The course was divided up into 5 days: discovering open data, publishing and managing open data, consuming and understanding data, the business of open data and a hackathon. As a class we co-created a booklet of learning from the week that will be published shortly on the ODI website.  Another useful resource for anyone thinking about open data is this field guide. 

I came away thinking that design by default is as important as digital by default when it comes to open data and adding context to it. Mention the word design in relation to data and many people will automatically think about the visualisation of data, but there is a real role for design to play in the whole process of data being published. The questions to ask when publishing open data are very similar to the questions you’d ask in any person-centered design approach. Who is it for? How is it going to be useful for them? What format do they need it in? What else do they need to know about it? Where has it come from? The Government Digital Service has some great principles that should underpin any open data project.

The areas I’m most keen to explore are the intersection between strategic design and data, and the role of data in supporting stewardship. In the words of Bryan Boyer, “Design is the task of stewarding ideas into life in the real world, where solutions do not always allow themselves to be politely engineered. Contending with the forces of nature and humanity is to balance constraints towards finding effective compromises. Stewardship is the art of getting things done when everything is not fully under your control. The steward, in the context of strategic design, frames the architecture of the problem at the beginning and then works to adjust course as surprises surface.” For more of Boyer’s Helsinki Design Lab thinking, see this new beautiful poster series

I have become increasingly interested in data as a means of surfacing truth, not the truth, but some truth. I see it as particularly useful for both bringing an idea to life and then acting like cats eyes on the road at night.  Data can tell you where you are, what is happening and give instant feedback enabling you to re-route. I hope to see more designers work with data scientists, not to design beautiful visualisations but as a way of shaping and stewarding whole systems.

Cassie Robinson

Campaigning Innovation.  It’s easy to lose sense of how we individually relate to major global issues when they don’t affect us directly.  This month Amnesty New Zealand launched Trial By Timeline which addresses this.  By taking our own personal footprint from facebook and contextualising this against the sometimes abstract issue of international human rights abuses the site is able to confront us with what our own experience of this might look like, with sound effects that engage the senses not just the rational brain.  Storytelling like this is critical as the context we live in becomes ever more global and complex.  Another great example of this in action is Greenpeace India’s Forest Hero Campaign. With so much rich data available on social media this is surely just the beginning…

NHS Reform. This April saw GPs across the country assume new powers with the most fundamental reforms to the NHS since – some argue – the 1940s. There have been big changes: roles and responsibilities that used to sit together have now been split between multiple organisations; funding flows are different, and perhaps most importantly – at a local level leadership is now with clinicians who head up membership organisations rather than hierarchical command and control structures. The Kings Fund is hosting an excellent debate navigating all this novelty and exploring what it means for patients. Meanwhile the political argument continues apace. See @andyburnhammp, @dhgovuk @jeremy_hunt or @policy_exchange depending on which side you want to hear.

The New Materialism. “The UK’s consumption cannot continue to rise indefinitely… if it is to make an effective contribution to a global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions’, so says the UK government’s Energy & Climate Change Committee. Getting serious about consumption means looking at our relationship with stuff. Yet rather than requiring us to go cold turkey on objects and lead the lives of possession-less ascetics, a new publication by Andrew Simms & Ruth Potts advocates a new materialism: treasuring possessions and revelling in the material world. Practically this means getting to know your object before you buy (find out at least three things about it), loving your objects (mend, maintain and reuse them) and demanding 10-year guarantees on everything you buy…

Rethinking Identity for the Future of Finance. Last week Visa published the Future of Technology and Payments, which places a large focus not on new technological developments but on identity and human behaviour, with data being the key factor. It highlights areas of development and brings to the fore key questions that as Andrew Vorster, VP of R&D Visa Europe, explained are already here but will become increasingly prevalent. One example is Ford’s Open Developer Programme that lets developers tap into all the data points collected by the car – to which thousands of developers signed up in its first 24 hours. Such programmes raise questions that go beyond the current obsession with data ownership, to issues of identity and collaboration. With our increasingly automated lives and changing notions of privacy and entitlement, there’s lots of food for thought here.

Finally how to be a better friend… Check out friendship pioneers Lifeboat who use art, science and great copy, to help us build deeper friendships.

Hosted by Michael Lewkowitz, a clutch of curious minds from the Nominet Trust, NESTA, the Big Lottery Fund, UnLtd, SIX, the Web Science Trust, MaRS and the Point People gathered to unravel some of the challenges of unleashing the untapped potential of ‘digital for impact’.  In other words, how might we better use digital technology to enable, understand, measure and evaluate social impact?  What kind of digital infrastructure do we need in order for greater impact to be achieved, sooner?

