Puffbox

I’m not getting too excited about the Cabinet Office using Youtube to disseminate video content. There’s plenty of video material sloshing around Whitehall, and you can’t really argue with free streaming.

The Department for Work and Pensions has opened (what I think is) the third ‘blog’ in Whitehall circles, this time on the less-than-gripping subject of pensions reform. Launched on 20 July, it’s their latest attempt to engage the country on the subject, and good on them for trying. But I almost think they’re trying too hard, losing some of the rough charm of the typical blog as a result.

The site is (currently) running on WordPress v2.0.3 with all the standard features, including RSS feeds right down to individual post level. A good choice, and not just because it’s free. They’ve done a nice job producing a custom theme to integrate the blog into DWP’s design.

But the content feels very ‘staged’, much more than (say) David Miliband’s musings. The weekly Talking Point articles don’t sit too well alongside the more ephemeral postings; and techniques such as subheadings in longer posts imply the involvement of serious writers. I guess you could level the same criticism at Education’s ‘FindOutMore‘, but then again, we don’t explicitly call it a ‘blog’ as such. (Unless it’s advantageous to do so. 😉 )

The approach to comments seems very heavy-handed, too. Most of the comments reproduced on the site are serious, considered and on-topic. In other words, not what you generally get on a blog. The policy hints at meticulous moderation:

We aim to publish a representative cross-section of comments… The Department reserves the right not to publish comments and to edit comments on grounds of space or style.

All in all, it’s hard to know what they’re trying to achieve. Some of the content looks like it has the general public in mind; some is just too geeky. They’re making valiant efforts to reply to comments, implying a desire for debate, but it’s always a bit clunky. (Hardly their fault though; few blogs handle the back-and-forth exchange of comments too well.)

I can see merit in a blog aimed at professionals; it would be a forum for serious discussion, and a chance to build buy-in for the government reform process (which will inevitably get ugly… so generating some goodwill is a very sound move!). But will this engage me as a citizen? I doubt it.

A subject like pensions needs to address me at the ultra-personal level. It needs to be about estimates and calculators, telling me exactly how much I’m going to be living on when I’m 65 (or whatever), or how much I need to be putting away now to fund the lifestyle I think I deserve later on. Ideally, without me having to fill in a tax return-style questionnaire.

And I hate to say it… but if you can’t encapsulate all that in a simple one-screen web form which I can fill in within a minute, from memory alone, then the system itself is too complicated.

Sorry it’s been a bit quiet for a few days… I was taking a few much-needed days off. In these days of mobile and online communication, it’s more or less impossible to log in without being pulled work-wards – so I didn’t even switch the PC on. It’s the only way. Anyway…

Defra – or specifically, David Miliband – is at it again. Not satisfied with having the Cabinet’s first blog, albeit not by choice!, they’ve now become the first department (certainly that I’m aware of) to launch an open, public wiki around the drafting of an ‘environmental contract’.

Less than three weeks into his job as environment secretary, Miliband wrote a piece for the BBC News website, jointly with new transport secretary Douglas Alexander, saying:

In the 19th and 20th Centuries, progressives forged a new social contract between citizens and the state. Progressive values, new developments in social science, and popular concern came together to deliver social justice. In the 21st century, we must find the same combination if we are to address environmental security. An environmental contract needs to set out the rights and responsibilities of government, businesses, and individuals.

In what can only be described as a brave move, Miliband’s department has opened a wiki based on the Jotspot online service, which charges a smidge under $200 per month for its top package (or $995 for the year, if they qualify as ‘non profit’). For the uninitiated, a wiki – yes, as in Wikipedia – is a website which can be edited by the readership. Usually the would-be editor is made to register, for all sorts of reasons of accountability. Perhaps most intriguingly of all, the Defra website imposes no such restriction. Anybody can edit it, without even leaving their name.

It’s a stroke of genius; a perfect way to live out your values. ‘I can’t stop you polluting it (the planet or the website), but if we all work together, we can maintain something beautiful here. It’s in everyone’s interests.’ So far, a week into the experiment, it seems to be working – although to be fair, it’s been very much ‘under the radar’. Until now. 😉

This can’t be true, can it? The president of Iran has launched a pretty unremarkable blog. Well, unremarkable unless you happen to have an Israeli-registered IP address. In which case – and I stress, apparently – you get a little gift, in the form of a security attack. I’m not inclined to investigate this further, as I don’t typically volunteer for virus assaults, but the sources (O’Reilly, Scoble) seem reliable enough.

(Humble update: er… should have trusted my spider-sense. Of course it was a hoax.)

I was lucky enough to spend some time this afternoon with the ‘Valiant Official’ who looks after Cabinet minister David Miliband’s blog. It was an informal, off-the-record chat over a coffee, and I won’t be divulging any juicy secrets here. But I was struck by the extent to which Miliband himself is driving the project.

I’ve seen evidence that he is writing the blog himself, even when technology conspires against him; and I understand it was his own express wish to take the blog with him to Defra from ODPM.

So why is he doing it? OK, let’s face it, it clearly doesn’t do his public image any harm. But I’m told he’s a very strong public performer, and very keen on engaging with the people. As such, I guess the dialogue inherent in a blog (with comments enabled) is natural territory.

Inevitably, it exists in something of a grey area – between official and personal, Civil Service and party politics, definitive policy and nascent opinion. But perhaps this is actually a good thing, giving him a space free from the historic and procedural baggage of other, more traditional platforms.

I’m more persuaded than ever that blogs represent a very powerful publishing model. But today’s chat was a useful reality check. The channel is nothing without having someone willing and able to talk to (and with) us.

So yes, I’d like to see more blogging in government… but as a symptom of a more communicative and proactively accountable public sector. That’s the real culture change we need.

Data from analysts Hitwise shows that traffic to the MI5 and Home Office websites rocketed last week, when the official national security alert level went from ‘severe’ to ‘critical’. You’d think something like this would merit special, strong treatment on the sites’ homepages, to help you get where you wanted to go. But don’t expect more than an unobtrusive text link… which, in the case of MI5, even comes ‘below the fold’.

They should have used this. 🙂

The IPPR has published some quite shockingly frank research into what government ministers and senior civil servants really think about the public sector. Anonymous quotes from ministers paint a picture of a civil service lacking in expertise, with no accountability – and no culture of either reward or penalty. One quote which sounds all too familiar to me is:

The single biggest challenge in Whitehall is getting things done! It is great in emergencies but on the day-to-day stuff is it amazing what tactics you have to resort to, to get things done, especially if you want to take on conventional thinking. There is an inherent and institutional resistance to serious change.

These are the people supposedly at the top… and if they feel powerless to make change happen, what hope is there for the rest of us?