Puffbox

Personalisation is one of those concepts which crops up every so often; and certainly in the new media field, it simply hasn’t realised its undoubted potential. As I’ve mused here before (somewhere), I’m personalising my own online experience through RSS aggregation, moreso than any single website’s personalisation function.

But ‘personalisation’ is the buzzword behind today’s ‘Building on progress: public services‘ paper by the Cabinet Office. And I’ve spotted a couple of web references in it. One’s really just an aside, quoting the example of a school which ‘has introduced a parents’ website where they can access up-to-the-minute details of their children’s progress, homework and achievements.’ More interesting is the statement in paragraph 5.20:

The Government should support the development of new and innovative services that provide tailored advice to specific groups (for example the netmums.com website which provides a discussion and advice forum for mothers). These are outside government’s direct influence, but government has a role to play in supporting them – for example by ensuring that they are not undermined by government programmes or websites with similar objectives, and have easy access to publicly available information.

There have been pointers in this kind of direction before, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it expressed in such stark terms, with emotive words like ‘undermine’. This is a clear statement to departments that other people are often in a better place to address their audience than they are… and you should go out of your way not to tread on their toes.

There’s a new two-minute piece-to-camera by David Miliband on YouTube today, supporting the publication of the Climate Change Bill. It’s a bit dry and clearly scripted. This is video the way press offices probably want video to be done. And that isn’t really a good thing.

I notice the Treasury has joined the ranks of central government websites offering news via RSS feed. Just the one feed so far, featuring a mix of press releases, speeches and other news – presented from its own top-level address: rss.hm-treasury.gov.uk. Summaries only – which, I guess, makes sense when some of the content is going to be extremely lengthy. And although there’s no autodiscovery tagging in the page headers, the industry-standard orange icon has a place in the left hand margin, which appears on every single page. 😀

I kid you not: I’ve found a government website with a click-to-generate-crap function.

Directgov Kids is a site developed by the Guardian, in association with the Department for Education and Skills, which ‘aims to encourage children (aged 5-11) to think of themselves as young citizens with a range of rights and responsibilities. It invites children to explore a self-contained world, full of online games and activities. These games introduce important ideas such as citizenship, democracy and political participation.’

The one thing it isn’t, though, is a kids’ interface on the Directgov content. So whilst it talks in general terms about things like ‘healthy eating and keeping fit, children’s rights and responsibilities, voting and democracy, online safety and looking after pets’, it doesn’t tell you anything about those things in the child’s own locality – and as such, it’s a bit of a missed opportunity.

It’s a Flash-based ‘click to explore’ kind of interface – in other words, you have to hover and/or click on everything, and hope some of them respond. Maybe kids like that sort of thing. But a lot of the responses are very slow to happen, and there’s quite a lot of hanging around as new scenes load, too.

Granted, I’m a quarter of a century beyond its target audience, but I just don’t think there’s a practical and measurable benefit to a website like this. Someone probably thought it was a ‘good thing to have’, but I don’t imagine it’ll breed a generation switched on to the joys of local democracy and healthy eating.

To find the poo, spin the world until you find the supermarket, then go into the Office. (My high score on the crapping cows game is 350.) There’s more about the site on the Parents Centre website.

(PS: I don’t think I ever mentioned the Young People’s site for Downing Street, launched last September… it’s here.)

I spotted some figures from research firm comScore (via Netimperative.com) which shows traffic to the country’s two leading e-government sites shooting upwards in January, after (presumably) a quiet December. They reckon Directgov had 3.118 million UK visitors aged 15+, and Job Centre Plus had 2.683m. That’s the first time I’ve seen figures putting Directgov ahead of JC+. And if the comScore numbers all stand up, that means 10.4% of the UK online population looked at Directgov during January. Finally delivering on that promise?

Almost unnoticed, the Directgov website has moved from its former CMS – ‘DotP’, or ‘delivering on the promise’ – to its new Stellent-based platform, developed by Xansa. Like its predecessor, the Stellent system is intended to be the uber-platform for all government departments; Directgov will shortly be joined in the so-called Club by the Dept of Health, with Education supposed to follow along shortly (although that work is well behind schedule).

There’s an interesting post by Alan Mather reflecting on DotP’s four-year journey. Perhaps inevitably, there’s a slightly bitter tone (I think?), particularly in the conclusion: ‘You’ve spent 30 months creating a site that is the same as the old one; I’m looking forward to seeing what new things can be done with the new service that couldn’t be done with the old one.’

