Puffbox

Simon Dickson's gov-tech blog, active 2005-14. Because permalinks.

2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005

Code For The People company e-government news politics technology Uncategorised

api award barackobama barcampukgovweb bbc bis blogging blogs bonanza borisjohnson branding broaderbenefits buddypress budget cabinetoffice careandsupport chrischant civilservice coi commentariat commons conservatives consultation coveritlive crimemapping dailymail datasharing datastandards davidcameron defra democracy dfid directgov dius downingstreet drupal engagement facebook flickr foi foreignoffice francismaude freedata gds google gordonbrown governanceofbritain govuk guardian guidofawkes health hosting innovation internetexplorer labourparty libdems liveblog lynnefeatherstone maps marthalanefox mashup microsoft MPs mysociety nhs onepolitics opensource ordnancesurvey ournhs parliament petitions politics powerofinformation pressoffice puffbox rationalisation reshuffle rss simonwheatley skunkworks skynews statistics stephenhale stephgray telegraph toldyouso tomloosemore tomwatson transparency transport treasury twitter typepad video walesoffice wordcamp wordcampuk wordpress wordupwhitehall youtube

Privacy Policy

  • , , ,

    Set the Census data free

    One particularly difficult phase of my career was my time with National Statistics, in the aftermath of the 2001 Census. I tried, and ultimately failed, to persuade the organisation to recognise the tremendous asset they held in Census data, and to make wide public access a priority. I’m proud of some of the (relatively modest) things we managed to put out, but overall I’m disappointed at the many opportunities that were missed.

    I remember my frustration at how everything was driven by very narrow ‘stakeholder consultation’, which ultimately resulted in the same old people asking for the same old things. The potential for civic engagement ranked well down the list of organisational priorities; the possibilities for data mashing didn’t even register. Despite the huge sums of money spent on countless consultancies, the end product was – ahem – somewhat underwhelming.

    So when I discover that the 2011 Census outputs are the subject of the latest blog-based consultation, part of the Hansard Society‘s Digital Dialogues programme, of course I’m interested. And I think we all should be.

    Two dates to bear in mind here. It’s nearly a year since the publication of the Mayo-Steinberg Power Of Information report, which called for ‘a strategy in which government … supplies innovators that are re-using government-held information with the information they need, when they need it, in a way that maximises the long-term benefits for all citizens.’ And just as importantly, we’re probably five years away from the first publication of census data.

    This must be the first Census to take a truly web-first, and arguably even an API-first, approach to publication. Several reasons:

    • Because it’s a one-off event, for which we have several years to prepare.
    • Because if you think the world is web-first in 2008, just you wait and see what 2013 looks like.
    • Because outsiders – from Experian to MySociety – will almost certainly do a better job than the Civil Service (sorry).
    • Because it doesn’t actually prevent government doing the ‘old school’ thing itself, if it wants. In fact, if you think ‘API first’, it’ll probably result in the ‘old school’ outputs coming together easier and quicker too. Be your own client.
    • Because to have any validity, the Census requires the goodwill and engagement of every person in the country. It’s one of the rare occasions where every resident puts something into a national kitty. Even if it’s only symbolic, this should be the prime example of the state giving something back to them in return.

    This is one government consultation where the geek community (by which I mean us, sadly) should bring its influence to bear. We all know it’s the right thing to do; but they won’t do it unless there’s a sizeable, quantifiable demand. This would be a huge symbolic victory for openness and democratisation. This is our chance.

  • , , , ,

    'Gov 2.0' in US presidential campaigning

    I’m grateful to Jeff Jarvis for a detailed post on ‘government 2.0’ (although it isn’t a term he used, nor should he have). He points to two recent proposals from the Democrat candidates for the US presidency.

    I hadn’t heard Hillary Clinton’s suggestion, back in January, that government should actually be required to blog:

    I want to have as much information about the way our government operates on the Internet so the people who pay for it, the taxpayers of America, can see that. I want to be sure that, you know, we actually have like agency blogs. I want people in all the government agencies to be communicating with people, you know, because for me, we’re now in an era–which didn’t exist before–where you can have instant access to information, and I want to see my government be more transparent.

    Meanwhile, Barack Obama told an audience at Google:

    I’ll put government data online in universally accessible formats. I’ll let citizens track federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and lobbyist contacts. I’ll let you participate in government forums, ask questions in real time, offer suggestions that will be reviewed before decisions are made, and let you comment on legislation before it is signed. And to ensure that every government agency is meeting 21st century standards, I’ll appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer.

    The concept of universally accessible data formats will/would be music to some people’s ears, of course.

