Puffbox

Consultation is something government puts huge amounts of effort into, without (often? ever?) getting it right. The latest major attempt, to encourage discussion around the Draft Legislative Programme, takes you to a five-question web form with questions so vague and high-level, couched in parliamentary language, that I wouldn't know where to start. Will we improve [...] read on »

Thanks to Jeremy for pointing out Harry Metcalfe's new 'Tell Them What You Think', the latest mass screen-scraping exercise from the MySociety stable: this time, it's government departments' consultation exercises. I actually met Harry last week, but didn't realise the project was actually 'out there'. It bears all the classic MySociety hallmarks - which Harry [...] read on »

Just to note that e-gov minister (?) Tom Watson, responding to comments on his 'tell me what to do' blog post, says he has 'already got moving on the single spot for consultations'. It's a start, but it's far from the solution. Indeed, not so long ago, we did have a single (Cabinet Office?) website [...] read on »

Puffbox's latest project was unleashed today; working alongside Jeremy Gould at the Ministry of Justice, we've built a WordPress-based website in support of the Whitehall-wide programme of UK constitutional reform, going under the banner Governance of Britain. As regular readers will know, I've started specialising in blog-powered websites which aren't actually blogs. And this one [...] read on »

Today sees the launch of version 2 of the website I designed and built for Lord Darzi's national review of the NHS. V1 was built in double-quick time during the summer, and for reasons of cost and speed, used the Typepad blogging platform. Over the last month or so, Typepad's limitations have become more and [...] read on »