Pete Bass

Campaigning is an area of VCS work that long resisted professionalisation, but this is now changing and starting to become a career based on transferable skills rather than issues. This is resisted by some single-issue activists (see rise of single issues) who do not want transferable skills or see themselves as part of the VCS. The growth of non-violent direct action also runs contrary to ‘professionalisation’, but the marginalisation of dissent means that it is increasingly necessary to be...

Coupling non-violent direct action with good media coverage can give organisations a seat at the negotiating table, but recent trends have made it more difficult to operate campaigns. Measures intended to combat terrorism (see responses to violent extremism) have led to stricter security and more surveillance. There has been an increase in laws and practices that place constraints on campaigners. Furthermore, the increasing privatisation of public space limits where groups can assemble in public...

I didn't want to make this article too geeky and about research data, but right on cue, a group of "major public funding agencies, charitable foundations and international organisations" funding health research today published a statement promising to start sharing research data to improve public health. The signatories include major funders such as the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

It is not explicitly clear that they will make the data "open" rather than just shari...

The Big Society is the government agenda which seeks to give more power to individuals and communities and make people less reliant on the state. The five themes intended to deliver this goal are to give communities more powers; to encourage people to take an active role in their communities (see trends in volunteering); to transfer power from central to local government (see localism agenda), to support co-ops, mutuals, charities and social enterprises, and to publish government data (see open ...

Governments and international institutions are beginning to publish the raw data that they hold about their work in a way that can be freely reused. Open data is now being made available on everything from government expenditure to crime and transport. Programmers and activists are collaborating to build online tools that reuse and visualise open data. It promises a new era of radical transparency and accountability as citizens and interest groups put this data to use. In the UK, as part of the

I've just updated this driver a little - I haven't included any stats to try and keep this future-proof. However there are still 9 million adults in the UK who have never used the internet, including a suprising number of 45-65 year olds. The Guardian datablog has a great article / stats on this issue.

It is very topical today, as the government's digital inclusion advisor Martha Lane Fox has just published here recommendations for government services to be "digital by default" to save money/pr...

It is interesting - there are certainly a few charities that have been set up as a result of government/Conservative policy - Big Society Network, the Free Schools Network etc.

Not sure if there has been a groundswell of new charities though. The general stats are always quite hard to work out because the necessary pruning by the Commission removes charities from the register all the time - and they've got better at this recently.

Perhaps one place to watch is this twitter feed, announcing e...

There was an interesting point made at the Big Society Evidence seminar on Monday that I overheard via @karlwilding on twitter that "collecting membership subscriptions by direct debit instead of face to face changes the relationship with members"

It is a reflection of technological change, and not necessarily a bad thing, but there is a big difference between a centralised membership factory with a CRM database, automatic thank you letters and millions of members.

I'm extracting some stats on...

Trends are not just for twitter. I find Google Insights for Search fascinating:http://www.google.com/insights/search/ can drill down and find the most popular search terms by category, and interestingly for future watchers there is a section which shows the 'breakout' fastest rising search terms.

Inflation in the UK has been above the target rate of 2% since 2009. Prices have been rising faster than wages and earnings, meaning that real household incomes have declined. However, inflation is forecast to fall sharply in 2012 as the impact of the VAT increase and energy price rises in 2011 drop out of the annual calculation. In the medium term there is considerable uncertainty around the future level of both inflation and growth - as both can be influenced by the wider state of the global e...