West Berkshire

Objectives

To facilitate the development of an electronic community network through a process of planning and review.

This was a direct response to the number of initiatives and actions that have involved the growth in new technologies in West Berkshire. The Project has attempted to take a strategic and reflective approach to co-ordinating these developments to ensure the maximum benefit for local people. The community network was to be guided by the principles of partnership, participation and performance.

Outcomes

The initial partnership involved in this project was the West Berkshire Targets Taskforce Partnership but in the final report it is clear that this group has been succeeded by the Learning partnership for West Berkshire. The Pathfinder Project has become part of the brief of this new partnership. The network is not yet a reality but the project has allowed planning which should make it real in this year. The project has been crucial in the development of the network and particularly in establishing the pace at which such development might take place.

The project did not focus on one specific strand of the Guide, feeling that improvement was more likely from tackling the interconnectivity of all three strands. At the heart of this thinking is the need to change and challenge partnerships with new and different members while at the same time building an atmosphere of trust and understanding. This is seen as a key need if Learning partnerships are to be successful.

The partnership involved with the project has progressed to a position that demonstrates a development of shared understanding. Changes in local partnership arrangements during the year have made progress slower than had been hoped and the period for reflection on roles and priorities hoped for has not been possible.

This project is unusual in having chosen to focus some of its activity on the participation strand of the Guide. It was made clear in the Guide itself that although many learning community initiatives were committed to working with local communities the examples of building shared understanding and a dialogue with communities were rare. Most examples in the Guide are drawn from experience outside learning community initiatives. For West Berkshire the changes necessary to approach such a dialogue would involve fundamental change although local individual examples of community consultation were prevalent. ICT is seen as an essential in setting up such communication.

The project was interested in the performance strand but was not able to deal with it within the time available.

As the project focused on ICT the key area of interest was participation and how ICT might be used to both widen participation in learning and also in active citizenship. Initial discussion was felt to be too academic and intangible to be of use and was replaced by a more practical project involving school sixth former video-conferencing with local councillors as part of a series of events for Local Democracy Week.

This project believes that its activities over the past year have resulted in substantial learning in relation to the development of ICT in local areas, which are likely to be of use to other Learning partnerships. The main recommendations are as follows:

• learning partnerships should have a sub-group that solely concentrates upon the new technologies to co-ordinate all the national ICT initiatives;
• there is a need to build an area strategy supported by the community that integrates and/or relates the welter of initiatives and national objectives engaging communities in the process of building a sense of ownership of public access ICT;
• some basic performance indicators that go beyond simple user numbers should be used to ensure that quality/best value/value added is provided from ICT infrastructure; and
• attention needs to be given to the need to invest in technical support, to ensure that systems placed in community venues and schools can achieve compatibility and to advances in digital television which could fundamentally change the availability of access to ICT.

The result of the project for the West Berkshire partnership was a chance to reflect on progress as a partnership with new technologies - an area seen as dominated by actions but enlightened by little proper research and reflection. The action plan developed from the project involves dealing with the development of the South East Grid for Learning, developing performance indicators, identifying progression routes from informal tasters to course provision and following up issues of democratic participation. It also includes more time, hopefully with consultants, for research and reflection.