The Sustainable Wellington Net

The Development of an Electronic Community Network

Abstract

The Sustainable Wellington Net is an outgrowth of a wider proposal
(which is still being developed) for a physical Green Centre in
Wellington. The aim of this centre will be to promote and facilitate
sustainable development in Wellington on an individual, community,
business and governmental level.

As the realities of funding meant that the physical Green Centre was
going to be a long term project, the organising committee looked at
other options for promoting these aims which could be implemented in a
shorter time frame. It was decided to use the communication and
information sharing potential of the Internet to set up a Virtual Green
Centre. Use of the Internet could fulfil many of the functions of a
physical Green Centre but at a level of cost that meant it could be set
up very quickly and maintained relatively easily.

Sustainable Wellington Net URL - www.sustainable.wellington.net.nz

Introduction

The Sustainable Wellington Net is part of a wider concept of a centre in
Wellington to promote the aims of sustainable development - a "Green
Centre".

To give you some background I will give a brief outline of the history
of the concept. The main outcome of the UN "Earth Summit" held in Brazil
in 1992 was the formulation of the "Agenda 21" for world development in
the 21st century. Its key points involve taking a holistic approach to
sustainable development - recognising the interrelationships between
people, the environment and the economy.  Throughout 1996 to 97 as a
response to their adoption of the goals of Agenda 21, the Wellington
city Council held wide-ranging public consultations on the future
development of Wellington. The outcome of this process was the "Our
City/Our Future " document which was a plan that gave a strategy for the
future of Wellington.

Goals, targets and initiatives were outlined in "Our city/Our Future".
One of the goals was to establish a "Green Centre" to promote and
facilitate sustainable development in Wellington - on an individual,
community, business and governmental level.

A steering committee was established to develop the idea of the Green
Centre. The committee was made up of community representatives from a
diverse range of backgrounds. As a first step we designed a
questionnaire which was sent out to environmental, conservation and
community groups in Wellington designed to gauge the level of support
for the idea of a Green Centre. A further aim of the survey was to get
some idea of what services and facilities these groups thought the
centre should provide. The responses we received showed there was very
strong support for the idea. A large number of groups indicated that
there was a need for a centre that would provide information resources
on environmental issues - a sort of one stop environmental shop.

Unfortunately the realities of the availability of funding in Wellington
meant that the physical Green Centre was going to be a long-term
project. There have been a number of environmental centres set up in NZ
but only a few have survived for any length of time. It is the basic
problem of having this fixed-costs-financial millstone around your
collective neck. We did not want to take the step of making a commitment
to a physical centre without any assured long term funding.

The organising committee then looked at other options for promoting our
aims and meeting the needs that our survey had identified. It was
decided to use the communication and information sharing potential of
the Internet to set up a "virtual Green Centre". Use of the Internet
could fulfil many of the functions of a physical Green Centre but at a
level of cost which meant it could be set up very quickly and maintained
relatively easily.

The first steps to the Sustainable Wellington Net

I will look at this process in two parts; firstly the initial work we
did to define the framework, format and content of the SWN; secondly the
selection of our networking platform.

Part One - Defining Format and Content

In setting up the SWN we felt that it was vital for us to -

Clearly define our community

Clearly identify the needs of that community

To try and resolve these points we designed a short questionnaire that
looked at a number of points -

whether groups had Internet access, what level of access they had, and
how much they used it

what services that the SWN could provide would be useful for their group
(we gave a list of possible things that we could provide)

The questionnaire was sent out to all Environment/Conservation groups in
the Wellington Region. The response rate was approximately 45%. The
feedback we got was interesting and useful, particularly regarding the
services that groups thought we should provide. The four key things that
were emphasised in the responses were -

A directory of Wellington Environment/Conservation groups

Updates on current Wellington issues

Links to useful information

Community notice board

The results gave a very strong indication that groups felt the SWN could
be useful to them and that they wanted a focus on local issues.

