Puffbox – Page 33 – Simon Dickson's gov-tech blog, active 2005-14. Because permalinks.

18 Sep 2009

company, politics

libdems, lifestream, lynnefeatherstone, puffbox, wordpress

Presenting the new website for Lynne Featherstone MP

We’re proud to unveil our latest creation: a new website/blog for Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone (or try this link if the DNS hasn’t rolled over for you yet). It’s taken a good few months, and has thrown up challenges on a scale I haven’t had to tackle before. But equally, it presented several opportunities for cheeky innovation, and as you’ll know by now, I can’t say ‘no’ to those.

A bit of background. Lynne started blogging in October 2003, making her one of the first MPs to do so – although she wasn’t an MP at the time. And in fact, she specifically credits her website as a factor in her winning the Hornsey and Wood Green seat in 2005 (on a 14% swing). She was also the first MP to use Twitter, more or less. And she’s in charge of the LibDems’ online campaigning strategy. No pressure then.

We had five and a half years’ worth of blog posts in Blogger, with over 2,000 user comments, to be migrated to WordPress. Oh, and 2,000 hand-coded press releases from the local party branch, to be integrated too please. Plus accounts on Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. And what about her contributions to other websites? Not to mention her activity in Parliament?

So the grand concept of the site is the use of a tabbed ‘lifestream‘ as the homepage. The initial view lists her last 10 actions, no matter where they happened – including Early Day Motion signatures, which required me to write my own scraper. Then, if you want to see her activity on one of those specific areas, you just click the appropriate tab. It’s all driven by RSS; the tabs are powered by ajax; the lists are generated by a cron for obvious reasons.

We’ve also made some first steps into Facebook integration. If you’re going to comment on the site, you can sign in with your Facebook credentials: this will pull your name and profile photo into the comment, and give you the option of adding an entry to your Facebook news-stream. I’ve used the official WordPress plugin, but it needed more tweaking than I probably expected, and didn’t always work reliably on all browsers. Let’s just say I’ll be keeping a close eye on it.

I’ve also used Ordnance Survey’s OpenSpace API to create a clickable map of the wards which make up Lynne’s constituency, with the precise boundaries marked, and map detail down to individual building outlines. I shouldn’t need to explain why this might prove to have been an – ahem – interesting move. It’s ready, but we won’t be activating it immediately.

The effort that’s gone into the issue and ward pages probably won’t be evident on the front end: you get a short summary, plus the latest posts tagged accordingly, plus any ‘blogroll’ links, plus – where relevant/available – the latest posts from other related sites or blogs, again pulled in via RSS. But crucially, all of this is done using standard WordPress functionality, in such a way that Lynne and her team can create new pages instantly. No (deep) tech knowledge required.

Naturally, it’s got all the sorts of functions you’d expect from a WordPress blog: sidebar widgets, paged comments, RSS feeds, decent SEO, etc etc. We’ve done pretty well in maintaining addresses from the old site: 50 to 60% of the URLs, at a guess, accounting for the vast majority of site traffic. And if you ignore the issues with Facebook’s custom markup language, everything (I think) passes HTML validation. Hooray!

There’s so, so many people to thank on this one. Jonathan Harris, who happens to be a constituent of Lynne’s, for the design work. Matthew Somerville for tweaking something for me within TheyWorkForYou, plus a couple of people within Parliament who tried to help me with EDM RSS through the proper channels, but ultimately couldn’t. Ex-LibDem tech supremo Mark Pack. Lynne’s staff and councillor colleagues for their early feedback. And Lynne herself for trusting me in the early stages, and encouraging me in the later stages when I didn’t necessarily trust myself.

Every site I do, I always try to do something innovative. This time, there are just so many things that I’ve never done before myself, or that I’ve never seen on a website in the same field. It’s been exhausting, occasionally terrifying, but great fun to do. And I can’t wait to see what happens next.
17 Sep 2009

e-government

bis, defra, wordpress

New sites at Defra and BIS

Two major departmental website changes (that I’m aware of?) today – a completely transformed website for Defra, and a new look for BIS’s corporate site.

The Defra site feels like an incremental improvement of what went before. Gone is the blocky layout and earthy (and somewhat apt?) colour palette, replaced by the de facto standard tabs and colour gradients, and a slightly esoteric colour scheme. It’s clear a lot of thought has gone into site structure, particularly at the upper levels: a friendly homepage highlighting good feature content, and meaningful tabs.

