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Paul Johnston

London, UK

London-based ex-civil servant now working for Cisco as head of the European public sector team within IBSG, Cisco's global strategic consulting arm. Launched and helped shape this site after writing The Connected Republic 2.0 with my Australian colleague Martin Stewart Weeks. My main non-work interests (apart from my family!) are philosophy, psycho-analysis and tennis.

Recently, Paul Johnston...

  • removed Peer to Peer Finance from the tag Gregory Vincent about 1 year ago.

  • removed New UK Public Sector Group blog from the tag chr about 1 year ago.

  • removed NZ State Services blog from the tag chr about 1 year ago.

  • removed e-Democracy - Alive and Kicking! from the tag chr about 1 year ago.

  • removed Beautiful Pictures of the Blogosphere from the tag chr about 1 year ago.

  • removed Harvesting human feelings from blogs from the tag chr about 1 year ago.

  • removed How do you like it - too wide or too narrow? from the tag chr about 1 year ago.

  • removed How And Why Public Officials Blog from the tag chr about 1 year ago.

  • commented on Creating a Transparent Policy Process over 2 years ago.

    Many thanks, ErDem, for your great comments. Do get in touch and lets discuss how we might move this discussion forward or even test things in practice!

  • uploaded a PDF file: Creating a Transparent Policy Process over 3 years ago.

    The attached 4-page document seeks to identify some of the key elements of an open policy-making process. Very interested in any reactions in particular suggested improvements!

  • commented on Video: John Seddon to Scottish Finance Committee 'When you learn to study & manage value you drive costs out of the system' over 3 years ago.

    not quite as insightful as the previous Seddon video (of him presenting in California) since he does not really get much time to set out his ideas in detail (unless I missed that part!)

  • commented on D over 3 years ago.

    This is an excellent video - the best introduction I have seen to Seddon's thinking and pretty convincing.

  • created Achieving Massive Citizen Involvement in Policy-Making over 3 years ago.

      Today (March 22) UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave a major speech on building Britain’s Digital Future which included a commitment to opening “the door to new ways of enabling people to influence and even decide public policy”. And of course this is also something the Conservative Opposition have committed to. So how do you do it? Well, any new citizen participation platform needs to extremely user-friendly – you need to be able to go there, find the issue y...

  • created a post which has since been deleted. over 3 years ago.

  • commented on An Experiment in Open Government or What a Brave New UK Government Might Do over 3 years ago.

    Certainly, a detailed conversation with anything like 50 mln people is not viable, but I certainly think there is scope for a more structured debate with citizen involvement. That could include allowing voting on packages of options, but personally I would not want to go to direct democracy and simply say "here are 100 possible budget measures; we will take the Y most popular measures subject to the overall budget impact of the different measures adding up to X".

  • created An Experiment in Open Government or What a Brave New UK Government Might Do over 3 years ago.

      Problem statement: Governments have improved consultation processes and experimented with other ways of getting citizens involved in policy-making, but policy-making is still seen as a black box that people feel excluded from. Also despite government efforts to listen more to outside voices including frontline public sector workers, the process of agreeing a change package can encourage a bunker mentality where potential problems (or implementation improvements) are missed in the dri...

  • tagged Transparency and Daily Life with the tag Transparency over 3 years ago.

  • created Transparency and Daily Life over 3 years ago.

    I am a strong advocate of transparent government, but sometimes it can seem very remote from daily life - how much do things like Obama's data.gov really mean to people in the street? Well, the excellent Sunlight Foundation did a blog recently that answers that question really well. The basic theme is what data might be relevant to you as you shop for your Thanksgiving turkey. Here's a sample of the blog, focussing on the main ingredient: Turkey. What are the results of the latest federal sa...

  • commented on Reflections on "Rethinking Lean Service" over 3 years ago.

    I agree with Tim that it is a really interesting podcast. What struck me was his strong argument against command and control and top-down management as opposed to systems-thinking and worker-empowerment. The other huge issue is his attack on standardisation. Orthodoxy is that the key to efficiency (or perhaps more specifically low cost production) is to standardise then optimise. Seddon strongly rejects this idea in services where he thinks standardization hugely increases costs, since the va...

  • commented on Mapping Participatory Budgeting and e-Participatory Budgeting over 3 years ago.

    Great mash-up with lots of information and really showing how widespread participatory budgeting is. I did tried to show it here but ran into the same barriers as you. People will have to go and have a loo, for themselves!

  • commented on eParticipation beyond political topics? over 3 years ago.

    Hi Bengt, interesting post. What are your experience and thoughts on going beyond textual comments. Its great to get lots of people to suggest lots of ideas and/or to participate in a discussion, but it is quite difficult for the output of this process to really impact the decision-making process. What is your experience of creating and using tools that enable citizens to explore issues to do with tradeoffs and conflicting priorities? Do you agree that it is important to find ways of aggregat...

  • created Open Declaration: Mass Participation Phase over 3 years ago.

    We have now finalised the open declaration - you can see the final text here. The next stage is to get as many people as possible to endorse it. The main place we are doing this is via a very simple sign-up site which my collaborator David Osimo created. If you have not done so already, please go to http://www.endorsetheopendeclaration.eu/ and endorse the declaration! We have also created a facebook group, so feel free to join this group and highlight the group to your facebook fri...

  • edited a PDF file: Draft Whitepaper on Obama and Transparency over 3 years ago.

    This is an early version of a whitepaper I am working on about the Obama administration's open government initiatives. I realise that we are all waiting with bated breadth for the transparency directive that is due in the next couple of weeks, but I would be interested in feedback on the paper in the meantime. I do think this year Nobel Peace Prize winner :-) has done a good job in moving the debate forward in this area, but I think there is still plenty to think about and a lot more that nee...

  • commented on Draft Whitepaper on Obama and Transparency over 3 years ago.

    Thanks, Tim. What a mistake! Hope you enjoyed the delib paper - I will switch change the document and upload the right one!! Should be the right one now. 

