Archive for February 2011
Downing Street behind open source push
Computer Weekly's public sector IT blog reports from Monday's 'Open Source Integrator Forum', described bluntly as: a dressing down in which the big 12 systems integrators, who supply 80 per cent of all government IT, were told firmly that they were preventing the government from carrying out its policy and had better change their ways. [...] read on »
WordPress v3.1: another step forward
It's taken quite a while to get WordPress version 3.1 out the door; and at first glance, you'd be forgiven for wondering quite why. You'll run the upgrade process, then struggle to find what exactly has changed. In fact, there are a few significant - or more accurately, potentially significant - enhancements in this release; [...] read on »
Another Cabinet Office WP consultation
Has somebody at the Cabinet Office just discovered WordPress, or something? I see they've also just launched a WP-based site to consult on the proposed Public Data Corporation. This time, the site is running in the most vanilla, out-of-the-box configuration imaginable - using the TwentyTen theme, and without even tinkering with the sidebar widgets (albeit [...] read on »
Can Cabinet Office’s WordPress-based commentable bills make a difference?
The Protection of Freedoms Bill, published last week, has become the first piece of proposed legislation to go through a 'public reading stage', as promised in the Coalition Agreement. The No10 website says it's 'the first step towards meeting the Coalition’s commitment to introduce a public reading stage for all Bills, allowing the Government to [...] read on »
White House contributing back to open source projects
Just over a year ago, I noted how the French government had contributed code back to the open source community, enhancing the Thunderbird email client for military purposes. I failed to not(ic)e that a few months later, the White House had done likewise - contributing a number of new modules for Drupal, based on development [...] read on »
Tories’ new packaged website service
I see the Conservatives have followed in the footsteps of both Labour and the LibDems, in offering a 'website in a box' service to local constituencies. Known as Bluetree - not to be confused with website developers bluetree.co.uk* - it's based on Drupal (plus multi-site management add-on Aegir) and was developed by the UK's self-proclaimed [...] read on »
DECC launches staff blogs on WordPress
Congratulations to the Department of Energy and Climate Change on the launch of their new staff blogs platform; and particular congratulations for choosing the right software to power them. Like other Whitehall blogging initiatives such as those at DFID and FCO (both of whom already have their own group blogs on climate change - here [...] read on »
The £585 favicon: explanation and justification
The Guardian's Charles Arthur followed up yesterday's story about the Information Commissioner's Office paying £585 for a favicon, and has managed to secure something of an explanation of how it reached such a price. Though the creation process is quite simple, confirming that it has been done correctly is not: what's been generated has to [...] read on »
Er… how much for a favicon?
Chins collectively hit the floor this afternoon, as word got round that the Information Commissioner's Office had paid £585 for the creation of a single 32x32 'favicon' graphic. Oh, and to be fair to them, adding a line to their pages' HTML header referencing it. Mark Bowen used WhatDoTheyKnow to follow up a reference he'd [...] read on »
WordPress at Dept of Health
Just a brief post to highlight Stephen Hale's write-up about WordPress usage at the Department of Health, answering the question I posed in a tweet last week: Just how many WordPress based sites is @hmshale running over at @dhgovuk? ... to which the answer is, one or two more than I had spotted. It's all [...] read on »