In our experience, you can be as ambitious or as open as you want with a project, but if you don’t have both then it’s harder to get people excited about it. The two work well together to gain traction and make a real-world difference.

After all, if a project isn’t ambitious but is open, then people who do find out about might not care enough to be interested. Conversely, if a project is ambitious but not open, then people tend to get suspicious. The sweet spot is being both open and ambitious, with bonus points for finding ways to help people get involved easily!

WAO is thinking about this at the moment as we’re kicking off a new LocalGov Drupal project next month working with Aaron Hirtenstein who we’ve collaborated before in his time at Agile Collective. It’s an interesting initiative that’s right up our street, being at the confluence of openness, community, and tech.

LocalGov Drupal
LocalGov Drupal is a publicly owned asset that delivers a better digital experience for citizens, improves service outcomes, and saves money.

LocalGov Drupal seems to have both the ambition (shared codebases!) and openness (collaboration!) to really change the game when it comes to local digital services in the UK. There are currently 26 UK councils who have signed the Local Digital Declaration and are collaborating to develop a shared pool of code, resources, research and expertise.

There are many reasons to use Open Source Software, with a reduced total cost of ownership being just one of them. The main reason we’re excited, though, is that we’re helping in ensuring that there’s a really active community around it. To do that, we’ll be using techniques including running sessions on developing an appropriate Architecture of Participation as well as running a pre-mortem and stakeholder mapping activities, among others!

In addition, those who have already laid the groundwork have ensured that decisions are made using sociocratic processes, and that it’s set up to be inclusive and sustainable. This is very much in alignment with the Spirit of WAO!

If you’re reading this and work for a council interested in getting involved, then go directly to the LocalGov Drupal site to find out more! And if you live in the UK, why not get in touch with your local council and put it on their radar? Below are the those that have already signed up:

List of councils participating in LocalGov Drupal

WAO is a collective of independent thinkers and makers helping charities, ethical companies, government departments and educational institutions with sensemaking and digital transformation.

Can we help you with your project or new initiative? Get in touch!