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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 'directgov'

Directgov returns to the Cabinet Office

22 July 2010 0 , ,

dgloopI couldn't help smiling at the news of Directgov going back to its original home in the Cabinet Office. Funny how things go full-circle: launched from within the Cabinet Office in April 2004, to COI (an 'ideal location') in March 2006, to DWP in April 2008, back to Cabinet Office in July 2010. The Cabinet [...] read on »

Remember to say thank-you

Coalition site duplicatedA bit of a tricky moment this morning. As you might have spotted, Downing Street has launched an initiative asking 'public sector workers' to help the government find ways to implement the massive spending cuts proposed in Tuesday's budget 'in a way that is fair and responsible'. And as has become the norm for such [...] read on »

Directgov unveils syndication API

1 June 2010 3 ,

dgapiIn one of his final speeches ahead of the general election campaign, Gordon Brown announced plans to offer Directgov's content via an API 'by the end of May'. And whilst other announcements in the same speech, such as the Institute of Web Science, have since faded or disappeared, the commitment to a Directgov API didn't. [...] read on »

Directgov starts seeking feedback

30 March 2010 3

To their great credit, Directgov have added a feedback box to the bottom of nearly every page on the site, asking how useful you find the page contents. Responses are anonymous, and there's some nice javascript to aid usability: a jQuery-based character count and validation check prior to submission. The language is maybe a bit [...] read on »

Don't watch that, look at this

18 January 2010 1

Tom Watson (West Bromwich East, Labour) To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the total cost to her Department was of the directgov advertising campaign, Go DirectGov. Jim Knight (Minister of State (the South West), Regional Affairs; South Dorset, Labour) The cost of production and airtime purchased to date combined is [...] read on »

A Lot Of Orange

8 December 2009 1

Doing a bit of research for my presentation in Oslo tomorrow (of which more later), I came across a somewhat surprising figure in Hansard. Directgov cost us £30.7 million in the year 2008-09 - well over double what it cost us the previous year. Of that £30.7 million, £7.48 million went on 'advertising, public relations, [...] read on »

Don't get a feed, get a blog

20 April 2009 9 , ,

I didn't write about Mash The State when I first heard about it, because the ambitions seemed embarrassingly modest: getting each council in the country to offer an RSS feed by Christmas. In 2009? - seriously? And then I note that, of the three e-government super-sites - Directgov, Businesslink, NHS Choices, annual budget approx £30m [...] read on »

Search tools for Directgov: Puffbox vs Microsoft

27 March 2009 16 , ,

So Directgov have 'partnered' with Microsoft to create a little IE8 search plugin, eh? Well, in the interests of wider browser compatibility, Puffbox presents its own search plugin to help the greater number of people using IE7 or Firefox. And we've done it at no charge, too. read on »

Such warmth in the snow

If there's one lesson to draw from the unveiling of Directgov's experimental School Closures site, it's the sheer goodwill of the community towards them. Quick précis for those who missed any of it: at 11.50pm on Sunday night, Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson publicly throws down a gauntlet. With the country facing snowy armageddon, could [...] read on »

£10m/year for government web innovation

I'm not going to say much here about the Power Of Information Taskforce report: the best place to do that is on the site itself. But I will pick up one point which stopped me in my tracks. The report notes that: Successful leading high tech businesses will spend at least 10% of their budget [...] read on »

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