  • tagged Draft Whitepaper on Obama and Transparency with the tag nobel over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Draft Whitepaper on Obama and Transparency with the tag draftwhitepaper over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Draft Whitepaper on Obama and Transparency with the tag Transparency over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Draft Whitepaper on Obama and Transparency with the tag Obama over 3 years ago.

  • uploaded a PDF file: Draft Whitepaper on Obama and Transparency over 3 years ago.

    This is an early version of a whitepaper I am working on about the Obama administration's open government initiatives. I realise that we are all waiting with bated breadth for the transparency directive that is due in the next couple of weeks, but I would be interested in feedback on the paper in the meantime. I do think this year Nobel Peace Prize winner :-) has done a good job in moving the debate forward in this area, but I think there is still plenty to think about and a lot more that nee...

  • created Public Services 2.0 in Europe - the story continues over 3 years ago.

    David Osimo and I are continuing with our open declaration adventure which is teaching us a great deal while also hopefully have some kind of an impact! We have now got a declaration which I think looks pretty good. It is still open for comments, so feel free to give your reaction in a comment on this blog or on http://eups20.wordpress.com/draft-declaration/ We will also do a more detailed supporting document which I will share here for your input in due course. However, the other issue...

  • created Inky Fingers - the Perils of Collaboration over 3 years ago.

    As part of the European Public Services 2.0 initiative that I am involved in, we used the mixedink tool, but we had quite a few problems. The creators of the tool were very helpful and clearly if we choose it, it was because we (and in particular me) were very impressed with the idea behind it and the way it was developed. You can see the output from the exercise here and my initial comments on that output and next steps here. Interestingly, it looks like we will now move to a conve...

  • commented on Civic Participation made too simple? over 3 years ago.

    Here is something a little bit similar - a UK organisation are trying to get young people more politically through Voicebot:  "Don’t believe visualising data can be exciting? Well then let me tell you about our robot, otherwise known as Voicebot!  The way it works is, you go to the website and answer the question ‘What do you care about?’, and using the wonders of the internet, Voicebot, writes out your answers, word by word on a piece of paper! Al...

  • tagged Civic Participation made too simple? with the tag civic_participation over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Civic Participation made too simple? with the tag US over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Civic Participation made too simple? with the tag twitter over 3 years ago.

  • created Civic Participation made too simple? over 3 years ago.

    It does seem barely possible that civic participation could be made too simple, but that thought certainly arose from a rather cool app I was just alerted to - http://2gov.org/ Basically if you tweet and include the tag @2gov, the app will send your tweet to your local representative. Currently, it seems to be being used mainly to say either that obama's healthcare reforms are great or that they suck. So to what extent will all those messages help anyone? Even rather more meaningful...

  • tagged Can Governments Till the Fields of Innovation? with the tag Innovation over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Pragmatics of opening up government data with the tag Data over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Everything you always wanted to know about social media but were afraid to ask with the tag socialmedia over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Mind the Facebook Gap...blown cover? with the tag socialmedia over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Mind the Facebook Gap...blown cover? with the tag Facebook over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Connected Volunteering with the tag Volunteering over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Power to the Many with the tag Obama over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Power to the Many with the tag e-Democracy over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Power to the Many with the tag Transparency over 3 years ago.

  • tagged NYC Service and the Penny Harvest with the tag Volunteering over 3 years ago.

  • tagged NYC Service and the Penny Harvest with the tag New_York over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Social media is subversive with the tag socialmedia over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Local Govt website of the future? with the tag localgovernment over 3 years ago.

  • tagged 10 sites that take online govt to a new level with the tag Web 2.0 over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Govt 2.0 Briefing Paper with the tag whitepaper over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Govt 2.0 Briefing Paper with the tag Government_2.0 over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Crowdsourcing in Chicago with the tag Chicago over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Crowdsourcing in Chicago with the tag Co-production over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Crowdsourcing in Chicago with the tag crowdsourcing over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Public Sector Futures: Workforce and Workplace Sustainability with the tag workplace over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Public Sector Futures: Workforce and Workplace Sustainability with the tag workforce over 3 years ago.

  • tagged San Francisco data clearing house with the tag San Francisco over 3 years ago.

  • tagged San Francisco data clearing house with the tag Transparency over 3 years ago.

  • tagged San Francisco data clearing house with the tag Data over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Public Services 2.0 with the tag Public_Services2.0 over 3 years ago.

  • removed Public Services 2.0 from the tag p over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Public Services 2.0 with the tag p over 3 years ago.

  • tagged easyCouncil with the tag Public_Services2.0 over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Australia 2020 with the tag Australia over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Australia 2020 with the tag Government_2.0 over 3 years ago.

  • tagged What does Europe need to do to lead the way in Public Services 2.0? with the tag Public_Services2.0 over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Is Co-production the key to Public Services 2.0? with the tag Public_Services2.0 over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Is Co-production the key to Public Services 2.0? with the tag Co-production over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Open Declaration on Public Services 2.0 with the tag Public_Services2.0 over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Running A Political Campaign On A Technology Platform with the tag campaigning over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Transparency in Africa with the tag Kenya over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Transparency in Africa with the tag Africa over 3 years ago.

  • tagged Transparency in Africa with the tag Transparency over 3 years ago.

  • created Transparency in Africa over 3 years ago.

    Thanks to Tiago, I came across the Kenyan budget tracking tool -  a simple but impressive tool for tracking how and where funds are being spent in Kenya. Reflecting the uneveness of internet access, the tool includes a mobile module so that citizens can send a text to point out errors in the information or flag up projects that seem in some way dubious. The tool comes from SODNET, a Kenyan NGO committed to social justice and democracy which seems to operate very much as a distribute...

  • edited a video: Open Declaration on Public Services 2.0 over 3 years ago.

    David Osimo has now done a very useful VOD to explain this initiative aiming to drive Europe more firmly in the direction of Public Services 2.0

  • shared a video: Open Declaration on Public Services 2.0 over 3 years ago.

