e-government – Page 23

26 Oct 2009

e-government

foreignoffice, stephenhale

FCO's modest redesign

The Foreign Office relaunched its corporate website over the weekend – always a brave move. You’re met by a very striking news-y homepage, with large-format high-impact (and high maintenance) imagery: it works very well indeed, but is the sort of homepage which takes a lot of editorial effort, and presumably a photo budget of some sort. There are several RSS icons dotted around the place; blog and Twitter areas on the homepage; and if you dig a little deeper, a press office blog (of sorts). It’s a homepage which clearly knows its purpose. And that’s a good thing.

Design-wise, the header feels modest and contemporary. But I’d have concerns about the presentation of text lower down the page. Whilst I’m sure a lot of the issues – inconsistent spacing, curious alignment, empty links – can probably be put down to teething troubles, I’m forced to look back to the Blogs site which started fairly messy, and hasn’t ever improved. Stephen Hale promises a new look to that site too; I sincerely hope so.

The press office ‘blog’ is a very interesting addition: running since June, it actually uses an account at Tumblr.com as its CMS, with the material being pulled into FCO chrome (presumably) via RSS feed. It’s publish-only, so no comments; and if you want anything beyond the last few items, it sends you off to Tumblr. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s lots to like about Tumblr, a lighter-than-lightweight ‘blogging’ solution. But I don’t feel comfortable about a major department of state using it. And I wonder if they’d be doing that if their main blogging platform wasn’t a better one.

You’ll be wondering about cost, no doubt. ‘None of this work cost any extra money,’ says Stephen, ‘we’ve done it in house.’ And whilst that doesn’t mean it’s free, at least it means (one assumes) they’ve avoided the worst excesses of some previous site rebuilds.

Is it better than what went before? Yes, I think so. It feels like a much smaller, slightly better organised site. But as I said last time, we expect a lot from FCO – with a famously digitally-savvy Foreign Secretary, a communications remit and a significant budget. I still think they can do more, and do it better. We await their new appointment with interest.
13 Oct 2009

e-government

careandsupport, consultation, health, wordpress

We care a lot

One of my bigger projects this year has been the website for the Care And Support green paper, aka The Big Care Debate. Basically, the country is in desperate need of a new funding model for long-term care of the elderly and disabled: and in July, three funding options were put forward for consideration. And we’ve been trying various things, online and offline, to engage people in the debate.

When the green paper was published, we did a Commentariat-style ‘commentable document’; there’s also an interactive on-screen questionnaire, with or without a ‘face morphing’ app which shows what you might look like when you’re old. (I can’t claim any credit for that last element btw.) Meanwhile, in the real world, there have been a series of ‘roadshows’ for public and stakeholders – as shown on the clickable homepage map. You’ll also note, if you click on places like Peterborough, Derby or Coventry, that the team have taken a digital camera with them, and are posting snaps on Flickr. Then there’s the Campaign Monitor email list, the Twitter account, the Facebook activity (official and unofficial)…

The response has been huge, and often angry. The site has received more than 3,500 user comments, the majority of which have been to a single page of the commentable document: there’s clearly been a concerted campaign among interest groups to make their opposition known. There’s also been a healthy volume of comments on the campaign’s blog, written – you’ll note – in the name of the lead official, rather than a politician (although that hasn’t stopped people constantly raising the issue of politicians’ expenses claims).

In truth, on occasions, it’s been too much. At one point, we feared the site had been hacked: in fact, we’d just hit the limit imposed by our hosting company on outgoing emails. (Turned out, it was too many people asking to receive email notification of follow-up comments.) If you don’t count Downing Street petitions, it must rank as one of the highest volumes of responses to a government consultation exercise.

Now let’s be honest: most of the feedback has not been complimentary. There are a lot of people who think the changes are designed to cut their current benefits; and anything the Government tries to do at the moment is being met with disillusionment, cynicism and antipathy. So is it a bad thing to have received so many defensive, angry, confrontational comments? Personally, I don’t think so. Negative feedback is still valid feedback. It highlights the areas where there have been problems, if only communication problems. And it gives you a mailing list of people you need to contact, to make your case.

We’re now into the final month of the consultation, which – for some people, I dare say – is a relief. By any volume metric, I’m confident the process will be counted a success. But of course, the only meaningful measure of success is whether or not it yields a workable proposal with general public approval. In the current political climate, I fear that may be too much to ask. Still, I hope the web element has done its bit.
29 Sep 2009

e-government

foreignoffice, stephenhale

FCO seeks new head of digital

Another senior digital job pops up: this time, it’s the Foreign Office looking for a Head of Digital Engagement. It’s a Senior Civil Service band 1 position, a 2-year fixed-term contract with a salary up to £90k (plus London weighting, plus 6 weeks holiday!), managing the 30-strong team based in London, Washington, New Delhi and Singapore.