I like it. But it’s a bit disappointing to learn that ‘[they’ve] had to change the web addresses for most of [their] information’ – and I think they’ve missed a trick by not at least trying to redirect some of the key pages.

For example, when you search Google for Defra, you get a list of eight key pages as well as the site homepage – ‘bringing pets to the UK’, ‘animal health & welfare’, ‘your questions answered’ and so on. Only two of these eight links lead anywhere still meaningful. It should only take a minute to add a few ‘301 redirects’ manually. And there’s still no RSS on the site. Grr. These days, I have to say, I think it’s a must-have. Even a reference to the feed generated by COI’s NDS-generated feed would be a help, guys.

BIS meanwhile have changed the design of their ‘pulled together in 3 days‘ corporate site: it now looks much more serious, considered, and dare I say it, conventional. I don’t mean that as a criticism; but the previous incarnation felt so much more agile, innovative even, and I’m going to miss having it there as a wonderful case study. Sniff.

The great news is, it’s still running on WordPress. So in fact, it’s probably just as useful a case study: proof that WordPress can do ‘conventional’ too, if that’s what you want. And with the volume of content in the new site structure, it looks like it’s there to stay for a bit longer, too. Steph and Neil have a bit more to say, including details of some interesting things happening behind the scenes: and fair play again to Steph for open-sourcing his coding work.
15 Sep 2009

company

Crowdsourcing my business plan
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the future direction of Puffbox. The company has been in existence for two and a half years, and things have gone pretty well. I’m consistently busy, with regular offers of interesting projects: sometimes too many offers, actually. The mortgage gets paid each month, and there’s no immediate threat to a pretty comfortable status quo. So I’m not worried as such; just keen to stay ahead of the game.

The ‘WordPress (etc) into government’ campaign seems to have been successful; partly through my own efforts, I hope. We’ve got some departments doing some really quite adventurous things, and others dipping toes into the water. There’s now a clutch of us freelancers / consultants selling our expertise into Whitehall, and a few instances of departments doing it for themselves. And with WordPress itself maturing as a product, it feels like we’re entering a new phase.

It’s a shift from ‘look what we can do’ to ‘how can we do it properly?’. A realisation that high-profile sites really can’t rely on individual developers, no matter how multi-talented – for the benefit of the developer as much as the client, possibly moreso even. The accumulation of a year or two of actual real-world experience.

I can see several possible directions Puffbox could take. But I’d like to get some input from those actually inside government: the clients, current and potential. What would be of most interest to you – practically, strategically, financially?
- More of the same. Keep doing what I’m doing, designing and building modest, innovative sites and apps. But bring in other similarly-skilled people to share the load. We’d continue to use off-the-shelf hosting services, or departments’ own arrangements. Sell the benefit of our longer experience: sure, you could do it yourself, but we’ll do it quicker and better.
- Move into hosting and support of WordPress sites – not just sites I/we build necessarily, either. ‘Business class’ rather than ‘coach’: expensive, but with a package of WP and plugin upgrading, security, etc etc to merit it. I’d need to form some kind of relationship with a tech guru or two; good news is, I know a few already.
- Focus on a couple of specific WP-based apps of specific interest to government. Perhaps a ‘press office’ function, skinnable to slot neatly into departmental sites. Or a locally-hosted Basecamp-style project management app. Or a UserVoice-clone. Or an online content aggregator. Or a ‘social intranet’ based on BuddyPress. Or a consultation platform. Hire them out for an ongoing fee, as opposed to selling a one-off deliverable.
- Develop an expertise in something new – RDFa? Data/API? Geo/mapping? Emailing? Video hosting? Possibly WordPress related, possibly not.
- Does it weaken the ‘government expertise’ pitch if I start to look at more political or commercial work?
It could be one of the above, or several at once, or something completely different. But I can’t shake the feeling that now is the right time to be doing something. What would you want from me, guys?

If you don’t feel comfortable commenting publicly, drop me an email. And remember, I never refuse the offer of a coffee.
3 Sep 2009

e-government, technology

cabinetoffice, taxpayersalliance, twitter

Trying to engage with the Taxpayers' Alliance

I usually let the Taxpayers’ Alliance stuff wash over me. No matter how valid their points often are, it’s getting to the stage where every news story about any government expenditure has to feature an angry quote from them. Maybe journalists really are using that online TPA Quote Generator.

