Tag: Government

Things I've spotted October 24th from 21:53 to 22:40

Here are some of the things I’ve been reading October 24th from 21:53 to 22:40:

  • FutureGov » Features » ePetitions data standards – get involved! – Andy Gibson is looking for local government to help him create a standard data set for e-petitions.
  • Against Transparency | The New Republic – This, from Lawrence Lessig, is really worth reading: "This is not to say the data will not have an effect. It will. But the effect, I fear, is not one that anybody in the "naked transparency movement," or any other thoughtful citizen, would want."
  • An encouraging week at the conferences – Digigov – David Pullinger of COI reflects on a couple of conferences: "It struck me that there are many talented expert e-communicators across government but hampered by the misperception that Web is IT."
  • Living with rats: Trafigura, climate change and the power of reputation – Julian reminds us that Trafigura is about our willingness to use tools, not the tools themselves: "The real story, I think, is the power of citizens to change an organisation’s reputation. What matters isn’t the tool – Twitter, Facebook or even good old-fashioned newsprint – but people’s willingness to use it. What’s also interesting is people’s readiness, at a time when politicians’ esteem has hit a new nadir, to defend the rights of Parliament against corporate and legal bullying. There was a glimmer here of what Parliament should be: the champion of the citizen and the exposer of abuses."
  • potlatch: the economic sociology of receipts – Will is really interesting on the growing trend to give a receipt with everything: "to normalise receipts in cafes or bars is to strive for the perfect, 'dis-embedded' clean exchange, of the liberal-economic imaginary. It depersonalises the interaction and substitutes data for memory. It declares the exchange over, with nothing more owed by either party. Frankly, this is futile, as exchanges always leak into society."
  • New for 2010: Retooled | Antonio Gould – Antonio's latest job: "The project will work with ex-manufacturing employees from the West Midlands, skilling them up in social media and working together on a challenge which mixes old and new skills."
  • Volkswagen to Rely Solely on IPhone App for GTI Launch | Advertising Age – Neville’s posterous – Volkswagen of America is launching the newest-generation GTI exclusively on an iPhone app, a cost-efficient approach the automaker said is a first for the industry. How cost efficient? When the marketer introduced the GTI in 2006, it spent $60 million on a big-budget blitz with lots of network TV. By comparison, an executive familiar with the matter estimates the annual budget for mobile AOR services is $500,000. And while an iPhone-only strategy may seem limiting, consider this: In September, Apple reported there are more than 50 million iPhone and iPod touch customers worldwide. By comparison, CBS' "NCIS," the most-watched show for week ending Oct. 18, reached 21 million viewers and commands an average price of $130,000 for a single 30-second spot.

Stuff I've seen September 20th through to October 6th

These are my links for September 20th through October 6th:

  • Pits’n’Pots – The Radical Press » Labour leader Barnes impersonates Pits’n’Pots! – "Labour Group Leader Mike Barnes has admitted to impersonating someone from this website to try and find information about a rumoured news story in another Authority."
  • Free music, courtesy of your library « Mabblog – "If (like me in Birmingham), you have an enlightened library service, they will have paid for a subscription to Naxos Music, so, by entering your library card number (you do have a library card, don’t you?) you can listen on-line, for free, to a “CD quality” stream of their recordings of Gilson’s music (or anything else in their vast and ludicrously high-quality catalogue). From home (or anywhere else, for that matter)."
  • Kirklees Community Technology Project « Yorkshire and Humber ICT Champion – ‘Local 2.0’ will work with community organisations, individuals, service providers, ward councillors and others within one neighbourhood and will look at how new web technologies can help people share information more effectively and bring more opportunities to neighbourhoods.
  • Feeding back citizen experience – Digigov – "We not only hinder the citizen in their ease of reporting (thereby potentially adding to their distress or preventing them from complimenting the service), we also lose something much more valuable – the ability to analyse where small changes across public services could result in maximum effect."
  • Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media: A Methodology for Learning from Social Media Pilots: Reflection – Questions to Help Deep Reflection Occur

    1.What worked really well in this project?
    2.Did it accomplish goals or outcomes? In what ways?
    3.Did it fall short? Why?
    4.What would you do differently?
    5.What surprises came up during the project? What unexpected happened? What could you learn or capture from that?
    6.What insights did you get during the project?
    7.What processes did you use that worked well? Which didn’t work so well? Why do you think that was?

Stuff I've seen September 10th through to September 12th

These are my links for September 10th through September 12th:

  • Google’s PageRank Predicts Extinction Paths | Technology & Gadget News – "The complex algorithm that Google’s uses to rank web pages has been hailed by scientists as a way to predict extinction cascades within ecosystems."
  • Mapping revisited & social change theory « CDI Europe – "The largest opportunity – and the largest experiment – would therefore be to test its social change theory in a space that so far no organisation has consistently occupied: mobile Internet and apps based on smartphones."
  • The Ethics of Openness | Rebooting the System – "Today the default in our discussion of government is negative: they are doing bad things badly, and we are the watchdog who’ll catch the bastards in the act.”
  • At “Blogger Roundtable” To Launch Homeland Security “Dialogue”, DHS Policy Head Heyman Asks For “Shareholders” Input As Part Of “Shared Responsibility” To Help Protect The Nation – "there were three major reasons for bringing the public into the “dialogue”: 1) to raise awareness and engage citizens about the “shared responsibility” for homeland security and address a “sense of complacency”; 2) to include the “shareholders” (ie. citizens) in discussions on how their government should be allocating its resources in homeland security; and 3) to solicit good ideas about how to keep the nation “safe and secure” from across the nation “capitalizing on the knowledge of the public”."
  • Treatment of Alan Turing was “appalling” – PM | Number10.gov.uk – "Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later."

Stuff I've seen September 7th through to September 9th

These are my links for September 7th through September 9th: