Category: Government

COI response on Metadata and Social Media Consultations

On Tuesday I wrote this blog post about the Central Office of Information beginning a consultation on the use of social media and metadata in government. The “consultation” was first spotted by Emma Mulqueeny. This morning the press office e-mailed this response:

“The social media guidelines are aimed specifically at Civil Servants and any informal consultation has been among this audience group.

“The Metadata guidance has also been subject to an informal consultation within government. However, we are planning a six-week formal consultation with a wider set of stakeholders shortly at which point the document will be made publicly available.

“We have amended our website to make this clearer.”

Emma spotted the COI site change mentioned above. It no longer says there is a consultation going on but that the work on metadata is “in preparation” and the using social media guide is “coming soon”.

First of all I’m pleased we got a prompt response. Thank you. But here are some more specific thoughts.
You don’t need to do this on your own as an internal thing. As Emma points out in this comment on Jeremy Gould’s post:

it is simply that there is SO much good will out here – we all want this to work – and I am pretty sure this is a rare occurance in any public/private/3rd sector collaboration. We so want these guidelines to be good, and we all want them to be exemplars, and there are many people who would freely give their time to making this happen, (some of whom I know, and I know how valuable and unique their ‘time’ is)… if time can be unique… I digress

Please, please can we have this back in consultation, and please, please can we be told how to contribute. We mean well :) we want to help!

So that’s my first point so eloquently made for me.

The next is a question: Are there enough civil servants with experience of using social media as part of their work to make such an internal consultation meaningful? Social media does have a slight chicken and egg problem because it is really understood through experiencing it and until you’ve had that experience you wont know that it might be of value to you. So I think it would be wise to find some way of ensuring there are enough people involved in this internal conversation who can help those being consulted experience what they are being consulted on.

Good to know the metadata work will be made publicly available soon. Will that be as a pdf – or will it be offered up in a more conversational way? If it is presented as a wiki we could edit it, there are other online mechanisms to allow comments to be made against specific sections of a fixed text or perhaps it could even be presented as a series of blog posts – perhaps a post per chapter, which would then allow us to comment and link. Working this way will make the consultation much more effective and hopefully mean that the resulting guidelines will be more realistic, ambitious and useful.

Many of us are already thinking along these lines. Paul Canning has already contributed a response to the earlier parts of the COI’s consultation on government use of the web and Cabinet Office Minister Tom Watson actively courts collaboration with us outsiders to help develop policy on the use of social media.
Any more thoughts from the COI please don’t worry about e-mailing them to me – just make a comment below or any where you find the conversation happening!

Government Consultation on Web Standards and use of social media

Emma Mulqueeny spotted that the Central Office of Information is currently consulting on government use of metadata and social media.

The evidence of the consultation existing is here, although, as Emma says, there’s no clear route to join the conversation. Our own Andy Mabbett (by that I mean fellow brummie) commented on the blog post to say that some of the earlier consultation conversation happened at the Public Sector Web Management Group and also some discussion of accessibility standards at The Pickards.

Thanks for the pointers Andy but neither is showing any identifiable conversation yet on either social media or metadata. It’s odd to have a government web site telling us a subject is out to consultation without it being clear how we can join that conversation.

Next week I’m in London at the invitation of Simon Berry (of Rural Net but also currently seconded to the Department for Communities and Local Government) to further explore how social media is and can be used to help improve community empowerment. The story telling that we have done through the Grassroots Channel podcasts was exactly about that. Simon has already established a shared space where ideas an be circulated and developed.

Other lines of conversation were also opened up by Jeremy Gould at intensely enjoyable UKGovBarcamp early this year. Does anyone know if there is such a thing for the COI’s consutation on social media and metadata?

I’ve put a call into the COI press office and will let you know what they say.

Hands up whose blog helps them learn? The Charity Commission thinks you're wrong.

I’m frowning at a consultation report published in March 2008 by the Charity Commission.

Public Benefit and the Advancement of Education March 2008 is the commissioners trying to clarify when an educational institution (private school) can or can’t claim charity status. However on page 18 they write:

There are two main aspects to educative merit or value:
• is the subject capable of being of educative value; and
• is the process such that it delivers educative value?

Fair enough, except by way of illustrating point 2 they add:

A modern example might be a ‘wiki’ site which might contain information about
historical events but, as the content is superficial and this information is not
verified in any way, it would not be accepted as having educational value without
positive evidence.
The Commission, having been satisfied on the evidence before it, accepted in a
particular case that an interactive website was a process capable of delivering
educative value as it was capable of delivering learning through improving the
student’s analytical and learning skills.
An individual’s blog, on the other hand, is not likely to be of educative value, as
neither the subject matter nor the process is of educational value.

As an explanation of why key social media tools are mechanisms with limited educational value I would say the report appears to be superficial and I can’t see that the information is verified in any way. I learn huge amounts through my blog and from wikis.

So which of you find your blogs to be of educational value? Which of you have been able to use wikis as a way of learning?

If you want to give the commission feedback on this consultation there doesn’t appear to be a way of commenting online on the document. It would of course be much better on the web not as a clunky pdf but as a wiki or maybe even a blog with a series of pages so we can comment on different aspect of the consultation – and then everyone can learn from it.

The only email address I could find was pressenquiries@charitycommission.gsi.gov.uk – which is OK to use because the press office will show a close interest in how the commission communicates and its reputation online.