But it’s not Stephen Hale‘s position – or is it? Announcing the vacancy on his FCO-hosted blog, he writes:

You might also have noticed that my own job title contains the words “Head”, “Digital” and “Engagement” in a slightly different order. This is a different job – it’s for our head of department. When the position is filled, it could change the dynamic of the team I work in. And my responsibilities (and job title) might have to change too. A lot will depend on who we recruit.

Fair enough… but I note that the ‘slug’ of the post is ‘time_to_move_on’. Hmm.

Update: Stephen emails to explain – the initial title of the piece was ‘Time to move on?’, with a question mark. (To which the answer was going to be ‘no’.) Except that, of course, the question mark got removed in the translation to a page slug. He assures me, he’s going nowhere.

Having spent the early – and probably the most productive – years of my Civil Service career at the FCO, I can vouch for it as a fine place to work; and with David Miliband as Foreign Secretary, you know there’s support for online work at the very top. If you fancy it, CVs and covering letters are due in by noon on 12 October.
17 Sep 2009

e-government

bis, defra, wordpress

New sites at Defra and BIS

Two major departmental website changes (that I’m aware of?) today – a completely transformed website for Defra, and a new look for BIS’s corporate site.

The Defra site feels like an incremental improvement of what went before. Gone is the blocky layout and earthy (and somewhat apt?) colour palette, replaced by the de facto standard tabs and colour gradients, and a slightly esoteric colour scheme. It’s clear a lot of thought has gone into site structure, particularly at the upper levels: a friendly homepage highlighting good feature content, and meaningful tabs.

I like it. But it’s a bit disappointing to learn that ‘[they’ve] had to change the web addresses for most of [their] information’ – and I think they’ve missed a trick by not at least trying to redirect some of the key pages.

For example, when you search Google for Defra, you get a list of eight key pages as well as the site homepage – ‘bringing pets to the UK’, ‘animal health & welfare’, ‘your questions answered’ and so on. Only two of these eight links lead anywhere still meaningful. It should only take a minute to add a few ‘301 redirects’ manually. And there’s still no RSS on the site. Grr. These days, I have to say, I think it’s a must-have. Even a reference to the feed generated by COI’s NDS-generated feed would be a help, guys.

BIS meanwhile have changed the design of their ‘pulled together in 3 days‘ corporate site: it now looks much more serious, considered, and dare I say it, conventional. I don’t mean that as a criticism; but the previous incarnation felt so much more agile, innovative even, and I’m going to miss having it there as a wonderful case study. Sniff.

The great news is, it’s still running on WordPress. So in fact, it’s probably just as useful a case study: proof that WordPress can do ‘conventional’ too, if that’s what you want. And with the volume of content in the new site structure, it looks like it’s there to stay for a bit longer, too. Steph and Neil have a bit more to say, including details of some interesting things happening behind the scenes: and fair play again to Steph for open-sourcing his coding work.
3 Sep 2009

e-government, technology

cabinetoffice, taxpayersalliance, twitter

Trying to engage with the Taxpayers' Alliance

I usually let the Taxpayers’ Alliance stuff wash over me. No matter how valid their points often are, it’s getting to the stage where every news story about any government expenditure has to feature an angry quote from them. Maybe journalists really are using that online TPA Quote Generator.

Then today, in the widespread but entirely inaccurate press coverage of a ‘Twittercrat on £118,000pa’, I spot a quote from TPA’s political director Susie Squire: ‘Taxpayers don’t want more Web2.0. They want an end to wasteful spending.’ Oh really? OK…

I was interested to find out more about TPA’s view of ‘Web2.0’… so I visited their website. Or specifically, their Typepad-hosted blog. How very ‘Web2.0’ of them. I wonder do they know about the various government websites which have also used Typepad for its cheap hosting, instant availability and high degree of configurability. I haven’t heard them praising it, so maybe not.

