Puffbox

Simon Dickson's gov-tech blog, active 2005-14. Because permalinks.

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    Full launch for Met crime maps

    Wednesday saw the formal launch of London’s crime maps, which first appeared in beta only a couple of weeks back. Don’t call it ‘1.0’ though: the source code declares it’s actually ‘beta 1.02’.

    As before, it shows areas colour-coded for the rates of ‘burglary, robbery and vehicle crime’, based on comparisons with ‘the average’. Yes, that’s an approach which has its limitations – my favourite being that areas containing police stations tend to rate worst for offences, because of (for example) finding drugs on someone you’ve just taken into the custody suite. But as a first step, it’s surely a good one. There are plenty of legal and logistical issues to overcome before we start putting dots on the map according to offences… and as we all know by now, if you try to sort everything out before going live, you never go live.

    No mention of the total cost in the official press release, but I’ve seen a figure of ยฃ210,000 reported (eg Daily Mail). Given that it’s a fairly straightforward map mashup, using the standard infoWindows and polygons built into the (free) Google Maps interface, I’d be very interested to see a confirmation and/or breakdown of that. Fair play to Boris and his Conservative administration for getting it out the door early; but the next ‘how much did that government website cost?’ argument could be interesting.

    Meanwhile, I see the Foreign Office is doing some map mashing of its own, with a cute (rather than useful) map of travel advice notices for the home nations’ World Cup qualifiers. But crucially, they’ve done it using the free ‘My Maps’ functionality; and it’s offered purely as an external link, not even an embed on the FCO page.

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    The Ministerial blog you don't know about

    I’d like to wish a happy first birthday to Margaret Hodge’s DCMS Diary. I thought I knew of every Ministerial blog out there, but a client mentioned this one to me earlier this week, and I was amazed to see it had been going so long. (Hodge only arrived at DCMS at the end of June ’07, as part of Brown’s inaugural reshuffle, so she didn’t hang around either.)

    Google Reader only knows of 6 subscribers; and in my experience, Google accounts for 50% of the typical blog’s RSS subscriptions, taking us to a mammoth dozen. After a year? – now that’s what I call a soft launch. It’s basically a record of her glamorous adventures as culture minister, rather than a forum for detailed political discussion; and posts are somewhat sporadic… currently running at one every two months.

    It’s running on Movable Type v3, with the IP address coming out as a Windows/IIS box at Digex UK (aka Verizon, I think). DCMS’s main site sits at Rackspace, which makes me think it’s another of the ‘sandbox’ servers which seem to be popping up (and rightly so) all round Whitehall. Comments have been disabled across the entire site, which is a shame, particularly in the light of the Digital Dialogues conclusion that moderation is never as onerous as you expect.

    Somebody really ought to compile a list of Ministers’ blogs… but maybe it’s best to wait a few weeks, for what are probably obvious reasons.

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    Should HMG support IE6?

    I’m on the brink of starting another coding project – a blogging initiative on behalf of another central government department, which I won’t name just yet. And I know how it’s going to turn out, because it always turns out the same.

    Many a true word, as they say, spoken in jest. But the reality is, most coding jobs would take a fraction of the time if we didn’t feel obliged to support IE6.

    I mention this because today, 27 August 2008, is the 7th birthday of Internet Explorer v6. Seven years, people. Yet the latest data from Hitslink shows IE6 still has a market share in excess of 25% – despite the upgrade to v7 being free, despite the availability of better competitors, despite the lack of ongoing support from Microsoft itself.

    But there are rumblings in the industry. Apple’s MobileMe service announced back in June that users would need to be using Internet Explorer v7 (the first major service to do so, according to 37signals). Then, 37signals themselves announced that their entire product line – including the well-known project management tool, Basecamp – would stop supporting IE6 as from this month. They wrote:

    Continued support of IE 6 means that we can’t optimize our interfaces or provide an enhanced customer experience in our apps. Supporting IE 6 means slower progress, less progress, and, in some places, no progress. We want to make sure the experience is the best it can be for the vast majority of our customers, and continuing to support IE 6 holds us back.

    It’s an even more compelling case when we’re talking about taxpayers’ money. Is it right for a government web project to cost (wild guess) 20% more than necessary, just because some of its potential users can’t be bothered doing a free upgrade – which, since 93.2% of UK internet connections are now broadband, most of them at speeds of 2Mbps or higher (according to the latest ONS data), should take a couple of minutes, at most?

    It wouldn’t be difficult for sites to do a quick browser detection, then offer links to download pages for IE7 and some other alternatives you might want to consider (Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc). It’s in everyone’s interests, not least Microsoft’s, to make more people upgrade. We’d be open to allegations of ‘nanny state’… but I wonder if the ‘public finances’ argument would win out?