    David Osimo has now done a very useful VOD to explain this initiative aiming to drive Europe more firmly in the direction of Public Services 2.0

  • created What does Europe need to do to lead the way in Public Services 2.0? over 3 years ago.

    My impression is that we have made huge progress in the last 18 months in terms of the public sector taking on board Web 2.0 approaches and Web 2.0 tools. There have been plenty of great initiatives in Europe and the election of Barack Obama has prompted an impressive upswell of activity in the United States. But (and I am sure you knew there was a but coming) there is still a huge way to go before these new approaches become mainstream. As it happens, the European Union is in the middle of ...

  • created Is Co-production the key to Public Services 2.0? over 3 years ago.

    I was having an interesting discussion last night with colleagues and thought I would share it here. As you may have guessed, we were talking about "co-production". I think what is attractive about this idea is the promise it holds out of radical change - instead of public service being done to us by them (the government), public services would be done jointly. Instead of being subjects (or passive objects) we would be partners. In fact, it is already quite interesting that we feel this way a...

  • commented on Public Services 2.0 over 3 years ago.

    You are right, Martin, it is a great article. I like the strong stress on individual and community self-help and I agree with Charlie that the public sector should be looking to support and encourage these possibilities as in the various examples that he mentions. I do think, however, that a lot of this is going to be complementary to public services rather than a replacement for them. For me, public services 2.0 would be both about public services changing (e.g. through more choice, transpar...

  • created San Francisco data clearing house over 3 years ago.

    Nice new site from San Francisco making its data available. I particularly liked the clear justification for the site - making their data more available, allowing citizens to build innovative apps using their data, getting feedback on the quality of their data and getting input on what other data citizens would like to see the city making available. Good job, sf!

  • created Crowdsourcing in Chicago over 3 years ago.

    I am a great fan of the Goldcorp story (how a Canadian gold company was going broke in 1999, posted all its most confidential mine info on net, challenged people to come up with new mining strategies, and got lots of great answers that helped it recover), so always interested in see the same kind of logic applied in the public sector. I recently saw this great story from Chicago where the Chamber of Commerce offered a $5000 reward for ideas on how to increase ridership on their bus system wil...

  • created 10 sites that take online govt to a new level over 3 years ago.

    My colleague Norm drew my attention to an interesting article with the above title that I have just got round to reading. I think it does show the progress that the public sector has made in grasping the opportunities of the Web including a certain amount of web 2.0. The list gives a good indication of the range of things being done and while I am sure there are plenty of static, uninspiring websites out there, it does show that ideas are being put into practice. I think what this sort of lis...

  • commented on Local Govt website of the future? over 3 years ago.

    Here's another one Brent - a bit more conventional than Westminster and not so good looking, but the find the nearest function seems particularly good. As one commentator pointed out, there is a strong emphasis on getting the citizen as quickly as possible to the information he/she wants in the form that he/she will find most useful.

  • created Local Govt website of the future? over 3 years ago.

    It is nice to see that local authorities have started to experiment with their websites and moved away from the very static sites of old. The pathbreaker in the UK was Redbridge i which went with a Google homepage style with lots of scope for user personalisation. Recently, the london borough of Westminister has got into the act - again with a strong Google influence but this time focussing on search rather than personalisation. What do people think - is this the way to go? Or have you c...

  • commented on Social media is subversive over 3 years ago.

    I like the Colbert/NASA story with NASA's efforts to allow the public to name a node/room on the new space station rather derailed by Colbert fans who voted en masse for it to be named Colbert. Amusing but indicative of something !

  • commented on Next Steps on the Road to Influencing European Governments over 3 years ago.

    I am fairly pragmatic about both the issues you raise. Manifestos are not the answer to life, but if they can help move things forward, why not? Similarly, it is true that this sort of way of trying to have an impact limits things to tne netarati, but there are a helluva lot of other people influencing things who are not the poor and the downtroden, so us trying to have an impact probably broadens things slightly and also (hopefully) pushes in positive directions. I would be concerned if thes...

  • created Twitter firmly established in Whitehall over 3 years ago.

    I came across this excellent post by Neil Williams, head of corporate digital channels at the UK's new department for Business, Innovation and Skills offering a template strategy for government departments. It is surprisingly long, but really covers all the issues a department should consider as it embraces Twitter. I think it does show that Twitter is now firmly established in Whitehall.

  • commented on Digital Swarming over 3 years ago.

    I am sure we are. What examples did you have in mind ssenator?

  • commented on Serendipity for Online Deliberation? over 3 years ago.

    How interested would the average user be in an inversed tag cloud? If there are 100 ideas to look through and I have only a limited amount of time, surely it makes sense (from my point of view!) that I look at the ideas that are currently most popular and then vote them up or down? Of course, this distorts the process but to some extent that is desireable (people don't waste time on the worst suggestions) and it certainly helps the user! If I see an inversed tag cloud, why should I look at th...

  • shared a video: Power to the Many over 3 years ago.

    Interesting video from Beth Noveck, now in the Obama Administration.

  • created Next Steps on the Road to Influencing European Governments over 3 years ago.

    A group of us are drafting a manifesto on open and transparent government which we will encourage European governments to adopt at the Ministerial egovernment conference in Malmo on Nov 21 and 22. The idea (now) is to draft a short manifesto on mixedink, supplement it with a more detailed document generated via a wiki and then use Facebook or some other mechanism to secure endorsement of the manifesto from as many people as possible. If you want to help us draft the manifesto, please contribu...

  • created Connected Volunteering over 3 years ago.

    Very late on this one, but better late than never. Another good initiative from Obama administration - http://www.serve.gov/ This certainly underlines the huge potential for using the internet for making it much easier for people to do good. Someone suggested to me at a recent event the idea of a website that offered real-time volunteering - what I mean is if you find yourself with a spare hour or two, you could go to a website and find a local organisation that could use a hand for...

