2009 – Page 12

10 Mar 2009

e-government, technology

Explaining No10's startling Twitter success

Downing Street’s remarkable Twitter popularity reaches new heights today, with the number of followers passing the 200,000 mark. But as some of you may know, an explanation has finally emerged courtesy of Matt Wardman – which should hopefully calm some of the general excitement I’m seeing around Whitehall.

At some point in January, so it turns out, Twitter began suggesting possible friends to new registrants… and Downing Street was one of the lucky few who made the cut. It’s my understanding that they were chosen ‘on merit’, as an example of a famous name making interesting use of the service; they didn’t ask for this prestigious position, and I don’t even think they were notified about it.

Pic from mattwardman.com

So suddenly, unexpectedly, their follower count began surging upwards. But of course, with so many ‘industry people’ already being Twitter users, none of us spotted this new matchmaking stage in the sign-up process. So perhaps it’s not the new dawn of popular political engagement that it might have seemed.

Now, I still see it as an unquestionably good thing. It doesn’t really matter how people found out about the account. And it doesn’t really matter if it’s a ‘tick this box’ or ‘untick this box’ scenario. (Speaking of which, I genuinely don’t know which it is… can someone enlighten me?) People are still opting into – or at least, not opting out of – a government ‘mailing list’. Even if they’re not really listening, they’re certainly hearing… and that’s more than a good start.

I don’t even think it matters if a large proportion are outside the UK (although again, I don’t know if the list of suggestions is geo-targeted). The messages may not be directly relevant to a foreign audience, but they certainly present the UK government as forward-thinking in the online space. The FCO would call that ‘public diplomacy’.

What Matt’s revelation does show is that @downingstreet is a fortunate exception. It demonstrates an interest, certainly, but a passive interest, rather than anything proactive. Other government initiatives simply will not receive Twitter’s special blessing as No10 did; and hence, will not receive anything like the same level of interest. Sorry to disappoint, guys.

That isn’t to do down the role that Twitter can play in (much as I hate the term) stakeholder engagement. You’ll just have to work at it, like any other Twitterer, to build your sphere of influence. There may only be a couple of hundred people interested in tweets on a given project; but if it’s the right couple of hundred people, the number doesn’t matter. Think quality, not quantity.

But it does suggest one possible use for the @downingstreet account: introducing people to other HMG activity on Twitter – and elsewhere online. It would be very interesting to see how much traffic a tweeted link could generate, for example. Time for a bit of bit.ly, gang?
9 Mar 2009

company, e-government

berr, commentariat, dfid, puffbox, stephgray, wordpress

A couple of Commentariat launches

A key element of the (re)statement of UK government open source policy the other week was the need to ’embed an open source culture of sharing, re–use and collaborative development’. That may have seemed like a waste of ink/bandwidth to those outside government; but I can assure you, I’ve sat in too many wheel reinvention seminars in my life already.

So Puffbox is glad to do its bit to get the wheels turning, by building and launching a couple of commentable documents using Steph Gray HM Government’s Commentariat WordPress theme, as seen on the (draft) Power Of Information Taskforce report. One is for DFID, on the elimination of world poverty; the other for Neil Williams at BERR, on the Low Carbon Economy. Wow, weighty subjects or what? – WordPress saving the world?!

Both are instantly recognisable as variations on Steph’s basic theme, give or take a bit of branding. This was a deliberate choice: I felt it was important for the sites’ origins to be immediately evident, as they needed to send a clear message about re-use, and the benefits in terms of speed and cost.

The DFID site was just another WordPress installation in an existing environment – the same one we’re using for DFID Bloggers, as it happens; the total cost to them will be one day of my time, covering WP setup and tweaks to the theme. And when you look at the functionality they’re getting for just a few hundred quid, it’s a pretty good deal.

