Archive for September 2011
Word Up Whitehall II: another 24 hour sellout
Just as with last year's inaugural event, all the available places at Word Up Whitehall II were snapped up within 24 hours. We'll have representatives from a dozen government departments (depending on how you count the various No10/Cabinet Office connections): and once again, my thanks to everyone for obeying the informal 'maximum three per department' [...] read on »
Word Up Whitehall II: bookings now [SOLD OUT]
Last week, I announced plans to host a second Word Up Whitehall event, for civil servants and their most friendly external developers to spend a day talking about WordPress. The event will take place on Monday 7 November, and will be hosted by the good folks at the Department of Health. Last year, all the [...] read on »
Announcing Word Up Whitehall II
This time last year, we organised an event called Word Up Whitehall: a day-long seminar for people working in UK central government, who were either already using WordPress or seriously considering doing so. An opportunity to take time out, listen to people's experiences, share some ideas, and hopefully come away inspired - or certainly, better [...] read on »
UKTI’s TechCityUK site: 100 WordPress pages, £53k
TechCityUK.com is a website produced by UK Trade & Investment to promote the 'entrepreneurial cluster' of technology startups in the Shoreditch / Old Street area of east London. Judging by its blog, it launched on 19 July this year. Google currently reckons it has 89 pages. And according to an FOI response published this morning, [...] read on »
Cabinet Office approves only 3 new domains since election
In an answer (ahem) to a PQ from Tom Watson today, Francis Maude announces that only three requests for new .gov.uk domains have been granted since the new government took office in May 2010. These were: alpha.gov.uk (which you might have heard of) childrenscommissioner.gov.uk (replacing thechildrenscommissioner.org.uk) education.gov.uk (replacing dcsf.gov.uk, reflecting the Department's change of name) [...] read on »
Mike Bracken on GDS structure and the power of precedents
Computer Weekly have posted an interview with Mike Bracken: a fairly chatty (and somewhat predictable) getting-to-know-you piece, but with a few interesting snippets. He reflects on the problems with the e-petitions relaunch: For example, with e-petitions, no-one could predict just how fast that demand would go up. Consequently we learnt a lot about scaling and [...] read on »
How we could all benefit from Betagov’s accessibility work
Accessibility is the subject of the latest post on the Government Digital Service blog: having had their fingers burned in the 'alphagov' phase of work, by consciously ignoring the subject, it's clear they want to be seen to make it a priority into the beta phase. Léonie Watson writes: Tom Loosemore has said: “… we [...] read on »
BBC’s study of Whitehall open source use yields little
By their own admission, it doesn't unveil any shocking secrets: but I suppose it's worth noting the BBC's attempt to investigate Whitehall's use of open source software, or lack thereof. In truth, it really only highlights that the picture is rather chaotic, with little centralised control. I can also guarantee it's less than comprehensive. But [...] read on »
Bang goes our 100% record
It's with some regret that we note the end of Puffbox's winning streak, as regards web work for political candidates. Thus far, every client who has stood for election to a political office of some kind has been successful. But our run came to an end on Friday night, with the announcement that Mike Tuffrey [...] read on »