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    WordPress runs America too

    A fascinating photo from WordPress chief Matt Mullenweg’s keynote address at last weekend’s WordCamp in San Francisco revealed a list of (US) ‘government agencies using WordPress’:

    US gov agencies using WP

    So that’s all the armed services, NSA, CIA and FBI… which kind of puts the ‘(in)security’ argument in some context. Hey, the Marine Corps love it so much, they’re listed twice! But no reference to 10 Downing Street, that I’ve seen reported anyway. Whassup Matt, no love for the UK? Ah well, it’s good to know that we’re not alone.

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    COI's instant response to RSS request – blimey!

    I’m pinching myself. Wednesday, 08:30am: Justin Kerr-Stevens makes a request via OPSI’s Public Sector Information Unlocking Service. A couple of dozen people sign up to say ‘good idea’. A few people (me included) add some more substantial comments. Fast forward two days to Friday, 12:32pm: COI publishes details of RSS feeds for (virtually) every Cabinet-level government department.

    I say ‘virtually’ every Cabinet-level department: the exceptions are the Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland Offices. I can’t see an RSS feed on the Scotland Office site; the NIO site’s feed is curious to say the least, showing just one update since Christmas (which clearly isn’t right). But the Wales Office is happily pumping out beautiful RSS. Puffbox and WordPress may have had something to do with that.

    Gripes? The URLs are truly revolting. But that’s the biggest nit I can pick. Justin, COI, OPSI, Mr Watson – thank you all. Did that really just happen?

    Update: I’m told they were on the site somewhere, just not obvious. Even knowing that now, I still can’t find where they were. And if you can’t find them, they might as well not be there. Next steps, please: an entry in the site’s primary navigation, nicer URLs, and auto-discovery tags on each department’s homepage.

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    Final Digital Dialogues report

    The third – and final – report from the Hansard Society‘s Digital Dialogues new media experiments emerged on Tuesday, although I very nearly missed it in all the excitement around Downing Street. The press release offers ‘a few simple rules’ for those wanting to use the internet for engagement and consultation, based on the experience of its 25 case studies:

    • Government departments must be adaptable and willing to take risks
    • Transparency and timely feedback to participants is essential
    • Government departments must be clear about the purpose of the consultation and the ways that participants’ contributions will be used
    • The right people – ministers and senior policy makers – must be involved
    • Evaluation is essential to ensure that departments learn and improve on the basis of experience.

    Clarity, commitment, reciprocity – fairly predictable stuff. But as Andy Williamson notes: ‘I hope it will allay some of the fears and concerns and encourage more government departments to take up the online challenge.’ The report, and its predecessors, give us a portfolio of specific, real-life examples – some successes, some flops – to reflect on. And we need that.

    I’m not at all surprised to see the Food Standards Agency’s blog and FCO Bloggers platform faring best in the reviews. At heart these were both straightforward blogs: personal expression, steady running commentary, nothing too clever. The projects which tried too hard haven’t done nearly so well; nor did projects which attempted to force artificial timeframes or tight restrictions. The report doesn’t shy away from its criticism.

    For me, the most important single message comes in the core guidance:

    Online engagement exercises require time to gather momentum; simply setting up a website in the hope that people will come to it achieves little. Sites might initially spark interest, but this is not sustainable enough to enhance public engagement and political efficacy.

    Point your manager to the executive summary, which concludes:

    • ‘Moderators were not required to manage as large a volume of traffic as many had initially feared.’
    • ‘Distrust was overcome when moderators facilitated open discussion and provided information to website users. […] Some websites failed to gain traction because users did not believe that anyone was listening or responding to their perspectives; in such cases, departments were paralysed by a sense of risk and failed to harness the range of engagement opportunities at their disposal โ€“ responding only on topics deemed safe.’
    • ‘Websites that were disconnected from their policy or ministerial brief, or constrained by a long chain of command, engendered less user satisfaction (both among participants and the government officials running the exercise).’
    • ‘Where government departments were too fixed in their approach, they failed to capitalise on their investment; those with a reflexive and experimental approach were able to adapt to meet the challenges posed by online engagement.’

    If that’s the last time we hear of Digital Dialogues: farewell, and thanks.

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    New Number10 site goes live

    Today sees the long-awaited launch of the new Number10 website, based on WordPress and built by New Media Maze with occasional interventions by yours truly. The reaction so far has been positive, although as the team have admitted to Twitter contacts, there are numerous rough edges still to be smoothed out. (Some more serious than others: as I write this, the site’s gone down.)