Anyway, a ‘Non-job of the week’ post makes a passing reference to the Cabinet Office vacancy, but concentrates on a local council recruiting a new press officer – which, apparently, is a bad thing. Anyway, as the article reaches its conclusion, author Tim Aker writes:

However, another communications officer at the council, taking scarce funds from the frontline, isn’t the answer. The answer is to have councillors do more than canvass at election time. Were we to have a more open political system … then maybe the people would trust politicians more. But as usual, instead of accepting the blindingly obvious solution of cutting back on their profligacy and engaging more with their constituents, the council opts for the norm and throws money at a problem. Sigh.

So the TPA wants more openness in government and politics. More direct engagement between elected representatives and the public. But it doesn’t want ‘Web2.0’ – the use of interactive technology, most of it ‘open source’ (and hence free), to promote direct engagement.

Here’s the thing. Done well, ‘more Web2.0’ has great potential to meet precisely the objective set by the TPA, namely bringing an end to wasteful spending. (And I like to think Puffbox is doing its bit in that regard.) How precisely do you ensure it is ‘done well’? You get someone in who knows what they’re doing. Someone with external experience, and internal seniority. And if you can get them into the one department specifically charged with improving government generally, so much the better.

Do you see where I’m going here, TPA? Sigh indeed.

PS Full marks to the Cabinet Office for their online rebuttal of the pathetic media coverage. It reads like a blog post, but it’s in the press release section of their website. I particularly love the line about @downingstreet being ‘followed by more than 1.2 million people, more than the official White House Twitter and considerably more than the daily circulation on most national newspapers.’
1 Sep 2009

e-government

COI blogging breaks cover

One of the most gratifying examples of government engagement with the online community was the transformation of COI’s browser guidelines from a self-contradictory, over-long and unworkable draft to a sensible and practical final document, thanks largely to online consultation with the online audience. Yes, I know it sounds obvious, but…

Eight months later, and after further trialling, it’s great to see COI now looking to build on this momentum with the launch of a new Digigov blog, and a promise to ‘share information and get feedback on digital policy across government and to stimulate debate around digital policy with other departments, agencies, web developers, bloggers and academics.’ There’s only an introductory post up there for the moment, so I’ll be watching with interest.

For the record – it’s running on WordPress, the standard version rather than MU as far as I can tell, and uses a custom theme – a one-off rather than a generic COI style – by Harry Metcalfe’s The Dextrous Web. (Note to self: must stop linking to the competition.) It’s another government endorsement of WordPress, and another endorsement of the value of true openness after the disappointment of the internal-only CivilBlogs.

Welcome aboard, guys. Now let’s make some good things happen.
31 Aug 2009

e-government, politics

decc, edmiliband, foreignoffice, labourparty, tangentlabs

Ed's Pledge: when Ministers go it alone

One of the few international set-pieces between now and the next general election is the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in mid-December. And the UK’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change is trying to drum up support among the population for – er, well, let’s not dwell on details. ‘A deal’ of some kind.

He’s launched a website, EdsPledge.com asking people to declare their support for his campaign, and spread it round their social networks. It’s a pretty modest affair… too modest, arguably. An imported feed from his Twitter account, lots of calls to action – but in terms of substance, only a 67-second YouTube video.

But you’ll need to be looking relatively closely to spot that EdsPledge.com (registered at the end of July) is actually a Labour Party website – which, in fact, sits within www.labour.org.uk. The Labour logo is in dead space in the bottom corner of the screen, and the footer text declaring the site’s ownership is light grey text on white. There’s literally zero reference to Labour in that 67 seconds of video – other than the choice of font, and who’s going to notice that? (Well, apart from me.)

Meanwhile, in the gov.uk domain, we have ActOnCopenhagen.gov.uk – proclaiming, would you believe it, ‘the UK Government’s ambition for a global deal on climate change’, a joint DECC/FCO production, hosted by FCO but ultimately using a DECC subdomain. (Hey… Miliband and Miliband. Hadn’t thought of that until now.) And guess what? It too has a clock counting down to the conference, a bit of Twitter and YouTube, and a ‘100 days’ message from Ed Miliband – plus, it has to be said, a lot more detail.

Of course it’s obvious why Labour should be trying to maximise the political potential of Copenhagen. And likewise, it sits perfectly within FCO’s wider public diplomacy remit, as well as the DECC portfolio. Nobody’s doing anything wrong per se, from a selfish perspective anyway. But I can’t help feeling we’re straying into dangerous territory here.

For decades, centuries even, the Civil Service sat as a buffer between politicians and the populace. Mass communication required budgets and infrastructure which the political parties couldn’t readily lay their hands on, or afford. But just as the music and journalism businesses have seen their previously cosy arrangements challenged by the disappearance of those barriers to entry, are we now seeing the politicians challenging the authority of their own departments for their own purposes?

