Podnosh

These are my links for February 14th through February 15th:

• Richard Sambrook: Big Thinker | Big Thinkers – Transparency is the new objectivity
  Balance used to be the watchword of the regulated UK news environment
  Now that is not enough. Trust is built through transparency.
  This can be liberating and it means “showing your workings”- as you did when doing maths at school- and admitting mistakes.
• Council newspapers: Revealed – the people who believe what’s written in them « David Higgerson – David Higgerson chewing over the problem of council publishing things that pass as newspapers "the councillors were praising themselves for the way they dealt with the snow – citing evidence from Lambeth Life. That’s a newspaper run by the council."
• The €4 Million Govt website that you never heard of « Damien Mulley – In a single sentence: 4M quid spent, no stats on usage.
• Federal Agency Ideascale Dashboard – Very neat – I especially like the bit which says which departments are short on ideas and could do with a little love. "To satisfy the Open Government Directive agencies are soliciting your ideas on how to make them more transparent, participatory, collaborative and innovative"
• Google Buzz: Not fit for purpose – Really detailed post on the many flaws with Google Buzz: "I have enough problems managing my email already, I don’t need Buzz to add to the cognitive load".

These are my links for January 26th through January 27th:

• News : NDS – The government will create one secure, resilient and flexible network which will enable every area of government to adapt their ICT to best deliver for the public. Other changes include, for the first time, bringing together Government departments, local government and wider public sector organisations to remove unnecessary overlaps between departments and avoid costly duplication of technology.
• Giving activities – Part 2: Professional amateur « Project : Arena – "taking journalism into the gift economy where it’s no longer a simple exchange between producers and consumers, writers and their readership. This new form of journalism is confronting issues familiar to many in volunteerism and others who’ve worked for many years in the gift economy."
• Open Government Initiative | The White House – "As part of the Directive, federal agencies have answered the President’s call by democratizing hundreds of high-value datasets on every aspect of government operations. While this is meaningful for the technology community and transparency advocates who have been working on this issue for years, the data released will have direct impact on the daily lives of the American people. Here are three examples to consider:"
• http://bournvillevillage.com/?p=622 – Bournville hyperlocal volunteer run news reports like, well er, reporters…."Passions ran high at a packed Rowheath Pavilion on Tuesday evening as experts and residents clashed over the best way to preserve Bournville’s future in the light of the Kraft takeover of Cadbury."
• SOCIAL MEDIA: Your EIGHT step guide to getting started… « The Dan Slee Blog – Really fien post from Dan Slee at Walsall: "You need to construct a cohesive and persuasive argument backed by figures that will work with people who look on digital with the suspicious eye of a Daily Mail reader."

Here are some of the things I’ve been reading October 24th from 21:53 to 22:40:

• FutureGov » Features » ePetitions data standards – get involved! – Andy Gibson is looking for local government to help him create a standard data set for e-petitions.
• Against Transparency | The New Republic – This, from Lawrence Lessig, is really worth reading: "This is not to say the data will not have an effect. It will. But the effect, I fear, is not one that anybody in the "naked transparency movement," or any other thoughtful citizen, would want."
• An encouraging week at the conferences – Digigov – David Pullinger of COI reflects on a couple of conferences: "It struck me that there are many talented expert e-communicators across government but hampered by the misperception that Web is IT."
• Living with rats: Trafigura, climate change and the power of reputation – Julian reminds us that Trafigura is about our willingness to use tools, not the tools themselves: "The real story, I think, is the power of citizens to change an organisation’s reputation. What matters isn’t the tool – Twitter, Facebook or even good old-fashioned newsprint – but people’s willingness to use it. What’s also interesting is people’s readiness, at a time when politicians’ esteem has hit a new nadir, to defend the rights of Parliament against corporate and legal bullying. There was a glimmer here of what Parliament should be: the champion of the citizen and the exposer of abuses."
• potlatch: the economic sociology of receipts – Will is really interesting on the growing trend to give a receipt with everything: "to normalise receipts in cafes or bars is to strive for the perfect, 'dis-embedded' clean exchange, of the liberal-economic imaginary. It depersonalises the interaction and substitutes data for memory. It declares the exchange over, with nothing more owed by either party. Frankly, this is futile, as exchanges always leak into society."
• New for 2010: Retooled | Antonio Gould – Antonio's latest job: "The project will work with ex-manufacturing employees from the West Midlands, skilling them up in social media and working together on a challenge which mixes old and new skills."
• Volkswagen to Rely Solely on IPhone App for GTI Launch | Advertising Age – Neville’s posterous – Volkswagen of America is launching the newest-generation GTI exclusively on an iPhone app, a cost-efficient approach the automaker said is a first for the industry. How cost efficient? When the marketer introduced the GTI in 2006, it spent $60 million on a big-budget blitz with lots of network TV. By comparison, an executive familiar with the matter estimates the annual budget for mobile AOR services is $500,000. And while an iPhone-only strategy may seem limiting, consider this: In September, Apple reported there are more than 50 million iPhone and iPod touch customers worldwide. By comparison, CBS' "NCIS," the most-watched show for week ending Oct. 18, reached 21 million viewers and commands an average price of $130,000 for a single 30-second spot.

