Puffbox

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

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    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 ๐Ÿ™‚ – 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 ยฃ1.47m 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? ๐Ÿ™‚

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    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. ๐Ÿ™‚

    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.

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    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?

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    Cameron goes direct

    The Tories‘ latest engagement initiative, Cameron Direct takes its ‘town hall meeting’ roadshow to a Plymouth primary school tonight. The event will be broadcast live, and then ‘on demand’, in video via the UK-based SelfCast.com. It also looks like they’ll be liveblogging the event through, guess what, CoverItLive. I’m not entirely sure it’s worth doing both, unless they’re planning on involving the liveblog-watchers in the proceedings somehow..? Proceedings start at 6.30pm, and should be done in time for kick-off in tonight’s football.

    Here’s the recording of last week’s event in Truro. Whether you like Cameron or not, you have to admit he’s very good at this sort of thing.

  • Dodgy start to David Davis campaign

    The website for David Davis’s campaign to get re-elected – on an identical platform? – in Haltemprice and Howden is now live at www.daviddavisforfreedom.com. I suggested last week that if his (wider) campaign was to be truly successful, he’d need ‘some kind of politics 2.0 initiative’: and so far, there’s not much sign of it.

    The Ministry of Truth blog does a real hatchet job on the Terapad-based site’s copyright and privacy notice: not normally pages which would merit much attention, but this is not a normal by-election. To give you a taster:

    All editorial content and graphics on this site are protected by U.S. copyright and international treaties and may not be copied without the express permission of Promoted by Duncan Gilmore on behalf of David Davis, which reserves all rights. Re-use of any of this site content and graphics for any purpose is strictly prohibited.

    Yes folks, that’s just beneath a big banner which says ‘David Davis for Freedom‘. It’s clearly been automatically generated from a template, but if your entire candidacy is about rights and privacy, you really ought to have had a closer look.

    And speaking of the banner at the top of the page: doesn’t it seem a bit – um – lacking in diversity? If you look at the associated Twitter account (39 followers, zero updates so far), you’ll find a ridiculously huge version of the same graphic (see above) does reveal a few non-white faces; but since you can’t actually see them on your screen, that doesn’t really stand up. And I’m not sure there’s a single person over 40 in the lineup either.

    But that isn’t the only curious omission. There’s no hint of a Conservative party logo. You’ll be looking through the site for quite some time before you uncover a single reference to Haltemprice and Howden. Amusingly, the only substantial reference to his party is followed immediately by a ‘but’. And reading the text on the homepage, you’d have no clue that having resigned, he was even planning to stand again.

    And then there’s this…

    In Davis’s defence, he has made an early move to reach out 2.0-style, with a lengthy article published yesterday on ConservativeHome – which, of course, came out in favour of 42 days. ‘I have deliberately embarked upon an unorthodox course of action to dramatise the damage being done to the country I love,’ he writes – thus admitting, surely, that yes, it is a publicity stunt. He says his website will be ‘a sounding board for the debate I am determined to generate about the threat to our liberties’, although I can’t yet see any hint of debate on the site… not even comments on the ‘blog’. I’d also note the paragraph in which he writes:

    Fortunately, the Westminster Village does not have a monopoly on political comment and reporting. In marked contrast to some rumour-mongering in the media, the blogosphere rapidly is becoming the real forum of popular debate and it offered a very different take.

    Davis himself clearly recognises the need to reach far beyond a mere constituency by-election, if his campaign is to amount to anything. I’m afraid he has a long way to go.

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    Does anyone ever 'share this'?

    On a couple of design jobs lately, clients have been very eager to have ‘sharing’ buttons on their pages. You know the sort of thing… one-click functions to submit a page to the reader’s Delicious, digg or Facebook friends. I get the feeling it’s purely because they’ve seen it on other sites, and think they should have it too.

    Except, in my experience, they’re very rarely used… and I mean rarely. Let’s look at one site: the BBC blogs, rated the number one ‘British blog’ (singular?) by Hitwise. Roughly half the BBC’s blogs have links to share content on Digg.com – rated the UK’s #11 online news source, also by Hitwise – as well as Delicious, Newsvine, NowPublic and Reddit (but not StumbleUpon?). These were first introduced nearly a year ago, surely plenty of time for people to have become aware of them. Even better, many of the Beeb’s blogs are relatively geeky in content, so should appeal to the more tech-literate Digger.

    So let’s visit Digg, and search for all the instances of people ‘digging’ a page on www.bbc.co.uk/blogs. The results:

    • a total of 16 articles were shared in the last 28 days
    • and half of them were only ‘dugg’ by one single person.
    • Half of the 60-odd digs in the last month were to a single posting, on the dot.life technology blog – which doesn’t even have sharing buttons on it.

    Don't worry, it's just a lame jokeThat said, it isn’t exactly difficult (in most cases) to add these buttons: at code level, it’s usually just a case of tacking the ‘permalink’ on the end of a base URL. And I guess it makes the point that you’re ‘down with this sort of thing’.

    But if you think it’s going to drive huge amounts of traffic your way, think again. And if it’s any kind of effort to get your IT people to add them in… pick a different battle, I’d say.

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    BBC blog feeds go full-text

    Credit where it’s due. By popular demand – and contrary to the implication of Jem Stone’s piece, I can’t claim to have started itย  – the BBC has switched from sending (very short) summaries in the RSS feeds from its various blogs, to sending the full text of the blog postings in question. ‘Sorry that it’s taken so long,’ Jem writes; no apology needed, sir. Thank you.

