What is a “Citizen Sensor Network”? A way of governing that rests on the storytelling and reporting powers of communities
Citizen networks of all kinds are of interest to us (as you know from our work on CANs). That citizens can exist in networks—instead of in cities, or in some idea of the public space—feels to us like a creative opportunity. How do you make the boundaries of your political community porous, attractive, emergent? And to cite another of our organising principles, how can these experiments be firmed up into a “parallel polis”, a countervailing power to states and corporations?
So we are interested in others’ methods about how to create these containers for community agency. We came upon the systems consultancy Cynefin’s method of creating a “citizen sensor network”. They explain below (from this PDF):
A citizen sensor network is collecting data from citizens on an ongoing basis. Rather than just capturing a snapshot in time, we enable continuous story collection over long periods of time, much like a virtual journal.
Real time feedback is essential for evidence-informed decision-making and informing strategy in complex environments. It enables measurement of what is happening on the ground, underlying ideation patterns together with insights into potential strategic interventions— before these become visible to conventional monitoring techniques.
Immediate feedback about the impact of decisions and interventions enables taking necessary action, to dampen negative consequences and amplify desired outcomes quickly.
Citizen sensor networks provide reliable data that cannot be faked. Networks created for an ordinary purpose can then be deployed in times of extraordinary need—when a natural disaster or a pandemic hits, a trusted network providing a real-time situational assessment is readily available to tap into.
In rapidly changing, high-stake, complex situations, decision-makers risk missing important information if they rely on familiar thinking and dominant narratives, without considering weak signals—the outliers in the data where opportunities and challenges exist. With our SenseMaker method, weak signals are clear, and it is easy to attend to all perspectives in order to make an informed decision.
Quite often, we miss things we are not looking for. This is called inattentional blindness. For example, when 24 radiologists were shown x-rays with a gorilla 48 times larger than a lung nodule, 83% of them did not notice the gorilla. If we do not see what we are not looking for, we can miss opportunities and challenges (Drew, Võ & Wolfe, 2013).
Citizen sensor networks are key to advancing the understanding of our democracies. Continuous engagement with citizens leads to more trust and thus more cooperation (Kumagai & Ilorio, 2020), which is especially important in crisis situations, such as pandemics.
Cynefin are interested in tying these insights to their SenseMaker® method and software - make you own choice about that. What we’re interested in their theory and praxis of empowered communities, and what citizens might learn from it.
Here’s a set of answers to the question (put in this paper) of “why you would use a citizen sensor network”:
Mass consultation with real time feedback
A citizen sensor network provides an opportunity to gain real time situational assessment across a large group of people. Real time feedback is essential for evidence-informed decision making and informing strategy in complex environments, especially where there is rapid change, e.g., during times of crisis or emergency. It enables measurement of what is happening on the ground and underlying ideation patterns.
These provide insights into strategic interventions before ideation patterns become visible to conventional monitoring techniques, which might rely on retrospective research and evaluation. Immediate feedback about the impact of decisions and interventions enables faster responses to dampen negative outcomes and amplify desired ones.
Localised sense-making
No-one has a better understanding of the real needs and concerns of a local community than the community themselves. In the past, agencies and governments have imposed well-intentioned interventions from afar, often with little effect and unintended consequences.
This is a bottom up approach rather than a top down, impositional, neo-colonial one, which implies communities need the help of external experts to assess the situation, generate solutions and apply them. Sometimes communities do need help, but not always, and often bringing experts in can have a negative impact.
We aim to help communities understand their context so they can determine whether external experts are needed and how to include them in a way that manages negative consequences. This approach draws on the knowledge, experience and wisdom that exists within communities and enables communities to make sense of their own patterns and co-create initiatives that will make a real impact.
Putting the power of sensemaking in communities’ own hands is a key part of what the Cynefin Centre does.
Taking stock to take action
A citizen sensor network allows communities to take an asset based development approach; to take stock of existing assets and capabilities (which are often unrecognised), and to consider how they could be grown, developed and used to solve the community’s challenges. This counteracts the convention to parachute in external resources/ideas which is often underscored by a more impositional, neocolonial way of thinking. Communities are empowered to take ownership of the solutions and manage them themselves.
Bridging the gap
SenseMaker® can be used to bridge the gap between top down and bottom up citizen engagement in realistic and coherent ways, through the use of citizen sensor networks. They can be used by citizens to connect with institutions and vice versa, thereby bridging the gap usually found between citizens and the institutions that serve them. They can also be used by citizens to reach out and engage with their community, or to inquire about and advocate for a specific cause.
People-focused
A key aspect of our approach is that it is people-focused; using SenseMaker®, storytellers interpret their own story, hence, process their own data. This data can be further filtered to draw out insights that can be translated into action. Our approach also removes layers of professional curation and interpretation in a process known as 'disintermediation'. This means knowledge and information can flow from those who have direct experience with a topic/situation within the network.
Radical repurposing in times of crisis
A key aspect of a citizen sensor network is that it can be exapted (radically repurposed) in times of emergency or crisis, or simply when a new engagement process is needed. For example, a citizen sensor network infrastructure can be activated for emergency communications or a situational assessment.
Radical repurposing draws on an evolutionary biology concept— exaptation—using something for a totally new purpose. Or more specifically, “a trait evolved/designed for other uses, and later ‘co-opted’ for its current role” (Vrba & Gould, 1986). One of our favourite examples is the theory that dinosaur feathers, which developed for other purposes such as warmth, were repurposed for flight.
Exaptation is fast becoming a key concept in innovation because it means not waiting for slow, incremental changes, but making bigger advances by looking around for what you already know/have and applying it in a new context or to a new purpose.
Paying attention to blind spots
In rapidly changing, high-stake, complex situations, decision-makers risk missing important information if they rely on familiar thinking, the perceptual lenses of their profession and dominant narratives, without considering weak signals—the outliers in the data where opportunities and challenges exist. We often miss things we’re not looking for, which is known as inattentional blindness. If we do not see what we are not looking for, we can miss opportunities and challenges. SenseMaker® helps make weak signals clearer and easier to attend to all perspectives in order to make an informed decision.
We also need to consider what’s totally in our blindspot: things we didn’t know existed and so weren’t looking for, ‘unknown unknowns’. Citizen sensor networks can pick on new happenings/phenomena/situations as they begin to emerge.
Further engaging communities in sensemaking
After stories and observations have been collected using SenseMaker®, there are a range of different participatory ways including (but not limited to) workshops, citizens juries and assemblies, online forums, and community knowledge repositories and workshops. These processes could bring citizens/community members together to read the stories that have been collected and generate insights and actions using a range of techniques and activities.
The obvious point to make here is that the Citizen Sensor Network is assumed to be commissioned by a higher authority or government, to enable their executive and/or strategic decisions, by being informed through strongly empowered civic communities.
Our starting point is with those communities, and the tools they can instantly access themselves, first and initially (under the headline of cosmolocalism). See our Alternative Editorial this week, about our work with the opinion-sampling software pol.is, used as a tool to show communities the complexity of their own opinions and attitudes on issues.
But as a template for how that relationship between empowered communities and a partner state might work, Cynefin’s methodology is provocative.