Puffbox

Hansard Society: ‘The purpose of Digital Dialogues is to assess the capacity of ICT to support central government’s communication and consultation activity. The pilot was initially scheduled to run between November 2005 and June 2006. Based on the value of longitudinal evaluation, the need to test guidance and to sustain the interest generated to date, Digital Dialogues has been extended to incorporate an additional second phase. An interim report from phase one will be available online in August 2006.’

You’ve got about five and a half hours, guys.

Well done to the Home Affairs Select Committee for its Citizen Calling initiative.

The topic is young people and the criminal justice system. The Home Affairs Select Committee wants your help to define how Parliament should look at the issue. They will set some questions – the idea is that you use your phone to send your views in as either txt, video, audio or images.

But… ouch. Some clumsy examples of kidspeak (what ‘decent gear’ are you offering?)… and a big ugly registration form, before you’re allowed to participate. Although the Hansard Society’s website helpfully tells you the number to contact, without having to surrender your personals. It’s 07786201247.

Committee chairman John Denham does his best to sell it to The Kids via YouTube, in a video supposedly ‘recorded on a mobile phone’. (Ooh, how cutting edge.)

I really want to be enthusiastic about this… but it feels like a classic case of ‘medium not message’. The existence of YouTube, and the ability to send video from place to place, is not in itself going to change the ways politics happens. You’ll only win people’s trust when they can see their input – in whatever format they can deliver it – having a direct effect.

I’ve been totally remiss by not mentioning the Northern Ireland eGovernmentUnit’s blog, which has been banging stuff out for almost a year. It says it’s ‘designed to be a general eGovernment news resource and source of information on current developments in technology and not a definitive source of information on NI eGovernment activities.’ Which is a pity, since I’d probably be inclined to subscribe to it if it was a definitive source of information on NI eGovernment. I don’t think we need yet another blog talking about Google’s web apps suite. (It’s yet another Typepad-hosted effort, incidentally.)

Inevitably there’s more to the Conservatives’ claim that ‘spending on Government spin has trebled under Labour and taxpayers are now supporting an army of more than 3,200 press officers‘, the lead story in this morning’s Daily Telegraph, than initially meets the eye.

For one thing, Graeme Wilson seems to use the term ‘press officers’ very loosely: he goes on to confirm that it actually covers ‘press officers and other public relations staff’, which would typically include the press office, publications managers, online activities, maybe even call centre people. He mentions in passing that ‘when Labour came to power in 1997, just over 300 fully-fledged press officers were working in Whitehall‘ – note, we’re now talking about ‘fully fledged’ press officers, undermining the original comparison – ‘although that figure excluded a small number of other public relations staff.‘ Well, I was in Whitehall at the time, and I can tell you that it was far from a ‘small number’ of other people employed in PR activity.

Besides, as a Cabinet Office press officer points out in the Guardian’s write-up, we’re looking at a very different media landscape now, compared with ten years ago. Not least thanks to the development of direct-to-consumer channels, like the internet. I’m not saying the increase hasn’t been substantial; and I’m certainly not saying that there isn’t fat to be trimmed. But please guys, let’s make valid comparisons for the sake of sensible debate.

• Silicon.com: ‘The UK Cabinet Office has been forced to pull one of the public service videos it published on YouTube due to copyright violation.’
• Youtube: ‘This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner COI Television because its content was used without permission.’
• COI: ‘COI’s Chief Executive reports to the Minister for the Cabinet Office.’

There’s something really important happening on political blogs. ‘Britain’s foremost political bloggers have come together to form MessageSpace, an exclusive advertising channel that offers exposure to opinion formers and thought leaders.’ Yeah, and?

Well, look at who makes up the MessageSpace family. ‘Our publishing partners include ConservativeHome, Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale, Labourhome, Political Betting, Recess Monkey and LibDemBlogs.’ Yes, that’s right – the three main parties’ online grassroots networks are all playing together in this initiative.

It’s almost saying ‘that which unites us is greater than that which divides us’. Could you see the political parties cooperating like this in the real world? Mind you, I might be over-analysing this… maybe it’s just a pragmatic decision in the interests of generating some cash.

The Home Office has received a telling-off from the Advertising Standards Authority, for failing to spell out the URL of a campaign website in a radio commercial. The ASA has ruled that ‘the ad should not be broadcast again in its current form’ – but it’s a bit much to say, as the BBC does, that the ad has been banned.

The domain thinkuknow.co.uk was registered by the Home Office as far back as 8 November 2001. It was relaunched in January this year, as promoted on the Home Office website itself. The follow-up publicity campaign, which ran on 96 Trent FM in March this year, told listeners:

What you say online isn’t always what a paedophile hears. Giving out personal info could let a paedophile track you down. Be smart online, be safe offline. Visit thinkuknow.co.uk

All well and good. But they didn’t say that it was the letter ‘u’ in the middle, rather than the word ‘y-o-u’. And even though txt msging has ruined the young generation’s grasp of English, I’d still say people would be more likely to type in ‘you’.

The domain thinkyouknow.co.uk was registered as recently as 15 February 2006 – note, a couple of weeks after the relaunch – by one Chris Fox trading as Liquid Names, with an address in Spalding, Lincolnshire (although it looks like he tried to sell the house in question on eBay in April). The domain is currently ‘parked’, and if you go there, you’ll see a page of ‘sponsored links’ – in other words, adverts generating revenue for the owner.

