From Cabinet Office questions and PMQs today… and that’s before the debate on Segways tonight. So we’re to assume that the nation’s MPs were catching up on some serious geek time over the Christmas break then?
(Background pic from uk_parliament at Flickr)
Before you get carried away, it’s the prime minister of Kazakhstan who has demanded that all his Cabinet colleagues get blogging. Reuters reports:
“I have opened a blog on the government website,” Masimov told a government meeting. “So I order all ministers… to start personal blogs where people will be able to ask you questions that you must answer.”
Masimov started his own blog last week with an introductory post that has already received 152 comments, some of which were complaints about the quality of tap water in villages. He has since ordered the cabinet to investigate the criticisms.
For the record, I’m not sure you can actually order someone to blog. I wrote something on this ages ago, referring to David Miliband’s pioneering efforts: ‘The channel is nothing without having someone willing and able to talk to (and with) us.’
But anyway… the Kazakh PM’s website is running on BlogEngine.NET, not a platform I know well. There’s embedded Flash video, comments on every (?) post, and a fair smattering of RSS icons. He’s not exactly prolific, with only 5 posts on the site since the end of November, but he’s getting plenty of responses.
If anyone happens to speak Kazakh (or is it Russian?), feel free to tell us all about the content. No Borat references required, thank you very much.
A quick nod towards today’s New Opportunities (micro)site, in support of the white paper on Social Mobility. Most of it is fairly straightforward, ‘pages in a hierarchy’ stuff; well done, certainly, but nothing particularly special. There are a few points definitely worthy of note, though.
One is the root address: www.hmg.gov.uk – one of many domains pointing to the Cabinet Office’s webserver. It’s a very odd choice indeed; and somewhat ironic, given that the earliest government domains were hmg.gb. Presumably it’s because of the cross-departmental nature of the initiative itself; that would also explain the use of that lesser-spotted HM Government logo.
Another is the inclusion of Flash-based streaming video, direct from the host site itself – as opposed to the usual embedded-from-YouTube method. It’s quite a timely move, given COI new recruit Ross Ferguson’s reflections on that very subject this morning. Here’s one embedded example…
Streaming your own video can get expensive: at respectable quality, that’s a lot of data eating up your monthly bandwidth allocation. But I suppose the DIY approach means you can customise the appearance, see the usage stats, and (crucially in this case, I suspect) get around corporate IT networks’ blocking of YouTube et al.
Then there’s the ‘social media press release‘, which proclaims: ‘We want to encourage debate online and offline about the issues raised in this document, and have made the following resources available for bloggers and journalists to use within their own coverage of the White Paper.’ In practice that means a bullet-point summary, a dozen streamed videos for easy embedding, plus links to external resources and external coverage. It’s a nice package.
To be honest though, I’m not sure the fluffy ‘ordinary people’ video content is right for this sort of thing. I don’t see why anyone would want to include these case studies in their coverage. Surely you’d have a better chance with some pieces to camera from insiders / experts / Ministers? (Not that those are ideal, necessarily…)
As for ‘social mobility for bloggers’ – well, it’s always amused me how easy it is to get yourself some profile in this business. If you can crank out a half-decent blog, people will find you, and your name will become known. There aren’t that many people talking about the subjects I cover here. There’s no magic recipe: just demonstrate that you know your subject, and it’ll pay off. But that’s enough career advice from me… 🙂
Much excitement over the weekend at the launch of LabourList, describing itself as ‘the must read online forum for Labour minded people’. Edited by Derek Draper, taking three days a week (he tells the Mail On Sunday) out of his job as a psychotherapist, the site is keen to stress its independence; but nobody’s doubting its official endorsement, and it’s built and hosted by Tangent Labs who handle all Labour’s official stuff.
Back in September, I was an observer at a fringe meeting at the Labour conference, addressed by Draper. As I wrote at the time, the discussion highlighted the fact that LabourHome was neither able to match ConservativeHome head-on; nor was it trying to. ‘With no disrespect to the many valiant amateurs, in the room and on the web,’ I wrote somewhat presciently, ‘there’s nobody of sufficient prominence taking on the Dales and Montgomeries, and fighting Labour’s corner.’
LabourList pretty much delivers on that score, anyway. Looking down the left-hand column, it’s like a who’s-who of the left: household names like Piers Morgan, Ken Livingstone and Peter Mandelson; up-and-coming figures like David Lammy; insiders like Draper, Charlie Whelan, Philip Gould and Ben Wegg-Prosser; blogging veterans like Luke Akehurst and LabourHome guys Jag Singh and Mark Hanson… impressive stuff. Although of course, barely 36 hours after its launch, most of the content is still ‘not published yet’.
