Tag: Government

23rd June 2009

Stuff I've seen June 21st through June 23rd

These are my links for June 21st through June 23rd:

eGov monitor – A Policy Dialogue Platform | Promoting Better Governance – Helen MIlner: "I actually trust Lord Carter’s vision. There is no doubt there remains considerable work to be done to move Digital Britain from paper to practice, to balance the books and to co-ordinate the consortia of new agencies and old friends, but I for one am a believer. I’m therefore genuinely saddened we’ll be losing Carter’s leadership, and I’m looking to him for a smooth handover of ideas to his team, his boss, and his successor. "
Twitter / Nicola Toms: RT @72prufrocks: Building … – RT @72prufrocks: Building community takes love, service, patience, hard hat, steel toe-caps, high vis jacket and gin (via @podnosh) :))) (Tahnks also to Lloyd Davis )
100 Awesome Open Source Tools for Writers, Journalists, and Bloggers | Online Courses –
Three pillars of Open Government | Kate Lundy – The three pillars of open government.
* Citizen-centric services
* Open and transparent government
* Innovation facilitation
Tom Watson: Crack open the lobby cartel, rip up the rules, and let a new era of accountability begin – Commentators, Opinion – The Independent – Crack open the lobby cartel. Let in a new generation of online commentators. Share access to lobby briefings with a more diverse group of reporters. Rip up the lobby rules and put all briefings on the record. Do this, and a new Speaker can genuinely be part of a new era of accountability.

13th June 2009

Stuff I've seen June 9th through June 13th

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.

9th June 2009

Things I've spotted June 8th from 19:24 to 23:25

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"

8th June 2009

Stuff I've seen June 4th through June 8th

These are my links for June 4th through June 8th:

Socially Media, Birmingham – 24Randomthoughts.com – Birmingham is a huge hive of activity there’s stuff going on every single week if you just seek it out (it took me a while to find it but then I can be quite lazy). The people that come to these events are welcoming and friendly and I have had the most excellent introduction to this scene and I know its only going to get better.
socialstrategy:start [Practical Participation] – There are many small hurdles to effective use of social media and technology in public services. In democratic engagement and participation; communications and outreach; education; or just about any other area of work – the same soluble barriers hold up action.
Headstar E-Government Blog » Blog Archive » Birmingham Transformation Aided By Mapping Tools – The group hopes to make Birmingham England’s first “intelligent city” by creating an integrated, fully digitised transport network. Birmingham also uses digital maps in its contact centres, where staff can pinpoint the caller’s property on a map and quickly bring up information relevant to that location.
Convince and Convert Blog: Where Social Media and Email Collide » The 6 Dangerous Fallacies of Social Media – It’s about having a strategy for making your company or organization more like a person and less like a machine. It’s about humanization.
LocalGov.co.uk – Your authority on UK Local Government > LocalGov.co.uk – Your authority on UK Local Government > Council freezes Twitter account after insult gaffe – Croydon council has suspended the Twitter account of its 'newspaper' Your Croydon after it 'tweeted' a dig at an Evening Standard journalist. A local newspaper has reported that a member of the council's staff used the account to criticise the reporter, claiming 'a squirrel could have run rings' around her after she had interviewed TV personality Esther Rantzen.
As Dominic Campbell put it so beatly, get over it.
The council claim that the post was supposed to be a private message, but was instead published for all to see.

It was then forced to post a further message which said: 'A few have picked up on a tweet about Esther R interview that was meant to be a PM (private message). No offence intended to ES (Evening Standard) lady! Still learning here!'