    Full-text feeds on the blogs was always The Right Thing To Do. There are basically two types of BBC blog: the senior journalist, offering instant analysis or adding background; and the ‘behind the scenes’ staff commentary, aimed at engaging / assuaging the community.

    In both cases, we’re already paying for the work these people are doing through the Licence Fee, so it was arguable we were entitled to getting the item however we wanted. The excuse of stat tracking via click-throughs didn’t go far, as we’d already paid for it all anyway. It wasn’t for BBC management to judge a business case; it was our content, to receive however we might want.

    The growth of mobile internet usage is perhaps the greatest user-centric justification for the move. I can speak from experience; I’ve got several BBC blogs in my Bloglines account, which I frequently read on my mobile phone. The inconvenience factor – reconnecting to the data network, pulling the page, and hoping the mobile browser doesn’t destroy it – was often enough to stop me clicking through.

    But it also reflects the reality of the blogosphere, where most ‘normal’ bloggers are happy to share their full-text feeds. The Beeb’s bloggers are playing by the standard rules, joining the community rather than putting themselves above it. Again, it’s just The Right Thing To Do.

    So will be see full-text RSS of news items? I doubt it; it would open up all sorts of anti-competitive arguments, and would make it just too easy for the Beeb’s content to be republished by others for profit. Mind you, since we’ve paid for it already… etc etc. ๐Ÿ˜‰

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    Big test for single-issue politics

    Like everyone else, I’m trying to make sense of David Davis’s decision to resign his Commons seat, and fight a by-election to win it back. He says he’s trying to start a national debate on ‘one of the most fundamental issues of our day.’ But when it comes to the vote, assuming he wins, he’ll only get a mandate from 1/643 of the country. In a seat he was already safe in, with his nearest challengers (the LibDems) not fielding a candidate. Result: we’ll end up exactly where we started, with a Conservative MP representing Haltemprice and Howden.

    Nick Robinson offers a list of ten solid reasons why it’s potentially nuts. By any conventional measure, he doesn’t have a lot to gain… which leads me to think of something else.

    We’re constantly hearing about general public disinterest in politics, but a continuing – and growing? – interest in ‘single issues’. Taking him at his word, David Davis is attempting to redefine himself as the nation’s Mr Liberty, effectively abandoning – or certainly, putting on hold – a successful conventional political career.

    If Davis is to really pull this off, he needs to position himself at the heart of a national grassroots political campaign, crossing traditional party boundaries. It’s hard to imagine how he can do this without some kind of ‘politics 2.0’ initiative – joining up with existing online-led campaigns like NO2ID, perhaps, and confronting big hitters like ConservativeHome (who got a mention at PMQs on Wednesday, and are now voicing some regrets). Yet at the moment, his personal website (www.david-davis.co.uk) has been subsumed into conservatives.com.

    At the other extreme, there’s the ‘playing chicken’ theory, which suggests that if Labour are so sure they’ve got public support on 42 days, let’s see them prove it. Except that in 2005, Davis got 47.5% of the vote, versus just 12.7% for the Labour candidate: hardly a level playing field. And it would be odd for a senior Shadow Cabinet member to lead such a ballsy party-political initiative (apparently) unilaterally.

    One other cynical thought crosses my mind. With the Tories under Cameron riding high in the polls, there’s really no prospect of Davis ever getting the Ultimate Prize now. He might have nothing to gain by doing this; but perhaps he’s got nothing to lose either. Worst case, he bows out in glory, a hero, a man of principle.

    If nothing else, the next few weeks will make for a very, very interesting spectacle. If single-issue politics really is the order of the day, here’s its big test. The implications could be staggering.

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    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 โ€™shiny front endsโ€™. 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?

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    Puffbox's onepolitics site relaunched

    A few months back, I built and launched onepolitics: an automated website which pulled together the latest blog postings from the ‘proper’ political commentators. It wasn’t ever meant to be a mass-audience website: I built it for myself, but if anyone else wanted to use it, they were welcome. As I wrote at the time:

    Iโ€™m finding myself looking at onepolitics during quiet moments through the day, purely to see whatโ€™s popping up. Iโ€™m kind of interested in this sort of content generally, but not enough to want to be disturbed by every new item popping up in my RSS reader.

    I’ve found it really useful, so much so that I wanted it to give me more than the fairly restrictive content it offered. I was also noticing the limitations of the initial build, based on WordPress and the FeedWordPress plugin; and at the same time, realising the awesome power of pure RSS. Plus, with more political content going into YouTube, I wanted to add a video element.

    So in the last day or two, I’ve rebuilt onepolitics, dropping WordPress – see? it isn’t the answer to everything! – and driving everything through RSS feeds aggregated using shared labels in Google Reader. It now includes full representation of MainStreamMedia and ‘true’ bloggers. It should be faster to update, with the latest items appearing within five minutes of publication. It also includes an Ajax-style ‘video player’, showing the latest video clips from the parties’ official YouTube accounts. There are a few cute new design touches. The only flipside is, I’ve dropped the archive aspects… but looking at the usage stats, nobody was using anything other than the ‘latest’ list anyway.

    The code is almost embarrassingly straightforward: it even relies on an old-school FRAMESET, for goodness sake. But it made things much easier to put together, particularly from a cross-browser perspective, and I’ve used a few presentational tricks to smooth the usability.

    As before, it’s there if you want it. It helps me keep on top of what’s happening on the political blogs, and if it helps you too… great.