Our discussions were wide-ranging.  From the meaning of impact – ultimately a ‘human oriented aim’ – to the emergent nature of the digital realm and the lack of ‘failure’ stories, we got stuck into some meaty conversations.  Being reminded of the Cynefin Framework as a useful lens when considering complexity was helpful, as was learning of software carpentry bootcamps that are held for scientific researchers.  Also memorable was the appearance of the word antidisintermediationarianism in the discussion, thanks to Dave de Roure of the Web Science Trust, whose blogpost may be handy for those of us bamboozled by such lengthy terms.

As we brainstormed and grouped by theme both the barriers to, and strategies for realising the full potential of digital for impact we were struck by the scale of the challenge.  How do you prepare for a world that is increasingly chaotic?  The data mountain is growing, but we are currently without the right equipment to properly scale it.  The pace of change is so rapid that, for many, it can feel like an impossible game of ‘catch’ between a snail and a cheetah.  We are poorly coordinated, and there is friction between cultures too.

And yet we weren’t disheartened.  As a group, we saw much potential in the ‘delicious ambiguity’ of now.  We talked of the need for much more experiential learning, sharper tools for data discovery and usage and how we could get better at combining human brainpower with technological possibility.  In the ultimate emergent environment where, according to Kieron Kirkland of the Nominet Trust, ‘everyone is just chucking out stuff and seeing what sticks’, the time has come to get properly stuck in to the challenge.

Amongst the all the big thinking and post-it notes, there was definite energy in the room for action.  Or, to coin a phrase that emerged in the session itself, ‘f*** it, let’s ship it’.   It’s time to join up the conversations going on around the world about these issues; it’s time to get going on systems change.

With thanks to Michael Lewkowitz for facilitating the conversation.  His reflections on the day are here.

Hannah Smith

PHASE 1: WHERE DO YOU START?

Sun streams through the window at Oxford University, it’s a hot day in May 2009. A hundred and fifty bankers, academics, and NGO peeps fumble with umbrellas and string, building ‘models of the financial system they want to see’, led by a charismatic facilitator. A team from the World Wide Fund UK (WWF-UK) and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) juggle post-it notes in the background, trying to remember one another’s names.

This is about sensing. You always think you know where you’re going to start or end up but what we rapidly discovered is that there’s a period where you’re in the Chaordic. There’s chaos and there’s order and you play in the middle of it.  And at the same time, we’re trying to build some credibility and convene people around the subject. Ok so what did we do?  

Here’s what we thought we’d do 

• Convene representatives from different parts of the financial system- get them think about what the future of finance might look like
• Raise a few million pounds
• Pick a handful of representatives in powerful positions (of course they’d come) and design a programme that will take them through the U process
• Support them to create new projects tackling different leverage points in the financial system

Lessons learnt 

• We didn’t raise a few million pounds: Funders won’t believe in you, till you do. From a funders point of view they’re asking ‘why should I listen to you?’
• Establish credibility: As unlikely bedfellows, the WWF-UK and ICAEW brands attracted people to the Lab. Reos, the consultants we worked at this stage, had a process and the confidence to fight for it when the crowd got mutinous. Partnering with Oxford Said Business School attracted high profile attendees
• Core team relationships are crucial: We spoke different languages at our organisations and didn’t spend nearly enough time building understanding. We would spend a week politely ‘wordsmithing’ one others’ attempts to describe what we were doing.

PHASE 2: BUILD COMMUNITY, CROWD-SOURCE & RECONNECT WITH YOUR OWN VALUES

June 2010, Chartered Accountants Hall, London. A tanned investment banker with shiny brown hair stands up amid a seated audience of a hundred and twenty in pinstriped suits, corduroys and summer dresses. ‘This feels a bit like alcoholics anonymous’ he says, shuffling. ‘In answer to your question; the reason why I showed up today is because I want my children, who are 5 and 7, to be proud of their father. Right now I don’t feel that they can be’.

This phase is all about reconnecting people with their values, giving them permission to speak up and to think the unthinkable. Even flaky ideas are welcome here, in fact they’re encouraged. All too often being too deterministic at this stage stifles the sheer beauty and range of ideas that can emerge.

