

Total

NA

section

target

NA

NA

NA

NA

1500 1500 3500 1500 2500 1250 500 750 3000 2500 2500 500 500 500

1363 1604 3879 1349 2697 1183 563 716 3248 2979 2612 435 176 533

91% 107% 111% 90% 108% 95% 113% 95% 108% 119% 104% 87% 35% 107%

22500

23337

104%

91% ideal-presence 105% potential-drivers-and-inhibitors models 108% Model-presence Assessing-actual-presences 109% Initial-interview-questions OpenEended-IQs Models 104% critical-appraisal 76% limitations further-work 104%

actual %*used

PROGRESS 1. 2. 3.

All research finished! In progress – need 2 clear days to find better stuff and fit it in All chapters – even critical appraisal and further work now exist. Need to make litrev better

Questions/notes 1. 2. 3.

Peter, please comment on new bits (introduction, further work, critical appraisal) Is it sensible to critique my own work (section 2.1.1) Do I need definitions of e-‐democracy, e-‐participation, e-‐government? My references are letting me down



SUPERVISOR’S COMMENTS Planning and management 1. 2. 3.

Research 1. 2. 3.

NEXT MEETING: 17 December


175


176



OBJECTIVES • • • •

Finishing touches to content Is abstract OK? Formatting Submission

SCHEDULE Item Introduction Literature review Bring it together Interim report Research methods Designing and testing tools Gather data Findings Discussion Conclusions



Notes

nd 2 marker’s comments Done All interviews but 1 arranged for this period. [interview with offline CC 1 October] 5 October Finished 9 October – 4 days behind schedule. End October First draft completed 2 November – behind schedule mid First draft done 16 Nov. That’s on schedule. But November earlier parts still need attention. So still behind schedule 1 December In my dreams! But will be submitted by 20 December (final deadline is 6 January

WORD-‐COUNT CHAPTER target

SECTION actual %*used

section

target

NA

NA

NA

NA

1500 1500 3500 1500 2500 1250 500 750 3000 2500 2500 500 500 500

1581 1291 3914 1339 2487 602 480 630 2773 5031 2235 419 171 397

105% 86% 112% 89% 99% 48% 96% 84% 92% 201% 89% 84% 34% 79%

22500

23350

104%

frontmatter

NA

NA

NA

Introduction

1500

1581

LitRev

6500

6544

Methods

2500

2487

Fundings8and8discussion

8000

9516

Conclusions

2500

2235

Critical8appraisal,8 limitations,8further8work

1500

987

105% Introduction ideal2presence 101% potential2drivers2and2inhibitors models 99% Methods Model2presence Assessing2actual2presences 119% Initial2interview2questions OpenEended2IQs Models 89% Conclusions critical2appraisal 66% limitations further2work

22500

23350

Total

104%


actual %*used


177

PROGRESS 1. Content ready to submit, I think 2. Is abstract OK – 241 words QUESTIONS/NOTES Request advice on format. I’ve followed MJR’s instructions but • • • • • •

Is scanned signature on declaration OK? really single-‐spaced? Colour headings OK? OK to print at home on recycled paper Equal left-‐right binding margins in Word? Mirror margins captions above tables and figures to appease Word’s heading tool when tables take more than one page. But IMHO it harms readability.

SUPERVISOR’S COMMENTS Planning and management 1. 2. 3.

Research 1. 2.

NEXT MEETING: VIVA!!!!!



178

Appendix 11: Feedback on initial report 26 August Dear Bruce (and Peter) Thanks for your interim report. The work appears to be progressing splendidly. Some small comments re: your comment on the front page about tenses. Please note the work should generally be written in the present tense, but it is permissible to use past tense when explaining decisions taken in the progress of the research, specifically in the Methodology Chapter. The aim and RQs are fairly clear. It might also be useful to set out 'Aim and Objectives' in Ch1 – Objectives being the steps taken to fulfil the aim. Some Objectives are met through the review of secondary sources, some are met by empirical work or any further evaluation carried out once the analysis is complete. It can then be explained at the start of each chapter, how that chapter helps meet one or more objectives. Please remember that the External Examiner will not have read Ryan & Cruickshank (2012) and so you should give this due coverage in the Lit Review As noted above, I suggest you ‘bookend’ each chapter in the Dissertation with an Introduction which establishes how the chapter helps meet one or more Objectives, and also a Conclusion recapping on what has been achieved. I wouldn't normally comment on a Methods chapter in the Interim Review but, since you have provided this, it seems silly not to! Your discussion of research strategies is actually of research approaches or paradigms. I think this is too high-‐level for what should be a focussed investigation with known boundaries. The Lit Review focuses on models that explain uptake by measuring the relative influence of pre-‐defined factors. That in itself is a rather positivist approach, in that you are suggesting that there are objective understandings of what each of these factors are, and we can come to an agreed assessment of how they interact. That said, you then 'back away' from a strong positivist interpretation by setting out the components as 'themes' in Section 2.3.5. I was pleased to see this – as such you are moving more towards a mid-‐point in the subjective-‐objective spectrum where the themes can provide an initial focus but do not 'limit' the the research. I think the aim of this chapter should be to set out a methods approach that will allow you to maintain this ambition – in other words please do avoid producing very structured and inflexible interview schedules. Rather, ensure that your schedules (the list of question areas to be covered) can allow you to collect the data that you think will be relevant, while also allowing 'unexpected' data to be recorded that might in fact challenge some of the assumptions contained in the models! So -‐ semi–structured interviews are probably very valuable to you. Hope that makes sense! Looking forward to seeing the final version. Best Colin
