Community Voice Clackmannanshire: A better experience of finding and providing information

About this fund

Residents of Clackmannanshire have gathered to form Community Voice, a group that represents the experience and expertise of those living in the area.  As a small sub-group, we have worked together with Foundation Scotland, bringing our own experiences, along with stories from others living in the county, to bring some clarity and local context to the challenge this fund aims to tackle. Not to try and design a fix but to describe the best problems to solve. Our aim is to inspire, encourage and invite others to develop ideas for new approaches to providing and gathering information.

Purpose of this fund

Whether it's filling in a complicated form or organising an appointment or knowing what to do in an emergency, people still feel the frustration and anxiety of not having the information they need, when they need it most. And with the rise of digital services, it can sometimes feel as though there's too much information. During our Community Voice conversations we've often heard that 'poor information' or 'lack of information' can stop people from accessing important services and opportunities.

This is clearly one of the root causes of many challenges that people face. But why is 'good information' so hard to find? Perhaps because information comes from many different sources or it might regularly change or it might only be available in a format that many people can't access. As ever, it's complicated.

This fund is about taking steps towards a Clackmannanshire where finding and providing the information we need for everyday life is less of a challenge.

We are currently asking for Expressions of Interest only – short descriptions of ideas that could be developed into full proposals later. All applicants who submit an idea by 8th May will be invited to attend an event in Clackmannanshire in late May 2026 to develop their ideas further with residents and with other organisations. Our hope is to foster a collaborative approach and to help applicants to truly understand the nature of local information challenges.

There will then be an opportunity to submit a fully developed proposal in June 2026. 

---

Context
In the meantime, to give you some local context, we met as a group on several occasions to describe our challenges. Here’s what we discovered:

Information comes in many forms and we use it in many different ways. Our focus here is on information that helps us to do the tasks that we are required to do as well as accessing support and services that we rely on in day-to-day life. This could be dealing with an urgent, time-sensitive situation such as a medical emergency, a domestic repair, filling in an official form, applying for a job, proving your identity or securely accessing an account.  It could also include less urgent but equally important situations such as comparing options, buying something or learning a new skill.

In situations like these, we're usually gathering information to make decisions. What do I need to do next? What information is needed? Who is the person I need to speak to?  Who would be a reliable person or organisation I can trust to do the work?

What we can do is to describe what poor information means to us and share our basic principles for making it easier to find and provide information. The problem is that sometimes we can't easily do what we need to do. This could be for many different reasons:

Finding information
We don't know where to start. We don't know what we need to find or where to find it.

Finding the right information
There is so much information now, it's overwhelming. How do we navigate to the most useful information?

Choosing the right source
We have all experienced misinformation (being told the wrong thing) and disinformation (being deliberately misled) so we need to know that we can trust what we find. Even if we trust the source of the information, how do we know it's correct and up to date?

Accessing information
There is an increasing need to set up accounts, create and manage passwords, use 2 Factor Authentication and generally be more aware of security concerns. We rely on devices now - most people now have access to a smartphone  Are more services now being designed for mobile access and actually becoming harder for some to use? Or are they impossible to access unless we have a device?

Providing information
Our life is full of forms and each form seems to be different, and things are rarely joined up so that we have to provide our details multiple times. It sometimes isn't clear why we are being asked for particular information but often we can't progress unless we do provide it. If it isn't clear how to complete something or provide information, the help and support is rarely a person, it's often online. This might not be enough.

When is this a problem?
We search for and use information every day, but we identified that the impact of poor or no information is most felt during life events - such as during caring responsibilities, medical and domestic emergencies, births, deaths, legal situations, dealing with council and Government requests. Times when the stakes feel high and the consequences feel greatest.

---

Our principles for helping people to find information 
There are many ways to describe what better information might look like, so we decided to describe some things that really help and really hinder our use of information and turned them into some Principles for helping people to find and provide information.

There will be more but, as a starting point, our hope is that these principles can begin to guide those who want to improve the experiences of seeking and providing important information.

What to do next
We want to work towards a future Clackmannanshire where seeking and providing important information is a much better experience. If you have an idea that you think could contribute to this, we’d love to hear from you.

Of course, to do this we’ll ask you to fill in a form! And no, the irony isn’t lost on us, we’re facing into the challenge and recognising the limitations of our own information provision and collection. We’re learning how we can improve by working with Clackmannanshire residents - and you can too. While we can’t change the application process much at the moment, we can use one of the principles above and reduce the number of surprises.

Here are the questions we’ll ask you when you apply:

•    Please tell us about the project you are wanting to develop – what will it do, how will it make a difference and who is likely to be involved in making it happen?
•    How much do you expect the project to cost, and over what period of time do you expect it to run? (for example, less than a year, one year, two years or longer)?
•    How much would you be looking for from the Transformation Space and what kinds of costs would the grant pay for?
•    When would you be ready to submit a full application?
•    Are you planning to attend our in-person event in Clackmannanshire in mid-late May 2026?

That’s it. Your application won’t be assessed at this point but it will secure you a place at our event in May and an opportunity to develop a full proposal in June 2026. On the day, we’ll ask you to briefly share your idea using your Expression of Interest as a starting point.  

Who can apply?

The Community Voice Group wants to fund projects that contribute to better experiences of finding and providing information. We understand that there will be different ways to approach this, not a single solution, so if you have an idea that addresses this issue, please consider applying.  

What can’t be funded?

Information on what the fund cannot support is provided here 

How are decisions made?

Decisions about how the funding is distributed will be made by the Community Voice residents group.