Archive for April 2009
Irony of rail rover Adonis's ministerial blog
I'd completely missed the fact that transport minister Lord Adonis, on his recent fact-finding trip round the UK rail network, had written a 'blog' of sorts for The Times's website. Helpfully, the Department for Transport has reproduced the articles in full, albeit shoe-horned into the Speeches section. It's well-written, down to earth... everything a blog [...] read on »
WordPress in UK government: an informal audit
I thought it was about time I compiled a list of all the UK (central) government web projects I know of, which use WordPress. Partly because I'm meeting some people during the week to talk about it; partly to start preparation for the session I've volunteered to give at July's WordCamp UK. This is off [...] read on »
Our top story: government web video
It isn't every evening that a video clip from a government website features prominently on the main evening news. Except this week. Last night, it was the Treasury's YouTube clip of Alastair Darling preparing for tomorrow's Budget: nothing too spectacular, nice visual wallpaper for the story. Tonight, the PM's announcement of changes to MPs' expenses [...] read on »
Don't get a feed, get a blog
I didn't write about Mash The State when I first heard about it, because the ambitions seemed embarrassingly modest: getting each council in the country to offer an RSS feed by Christmas. In 2009? - seriously? And then I note that, of the three e-government super-sites - Directgov, Businesslink, NHS Choices, annual budget approx £30m [...] read on »
Time called on top UK blogger
In February, The Times named the blog written by Philip Barclay and Grace Mutandwa, staff at the British Embasy in Zimbabwe, to be one of the UK's best. And rightly so. Some of the stuff they've written has been the most moving I've ever read on a blog. But while Grace is a local, Philip [...] read on »
Matt Mullenweg to attend UK WordCamp
Tickets have just gone on sale for this year's second WordCamp UK. And if the promise of hearing me banging on about WordPress isn't quite enough to tempt you to spend a July weekend in Cardiff, here's some news that might swing it: Matt Mullenweg, basically 'Mr WordPress', is coming too. I'm also proud to [...] read on »
McBride: a scandal for the internet age
So Damian McBride appears to have been taken down by the blogger he was considering trying to emulate. It's being reported that McBride's emails were sent from his official Downing Street email account. If so, that's a naive error to have made: partly because it leaves him open to (valid) accusations of misusing public resources, [...] read on »
WordPress co-founder's e-government work
So many new websites appearing at the moment, you'd think it was the end of the financial year or something. The new DIUS site is very pretty, although I hear it wasn't cheap. There's a new site for the Ministry of Justice, which (if I'm totally honest) feels a bit dated, and clearly has several [...] read on »
Puffbox's new site for digital politics 'guru'
A while back, I did a very quick job for the Liberal Democrats, working with their (now outgoing) Head of Innovations, Mark Pack. So I considered it a real honour when Mark then asked me to help him put together his own personal site: and markpack.org.uk went live this week. It wasn't a straightforward 'web [...] read on »
Ordnance Survey's new approach
Over the last few weeks, I've been working with Ordnance Survey to produce a WordPress version of their new business strategy, published today. As you'll immediately spot, it's another piece of work based on Steph Gray's Commentariat theme, including some of the tweaks I did for BERR's Low Carbon Strategy. As I write this, I've [...] read on »