Did you attend SurreyCamp (or maybe wanted to) and would like to find out how to apply the Future Surrey approach of using design principles and social networking tools to help take your ideas further? If so, come along to SurreyCamp reunion is on the afternoon of Monday 12 December. There will be a few short presentations and a series of very practical, hands-on workshops.  You can get more details and free tickets here.  This will also be a chance to get a detailed look at the Future Surrey projects.

CORE PROJECTS

Over the last two weeks we’ve been busy cooking up plans for two core Future Surrey innovation projects: Casserole and Help Out!

People share some the best experiences of their lives over a drink or a meal. Casserole is a project which helps address social isolation and better nutrition by helping people share food with vulnerable adults near them. After a great first meeting with Reigate & Banstead we are moving forward to get in touch with organisations and individuals with an interest in social isolation or food (or both). If you are interested in being involved or know someone who might be then please get in touch with Murtz Abidi at murtaza@werarefuturegov.com.  Sign-up to the Future Surrey network and join the social isolation group if you’d like to be kept up to date.

Help Out! is a way of supporting resident action in the place where they live and helping to keep Surrey beautiful and accessible. We’re having a launch workshop on the afternoon of  8 November. We’ll be sharing some initial designs and asking participants to help shape this project.  Contact me at ingrid@wearefuturegov.com  or join the Help Out group if you’d like to know more or maybe even help out.

MORE SOCIAL MEDIA SURGERIES

There are two more social media surgeries planned for November. Join in to learn or share your knowledge on how social media can be used to support council and community objectives. Come along from 10-12 on 16 November at Chertsey Library or 10-12 17 November at Guildford Library.  More information including sign-up information on the Future Surrey site.

SURREYCAMP: THE REUNION

Did you attend SurreyCamp (or maybe wanted to) and would like to find out how to apply the Future Surrey approach of using design principles and social networking tools to help take your ideas further? If so, come along to SurreyCamp reunion is on the afternoon of Monday 12 December. There will be a few short presentations and a series of very practical, hands-on workshops.  You can get more details and free tickets here.  This will also be a chance to get a detailed look at the Future Surrey projects.

CO-PRODUCTION WORKSHOP

In the spirit of co-production we’re keeping the agenda fairly loose, but our aim is to explore how co-production can work and to think about how Surrey as a local area can be open to ways of co-producing services with residents and partners, so it’s as much about how the council works internally as externally.  The session will be split into two half-days – an afternoon and a morning – in order to give people time to reflect after the first half day.  We will be involving facilitators who will challenge us all and help us think through the issues.  Those of you who attended David McNulty’s managers’ briefing with Johnnie Moore will know what an amazing facilitator he is.  Contact Carrie Bishop at carrie@wearefuturegov.com to get involved.

The session takes place in County Hall on:

• Wednesday 9 November 1pm – 4pm
• Thursday 10 November 10am – 1pm

DON’T FORGET THE MUFFINS

It’s another  Muffins and Mingles at County Hall this week. Join members of the Future Surrey team to find out more about what we’re doing or get advice on social media and/or user-centred design. No muffins this week, but I will be bringing my favourite spiced cookies!  Come see us in Costa from 11 to 12 on Wednesday 2 November.

Welcome to the first Future Surrey update! We’ll be sharing updates from the programme and opportunities to get involved about every two weeks. If you aren’t already receiving our newsletter sign up here.

The Big News

We’ve always been focused on deliverig a couple of core projects.  These are now agreed and we’re very excited about working on:

• Social isolation – This project will tackle social isolation and malnutrition in elderly and vulnerable adults in Surrey by  building local networks and social capital around sharing food.  Murtz Abidi will be leading this project.
• Resident action – Help Out where you live: this project will help local people find opportunities for civic action or informal volunteering – and help coordinate communication between agencies and the public through social media and other channels. Ingrid Koehler will be leading on this one.

We really need your help: your ideas, experience and effort. You can get involved as an active contributor or just to stay informed. Please join the Social Isolation project group and/or the Help Out group on the Future Surrey network.

Social media surgeries

Curious about Twitter? Wondering how Facebook could support your service? Social media surgeries are a great way for people to share their knowledge about social media and explore together in a relaxed atmosphere.  Helen Leech of the Surrey CC library service kicked off the first four in September and Anna McCulloch will be convening the next three in October and November. The next one is thisThursday 20 October at Guildford Library and there are still some places left.  Find out how to sign up on the Future Surrey blog – the social media surgeries are open to anyone in the  public sector in Surrey.

SurreyCamp

SurreyCamp was a fantastic interactive event. We’ve done a round-up here and  shared your recent feedback on what you thought about the camp.  Have a look through the ideas and see what you can share or what you could help to make a reality.

