Civic Atlas updates

Understanding a place is useful.

But once you start putting information about its organisations, communities and circumstances into the same picture, another possibility emerges:

What might we find that we weren't looking for?

That's the focus of version 0.7.

The previous release shifted the Atlas from understanding individual organisations to understanding the places they work in.

This release starts exploring what happens when we connect that information.

The Atlas now gathers evidence about organisations and turns it into structured observations: things that can be supported by what an organisation says about its purpose, activities, communities and work.

Those observations can then be considered alongside observations from other organisations and from the places in which they operate.

Sometimes, a connection emerges.

Sometimes, there is a possible gap.

Sometimes, two apparently unrelated pieces of work begin to look like different parts of the same issue.

And sometimes, the most interesting thing is simply a question that nobody thought to ask.

The Atlas calls these Discoveries.

What is a Discovery?

A Discovery isn't an answer, and it isn't a claim that the Atlas has found the truth.

It is an evidence-based possibility worth investigating.

The Atlas shows the evidence that led to the Discovery alongside the interpretation it has made from that evidence. This distinction is deliberate.

The evidence says:

These things are here.

The Discovery asks:

Could they mean something when we consider them together?

That means a Discovery can be useful even when it turns out not to be right.

It might confirm something people already know.

It might reveal a connection that had gone unnoticed.

It might point towards a gap or an opportunity.

Or it might lead to a better question.

The Atlas isn't trying to manufacture answers. It is trying to make possibilities visible.

From organisations to connections

One of the earliest examples came from looking at just 11 organisations.

Several had apparently very different purposes, but their published information contained evidence connecting their work with people's pets.

Individually, those observations weren't especially surprising.

Considered together, they suggested a much broader question: could the welfare of people's pets sometimes be an important part of people's own welfare – and therefore something that should be considered as part of an intervention rather than as an adjacent or incidental issue?

The Atlas doesn't know the answer.

It shouldn't pretend to.

But it can surface the question, show the evidence that led it there, and provide a starting point for someone who might want to investigate it properly.

And this is where Discoveries become more than another layer of information.

The people working directly with these issues may already know parts of the story. A frontline worker may encounter it repeatedly within their own work. Another organisation may see the same issue from a completely different perspective.

The knowledge can already exist within the system.

What may be missing is the connection between those pieces of knowledge – particularly at the level where decisions about policy, service design, commissioning and funding are made.

The Atlas is beginning to explore that gap.

Before deciding what to do

This also changes where the Atlas sits alongside research, consultation and intervention.

Those approaches often begin with a problem or question:

What is happening here? What do people need? How should we respond?

The Atlas can sit before that point.

It can start with a much more open question:

What can we find that might help us define, understand or inform the problem in the first place?

That doesn't make the Atlas a replacement for consultation, research, systems thinking or professional judgement.

Quite the opposite.

A Discovery can provide a starting point for those things.

It can give a researcher a hypothesis worth testing.

It can give a council officer a question worth taking to local organisations.

It can give a funder something to investigate.

It can give an organisation a reason to look more closely at another organisation's work.

Or it can simply prompt someone to say:

We already know about this – and something is already being done.

That's useful too.

The purpose of a Discovery isn't to manufacture novelty.

It is to improve visibility.

What comes next?

Version 0.7 is the beginning of a new phase for the Atlas.

The aim is no longer simply to describe Birmingham's civic infrastructure, but to explore what becomes visible when its different parts are considered together.

There are thousands of organisations in Birmingham. There are dozens of wards, different communities, different needs and countless relationships between them.

The Atlas cannot know all of those relationships.

But it can look for evidence of them.

And as the number of observations and Discoveries grows, the possibility of finding connections that would be difficult to see any other way grows with it.

The long-term aim hasn't changed.

Not to build a bigger directory.

Not to tell Birmingham what to do.

But to make it easier to see the civic system before deciding what to do about it.