  • ,
    , ,

    First MP on Twitter (?)

    LibDem MP for Hornsey & Wood Green, Lynne Featherstone was one of the first MPs to start blogging, back in October 2003; she now reckons she’s the first MP to start Twittering, having tweeted (?) for the first time this morning. You’ll find her at twitter.com/lfeatherstone.

    Of course, it all depends on your definitions. As Stuart Bruce will testify, Alan Johnson’s (ultimately unsuccessful) campaign for Labour’s deputy leadership used Twitter although never strictly for MP-related business; and someone has posted a few tweets under the account ‘GordonBrown‘ – one or two of which, I have to say, made me laugh out loud.  Plus our own Justin Kerr-Stevens has dragged a few ministerial statements into the Twitterverse by proxy, courtesy of his twitter.com/hmgov RSS mashup.

    Twitter seems to be everywhere suddenly, just at the moment where Facebook (for me at least) has gone deathly quiet. Hitwise analyst Robin Goad presents plenty of data on the supposed slowdown of Facebook’s stellar growth in the UK, but doesn’t attempt to draw a definitive conclusion.

    The points I made in a piece back in January seem just as valid now, and I’m seeing a lot of people making the same switch from Facebook to Twitter. It actually came as a bit of a shock when I spotted just how many friends and contacts were following my Twitter updates, especially when I’d done nothing to promote their existence.

    Organisations would do well to look at how Twitter can slot into their online comms approach. It could be as simple as a sequence of ‘new news release’ alerts to a specific Twitter account. Not strictly in keeping with the medium’s personality, but better than nothing. And anyway, if it’s a well written news release, the first sentence should stand alone as a summary – and should therefore be perfect as a ‘tweet’.

    Insanely late update: just for the record, it looks like Lynne was actually beaten by Tory MP Grant Shapps. Lynne joined on 22 March; Grant joined a fortnight earlier.

  • , , , ,

    No10 man's blog raised at PMQs

    With civil servants’ blogging habits such a hot topic, I can’t avoid mentioning the reference casually dropped into PMQs by David Cameron this afternoon.

    There is a new strategist, a man called David Muir. Yes, I have done a bit of research—he is the chief strategist and on the internet he has listed his favourite book. It is called—[Interruption.] Is his favourite book not the following? It is called “The unstoppable power of leaderless organisations”. If the Prime Minister cannot make a decision, and if he cannot run his office, why does anyone wonder why he cannot run the country?

    How could Cameron possibly have uncovered this? Well, David Muir included the book on a list of ‘books I really like’, in the sidebar of his Typepad blog… hastily password-protected upon the announcement of his appointment, but still visible via Google’s cache.

    The FT’s Westminster blog calls it a ‘nice bit of point scoring’ – and wonders how the book’s message of decentralisation squares with the perception of a Stalinist Prime Minister. How indeed. Meanwhile of course, Clay Shirky – in town to promote his new book, ‘Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations‘ – is being invited round to tea by Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson. There’s a thread here.

  • Next WordPress release looking great

    I downloaded the first ‘Release Candidate’ version of WordPress version 2.5 with a sense of trepidation. New functionality often means added complexity. But I’m happy to report, my fears were unfounded. It looks fantastic.

    The most striking change is the colour scheme: the ‘classic’ dark blue style is now joined by a more chilled, muted option – and, apparently, the ability to implement your own colour schemes too. I can see that being popular with clients: it won’t actually amount to anything, and I doubt I’ll be able to charge for it, but it will make the tool feel ‘theirs’.

    Most of the same options are in more or less the same places, but there’s been a bit of gentle juggling to put all the important things in the most prominent locations. They’ve done a fine job of improving usability without losing familiarity. Plus there are significant improvements to tag management and the media library, which are most welcome.

    The only real disappointment is in page management. I’m surprised they haven’t come up with a ‘drag and drop’ method of handling page hierarchy; we’ve had ‘drag and drop’ sorting of sidebar widgets for a while, and it’s not as if the necessary Javascript isn’t out there. (In fact, whilst I’m no expert, I suspect most of the necessary Javascript is already inside the WordPress package somewhere.) There’s a note on the page authoring screen which says: ‘We know this is a little janky, it’ll be better in future releases.’ – but there’s no indication of whether that means ‘the next release candidate’ or ‘the next full version’.

    I’m not brave enough to move any production sites over to the release candidate just yet; but suffice to say, I’ll be upgrading as soon as I can. The WordPress development blog says it’s ‘basically done and stable, and could be released today’ – so expect it to emerge imminently.

