benefits camp

event taking place next friday ... free places -

Change is happening in the way that benefits are being assessed and allocated, with recent discussions around benefits for people with disabilities and long-term health conditions, job seekers, families and others.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, this is going to be a bumpy ride for many who are affected by it. Time for us to get our heads together and think up some ways to plug the gap. And quick.

This event is for anyone up for helping fix/hack/change and otherwise improve the benefits system.

We need some good ideas for:

  making the current system better so people can get the most out of it
  making other things better so we keep the current system but have stuff like resource-sharing tools to complement it
  ways of totally disrupting the benefits system so people no longer need the state’s money

We need you if you are:

- someone with a good idea
- someone who knows about economics
- someone who knows about the benefits system
- someone affected by the changes
- someone with passion and enthusiasm for change
- a developer
- a designer
- a facilitator

Or indeed all of the above!

Book @ http://wearefuturegov.com/events/benefits-camp/

It’s an event organised by Future Gov, who describe themselves as “a consultancy and social innovation incubator helping to shape the future of government”, so essentially an independent thinktank.

Their founder and director is someone called Dominic Campbell who says that he set up Future Gov to “focus on communications and engagement in government the use of technology and new media in driving improvement in local government”

If I was in London, I would probably have gone along, but I’m not so I can’t.

They may be the greatest thing since sliced bread for all I know but anyone who uses phrases like “social innovation incubator” wants to have a serious word with themselves.

LOL!!! Quite agree….

you can follow benefitscamp online @ http://www.ustream.tv/channel/futuregov—-benefits-camp

or on twitter .... https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/#benefitscamp

ps - nice comment re the rightsnet forums from william perrin (http://talkaboutlocal.org.uk/) -

sorry not to make benefitscamp I’m on paternity leave and surrounded by nappies.

If i was coming along the one thing i would shamelessly plug is the rightsnet discussion forum. it’s a model of a distributed expert system as benefits advisors help each other out with the madness of the benefits system.

but it uses deeply unfashionable tech, the trad discussion forum and thus often gets overlooked by trendy web folk. Sean and Terry at LASA are real heroes for creating and maintaining this remarkable community resource that confronts head on some awkward taboos, such as discussing real cases in public.

I tried and failed several times when working in central government to get the site sponsored and helped by HMRC and DWP.

good luck

There is a write-up of some headline points from last week’s event available now.

Benefits camp