Tag: Government

Links from December 15th

Jules & Jim | DensityDesign | Communication Design & Complexity

Here are some of the things I’ve been reading December 15th from 02:21 to 03:00:

  • David Barrie: Love diagrams – “What followed was a sequence of graphics that map the course of human relations in the film – cutely assuming that love relationships are “dynamic” (don’t stop reading) and ignore scuzzy soap and socks left on the floor.” Original here.
  • Theatre Pledge 2010 « Stan’s Cafe Theatre Company – Stan’s Cafe theatre pledge encourages people to make a commitment to support local theatre, bring new people to new experiences. What might you choose to create a pledge for?
  • Official Google Enterprise Blog: Why the City of Los Angeles chose Google – “Google Apps will save the city of Los Angeles millions of dollars by allowing us to shift resources currently dedicated to email to other purposes. For example, moving to Google will free up nearly 100 servers that were used for our existing email system, which will lower our electricity bills by almost $750,000 over five years. In short, this decision helps us to get the most out of the city’s IT budget.” via @davebriggs.
  • Ethical Xmas? | Birmingham Conservation Trust – My favourite Birmingham charity on how you can support it with your Christmas Shopping
  • Christmas Fun at Stanhope Hall Highgate « Highgate,Digbeth and St Andrews – Andy Sheppard, neighbourhod manager, shows that praise is a key quality to deploy in blogging a community: “Father Christmas made a special visit to Stanhope Hall and presented all the children with an early Christmas Present. Special thanks for both events are due to Monica Lee Community Worker and the ladies of Stanhope Hall Womens Group who worked incredibly hard to ensure the success of both events. Special thanks are also due to Eddie Howard and Highgate Housing Liaison Board for their support for both events.”
  • Hyperlocal news: profits a long way off | Media | guardian.co.uk – “2010 will not be the year of hyperlocal—these are the foothills, the beginnings of localised online publishing. But the signs are auspicious: increasing levels of online literacy and broadband connections mixed with more inevitable local newspaper closures mean it’s natural that readers—and advertisers—will shift to new outlets. Whether anyone will be making a real living from it—as a mainstream publisher or a start-up—seems unlikely in the near future… ” via @daveharte.

Stuff I've seen December 6th through to December 13th

These are my links for December 6th through December 13th:

  • When 1000s of Spaniards Rallied in Defence of Online Rights (I): A Chronicle | Personal Democracy Forum – Well worth a read: “An online fire is burning in Europe. It was set by what appears to be a designed campaign to transform the European intellectual property regime, towards a more restrictive set of rules directly affecting the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and information. We’re seeing its implementation in Sweden, France, Italy, UK or at the EU level in Brussels.”
  • The Ernest Marples Blog › The blog for Ernest Marples’ Postcodes – There have been some pretty exciting announcements during the last few weeks. Alongside those, we’ve also met with the Royal Mail to have a talk about finding a way forward.A couple of weeks ago, we had a great meeting with the Royal Mail. They explained in some detail the background to these datasets: how they’re maintained, where the data comes from and where money changes hands. It’s all a bit complicated!
  • Lee Bryant on leadership – I keep returning to this post by Headshift’s Lee Bryant, on leadership in the networked society. It’s big, meaty and good.My starting point was the myth that leadership is somehow less important in new, networked organisations. Not so. If anything, it is more important than ever, but the focus and practice of leadership is changing; and if we are to engage leaders and involve them in the development of social business structures, then we need to be able to understand and address their challenges and issues using language that resonates with them.He provides some slides from a talk he recently gave on the topic, which give a nice overview – though I really do recommend you read – and re-read – the whole thing:
  • http://blogs.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/digitalengagement/post/2009/12/07/Local-Government-Data.aspx – “The Government will encourage local government to release local public data and make it free for reuse, and establish an open-platform local data exchange. Professor Nigel Shadbolt from the University of Southampton has been asked to head up a panel of experts to oversee the release of local public data and ensure that data are linked effectively across local authorities, the Local Government Association, government departments and agencies.”
  • Countdown to oneplace « Audit Commission blogs | Michael Newbury – If knowledge really is power then we’re truly putting an awful lot of power into the hands of the ordinary citizen. The person who uses and pays for public services. In times of extraordinary pressure on public finances this seems absolutely the right thing to be doing.

Stuff I've seen December 4th through to December 6th

These are my links for December 4th through December 6th:

  • Measuring digital engagement – Digigov – "Recently, I’ve been working with colleagues in COI on this problem and we’ve come up with three common measures that appear to work across all digital engagement or social media tools:

    1. Number of relationships
    2. Number of user-generated content items
    3. Number of referrals/recommendations"

  • Listening to you – "Residents in Longton and Meir are invited to meet their local police commander next week, and a new billboard will leave them in no doubt of where and when to find him. A 20ft by 10ft billboard has been sited on Weston Road in Meir (near The Broadway) inviting people to come and speak to the local commander. " via @Mike_rawlins
  • Charlie Beckett, POLIS Director » Blog Archive » Networked Journalism: Challenges To NGOs and Mainstream Media – What a relief: "In a recent Polis private seminar with a major international NGO and a global news organisation, the head of the news media’s international division said that he now accepted that they had to work together to report the world:

    “We may have, if we are lucky, one stringer in a particular country. You may well have a dozen people there who know it well. It makes sense for us to use your resources to cover a story or issue.”

    All media organisations are now opening themselves up to gathering material from the public – including NGOs. And NGOs are now expecting their humanitarian staff to act more like journalists. "

  • Freedom to Lead | John’s Idea – "In Leicestershire 92 council staff spend their time keeping government up to date on 3,000 performance indicators at a cost of £7 million a year. The need to reduce these costs, and shift the emphasis of performance reporting from central government to local people, sit at the heart of the LGA campaign Freedom to Lead."
  • CivicSurf » “That’s not a blog. Blogs are boring with lots of text” – Hear, hear: "

    What struck me last night, and not for the first time, was that people still have this ingrained view of what a blog is. When I showed the cake site to one lady she blurted out, “That’s not a blog! A blog is boring with lots of text.” WordPress.com still promotes itself to bloggers and offers:

    “Express yourself. Start a blog.”

    It’s a website that is easy to update and optimised for search engines. End of. Let’s not label it with something that puts people off.

Stuff I've seen December 1st through to December 3rd

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.