Most interesting for me, perhaps, will be the involvement of two Cabinet ministers – Mandelson from BERR, and DFID’s Douglas Alexander. Will they be able to touch on any aspects of their day jobs, in any substantial way, or can it only be party campaigning stuff? Of course, if Mr Alexander wishes to blog about his day job, there’s a first-rate blogging platform ready and waiting. 🙂
Draper is quick to tackle any perception that LabourList will try to undermine the (occasionally troublesome) LabourHome. ‘I want to make it clear that I don’t see LabourList and Labourhome as being rivals,’ he writes; ‘quite the contrary, we should be comrades.’ It could work out to be quite a useful double-act, actually – and at least it’ll put a stop to the never-flattering comparisons with ConHome.
I’m inclined to share Jon Worth’s suspicion about the choice of the Tangent Labs platform, though – ‘proprietary software that was not designed for blogging’, when WordPress would have done the job perfectly. On a functional level it’s fine, I suppose; but visually it’s pretty awful – and the URLs are just horrible. There are RSS feeds a-plenty, although most people won’t spot most of them. And I wouldn’t have shown all those comments on the homepage, pushing the second story way out of view.
One substantial plus point, though, is their up-front approach to moderation. You need to register as a member to comment, although you don’t need to be a Party member. And once you’re in:
If your comments are deemed to be offensive, they will be removed completely. [But…] In order to ensure an insightful, engaging debate we will also place other comments judged to be grossly unintelligent or obtuse or trolls in our trash can. These comments can however still be viewed by users by clicking on the “include trash comments” button under each post. We encourage anyone who has had a comment denied to repost their thoughts on their own blog, and leave a trackback instead. Although we might think a comment is inappropriate for our conversation that does not preclude you making your point elsewhere.
However, I’m really not sure about the inclusion of the ‘Latest News from the Prime Minister’s Spokesperson’ on the homepage: the divide between Government and Party is difficult enough, without drawing attention to it like this. And I’m genuinely a bit shocked to see a prominent promo for FixMyStreet – alongside similar promos for the TUC, Unite, and a couple of other Labour Party initiatives. What’s the MySociety line on that, I wonder?
Mandelson’s opening piece is very significant, with implications beyond party politics. ‘The Labour party itself is now moving to the forefront of new media and online campaigning,’ he declares – er, OK, go on. ‘The world has changed since 1997. Now, no-one has been more identified with message and campaigning discipline than myself, something that makes me rather proud… But when it comes to new media we have to recognise that the days of command and control are over. Instead we need to learn to embrace and engage.’
[I’m assuming, by the way, that the Second Life thing was solely to give the newspapers a pretty picture to print; otherwise it’s a screengrab of a half-empty site. And yes of course, I fell for it too. But I can’t believe the party is seriously converting its minimal funds into Linden dollars.]
So, let battle commence. Last week, the LibDems announced the formation of a New Technology Board ‘to oversee the party’s online campaigning’ ahead of the next general election; it’s to be chaired by blogger and Twitterer Lynne Featherstone. Plus of course, the Tories under Cameron have been trying to mark out this territory as their own for some time. Is this a win-win-win situation for those of us trying to evangelise to government?
It isn’t every day you get writers like Stephen Fry and JK Rowling, Oscar-winning film producers and Nobel Prize-winning scientists contributing to a government website. But it does happen.
Governance of Britain is a site I built a year ago, on behalf of the Ministry of Justice. Plans and circumstances have changed a few times since then, which frankly haven’t helped with establishing the site; and there’s word that things might be changing again. But it contains a few features and functions which I’m particularly proud of.
This week saw us uploading a clutch of new contributions from high-profile public figures on what it means to be British. We’ve already had pieces from, among others, Trevor Phillips, Dame Evelyn Glennie and Nicole Cooke (pre-Beijing, by the way), as well as what you might call ‘the great and good’. A couple of them are even in video form. Comments are open; it’ll be interesting if such ‘citizen-friendly’ material can generate large volumes of feedback.
Each contributor has approached the subject in a different way. Some are short, some much longer. Some are very personal, others clearly ‘the official line’ from an organisation they represent. Some are quite academic, others quite provocative. Well worth a quick click through. I’d particularly draw your attention to Lord Puttnam‘s video: a one minute piece to camera, well-delivered by a natural communicator.
Chances are, you missed last month’s publication of the Cabinet Office’s white paper on the 2011 Census. ‘Modern times demand modern approaches,’ declares Sir Michael Scholar, chair of the UK Statistics Authority: you’ll be able to complete your census form online, and ‘all standard outputs will be publicly accessible online, and free of charge, from the National Statistics website (whatever that is – as I understand it, the name disappeared in the UKSA rebranding).’
The Census represents a marvellous opportunity. We’re now many years into the post-web world, and online is now the main distribution channel for data. We’ve got several years to learn from the best practice of others, be they fellow statistical organisations around the world, or heavy-duty data disseminators like the financial markets. There’s no issue as regards a business model: the commitment to free availability has already been made. It’s an open goal.
Unfortunately, I probably wrote something almost identical to the preceding paragraph seven years ago, when I started working for ONS as Web Editor in Chief, full of optimism at what magic we could weave with the 2001 census data. It didn’t last; there was virtually zero consideration of public usage in the output plans, and I couldn’t persuade the key people of the cultural shift happening outside. There were some blazing rows. I left ONS in 2004; it says something that the website I built as a six-month stopgap in 2002 is still their main web presence – reskin aside, almost exactly as I left it.
