An interesting story out of Birmingham in the UK. After launching its new 2.8 million pound participatory planning website, local residents created their own site entitled, “BigCityTalk”.
As reported in the blog Stap isi, one of the citizen-web developers became exasperated over the difficulty in using the City’s website, commenting: “We wanted a place to discuss the issues and options and help each other (and everyone) understand the Big City Plan.”
The new site was an interesting collaboration from a number of sources using a variety of UK open-source programs like FixMyStreet and Planning Alerts.
As the blog piece goes on to surmise, the future of civic web development (especially where public engagement is concerned) should be a public/public sector relationship where the governing institution maintains its role as legitimate convener - much as it should in face-to-face civic engagement.