The BERR project was slightly trickier. It was a new WPMU environment, always a little trickier to set up; and because the document wasn’t as long as other Commentariat instances have been, I had to re-engineer the theme to work off pages rather than categorised posts. I finished my bit in the final hours before dashing off on a week’s holiday; seeing the finished product on my return, I’m really impressed by how well it’s come together. Massive credit to Neil and the BERR team; the use of pictures really makes a dramatic difference.
25 Feb 2009

e-government, technology

opensource, ukgovoss

Gov.UK tips scales in open source's favour

The line which jumps out at me from today’s new government ‘Action Plan’ on open source software is quite a neat encapsulation of the entire document:

Where there is no significant overall cost difference between open and non-open source products, open source will be selected on the basis of its additional inherent flexibility.

Fundamentally, the policy on Open Source hasn’t changed much, if at all. Instead of just considering Open Source, civil servants now have to ‘actively and fairly’ consider it. I’m not sure what practical difference that tweak will make: but the subtext is pretty clear.

Likewise, I don’t imagine the ‘tiebreaker’ clause will be invoked very often, not explicitly. But what’s important is that it doesn’t say there’s potential to be more flexible, it says – rightly – that the flexibility is inherent.

The Action Plan reads like a document which wanted to say more, but didn’t feel able to. It sets out to reassure the bureaucrats that Open Source isn’t a risk, is already widely used, and can be taken seriously. It talks up the notion of ‘open source culture’, and warns against procedural barriers. It goes as far as it can towards saying ‘please use it more!’ – but in the world of procurement politics, and billion-pound budgets, perhaps you can’t realistically expect it to go any further. Opposition politicians aren’t under such restraint, of course.

Will this make a difference to me, as someone who ultimately makes most of his living from selling open source to government? Not really. In fact, I feel as if Puffbox has been putting a lot of these principles into practice for some time. We didn’t need to be told to; we just felt it was right to do so.

I’ve always felt perfectly comfortable making the case for open source on its own merits, and had plenty of success too, without having to wave around a Cabinet Office document – the 2004 policy has literally never come up in conversation. And whilst it might be useful to have a list of officially approved products (action point #4), I don’t expect departments to accept documentation in OpenOffice format (#8) any time soon.
24 Feb 2009

politics, technology

douglascarswell, hansardsociety, lynnefeatherstone, MPs, tomharris

Creative Commons: 3 MPs on blogging

A shock conclusion emerges from the Hansard Society’s latest research into MPs’ use of new-fangled technology: they are normal people. Well, ‘kind of normal-ish’, Labour’s Tom Harris clarifies. We’re here at Microsoft’s relatively new London offices to hear from three MPs, one from each of the main parties, on what they put in, and what they get out of blogging.

As things kick off, I’m feeling mildly subversive. Partly because I’m using a Linux laptop on Microsoft’s patch. But mainly because I’m the only person in a room of 50, here to talk about technological matters, with a laptop in front of them.

Tory MP Douglas Carswell is first up: he’s in a rush off. He makes, on the face of it, some provocative statements. Technology is ‘having a transformative effect on the disadvantaged’, he says, citing a specific example of local parents of special needs kids, who got information from similar support groups around the country, and used it to take him and the local authority to task. Westminster will need to adopt open source politics, he says, or new entrants will take market share; and it will ultimately lead, he suggests, to more grown-up politics. And with that, he makes the dash up Victoria Street to obey a three line whip. To be fair though, he did blog it up before I did.

Next it’s LibDem MP Lynne Featherstone: a blogger since 2003, but – she insists – she’s so not a geek. For her, it’s a way to prove she isn’t ‘lazy’ like ‘all the rest’; she extols the blog’s value in local campaigning. ‘I pay no mind to the dangers of blogging,’ she says – although, she admits, she does have someone check her stuff for anything ‘politically suicidal’.

Finally, at the top table anyway, it’s Tom Harris – who, he reminds us (to my own surprise), has been blogging less than a year. Straight away, he confronts the ‘received wisdom’ that he lost his ministerial job because of his blog: he genuinely doesn’t know if that’s true, and he hopes it isn’t a signal that ministers shouldn’t blog (or at least, shouldn’t be worth reading). He rejects suggestions that he’s some kind of maverick – in fact, he says, he takes ‘the party line’ very seriously, and assures us you won’t find much in his archives that deviates from it.

