Puffbox

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

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    WordPress runs America too

    A fascinating photo from WordPress chief Matt Mullenweg’s keynote address at last weekend’s WordCamp in San Francisco revealed a list of (US) ‘government agencies using WordPress’:

    US gov agencies using WP

    So that’s all the armed services, NSA, CIA and FBI… which kind of puts the ‘(in)security’ argument in some context. Hey, the Marine Corps love it so much, they’re listed twice! But no reference to 10 Downing Street, that I’ve seen reported anyway. Whassup Matt, no love for the UK? Ah well, it’s good to know that we’re not alone.

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    COI's instant response to RSS request – blimey!

    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 government department.

    I say ‘virtually’ every Cabinet-level department: the exceptions are the Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland Offices. I can’t see an RSS feed on the Scotland Office site; the NIO site’s feed is curious to say the least, showing just one update since Christmas (which clearly isn’t right). But the Wales Office is happily pumping out beautiful RSS. Puffbox and WordPress may have had something to do with that.

    Gripes? The URLs are truly revolting. But that’s the biggest nit I can pick. Justin, COI, OPSI, Mr Watson – thank you all. Did that really just happen?

    Update: I’m told they were on the site somewhere, just not obvious. Even knowing that now, I still can’t find where they were. And if you can’t find them, they might as well not be there. Next steps, please: an entry in the site’s primary navigation, nicer URLs, and auto-discovery tags on each department’s homepage.

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    Met launches London crime maps

    London’s Metropolitan Police has launched the first test of its planned ‘crime mapping’ application, and at first glance, it’s really quite nice. There’s data from borough to ‘sub-ward’ (a few streets), although at the moment it’s only carrying aggregated totals of ‘burglary, robbery and vehicle crime’.

    The ‘high/average/low’ colour coding makes it easy to take in; and navigation is pretty good. The selection of statistical geography is inferred from the zoom level of the map – a method which has its ups and downs. But with a postcode search, it’s easy to go directly to ‘your patch’. (I’m a bit dubious about the accuracy of the boundaries, though.) Throw in some nice little Javascript-y UI touches, and you’ve got an excellent start – with the promise of ‘further enhancements … prior to the formal launch of the service in September.’

    But what’s most striking about this? It’s done on Google Maps. Here’s a extra-high-profile government mapping application, and they’ve made a conscious – and entirely predictable – decision not to build it using the tool provided by the government’s own mapping agency.

    It’s not a million miles away from the vision put forward by the Power of Information taskforce; Tom Loosemore calls it ‘a decent first effort’, but laments the ‘lack of proper profile for your local coppers’.

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    Ofcom's commentable documents

    Ofcom’s Tom Loosemore shows there’s still plenty that can be done with Typepad; an ‘interactive’ version of their Communications Market Review has just gone up on the same account used to host their Public Service Broadcasting review blog. It’s actually the second time they’ve done this; there was a similar trial earlier this year, with the PSB Review itself.

    It works very much along the same lines as CommentOnThis; or the CommentPress theme for WordPress, as used by Steph at DIUS. But it’s one of the more innovative uses of Typepad you’ll see.

    I must admit, I’ve gone off Typepad as a platform: I was finding it too restrictive, too tied to the concept of blogging (where WordPress was open to being used as a lightweight CMS). However, the single biggest thing in its favour remains the ease of setup: £75.90 per year, giving you full design control (unlike, say WordPress.com), generous disk space and bandwidth allocations, a custom domain, and the IT department need never know. News of a next generation platform is intriguing, with the promise of new features in time… but it’ll take a lot to wean me off WordPress now.

    Given Typepad’s restrictions, Tom’s interactive approach is quite an achievement. Each paragraph in the document is its own blog ‘post’, with its own comment stream. It looks as if Tom may have spent a few hours last Friday, painstakingly creating each post in reverse order, to ensure they appeared in numerical order on the site’s (reverse chronological) homepage. Not something you’d want to do regularly… and WordPress ‘pages’ would have made it much easier. But hey, full marks for inventiveness!

    (Thanks to Ross Ferguson.)

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    Final Digital Dialogues report

    The third – and final – report from the Hansard Society‘s Digital Dialogues new media experiments emerged on Tuesday, although I very nearly missed it in all the excitement around Downing Street. The press release offers ‘a few simple rules’ for those wanting to use the internet for engagement and consultation, based on the experience of its 25 case studies:

    • Government departments must be adaptable and willing to take risks
    • Transparency and timely feedback to participants is essential
    • Government departments must be clear about the purpose of the consultation and the ways that participants’ contributions will be used
    • The right people – ministers and senior policy makers – must be involved
    • Evaluation is essential to ensure that departments learn and improve on the basis of experience.

    Clarity, commitment, reciprocity – fairly predictable stuff. But as Andy Williamson notes: ‘I hope it will allay some of the fears and concerns and encourage more government departments to take up the online challenge.’ The report, and its predecessors, give us a portfolio of specific, real-life examples – some successes, some flops – to reflect on. And we need that.

