Puffbox – Page 32 – Simon Dickson's gov-tech blog, active 2005-14. Because permalinks.

27 Oct 2009

e-government

bis, consultation, onlinepoll

Credit where it's due

The BIS All-Stars have produced something relatively small-scale in support of their new consultation on credit and store cards: but it works remarkably well.

Working with plain English consultancy Simply Understand, they’ve boiled the classic 80-odd-page goverment consultation document down to just 10 (and done a nice design job on it too). But then they’ve gone a step further, and reduced it to a simple web poll asking which of five issues is most important to you. There’s a short explanatory paragraph on each, hidden by Javascript thus forcing you to interact with it immediately. Concise, straightforward text which gets you clicking from the off… and makes you think a bit, but not too much. Modest in its ambitions, and all the more successful for it.

And then, when you’ve cast your vote, it offers you the option to send a pre-constructed tweet out on Twitter (as well as a few other sociable options)… which is how I heard of it, so at the very least, it’s worked on one person. Not rocket science by any means, but a wonderful little touch I wish I’d thought of.

Oh, and it all slots perfectly into their existing website. Another good reason to be using WordPress.

It’s not the only thing BIS have put out today… more later.
26 Oct 2009

e-government

foreignoffice, stephenhale

FCO's modest redesign

The Foreign Office relaunched its corporate website over the weekend – always a brave move. You’re met by a very striking news-y homepage, with large-format high-impact (and high maintenance) imagery: it works very well indeed, but is the sort of homepage which takes a lot of editorial effort, and presumably a photo budget of some sort. There are several RSS icons dotted around the place; blog and Twitter areas on the homepage; and if you dig a little deeper, a press office blog (of sorts). It’s a homepage which clearly knows its purpose. And that’s a good thing.

Design-wise, the header feels modest and contemporary. But I’d have concerns about the presentation of text lower down the page. Whilst I’m sure a lot of the issues – inconsistent spacing, curious alignment, empty links – can probably be put down to teething troubles, I’m forced to look back to the Blogs site which started fairly messy, and hasn’t ever improved. Stephen Hale promises a new look to that site too; I sincerely hope so.

The press office ‘blog’ is a very interesting addition: running since June, it actually uses an account at Tumblr.com as its CMS, with the material being pulled into FCO chrome (presumably) via RSS feed. It’s publish-only, so no comments; and if you want anything beyond the last few items, it sends you off to Tumblr. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s lots to like about Tumblr, a lighter-than-lightweight ‘blogging’ solution. But I don’t feel comfortable about a major department of state using it. And I wonder if they’d be doing that if their main blogging platform wasn’t a better one.

You’ll be wondering about cost, no doubt. ‘None of this work cost any extra money,’ says Stephen, ‘we’ve done it in house.’ And whilst that doesn’t mean it’s free, at least it means (one assumes) they’ve avoided the worst excesses of some previous site rebuilds.

Is it better than what went before? Yes, I think so. It feels like a much smaller, slightly better organised site. But as I said last time, we expect a lot from FCO – with a famously digitally-savvy Foreign Secretary, a communications remit and a significant budget. I still think they can do more, and do it better. We await their new appointment with interest.
21 Oct 2009

politics, technology

hansardsociety, iaindale, joswinson, kerrymccarthy, twitter

Hansard Society event on Twitter in politics

What can you say about Twitter? They came in their dozens to the Hansard Society’s event at Portcullis House to find out from a panel consisting of blogger Iain Dale, MPs Jo Swinson and Kerry McCarthy, and Tweetminster founder Andrew Walker. I hadn’t expected to learn a lot: I’ve been using Twitter longer and more intensively than most people. But I still came away more than a little disappointed.

Yes, some/many people talk a lot of pointless nonsense. Yes, people send links to stuff. Yes, sometimes certain topics rise to prominence. Yes, you can build engagement with people. But if you’d spent the hour and a half just looking at the Twitter website, you’d have learned all that for yourself anyway. And since most people in the room were already Twitter users, they probably knew it before proceedings started.

