Puffbox

How many central government websites offer RSS feeds these days? The good news is that of the 20 departments represented in the Cabinet, I could only find one that didn't. But it was a bit of a surprise to see how few offered 'full text' feeds, as opposed to 'summary only'. I visited each of the [...] read on »

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 each [...] read on »

Five years ago - to the very minute, as it happens! - I was working on a proposal to put to someone at the Cabinet Office. I was still working at ONS, and was trying to think of a clever way to handle our job adverts. We were obliged to post details of all vacancies [...] read on »

I've never been one for New Year's resolutions or predictions; I'll leave those to other people. Suffice to say, I'm increasingly of the opinion that web 2.0, as a phase in the web's development, is over. I'm using almost exactly the same tools now that I was this time last year. It's ages since any new [...] read on »

I'm pinching myself. Wednesday, 08:30am: Justin Kerr-Stevens makes a request via OPSI's Public Sector Information Unlocking Service. A couple of dozen people sign up to say 'good idea'. A few people (me included) add some more substantial comments. Fast forward two days to Friday, 12:32pm: COI publishes details of RSS feeds for (virtually) every Cabinet-level [...] read on »

Time for some tech talk. A few weeks back, I wrote about Google's new AJAX Feed API. Having played with it last week on behalf of a client, and having liked what I saw, I decided to implement it myself. If you're reading this on the puffbox.com website itself, you might see a list in the [...] read on »

Gordon Brown's off to Japan for at the weekend, to hang out with the other G8 heads of government. So it's time to crank out another Puffbox production for 10 Downing Street: the now-familiar mash-up of a travel-blog, Twitter stream and Flickr photo set. As with previous trips to the US and Brussels, it's based primarily [...] read on »

It's coming to something when the editorial policy of a single page on a government department's website is the subject of a parliamentary question. Naturally, the Tories' shadow secretary of state for Work & Pensions has a particularly keen interest in new additions to the DWP site's What's New page. The top of said page says [...] read on »

One senses there's not a lot of love between Guido Fawkes and Tom Watson. So it's all the more remarkable that, within a few days, they've effectively reached an identical conclusion on the need for a better approach to public sector job advertising. A week ago, Tom wrote a blog post noting the lack of a [...] read on »

Credit where it's due. By popular demand - and contrary to the implication of Jem Stone's piece, I can't claim to have started it  - the BBC has switched from sending (very short) summaries in the RSS feeds from its various blogs, to sending the full text of the blog postings in question. 'Sorry that [...] read on »