Puffbox

I guess you might see it as kneejerk; I prefer to see it as responsive. The Civil Serf affair has brought the matter of civil servants blogging to a head, and now is absolutely the right time to work out the ground rules. At lunchtime, Tom Watson publishes a 'for starters' list of bullet points [...] read on »

Full credit to Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson for his extremely measured and well-balanced take on the Civil Serf story. Tom was speaking at Tower 08, a major CO-hosted conference on Transformational Government - and has posted his speech on his long-established (and often highly party-political) blog. For the record, the speech isn't yet showing [...] read on »

OK, I'm an idiot. The lengthy and fair-minded piece I wrote this morning about a speech by Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne at the RSA was a year late. Osborne made some interesting points about the need 'to recast the political settlement for the digital age.' And now today, there's an email doing the rounds [...] read on »

When the Guardian's Michael Cross interviewed Directgov chief executive Jayne Nickalls in August last year, he wrote: In its response to the Power of Information report, the Cabinet Office proposes that Directgov embraces Web 2.0 technology by incorporating a blog in which users exchange their experiences. Now if it's really in the official Cabinet Office [...] 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 »

I haven't yet seen official confirmation, but I'm reliably informed that Tom Watson is the new minister for e-government, post-reshuffle. The Cabinet Office website only says that: 'Following on from Gillian Merron's departure to the Department for International Development, Tom Watson MP has been appointed as new Parliamentary Secretary.' And since she was responsible, it [...] read on »