The event just didn’t get to the heart of what made Twitter different. Most of the points were equally applicable to any other ‘social media’ channel. And regrettably, it felt like we were falling into the usual trap of seeing social media as new broadcast channels. Sure, there were brief mentions of debate (conclusion: it’s not very good at it) and short-form correspondence with constituents. But almost everything was in a context of getting your message out to an audience.

All of which misses what, for me, is by far Twitter’s strongest selling point: namely, the fact that your audience is listening to you because it wants to listen, wants to engage… and wants to help.

I longed to hear one of the panel talk about how their Twitter audience helps them be better at their work. Examples of where they’ve asked a question, and their followers have answered it. Or where they’ve said they’re about to go into a meeting with someone, and a follower suggests a Killer Question. Demonstrations of the power of the network. But none came. (It’s a pity, because I’ve heard Tom Watson talk most persuasively about precisely that.)

One of the reasons I love Twitter myself is that, when everything – and everyone – gets boiled down to 140 characters, there’s no room for airs and graces. It’s a level playing field, with world leaders’ great pronouncements streaming in alongside mundane updates about what my mates are having for breakfast. It’s a reminder that you’re nothing special – or rather, you’re just as special as everyone else.

You might have something to say to me, which might interest me; but equally, I’ve got something to say to you, which might interest you. We’re all in this together. And post-expenses scandal, in a profession which depends on connecting personally with an electorate at least once every five years, I’d have thought that was a timely reminder.

A good-natured, upbeat but ultimately insubstantial evening.
13 Oct 2009

e-government

careandsupport, consultation, health, wordpress

We care a lot

One of my bigger projects this year has been the website for the Care And Support green paper, aka The Big Care Debate. Basically, the country is in desperate need of a new funding model for long-term care of the elderly and disabled: and in July, three funding options were put forward for consideration. And we’ve been trying various things, online and offline, to engage people in the debate.

When the green paper was published, we did a Commentariat-style ‘commentable document’; there’s also an interactive on-screen questionnaire, with or without a ‘face morphing’ app which shows what you might look like when you’re old. (I can’t claim any credit for that last element btw.) Meanwhile, in the real world, there have been a series of ‘roadshows’ for public and stakeholders – as shown on the clickable homepage map. You’ll also note, if you click on places like Peterborough, Derby or Coventry, that the team have taken a digital camera with them, and are posting snaps on Flickr. Then there’s the Campaign Monitor email list, the Twitter account, the Facebook activity (official and unofficial)…

The response has been huge, and often angry. The site has received more than 3,500 user comments, the majority of which have been to a single page of the commentable document: there’s clearly been a concerted campaign among interest groups to make their opposition known. There’s also been a healthy volume of comments on the campaign’s blog, written – you’ll note – in the name of the lead official, rather than a politician (although that hasn’t stopped people constantly raising the issue of politicians’ expenses claims).

In truth, on occasions, it’s been too much. At one point, we feared the site had been hacked: in fact, we’d just hit the limit imposed by our hosting company on outgoing emails. (Turned out, it was too many people asking to receive email notification of follow-up comments.) If you don’t count Downing Street petitions, it must rank as one of the highest volumes of responses to a government consultation exercise.

Now let’s be honest: most of the feedback has not been complimentary. There are a lot of people who think the changes are designed to cut their current benefits; and anything the Government tries to do at the moment is being met with disillusionment, cynicism and antipathy. So is it a bad thing to have received so many defensive, angry, confrontational comments? Personally, I don’t think so. Negative feedback is still valid feedback. It highlights the areas where there have been problems, if only communication problems. And it gives you a mailing list of people you need to contact, to make your case.