My understanding is that simple running cost, rather than scope for any extra functionality, was the main reason for the move. But the main challenge for The Club going forward is to extend its membership – and that will require both a carrot and a stick. Make it too good an offer to refuse: great functionality, rapid deployment, low cost. But be prepared to play the Transformational Government card if necessary.

I played some part in developing the specs for the Club platform, with a particular focus on RSS and all that entails. No sign of that work yet on Directgov – and as I said earlier about Transport, I’m shocked to see a major new platform going live without RSS. But if my spec survives the review process, I think the functionality will be a pleasant surprise.

If you just can’t wait to get Tony’s response to the 1.8m signatures in opposition to road pricing, you can get all 1257 words right now from the Downing Street website. Good to see more of a focus on the next step this time, with onward links provided ‘to take it further’… but still far too long in my book.

The language used is balanced, plain-spoken and actually quite persuasive. And for a politician, it’s remarkably candid in places – ‘I fully accept,’ he writes, ‘that we don’t have all the answers yet.’ It closes with a commitment to ‘further consultations… The public will, of course, have their say, as will Parliament. We want to continue this debate, so that we can build a consensus around the best way to reduce congestion, protect the environment and support our businesses.’

I don’t think this ever was a PR disaster, as some have claimed. But by accepting the opposition, and responding to it in a measured and quite constructive manner, Downing Street deserves considerable credit. They didn’t have to do that; it would have been very easy to point to the many frivolous petitions on the system, and declare the whole thing a failed experiment in consultation.

It’s too early to declare this a new era in civic political engagement, but we’ll look back on this moment fondly. The next step is going to be fascinating. How will the public have its say, I wonder? Is an open approach to policy-making to be Blair’s ultimate legacy?

According to the BBC, we’ll get Tony Blair’s response to the road pricing e-petition from 6am tomorrow (Wed). How convenient, just in time to catch the Today programme. If it weren’t covering the big breaking story of the evening, the (apparent) announcement of a withdrawal from Iraq. (Good time to bury bad news, and all that.)

The email that went out on Monday about ID cards is available in full from the No10 website. And the first thing to strike me is, er, how long it is. Well over 1000 words, which pushes the limits of any guidelines for good online writing. To its credit, it’s all in the first person, and clearly has the personal touch, when it could easily have simply been another op-ed article. But for the few who get to the bottom, there’s no obvious call to action. It just leaves us ‘agreeing to disagree’, which doesn’t really help much.

I’m quite impressed by the new ‘big issues’ pages on the No10 site, incidentally. A nice way to package up all the related material, and clearly done with the casual reader in mind. There are a couple of headaches though, with inconsistent use of iconography, and a few not-checked-in-Firefox HTML issues.

Some great analysis from Heather Hopkins of the traffic (and by extension, the 1.7m signatories) to the now legendary e-petition on road charging. Heather notes that the Daily Mail website is the fourth largest provider of traffic to the petitions site (behind Google, Hotmail and the No10 site itself).

Further demographic analysis shows that almost half the site’s visitors are aged 55+, and living in southern England, with particularly strong representation for the South West and South East (not including greater London) regions. I don’t think this necessarily undermines the value of the signatures – but you have to admit, this is precisely the demographic you’d expect to be most naturally hostile to the plans.

I knew there were comments by Tony Blair about the (in)famous e-petition in Sunday’s Observer… but I hadn’t realised it was a full piece solely about the e-petition itself.

It’s a sign of just how fast politics has changed in the last decade that, while I once was criticised for being a control freak, I now find myself under attack for allowing dissenting views on my own website. And there is no doubt it used to be accepted wisdom, which I too accepted, that politicians needed to frame the shape of any debate and only engage with issues on their own terms.

But I don’t believe this is possible any longer. We have to remember that No 10’s new e-petition service has not generated the views against road pricing that have been expressed by more than a million people. They were already there and it’s not possible, wise or healthy for politicians to try and sweep them under the carpet.

What it has given us is the ability, which was simply not there before, to engage with those who have signed the petition and with everyone else in the country on what are the options for tackling congestion on our roads and, indeed, the other long-term challenges facing our country.

Over the next few days, I will be sending out a response to everyone who has signed the petition against road charging, explaining the problems the country faces and why I believe road charging is surely part of the answer here as it is in many other countries.

I’m not sure I can add anything to that. Only to advise anyone in the e-government business to keep this article bookmarked for future quoting… at least until the summer. For obvious reasons.

(I haven’t signed the petition myself… but if anyone reading this did, and receives the response, I’d be very interested to see it.)