These are my links for September 1st through September 2nd:

• Headshift’s deal with Dachis Group brings ‘Facebookification’ of business to London | Media | guardian.co.uk – "Social business is the new way of working, not just new technology."
• Digital Transparency Index for US Congress – "The Digital Transparency Index is a way to indicate how active legislators in Congress are in the online world. It's currently comprised of several factors including a legislator's web presence, whether or not they syndicate content, and how active they are on Twitter and YouTube."
• What is Rant and Rave? | Instant Customer Feedback | Rant and Rave – Spotted by @chrisunitt: "Rant & Rave works by gathering people’s thoughts as soon as they experience a product or service. It collects feedback instantly through two main channels – formal and informal."
• Social seniors « stuff and junk – Some feedback from the first social media surgery/mob at Mosman Library ins Sydney: "I can’t think of a generation better suited to social media than that of our senior citizens." That's exactly how we find it at the Birmingham surgeries.
• xkcd – A Webcomic – Tech Support Cheat Sheet – This is how the experts do it. via @chimerax

These are my links for July 1st through July 4th:

• It's The Ruddy Future – "Hello people! So glad you've pulled your finger out – and used it to click through to our lovely website. Just by being here, you've already taken your first step towards a super sexy, rewarding career in technology.
  Well done you!"
• Do you care about Wales? Can you code? Fancy helping TheyWorkForYou then? | Quixotic Quisling – "TheyWorkForYou are looking for volunteer coders interested in working on Welsh Assembly data. If that’s you, please join the new discussion list and let’s figure out how to do it."

  If you don’t know TheyWorkForYou then take some time to familiarise yourself. It’s a well established site taking parliamentary data and presenting it in a queryable form. It’s free, loaded with information and very useful indeed.

• Directgov | Innovate | – "Welcome to Directgov | innovate. We developed our platform to enable conversation with the developer community around innovative use of digital technologies in the government space."

  We blog and encourage people to submit examples of apps developed in the government space using government data or demonstrating innovative use of technologies.

• CKAN – Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network – Home –
• Socrata –
• About Socialbrite.org | Socialbrite – "an affiliation of passionate social media consultants and strategists who believe in collaborating to produce positive change. Through training workshops, reports, case studies, learning materials, blogging and consulting services, we want to make sure that everyone has access to the knowledge and tools that the social media revolution offers."

These are my links for June 9th through June 13th:

• Local Works | Campaigning to implement the Sustainable Communities Act – You can only use the radical new bottom-up powers in the Sustainable Communities Act if your councils (district/borough/city and county) choose to use it too! See the map and list below for those who have. If your councils have not already done so please write to them (and urge others to write too!), this sample letter will help you.
• The Open Rights Group – But with Lord Carter departing, there is a serious question as to whether the government will push the Digital Britain agenda forward at all. Who will pick up the brief; will they support and desire the completion of its recommendations; will they be able to build up the political will to see any proposals through Parliament, especially as its mood darkens?
• BBC NEWS | Technology | Web creator job 'beyond politics' – The inventor of the world wide web has been asked by the prime minister to help open up access to government data.
• I smell a government rat in my news | Online Journalism Blog – To help you measure the amount of government-funded journalism, Nicolas Kayser-Bril built this little app, I smell a government rat in my news. Just type in any query and you’ll see the share of articles produced with state funds.
• Peregrine Falcons – Worcester Webcam – Great work from Worcester City Council to engage public interest and establish broader positive relations with folk.