We’re now into the final month of the consultation, which – for some people, I dare say – is a relief. By any volume metric, I’m confident the process will be counted a success. But of course, the only meaningful measure of success is whether or not it yields a workable proposal with general public approval. In the current political climate, I fear that may be too much to ask. Still, I hope the web element has done its bit.
13 Oct 2009

politics

conservatives, myconservatives

Thoughts on MyConservatives
A bit pushed for time just now, but I wanted to jot down a few thoughts regarding the launch of the Conservatives’ new community platform, MyConservatives.com. I hope they make sense.
- It’s built on an open-source platform – specifically Drupal. Almost certainly the right choice: after all, Drupal describes itself as ‘community plumbing’. For those who have never used it, Drupal is a startlingly powerful platform for all things social and online; but to me, that’s its downfall – I’ve always found it overwhelming.
- It fell over on day one. Happens to us all.
- Opening the system to allcomers, not just party members, is a brave move – but the right one, I think. (And is something I suggested Labour might do with Labourspace, back in March 2008.)
- Having said that, the heavy Conservative branding – including the use of an Eric Pickles video on the homepage – will put a lot of people off. I don’t see people registering for this unless they’re at least passively Tory.
- The ‘campaigns’ page – currently the heart of the site – has two key elements: ‘local campaigns’ and an events calendar. Neither are working well. When I put my postcode into the local search – even though I live in a Tory-LD marginal, high on the LDs’ list of target seats – it comes back: ‘Your local candidate doesn’t have a campaign team yet.‘ I’d have thought they’d pre-organise some of these key areas prior to launch. And there’s no encouragement for me to sign up to be notified if/when they do finally organise locally. The events listing is rather curious, initially showing me events from 2 to 10 Oct – not great when today’s the 13th.
- I really like the way they’ve illustrated what a donation pays for:
  
  It demonstrates that even a token donation can have a material effect…
- … but I still think it’s an uphill struggle to get people to donate. We’re looking at a massive cultural change, at a time when public trust in politics really couldn’t be lower. I just can’t see it.
- The sign-up form isn’t too intrusive, but it doesn’t tell me what my details will get used for. Inevitably I’m assuming it’ll go straight into their junk-mailing database – which is why I haven’t signed up myself, incidentally.
- And whilst it may not be unique functionality – both Labour and the LibDems can rightly claim to have had a lot of the same tools for some considerable time – presentation and high-level commitment goes a long, long way. Even if it doesn’t really raise the bar, the perception is that it does.
- I wonder what will happen to it after the election?
5 Oct 2009

politics, technology

conservatives, tomsteinberg

Tom, Tories and Timing

Tom Steinberg’s blog splutters back to life after more than two years asleep, to confirm reports that he will be advising the Conservatives on IT policy. ‘I’ve been asked to advise the Tories on IT policy,’ he writes, ‘and I’ve accepted.’

He’s clearly sensitive to the issues this raises as regards his ‘day job’ as director of MySociety. He immediately jumps in to stress MySociety is ‘non-partisan’, and that he himself has no interest in party politics. That’s all fair enough. But it’s inevitably going to make life difficult, on numerous levels. Take for example this paragraph on MySociety.org’s ‘About’ page:

No, we are not party political, and this project is neither left nor right wing. It is about building useful digital tools for anyone who wants to use them. And unlike most think tanks that say they’re non-partisan, we really are – none of that ‘It’s not official, but everybody knows they’re really close to party X’ nonsense here.

Now of course, MySociety isn’t just Tom – but he’s its public face, and a very visible face at that. Can we really read that paragraph today, in the same way that we would have read it last week?

Let me be absolutely clear. I completely understand why Tom has accepted this offer. Direct access to (future?) Ministers at a policy development level is invaluable. You can, of course, get a lot done through the civil service; but a change of Prime Minister brings with it the kinds of opportunities you can’t ignore. And I have no doubt that Tom has accepted this role because he sees it as the best way to get Good Things done.