Co-production

Interersted in learning more about how to develop and lead co-production?  Drop us a line if you’re interested in participating in an interactive session in early November.

Visualising Data

As part of the Future Surrey programme, we’re taking a look at how data can be presented better to share messages inside and outside the council. Can you help? Is this something you’d like to work on? Join us in the visualising data group.

Share your Future Surrey story

Future Surrey isn’t just a project. It’s an approach embracing user centred services and using digital technology to improve people’s lives.  The Superfast Broadband team have been using the Future Surrey site to share and you can, too. It doesn’t have to be super technical, but anything where you’re trying to bring innovation to the services you provide with citizens. Drop us a line atingrid@wearefuturegov.com  if you’d like to do a guest post or become a regular contributor.

Chat to us over muffins or join us online

Join us in Costa at County Hall for the next Muffin and Mingle on Wednesday 19 October from 11 to 12.  We’d love to hear your ideas and talk things over.   Or join the Future Surrey network  to connect with colleagues, share and learn.  We can’t wait to hear from you!

As part of SurreyCamp, participants worked on ideas crowdsourced by delegates. Each group is sharing a write up of what they did here on the Future Surrey network. Read about the whole day here, including links to other great ideas. 

The idea our group worked on was a website that could bring together comprehensive information about learning for adults in Surrey. Various council services offer opportunities to either find out about or learn more on a variety of topics – Libraries, Surrey Arts, the Adult & Community Learning Service, not to mention the wealth of voluntary and charitable organisations, private trainers and self-help groups and clubs meeting throughout the county to pursue their interests.

What difference does this idea make?
The site could be developed to become not only attractive but also inter-active, and could form a platform for E-learning courses as well as providing information.

How does this save money? Could it make money?
Providers could pool resources and income could be generated from charging for listings or links on the website, and possibly from sponsorship by businesses.

How does this help people of Surrey do things for themselves?
Anybody with access to the internet would be able to find out about or learn; outreach projects to promote digital inclusion could really help people to help themselves.

What do you need to make this happen?
There appears to be a domain name surreylearning.co,uk already in existence but we don’t know how to go about gaining access to this – there doesn’t appear to be very much on it at the moment. Setting this project up could be an ideal secondment opportunity or task for an apprentice, and the income generated could pay for the resources needed.

Our group: Sue Risbridger, Pamela Hart, Fiona Fitzpatrick and Kate Swallow

As part of SurreyCamp, participants worked on ideas crowdsourced by delegates. Each group is sharing a write up of what they did here on the Future Surrey network. Read about the whole day here, including links to other great ideas. 

We looked at how the public sector might interface with the business community in Surrey in a more joined-up way. The Surrey economic partnership is already making many of these links, and we wanted to add to this initiative to create a common online forum/website to signpost everything that is going on.

There are three overlapping segments to Surrey’s businesses – those who already supply the public sector, those who may be potential suppliers, and those who would not be suppliers but who need to be in touch with county-wide initiatives for economic development. The first two of these in particular are where we need to understand the point of view of businesses better and share our contract opportunities with them in a more joined up way. We thought there could be a multi-agency collaboration event to which we could invite businesses. It was clear that lots is already happening in this arena, but the linkages between all the different initiatives are not well understood, and the public sector could be more coherent.

Submitted: by Derek Lancaster. Photo credit: Building an open source business by OpenSourceWay on Flickr. 

As part of SurreyCamp, participants worked on ideas crowdsourced by delegates. Each group is sharing a write up of what they did here on the Future Surrey network. Read about the whole day here, including links to other great ideas. 

Our small, but perfectly formed group of four considered (a) how could we revitalize democracy –when, why and how can people vote, (b) how we could get more people voting and (c) how can we use social media to engage with new voters, registering and even voting online?
Changes to electoral practices such as voting on line requires primary legislation, so recognising that was a little beyond our remit, we focused on the development of an app, called i-Vote, aimed to guide residents through the electoral process and engage with young people more dynamically.

i-Vote could include factual information such as links to national political parties; details of candidates standing in forthcoming elections; as well as directing residents to their registered polling station including opening times and location maps.

i-Vote could also include more interactive items such as a countdown to polling day, key election dates such as the last day to register on the electoral roll, or applying for a postal vote; democracy games (we didn’t explore this one fully!) and daily polls.

Political parties (either at a local or national level), in turn, could monitor the daily polls and potentially adjust their campaigns accordingly.

i-Vote would require some marketing and ideas included working with local schools, e,g, during local democracy week and using QR codes on Council literature with links to the free app.

