Archive for November 2010
What are you suggesting, Sir Bonar?
There have been some intriguing tweets from the well-connected, albeit fictional, UK data sharing czar, Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom in the last day or so.
[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/sirbonar/status/1689062737977344"]
[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/sirbonar/status/1712500290617345"]
[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/sirbonar/status/1713718299721728"]
There it is again: the notion of greater rationalisation around Directgov. Hmm..?
In other news: Guido Fawkes is getting his teeth into the number of former Conservative Party (and indeed, Lib Dem) staff now finding themselves with Civil Service jobs. One stand-out name on the list is Rishi Saha, whose appointment was (finally) covered by the Mail a few days ago. Newsnight's Michael Crick quotes his job title as 'deputy director of communications in the Cabinet Office (and effectively head of digital communications, in charge of the websites run by the Cabinet Office and Number 10)' - but he isn't named in the Cabinet Office's recent orgchart.
Downing St’s new transparency site
When is a new website not a new website? When it's a subdomain, of course. Presumably that's the justification for Downing Street launching a new transparency website, acting as a centralised depository for departments' Business Plans (don't call them 'structural reform plans', no matter what the URL says), org charts and meetings / hospitality data. In the last hour or so, it has taken its place in the Number10 site's primary navigation, replacing 'Communicate'.
There's a rather complex arrangement behind the scenes, by the look of it, with the more basic pages showing signs of being hand-coded in PHP, and the jQuery-rich Business Plans area being content-managed by a different application. It's all running on Amazon hosting, so I'm guessing it might be bespoke PHP with Business Plan data sitting underneath in Amazon's SimpleDB? But I'd be delighted if someone could enlighten me further. It certainly isn't WordPress.
[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/mizansyed/status/1620114021556224"]
One disappointing aspect, though, is the use of Disqus for commenting. I continue to have serious reservations about government using a function which absolutely requires javascript - not just to submit a comment, but to read them too; and hosts its data at an overseas third party. As Neil Williams noted previously, it's dead easy to lash it into any web page: but personally, I'd only ever want to use it as a last resort. I'm not sure Downing Street should be setting this kind of example.
[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/pubstrat/status/1622105846194176"]
Paul Waugh takes his audience with him to PoliticsHome
Evening Standard deputy political editor Paul Waugh starts his new job this morning, as editor of (increasingly paywalled) website PoliticsHome.com. Mildly interesting in itself, as evidence of the still-growing influence of online in the political space, although far from the first time a 'proper' journalist has gone over to the blogs' side.
What's quite interesting is the mechanics of the move itself. His final post on the Standard's (Typepad-powered) blog gave full details of his new job, and where you'd be able to follow him - including direct links to his new home page. I find it very hard to imagine any other media outlet being so relaxed about a star reporter or columnist 'taking his readers / audience with him'.
Equally intriguing is the fact that his (personal) Twitter account has just kept going as it always did.
[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/593819410112512"]
Despite the on-page linking and the background wallpaper - Standard last week, PolHome this morning - Waugh 'owns' this particular channel of communication... and its almost 10,000 followers. He isn't dependent on his employer's infrastructure, or brand, to talk to his audience.
Former BBC man James Cridland, now a 'radio futurologist' (?), wrote an excellent piece about this issue 18 months ago, in the context of radio presenters moving jobs. His rather draconian-sounding conclusion was this - although it's worth noting the dissent, some from known names in the industry, in the ensuing comments:
Give your presenters official Twitter feeds for your station, and make it clear that they can only promote these. XFM is doing the right thing here, since it has a set of them – @daveberry_xfm is Dave Berry, for example – but this is clearly part of the station’s output. Ensure that -you- retain the password, and ensure that you actively monitor what they say (just like you monitor what they say on-air.) That way, when you part company with that presenter, you can communicate this fact to their followers your way – and, crucially, you stay in control.
[Over the next couple of days, James also offered opinions on promoting personal websites (in short: no) and email addresses (likewise), stirring similar levels of controversy.]
So whether he realises it or not, Paul is offering an interesting case study in what constitutes 'brand' in the world of third-party online services. When communications infrastructure was difficult, employers could keep control. When we're all just a few seconds away from creating our own Twitter / Facebook accounts, the employer is left with little more than guidelines. And perhaps a rather weak argument about using company resources for personal purposes.
I really enjoy Paul's stuff: and I'd happily be subscribing to his new blog right now... except that somehow, the website - running on a bespoke platform which happily 'ingests' other people's RSS feeds - can't offer an RSS feed of its own, although one is promised 'soon'. (FYI: it's two months since prominent blogger Waugh's move was announced.)
Oh, and by the way, PoliticsHome - disabling the ability to right-click on your pages... really?
Useful WP plugin for embedding tweets
The announcement of a new function in WordPress.com led me to discover the existence of the Twitter Blackbird Pie plugin, which does this:
[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/wordpressdotcom/status/600049276948480"]
I'm finding a growing number of my blog posts being sparked by tweets, and this should be a cute method for embedding them, rather than simply linking out. Let's see how it goes.
Aussie govt’s shared WP platform
Courtesy of a retweet via @DirDigEng, I see the Australians have launched a shared WordPress platform for use by government agencies. The installation, known as Govspace, was apparently opened in May this year, and currently claims to be supporting 30 'spaces' (ie blogs) - some of which, I think, have been imported from other installations.
At first glance, it seems to be a pretty straightforward v3.0 multisite build, running on Apache - so I'm not sure I'd agree with the suggestion that it's its 'own version' of WordPress. But there's some nice customisation in terms of themes: agencies are offered a selection of government-branded custom themes, although many appear to have brought their own; and there are some quite nice-looking (but sadly unreleased) in-house plugins - plus a set of pre-installed third-party plugins (not all of which I'd agree with, FYI). Full details on the Features page.
(They've helpfully included a screengrab of an options page: here, and in a few other front-end areas, you can see a continued reliance on pre-v3 workarounds, where new features such as custom menus, post types and taxonomies would probably help. And I'm not sure I'd have left sign-up so open, but there you go.)
As some of you will be all too aware (!), I've been lobbying for precisely this kind of setup in the UK for more than three years - see this post from 2008 as an example. Perhaps three years ago might have been too early; but now, with multisite built into 'normal' WordPress v3.0, and with the drive to cut costs, surely it's an idea whose time has come.
I'm still hearing rumours of greater centralisation for government web activity, probably within an expanded Cabinet Office operation: that would be the natural home for any such initiative. And as I've written here before, a well-structured, well-managed multisite install could offer a perfect blend of control and flexibility.
Of course I'd be keen to discuss it.
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