e-government – Page 36

19 Jun 2008

e-government

benhammersley, civilservice, davidmiliband, foreignoffice, wikis

Ben Hammersley prototyping at Foreign Office

Things are happening at the Foreign Office. About a month ago, they registered a new dot-com domain, with the apparent intention of hosting a series of prototype web builds. But since the only link I’ve yet seen to the domain has now been removed by its (well-connected) author, I won’t provide a link to it here.

First to emerge is an ‘online collaboration space’ to be used for ‘work on projects with partners outside government’, running on the same wiki platform as Wikipedia. Unlike previous wiki efforts at Miliband-led government departments, it will be invite-only: all users will be ‘verified’, following nomination by an FCO officer. (It’s probably just as well.) There’s also a WordPress blog installation 🙂 – although it’s currently empty.

The site confirms a rumour I’d heard, that all-round Renaissance Man Ben Hammersley (geek, journalist, photographer, ultra-marathon runner, kilt-wearer) is working for the Foreign Office… even going so far as to have a gov.uk email address. With one single appointment, the credibility of e-government efforts takes quite a leap… although I note Ben doesn’t appear to be shouting too loudly about his move into the civil service.

It’s good to see the Miliband Effect finally kicking in. I was a bit underwhelmed by the FCO website’s £1.47m relaunch back in March, although I know that site had been in preparation long before Miliband arrived at King Charles Street. FCO is right to recognise that such ‘skunk works‘ operations are the best – and arguably, the only – way to fire innovation.

Mind you, that was a lesson they should have learned more than a decade ago, when they gave a fresh-faced 22 year old more-or-less free rein to design, build and run Whitehall’s first ‘real time’ website, with groundbreaking and award-winning results. Have I ever told you that story? 🙂
18 Jun 2008

e-government

blogging, civilservice

Civil servants cleared to blog
Not before time, the official Civil Service guidance on ‘participation online’ has been published – and whilst it’s not quite the upbeat, positive encouragement that I was lobbying for, it does at least make clear that (a) you’re allowed to do it, and (b) you should say you’re a civil servant (where that’s relevant).

Brevity has clearly been a priority in the final draft. I had hoped we’d get something a bit longer, actively encouraging civil servants to get involved (along the lines of the BBC’s excellent guidance, especially this bit). But Jeremy notes that more substantial stuff may be following later.

Picking out the important things, either said or implied in the text:
- You are definitely allowed to get involved in ‘2.0’, like blogs and discussion forums.
- You absolutely should give your job title. You shouldn’t disclose your phone number or home address. Names and email addresses aren’t mentioned, so I guess that’s considered OK.
- You should explicitly point out that you’re speaking as a civil servant.
- You should engage in communication: in fact, you should encourage it.
- ‘You should not disclose information, make commitments or engage in activities on behalf of Government unless you are authorised to do so’ – but if you have that authority, then you can.
- You should be nice. Well, they say ‘cordial’, but you know what they mean.
This is a big step indeed. And it shows the benefit of having a blog-literate Minister for e-Government. I’m just glad I registered govblogs.co.uk earlier in the week… for purposes which will soon become apparent. 🙂

Update: A few extracts from Tom Watson’s comments in the Commons this morning:

Our next challenge for the Power of Information Taskforce is to develop more detailed guidelines to encourage civil servants to take the first steps to engage with online social networks.

There are an incredibly large number of digital pioneers across the civil service – young people who may be junior in status – and one of my jobs is to try to join them all up so that they can enlighten their older counterparts in more senior positions.

The challenge for the power of information taskforce is to get our civil servants to engage in online communities in an appropriate manner. Clearly, one of the things that underpins our hard-working public servants is the notion of common sense, and I hope that they will apply that in their online activities as much as their offline activities.

See it in all its glory on theyworkforyou in the morning.

Another update: here’s the video of the announcement in the Commons. First thing I’ve video-tagged on TheyWorkForYou… and a wonderfully easy process.
18 Jun 2008

e-government, technology

crimemapping, homeoffice, ordnancesurvey, powerofinformation, statistics, tomloosemore

Power Taskforce's ideas on crime maps

The Home Office is confirming that it’ll press ahead with online crime mapping, as recommended by today’s Casey Report on Engaging Communities in Fighting Crime.

Even better, the Power Of Information taskforce – specifically Will Perrin and Tom Loosemore, in apparent association with designers Schulze and Webb – have posted a few concepts showing not only the mapping of crime data, aggregated to postcode sector; not only an overlaid layer of data showing public facilities such as schools, pubs and cash machines; but also the ability to actually do something as a follow-on. I’m especially intrigued by the RSS icon: blogging bobbies, perhaps?