Here are some o the things I’ve been reading June 8th from 19:24 to 23:25:

• Trading my 2G iPhone for cake | Pete Ashton – All bids must be a cake or combination of cakes. No biscuits. No other forms of pudding. Just cake.
• Site and Sounds – mac / Cannon Hill Park | Created in Birmingham – This time, artists Kate Chapman and Charlotte Goodwin are exploring the mapping theme by inviting people who live, work or play close to mac to re-discover familiar places and explore places they have never visited before, sharing their thoughts and observations to create an audio map of the changing landscape. All of these recordings will feed into an audio map – a web of downloadable audio tracks focusing on different locations in a mile radius of Cannon Hill Park.
• Open Government Brainstorm: Collaboration in Action « OSTP Blog – By generating word clouds and doing some analysis of the metadata in the dialogue, they found that people on the outside of government are focused on transparency and making data more available to the public, and on the inside, government officials want to build collaborative and participatory tools.
• Snapshot of UK govnt use of social tools – and Press Office involvement « Emma Mulqueeny – It is literally a snapshot and I sincerely hope it will be taken and used by anyone who needs it.
• Your Right To Know » Blog Archive » Transparency of politicians’ expenses goes global – "What’s amazing isn’t just the interest in the story but the way journalists and citizens of those countries immediately start to wonder: ‘What about our politicians? What are they doing with our money?’ And so the campaign for transparency and direct accountability goes global! Even while our House of Commons continues to work behind the scenes to block future disclosures (more on this soon), other countries are moving to greater openness.

  Two political parties in New Zealand have announced proactive disclosure regimes for their politicians. Apparently, our scandal has a ring of familiarity for New Zealanders as explained in this article"

To find the Digital Britain interim report click on this image

Earlier this week Jon Hickman asked me to say a few things at the Digital Britain unconference in Birmingham.  He wanted me to share some opening thoughts about the interim reports 5th objective:

Developing the infrastructure, skills and take-up to enable the widespread online delivery of public services and business interface with Government.

An overview of the entire mornings conversation is here, but I wanted to share my thoughts.

This objective, “to develop the infrastructure skills and take up to enable the widsespread online delivery of public services and business interface with government” appears to almost entirely about refining ane ecnouraging online transactions.  It suggests that the ambition is to use the net to govern more efficiently. That is unquestionably important but it ignores how the web can and will shift our democratic relationships, allowing self organising citizens to ignore, short circuit, or improve how we govern or  self govern.  Core to this is ensuring that we all are able to effectively publish (rather than simply consume) online, should we wish to do so.  This democratic shift is also being accelerated by the problems being faced by the big cultural and media organisations which Digital Britain as a report appears to be attempting to save.

Digital Britain says very little that seems relevant to this democratic shift. A couple of things that it mentions which are tangental are:

1 Safety: “We want to make the UK the safest place to do business online”.  Who’s going to argue with that? It will make us more likely to use the web to relate to government and take part in civic activity, won’t it?

Well it may not.  The safest place to do business online could also be the most controlled and closed down.  If that is the route we go then democracy baby and democracy bathwater will be scootling down the drain together. (Byron Report )

The report also appears to cling to a shadow of the unworkable idea of a film classification type service (” clear and effective labelling to help people avoid material likely to be harmful or offensive”) and adds “There should be a clearer role for trusted brands that provide a guarantee of the nature of the content that may be accessed through their product (e.g. the approach Apple has taken to making available applications that run on iPhone).”  Apple do this because they have found a funding stream around applications. Which “trusted brands” can make that happen with public content?

2 National Digital Literacy Plan. This is the other directly relevant bit: “We will only reap the benefits of becoming a digital nation if we ensure that everyone has access to the right education, skills and digital media literacy programmes to ensure that being digital is within the grasp of everyone.”

Yes is the simple answer to that.  Please though don’t make this a digital media literacy national curriculum which will date before it’s finished.  For this to work you have to find a mature balance between digital media literacy, learning and safety.

So I found two things in the report relevant to the issue of the net and democracy.  This led me, by way of  starting a conversation, to raise these additional points:

1 Should we stop existing IT projects which could stifle digital media literacy. Anything which is overly safe and overly cautious is likely to hamper our progress as a digitally literate nation. For example learning portals for schools etc – are they going to help or hinder? Do they really encourage rich informal learning and the sort of free flowing collaborations skills which will give us an economic advantage? (answers to this below please!)