  • commented on Economy of Scale - It's a myth! over 3 years ago.

    I finally got round to watching this video and it was worth it. I don't like the slightly cult-like way that the message is presented or the I-am-totally-right and everyone else is totally wrong way in which John Seddon presents his ideas, but it is always good to hear a challenge to orthodoxy and the basis of his critique is interesting and probably has a lot of validity. Here are the key messages as they struck me: its a mistake to try to make a clear split between the front office and...

  • commented on Serendipity and inversed tag clouds over 3 years ago.

    It is an interesting idea, but how much do people value serendipity? And in some contexts won't it mean that you get pointed towards the least interesting rather than the most interesting? There must be contexts where this would not matter, but its a question of thinking of them! Perhaps where you know that all the entries are of a certain standard it would be worth knowing which have been least looked at or where the most popular ones are likely for that reason to be less interesting. One po...

  • edited a PDF file: Everything you always wanted to know about social media but were afraid to ask over 3 years ago.

    This is a great document that has been produced by a Cisco colleague while she was working for NetHope. It is aimed at NGOs but I think most public sector organisations would probably also learn a lot from it. Its also probably a great document to find out someone who wants to get to the bottom of what social media is about.

  • uploaded a PDF file: Everything you always wanted to know about social media but were afraid to ask over 3 years ago.

    This is a great document that has been produced by a Cisco colleague while she was working for NetHope. It is aimed at NGOs but I think most public sector organisations would probably also learn a lot from it. Its also probably a great document to find out someone who wants to get to the bottom of what social media is about.

  • tagged Public Services 2.0 - An Open Declaration for Europe with the tag eups20 over 4 years ago.

  • created Public Services 2.0 - An Open Declaration for Europe over 4 years ago.

    It has been truly impressive to see the way that the Obama administration has galvanised the debate in the U.S. about how the Web can help improve government and public services more generally. It would be great to see a similar wave of activity in Europe to build on some of the great stuff that has already happened here (and where we may even have been a bit ahead of our American cousins at least some of the time!). In an attempt to contribute to that goal David Osimo and I have launched...

  • commented on Community Self-Moderation over 4 years ago.

    Tks, Tim, and there is lots of fantastic stuff on your blog that I would encourage people to check. In my post I meant voting rather than flagging - that there has been lots of flagging and removing is a little disappointing; what I was hoping was that the voting would have been a bit more active!! PS If you want to do a post to tell us a bit more about Zilino - what it does and how it is going - that would be great.

  • created Community Self-Moderation over 4 years ago.

    One of the challenges of Web 2.0 for the public sector is the fear of being overwhelmed with input, not all of which will be well meant and which in any event will be extremely resource intensive to deal with. A couple of recent examples gave me a sense that we are being to tackle this issue. 1) the Peer to Patent process is based on creating user-teams around a patent application with this self-organising group discussing the application as a group before producing an output for the public ...

  • tagged Public Services Summit with the tag nobel over 4 years ago.

  • shared a video: Public Services Summit over 4 years ago.

    Here is a short video about the annual Public Services Summit that Cisco hosts with the City of Stockholm on Dec 9 and Dec 10 in Stockholm and Oslo during the Nobel Festivities.

  • commented on Australia's eGovt awards over 4 years ago.

    Let me have a go at playing devil's advocate! Take a great initiative such as http://www.fixmystreet.com/. It was created three or four years ago and it was a fabulous idea, but is it a success? I haven't got the usage statistics, but my impression is that it has stalled at a pretty low level of usage. Where will it be in five years time? Probably just seen as a great pioneering project that never got taken up. Now you can certainly blame existing agencies for this and in order for fixmy...

  • commented on Minimising Spam in the Connected Republic over 4 years ago.

    Many thanks, Craig. We have probably been lucky that we have not had too much spam over the last two years, but now we have had two large attacks in four days, so clearly we need to do something. The first thing we will do is have a delete user button that is available to the admins as well as the website designer/creator. That should mean that all spam will go down in hours at worst. But as you suggest we are also planning to force new members to have their first post/comment moderated befor...

  • created Winners of Sunlight's Apps for America Competition over 4 years ago.

    Just spotted this today - the announcement of the winners of the Sunlight Foundation's Apps for America competition. There are some great apps in here - the overall winner Filibusted seemed a bit partisan to me, but I liked Legistalker that lets you track what US politicians are up to online. A really witty and interesting one is Hello Congress which offers every US legislator (Senator or representative) a new service - citizen-sourced research and views on priorities. Its a fantastic idea an...

  • created The Fourfold Uses of Social Media over 4 years ago.

    Thanks to Norm, I came across an interesting US article on social media and national security - http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20090415_8127.php What particularly caught my attention was the fourfold classification of the use of social media - 1) inward sharing (sharing information within an organisation) 2) outward sharing (sharing between organisations) 3) inbound sharing (obtaining information from outside the organisation) 4) outbound sharing (sharing information with those o...

  • tagged Five Technologies Tim O'Reilly Says Point Past Web 2.0 with the tag technology over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The LGA group is set to launch a new service that will help councillors to use social media to keep in touch with local residents with the tag localgovt over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The LGA group is set to launch a new service that will help councillors to use social media to keep in touch with local residents with the tag web2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Systems thinking in the U.S. Public Sector with the tag systemthinking over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Systems Thinking and the Case Against Benchmarking with the tag systemthinking over 4 years ago.

  • removed Web 2.0 and the Public Sector from the tag IBSGWhitepaper over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Web 2.0 and the Public Sector with the tag IBSGdraft over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Government 2.0 whitepaper with the tag IBSGWhitepaper over 4 years ago.

  • uploaded a PDF file: Government 2.0 whitepaper over 4 years ago.

    This is the final version of the whitepaper on Government 2.0. Thanks for all the feedback which helped enrich this document. Please share freely.

  • removed Draft Whitepaper on Government 2.0 from the tag IBSGWhitepaper over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Draft Whitepaper on Government 2.0 with the tag IBSGdraft over 4 years ago.