Then today, in the widespread but entirely inaccurate press coverage of a ‘Twittercrat on £118,000pa’, I spot a quote from TPA’s political director Susie Squire: ‘Taxpayers don’t want more Web2.0. They want an end to wasteful spending.’ Oh really? OK…

I was interested to find out more about TPA’s view of ‘Web2.0’… so I visited their website. Or specifically, their Typepad-hosted blog. How very ‘Web2.0’ of them. I wonder do they know about the various government websites which have also used Typepad for its cheap hosting, instant availability and high degree of configurability. I haven’t heard them praising it, so maybe not.

Anyway, a ‘Non-job of the week’ post makes a passing reference to the Cabinet Office vacancy, but concentrates on a local council recruiting a new press officer – which, apparently, is a bad thing. Anyway, as the article reaches its conclusion, author Tim Aker writes:

However, another communications officer at the council, taking scarce funds from the frontline, isn’t the answer. The answer is to have councillors do more than canvass at election time. Were we to have a more open political system … then maybe the people would trust politicians more. But as usual, instead of accepting the blindingly obvious solution of cutting back on their profligacy and engaging more with their constituents, the council opts for the norm and throws money at a problem. Sigh.

So the TPA wants more openness in government and politics. More direct engagement between elected representatives and the public. But it doesn’t want ‘Web2.0’ – the use of interactive technology, most of it ‘open source’ (and hence free), to promote direct engagement.

Here’s the thing. Done well, ‘more Web2.0’ has great potential to meet precisely the objective set by the TPA, namely bringing an end to wasteful spending. (And I like to think Puffbox is doing its bit in that regard.) How precisely do you ensure it is ‘done well’? You get someone in who knows what they’re doing. Someone with external experience, and internal seniority. And if you can get them into the one department specifically charged with improving government generally, so much the better.

Do you see where I’m going here, TPA? Sigh indeed.

PS Full marks to the Cabinet Office for their online rebuttal of the pathetic media coverage. It reads like a blog post, but it’s in the press release section of their website. I particularly love the line about @downingstreet being ‘followed by more than 1.2 million people, more than the official White House Twitter and considerably more than the daily circulation on most national newspapers.’
2 Sep 2009

politics

debate, generalelection, skynews

Sky News pressing for TV debate

Sky News has launched a high-profile campaign calling on the leaders of the main political parties to commit to a televised debate – or strictly, several – at the next election. They make a compelling case – pointing out that even Afghanistan managed it. Why on earth, in the year of our Lord two thousand and ten, can’t we?

David Cameron responded almost instantly to Sky’s letter; Nick Clegg has also backed the idea in the past few weeks. Then again, of course they would. So ultimately, it all comes down to the Labour response – although Sky don’t seem to be ruling out the ‘tub of lard’ option.

I find it quite remarkable that we’ve made it to 2010 without TV debates becoming part of the British electoral process. How dare they refuse the electorate a neatly packaged opportunity to ‘compare the market’? (Sorry.) It shouldn’t be about whether each leader thinks it’s strategically advantageous to him or her. Doesn’t the electorate have an absolute right to expect those who wish to lead it to come before them, and present their case using the electorate’s preferred communication medium? And isn’t it reasonable, in a world where media profile is all, for those leadership candidates to demonstrate their competence in that regard?

For once, I think it’s in everyone’s strategic interests to have the debate this time round. Cameron’s good on camera. Clegg needs the exposure. And Labour can’t do any worse. Actually, if I were Labour, I’d be saying yes, specifically with a view to the long term. If we have a debate this time, it’ll be nigh-on impossible not to have one at every future election. And whilst it mightn’t actually help Labour on this occasion, they may well be grateful of the opportunity to embarrass Cameron (or whoever) in four or eight years’ time.

But you know what? I almost think the most compelling reason for doing it, is simply to do it. Because it’s never been done before, and it might spark a bit of interest among the disinterested. And because it means we’ll never have to have this argument again.