But – why now? The exact circumstances of the announcement, at the Conservative Party Conference, can only serve to offend current good contacts within Labour… putting Tom in an awkward position, for the next six months at least, and (conceivably, I suppose) beyond – for no obvious benefit. And despite his protestations of non-partisanship, it will inevitably be portrayed in party-political terms: a defection by a former Labour advisor, one of Gordon Brown’s Everyday Heroes turning his back, etc.

MySociety’s Francis Irving asked on Twitter, ‘how is steiny helping tories with bills any different from helping labour with petitions?’ My response is that we still have some notional separation between politics and government, and the petitions system was built for the civil service, for The Government Of The Day. I would have fully expected Tom and MySociety to engage with a new Conservative government, if and when. But I’d have expected him to wait until they had actually become the Government.

Tom is a good guy. A great guy, actually. I hope he knows what he’s doing. And I hope it pays off in the end. In the meantime, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
30 Sep 2009

politics, technology

awards, commons, MPs, parliament

No awards for MPs' websites this year

Bad news for anyone who’s just put a massive amount of work into an innovative, cutting-edge website for an MP. (Ahem.) I’ve received confirmation from the British Computer Society – oops, sorry, ‘BCS – The Chartered Institute for IT’ – that their annual awards recognising the best websites by Members of Parliament aren’t quite as ‘annual’ as the label might suggest.

I noticed that the new BCS website seemed to be downplaying the info on their MP Website Awards – and emailed to ask if it was still happening this year. The response – quite telling in its own way – came back:

The decision was taken earlier this year not to hold the competition this year. We decided that would give MPs time to have another look at their websites as, while some had really made efforts to improve their sites as a result of our first year competition, a significant proportion had not. BCS is still very much interested in the competition and we hope we can take it forward in the future.

A pity. But then again, I suppose those websites will be facing the ultimate test of their effectiveness – with their constituents in a general election – next spring.
29 Sep 2009

e-government

foreignoffice, stephenhale

FCO seeks new head of digital

Another senior digital job pops up: this time, it’s the Foreign Office looking for a Head of Digital Engagement. It’s a Senior Civil Service band 1 position, a 2-year fixed-term contract with a salary up to £90k (plus London weighting, plus 6 weeks holiday!), managing the 30-strong team based in London, Washington, New Delhi and Singapore.

But it’s not Stephen Hale‘s position – or is it? Announcing the vacancy on his FCO-hosted blog, he writes:

You might also have noticed that my own job title contains the words “Head”, “Digital” and “Engagement” in a slightly different order. This is a different job – it’s for our head of department. When the position is filled, it could change the dynamic of the team I work in. And my responsibilities (and job title) might have to change too. A lot will depend on who we recruit.

Fair enough… but I note that the ‘slug’ of the post is ‘time_to_move_on’. Hmm.

Update: Stephen emails to explain – the initial title of the piece was ‘Time to move on?’, with a question mark. (To which the answer was going to be ‘no’.) Except that, of course, the question mark got removed in the translation to a page slug. He assures me, he’s going nowhere.

Having spent the early – and probably the most productive – years of my Civil Service career at the FCO, I can vouch for it as a fine place to work; and with David Miliband as Foreign Secretary, you know there’s support for online work at the very top. If you fancy it, CVs and covering letters are due in by noon on 12 October.
28 Sep 2009

company, technology

hosting

The reality of cheap web hosting

Since I started building sites using WordPress, I’ve tended to use cheap hosting – very cheap hosting. I’ve run high-profile government websites quite comfortably on shared hosting deals costing £50 a year, or less. Some had daily page views running into the thousands; at least one was for 10 Downing Street. It seemed in keeping with the low-cost ethic, and it didn’t let me down.

But over the last few months, I’ve come to understand a bit more about how cheap hosting actually works. The reality, I’ve realised, is that all web hosting is effectively free of charge. When you pay a fee for hosting, you’re really paying for support – or perhaps more accurately, the promise of support when you need it. An insurance policy, in other words.

