Tag: linklove

19th October 2010

Stuff I've seen October 11th through to October 19th

These are my links for October 11th through October 19th:

G-Cloud will save us £1.2 billion a year, says government CIO – ComputerworldUK.com – Also on procurement… “SMEs can’t afford to bid. In my opinion, that stifles innovation.
Ordnance Survey Blog » GeoVation gets £150,000 funding boost – The funding will be used to support geography based ventures that have the greatest potential to transform how we travel – so get your thinking caps on!
Council’s red tape cut as 4700 whitehall targets slashed – Local government – Communities and Local Government – instead of the National Indicator Set, and instead of every single department's endless demands that you measure this, that or the other, there's just going to be one list of every bit of data that Government needs."
Pickles scraps more national targets » Communities » 24dash.com – National Indicators used to monitor council performance will be replaced with an agreed single list of Whitehall data requirements for local government. New transparency arrangements, CLG says, will make sure councils remain accountable to local people.
DCMS Transparency Data – This transparency site is a data repository for the Department and its Arms Length Bodies.

11th October 2010

Stuff I've seen October 9th through to October 11th

These are my links for October 9th through October 11th:

Machine written sports reports Projects – Stats Monkey – By analyzing changes in Win Probability and Game Scores, the system can pick out the key plays and players from any baseball game. Second, the system includes a library of narrative arcs that describe the main dynamics of baseball games (as well as many other competitions): Was it a come-from-behind win? Back-and-forth the whole way? Did one team jump out in front at the beginning and then sit on its lead? The system uses a decision tree to select the appropriate narrative arc.
Too much money plays against government 2.0 – government 2.0 is more interesting – and useful – where the are scarce rather than abundant resources.
The Great Transition: what it means for Local Authorities « Nat Wei’s Blog – make cuts intelligently rather than in a knee jerk fashion, safeguarding effective and connective local community projects and other external suppliers rather than avoiding to make savings closer to home or spinning out functions as mutuals or social enterprises – at least until many of them have been able themselves to transition to a more diversified financial position.
Community Media Activist: The Spectre of Community and the Big Society – The Big Society, if there is such a thing, or spirit, or programme, will most likely emerge from the evolution of community, and community development, rather than the ideological urgency of a cutback-driven Little State.
Thriving too: Big Society: Exploring Sustainable Collaborative Service Models – "Collaboration between equals is difficult, between disciplines more so… but between paid professionals and unpaid volunteers very hard indeed. On paper it sounds like ‘just the sort of thing we should be doing’…. But in real life situations, such as the one described, it presents challenges that we don’t know how to overcome…. Yet.
The challenge is not organisational or even financial… but about how we create frameworks that sustain the *relationships* that are required for collaborative services to flourish."

9th October 2010

Stuff I've seen October 5th through to October 9th

These are my links for October 5th through October 9th:

‘Big society’? Let me explain | Ian Birrell | From the Guardian | The Guardian – "At its core, the big society is an attempt to connect the civic institutions that lie between the individual and the state – and these range from the family and neighbourhood to churches, charities, libraries, local schools and hospitals. It is born out of recognition that our centralised state has become too big, too bureaucratic and just too distant to support many of those most in need of help, and that it deters people from playing a more active role in public life."
Why Facebook’s New Groups Will Change the Way You Use Facebook – the new feature offers an improved signal-to-noise ratio, increased context for communication and a big improvement in user privacy, thanks to respect for the contextual integrity of conversations.
HyperLocalGovCampWM 1 – How organisations can use social media for internal communication | the albert memorial is still there – "…if you think about it, a workplace blog is effectively a hyperlocal blog – or depending on the nature and size of the organisation, a series of workplace blogs."
Snowblog – Reflections on Birmingham – "By the way, now that the British Waterways quango is to go, who will sustain the magnificent canal system here?"
YouTube – Harvey Milk Speech – Harvey Milk Speech

5th October 2010

Stuff I've seen October 1st through to October 5th

These are my links for October 1st through October 5th:

An open letter to David Cameron, part one of three « Francesca Elston – I have worked in a large Government department, and I believe the following: firstly, that it would have been possible to take 25% of the costs out without harming the service delivery in the long term (that caveat’s important); secondly, that it might have been possible to improve the service in doing so, and thirdly that there were people within that organisation who knew exactly where the 25% lay.
Government data will be machine readable, Maude pledges | Politics | guardian.co.uk – Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude told the Conservative party conference in Birmingham that the Freedom of Information Act will be amended so that all data released through FoI must be in a reusable and machine readable format.
BBC News – The ‘night riders’ who help the NHS – The volunteer service, which is available in the south-east of England, offers a free out-of-hours service to a number of NHS hospitals and can be asked to carry anything urgently needed from baby milk to blood products and X-ray results.
MaPit – MaPit is our database and web service that maps postcodes and points to current or past administrative area information and polygons for all the United Kingdom.
Another notable benefit is that this new version has been filled with only totally open data, so you can be secure that you can reuse the data from this site under the minimal terms of the licences given below.
BBC – dot.Rory – A 16-year-old who turned up at a hacking event a couple of months ago may just have achieved two great things. If Isabell Long’s idea works, it could make a major contribution to getting Whitehall to cut its energy use.