PS: Do I need to note that Sky might not be launching this campaign this solely out of a belief in the democratic benefits? It’s in their interests to ‘own’ the issue… otherwise the event would undoubtedly go to the BBC. (And probably still will.)
1 Sep 2009

e-government

COI blogging breaks cover

One of the most gratifying examples of government engagement with the online community was the transformation of COI’s browser guidelines from a self-contradictory, over-long and unworkable draft to a sensible and practical final document, thanks largely to online consultation with the online audience. Yes, I know it sounds obvious, but…

Eight months later, and after further trialling, it’s great to see COI now looking to build on this momentum with the launch of a new Digigov blog, and a promise to ‘share information and get feedback on digital policy across government and to stimulate debate around digital policy with other departments, agencies, web developers, bloggers and academics.’ There’s only an introductory post up there for the moment, so I’ll be watching with interest.

For the record – it’s running on WordPress, the standard version rather than MU as far as I can tell, and uses a custom theme – a one-off rather than a generic COI style – by Harry Metcalfe’s The Dextrous Web. (Note to self: must stop linking to the competition.) It’s another government endorsement of WordPress, and another endorsement of the value of true openness after the disappointment of the internal-only CivilBlogs.

Welcome aboard, guys. Now let’s make some good things happen.
31 Aug 2009

e-government, politics

decc, edmiliband, foreignoffice, labourparty, tangentlabs

Ed's Pledge: when Ministers go it alone

One of the few international set-pieces between now and the next general election is the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in mid-December. And the UK’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change is trying to drum up support among the population for – er, well, let’s not dwell on details. ‘A deal’ of some kind.

He’s launched a website, EdsPledge.com asking people to declare their support for his campaign, and spread it round their social networks. It’s a pretty modest affair… too modest, arguably. An imported feed from his Twitter account, lots of calls to action – but in terms of substance, only a 67-second YouTube video.

But you’ll need to be looking relatively closely to spot that EdsPledge.com (registered at the end of July) is actually a Labour Party website – which, in fact, sits within www.labour.org.uk. The Labour logo is in dead space in the bottom corner of the screen, and the footer text declaring the site’s ownership is light grey text on white. There’s literally zero reference to Labour in that 67 seconds of video – other than the choice of font, and who’s going to notice that? (Well, apart from me.)

Meanwhile, in the gov.uk domain, we have ActOnCopenhagen.gov.uk – proclaiming, would you believe it, ‘the UK Government’s ambition for a global deal on climate change’, a joint DECC/FCO production, hosted by FCO but ultimately using a DECC subdomain. (Hey… Miliband and Miliband. Hadn’t thought of that until now.) And guess what? It too has a clock counting down to the conference, a bit of Twitter and YouTube, and a ‘100 days’ message from Ed Miliband – plus, it has to be said, a lot more detail.

Of course it’s obvious why Labour should be trying to maximise the political potential of Copenhagen. And likewise, it sits perfectly within FCO’s wider public diplomacy remit, as well as the DECC portfolio. Nobody’s doing anything wrong per se, from a selfish perspective anyway. But I can’t help feeling we’re straying into dangerous territory here.

For decades, centuries even, the Civil Service sat as a buffer between politicians and the populace. Mass communication required budgets and infrastructure which the political parties couldn’t readily lay their hands on, or afford. But just as the music and journalism businesses have seen their previously cosy arrangements challenged by the disappearance of those barriers to entry, are we now seeing the politicians challenging the authority of their own departments for their own purposes?

There’s now nothing to stop a minister setting up his/her own website pushing his/her own line – beyond the control of The Department. In many cases, it could be much cheaper and quicker to go outside, rather than rely on the internal processes. And free from Civil Service rules on dispassionate discourse, it might be more effective too.

Now, whilst there could be tension between these two web initiatives, I suspect there won’t be in practice. Wearing my cynical hat, the Labour site seems to have two objectives – visibility for Miliband, and harvesting the contact details of potential Labour sympathisers/voters. There’s no real duplication of functionality or content, nor any inherent clash with the weighty objectives of the DECC/FCO site.

But this is the first time I’ve seen such an obvious attempt by Labour to mirror departmental responsibility; and it’s easy to imagine how other similar activity around other departments’ areas – let’s say Health? Defence? Treasury? wider foreign affairs? – might get a little more juicy. Keep an eye on it, folks.
26 Aug 2009

company

opensource, plugin, robots.txt, wordpress

WordPress plugin: Robots.txt Reminder

I’m sure we’ve all done it. You’re creating a new WordPress installation, and for a bit of privacy whilst you build the thing, you choose not to ‘allow my blog to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati’. But in the rush to get the site out the door, you forget to switch the setting to make it ‘visible to everyone, including search engines’.