    Although I’ve been contributing to this project for several months, today’s public activation is the first time I’ve actually seen it ‘for real’ – and I’m struck by just how stripped-back it really is. The homepage really does feel like a blog; and it’s a pleasant surprise to see quite how much prominence has been given to the Twitter, Flickr and YouTube activity. The image / video unit at the top of the homepage really is huge, and represents a brave move: keeping it fresh will be quite a challenge, but good on them for trying nonetheless.

    The exciting aspect for me is the sheer potential opened up by the move to WordPress. There has been a lot of hard (and frankly unglamorous) work done by the guys from New Media Maze to migrate everything to the new platform. But now that’s done, we can all start thinking about extra functionality and presentation ideas, and add them into the site with relative ease.

    The ‘beta’ label in the header isn’t just an industry in-joke, or an attempt to excuse any temporary difficulties: it’s a statement of future intent.

    PS: If anyone’s interested in the background to today’s launch, you can look back through the Puffbox.com archives. And please note the URL of that link, for another cool WordPress trick. ๐Ÿ™‚

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    New No10 site in the Mail

    Thursday’s Daily Mail picks up on the imminent launch of the new Downing Street website, and chooses to focus on the ‘Number10TV’ video element, to be powered by Brightcove. But for once, it’s a story driven more by its scepticism about new technology than its dislike of the current government.

    They wrongly call it ‘the latest effort to boost his flagging poll ratings’ (as it’s a Civil Service initiative), but correct themselves later in the same piece, referring to it as ‘a fresh political effort to exploit the potential of the internet to reach voters directly’. And indeed, they do quote No10’s attempt to put some perspective on it: ‘Downing Street last night played down the significance of the new channel, saying: ‘Weโ€™re always looking at ways of improving and strengthening the website.”

    But it’s the sniffy tone regarding everything from Webcameron to the @DowningStreet Twitter account which is most striking. A lot has happened on Webcameron since the initial clip of Dave doing the dishes, although it’s gone a bit quiet lately; and I’d have to disagree with the assertion (relatively speaking, anyway) that the Twitter activity ‘has so far failed to arouse great enthusiasm’.

    Despite their Damascene conversion to the web, driven principally by celebrity drivel, it seems the Mail’s heart really isn’t in this modern stuff after all. (There’s a remarkably similar story in the FT, by the way, but with slightly less cynicism.)

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    Would you want a gov-wide social network?

    OK, so it’s hardly a shock for a survey from a UK-based ‘web 2.0’ company to conclude that UK public sector workers think ‘Government should buy local, go social’. But I don’t want to dismiss this piece of research from Huddle.net completely… particularly since hard numbers, no matter how dubious, always look good in a business case.

    Huddle‘s survey of 202 local authority officials found a (very slim) majority to be ‘disappointed with lack of innovation in IT services’, and (just under) a third thinking ‘Governmentโ€™s IT problems could be solved by buying from local, UK-based companies rather than multi-national conglomerates’. If anything, I’m surprised those numbers – particularly the latter one – are so low.

    But I’m interested to see 31% would like to set up a social network for their own organisation, whilst 38% would support a government-wide social network. Again, to be fair – they would say that, wouldn’t they.

    (And equally inevitably, I’m going to say ‘WordPress’: the planned BuddyPress theme/plugin collection looks fabulous, particularly these recent screenshots on the lead guy’s blog. However, the consensus from WordCamp the other week seemed to be that BuddyPress isn’t quite production-ready yet. See: I can be dispassionate about WordPress.)

    I’ve got an account on Huddle, but I’ve never used it properly myself. It looks like a nice tool, not dissimilar to Basecamp but with a slightly more corporate, less startup kinda feel – and that’s probably not a bad thing. Apparently it’s been used by DCMS and John Lewis, but they aren’t on their website’s list of case studies, which remains a bit short on household names.

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    New Whitehall innovation hub

    There’s nothing explicitly technological in the announcement today by the National School of Government that ‘the Sunningdale Institute has established an Innovation Hub to develop know-how on stimulating and supporting innovation in government and the public services’ – as announced in the DIUS Innovation Nation white paper. (See Steph’s interactive version.) But since the Hub’s raison d’etre was to ‘capture and disseminate learning about public sector innovation’, it would seem insane for there not to be some kind of electronic communication component.

    The press release, not yet on the NSG website (?!), says the Hub will ‘carry out research and consultancy, network formation and active learning events for departmental leaders, develop corporate mechanisms that will help incentivise innovation, and look to international government interventions that seek to support more innovative government.’ Um, I’m sure that all sounds great. Let’s see where it goes.

    So it’s not the online innovation hub I’d hoped for, when I saw the headline. I still think there’s a role for such a group, perhaps along the lines of the Economist’s Project Red Stripe group: six people given six months, and a six figure budget to do something cool and web-based. It’s worth downloading the project wash-up they wrote at the end of last year, describing the lessons they learned for such initiatives.