2 Transparency isn’t mentioned. Transparent appears only once. Transparency will be the core media virtue in the future, replacing others such as impartiality.  Transparency is how we hold publishers and politicians to account. What does transparency mean?  Could there be principles to describe transparency which can then form the basis for a new set of standards against which online activity can be measured?

3 Talk to the folks next door. Whilst I was ranting on about how the people who wrote Digital britain didn’t seem to have read the Power of Information stuff Dave Harte did a quick search of the document to find no mention of the Power of Information Taskforce.   Unh.

My twoppenorth as an opener.  An overview of the entire mornings conversation is here with recordings of it all from the marvellous Rhubarb Radio.  Aggregations of national conversation on twitter at #dbuc09. Thanks to Nat and Julia at www.aquila-tv.com for organising and BillT for the original idea. Notes form the Manchester Event are here.  BTW Recasting the Net looks like another postive contribution to this conversation.

Below (scan down a bit) is a piece I’ve written at the invitation of Paul Bradshaw from the Online Journalism Blog. Paul e-mailed to say:  “I’m creating a 6-part series of responses to the government as part of its inquiry into the future of local and regional media. I will be submitting the whole – along with blog comments – to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. They invited responses on 6 areas. This part will look at the 3rd:

The appropriateness and effectiveness of print and electronic publishing initiatives undertaken directly by public sector bodies at the local level. The question of what public sector bodies should be allowed to publish, how that affects local journalism, and how it affects local democracy, is one of the most difficult to resolve – not least because it involves so many interconnected elements.”  So that’s what Paul asked. He has written this and here are my thoughts – mostly on the question of the quality and transparency of information paid for from the public purse:

—————————————–

I talk to a lot of people who work in council communications departments. They’re all conscious that the regional press is in trouble.  If they’ve not recently lost a local paper they’ve certainly seen local journalists lose their jobs.

They consistently tell me one thing: “Because there are fewer reporters it’s easier to get coverage. Those who are left are really grateful for the stuff we give them.  More and more they run it verbatim”.

On the one hand we have newspaper editors complaining about direct competition from council newspapers and websites, on the other they increase their reliance on content from these same sources.   This tension amply illustrates the waning value of newspapers as mediators.

Public bodies will continue to want to connect directly with an audience. They will find it ever easier to tell their stories in audio, video, maps, text and images and they will attach all that content to rss feeds to be used by individuals and publishers of all sizes.

Not only that but public services have a growing responsibility to talk directly to the public.  The conversational web and data mashing offer an unprecedented opportunity to collaborate with us to improve public services.  It would be negligent for any media regulation to stifle this.  Indeed central government already actively encourages local councils to improve their direct relationship with the communities they serve.

Any minister making decisions now risks being derided in years to come for not understanding quite how powerful these new flows of information are, first to undermine the business model of newspaper and second to strengthen the democratic opportunities for our public services. I can’t imagine any sensible intervention from Andy Burnham or Hazel Blears demanding that this trend should be somehow stopped!

New standards for Public Information

Newspaper editors should stop bleating about potential competition. Instead they should fight for new standards for public information.

Clearly all public communications departments take care to be accurate and negotiate the line between politics and public service. Often they will check their facts more carefully than journalists might because they get more stick for being wrong.

But as more and more material from local government press departments is used  use un-mediated by millions of people how do we guarantee the quality of this information?

So now is not the time for government to stifle council communications teams. Now is the time to ask if we have the right editorial guidelines for council press officers and communications departments. Let us instead ensure  every single one is a centre of excellence for plentiful, high quality and easily re-usable public information.

We already have at least one model for using public money to pay public servants to create content for the public good. It’s called the BBC. This is based on the rather clumsy notion of impartiality. The new model should be built on guarantee of quality that comes with transparency.

Any comments you make below will be posted, by Paul, through to the enquiry. Others in the series include:

Alex Lockwood on “The impact of newspaper closures on independent local journalism and access to local information”

Adrian Monck on “The opportunities and implications of BBC partnerships with Local Media”

Paul Bradshaw also on “Should Councils Publish Newspapers”