So I’ve created a laughably simple WordPress plugin called ‘Robots.txt Reminder’, which adds a notification message to the top of all Admin pages if it detects that (a) your blog is set to block search engines, and (b) your user capabilities allow you to make the change. It’s kinda hard to ignore, but that’s kinda the point.

Click here to download robotreminder.zip, then – assuming you’re using one of the more recent versions of WordPress, and are able to do automated updating – upload the zip file as-is, by clicking on Plugins -> Add New -> Upload.

It’s not the first plugin I’ve ever coded, but it’s the first plugin I’ve ever ‘released’ like this, so please be gentle. 🙂
26 Aug 2009

politics, technology

amazon, copyright, digitalbritain, filesharing

Fair prices, fair penalties

I’ve found it really hard to articulate my thoughts on this week’s hot topic, filesharing.

There’s no getting away from the fact that freely distributing copyrighted work is wrong; and wrongdoing must attract sanctions at some point. And in the chaotic, decentralised world of the internet, the only party who could reasonably be asked to apply such sanctions is the ISP. But on one side, you’ve got the music industry demanding protection, after years of having a pretty sweet deal; on the other, you’ve got the ISPs less than keen on becoming a police force (see TalkTalk’s blogged response). Both have commercial interests to protect, and principles to defend.

And of course, it doesn’t help if government is seen to be moving the goalposts midway through a consultation.

Writing on LabourList, Tom Watson talks about ‘the choice of accepting [the new reality] and innovating, or attempting, King Cnut-style, to stay the tide of change’. The Open Rights Group talks about ‘letting the market solve the problems … This is the wrong moment to go in this direction.’ I think both are right.

When Apple opened its iTunes store, I tried it, disliked it, and never went back. Nasty user experience, locked-down files in a non-universal format. But I made my first music purchases through Amazon.co.uk a couple of weeks back, and found it a very pleasurable experience. A fair price for a high-quality, unrestricted MP3 file. My purchases registered themselves automatically with Winamp and iTunes, and hence to my iPod (and anywhere else I might want to take them). Seamless, instant, perfect. I will be doing it again.

The music business screwed up by not recognising the implications of online sooner. Filesharing became too easy; and when online music sales finally happened, they put all their efforts into making it more awkward for the punters – DRM, proprietary formats, etc. And they’re expecting us to pay the price now.

But finally, the simplicity, convenience and fair pricing of Amazon’s model presents a challenge to the good people who found themselves filesharing even though they knew it was ‘wrong’. (And that’s without considering commercial, ‘legit’ sources of free online music like Spotify.)

I don’t believe you can argue on principle against sanctions for ‘hard core’ copyright infringers – whatever those sanctions may be, and however they are enforced. But it does now feel like we’re reaching a fair market proposition. A reasonable price for doing the right thing – coupled, inevitably, with an appropriate penalty if you don’t.
21 Aug 2009

e-government

cabinetoffice

Cabinet Office seeks digital chief

A job advert of potential interest to readers of this blog: the Cabinet Office is looking for a ‘Deputy Director – Digital Communication’ – a full-time, permanent Grade 5 position, based in Whitehall, paying ‘c£75k’.

It’s an interesting-sounding role, reportedly the ‘most snr dept webby in Whitehall’, with the successful candidate being asked to ‘lead the development and delivery of a detailed website strategy encompassing the technical and communications future of the entire online estate, supporting the drive for website rationalisation and enabling the rapid uptake of digital engagement activities throughout communications and beyond.’

Inevitably at that level, the focus is on strategy development, stakeholder management, evaluation, benchmarking, etc etc. – but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the Cabinet Office is a very juicy department to be involved in, given that its raison d’etre is to be ‘at the centre of government, making government work better’. Which is kinda what we’re all looking to do.

The job includes responsibility for ‘running and transforming to “Web 2.0” a number of high profile and well trafficked government web presences: Cabinet Office – the core corporate channel, HMG – the home of major cross government policy initiatives, [and] Civil Service – the corporate mouthpiece and sole online channel for >500,000 employees and their diverse needs.’ (First time I’ve seen HMG referred to as a ‘proper’ channel, by the way; I’ve always seen it as a domain of last resort.)

It’s an influential role, a decent salary, and a permanent position in a time of recession. I can imagine a lot of people being interested in it.