As reported on Simpl in December, Google have asked FutureGov to team up with the RSA and Livity to deliver another Interactivism Hack Weekend. Back in June the first ever Interactivism took place in Brick Lane, East London, and brought together developers (including from Google), designers, social innovators and older people (from Gransnet) to work on solutions to make the internet more accessible for older people. This time we are inviting you to submit ideas that use digital technology to help young people find the job, education or training that is right for them to the Interactivism: Young People’s Hack Weekend challenge. We will be bringing the familiar Interactivism mix of people together on the 17th and 18th February in Ravensbourne, Greenwich, but instead of older people from Gransnet, young people from Livity will be joining the teams to work up your great ideas into working digital prototypes.

2011 was certainly not a dull year for news, but in many ways, it was a depressing one. You don’t need me to remind you that “global economic crisis”, “Eurozone crisis”, “public sector cuts”, “youth unemployment” adorned many a newspaper headline and newsreader’s reel. But, as Julian Thompson, Director of Enterprise at the RSA, admitted in his blog about Interactivism, these news stories became something that many of us tried to avoid.

I am hoping that now we have leapt into 2012, the new year will bring with it some new energy that will inspire us to think again and tackle, rather than avoid, these big challenges. Of course, most of us are not in the position to set national growth strategies or clear global debt, but I believe that some of the best solutions ultimately come from the bottom up and if we have learnt nothing else from this gloom, it is that we can’t sit around waiting for politicians to work their magic and make everything better for us, we need to do something ourselves. Interactivism: Young People’s Hack Weekend is your chance to do just that.

You can find out more about the Interactivism challenge, including how to enter your idea or register your interest in attending, here. You don’t have to have entered an idea to come along to the two day event – we are looking for designers and developers (including students) to help the teams bring their ideas to life. There are exciting prizes, including Google Chromebooks, lined up for the winning team. So get thinking, be creative, be different and post your idea on Simpl now. The closing date is the 25th January 2012.

To keep up-to-date with the Interactivism challenge’s progress, including the announcement of the winning ideas, please follow the Simpl blog or the Simpl twitter account.

If you want to know more, please get in touch: lucy [at] wearefuturegov [dot] com or rachel [at] wearefuturegov.com.

And we’re live! Yesterday saw the launch of Interactivism Young People’s Hack Weekend on Simpl with a call out for ideas that use the web and digital technology to help get young people into (and maintain) the education, employment and training that is right for them. Right, so it’s pretty impossible to escape the constant media surge of stories around NEETs, youth unemployment rates, social unrest, you name it, and it’s painting a pretty bleak picture of the current situation young people are in. There is no doubt times are tough, but rather than dwell in the negative, we want you to harness those negatives, creating ideas for projects that will help change this myriad of sad statistics into positive social action. We’ve got quite a few tricks up our sleeves to get those innovative juices flowing. For one, the RSA have put together a discovery framework, which maps out some of the biggest barriers and gaps in what’s currently out there to help young people. They look at how design methods and a nifty matrix can help you discover where your idea might fit into the mix. Additionally, in the run up to Interactivism, keep your eyes peeled for a string of guest posts on the Simpl blog written by a pretty awesome bunch – including young people, those who work with young people, employers, and more – to help highlight some of the biggest needs from those who know best. And if that isn’t enough to put some fire under your feet to get ideas flowing, here’s another thing to consider – prizes. That’s right, as a bit of extra enticement, we’d like the reveal that the prizes for the top hack weekend ideas will include – Google Chromebooks for the entire winning team, a trip for one lucky student developer to one of Google’s international offices, and a chance for the young people involved to get a tour and lunch at Google HQ in London. Like we said, stay tuned to Simpl (both on our blog and on Twitter @Simplco) for the latest news, details and inspirations relating to Interactivism, and we hope you see your ideas up soon!

Never ones to miss out on the chance of a good get together, we want you to help us celebrate our biggest year so far!

Join us for some classic Christmas films, some mulled wine and a mince pie or two. There will be merry-making, Dominic in a santa hat*, and more tinsel than you can shake a jingle bell at. Please rsvp to mistletoeandwine@wearefuturegov.com – Christmas film suggestions welcome!

