’Municipal Ear’A Web Service for Involving

Citizens in Political Program Work

Ville TapioFountain Park Ltd

15.12.2008

Contents:Presentation of the service (1-10)

Presentation of the results (11-17)Theory base (18-22)

Company presentation (23-28)

2

Project Background

The National Coalition Party carried out a successful campaign with the “Party with Ears” theme in 2007 Finnish parliamentary elections - the challenge was how to transfer this into the Internet

Fountain Park Ltd has been developing web services for proactive and participative leadership since 2001 (mainly for the sector of big enterprises)

Rich User Experience and Social Networking in Web 2.0 research project of Fountain Park,University of Oulu and Stanford’s H*/Media-X Research Institute

”Many scientifcally well-argued concepts from social network analysis (SNA), which have not been much utilized yet, may be applied in developing Web applications. These incluce e.g. the concepts of weak ties, bridge, cohesion and homophily. These are well documented sociological concepts that influence buying patterns, political choices, self-concept, innovation, productivity, quality and more that have been hard to observe in the off-line world.”

3

Welcome page - www.kuntakorva.fi

4

Background variables

5

Instructions

6

Proposing themes

7

Proposing themes from other peoples’ point of view

8

Evaluating themes proposed by others

9

One more chance to propose themes

10

Challenge your network

11

Statistics

34 130 participants 16 031 proposed themes 82 139 theme evaluations 368 440 themes read

Males 56.6 %, females 43.4 %

Under 30 years 16.9 %, 30-55 years 48.9 %, over 55 years 34.2 %

Students 10.5 %, employees 49.7 %, entrepreneurs 17.2 %, retired 16.6 %, others 5.9 %

12

Classification of data using SOM

“A self-organizing map (SOM) is a type of artificial neural network that is trained using unsupervised learning to produce a low-dimensional (typically two dimensional), discretized representation of the input space of the training samples, called a map. The map seeks to preserve the topological properties of the input space.

This makes SOM useful for visualizing low-dimensional views of high-dimensional data, akin to multidimensional scaling. The model was first described as an artificial neural network by the Finnish professor Teuvo Kohonen.”

13

Main themes

People talked most about Work and Education while Social and health services were evaluated as the most important theme. It’s especially important to notice that themes that weren’t

much talked about such as Communality, were still evaluated to be very important by all different respondent groups.

Work

Education

Health services

Municipal economy

Housing and construction

Entrepreneurship

Family

Administration and policies

Services for senior citizens

Traffic and transportation

Comfort and safety

Sports and hobbies

Environment

Day care

Culture

Immigrants

Communality

Importance (avg)

Amount (%)

14

Subthemes of the communality

Immigrants’ intregration to the society

Prevention of social exclusion

Senior citizens Association activity

Family and raising childrens

Support networks

Schools and youth work

15

Regional variation

Immigrants, Traffic and transportation and Environment are evaluated more important in Helsinki than in the rest of the country.

Issues related to Entrepreneurship, Services for aging people and Education are considered less important in Helsinki.

Work

Education

Health services

Municipal economy

Entrepreneurship

Family

Services for senior citizens

Comfort and safety

Housing and construction

Administration and policies

Traffic and transportation

Environment

Sports and hobbies

Day care

Culture

Immigrants

Communality

Whole country

Helsinki

16

Comparison of respondent groups(for example Males vs. Females)

Work

Education

Health services

Municipal economy

Entrepreneurship

Family

Services for senior citizens

Coziness and safety

Housing and construction

Administration and policies

Traffic and transportation

Environment

Sports and hobbies

Day care

Culture

Immigrants

Communality

Males

Females

17

Media Visibility

18

Quantitative research

Good for measuring well known, easy to structure phenomenonsthat have happened in the past

The challenge is to design valid question patterns, get really new information and take advantage of the results.

Good for structuring complex phenomenons, searching new information, forecasting changes and planning future actions

The challenge is the scalability and the statistical analysis of the results

Qualitative research

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Wisdom of Crowds

Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.

Four elements required to form a wise crowd: Diversity of opinion Independence Decentralization Aggregation

Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business,

Economies, Societies and Nations

James Surowiecki, 2004

20

Observation Filters

"Implanting Strategic Management”by Igor Ansoff. Prentice Hall 1984ISBN 0-134-51808-X

• Surveillance filter defines the area that we observe, e.g. our current market and industry. The challenge is that discontinuities usually come from outside of our current industry.

• Mentality filter is formed of previous (success) experiences and we have a tendency to filter novel issues off, because they have not been important to us before.

• Power filter prohibits people to express their ideas to those who possess more organizational power or power based on expertise.

