I simply offer you this embed from the Cabinet Office Making Government Work Better Conference and this link to the #tower09 hashtag because I think they are worth watching.
Year: 2009
Stuff I've seen May 12th to May 14th
- Journalism.co.uk :: New Northcliffe hyperlocal sites will combine ‘social networking and news’ – The next generation of Northcliffe’s local news sites will combine citizen journalism, blogging and Facebook-style networking, the publisher has said.
- Journalism.co.uk :: CN Group to trial revenue share with ‘community correspondents’ – The correspondents will receive 25 per cent of any revenue generated by the sites, which varies between properties. Sites carrying at least five adverts will pay around £80 a month, Nick Turner, CN Group’s head of digital content development, told the Digital Editors Network meeting yesterday.
- BBC NEWS | Politics | Peer turns fire on BBC presenter – Transparency is exciting. two public servants argue about what is right – one a journalist, the other a politician
- Government invites bids for a share of £20 million to fund adult learning – Organisations can bid for a share of £20 million in Government cash from today to open up and promote informal learning for adults and young people across the country.
- Carnegie UK Trust – Democracy & Civil Society – Civil Society Commission – The distinctive roles that civil society associations play in creating safe spaces for meaningful deliberation where difference can be articulated and acknowledged.
The relationships between civil society associations and media.
The marginalisation of dissent – with a focus on relationships between UK and global civil society.
How can we help Andrew Stott as Director of Digital Engagement?
Andrew Stott is moving from being the Government’s Deputy Chief Information Officer to the new post of Director of Digital Engagement. He’s just become key to the world of social media, data mashing, government and democratic shift.
Titles like Chief information Officer make me shudder a little. I’m not even a fan of knowledge management as a term – it seems to over formalise how we share what we know. One thing that looks very promising is his depth of experience with geographical information. The Guardian rather oddly described him as an “experienced Press Officer”. Jimmy Leach at The Independent summed him up as: “entering from the IT angle, rather than from the social media angle as others have pointed out.” So I went looking for reassurance that he will also be a champion of people, conversation, connection and collaboration: Dod’s interviewed Andrew last year and quoted him as saying:
The Treasury’s refurbishment, Stott says, with a big coffee area right in the heart of the department, “has created a culture of ad hoc meetings where you bump into other people. It is not just about smart IT; it is about getting people talking to one another.” The Information Matters strategy lists the new GCHQ building as another example of where communication, accidental meetings and face-to-face time have been made the norm. “It is compelling,” says Ceeney, “they have very consciously changed their whole culture from one of ‘need to know’ to one of ‘need to share’.”
The new job will be:
- implementation of the Power of Information Taskforce recommendations
- chairing the Government’s Knowledge Council and working with The National Archives to take forward the Information Matters strategy for Knowledge and Information Management
- increasing the civil service’s use of internal digital tools to improve cross Government coordination and collaboration as an aid to better policy development and service delivery
- the civil service website
Can I help Andrew Stott?
My first thoughts are the most obvious.
- Join the conversation. Assuming Andrew wants to engage with us, take the time to give him useful help.
- Offer him a mentor or two? Is that cheeky? I hope not. Who would be ripe for that role?
- Make sure he knows he’s surrounded by a substantial community that wants POIT to succeed.
This extra tip came from Josie Fraser:
and there’s loads of other reaction here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=Andrew+Stott
Other blogs writing about this:
Puffbox. Andrew Lewin. Demsoc. Paul Canning. Emma Mulqueeny. Dave Briggs. Neil Williams. Harry Metcalfe: the next morning Andrew showed up at the office having spent all the previous evening writing a bunch of code to take the nasty XML and make it into useful data. Helen Nicol. Paul Evans.
Interesting things including Quiet Riots and Social Network Analysis in Journalism
- Community Consultancy « Sociability – there’s far more to Twitter (and Facebook) than brand awareness and self-promotion. In engaging with a community of peers, I gain not just a media channel but an educational resource too. Much like a guild or professional association, Twitter allows me to build my own network of specialists with whom I share knowledge and swap industry insights. It allows me to build my own personal “guild” directed entirely to the skills and industries that interest me. They can teach me how to do my job better, whatever my job happens to be today.
- Online Citizenship for young people – e-safety project ideas : Tim’s Blog – Brent LSCB have long been leaders in the drive to encourage every local authority to have an e-safety group within their Local Safeguarding Children Boards – and in encouraging organisations working with young people to have e-safety co-ordinators. Refreshingly their focus has not just been on a narrow definition of e-safety and safeguarding – but they have pro-actively recognised the importance of supporting young people to thrive online and be active online citizens as a means to promote online safety. And they have been very kind in letting me share the project and strategy ideas we developed.So – here is Citizenship for Young People: promoting e-safety through promoting opportunity – proposals for positive project as a PDF download.
- Regeneration – Cities and regions – Communities and Local Government – A clear definition of regeneration – ‘Reversing economic, social, and physical decline in areas where market forces will not do this without support from government’.
- www.quietriots.com – With the technology we have at our fingertips there are new ways to organise ourselves to get change to happen. Being “Mad as hell” is often where it all starts. Quiet Riots is in development
- Uncloaking Economic Terrorists: a Slumlord Empire – A small, not-for-profit, economic justice organization [EJO] used social network analysis [SNA] to assist their city attorney in convicting a group of “slumlords” of various housing violations that they had been side-stepping for years. The housing violations, in multiple buildings, included:1. raw sewage leaks
2. multiple tenant children with high lead levels
3. eviction of complaining tenants
4. utility lines of six figuresThe EJO had been working with local tenants in run-down properties and soon started to notice some patterns. The EJO began to collect public data on the properties with the most violations.