The fun starts at 1pm, and will go on after working hours so drop in any time till late 20th December at Roxy Bar and Screen 128 – 132 Borough High Street, London SE1 1LB (Google Map).

*unconfirmed at time of writing

FutureGov Christmas Party Flyer

View more documents from FutureGov

Knives and forks at the ready? Good because we want to introduce you to Casserole, a community project that connects people – one good shared meal at a time. The project is being developed and piloted with Future Surrey and has just won a contract with the TSB and Design Council on their joint Independence Matters programme.

It’s been a busy few months here at FutureGov and one of the many imagination capturing projects we are working on started out a few months ago as Community Kitchens. Supported by an initial development contract awarded by TSB and Design Council, we wanted to get out and understand more about the variety of things that might impact on our idea of getting people to cook extra meals for others in their community. With the help of the lovely folks at WRVS in Waverley and Elmbridge Borough Council, we spoke to a whole host of people from volunteers who’ve been helping deliver meals on wheels for more than 25 years,to interviewing random members of the public on the street to discover their views on participating in community services. We even got to catch up with Mrs Munday, who had been celebrating her 100th birthday that week, when we shadowed some of the brilliant meals on wheels volunteers in Surrey.

WRVS preparing meals

Linking up with the Future Surrey project has been a fantastic boost for Casserole. Surrey Camp, held in September, brought together a whole host of different people in Surrey from county and borough councils, police, public and voluntary organisations, residents and service users in an unconference style of collaborating to change through design and technology. Having so many people in one place was incredibly useful and out of this big network the Social Isolation group began to form, sharing their insights into social isolation and adult social care and it became apparent that food could be a key factor in combatting this issue.

Why? Well we know that food is more than simply nutrition –  just look at the endless cookery programmes on telly or remember the smell of your grandmother’s kitchen. Whether through international food markets, Christmas meals, summer BBQ parties, Come Dine With Me or community allotments, food is one of those rare social objects that is able to build universal connections across cultures and generations. So we thought, what better way than using food to tackle social isolation?

Mapping workshop at Surrey Camp

The idea behind Casserole is as simple as pie and offers you the choice of being a cook or a diner. A cook chooses times that they can prepare an extra portion of the meal that they are already making and what this meal might be and then Casserole matches them with a diner who lives nearby. Diners can then suggest recipes and give feedback on dishes they liked. Being a part of Casserole means everyone involved can share recipes, hints and tips to learn some cool stuff along the way. We want the mouth watering smell of a fresh lasagne or red hot curry to spread from street to street through our network of Casserole volunteers.

Casserole is all about looking at the small and unique contributions we can each make by cooking an extra meal along with our own and giving it to someone who might appreciate it. When it comes to cooking dinner, it doesn’t take much extra time to add one more portion to the mix, but the value of that extra portion to someone who lives on your street and struggles to get out and about amounts to much more than just a meal. As a Casserole volunteer, you might build relationships with people you would never otherwise encounter, and what’s more, their recipes, feedback and opinions could help you to finally cook that amazing Beef (or Veggie) Wellington you’ve always dreamed of.

Carmela's Kitchens

Thanks to Surrey County Council, the TSB and Design Council and developments through Future Surrey, we are now focusing our first pilot of Casserole in Reigate & Banstead and, in particular, in the Redhill and Merstham areas and would love to hear from people and organisations who live in this area and are keen to be involved.

And finally, we are excited to announce that  Surrey’s very own Carmela Tomkins, of Carmela’s Kitchen, will be supporting the project as one of our advisors. Carmela’s enthusiasm and passion for good food is something we love and aspire to have at the heart of the Casserole project.

If you are interested in finding out more about Casserole, sign up by visiting www.casserolehq.org or get in touch by e-mailing me at Murtz [at] wearefuturegov [dot] com

Image: Paolo Marconi

Talking to a room full of child protection practitioners at the launch of our work with Brighton and Hove City Council recently, I outlined the story of Patchwork to date.  The response was great – I couldn’t have hoped for more enthusiasm and participation from everyone there.  We had a full house and even a potential fire hazard at one point, until we made more space for the nearly 90 practitioners that turned up.