Looking back, I can recite instances where a cheap hosting company has suspended accounts unilaterally and without warning, because traffic or other activity hit a notional limit. Or where a global setting was changed on a shared webserver, breaking key functionality on one of my sites. For the vast majority of their clients, these wouldn’t have been problematic: most websites won’t trouble their traffic limits, or use difficult functionality. But mine did.

Cheap hosting means zero tolerance. You aren’t paying them enough to employ someone to get in touch proactively before things go wrong; or to respond to your anguish afterwards. They will employ unilateral limits, and make unilateral changes, based solely on a cold analysis of what will suit the majority of clients. Based on automated tests and calculations, not human beings. I’m not blaming them; you can’t really expect them to do anything else.

But that isn’t good enough for serious publishing efforts. They do deserve better – advance warnings, responsive support in a crisis, proactive maintenance to stop bad things ever happening. And that comes at a price.

In the context of my crowdsourced business plan, one emerging idea is long-term site support. In a WordPress context, that means updating the underlying technology; updating WordPress itself; updating themes and plugins; and at each stage, testing to make sure everything still works as intended. So I’m talking to some people about the possibility of providing a WordPress-optimised, centrally managed hosting service, aimed at government and corporate usage. We feel WordPress has reached a certain level of maturity, and it’s probably time the hosting arrangements did so too.

If we do it, it’ll be the best, slickest, smoothest, friendliest, smartest, most tailored solution we can imagine. But it won’t be cheap.
28 Sep 2009

politics

downingstreet, labourlist, labourparty, sarahbrown, tangentlabs, twitter

Who says Labour people can't do web?

A couple of (broadly) Labour-related online developments of note late last week.

One was the relaunch of LabourList, just in time for conference. Alex Smith has done great things editorially since taking control of the website in the wake of Drapergate, and entirely deserved the recognition of a high ranking in Iain Dale’s annual poll of the top political blogs. But the website has always been a bit, well, ugly (or indeed, well ugly) – like it was trying too hard.

The new look is a big improvement, primarily because it accepts the reality that it’s really just another multi-author blog. You get a straightforward two-column layout: content plus comments on one side, a site-wide sidebar on the other, with header navigation based (I guess) on tags. It isn’t spectacular in design terms, but it doesn’t need to be. (Mind you, I’m not sure about including everyone’s ‘gravatar’ on every page: that’s going to slow things way down, for everyone.) It’s still powered by the same mysterious Tangent Labs platform as other Labour output; I’m wondering why.

The other was the news that Sarah Brown, the PM’s wife had passed uber-geek Stephen Fry in terms of Twitter followers. As I write this, Mr Fry has 773,000 followers, Mrs Brown has 791,000.

With no great fanfare in the conventional media, Mrs B has built quite a profile around her Million Mums campaign against ‘the needless deaths of women in pregnancy and childbirth around the world’, and other similarly lefty causes. It’s pretty clear she’s writing her own tweets personally, and gets actively involved in terms of replying, re-tweeting and hashtagging. It’s working, and she is often (rightly) used as a best practice example for public figures.

She also did a bit of blogging from last week’s G20 summit in Pittsburgh, again at wordpress.com – although I’m told there has been talk about bringing it properly ‘in house’; and has been contributing to the influential Huffington Post for some time.

Her activity is rarely Labour-branded per se… but of course it’s exactly a year since she sensationally appeared on-stage at the Labour conference to introduce her husband. (It’s quite amusing to look back at the BBC’s live text commentary from the day: ‘It’s almost time for the pre-speech video. Sarah Brown is in the hall. At the lectern. What’s going on? It looks like she is about to address the Labour conference.‘) Now articles are being written, describing her as ‘arguably the most admired and powerful woman in Britain… She might even be the last hope for Labour.’

Don’t underestimate the role her new media activity has played in this.