Part Two - Selection of Networking Platform

I will just digress a bit at this point to give a little bit of
background to our choice of webhosting platform. The WCC is in the
process of setting up a Wellington Community Network, and to manage this
they have set up a trust structure called the 20/20 Trust. Some of the
projects which the 20/20 Trust run include a seminar programme providing
info on the use of the Internet which is aimed specifically at NGO's, PC
Recycle which is a computer refurbishing scheme designed to provide
computers at no or low cost to schools and NGO'S. The 20/20 Trust also
manages the Wellington World Wide Web (or W4 as it is better known);
this provides free website hosting for NGO's. We chose to locate the SWN
on this Community Webhosting scheme. The choice of this for our base
was, to be frank, based initially on the pragmatic point that it was
free (given our total lack of funding this was of some significance). It
has been a good choice; it has provided adequate space for growth and a
nexus for basing associated community Webster. Also our vision of
developing an Environment/Conservation electronic community network
fitted in well with their concept of a wider Wellington community
Network. The Sustainable Wellington Net would fit within this network as
one of a number of "Special Interest Groups".

Setting up the SWN website

With some clear idea of our community and their needs and a secure host
we then began the practical work of setting up the SWN. This developed
in a number of stages. Firstly we just had the front page, Mission
Statement, a directory of groups and a links page. We have progressively
added new pages eg Site News, Hot Topics, Calendar Page (Green Events),
Green Shopping, Ethical Investments. As well as adding pages Tom did a
substantial redesign to make the page more user friendly and to ensure
that it -

would be fast to down load and not graphics intensive

would display correctly and be usable by any browser (including text
only ones)

would comply with the latest HTML specifications (HTML 4.0, CSS)

would be friendly to people with disabilities (the site is Bobby
Approved)

The site was hand coded using BBEdit Lite on an Apple Macintosh.

Future development

A key priority for our future development is to increase the use value
of the SWN to Environment and Conservation groups in Wellington - to
make it something that is integral and indispensable to the work of the
groups in our community. Given our limited funding a lot of the
publicity for the SWN has been essentially word of mouth (or cyber word
of mouth). However, we have made concerted efforts to use the local
media to publicise the SWN and have taken advantage of any opportunities
for networking and meeting with groups in our community. We have also
produced a Green Bookmark with information about the website and the
note "please bookmark this site" that we have distributed at places like
Organic food shops, libraries, CAB's etc. A number of Wellington groups
have sent them out with their mail outs. At the Environment and
Conservation Organisations annual conference in Wellington we set up a
display and an operating terminal with a cached copy of the website.
This was very useful as a trial run and we hope to repeat this at future
events.

Realistically this has been a slow incremental process but one which is
now showing real growth in the use of the SWN by local groups,
particularly the Action Alerts and the SWN Calendar. January was our
first real month, the total number of visits to for the month was 31 (to
be frank probably 60% of these were Tom and I), and the average number
of visits per day in August was over 7.

There are still real problems that we are facing. Part of the problems
are a result of the realities of NGO's in NZ, the very large number of
groups which can result in fragmentation and lack of communication.
(ECO, a national umbrella organisation of Environment/Conservation
groups has about 70 odd members nationally, but in Wellington alone
there are approximately 65 Environment/Conservation groups). This
problem can be exacerbated by a parochialism or conservatism in groups.
(It was interesting in our survey that while all of the respondents had
Internet access only 40% used it for their group's work). Lack of
funding (that chronic problem of all NGO's) is an ongoing worry
particularly for the future development of a physical Green Centre. This
is further complicated by the possible uncertain future of the WCC
Community Webhosting Scheme. 

Not withstanding these problems we are optimistic for the future. Mario
Marino posed the question about community networks: " are they part of
an ephemeral social phenomenon that is destined to merely stall or
implode. Or do they represent a vibrant social force capable of adapting
to a rapidly changing world and community needs, and achieving positive,
lasting social change in their communities?"

We believe very strongly in the latter proposition and we hope that the
SWN will develop as a major catalyst for the growth of community
awareness of and participation in the sustainable development of
Wellington and NZ.