puffbox

An idea whose time has come

Crime mapping is front-page news today (in the Telegraph anyway). Most of the stories follow a predictable pattern: Ministers say it will inform the public, and make the police more accountable, but it’ll lead to house price chaos. Etcetera. But I’m finding myself infuriated by the Telegraph leader column which proclaims: The Conservative Party has appeared a [...] read on »

My show-stopping session at WordCamp

A week since the inaugural WordCamp UK, and I haven’t got round to writing up my session on ‘WordPress in large organisations’ - specifically, government. Then again, with Chris Garrett and Dave Briggs doing it on my behalf, why should I? My key message was that in many large organisations, there’s often open warfare [...] read on »

Crime maps by Christmas

A Home Office press release this morning makes the explicit pledge: ‘Every neighbourhood in England and Wales will have access to the latest local crime information through new interactive crime maps. [...] By the end of the year every police force area will produce crime maps which will allow the public to see where and [...] read on »

More Ministerial blogging

A few more developments over at the Foreign Office to note. Meg Munn, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State is now blogging - making a total of 3 FCO ministers, along with Messrs Miliband and Murphy. They’ve also been bringing in a few other Embassy staff - including the High Commissioners to Nigeria and Malta, both [...] read on »

Mirror and Telegraph redesigns

The new Mirror website is a dramatic improvement. But then again, all previous Mirror websites have been terrible - particularly the last one, launched just 18 months ago. As Martin Stabe notes, the site’s homepage takes an unfamiliar building-blocks approach… which, in this case, I really find myself warming to. It suits the kind of picture-heavy, [...] read on »

Govt comms: better, but years behind

Flicking across the news channels tonight, I bumped into recorded coverage of Wednesday’s Lords Communications Committee. You had the BBC’s Frank Gardner and Sky’s Tim Marshall, plus a couple of other senior journalists, giving their frank opinions on the state of media, politics and government. I only caught the last few minutes; it looks like [...] read on »

Sneak preview of new Number10 site

Fresh from stealing the online show at the recent G8 summit, the 10 Downing Street digital comms team have given the Prime Minister’s new website its first public outing, with a few sneaky screengrabs popping up on their Flickr account. It’s quite a significant departure from the existing site, although if you’ve been following the [...] read on »

WordPress and widgets as DIUS consults

There’s no stopping Steph Gray over at DIUS. Last week it was a ‘commentable’ White Paper, driven by WordPress. Today, they’ve launched a remarkably deep consultation site on Science and Society. In his writeup, Steph is kind enough to quote my own work for the Ministry of Justice’s Governance of Britain as an inspiration. But [...] read on »

Capita to take over NHS Choices

I see today that Capita has been named as the preferred bidder for the £60m+ contract to run the NHS Choices website for the next 3 years - ahead of the incumbent, the Dr Foster Intelligence public-private partnership, as well as IBM, Serco and TATA. According to Capita’s own press release: Capita will be responsible for the [...] read on »

MOD’s news blog duplication

It’s just over a year since the MOD launched ‘Defence News: official news blog’, not to be confused with ‘Defence News‘ on its main corporate site. The main ‘Defence News’ site is a full-on news service, publishing 3 or 4 substantial articles each day. There’s a proper (editorially arranged) ‘front page’, with articles tagged by topic [...] read on »