Puffbox

… the Australian Government has published a 30-page consultation paper (PDF) on whether it should have a consultation blog (singular). Words fail me sometimes.

In their defence, it sounds like they’re trying to spec up a full-scale system for online consultation, way beyond a mere ‘blog’. They’re talking about having an official invitation to participate, in easily-embeddable video form, from the relevant Minister. Response mechanisms could include an online survey, or a full-on discussion forum (with registration not mandatory). They have given some thought to using ‘social’ tools to highlight certain active consultations, but nothing of note yet.

So once you dig beneath the surface, there’s more to it than the rather ignorant title suggests. But I’m still a bit bemused that they haven’t at least launched a basic blog as part of the exercise. There is a web page about it, but don’t expect anything more than a mailto link.

There have been rumours flying around that David Miliband may be about to restart his blogging activity… in fact, I may even have generated one or two of them myself. Well, after a little detective work, I can exclusively confirm them. The Foreign Office is poised to launch a surprisingly ambitious blogging initiative, featuring not just one but as many as six blogs – from the very top to the very bottom of the organisation.

The intention, Miliband explains on the new site’s ‘about’ page, is to ‘show more of the enormous range of interesting, and challenging, work we do and why we do it.’ Miliband himself is joined by Jim Murphy, his Minister for Europe who ‘wants to hear your views on how the EU is doing, and to encourage discussion through this blog’. So whilst you’re not likely to get your referendum on the European treaty / constitution, you will at least have one outlet for your support / anger. Good luck to whoever’s moderating that one.

Then there’s Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles KCMG LVO, currently Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Afghanistan; and Lindsay Appleby, a First Secretary (ie relatively senior) in the Brussels office. Reporting from the front line, there’s Maria Pia Gazzella, from the Embassy in Chile. But most remarkable of all is Sarah Russell, who doesn’t even work for the FCO yet – she’s a Fast Streamer due to join in October 2007, so presumably we’ll be following her progress as she learns the ropes.

As I understand it, the system is running on the very same Community Server machine as Miliband’s former Defra blog – which explains (a) why the Defra blog disappeared a couple of weeks back, and (b) why the presentation templates look very familiar indeed. I’m glad to see my own blog has kept its place in the (fairly brief) blogroll in DM’s sidebar, along with a few other usual egov suspects, and a selection of political blogs (not just red ones, either). But as I write this, there’s at least one notable omission.

I haven’t heard anything about a launch date, and there’s nothing immediately obvious on the site to give any hints. It all looks ready to go, though, barring the first round of postings.

But I need to say one thing. Although I’ve got good contacts ‘on the inside’ who probably knew about this, nobody ‘broke the embargo’. Miliband told the world it was coming; I just did a bit of digging, and happened to dig in the right place. The site is wide open for all to see; and if it was meant to be kept ‘secret’, it would/should have been password-protected. Even so, I’m not going to link to it directly – but I can’t stop you doing as I did, and guessing what the address might be.

While you’re waiting for the official announcement, have a peek at the FCO’s Flickr account which has just sparked into life again.

I got some bad news yesterday. Last week, I took an urgent call from a colleague working in central government; a new (but quite large) public sector organisation (which I won’t name) was in desperate need of a new CMS-driven website, but its long-term solution was still months away. Was there anything I could suggest? And could they have it by the end of September? Red rag to a bull… 🙂

Within a couple of days, we had put together a proposal to build the whole thing in WordPress MU (multi user). In many respects it’s the logical extension of much of my recent work and thinking. ‘Press releases’ is just a blog. ‘FOI disclosure log’ is just a blog. Want to keep stakeholders informed of activity on your project, or in your department? That’ll be a blog, plus a few static ‘pages’ forming a pseudo-primary nav. And so it goes on. Plus of course, all the inherent goodness of a blogging system – built-in search,sidebar widgets, subject tagging, RSS, comments if you’re feeling brave. The price? Only just into five figures.

It was genius. Design, development and deployment measured in (literally) days, rather than months. And if you’re prepared to apply the ‘near enough is good enough’ rule, everyone gets what they’re most eager for.

It got rejected, ostensibly because it was too ‘out there’. I’m reminded of President Kennedy’s inspiring words about the 1960s space programme:

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.

How many organisations do you know which are happy with the big, ugly content management system they spent hundreds of thousands (or indeed, millions) on? Not many, I’ll bet. Yet we keep doing and re-doing it. Meanwhile, millions of bloggers prove how much you can do with an open-source tool, a few community-derived plugins, and a genuine desire to communicate.

So I’m afraid, despite Jeremy’s upbeat comments about Thursday’s government heads of e-communication meeting, I’m feeling a bit depressed this morning. To be in with a chance of meeting the deadline, I had to start before getting the go-ahead – so that’s a few days’ hard work largely wasted. I know I’m going to look at whatever they end up with, and know it could have been so much more. I’m worried that it’s easier to sell a £100,000 product than it is to sell an identical – or indeed, a better – £10,000 product. I fear we might be in an Emperor’s New Clothes scenario.

If anyone out there is feeling brave, please get in touch while the idea’s still fresh.

I’ve no idea how long it’s been in operation… but I’m delighted to see that the OPSI website allows you to ‘subscribe to searches’ via RSS. Sadly the results aren’t especially helpful – generally we’re talking a procedural title and a brutal description, and it’s individual pages rather than assembled publications. But hey, it’s a start.