Roundtable – Risk and the Big Society, 6 April 2011 8.30am

Invitation Only Seminar

The coalition government has committed itself to rolling back bureaucracy, and handing more power and responsibility to local services, charities, volunteers and ordinary citizens. Doing so, however, risks exposing us to new risks. The contraction of the Vetting and Barring Scheme, for instance, could expose children and vulnerable adults to abuse.  Encouraging people to get involved in policing their local neighborhoods could expose them or the people they ‘police’ to attack.  There are clear risks in devolving local services to volunteers or further devolving budgets to service users, including health and safety risks and risk of fraud.

Against this background the 2020 Public Services Hub and the RSA are hosting a seminar exploring the nature of the risks associated with the Big Society reforms in public services and how they can be appraoched in a more participatory way.  

Key questions asked by the seminar include;

• To what degree are moves to devolve power to citizens and service users being hampered by concerns about risks involved?
• To what degree are these concerns well grounded? Are there ways of managing risks in a less bureaucratic, more bottom-up way?
• What role could new thinking in behavioral psychology and elsewhere and new technology play in tackling risk in a more bottom-up way.

Dr Ben Rogers, Visiting Fellow at the RSA, is leading an RSA project on Risk and the Big Society, will deliver a short presentation outlining early findings. 

Please download the Risk seminar presentation