He started blogging as an outlet for the opinions which didn’t otherwise get a platform; and as a conscious effort to balance out the right-leaning dominance of the ‘blogscape’. As a former journalist, he finds the writing very easy: but interestingly, he reveals that he spends more time moderating comments than writing posts. (Andy Williamson tells us the majority of MPs’ ‘blogs’ don’t accept comments, incidentally. Hmm.)

Several times, particularly in the concluding Q&A, Tom speaks in favour of a liberal, almost anarchic position. It’s probably inevitable, he says, that every candidate at a forthcoming election will have a blog; it’ll be impossible for the parties to control centrally – ‘and that’s great’. He has a bit of a dig at ‘an unnamed individual’ displaying control-freak tendencies – but doesn’t name him. Whoever could he have meant?

I’m struck by Tom’s and Lynne’s differing routes into blogging. Lynne isn’t being too self-deprecating when she talks down her technical skills; but she’s astute enough to see the value in it all, and is surrounding herself with people whose skills complement hers. It makes her such an interesting appointment to head up the LibDems’ online efforts: she’s a campaigner at heart, and she’ll ensure that the party doesn’t get carried away with tech for tech’s sake.

Tom meanwhile comes across as ‘one of us’. Over a glass of wine afterwards, he expands a bit on the control freakery, naming a couple of names which I won’t repeat here. He isn’t too bothered how many of his blog’s readers are local constituents. Even if his blog cost him his ministerial job, I don’t hear any regret in his voice when he talks about it. He’s blogging for exactly the same reasons I do.

I leave feeling we’re in quite a happy position just now. Those MPs who are blogging (properly) are doing it because they want to, and/or because they want to get something constructive from it. We haven’t yet reached the point where all candidates need to be seen to do it – as, say, with tedious printed constituency newsletters. But there were signs tonight that it’s starting to happen… and that, fundamentally, is a bad thing.
24 Feb 2009

technology

geodata, google, javascript, twitter

Putting Google geo-location to the Twitter test

Google’s javascript API has an exciting, and somewhat underreported little feature built in: each time a call is initiated, it attempts to establish where the browser is physically located – and reports back a town, ‘region’ (county) and country. I was wondering if it was accurate enough to be used to ‘personalise’ a website automatically: so I ran a quick experiment among my Twitter following.

I set up a quick test page on puffbox.com, which included a call to the Google API, and asked people to leave a comment as to whether or not the response was accurate. Within an hour I’d had 30 responses, from all around the UK.

The results revealed that the function is sometimes bang-on, sometimes blocked, sometimes curious, and sometimes plain wrong… occasionally by hundreds of miles. I can forgive the occasional placing of towns in the wrong county; but several people in the north of England, using the same ISP also located up north, were getting responses of ‘London’. So my conclusion, disappointingly, is that it’s not really good enough to make meaningful use of.

A wasted effort? Hardly. It actually saves me the effort of building something reliant on the geo function, only to discover it’s useless for large numbers of people. And it’s a nice case study for the value of Twitter: a crowd of good folk and true, located all over the country, from whom I could ask a 5-second favour… with a good expectation of getting responses. Thanks, team.
23 Feb 2009

company, e-government

delicious, downingstreet, notwordpress, puffbox, realhelpnow

Real Help Now: a national picture

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working with the Downing Street team to put together Real Help Now – a fairly modest website, for now anyway, to introduce and demonstrate the practical help available to families and businesses during the recession.

Fundamentally, in this initial build, it’s a news aggregation site – pulling together material not just from national sources, but regional and local too. The aim is to complement the citizen- and business-facing stuff, at Directgov and BusinessLink respectively, by showing what’s actually happening on the ground, well away from Whitehall and the City.

What CMS are we using? Brace yourself – for once, it’s not WordPress. Not yet.