    I’m not at all surprised to see the Food Standards Agency’s blog and FCO Bloggers platform faring best in the reviews. At heart these were both straightforward blogs: personal expression, steady running commentary, nothing too clever. The projects which tried too hard haven’t done nearly so well; nor did projects which attempted to force artificial timeframes or tight restrictions. The report doesn’t shy away from its criticism.

    For me, the most important single message comes in the core guidance:

    Online engagement exercises require time to gather momentum; simply setting up a website in the hope that people will come to it achieves little. Sites might initially spark interest, but this is not sustainable enough to enhance public engagement and political efficacy.

    Point your manager to the executive summary, which concludes:

    • ‘Moderators were not required to manage as large a volume of traffic as many had initially feared.’
    • ‘Distrust was overcome when moderators facilitated open discussion and provided information to website users. […] Some websites failed to gain traction because users did not believe that anyone was listening or responding to their perspectives; in such cases, departments were paralysed by a sense of risk and failed to harness the range of engagement opportunities at their disposal – responding only on topics deemed safe.’
    • ‘Websites that were disconnected from their policy or ministerial brief, or constrained by a long chain of command, engendered less user satisfaction (both among participants and the government officials running the exercise).’
    • ‘Where government departments were too fixed in their approach, they failed to capitalise on their investment; those with a reflexive and experimental approach were able to adapt to meet the challenges posed by online engagement.’

    If that’s the last time we hear of Digital Dialogues: farewell, and thanks.

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    New Number10 site goes live

    Today sees the long-awaited launch of the new Number10 website, based on WordPress and built by New Media Maze with occasional interventions by yours truly. The reaction so far has been positive, although as the team have admitted to Twitter contacts, there are numerous rough edges still to be smoothed out. (Some more serious than others: as I write this, the site’s gone down.)

    Although I’ve been contributing to this project for several months, today’s public activation is the first time I’ve actually seen it ‘for real’ – and I’m struck by just how stripped-back it really is. The homepage really does feel like a blog; and it’s a pleasant surprise to see quite how much prominence has been given to the Twitter, Flickr and YouTube activity. The image / video unit at the top of the homepage really is huge, and represents a brave move: keeping it fresh will be quite a challenge, but good on them for trying nonetheless.

    The exciting aspect for me is the sheer potential opened up by the move to WordPress. There has been a lot of hard (and frankly unglamorous) work done by the guys from New Media Maze to migrate everything to the new platform. But now that’s done, we can all start thinking about extra functionality and presentation ideas, and add them into the site with relative ease.

    The ‘beta’ label in the header isn’t just an industry in-joke, or an attempt to excuse any temporary difficulties: it’s a statement of future intent.

    PS: If anyone’s interested in the background to today’s launch, you can look back through the Puffbox.com archives. And please note the URL of that link, for another cool WordPress trick. 🙂

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    New No10 site in the Mail

    Thursday’s Daily Mail picks up on the imminent launch of the new Downing Street website, and chooses to focus on the ‘Number10TV’ video element, to be powered by Brightcove. But for once, it’s a story driven more by its scepticism about new technology than its dislike of the current government.

    They wrongly call it ‘the latest effort to boost his flagging poll ratings’ (as it’s a Civil Service initiative), but correct themselves later in the same piece, referring to it as ‘a fresh political effort to exploit the potential of the internet to reach voters directly’. And indeed, they do quote No10’s attempt to put some perspective on it: ‘Downing Street last night played down the significance of the new channel, saying: ‘We’re always looking at ways of improving and strengthening the website.”

    But it’s the sniffy tone regarding everything from Webcameron to the @DowningStreet Twitter account which is most striking. A lot has happened on Webcameron since the initial clip of Dave doing the dishes, although it’s gone a bit quiet lately; and I’d have to disagree with the assertion (relatively speaking, anyway) that the Twitter activity ‘has so far failed to arouse great enthusiasm’.

    Despite their Damascene conversion to the web, driven principally by celebrity drivel, it seems the Mail’s heart really isn’t in this modern stuff after all. (There’s a remarkably similar story in the FT, by the way, but with slightly less cynicism.)

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    Le Twitter is front-page news

    French left-of-centre newspaper Libération dedicated Monday’s entire front page to ‘le Twitter’, declaring it to be ‘politicians’ latest weapon’. With only 6,000 users in France, compared to two million on Facebook, it’s still a relatively new phenomenon – and the lead story gives a decent grounding for those who haven’t come across it. Obama gets a mention, but sadly our own @DowningStreet doesn’t.

    In classic French thèse-antithèse-synthèse style, they balance up their excitable lead piece with a sceptical view from an academic, then pull it all together in an editorial comment. Dominique Wolton is the sceptic, comparing Twitter to pirate radio and community TV – which were heralded as a new critique of politics and lifestyles, but soon disappeared. He makes some very fair points in his piece; and it’s about time I dusted off my French degree, so here goes.

    Politicians imagine these new tools will help them escape from journalistic tyranny, and create direct links with the public – hence the explosive growth of blogs and forums. The catch is, this type of activity is timeconsuming but doesn’t replace traditional media or face-to-face contact, let alone real action.