  • removed Age: Why grey is the new green from the tag IBSGWhitepaper over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Age: Why grey is the new green with the tag IBSGdraft over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Ageing well in a connected world (Point of view) with the tag IBSGWhitepaper over 4 years ago.

  • removed Trust Clouds from the tag IBSG whitepaper over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Trust Clouds with the tag IBSGWhitepaper over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Trust Clouds with the tag IBSG whitepaper over 4 years ago.

  • uploaded a PDF file: Trust Clouds over 4 years ago.

    This is a whitepaper that my colleague Jeff Frazier wrote with the CEO of Swan Networks Charles Jennings. Its about Web 2.0 and public safety and how information flows are likely to have to start working in new ways if we are to grasp the opportunities of the Connected World.

  • removed Ageing well in a connected world (Point of view) from the tag ageing well over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Ageing well in a connected world (Point of view) with the tag ageing well over 4 years ago.

  • shared a video: The Best Ideas are Simple over 4 years ago.

    It started as a great idea from my boss Simon Willis and it's been taken forward with great enthusiasm by a huge range of people from former Portuguese President Jorge Sampaio to groups of students in New York, Istanbul and London. I am talking about dialogue cafe - launched today at the Alliance of the Civilisations conference in Istanbul. Have a look at the site and particularly the video!

  • shared a video: The Terrible Truth about Twitter over 4 years ago.

    Ok, so perhaps this video does not get it absolutely right. But its fun! Have a good weekend. Here is the link http://current.com/items/89891774/twouble_with_twitters.htm

  • created G20 Voice - Bloggers try to grab a slice of the action over 4 years ago.

    As you may or may not have noticed, London is playing host to the G20 (and a few protesters). An event like this obviously means masses of media and apparently there is a weird warehouse for media reps where they are all being held in safe isolation. The good news is that a group of 50 bloggers have been allowed into the media warehouse and are giving their non-professional perspective. You can follow them on twitter here and presumably all over the place in blogosphere (google G20 voice). A...

  • tagged The Eight Rungs of Citizen Participation with the tag citizen empowerment over 4 years ago.

  • created The Eight Rungs of Citizen Participation over 4 years ago.

    Tks to Dave, I have just read a great article written in 1969 (!) about citizen participation. Unsurprisingly, it is not about online participation, but nonetheless it is an interesting and useful framework. The ladder looks like this: I was initially a bit worried to see consultation labelled as tokenism, but the article convincingly explains that traditional forms of consultation (public meetings, surveys etc) do not really empower citizens - they are only a step towards citizen empowerm...

  • tagged Engineering a Better Town Hall with the tag citizen empowerment over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Engineering a Better Town Hall with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • created Engineering a Better Town Hall over 4 years ago.

    The Berkman Centre's Gene Koo had some great reflections on Obama's Open for Questions in a recent blog which I reproduce below. Its great watching the new US administration try things since even when they don't work perfectly they certain push forward the debate. I reckon all these ideas have moved forward faster in the last three months than in the preceding three years! Engineering a better virtual town hall Gene Koo | March 27, 2009  President Obama and his new media team are r...

  • uploaded a PDF file: Crowdsourcing e-Democracy over 4 years ago.

    Steven Clift did a nice job of crowdsourcing some great e-democracy examples for a talk he recently gave. You can see the whole presentation here. Or look at the attached pdf which just shows all the examples that members of a mailer sent into him. It really shows there is lots of creativity and uptake out there even if what we are looking at currently is just the early adopters!

  • tagged HackingCongress with the tag US over 4 years ago.

  • tagged HackingCongress with the tag citizen participation over 4 years ago.

  • commented on HackingCongress over 4 years ago.

    In the Uk we had an interesting event along these lines recently called Hack the Government Day. It was a lively session and seems to have generated some interesting ideas, see http://rewiredstate.org/

  • tagged Ask the President - Raising or Lowering the Debate? with the tag Media over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Ask the President - Raising or Lowering the Debate? with the tag Transparency over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Ask the President - Raising or Lowering the Debate? with the tag US over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Ask the President - Raising or Lowering the Debate? with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Ask the President - Raising or Lowering the Debate? with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • created Ask the President - Raising or Lowering the Debate? over 4 years ago.

    Thanks to Norm, I came across the new Ask the President site that Community Counts are hosting and a range of media organisations including the Nation and the Washington Times are supporting. The idea is to bring a new voice to traditional Presidential news conferences by allowing citizens questions pulled from the net and voted on by citizens. Its a great site and very easy to get involved since you can vote without logging in. Obviously that means that non-US citizens like me can vote (and ...

  • created Transparent Processes - Seoul Leads the Way over 4 years ago.

    I have heard people talking about how the City of Seoul used transparency to tackle the problem of corruption, but thanks to Steven Clift I finally came across the URL Its a great story about taking lots of processes and enabling them all to be done electronically and fully out in the open - so when your application goes in, you (and everyone else) can see where it is in the process and which official is currently looking at. Applications that shoot through the processes much faster than...

  • tagged The World grows a Planetary Skin with the tag Sustainability over 4 years ago.

  • commented on The Price of Transparency over 4 years ago.

    sounds great. be really interested for you to share any good or interesting examples of projects doing this as you come across them. tks for your participation. Paul

  • commented on The Price of Transparency over 4 years ago.

    Paul - we probably don't disagree as much as it might seem. I absolutely agree that it is really difficult to get people involved and that the easiest people to get involved are not necessarily the people you most want to get involved and certainly not the only ones you want to get involved! But my answer to that would be that we need to try to find ways of making easier and more attractive to get people involved, so that we can beyond those most likely to respond. Obviously small vociferous...

  • removed Mumbai hostage network from the tag publicsafety over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Mumbai hostage network with the tag public safety over 4 years ago.