The news content is being managed through a Delicious account. When we spot a new item of interest, we tag it with the relevant region; then, when you click a region on the map, we call the relevant RSS feed in (via Google’s excellent feed API). The feeds give us everything we need; the Delicious tagging tools are excellent; and, of course, it also means Delicious users can interact directly with the account, if they so desire. The ‘latest video’ box works off RSS feeds too: we’re aggregating YouTube feeds from several government accounts, plus relevant material from Downing Street’s Number10TV (which uses Brightcove).

I could bang on about the intricacy of the HTML layering, or the gorgeous JQuery fades on the video box; but you may as well have a look for yourselves. My only disappointment comes from the animation effects I had to ditch late on, when I couldn’t make them work satisfactorily in IE6. (The majority getting a lesser service due to the minority’s refusal to make a free upgrade? – discuss.)

We aren’t making any great claims for this site: it is what it is, a pretty front end, courtesy of regular collaborator Jonathan Harris, pointing to other people’s material, plus a (first person) message from the Prime Minister. But if it can establish itself, there’s naturally plenty of scope to extend and expand into something more communicative and interactive.
21 Feb 2009

e-government

barackobama, downingstreet, twitter

@downingst hits 100k Twitter fans

Entirely predictably, the Downing Street Twitter channel broke new ground at some time on Friday night, registering its 100,000th follower. To put this extraordinary growth in some perspective: one month ago, they had just 12,000. And just one week ago, they had 50,000. In relative terms, for now at least, they’re now comfortably settled into Twitterholic’s top 30 – ahead of MC Hammer, ahead of Philip Schofield, far ahead of Chris Moyles, and far, far ahead of Russell Brand (sorry Guido).

There seem to be two streams of criticism of Twitter, in terms of ‘serious’ usage: one, there’s no evidence of any tangible benefit (see Thomas Gensemer in the Guardian this week); and two, there’s no evidence of a Twitter business model. (Yet and yet, of course.)

Personally, I take a more positive view. Very few MPs have serious numbers of followers – there are only two political offices in the world with any kind of substantial Twitter following: Barack Obama and 10 Downing Street. The former didn’t do too badly out of it, did he? – although if you look back at the Obama tweeting, it’s frankly a bit rubbish. My guess is, it helped further his image as being hip to this sort of thing, and that was enough. Number10, meanwhile, do a surprising amount at a micro level – you might be surprised how many replies they send to ordinary punters, to their surprise and (often) delight.

And you know what? Even if there’s no future business model, we’re looking at a phenomenal opportunity here, today. The fact it may not be here tomorrow shouldn’t stop us exploiting it while it’s there. 100,000 people have signed up – actively, voluntarily – to hear from the heart of UK government. Now they’re actually listening, what should we be saying to them?
20 Feb 2009

technology

api, twitter

Barely a third of Tweeting is via the website

Some fascinating data published on Techcrunch reveals the usage patterns behind Twitter. Less than a third of updates (I think that’s what they’re measuring?), just 32% are posted via the web interface. The two leading Adobe Air-based clients, Tweetdeck and Twhirl, account for 23% between them; Twitterfeed‘s automated RSS postings put it fourth, ahead of (wow!) a paid-for iPhone app, Tweetie. And although Twitter doesn’t seem an entirely natural fit with most Blackberry users, Twitterberry is at no6.

I see all sorts of implications in this ranking: the fact that a clear majority of use of ‘a website’ isn’t via the web, showing what good things can happen when you offer an API; an endorsement of Adobe Air’s cross-platform approach, coupled (potentially) with Air’s relative friendliness to the less technical, more creative developer; and the fact that people really are prepared to pay actual cash for something like Tweetie, when there are perfectly decent alternatives (like Twitterfon or Twitterrific) in the iPhone app store. (And for the record: two of the top five are UK-based – Tweetdeck and Twitterfeed.)
19 Feb 2009

Uncategorised

briancox, communicators, TED

I want to be Brian Cox

Watching Professor Brian Cox on BBC2’s Horizon the other night, two things struck me. One was the fact that physics appears to have come quite a long way since I did my GCSE (and got an A in it, for the record). The other was a reminder that being a good communicator is actually a skill in itself.

