Puffbox – Page 41 – Simon Dickson's gov-tech blog, active 2005-14. Because permalinks.

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. 🙂
11 Feb 2009

e-government, technology

bbc, davidlammy, downingstreet, twitter

David Lammy, Twitter expert

It came as a bit of a shock this evening, when BBC1’s The One Show started talking about Twitter, that reporter Gyles Brandreth’s first port of call was Kingsgate House on Victoria Street, home of DIUS and minister David Lammy. With traffic up by a factor of three this year already, Twitter’s certainly a hot topic at the moment – with the BBC in particular facing accusations of going overboard; but where does David Lammy come into all this?

To be entirely fair, Lammy did talk (some of) the talk:

For me, it’s almost a broadcast means of people knowing what I’m up to during the course of the day. It is about finding ways in which people can be clearer about what government ministers are up to.

OK, so it would have been nice if he’d described it as a two-way thing – and of course, he may well have done, but that wasn’t the soundbite we heard. But nice to get the potential for political transparency on the record.

The only niggle is that Lammy has been a member of the Twitter family since mid-December. He hasn’t even reached three figures for the number of tweets. Indeed, he’s only been using it with any head of steam for a month. One can’t help feeling it was a nice ‘soft’ primetime TV appearance for a politician with ambition: the caption read ‘Minister, Dept for Innovation’, and it can’t have done any harm to put a government minister in a story about something ‘cutting edge’ and ‘cool’.

Speaking of Twitter: I see @downingstreet has now reached the Twitterholic Top 50, and looks like going even higher – they’ve already passed the MarsPhoenix Lander, one of Twitter’s iconic accounts. Between you and me, I’m told they have MC Hammer in their sights.
11 Feb 2009

technology

interconnectit, wordpress

WordPress: reclaiming the web

I love WP as much as the next guy. Unless this is the next guy. pics: bakershours.com

I’m suddenly receiving a lot of email (and other online communication) from people in the public sector, and indeed outside, who want to talk WordPress. And I’m not alone: Dave Coveney, from Liverpool-based consultancy InterconnectIT tweeted yesterday:

The professionalisation of #wordpress appears to have finally arrived. We no longer sell websites that happen to be WP, but because of WP.

So what’s happened to raise WordPress to the status of ‘credible alternative’? It almost feels like a stupid question – ‘why are people turning away from big-money consultancies charging six-figure sums, in favour of rapidly developed, more flexible, more usable solutions that deliver in weeks for a relative pittance?’ But bear with me.

If I looked narrowly at the public sector, I could suggest a few milestones which might have led us here: Number10’s precedent-setting adoption of WordPress, Steph Gray’s work at DIUS (and the use of the Commentariat theme on the Power Of Information document in particular), the general acceptance of blogging post-Peston as serious communication, my own relentless evangelism maybe. Perhaps the combination of all the above. Or perhaps it’s as simple as the modest price tag, and the time of year – it doesn’t feel like end-of-financial-year spending sprees, but I could be wrong.

None of which explains the surge in private sector interest though. Maybe it’s increasing cost-consciousness, or the smoothness of the version 2.7 interface, or the mere fact that ‘this stuff is cool’.

But you know what? It doesn’t matter. The message is getting through, and the cause is being furthered. It really feels like we’re getting somewhere, taking the web back from the Big Ugly Consultancies. It’s a good feeling.
3 Feb 2009

e-government

directgov, drupal, innovation, mashup, schoolclosures

Such warmth in the snow

Pic by Andrew Lewin – flickr.com/photos/draml (Creative Commons)

If there’s one lesson to draw from the unveiling of Directgov’s experimental School Closures site, it’s the sheer goodwill of the community towards them.

Quick précis for those who missed any of it: at 11.50pm on Sunday night, Cabinet Office minister Tom Watson publicly throws down a gauntlet. With the country facing snowy armageddon, could Directgov change their homepage to the only information people would care about – namely, ‘a host of travel info feeds and up to date advice’? A domain gets purchased before dawn, and within 24 (ish) hours, a School Closures mashup site is live. Happy Minister.

The site is, in effect, a dump of Directgov’s own Schools Finder data, uploaded into a Drupal CMS, with each school getting its own page; users are invited to find their local school(s) via a postcode or town name search, and then comment (blog-style) on whether the schools are open or not. It’s been put online using a uk.to domain, obtained from the FreeDNS service – presumably to get round the procurement process (and, one has to assume, the Web Rationalisation people). The precedents are duly noted. 😉

It’s really only a ‘proof of concept’ build. As commenters on the new Directgov blog have noted, we’re several significant steps – and a lot of public interaction – away from having a breakthrough service here. But just look around the web at the excitement and encouragement generated by the move. Harry Metcalfe, for example, recognises the same weaknesses I do, and yet still concludes:

It’s pretty rough around the edges: there doesn’t seem to be much RSS support, and there’s no access to the underlying data, and — well — it doesn’t tell you whether your school is closed… but it is still useful, and it’s very impressive that it appeared so quickly, and with such little prompting. Kudos to all involved — this is a fantastic and very encouraging start.