Judging by the mockups anyway, we’re looking at some serious interaction potential: polling on local priorities, emailing the local policing team or your local elected representatives. (Never mind the possibility of interacting with the data.)

It’s not the first time some/most of this has been proposed: whilst working at National Statistics, I was involved in the concept work which ultimately led to the disappointing Neighbourhood Statistics. It’s not as if we didn’t have some of these same ideas… but mashing-up has come a long way since then, thanks particularly to Google Maps. I note the ‘presumption’ that Google’s technology would underpin these maps… another nail in Ordnance Survey’s coffin?
13 Jun 2008

e-government

powerofinformation, richardallan

Power of Information taskforce blog

It’s a relief that the Power of Information taskforce, announced by Tom Watson a couple of months back, has launched a blog. Although apparently running since April, it’s only had a handful of postings… and its about page still lacks some basic information, like who exactly is in it. The initial posts include many references to ‘we’, without ever naming anyone other than the taskforce’s press officer. It also feels a bit strange that we didn’t know about the blog’s existence sooner: I’m grateful to Dave for the tip-off, without which…

On the bright side, it’s running on WordPress :), and it looks like the posts are being written by chairman Richard Allan himself (although you’d only find that out by scouring the RSS code). Comments are open, but moderated: and whilst none are yet showing, I’ve added a couple of thoughts which might stir things up a bit.

I was particularly stirred by an item on Information Architectures, which opens:

Models for presenting information over the internet have often been driven by their ’shiny front ends’. The user-facing website is all important and the supporting data is somehow squeezed into this. Thinking has moved on over recent years…

Maybe I’m reading it wrongly, but that reads like criticism to me. Am I the only one who thinks (a) a ‘front end first’ approach, you might call it ‘user-centric’, is actually a very good thing; and (b) more often than not, the front end is the last element to get any serious consideration in big government projects?
9 Jun 2008

e-government, politics

mysociety, parliament, video, youtube

Why Parliament doesn't like YouTube

LibDem MP Jo Swinson raised the subject of parliamentary video clips going on YouTube, during questions to the Leader of the House last week. You can see it below.

Helen Goodman’s response is enlightening: video material isn’t allowed to be hosted on a site where it can be searched or downloaded ‘to ensure that it is not re-edited or reused inappropriately for campaigning or satirical purposes’. In this day and age, it’s ridiculous…

…as is proven, of course, by the very fact that I can post the above video clip courtesy of TheyWorkForYou‘s new ‘mechanical Turk‘-style manual markup initiative, and BBC Parliament’s recordings.

It’s another MySociety project where my overwhelming feeling is disappointment: it’s sad that it has to come to this. And unfortunately, where Amazon can offer cash, MySociety can only offer warm feelings. But they seem to be making startling progress.

By the way… the list of signatories to Jo Swinson’s early day motion is interesting, with quite a bit of Northern Irish interest, and almost nothing from WebCameron’s Tories.
3 Jun 2008

e-government, politics

award, democracy, londonmayor, mysociety, newstatesman

The best we can do?

Nominations have closed for this, the tenth year of the New Statesman new media awards. So the winners of the five trophies are (theoretically) listed somewhere on this page. You might find a few gems you didn’t previously know about, but overall, I instinctively find the list a bit depressing.

Most nominees have only received a single nomination, in many cases by themselves, judging by the frequent use of the words ‘I’ and ‘we’. Most are pretty straightforward uses of off-the-shelf technology, by ‘one man band’ operations. And from a technical and/or creative perspective, most frankly aren’t great.

Maybe there’s a lesson in that. It’s now trivially easy to set up a passable website. Quality still takes time and skill, but you can get to the start line in next to no time, and with minimal up-front investment. From there, it’s really a question of the passion and commitment of the site ‘owner’, and its readership / community.

But I dare say it’ll be the bigger fish who will win. Expect at least one for MySociety. And I’d like to see recognition for the London Mayor ‘votematch‘ site, one of the few sites recently to really make me think. (The result it gave still haunts me.)
20 May 2008

e-government

consultation, dcsf

Subliminal consultation

Consultation is something government puts huge amounts of effort into, without (often? ever?) getting it right. The latest major attempt, to encourage discussion around the Draft Legislative Programme, takes you to a five-question web form with questions so vague and high-level, couched in parliamentary language, that I wouldn’t know where to start. Will we improve on last year’s embarrassing 71 responses, many of which had ‘little, if any, relevance’? I’m not convinced.

So full marks (unexpectedly?!) to DCSF for trying something quite different. Playspace is intended to canvas the opinions of younger children about playgrounds. It presents itself as a kind of Sim City affair, letting you drag play equipment into an empty space to create your own playground. But the clever bit is that you’re actually spending ‘credits’ to choose the equipment, and you earn extra credits by answering questions.

