Puffbox

It's now two years since DCSF published their Children's Plan - I know - and Ed Balls wants to know what impact it has had on you. They've published a progress report, and launched a commentable website... based on, guess what, WordPress. Not the first time they've gone down the open source route: a year [...] read on »

BBC News website editor Steve Herrmann is not happy. In previous years, the Beeb site has carried full school league table data, as soon as the embargo is lifted at 09:30am. But not this year. 'This is because the government has tightened up on the media's pre-release access to official statistics,' he explains. 'In the past, [...] read on »

Hooray for another high-profile UK government website based on an open source content management system: the new National Strategies website from DCSF, built on Drupal. It's big, bright, bold, and once you've registered - a remarkably painless process for a government site, without any apparent checks on your membership of the target audience - it offers [...] read on »

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 »