Puffbox

If there's one commitment in the Conservatives' Technology Manifesto, billed as 'the most ambitious technology agenda ever proposed by a British political party', which makes my heart leap with joy, it's this: We will also create a small IT development team in government – a 'government skunkworks' – that can develop low cost IT applications in-house [...] read on »

Hot on the heels of the BNP apparently (?) taking design cues from Obama, here's the new homepage for the Conservatives' website... and the Manchester City FC homepage, with which - you'd have to say - there is a remarkable similarity. For the avoidance of any confusion: one is returning to prominence after a long period [...] read on »

There's always a risk attached to using automated text-generating services. For example, this 'captcha' I was presented with by the Conservatives' Blue Blog website: Not one to raise on the first trip to Camp David, perhaps. read on »

I'm glad my former Microsoft colleague John McGarvey reminded me of Conservative shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt's proposal of a £1m prize to develop 'the best new technology platform that helps people come together to solve the problems that matter to them'. That's what happens when you announce things over the Christmas holidays. The plan is [...] read on »

You might have seen coverage in the last few days of the Government's forthcoming ICT strategy - 'New world, new challenges, new opportunities' - which leaked out last week, and is due to be published next week to coincide with the Pre Budget Report. The first I saw of it was at UKAuthority.com, with follow-up [...] read on »

A bit pushed for time just now, but I wanted to jot down a few thoughts regarding the launch of the Conservatives' new community platform, MyConservatives.com. I hope they make sense. It's built on an open-source platform - specifically Drupal. Almost certainly the right choice: after all, Drupal describes itself as 'community plumbing'. For those who [...] read on »

Tom Steinberg's blog splutters back to life after more than two years asleep, to confirm reports that he will be advising the Conservatives on IT policy. 'I've been asked to advise the Tories on IT policy,' he writes, 'and I've accepted.' He's clearly sensitive to the issues this raises as regards his 'day job' as director [...] read on »

David Cameron has taken the Conservatives' promises on availability of public data a few steps further, in principle at least, in a speech at Imperial College on taking 'broken politics' into the 'post-bureaucratic age'. 'In Britain today, there are over 100,000 public bodies producing a huge amount of information,' he said; 'Most of this information is [...] read on »

ConservativeHome blogger Tim Montgomerie posted a damning article over the weekend, condemning 'waste, over-spending and poor revenue strategies' at Conservative central office. One particular remark jumps out: 'The Tory leadership did not fix the party's finances during the good economic times and are now facing very difficult decisions as a consequence.' Sound familiar? Tim's piece provides [...] read on »

There are quite a few reasons to warm to the new Conservatives.com site. A refreshing colour palette; well-executed content tabs; a good solid navbar along the top; and most importantly, lots of human faces. The source code drops all the right names: Flash, Amazon web services, JQuery, Lightbox, and so on. But the apparent obsession [...] read on »