puffbox

Mash! Mash! Mash!

The latest move from Tom Watson’s Power Of Information Taskforce, effectively a big BBC Backstage-style government mashup competition, is a master stroke. The Power of Information Taskforce want to hear your ideas on how to reuse, represent, mashup or combine the information the government holds to make it useful. … We will take the best ideas [...] read on »

The power of postcodes

LibDem MP Lynne Featherstone has an idea. She tells Liberal Conspiracy the one IT project she’d like to see from government would be (if I can paraphrase) an email-bouncing facility, where you’d send an email (for example) to yourpostcode@police.gov.uk (sic), and it would automatically get forwarded to the relevant coppers. She rightly notes that sites [...] read on »

Power Taskforce’s ideas on crime maps

The Home Office is confirming that it’ll press ahead with online crime mapping, as recommended by today’s Casey Report on Engaging Communities in Fighting Crime. Even better, the Power Of Information taskforce - specifically Will Perrin and Tom Loosemore, in apparent association with designers Schulze and Webb - have posted a few concepts showing not only [...] read on »

Power of Information taskforce blog

It’s a relief that the Power of Information taskforce, announced by Tom Watson a couple of months back, has launched a blog. Although apparently running since April, it’s only had a handful of postings… and its about page still lacks some basic information, like who exactly is in it. The initial posts include many references [...] read on »

Govt report backs ‘free’ data

I wasn’t especially nice about the interim progress report on Power of Information Review, in that I didn’t see much specific progress being reported. So it came as a bit of a shock to discover, courtesy of the Open Rights Group, that there’s actually something really significant in it. The interim report announced that: HM Treasury and [...] read on »

Minister wants more social media

Tom Watson publishes (what looks like) a speech announcing the formation of a Power Of Information Taskforce, to be chaired by former LibDem MP Richard Allan (now senior manager of UK&I government affairs at Cisco), taking forward the Power Of Information report by Ed Mayo and Tom Steinberg. An interim Progress Report on Power was published [...] read on »