There’s now nothing to stop a minister setting up his/her own website pushing his/her own line – beyond the control of The Department. In many cases, it could be much cheaper and quicker to go outside, rather than rely on the internal processes. And free from Civil Service rules on dispassionate discourse, it might be more effective too.

Now, whilst there could be tension between these two web initiatives, I suspect there won’t be in practice. Wearing my cynical hat, the Labour site seems to have two objectives – visibility for Miliband, and harvesting the contact details of potential Labour sympathisers/voters. There’s no real duplication of functionality or content, nor any inherent clash with the weighty objectives of the DECC/FCO site.

But this is the first time I’ve seen such an obvious attempt by Labour to mirror departmental responsibility; and it’s easy to imagine how other similar activity around other departments’ areas – let’s say Health? Defence? Treasury? wider foreign affairs? – might get a little more juicy. Keep an eye on it, folks.
21 Aug 2009

e-government

cabinetoffice

Cabinet Office seeks digital chief

A job advert of potential interest to readers of this blog: the Cabinet Office is looking for a ‘Deputy Director – Digital Communication’ – a full-time, permanent Grade 5 position, based in Whitehall, paying ‘c£75k’.

It’s an interesting-sounding role, reportedly the ‘most snr dept webby in Whitehall’, with the successful candidate being asked to ‘lead the development and delivery of a detailed website strategy encompassing the technical and communications future of the entire online estate, supporting the drive for website rationalisation and enabling the rapid uptake of digital engagement activities throughout communications and beyond.’

Inevitably at that level, the focus is on strategy development, stakeholder management, evaluation, benchmarking, etc etc. – but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the Cabinet Office is a very juicy department to be involved in, given that its raison d’etre is to be ‘at the centre of government, making government work better’. Which is kinda what we’re all looking to do.

The job includes responsibility for ‘running and transforming to “Web 2.0” a number of high profile and well trafficked government web presences: Cabinet Office – the core corporate channel, HMG – the home of major cross government policy initiatives, [and] Civil Service – the corporate mouthpiece and sole online channel for >500,000 employees and their diverse needs.’ (First time I’ve seen HMG referred to as a ‘proper’ channel, by the way; I’ve always seen it as a domain of last resort.)

It’s an influential role, a decent salary, and a permanent position in a time of recession. I can imagine a lot of people being interested in it.
11 Aug 2009

e-government

birmingham, pressoffice, wordpress

Birmingham council: not all bad

Last week, I shared the general sense of shock around the blogs at news about Birmingham council’s new website: 3.5 years late, and costing £2.8 million. But last night, to my great surprise, I came across BirminghamNewsroom.com – a WordPress-powered website for the council’s press office, launched a couple of months back.

It’s based on iCompany – a ‘premium’ theme costing $80, with only minimal customisation; and by sheer virtue of choosing WordPress, it comes with a remarkably rich feature set, not least its offering of RSS feeds (and email alerting via S2). And that’s before we get on to its integration of Twitter, Flickr, YouTube/Vodpod, etc etc.

The domain was registered in March this year, and the site is hosted by justhost.com – who appear to charge a jawdropping £2.95/month for unlimited disk space / bandwidth / MySQL / domains, cPanel based, plus a free domain name. In other words, the perfect antidote to an over-running, over-spending web project. And with no immediate evidence of Big Consultancy involvement.

There are a few odd things in the build; I’ve written previously about why I don’t like using off-the-shelf themes; and if I wanted to be exceptionally cynical, I’d be concerned that the Press Office had felt the need to go out and build this site: what, the £2.8m site can’t match WordPress? But instead, I’m going to say ‘well done Birmingham press office’. I’ve always said WordPress would make the ideal platform for a press office, and this kinda proves it.
10 Aug 2009

e-government

commentariat, defra, wordpress

Defra use Commentariat for food consultation

Just to note that Defra is using WordPress to power its new consultation on Food 2030: a fairly straightforward use of Steph’s Commentariat theme, with a bit of Defra branding added. So nothing too clever, but as I’ve said before, I think it’s a very good thing if we’re clearly seen to be reusing the same code.

It’s not the first Defra use of WordPress of course; their third sector blog – in ‘public beta’ – has been pumping out the posts steadily since late 08, although comments are a bit thin. Both sites look to be on the same server, but the root URLs (‘blogs’ and ‘sandbox’) are not aliases of each other.

Oh, and I had nothing to do with either of them.