Here’s what we thought we’d do

• Build the community and deepen relationships within it. The Hara Collaborative worked with us during this stage and brought with them the Art of Hosting methodology designed to ‘welcome and listen to diverse viewpoints, maximise participation and civility and transform conflict into creative cooperation’. They also taught us only to speak when holding a stone (really, it’s a good discipline)
• We crowd-sourced ideas for a better system using open space technology and got people to cluster around the ideas that inspired them
• We supported the callers of these ideas, to turn their ideas into innovation groups – solid projects that could be funded

Success 

• There may not have been quite millions, but the money started to come in. We won funding from the Tellus Mater Foundation, which kept our work going for the next year and a half
• We are named one of the ‘Top 50, Britain’s New Radicals‘ by Nesta and The Observer, were featured in Forbes and invited to speak at various international conferences
• We built many deeply connected communities, in different parts of the financial system, from technology innovators, to policy advocates by hosting monthly drinks, workshops and large ‘Assemblies’ of a hundred plus stakeholders
• We experimented supporting around twenty ‘innovation groups’, amongst the most successful were;
• TEEB for Business Coalition, spearheaded by Pavan Sukhdev of the UNEP was developed in the Lab, funded by Defra and to the tune of $1m by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and incorporated in Singapore in 2012
• UnLtd Future, a programme designed to ‘accelerate alternative business models that connect people, planet and profit’ was funded by a private benefactor and successfully incubated nine social entrepreneurs, six of which secure funding at the end of the programme in 2012

Lessons learnt

• Asking the right questions was important. It’s very tempting use as the starting point, one’s own answer. What we found was being a caller of an issue is all important and working with the community you call to get to the right question. Only then can you hope to get to an answer. Don’t worry about holding uncertainty, that’s your job as host.
• Whoever comes are the right people: Innovation doesn’t only occur within the existing system, don’t worry if ‘mainstream’ don’t show up
• Make gatherings meaningful and fun. Informality wins. Reconnect people to their values and themselves, build models, draw things, use creativity
• Moving from idea to project takes more than convening: supporting leaders of our ‘innovation groups’ usually failed because we didn’t have a strategy of how to build them into organisations.

PHASE 3: CONSOLIDATE, STRATEGISE & DEMONSTRATE

June 2012 its 6.30pm and the Lab core team are curled up on different parts of a large red sofa, shoes off, eyebrows furrowed, staring down at their notes, scribbling and crossing out. ‘I think we need to work on three leverage points at once’ says one of them suddenly, ‘new business models, innovation in mainstream and leadership in civil society’. The group and coach look up at once, pens down.

This phase is about turning potential energy into action. How do you develop the radical projects you keep talking about and bring them to life?

Here’s what we thought we’d do

• Shirlaws helped us crack the strategy
• The goal is now ‘to incubate and accelerate new forms of prosperity, for people and planet’ and do this across the system by;

 1. Incubating new business models, innovation in mainstream finance and new forms of civil society
 2. Accelerate the capacity of leaders to create change
 3. Creating the wider conditions for change by raising awareness, creating supportive communities and advocating for policy change

Success

• We launched AuditFutures in 2012, designed to answer the question ‘how can audit better serve society’, funded by the big six audit firms.
• We built an influential stream of work Disruptive Finance Policy that included Andy Haldane of the Bank of England and was supported by Carlouste Gulbenkien and the Friends Provident Foundation
• In January 2013 we launched ‘Campaigning for the Common Good’ a leadership programme in partnership with nef (New Economics Foundation) for 20 economic justice campaigners
• We published our Prospectus and Manifest, a series of interviews highlighting groundswells of innovation within the financial system that are gaining momentum.

Lessons learnt 

• Your strategy takes a lot of work. You have to be prepared to put the hours in and adapt.
• Orchestration over emergence: There’s a point at which experimentation is longer the best strategy. What’s needed is a strong, clear intention and strategy
• Be rigorous. Say no to things that are misaligned, set clear boundaries and focus – mission first, organisation second, then the needs of any individual
• Funding gets easier: Once you are clear you attract people and organisations who want the same things and funding has been much easier to secure

Rachel Sinha and Richard Spencer, The Finance Innovation Lab

The Finance Innovation Lab is an incubator for systems change in finance. Jointly hosted by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and ICAEW (the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales), it was launched in 2008 and in 2012, was named one ’50 New Radicals, changing the face of Britain for the better’ by NESTA and The Observer newspaper.

Further details: http://thefinancelab.org/

January saw the publication of not one, but two papers on systemic innovation, handily bundled together for easy reading. If you’re not sure what we’re talking about when we say ‘systems innovation’, this is a good place to start. Between them, Geoff Mulgan and Charlie Leadbeater cover definitions, methods and the potential of systems innovation, as well as reflecting on how it might help us to tackle some of the great social challenges of our time.

A decade of destitution

Julia Unwin, chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, predicts that we will see a level of poverty we did not imagine we’d see again on these shores in the coming decade. In this lecture, she asks ‘what would Beveridge do?’ Her conclusions call for market, state and community to work together to create a new approach to tackling poverty that is as bold as the welfare state settlement of 70 years ago, but that better reflects life in the 21st century.