  • ,

    The hunt for Civil Serf continues

    It looks like I wasn’t the only e-gov person to get an email this afternoon from the Daily Mail, asking if I knew who Civil Serf was. No, I don’t. And given the treatment which the Mail handed out to DFID’s Owen Barder, I wouldn’t be inclined to tell them, even if I did. But on the bright side – if they’re asking, they clearly don’t know yet. Probably just as well.

    I’ve worked out what troubled me about the Mail’s reporting of Civil Serf’s suspension. They have reproduced a remarkably detailed account of Serf’s meeting with ‘investigators’; details which, I’d say, reflect badly on the individual concerned. I’d have thought such details were confidential, at least until the completion of any investigation. Breaching confidentiality? I’m not smiling at the irony in that.

  • , ,

    Nine Lords a-blogging

    Very interesting to see the horrendously-branded Lords Of The Blog, a new group blog co-written by nine peers, each promising a couple of items per week. Prime mover Lord (Clive) Soley writes in his introductory post:

    MP’s and Peers need to find new ways of engaging with the public. A blog is not the complete answer to the feeling of alienation from the political system that many feel today but it is part of the answer. In the 1950’ trade unions and the church played a bigger role in informing people about their political rights and duties. That has gone and the conventional media has been unable to replace it.

    The selection of participants is rather curious – mainly LibDems and cross-benchers, if I’m not mistaken – but there are a few recognisable names and faces. And as ever, it’s early days, etc etc.

    The site is hosted on the WordPress.com service – as, coincidentally, is another HMG blog site I’m hoping to launch before the end of the week. If you’re only looking for standard blog functionality, and aren’t too precious about design, it’s hard to argue with the WordPress.com offering: just $10/year to map your own domain instead of ?.wordpress.com, $15/year for the right to use your own CSS styling, if you aren’t impressed by the dozens of available themes.

    It won’t give you absolutely everything you want; but it’ll do most of it, and it’ll take care of all the hassle-y bits too.

  • , , ,

    Civil Serf suspended

    I’m reluctant to write this solely on the basis of a piece in the Mail (on Sunday?), but it seems Civil Serf has been identified and suspended by DWP.

    Investigators hunting for the blogger summoned her to a meeting last week, when it is understood that she denied responsibility. She was told she was being suspended regardless and, when she was ordered to attend a subsequent meeting with the inquiry team, she finally confessed.

    She was caught after the Government dedicated a team of computer experts to track her down across the internet. A source in the DWP said it was an extraordinary outlay of resources as the team was told to clear their desks of everything except their hunt for Civil Serf.

    OK, if we try to strip away the inevitable tabloid hyperbole, which isn’t necessarily straightforward… this is almost the worst possible conclusion. Denying responsibility was a bit daft, and probably only made things worse. It also leaves DWP looking just a bit reactionary.

    What message are they trying to send, I wonder? And what signals does it send about DWP senior management’s appreciation of the way communications are evolving?

    Reminder: DWP takes ownership of the government’s flagship web project in a couple of weeks.

  • ,
    , , , ,

    BBC finally embedding video

    BBC embedded Flash playerSteve Herrman, writing on the BBC’s Editors blog, is absolutely right: the move to video embedded on the page is ‘quite a significant moment’ for the Beeb’s website. Except that, judging by the first visible example, it’s got issues. It’s either failing to buffer, or returning an error message.

    As explained in more detail on the Internet blog, the move to Flash video means faster processing for them, better quality for international users, and better usability for everyone. Clips will all have their own ‘permalink’ pages on the site, which makes for easier linking – but if you’re thinking of embedding clips on your own site, you’ll be disappointed.

    It’s a welcome improvement from the Beeb: the News site’s use of video was starting to look ridiculously dated, when compared to the iPlayer… or indeed, to competitors like Sky, who went down this route almost a year ago. But I think Sky still has the edge in terms of usability. The Beeb’s pages already feel too long to me; I doubt many people ever read to the bottom of a story. By embedding video at the top of the page, as they seem to be doing, it pushes the text content even further down. Sky’s ‘rich sidebar’ treatment gives the best of both worlds.

  • , ,
    , , , ,

    Civil Serf: Simon's video for BBC

    I got an email from the team behind BBC News 24’s Your News show during the week, asking if I’d record a contribution as part of a piece they’re planning about – guess what – Civil Serf. So here it is, as a Puffbox first-play exclusive.

    Nothing you probably don’t know already, but hey – a bit of TV exposure, for the first time in ages. Eagle-eyed viewers may recognise the location for the filming, a deliberate choice obviously. (I say filming: more a case of propping my mobile phone up against the wall of the Foreign Office building.)