  • removed Koln's Successful Participatory Budget Experiment from the tag Participatory Budgeting over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Koln's Successful Participatory Budget Experiment with the tag ParticipatoryBudgeting over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Directory of Online Budget Simulators / Games with the tag useful list over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Social Media Policy examples with the tag useful list over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Social Media Policy examples with the tag social media over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The Internet is the enemy with the tag free speech over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The Internet is the enemy with the tag e-Democracy over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The Internet is the enemy with the tag Internet over 4 years ago.

  • tagged "The source of America's prosperity has never been merely how ably we accumulate wealth, but how well we educate our people": Obama's remarks on education reform with the tag economic growth over 4 years ago.

  • tagged "The source of America's prosperity has never been merely how ably we accumulate wealth, but how well we educate our people": Obama's remarks on education reform with the tag Education over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Fit for purpose..the machine is broken with the tag governmentmachine over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Fit for purpose..the machine is broken with the tag UK over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Fit for purpose..the machine is broken with the tag publicservice over 4 years ago.

  • tagged A Touch of Classics on Collaboration with the tag Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  • commented on NZ justice system utilises facebook over 4 years ago.

    great story!

  • tagged NZ justice system utilises facebook with the tag NZ over 4 years ago.

  • tagged NZ justice system utilises facebook with the tag Facebook over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web with the tag W3C over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web with the tag Transparency over 4 years ago.

  • tagged "Placing power in the hands of those who use our public services": UK's new policy embraces open government with the tag Transparency over 4 years ago.

  • tagged "Placing power in the hands of those who use our public services": UK's new policy embraces open government with the tag UK over 4 years ago.

  • tagged "Placing power in the hands of those who use our public services": UK's new policy embraces open government with the tag empowerment over 4 years ago.

  • commented on "Placing power in the hands of those who use our public services": UK's new policy embraces open government over 4 years ago.

    This is a fascinating document. The rhetoric is great and it contains many good proposals, but there are one or two things I find strange. One is the tendency to want to build aspirations into law, e.g. the government's commitment to eliminate child poverty by 2020 will be enshrined in law. Why on earth would someone do this? And what real impact will it have? Another interesting feature of the document is that much of the talk of citizen empowerment is not really about empowering citizens it...

  • commented on The Price of Transparency over 4 years ago.

    Paul - I am sure you have more direct experience of this than me, but I would disagree. I do think Web 2.0 can involve people in local politics who might not otherwise have got involved and I do think this is likely to be a good thing, even if the additional people brought into the process are not representative of the whole population. My impression is that a highly limited group of people are currently involved in much local politics and that this can have extremely negative impacts. I woul...

  • tagged The Price of Transparency with the tag US over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The Price of Transparency with the tag Transparency over 4 years ago.

  • commented on Improving Access to Government through Better Use of the Web over 4 years ago.

    Allan - At the moment any comment has two impacts: 1) the comment appears as an activity in the activity stream on the home page 2) the item moves to the top of the discussion list on the discussion page (so on that paper items are ordered in terms of latest activity including either creation or commenting). Furthermore, people can tag and then find things via tag (or find them via an individual if they see someone as a particularly valuable contributor and want to follow that person's ac...

  • commented on Vote for your Park: nothing but a bad idea? over 4 years ago.

    Tks, Tiago. It would be interesting to see a more detailed breakdown of the voting and hopefully someone will do an analysis of what the winners have in common. My local park (Crane Park) won in the South West competition, but it is hard to assess whether that is the best public outcome or not!

  • commented on Fit for purpose..the machine is broken over 4 years ago.

    My first reaction to this report (as an ex-civil servant!!) was that knocking the government and the civil service is just an easy way to grab headlines and look radical. Rather than engaging with the real difficulties of the situation, you just tap into people's discontent with the status quo and claim that your proposals are the answer. Which is more fit for purpose the civil service or private sector finance companies? Or even the civil service or political parties/think-tanks? So the rhe...

  • commented on The Internet is the enemy over 4 years ago.

    This is certainly a problem, but like most problems can I think be overstated. I visit lots of places on the web where all sorts of interesting conversations are taking place in very civilised ways. Like at how constructively people responded to the Power of Information review. Or how most good blogs do get reasonable discussions. I read the BBC political editor's blog and he does often get what seems to me to be uninformed comments sometimes fairly abusive and from people with axes to grind ...

  • tagged EU Profiler: voting advice application for the 2009 EP elections with the tag Europe over 4 years ago.

  • tagged EU Profiler: voting advice application for the 2009 EP elections with the tag voting over 4 years ago.

  • uploaded a PDF file: The Case for Open Government over 4 years ago.

    Truly excellent presentation by Jennifer Bell from Canada's Visible Government group - wow - if only my presentations were half as good! The only consolation is that share a very similar agenda!

  • created Final version of UK's Power of Information Taskforce over 4 years ago.

    Great to see the final version of the Power of Information Taskforce report finally hit the airwaves - http://poit.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/poit/ And of course they have added some more innovative with a Netvibes dashboard to help people follow discussions of the report.  http://www.netvibes.com/cabinetoffice#Power_of_Information_Taskforce  Great job - many congratulations to Richard, William and everyone else involved. #poit

  • created The World grows a Planetary Skin over 4 years ago.

    I couldn't resist sharing this great initiative some of my colleagues have been working on with NASA - its an attempt to create a planetary skin for the world that will monitor carbon emissions and provide useable information so that we will no longer be flying blind in relation to the environmental impacts of the decisions we are all making one way or another each day. Have a look at the video and you will get a sense of what it is all about http://www.planetaryskin.org/content/resource...

  • commented on Who should run the U.S.? over 4 years ago.

    Jim - my apologies for letting my rhetoric run away with me and for going over the top! I think you have created a great site and I do think it will contribute towards transparent governance, which like you I really support. I also think you have managed to generate an impressive level of intelligent debate on your site. I suppose what I was reacting against the vague implication that if only democracy was run directly by thousands of people on the internet, all our problems would be over. I ...

