Mary Reid

There are some great animations and games emerging for the election this time.

My favourites so far are:

WMD Hunt

gbjab

London Calling

Then I joined Martin Scarfe, the National Projects Programme Director (in picture), on a panel at a briefing session for Chief Executives and lead members of local authorities to discuss 'Efficiency, Effectiveness and e-Government'.

Here the concern by the audience was that many officers and councillors were resistant to change. We heard about councillors who refuse to use email, and officers who refuse to appear in webcasts. It seems some of the ideas being tried out in e-government were just too much for some. But we were urged to continue, and to develop it all beyond 2005.

I agreed with someone who was unhappy about the way councils refer to people: "They are not customers, they are council tax payers - they own the Council".

In the evening I gave a lecture to the SocioTechnical Group of the British Computer Society - a small group of people, mainly from academic backgrounds. We had a lively and stimulating discussion about local democracy.

David Wilcox quite properly pointed out that there is local democracy beyond local government - other public authorities, plus the voluntary sector, engage people in decisions about their localities. He would have liked the scope of the National Project to be widened to include grassroots activity and the role of civil society.

'Empowerment' has been my mantra throughout my political life, so I had great sympathy with this view. There is plenty of work to be done with local authorities. They need to become much more responsive, to remove barriers to communication and to actively encourage greater participation. People outside local government may not realise the enormous culture changes that are needed to make this happen.

David also asks in his blog why the National Project doesn't cover elections - a frequent question. But postal voting, e-voting, encouraging turnout etc are common issues at all levels of government, not just local government. The Electoral Commission was set up to stimulate interest and evaluate the voting pilots, so we have been avoiding duplication on this.

I see the National Project as one piece in a much larger jigsaw. The bigger picture (some of which I am actively involved in) includes using the e-channels to enhance politics, single issue campaigning, community development, voting and individual involvement.

Unfortunately our title, 'Local e-Democracy', suggests larger aims than 'just' transforming 400 local councils......

So how do you reduce graffiti by 65% and win a national environmental award for doing so? You develop a Graffiti Strategy with your community partners - environmental services, trading standards, police, youth offending team and the voluntary sector.

Simple! - well, not so simple, of course. It requires intelligence and lateral thinking. Like the extraordinary work of the Kingston-based Save the World Club. Bernadette Vallely explained their thinking at the Kingston Community Leadership Conference yesterday.

Save the World Club works with young people who are on the margins - Bernadette describes them all as 'distressed' - who get involved in anti-social behaviour, low level crime and graffiti. They have no civic pride and lack self-esteem. So the Club started with a heavily graffitied wall at a playground, brought in artists, begged for funding and scrap materials, then got the young people to design and build a giant mosaic mural (it covers 48 square metres) over the summer holidays.

This picture shows Bernadette Vallely with Edward Davey MP by the completed mural. 

Since then the Save the World Club have worked on three other prominent town centre projects - the largest is an amazing 175 square metres. My favourite is the Muybridge mural in Castle Street (I'll post a picture when I've found one) which represents those early photographs of human and animal movement.

This picture is a section of the one under Kingston Station railway bridge.

These projects have so many positive outcomes - the young people are valued, excellent public artworks are created, intimidating urban spaces are transformed, and whole communities get involved. To date over 3000 people have taken part. Mosaic is easily cleaned and difficult to vandalise, so the improvements are long lasting.