21

Weak Signals

“A weak signal is a factor for change hardly perceptible at present, but which will constitute a strong trend in the future.”

Michelle Codet 1994

“A weak signal is a sign which is slight in present dimensions but huge in terms of its virtual consequences.”

Pierre Masse 1965

Trends

Weak signals

22

"Committing to change" (146-160) in Conner Daryl R., Managing at the Speed of Change; How resilient managers succeed and prosper where others fail. John Wiley & Sons 1992, 1998 ISBN 0-471-97494-3

Conner, Darryl R. & Patterson, Robert W. “Building Commitment to Organizational Change.” (18-30) Training and Development Journal 36, 4 (April 1982).

Awareness

Interest

Understanding

Acceptance

Commitment

Internalization

Action

Requires personal

reflection and sharing with

others.

Result

Building Commitment to Change

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Fountain Park Ltd

Fountain Park offers web services for:

Helping new leaders to understand and get acceptance of their new organization

Participation of crowds to the planning of strategies and programs to increase the level of interest and commitment

Analyzing customer and other stakeholder insights to increase organizations’ competitiveness

Established in 2000, owned by the staff, office in Helsinki, 20 employees, growing rapidly (52 % in H1/2008 compared to H1/2007)

Creating a new market between the established software, training, consulting and research markets:

Software companies

Consulting companies

Research companies

Trainingcompanies

Fountain Park”Web services for

proactive leadership”

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UK’s public sector customers

Department of Innovations, Universities and Skills, Alex KingOnline brainstorming for DIUS scenario process

The National Trust, Alex HuntOnline brainstorming for internal and outernal stakeholders

Department of Trade and Industry, Alister Wilson Two online brainstromings: CBI Horizon Scan & FAN Club Meeting Scan

NIACE National Institute for Continuing Adult Education, Simon MaugerOnline brainstorming for NIACE scenario process

REGENworks, Marion CooperOnline brainstorming for regional development strategy

Foresight’s Horizon Scanning CentreThree year framework contract for Futures projects(www.foresight.gov.uk/Horizon%20Scanning%20Centre)

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Other international customers

Deloitte (USA)Strategic agility online dialogues

Technology Forecasters Inc (USA), Pamela GordonScanning change signals from global operating environments

Singapore GovermentSeveral online operating environment scannings to support goverment’s foresight work

CERN (Switzerland), Markus Nordberg Online human risks analysis for commissioning of the new particle accelarator

Prometeus Association (France), Kari MikkeläOnline evaluation of future challenges of e-learning

City of Tartu (Estonia)Youth health survey

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Case British Telecom

Efficiency improvements by listening to the employees

The challenge 2007 was to collect and evaluate the most pressing ”hygiene issues” inside BT Retail. This means the systems, processes and behaviors that cause the most internal friction in people's everyday work and have the biggest impact on corporate performance.

Hundreds of employees participated, and over 500 answers were given to the question "Things I'd like to see changed". The participants also evaluated issues submitted by other respondents.

The results identified clearly the action priorities, and allowed new and existing actions to focus on issues with the biggest business impact. The Fountain Park tools and expertise were an invaluable part of an ongoing process, through which management is committed to delivering accountable and measurable results that make BT Retail function better.

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Case Finnish Innovation Fund

Creating the national natural resources strategyThe Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra invited participants from industry, government, universities and media to brainstorm ideas on what needs to be taken into consideration when preparing the national natural resources strategy. The work is coordinated by Sitra. The results will be presented to Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen in the spring 2009. When the strategy is finished, the crowds will be invited again to propose projects which should be initiated to implement the strategy.

Brainstorming new programme ideasSitra wanted to increase transparency of its programme preparation phase by inviting its stakeholders to take part in the preparation. Fountain Park's online brainstorming was the method chosen. The closest stakeholders were first invited to give ideas on the themes that could be important for the future of Finland, to evaluate the significance of others' ideas and to invite members of their own networks of visionaries to participate.The invitation reached 2 150 people in a few weeks, making 2 474 suggestions and evaluating others' suggestions 13 636 times. On the basis of the results, the board of Sitra selected five topic areas for further development.

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Do you need an Ear?

Call or email to me:Ville Tapio+358 40 590 9385ville.tapio@fountainpark.com

Fountain Park has carried out more than 200 research and communications projects like ‘Municipal Ear’

Our software has been used to do more than 15 000 research projects and to involve almost 2 000 000 people in decision making processes

Our biggest projects have had up to 19 language versions and tens of thousands of participants from all over the world

A project such as Municipal Ear costs 20 000 euros

Euro elections are coming. How will you find out the real thoughts of potential voters and get them interested about the Euro politics?