It was a proud moment sharing our journey with Patchwork so far and it’s clear that designing the app with practitioners instead of at them has led to a product that meets their needs.  No one questioned the point of Patchwork – all the questions were asking what it does and what more it could do (answer: plenty!).

As you can imagine, a lot of the questions were about information security.  Is it open to just anyone?  How do you stop people randomly searching for others?  And of course people wanted to know if they could upload their case notes and use it as a multi-agency messaging system.  This is where my heart sinks a bit.  Technically can we do that stuff?  Of course!  In reality will we be able to do that stuff?  Right now it seems a couple of years off.

The problem is Information Governance.  I don’t have the background to go into the detail of it, but our work on Patchwork has introduced us to a moral maze (or is that a legal labyrinth?) of Information Governance issues.  The law (or is it policy? or guidance?) is confusing to say the least, but more confusing is the way that the public sector’s policies seem set up to prevent good working links between different agencies – health, police, local councils, voluntary sector, housing associations, private companies, fire service and even individuals like parents and carers.

This post is not a rant about how bad the policies are, or how the law should be changed.  It’s a call to local authorities and other public sector agencies to invest in their Information Governance teams.  Investing in anything right now is a tall ask but if there’s anything that can save money in the medium to long term it’s having an all-star, red-hot Information Governance team.

I know what it’s like – you see ‘Information Governance’ on a budget line and think ‘That’s got ‘cut’ written all over it’.  After all, who really knows what those guys do?  Didn’t we just invest in Sharepoint?  Wasn’t that supposed to solve all these problems and mean that information is flowing round the organisation like a well oiled machine? (How’s that working out for you by the way?).

Here’s what a top-notch Information Governance team should be doing:  working out how local authorities can share information with other agencies (and vice versa) without compromising people’s privacy and security; thinking about how to work with cloud computing and the security and information implications of having data hosted outside of the council; helping staff in services understand how to use the web safely; helping you figure out how you can stop investing in big expensive systems and start running lightweight web-based apps.  I’d like to see more suggestions in the comments…

Most local authority Information Governance teams are only a couple of people strong if you’re lucky, and those we’ve encountered in the NHS seem to be about the same.  They’re overworked, under-resourced and operating in a world that is rapidly dying.  No wonder their default position is to say ‘no’ and to operate an approvals-based system that leaves you guessing at what might satisfy their standards.  They don’t have time to work together to find solutions and ways to break through the barriers, they only have time to highlight risk.  Furthermore they work in a field that is tabloid heaven.  If something goes wrong it’s their responsibility (legally) and their name in the Daily Mail.  The fear of blame is endemic in the public sector and leads to restrictive practice all over the place.  But that’s another post for another day.

The point is that it’s easy to blame Information Governance teams for not being progressive enough or for constantly blocking innovation.  But good information governance is essential to keep services running in a web-enabled world, and it’s the last thing that should be running on a shoestring.  It’s time to invest in professionals who know their stuff, have in-depth knowledge of web technology and security, and have time to support the organisation in how they use technology and use it right, not whether to use it at all.

If this post had any influence at all we’d see 400 councils rushing out to recruit their own Information Governance teams.  But in reality a district probably doesn’t need its own team, and in many ways even a county doesn’t.  It would be way more interesting to see local authorities and other public agencies investing together in a shared Information Governance resource, perhaps at county or city level.  They could afford more and better advice and the advice would be applicable to a region rather than a fragmented agency-by-agency basis.  That would put organisations on an equal footing and create the conditions for multi-agency working to be successful.

Meanwhile, back at PatchworkHQ we’ll be spending the next 6 months trying to work through the information governance issues associated with letting practitioners from different agencies just see who else is working with their cases.  The title of this post is a quote from a social worker who refuses to let the absurdity of current Information Governance rules dictate her practice, and we’re fortunate to work with many others who feel the same.

Onwards!