Submitted by Arabella Davies.  Photo credit: I voted by Annnna_ on Flickr

As part of SurreyCamp, participants worked on ideas crowdsourced by delegates. Each group is sharing a write up of what they did here on the Future Surrey network. Read about the whole day here, including links to other great ideas. 

We all came to the table with different views as to what we meant by parenting, what we wanted to achieve and how social media and technology could play a role. After some debate we agreed to focus on improving the access to public services for those parents of disabled children who do not usually find their way around “the system”.

We decided that this could be tackled by:
· Improving current web based SCC services so they offer a very good service to those parents who are articulate, knowledgeable and able to make the case for their child. This will siphon of onto the web a considerable proportion of the customer base and allow it to be handled in the most cost effective manner

· The web redesign would mean producing content which is “parent and child centric” rather than current content which reflects SCC’s structures and language

· The freed up resources from the above web work, will be recycled to provide an enhanced telephone and F2F service for those parents who need far greater support

· We were conscious that this group of parents did not all have high literacy levels as a result of poor educational attainment or because English was not their first language. We would therefore look to develop some apps which were very visual and included the sort of instructional talking heads you see on You Tube. We would also signpost these parents to literacy support services

· Finally, we recognised that the disadvantaged parents may not have access to a PC at home nor own a car. We would therefore provide access to PCs through the whole of the public estate.

Submitted by Graham Cook.  

As part of SurreyCamp, participants worked on ideas crowdsourced by delegates. Each group is sharing a write up of what they did here on the Future Surrey network. Read about the whole day here, including links to other great ideas. 

Using social media to encourage visits to the countryside

The Problem / issues

As a County Council service we currently are not able to engage with the public via social networks.

This feedback submitted by Alex Baxter-Brown

Our table ‘Rural’ included just three delegates, yet many of the morning speakers commented upon Surrey’s countryside as one of the key reasons why Surrey is a great place to live and provides a high quality of life for its residents. The fact is most see the countryside from the window of their car or a train. Of those who do visit the countryside the vast majority do not venture further than 100 metres from a car park. The health and wellbeing benefits that can be achieved through visits to local countryside areas are widely documented. So how do we get people out there, can social networking be part of the answer?

Our solution

• establish a countryside Blog.
• encourage people to report back things they have seen when visiting countryside sites and with the option to post pictures, e.g. of wildlife or views.
• use a web-based platform to increase knowledge of where to visits using an interactive map with t focus on countryside places.
• use of Smart phone apps with places to visits and routes to follow.

A further thought was that there might well be grants and sponsorship possibilities to establish these opportunities.

As an example of what can be achieved using social networking, see the ‘Downlands Trust’ on Facebook.

This feedback was submitted by Alex Baxter-Brown

As part of SurreyCamp, participants worked on ideas crowdsourced by delegates. Each group is sharing a write up of what they did here on the Future Surrey network. Read about the whole day here, including links to other great ideas. 

What is the project?

Use technology to help to deal with the isolation felt my many vulnerable groups including Older People and People with Disabilities. This could be either people receiving Council services or the wider group. It was felt that access to information and services online would be an element in helping to ease this isolation. This would in term help people to live at home longer and be a chanel for the delivery of services like Telecare/Telemedicine.

The first barrier to this is the lack of access in the groups identified. It was felt that if there way a package of access and a variety of means of access (devices like Digital TV etc) that this would increase take up. The proposal is to leverage the Superfast broadband investment by the Government and the County Council.
We will work with the SFBB project to establish what services the suppliers and ISP’s could provide, also to work with community groups to establish their broad requirements.

We will then assess the best way forward either within the current SFBB procurement to include this kind of package, provide information to the successful companies which they can use to develop a commercially viable package or carry out a separate procurement.

In parallel we will work with our partners and community groups to identify what types of end user devices (e.g digital TV, Touch Screens) and which services would be most valuable delivered across this infrastructure. A starting point will be what devices already exist.We will then look at ways to take this forward.

What difference will it make?

This will widen access having benefits for the individuals in these vulnerable groups but also in our ability to deliver online services to these vulnerable groups.

How will it save money?

The project leverages existing investments and commitments to help the council and public sectors overall strategy. The capability will be part of the SFBB project, the actual connectivity will be paid for by individuals either themselves or through their Individual Budgets. This will be part of the councils overall preventative strategy which will help people live at home effectively and so not need council services. It will lead to long term but not short term savings.

How does it empower the community to do things for themselves?

Connectivity for these groups is the first step in being able to take advantage of the services being developed e.g. the Drop by Website.

Next steps – Paul Brocklehurst to raise with SFBB Steering Project.

Submitted by Paul Brocklehurst. Image: Sometimes it’s lonely by DaedalusT on Flickr.