Puffbox

Simon Dickson's gov-tech blog, active 2005-14. Because permalinks.

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    Getting down to business

    A couple of potentially interesting launches today.

    First came Start Up Britain, which offers an unusual proposition: ‘helping Britain’s future entrepreneurial talent by providing links to the web’s best business resources, along with offers from some of the biggest brands in the country’. You’re greeted at the top of the homepage, somewhat surprisingly, by a photo of David Cameron – looking quite sinister, or is it just me? (No, it’s not.)

    The site claims to have ‘the full backing of the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and HM Government’, and the big photo of Cameron – which may or may not be connected to the adjacent proposition? – lends credibility to a one-page site which might otherwise come across as yet another attempt to make money from startups: of its four ‘top tips’, two are explicit adverts, and one expects the other two will lead to some monetisation further down the line.

    Dig beneath the javascript, and there’s little more to it – for now at least – than a bunch of links and money-off vouchers: so in effect, it’s an online equivalent of the goodie bag you’d get at the door of any one of the many startup exhibitions. Steph said it was hammering nails into BusinessLink’s coffin: that seems premature. But it certainly poses some challenging questions of it.

    Then this afternoon, we see the launch of Innovation Launch Pad, a Cabinet Office initiative powered by Spigit – whose recently appointed ‘general manager’ is James Gardner, who joined them from DWP at the start of the year.

    Until 22 April, the Cabinet Office is inviting SMEs to ‘pitch business ideas on how you can help to provide better value for money in the delivery of Government’s business… The best ideas will be handpicked by a community of civil servants and, after intensive mentoring from some of Britain’s foremost entrepreneurs, those that demonstrate the highest impact will be invited to present their ideas at a Product Surgery in the summer.  This will stimulate new, open competitions in Government markets in which these suppliers will be able to participate.’ None of which seems to guarantee any business, but anyway.

    Coming on the same day, these two initiatives – both sitting somewhere between the public and private sector – certainly point to a different way of doing things, and (I suppose) make tangible Cameron’s notion of an enterprise-led recovery. Both are backed by names with good track records in this sort of thing, so certainly worth keeping an eye on. But do either of them fill me with inspiration? To be honest… no, not yet.

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    £10m/year for government web innovation

    banknote
    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.

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    Web 2.0 is just so 2008

    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?

    • Optimised presentation on mobile devices, specifically the iPod Touch / iPhone (for now)… and as I’ve mentioned before, on games consoles like the Wii. By September last year, there were 3.6m Wiis in UK hands; and it’s been another big Christmas for Wiis. That’s a lot of internet-ready devices in a lot of UK living rooms.
    • High definition video. We’re starting to see HD camcorders coming in at affordable prices, and YouTube is starting to deliver very high quality versions of uploaded clips. The quality is at least as good as TV, and sometimes I’d say better. I particularly like the look of the Canon SX1 (stills) camera – digital SLR functionality in a consumer product, with the ability to shoot HD video to SD card. £400’s a lot of money, but I’m still tempted.
    • RSS. No, seriously. As an industry, we seem to have given up on mass consumer adoption. Instead, attention seems to be heading into how we can use it to create new sites in their own right, like Steph’s digitalgovuk catalogue or my own OnePolitics; or connect sites seamlessly across different CMSes. I’m even planning to build one site whose homepage will be powered primarily by its own RSS feed (too boring to explain). We need it more than ever, and it still isn’t letting us down.
    • JQuery. I’ve always resisted learning Javascript; it felt like too much of a step towards becoming a full-time developer. But JQuery makes it so ridiculously easy, it’s a crime not to use it. So far, most of my work with it has been invisible, behind-the-scenes stuff. But I’m looking for excuses to go JQuery-crazy.
    • WordPress. Or more accurately, me using WordPress. I’m thinking up more and more clever ways to use it, and it’s almost a case of finding projects where I can squeeze in my new ideas – with or without the client knowing. 🙂 More details as things emerge, naturally.
    • Cost-cutting. Having too much money is almost as bad as not having enough. It’s a magnificent opportunity for open source generally, and for people like myself (forgive me) who can whip up impressive solutions with it. The business cases for buying Big Ugly CMSes and hiring Big Ugly Consultancies will need to be very, very good.
    • But most of all… good, substantial material going online. We’ve done enough trials and experiments to see what works and what doesn’t. Specifically, we’ve got enough examples to show that it won’t work unless you really make an effort. So let’s hope the ascent of Obama, and the prospect (however slim) of a UK general election inspire politicians in government and outside to really get stuck in.

    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.)