Reconnection and resilience

John Houghton (the guy behind the excellent Metropolitan Lines blog) argues that the move towards community-led regeneration is a positive step, but it’s not enough to rebuild fractured neighbourhoods and towns. ‘The residents of the poorest neighbourhoods are coming up with their own ideas. But society can’t pat them on the head for their gumption and leave them to fight against the tide.’ Local initiatives may build resilience, but reconnection is also needed – linking local neighbourhood renewal efforts to wider initatiives for sustainable urban development.

Lean in – really?

Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg wants to be the new face of feminism, and her new book Lean In: Women, Work And The Will To Lead is supposed to empower women by letting them in on the secret of how to play the alpha male game. C’mon girls, speak up in meetings! Don’t let the desire to have kids actually influence your career choices! Make your man wash his own socks! Yvonne Roberts’ excoriating article hits the nail on the head about why this book is so depressingly wrong. As feminists, we’ve got to transform our current models of work, not play along with them.

Collective impact

From economic inequality to climate change, the really tough societal challenges we face dwarf individual organisations and initiatives. And yet our grant-making infrastructure is still geared to funding initiatives proposed by single organisations. Stanford Social Innovation Review has a very good series on aiming for collective impact, starting with this introduction. For alliances to be successful in achieving a goal, they need a common agenda, mututally reinforcing activities, shared measurement systems, a lot of communication and some discrete resources for co-ordination. I predict we will hear more and more about these issues.

And for some light relief…

If you’re wondering when your expenditure on loungewear might peak, you’d better take a look at these 35 graphs mapping lifetime expenditures. Fascinating stuff.

When all you need is love but all you’ve got is 45 minutes, try this. In fact, even if you’ve got love, try it. You will have some wonderful conversations, I promise.

Sophia Parker

Our primary motivation in setting up the Point People is to experiment with new organisational models that might be better equipped to support systems change. By systems change we mean innovation and improvement that isn’t isolated to one part of a system, but is located at multiple parts of a system and is interconnected. By setting up as a network of individuals, with a tiered and flexible system of membership, and a non-hierarchical, collective approach to leadership, the Point People hope to put new systems at the heart of our operational structure.

Vast amounts of good intention and funding are spent on innovations that can only hope to make marginal impact because they are dependent on systems that are clogged and inefficient.

Our health system spends the vast majority of its funds on acute care when preventative, lifestyle based initiatives would be far more effective and cost-efficient.

Our system of national accounts attributes economic value to weapons and war but ignores the productivity of informal care, parenting, and domestic work. A tree in the ground consuming carbon dioxide and producing oxygen is ignored, but cut down and turned into timber, and it gets a £ sign attached to it.

Our system of capitalism is predicated on the accrual of wealth to the few over the long term and to the pursuit of profit over any other competing priority.

Isolated innovations that attempt to address the damaging consequences of these systems, no matter how well intentioned, will fail unless they are part of a wider ambition for holistic change.

The qualities we need to support systems change, then, include interdependence, collaboration, modesty, perspective, a willingness to see oneself as a part of something bigger, and ones value as conditional on the value of the group – potentially even self-sacrifice. As Marc Ventresca from Oxford’s Said Business School argues, we need to start thinking of ourselves as‘systems builders’ rather than ‘entrepreneurs’. Changing systems doesn’t require striking out on ones own and building a business through quashing competition; it requires collaboration, bridge building, and recognition of common cause.

Is there something ‘female’ or ‘feminine’ about these qualities? One of the most pernicious and embedded systems I can think of is the social construct of gender roles. The collective set of rules, roles, and expectations assigned to men and women across cultures is responsible for great inequalities, and severe restrictions on people’s freedoms and choices. So with out wanting to be essentialist about what men and women ‘are like’, I do wonder if there is something beyond coincidence in the make up of our network so far. And if it is qualities of inter-relatedness, shared aspirations and the sharing of risks and rewards that system wide innovation calls for, what kind of work needs to be done to increase the demand and development of these qualities and aspirations in society at large?

If you’d like to read more, the following articles & videos may bring further meaning and context to why we’ve come together in this way - here, here, here, here, here, here & here

“Asking the right questions” rather than constantly searching for answers, is a catch-all for projects and concepts that Kyra spends her time working on.

She has spent time at SustainAbility, The Guardian and Business in the Community working as a resident journalist, innovation strategist and sustainability consultant. Her work focused on issues like the future of energy, internal and external collaboration and creativity, growth and intergenerational equity. During this time, she provided cutting edge research, writing and consulting in the innovation and sustainability industries.