  • commented on How do you stop Collaboration from being the Cinderella? over 4 years ago.

    Tiago - I haven't (yet!) developed a full methodology, but the sort of things you would presumably look at might include: delays in processes caused by waiting for someone to respond; time wasted in tracking down and getting in touch with the right person; degree to which stakeholders felt that they were able (and easily able) to get input from all those they needed input from; degree to which stakeholders felt that there were able (and easily able) to input into the work of others etc. 

  • tagged How do you stop Collaboration from being the Cinderella? with the tag Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  • created How do you stop Collaboration from being the Cinderella? over 4 years ago.

    Gerald did a great post recently on Collaboration and we are all convinced of the huge potential for improving collaboration within all kinds of organisations whether they are public sector or private sector. The problem is that collaboration is everyone's problem and no one's problem. Ask anyone whether collaboration could be improved in their organisation and the chances are that they will agree that it could be, but its like a background ache rather than a burning pain and it is very easy ...

  • commented on The Age of Internet Politics over 4 years ago.

    yes, it is an interesting discussion (although it starts a bit slow). Highlights for me: Obama beat McCain by 120 mln to 25 mln in terms of YouTube views, but much more importantly the official campaign videos were only 10% of all the YouTube videos that mentioned the election - they totalled 1.5 billion!! Obama made particularly good use of targeted ads on Facebook - rather down to people with a particular education background, interests/hobbies etc Data-driven canvassing - really max...

  • tagged The Age of Internet Politics with the tag Government2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Peer to Peer Finance with the tag Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Digital Engagment - which role do you fill? with the tag Participation over 4 years ago.

  • removed President Obama's New Virtual Community Created to Shape his Open Government Directive from the tag obam over 4 years ago.

  • tagged President Obama's New Virtual Community Created to Shape his Open Government Directive with the tag Transparency over 4 years ago.

  • tagged President Obama's New Virtual Community Created to Shape his Open Government Directive with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • tagged President Obama's New Virtual Community Created to Shape his Open Government Directive with the tag obam over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Campaigning 2.0 with the tag politics over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Campaigning 2.0 with the tag UK over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Koln's Successful Participatory Budget Experiment with the tag e-Democracy over 4 years ago.

  • tagged LocalGovCamp with the tag UK over 4 years ago.

  • tagged LocalGovCamp with the tag localgovt over 4 years ago.

  • tagged LittleSis -- The Sousveillance Website with the tag Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  • tagged LittleSis -- The Sousveillance Website with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged LittleSis -- The Sousveillance Website with the tag e-Democracy over 4 years ago.

  • tagged LittleSis -- The Sousveillance Website with the tag public safety over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Who's in charge? with the tag e-Democracy over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Who's in charge? with the tag Participation over 4 years ago.

  • tagged O'Reilly on Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing with the tag Cloud Computing over 4 years ago.

  • tagged O'Reilly on Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged How And Why Public Officials Blog with the tag video over 4 years ago.

  • tagged How And Why Public Officials Blog with the tag US over 4 years ago.

  • tagged How And Why Public Officials Blog with the tag chr over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Discussion: eParticipation in Europe with the tag Europe over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Discussion: eParticipation in Europe with the tag e-Democracy over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Discussion: eParticipation in Europe with the tag Consultation over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Discussion: eParticipation in Europe with the tag Participation over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Who should run the U.S.? with the tag Consultation over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Who should run the U.S.? with the tag Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Who should run the U.S.? with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Who should run the U.S.? with the tag US over 4 years ago.

  • created Who should run the U.S.? over 4 years ago.

    Here's another interesting one from the techno-democrats - I don't mean President Obama's team but rather those who like the idea of marrying technology and direct democracy. This time it is in the US and it looks like a good platform - http://whitehouse2.org/ I still think, however, that it is going in the wrong direction - the point is to transform our democracy, not to pretend it does not already exist! In my view the value of this kind of thing is that it increases pressure on g...

  • commented on Discussion: eParticipation in Europe over 4 years ago.

    Thanks, Rolf. I went in and added an idea. It looks an interesting project, although I did find it a little bit confusing. I imagine it will get easier to understand as more people get involved! I will try to follow what is going on and hope other people from this site will also get involved. (Maybe you can update us as the project moves quickly through its three stages).

  • commented on How And Why Public Officials Blog over 4 years ago.

    Norm - I love the video: a very clear statement from an important public sector official on why blogging has value for him! tks for sharing. Paul

  • created O'Reilly on Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing over 4 years ago.

    Tim 0'Reilly seems a deeply thoughtful guy to me, so when I came across a post by him on Web 2.0 and Cloud Computing, I of course loved it. http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/10/web-20-and-cloud-computing.html#definitions I like his definitions of the three different types of cloud computing and his suggestion that the next IT giant will be the company that creates a service that best harnesses network effects to get better the more people use it. Its not very clear (to me!) quite what h...

  • tagged Koln's Successful Participatory Budget Experiment with the tag Germany over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Koln's Successful Participatory Budget Experiment with the tag Participatory Budgeting over 4 years ago.

  • uploaded a PDF file: Koln's Successful Participatory Budget Experiment over 4 years ago.

    My colleague Willi shared with me a great presentation about Koln's interesting experiment in participatory budgeting and since I know many of you are interested in this topic I thought I would share it more widely. I hope you enjoy it!

  • created Digital Engagment - which role do you fill? over 4 years ago.

    Steph has done an interesting and amusing analysis of the different types of people who might be involved in digital engagement. As Jack of all trades and master of none, I somewhat surprisingly favour muddling through with individuals filling different roles at different times, but Steph's analysis is worth looking at - I particularly liked the most likely to say section on each slide. http://blog.helpfultechnology.com/2009/02/defining-the-roles-within-digital-engagement/

  • created a post which has since been deleted. over 4 years ago.

  • commented on Who's in charge? over 4 years ago.

