These are my links for December 1st through December 3rd:

• Thinking Big – the cabinet office use Bebo to harness ideas. – “In total we received over 12,000 votes across all polls in reply to questions on how to improve schools, concepts of identity and whether Britain ought to have a death penalty.”The polls, in turn, drove young people to want to contribute more on a serious debatable topic. Rather than giving a simple yes or no answer they commented to explain their opinions and provide new ideas. In total the Bebo profile page had 6,798 comments while the Big Think teaser video that was added to the Bebo homepage was viewed 1,592,643 times.
• Greenversations Convey the Message: How Social Media Helps Us Serve you Better – “A human voice can help connect with the public’s emotional response during a crisis.” via @futuregov
• Delib’s Local Authority Audit | Delib Blog – “Here is a general report on our findings with an overview of online consultation pages in local authorities and top tips we have formulated from our research . Individual authorities have been sent their own audits – which we hope will prove useful in finding opportunities to improve their online public consultation and engagement.”
• Talk About Local » Government data on the ground, making a difference – The challenge for John Denham’s Department is to get local authority held data published and then stimulate creativity in truly local applications of national and local data sets. There are some simple and cheap ways – a competition with small prizes for good ideas, run a hack day with say the LGA or Dave Briggs.