I don’t see this site ever being (properly) finished, certainly not in its current form. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if it can (ever) tell me whether my local schools are actually open or not. But that wasn’t the point: as Brian Hoadley puts it in the blog post’s comments – ‘This prototype was the first in a series of efforts to create a process around which we can develop rapid ideas.’ (Followed up later by Paul Clarke: ‘its existence demonstrates an attitude, not a magic solution to a very difficult information challenge.’)

It was a concrete fulfilment of the principles Paul Clarke described at the weekend’s Barcamp, proof that it wasn’t just talk. Proof – to itself – that government can actually do this sort of thing. And just as importantly, it has proven how much we, the wider web community, have been longing to see this happen.
3 Feb 2009

e-government

Two-thirds filed their tax returns online

Another small step forward in e-government: HMRC is reporting that ‘67% of all self assessment tax returns were filed online this year… A total of 5,759,006 people filed online by the 31 January deadline – an increase of over 50% on the 2008 total, when 3.8m people filed online.’

Why the sudden change in behaviour? ‘HMRC’s SA online and other Internet services enable people to do business with government in the way we know they want to,’ says a quote in the press release – but I’m not so sure. There was a significant change in the rules this year: paper returns had to be in three months earlier. And as previous experience shows, most people don’t do their returns until the very last minute.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with using such ‘encouragement’ to move people towards online interaction – as long as government is able to keep its end of the bargain.

PS: In the initial version of this post, I said I’d heard that the Self Assessment system wasn’t compatible with Firefox. In fact, it’s the VAT system that still isn’t Firefox-friendly. There were problems with the C&E side of the HMRC website some time ago, but I thought they’d all been sorted? Apparently not.
2 Feb 2009

e-government

businesslink, directgov, nhs, powerofinformation, startups

£10m/year for government web innovation

Pic by a.drian, found at Flickr.com. Creative Commons licence.

I’m not going to say much here about the Power Of Information Taskforce report: the best place to do that is on the site itself. But I will pick up one point which stopped me in my tracks. The report notes that:

Successful leading high tech businesses will spend at least 10% of their budget on innovation… DirectGov, BusinessLink and NHS Choices should create an combined innovation pot of 10% of their budgets, focussed on improving the public experience of government websites, through outside-in innovation not internal requirements. Annual plans on how this £10m innovation pool is to be deployed should be published and agreed by a new Head of Digital Engagement.

Now let’s be clear: £10m is a heck of a lot of money, particularly in a world where the price of the tools is almost negligible. By my rough calculation, that’s more or less equivalent to a team of 36 consultants on a day rate of £1000 ex VAT, working full time. Even allowing a big chunk for ‘overheads’, which you’d normally look to minimise anyway, you’re still talking about maybe 20 full time people earning absolutely top-whack salaries.

(Note: I’m not saying anyone’s worth £1000 a day; just noting that many in government would consider that ‘the going rate’. It explains why people keep telling me I should put Puffbox’s rates up.)

It’s too big a sum for the Big Ugly Consultancies to ignore, and that’s what worries me. If we’re serious about getting serious innovation, we need to treat this as a venture capital fund, and start getting the cash out to dozens of small-scale, agile, hungry operations.

The big boys are getting enough cash out of the public purse already – and will continue to take the lion’s share of the remaining 90%. If they want to innovate, they already have plenty of opportunity – and arguably, have had it for long enough.
1 Feb 2009

e-government, technology

commentariat, commentpress, stephgray, wordpress

Government's WordPress theme for collaborative commenting

Steph from the Department of Innovation is at it again. I’m really very impressed by his new WordPress theme, Commentariat, which effectively picks up where CommentPress left off. After an internal trial, he’s used it publicly for the first time, allowing people to comment on the Power Of Information Taskforce’s report.

I think he’s correctly identified the weakness in CommentPress: it isn’t meaningful to comment on individual paragraphs. Better instead to offer the content in editorially selected chunks. And that’s what Commentariat does. It makes commenting a breeze: I’ve just been through the entire POIT document, commenting furiously as I went… and I’ve certainly never done that before. The technology is irrelevant: if it’s getting me to contrbute like that, that‘s why I’d consider it a success.

I don’t understand the potential ins-and-outs of copyright (which will be the subject of another post in due course), but I really hope we can find a way to release this ‘properly’ as a theme offered through WordPress.org. It will genuinely amaze people to see HM Government producing something like this, and offering it free to the world. Who says we don’t ‘get’ open source?