Puffbox

While we’re on the subject of blogs and DFID… if it’s true that DFID is funding a Research for Development portal that’s costing £360,000 a year to run, and getting only 3,100 visitors in the average month (as disclosed to Hansard a couple of weeks back), that’s pretty shocking. Surely there’s more to it than it seems…? (spotted on DizzyThinks)

Theresa May tabled a wad of PQs lately asking departments for details of the websites they run, and the costs incurred: I think this search picks most of the answers up, but don’t expect many great insights. In quite a few cases, departments have used the ‘disproportionate cost’ excuse.

I picked the right day to – finally! – sign up for Facebook: yesterday saw another very new media-literate speech by David Miliband, and another venture into YouTube. (Personally I wouldn’t have let him stand to do this; it does affect your tone of voice, and I think it’s to his detriment here.)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw83heBf3mk]

The speech itself, at Google’s Zeitgeist conference, was a return to his pet theme of ‘how the spirit of the age requires a new type of politics, and how the new tools of the age can help deliver economic and social change.’ In truth, if you read the New Statesman piece, most of this will be familiar. But it’s still actually a little exciting to see a Cabinet minister – and potentially a future Prime Minister – talking about Web 2.0, Facebook, Linux and the like. (Er, we’ll overlook the spelling of ‘wikipaedia’ in the transcript.)

Miliband clearly sees this as his Big Idea. The speech touches on education, transport, environment, community… a month or two back, this would have been interpreted as his bid for Labour’s leadership. Since that moment has passed, and the job now unlikely to become vacant for a few years at least, we’re left with the conclusion that he actually believes it.

I’m fascinated to see where Miliband ends up post-reshuffle. I hear he has won a lot of friends at Defra, and they would be sorry to lose him. But if environmental issues are to be an electoral battleground next time round, as seems likely, don’t be surprised if he stays where he is.

Behold the power of referral logs! I’m not sure I’m supposed to know about the new Directgov ‘internal’ blog which was started last week by e-government veteran Paul Cronk. But since he linked to me, and since someone clicked on it, I now know about it. (Since it’s explicitly internal, I won’t link to it… unless Paul gives me the OK to do so?)

Its aim is to ‘communicate actions, changes and information around the content of Directgov’ – and of course, a blog is a great way to do so; good on them for trying this. My thanks to Paul for linking to me… but I think it’s a bit harsh to say the various external e-gov-centric blogs are ‘not comfortable reading… critical of Directgov’. On the rare occasion I am critical of it, I hope it’s constructive criticism. We all need a better Directgov; and I’m sure we’re all equally impatient about getting it.

Much debate over the weekend about comments by Owen Barder, a DFID civil servant on his blog. The Mail on Sunday decides to make a meal of his ‘astonishing website outburst… which compares President George Bush to Hitler.’ But we shouldn’t get carried away here: it’s the Mail, after all.

Owen has made a single schoolboy error. Like it or not, there are certain banned words in the English language… and ‘Hitler’ is one of them. Any time you use the word, expect it to generate blind fury, completely ignoring the merits (or otherwise) of your argument. That aside, there’s no story here… it’s just typical Mail bluster, which we shouldn’t take too seriously. Outspoken? Good, we need more of that. Sexually explicit? Hardly, based on the passages the Mail has seen fit to quote.

Tim Worstall does a great job of tearing the Mail piece to pieces: with lengthy justification, he describes it as ‘a mixture of gross distortions, garbled (and wrongly attributed) quotes and in general a hit job.’ Says it all. It’ll be interesting to see Owen’s perspective (when his blog comes up again), and any official response from DFID. I’m sure their press office will be seething… but since a large part of DFID’s role is campaigning, this attention may secretly be welcomed.

A bit of a surprise to see Labour deputy leadership candidate Alan Johnson presented as the poster boy for Twitter in a piece in today’s Guardian output. But then, of course, his campaign is being driven (online at least) by our own Stuart Bruce. I think Stuart’s absolutely right, incidentally: ‘We’ve taken a decision that Alan is not going to start a blog just for the deputy leader contest… It’s better to not blog than to do it badly.’

From there, the article becomes another ‘isn’t Twitter just a waste of time?’ piece. It’s a contention I’m gradually having more sympathy with. I’ve tried to get into Twitter, but I can’t. I’ve tried Jaiku too, and again, whilst there’s a lot to like about it (particularly the Flickr integration), I just haven’t got the spare time.

But I’m convinced that Twitter – as a concept – is definitely on to something. I’ve got an early idea based on microblogging, which excites me and seems to fit very neatly into one of my clients’ areas of activity. I just need to find time to develop it a bit more. (Which pushes Twittering even further down my to-do list.)