The ASA received only one complaint, from a woman who said the thinkyouknow.co.uk site ‘contained links to websites of an adult nature including pornography websites’. In their defence, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (who have since taken ownership of the website) say that:

the inappropriate material on the other website was at least four clicks away from the homepage, and CEOP believed that any user would be aware, by that point, that it was not a site about child protection on the internet.

which seems a fair point. In fact, on virtually any page on the internet, you’re probably just four clicks away from ‘inappropriate material’. (Tip: don’t test this theory during office hours.)

My take on this? It’s right that the Home Office should get a slap on the wrist for this… not for pointing to pornography (which is really pushing it a bit), but because they should never have used a URL which could so easily be misheard, without spending the couple of quid necessary to purchase the erroneous alternate. Bear in mind, they had four and a half years to do so.

(Update: I’m wondering if they maybe used to own the domain, but let it lapse? There are over 100 references to thinkyouknow in Google, from what you would consider authoritative and reliable sources, including the BBC, Hansard, Oftel/Ofcom, various police forces, BT, and – inevitably – at least one Home Office website.)

Of course, all this free publicity for the thinkuknow site can’t be bad. Er, just a minute… they didn’t engineer this, did they? After all, the whole premise of the complaint is that the misguided listener ended up on a page which she took to be something it actually wasn’t. Which seems to be the whole point of the campaign… 😉

I’m not getting too excited about the Cabinet Office using Youtube to disseminate video content. There’s plenty of video material sloshing around Whitehall, and you can’t really argue with free streaming.

The Department for Work and Pensions has opened (what I think is) the third ‘blog’ in Whitehall circles, this time on the less-than-gripping subject of pensions reform. Launched on 20 July, it’s their latest attempt to engage the country on the subject, and good on them for trying. But I almost think they’re trying too hard, losing some of the rough charm of the typical blog as a result.

The site is (currently) running on WordPress v2.0.3 with all the standard features, including RSS feeds right down to individual post level. A good choice, and not just because it’s free. They’ve done a nice job producing a custom theme to integrate the blog into DWP’s design.

But the content feels very ‘staged’, much more than (say) David Miliband’s musings. The weekly Talking Point articles don’t sit too well alongside the more ephemeral postings; and techniques such as subheadings in longer posts imply the involvement of serious writers. I guess you could level the same criticism at Education’s ‘FindOutMore‘, but then again, we don’t explicitly call it a ‘blog’ as such. (Unless it’s advantageous to do so. 😉 )

The approach to comments seems very heavy-handed, too. Most of the comments reproduced on the site are serious, considered and on-topic. In other words, not what you generally get on a blog. The policy hints at meticulous moderation:

We aim to publish a representative cross-section of comments… The Department reserves the right not to publish comments and to edit comments on grounds of space or style.

All in all, it’s hard to know what they’re trying to achieve. Some of the content looks like it has the general public in mind; some is just too geeky. They’re making valiant efforts to reply to comments, implying a desire for debate, but it’s always a bit clunky. (Hardly their fault though; few blogs handle the back-and-forth exchange of comments too well.)

I can see merit in a blog aimed at professionals; it would be a forum for serious discussion, and a chance to build buy-in for the government reform process (which will inevitably get ugly… so generating some goodwill is a very sound move!). But will this engage me as a citizen? I doubt it.

A subject like pensions needs to address me at the ultra-personal level. It needs to be about estimates and calculators, telling me exactly how much I’m going to be living on when I’m 65 (or whatever), or how much I need to be putting away now to fund the lifestyle I think I deserve later on. Ideally, without me having to fill in a tax return-style questionnaire.

And I hate to say it… but if you can’t encapsulate all that in a simple one-screen web form which I can fill in within a minute, from memory alone, then the system itself is too complicated.

Sorry it’s been a bit quiet for a few days… I was taking a few much-needed days off. In these days of mobile and online communication, it’s more or less impossible to log in without being pulled work-wards – so I didn’t even switch the PC on. It’s the only way. Anyway…

Defra – or specifically, David Miliband – is at it again. Not satisfied with having the Cabinet’s first blog, albeit not by choice!, they’ve now become the first department (certainly that I’m aware of) to launch an open, public wiki around the drafting of an ‘environmental contract’.

Less than three weeks into his job as environment secretary, Miliband wrote a piece for the BBC News website, jointly with new transport secretary Douglas Alexander, saying:

In the 19th and 20th Centuries, progressives forged a new social contract between citizens and the state. Progressive values, new developments in social science, and popular concern came together to deliver social justice. In the 21st century, we must find the same combination if we are to address environmental security. An environmental contract needs to set out the rights and responsibilities of government, businesses, and individuals.

In what can only be described as a brave move, Miliband’s department has opened a wiki based on the Jotspot online service, which charges a smidge under $200 per month for its top package (or $995 for the year, if they qualify as ‘non profit’). For the uninitiated, a wiki – yes, as in Wikipedia – is a website which can be edited by the readership. Usually the would-be editor is made to register, for all sorts of reasons of accountability. Perhaps most intriguingly of all, the Defra website imposes no such restriction. Anybody can edit it, without even leaving their name.

It’s a stroke of genius; a perfect way to live out your values. ‘I can’t stop you polluting it (the planet or the website), but if we all work together, we can maintain something beautiful here. It’s in everyone’s interests.’ So far, a week into the experiment, it seems to be working – although to be fair, it’s been very much ‘under the radar’. Until now. 😉