I’ve been given a guided tour of the CERN nuclear laboratory, on the French/Swiss border: I’ve actually seen all the kit, up close. But its sheer significance didn’t hit me until I saw this video of Brian Cox, professor at the University of Manchester and CERN researcher, speaking at the TED Conference last year. If you haven’t watched it, make a cuppa and enjoy the next 15 minutes.

How can that possibly be? How can it be more affecting to watch a YouTube video of some floppy-haired bloke giving a lecture, than to actually walk the corridors where the history of the universe is being rewritten (present tense)? It’s the most tangible evidence I can think of, that communicating well about what you’re doing is just as important as what you’re doing… with lessons for all of us in this business.

Sometimes I wonder if he’s just a bit too good-looking for his own good: the ‘indie kid’ clothes, the model hair, the dazzling teeth. But there’s no getting away from his sheer talent – and his passion for the subject. You listen to him, and you come away caring about something you know is w-a-y beyond your comprehension. The Horizon programme – ‘Can We Make A Star On Earth?’, about nuclear fusion – is available on iPlayer until mid-April, and it’s well worth an hour of your time.
17 Feb 2009

e-government

cabinetoffice, engagement, matttee, tomwatson

Govt seeks £120k/yr Director of Digital Engagement
Who said there were no ‘senior strategic web roles’ in government? The Cabinet Office has just issued a job advert, looking for someone to ‘develop a strategy and implementation plan for extending digital engagement across Government’, and ‘act as head of profession for civil servants working on digital engagement’. It’s a Senior Civil Service Pay Band 2 position – ie very senior indeed, ‘accountable to the Permanent Secretary – Government Communications (Matt Tee) and to the Minister for the Cabinet Office (Tom Watson)’. Oh, and the money’s not bad either: starting salary of £120,000, plus 30 days holiday.

On paper at least, the resources available aren’t great: the job spec promises only a ‘small team’ and a ‘small budget’. But regular readers will know I’m actually quite happy to see that – and the spec justifies it beautifully, saying one of the role’s key purposes is ‘to assist Government in making effective use of current digital spend, which runs into many millions, and to enable departments to save significant sums on their engagement activities through switching from expensive face to face and postal methods to cheaper digital techniques.’ Perfect.

On the flipside, the demands are sky-high. ‘This is not a role for a generalist,’ it warns – a statement clearly intended to scare off the bog-standard civil servant seeking promotion. ‘The professional skills required are formidable… Within a year the Director of Digital engagement should be able to point to two departments whose use of digital engagement are recognised in the digital community as being world class. Within two years the use of world class digital engagement techniques should be embedded in the normal work of Government.’

The applicants’ information pack spells out some specific qualities they’re after:
Essential
- Is a highly credible individual in digital communications
- Has run a public facing web site of significant size, for example for a broadscaster or newspaper; or has been a leading figure in getting a large organisation to engage through digital channels.
- Has innovated in web, beyond ‘web publishing’ and can demonstrate concrete personal examples of changing how organisations carry out their core functions using digital channels
- Understands the technology and software that enable excellent web development, and has experience of advising on its procurement and deployment
- Has experience of achieving change through influence, especially with policy and delivery officials
- Has the authority to be credible with Ministers and senior officials
Desirable
- Has experience of the workings of Government
So who’s going to get it? It might appeal to people like DJ Collins, Google’s European comms director (with good Labour connections); or ex-BBC chief Ashley Highfield, although he’s just started a new job with Microsoft… but it’s probably a significant pay cut for those guys. Then again, whoever takes the job will have to be doing it for the love of it, not for the money.

PS: Full marks to that man Steph for setting up a UserVoice ‘idea storm’ to crowd-source the lucky applicant’s to-do list. 🙂