Puffbox.com

Adventures in government, politics and open source. Mostly WordPress-related.

Simon Dickson, principal consultant at Puffbox, has been blogging about e-government, online politics, and WordPress since 2005. Some important people read it.

Archive for August 2011

New man in charge at Number 10

One of the most prominent WordPress installs in the UK is under new management: Nick Jones, formerly Director of Interactive Services at the (now doomed) COI, has been appointed Head of Digital for the (now merged) Downing Street / Cabinet Office operation. He replaces former Tory staffer Rishi Saha, who quit government for a PR [...] read on »

Bespoke builds and broader benefits

multistoreyIn which Simon makes the case for the 'government machine' (in the diagram above), for government departments to publish fairly basic written information about their work, to be built on something which already exists, instead of being built 'from the ground up'. If you haven't already, do read Neil's piece... then Stephen Hale's piece about [...] read on »

WordPress in proper English

22 August 2011 3

If you've ever felt just a little, well, awkward with WordPress's use of American (so-called) English - color, 'uncategorized' and so on - I've got frightfully good news for you. A brief exchange of tweets this morning between myself, Dave Coveney and Automattic's Peter Westwood led to the creation of a proper localisation project, to [...] read on »

LibDems’ tech policy paper backs open source, mobile-friendly websites and sarcastic tweets

19 August 2011 0 , ,

One area where the LibDems were conspicuously - and perhaps surprisingly - lacking at the last election was technology policy. In fact, it hadn't (formally) updated its thinking on the subject since 2003. But a working group was set up soon after the election, chaired by newly elected Cambridge MP Julian Huppert. A consultation paper [...] read on »

Cabinet Office finally confirms Alphagov transition to beta

If you've been following the whole Alphagov thing - and if you're reading this, we can probably assume you have - then today's Cabinet Office 'announcement' that the Single Government Domain project has now 'progressed to the next stage' won't have come as any kind of surprise. I make it seven weeks since the team [...] read on »

Dept of Health switches to WordPress

8 August 2011 0 , , ,

dhonwpCongratulations to Stephen Hale and the team at DH for finally making the leap, and moving their corporate web presence over to WordPress. Stephen hinted at such a move back in February, when he blogged about their successful use of WP for a number of subsites: 'having dipped a toe in,' he wrote, 'it’s tempting [...] read on »

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