Archive for November 2010
Now Matt Tee resigns too
Mark Flanagan, Jayne Nickalls, John Suffolk, Alex Butler, Andrew Stott... now Matt Tee. The Cabinet Office has announced that the Permanent Secretary Government Communications is to 'undertake a review of the Central Office of Information (COI) and the coordination of cross-department marketing and communications' - and then head for the exit himself. The review will [...] read on »
You say you want a revolution…
When the Lane Fox review proposed 'a new central team in Cabinet Office in absolute control of the overall user experience across all digital channels, commissioning all government online information from other departments', we may all have misread it. There's a must-read comment on Steph Gray's post reviewing the review by Tom Loosemore, who played [...] read on »
Lane Fox report published; does Cabinet Office share her revolutionary zeal?
Martha Lane Fox's review of Directgov has been published this morning - as an 11 page, 5.7MB graphic-based PDF file, making it impossible to search or select text. (Thanks to various colleagues on Twitter for confirming it wasn't just me.) Its key recommendations, pretty much as anticipated: Make Directgov the government front end for all [...] read on »
Lane Fox plans for government web revealed
A document published on a gov.uk site appears to have lifted the lid on Martha Lane Fox's plans for UK government web publishing. Published as an unrestricted PDF, it is a review of the website of the organisation in question. But given the ongoing Lane Fox review, its author provides a helpfully concise summary of what may lie ahead. read on »
Directgov board ‘dissolved’ prior to CEO’s exit
In the world of the government webby, it really doesn't come a lot juicier than this. Jayne Nickalls's resignation as chief executive of Directgov was confirmed via Twitter on Saturday: [blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/jnickalls/status/5971161754107904"] This was followed by a report in the Sunday Express (which I'd have missed, were it not for a helpful tipoff): THE boss [...] read on »
Directgov CEO Jayne Nickalls quits (now confirmed)
No formal confirmation as yet, but we have reports from two very well-placed sources that Directgov CEO Jayne Nickalls has 'resigned' from her £95,000-a-year position. [blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/markflanagan2/status/5657033491611649"] [blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/JimmyTLeach/status/5672929454981120"] It's just over a month since Martha Lane Fox submitted her review of Directgov, and her proposals for its future. And only two days ago, there [...] read on »
Mark Flanagan leaves No10
[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/markflanagan2/status/5177151099768832"] News of another high-profile (if you're into this sort of thing) Whitehall departure: this time it's Mark Flanagan, who joined Downing Street in 2008 as head of digital, but subsequently became head of strategic comms. Mark's Labour connections were no secret, so perhaps the biggest surprise is that he lasted so long. He's [...] read on »
To tweet or not to tweet?
A bit of a first today: meeting with a new client, I found myself - for the first time - insisting that they get a Twitter account. I think they were rather taken aback by the suggestion: so was I, to be honest. But I think it's important to recognise that Twitter has reached a [...] read on »
Situations vacated
I'm aware that other news stories have rather dominated the agenda this morning; so you may have missed the news that: government CIO John Suffolk has resigned, although so far he has neglected to mention it on either his blog or Twitter account, neither of which has been updated since 30 July (when he declared [...] read on »
Cabinet Office web ‘takeover’
Leaving aside the inevitable tabloid hyperbole, the Mirror is reporting this morning that: Scores of civil servants could be axed under plans to hand David Cameron's "vanity staff" control of all Government websites. The PM wants to create a single unit to take charge of web operations handled by 117 staff in separate departments. Whitehall's [...] read on »