A quick skim through the white paper provides little reason to restore my optimism. It has more to say about printed books of preformatted tables than it does about electronic methods – there’s no fleshing-out of what ‘online dissemination’ might mean. Instead, there’s a commitment to produce CDs and DVDs… seriously? in 2012?
But there may yet be hope. Back in December, ONS quietly launched a 2011 UK Census Output consultation – based, remarkably, on a Wiki platform. They’ve published initial survey findings from 500+ respondents, half of whom were in government; it’s a bit disappointing to see so little input from potential new customers (only 2%), as opposed to the ‘usual suspects’. Yet a clear majority of this normally conservative (small ‘c’) audience said they would be happy with electronic output alone.
And hallelujah! – elsewhere on the wiki there’s even mention of an ‘intention is to support a variety of electronic dissemination options through the use of an internet-based API [said on another page to be ‘publicly-available’] that can access the full range of aggregated Census statistics.’ There’s even a link to a list of the API calls to be offered – but it ‘does not (yet) exist’. Many a slip twixt cup and lip, as they say… but they’re undoubtedly talking the right talk here, and perhaps that’s all we can ask at this stage.
My only plea is that they remember the huge potential value for new users. Things have moved on dramatically since 2001; I can think of countless websites which would adore a system they could hook into, with fantastic potential benefits to ordinary web users. The wiki’s list of planned response formats betrays the ‘insiders first’ instinct again: nothing your average masher will be familiar with. Consult your community by all means, guys; but recognise there’s an even wider potential community these days.
I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions or predictions; I’ll leave those to other people.
Suffice to say, I’m increasingly of the opinion that web 2.0, as a phase in the web’s development, is over. I’m using almost exactly the same tools now that I was this time last year. It’s ages since any new technology (in and of itself) blew me away. And I’m very close to unsubscribing from TechCrunch, the trade journal of web 2.0. I just can’t think of the last thing I read in it which really excited me.
So here we are. It really feels like we have our winners in most of the ‘web 2.0’ categories: WordPress, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Basecamp, Google in various guises. And it feels like we have all the tools we need, most of them free of charge, to make things happen. Let 2009 be the year where we really start to make use of them.
What excites me?
We have all the tools we need, and it’s even easier than before. Let’s start delivering.
PS: Coincidentally – and yes, not a little ironically given the above – TechCrunch has today posted its list of ‘products I can’t live without‘. Most notable, to my half-awake eye, is the similarity with last year, and the gradual pruning of the more obscure names in favour of the Old Favourites. (Slightly surprised to see FriendFeed making the 2009 list, by the way.)
You’ll be seeing a lot of the Change 4 Life brand, and the associated bright Morph-esque characters whose aim in life is to tackle the growing problem of obesity. But whatever you do, don’t call it a government campaign, though – it’s a ‘society-wide movement’. Which essentially means, it’ll be everywhere: online and offline.
I’m almost becoming blasé about seeing government accounts on Flickr and YouTube. But they’ve done it particularly well, with the YouTube videos obviously kept short, and the Flickr photos being more than just ‘Minister shaking hands with‘ (although it’s a shame they’re ‘All rights reserved’).
The defining characteristic of this campaign – sorry, movement – will be ubiquity, through brand extension. DH is offering the full range of design assets for download from its website; and ‘services or products provided or commissioned by the NHS or local authorities’ are being encouraged to use the Change4Life name, logo and sub-brands. They’re also being encouraged to think up their own sub-brands; and whilst it isn’t permitted to just add ‘4 Life’ on the end of an organisation name, the design guidelines imply an open approach. A good few household names are signed up as members of the ‘business 4 Life coalition’ – although that in itself has attracted some criticism already.
Not for the first time, the campaign’s online call to action is to do a search; on the ads I’ve seen so far, no actual URL is quoted. It’s a risky strategy, but I guess there’s evidence to show that it worked OK on previous campaigns (?).
The website is a subdirectory of nhs.uk, but there’s no hint of NHS branding – in fact, no mention of government at all, other than a Crown copyright reference in the footer. There are reasonable attempts at interactivity. I like the postcode search listing all sorts of active activities near you, with a Microsoft Virtual Earth map, and a link into Transport Direct for directions. But the function to create your own character is a bit of a mess: choose a colour, height, and one of half a dozen poses… hardly much in the way of customisation… then, as far as I can tell, nothing. My customised Morph has yet to make his promised return to greet me.
The main objective of the site, at first glance, is to make me sign up for an information pack. Nothing inherently wrong with that, of course… but it could have been so much more. A personal diet/weight tracker, maybe. Some kind of ‘introduce me to a local sports club’ function. Even some kind of blogging / discussion forum thing. But as it stands, I don’t see any reason for me ever to return for a second visit.
Mind you, if the objective is to get me to go outside and run around, maybe that’s deliberate.