It’s consultation for the attention-deficit generation: a handful of questions, with the reward of play after. A dozen multi-choice questions, and you’re done. Meanwhile, behind the scenes – I assume – it’s capturing the answers to the questions, as well as an indication of what types of equipment kids actually prefer.

It’s not without its problems. Like, for example, spelling DCSF wrong; and failing to link to its privacy statement, which is pretty essential for what must be a data-capture process behind the scenes. (Thankfully these glitches have now been fixed after I raised them… although I’m not convinced the site’s generic privacy statement goes quite as far as I’d like for this application.) But it shows a willingness to explore more effective means of sounding out public opinion… and I bet it results in a much richer collection of real data then any ‘normal’ consultation process.

It’s good to see an e-comms good news story coming out of DCSF’s e-efforts. You don’t have to dig too deeply into their website to find crushing legacy problems dating back a decade. And that’s before we even mention Schoolsweb.
19 May 2008

e-government

downingstreet, gordonbrown, youtube

Questions to the Prime Minister!

Downing Street’s journey ever deeper into new media continues… as Sky’s Joey Jones observes, ‘cyberspace probably seems the safest place for Gordon Brown right now.’

And on the day he addresses Google’s Zeitgeist Europe conference, apparently to announce ‘a number of areas (plural? hmm…) where the UK Government and technology giant Google are planning to work together’, he also becomes the latest politician to invite questions from YouTubers. See their London Mayoral efforts, or the US-based YouChoose for other examples… or indeed, the Rolling Stones.

I’m not entirely sure about these ‘ping-pong’ video interviews… they’re certainly better than the mock-TV studio efforts which Labour have tried before, but I worry about a channel where the questions are often longer than the answers.

You’ve got until 21 June to record and submit your question, with responses to follow ‘at the end of June’… although they’re describing it as ‘regular’, so there should be further chances later.
18 May 2008

e-government, politics

communities, democracy, gordonbrown

Web as a weapon: visionary stuff from Gordon Brown

It didn’t generate much media coverage, but there were some stirring words in Gordon Brown’s speech on Saturday to the Church of Scotland general assembly. One of the recurring criticisms levelled against him has been a lack of a defining vision: well, try this one for size.

The greatest arsenal of power today is not nuclear or biological or chemical but people – the discovery of our capacity to come together across borders and oceans and to stand together as one. And what I want to argue is that the joining of these two forces – the information revolution and the human urge to co-operate for justice – makes possible for the first time in history something we have only dreamt about: the creation of a truly global society.

A global society where people anywhere and everywhere can discover their shared values, communicate with each other and do not need to meet or live next door to each other to join together with people in other countries in a single moral universe to bring about change. I believe that these vast and swiftly summoned movements of people coming together can now become the most powerful weapon for justice ever put in human hands.

It’s great to see a politician, the Prime Minister indeed, going a step beyond the ‘information revolution’ phase, and talking about the impact on society and human relationships both nearest and distant. Steadily we’re seeing The Establishment start to recognise how far the transformation goes. But one wonders if the PM will feel it even more directly after the Crewe by-election on Thursday night: the Tory bloggers, like the party they support, are pushing as hard as they possibly can.

Interestingly, what little media coverage there was – particularly in the Scottish papers – has been overwhelmingly positive for the PM; in stark contrast to virtually everything else from the nationals lately. ‘If Gordon Brown was Prime Minister of a better Britain, then his speech yesterday would have confirmed this son of the manse as the man Britain believes is right to run the country,’ writes Scotland on Sunday’s Kenny Farquharson. The Sunday Mail was even more direct: ‘On his home turf he showed that he is still the man to lead Britain.’ It’s not all bad out there.
9 May 2008

e-government, politics

hazelblears, mysociety, opensource, petitions

Blears backs wider use of online petitions

Writing on Comment Is Free, Hazel Blears reckons Labour’s problem is that it has become distanced from its voters. ‘The problem is the powerlessness within the system for the majority of people,’ she writes. ‘People feel that their views disappear into a black hole, without the slightest echo.’

Hazel’s solution is ‘a healthy dose of direct democracy’: more directly elected mayors, a reinvigorated co-op movement, and online petitions. ‘Petitions, especially on-line, should be used to guide the deliberations of local councillors and ministers,’ she says. ‘Petitioners should be able to press for debates in council chambers and even parliament.’

If that inspires anyone to set up their own petitions system… don’t forget that the Downing Street petitions system, built by MySociety, is ‘open source’, meaning you can download and use it free of charge.