    There is an illusion of transparency. Knowing what a politician is up to at all times isn’t the same as political action. Politicians need silence, and time. They can’t constantly maintain an interactive relationship. Rather than improving democracy, too much interactivity could accentuate «l’agitation politico-médiatico-démocratique» (ed: how French is that!!). Politics is complex and slow. We mustn’t give in to technological ideology.

    Political communication is a complicated, three-sided game: politicians, media and public opinion. We need to beware an imbalance, which will ultimately benefit no-one.

    In less than 5 years, the current infatuation with new, interactive modes of communication will calm down. Politicians will make more selective use of the internet. They will realise that their credibility doesn’t depend on their use of these technologies, but on their ability to act, and their conviction.

    The reference to ‘less than five years‘ is significant, as that’ll coincide with the next set of French presidential elections. Elsewhere, we have the US voting this autumn, and the UK in 2010 (at the latest); my suspicion is that in the short term, even with no tangible results, the sheer kudos of being active in these new channels will still count for something. Or perhaps more accurately, it’ll reflect badly on any candidate or party which is seen not to be hip to it all.

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    Departmental blog platforms

    When you think of ‘official’ blogging platforms inside government, the obvious example is the Foreign Office blogs site – headed of course by David Miliband, but featuring some truly remarkable contributions from various global ‘hotspots’ (Beijing, Kosovo, Zimbabwe). But it’s not the only one out there, and it’ll soon be joined by others.

    One which rarely gets a mention is the Royal Navy’s Jack Speak – which, before you ask, is the Navy jargon term for Navy jargon – launched nearly a year ago, and based on WordPress. 🙂 Like the FCO’s site, it features personal contributions from an eclectic selection of ‘ordinary staff’. The content doesn’t flow as naturally as the FCO site, but then again, maybe that’s too much to expect with such subject matter. And perhaps as a result, despite prominent promotion on the Navy’s front page, it doesn’t seem to attract much in the way of comments: just three in the whole of July, for example.

    There’s been an equally quiet launch for the NHS Expert Blogs pilot. So far, there are half a dozen active blogs, based around themes rather than individual bloggers: diabetes, asthma, arthritis, and so on. The site feels very impersonal, which seems at odds with the often extremely personal accounts you might read; there’s next to no detail on who the people actually are. As you might expect, given the NHS Choices tie-up with Microsoft, it’s running on Community Server.

    Meanwhile, Puffbox is working on a similar blogging platform for another central government department (which I won’t name just yet). It’ll be a similar proposition: personal stories from half a dozen front-line staff in interesting situations, to give a flavour of the organisation’s work. The schedule is pretty aggressive, measured in weeks rather than months; but I’m quite excited at the chance to see what we can do.

    As you might expect, it’ll be WordPress-based; but the plan is to use the ‘single user’ version rather than MU. I don’t think we need the full power of MU, there’s always the question of plugin compatibility, HQ understandably want to keep their hands on the controls – and besides, we can do a lot with the WordPress Template Hierarchy to make it feel like each writer has a separate blog.

    At the same time, I’m seeing one of my longer-term projects evolving into what looks like a proper ‘project blog’ platform. Several teams have seen the existing WordPress-powered site, and want to be able to contribute to it. Whether they’ll come across as ‘blogs’ per se, I don’t know. But it’ll certainly be a step closer to what I imagine will be the end game here: ‘project blogs’, where teams write in their official capacities, and seek feedback from their stakeholders. More details to follow.

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    Would you want a gov-wide social network?

    OK, so it’s hardly a shock for a survey from a UK-based ‘web 2.0’ company to conclude that UK public sector workers think ‘Government should buy local, go social’. But I don’t want to dismiss this piece of research from Huddle.net completely… particularly since hard numbers, no matter how dubious, always look good in a business case.

    Huddle‘s survey of 202 local authority officials found a (very slim) majority to be ‘disappointed with lack of innovation in IT services’, and (just under) a third thinking ‘Government’s IT problems could be solved by buying from local, UK-based companies rather than multi-national conglomerates’. If anything, I’m surprised those numbers – particularly the latter one – are so low.

    But I’m interested to see 31% would like to set up a social network for their own organisation, whilst 38% would support a government-wide social network. Again, to be fair – they would say that, wouldn’t they.

    (And equally inevitably, I’m going to say ‘WordPress’: the planned BuddyPress theme/plugin collection looks fabulous, particularly these recent screenshots on the lead guy’s blog. However, the consensus from WordCamp the other week seemed to be that BuddyPress isn’t quite production-ready yet. See: I can be dispassionate about WordPress.)

    I’ve got an account on Huddle, but I’ve never used it properly myself. It looks like a nice tool, not dissimilar to Basecamp but with a slightly more corporate, less startup kinda feel – and that’s probably not a bad thing. Apparently it’s been used by DCMS and John Lewis, but they aren’t on their website’s list of case studies, which remains a bit short on household names.