    A thought-provoking video by an interesting Irish man standing-for-election but as a direct techno-democrat. I had a variety of reactions: 1) Its great that he taking the initiative and doing stuff! 2) The United Minds forum concept is interesting and the video fun and lively. 3) There is quite a lot I liked and/or agreed with in the video, but it does illustrate how easy it is to be negative and blame THEM for everything! Unfortunately seems a bit facile/unfair! 4) It's nice to think...

  • shared a video: Who's in charge? over 4 years ago.

  • created Campaigning 2.0 over 4 years ago.

    Dave has a great post looking at a specific political campaign (the Conservative "Honest Food" campaign) and suggesting how it could be improved to be more in the spirit of Web 2.0 and really give people a chance to interact (and make it fun). Dave's points and suggestions are quite general and I think they would apply to any public sector organisation trying to build interest and activity just as much as to political campaigners. In either case the underlying message is: if you want to get p...

  • tagged When Desperate Times Call for Participatory Measures with the tag engagement over 4 years ago.

  • tagged When Desperate Times Call for Participatory Measures with the tag US over 4 years ago.

  • tagged When Desperate Times Call for Participatory Measures with the tag ParticipatoryBudgeting over 4 years ago.

  • commented on When Desperate Times Call for Participatory Measures over 4 years ago.

    It seems to me that there are a wide variety of reasons why these US bodies are doing this kind of thing: 1) windowdressing/publicity - it doesn't cost much to do this kind of thing, so why not? 2) idea-generation - we need all the budget-improving ideas we can get, so maybe citizens have some we have not thought of? 3) support-building - we need to reduce opposition to budget cuts, so lets see if we can get citizens involved in the process so there is less opposition and complaining 4) s...

  • commented on Collaboration Has Become the Building Block for Productivity and Growth in Government over 4 years ago.

    Diagoal, I am glad you liked Gerald's post and signed up. From your blog it looks like you are interested in collaboration between citizens and public sector organisations, while I think Gerald is probably more focussed on collaboration within public sector organisations and between them. But I suppose collaboration is pretty important in all directions!

  • tagged U.S. follows UK lead on transparency! with the tag UK over 4 years ago.

  • tagged U.S. follows UK lead on transparency! with the tag US over 4 years ago.

  • tagged U.S. follows UK lead on transparency! with the tag Transparency over 4 years ago.

  • tagged U.S. follows UK lead on transparency! with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • created U.S. follows UK lead on transparency! over 4 years ago.

    Ok. I am deliberately being a bit provocative, but its great to see a couple of US organisations creating a site called http://www.showusthedata.org/ where US citizens (and probably anybody) can suggest US federal data sets that should be publically available and people can vote on which ones they think would be most helpfully make public. So its a bit like showusabetterway but with a direct focus on data sets rather than interesting uses of data sets plus use of direct voting to highlight th...

  • commented on Clay and the Wisdom of the Crowd over 4 years ago.

    Many thanks, Tim. For some more great analysis by tim in this area see his blog and in particular his commentary on some of Obama's initiatives via change.gov.

  • created Clay and the Wisdom of the Crowd over 4 years ago.

    Great post by David Wilcox following a lecture that Clay Shirky gave at the ICA in London. Dave explains that Clay confessed to not believing that the crowd is always wise. Interestingly, one of the things that prompted him to make this point was how the Citizens Briefing Book that I have mentioned before was hijacked by campaigners for the legalisation of marijuana. So Clay suggests that mass online participation will not always work well because special interests groups will often hijack it...

  • tagged UK Weather - Snow Problem for Twitter with the tag Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  • tagged UK Weather - Snow Problem for Twitter with the tag UK over 4 years ago.

  • tagged UK Weather - Snow Problem for Twitter with the tag twitter over 4 years ago.

  • shared a video: UK Weather - Snow Problem for Twitter over 4 years ago.

    Great example of the power of crowd-sourcing. Last Sunday someone had the idea of using twitter to gather data on where it was snowing in the UK. So people who twitter were asked to send a message of the following kind: #uksnow tw12 5, i.e. the hashtag uksnow followed by the first three elements of their postcode followed by the amount of snow on a scale from 0-10. And then someone made a video of the result! Impressive and another good illustration of how things are going. For me info see h...

  • commented on Collaboration Has Become the Building Block for Productivity and Growth in Government over 4 years ago.

    I am a great fan of presence - the ability to know who is online and how best to contact them - and think there are lots of applications in the public sector - from being able to query what some case notes meant with the person who actually wrote them to a social worker having a quick word with the last co-worker who had contact with a particular family just before a visit to them. The two most obvious barriers are: 1) even more information overload - how do I focus when people are constantl...

  • tagged One day everything will be mashed! with the tag telepresence over 4 years ago.

  • tagged One day everything will be mashed! with the tag cisco over 4 years ago.

  • tagged One day everything will be mashed! with the tag Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  • created One day everything will be mashed! over 4 years ago.

    I couldn't resist sharng this - it's a mashup of all the cisco offices where we have installed a telepresence suite to enable virtual face-to-face meetings: TPgooglemashup. I think it is interesting for two reasons: a) it shows the extent to which one company has invested in moving away from travel towards virtual meetings b) it just reinforces the fact that more or more we will expect everything to be available in this sort of mash-up.

  • tagged Web 2.0 and the Public Sector with the tag IBSGWhitepaper over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Amsterdam going ahead with Open Access FttH model with the tag broadband over 4 years ago.

  • commented on Post-Bar Camp reflections on engagement over 4 years ago.

    Here is an example of how not to do it. http://charterconsultation.hmrc.gov.uk/ What didn't I like: a) you had to start by giving them lots of info about yourself before you can give your opinion - I recognise that for them this is useful info, but it is not what I wanted to spend the first three minutes of my engagement with them doing. In fact, it was rather ironic - they took all the worst aspects of interacting with the tax dept and mirrored them in their online engagement form! b) when...

  • commented on US citizens monitor stimulus plans over 4 years ago.

    Thanks, Russell. Its fascinating to see the US really leading the way in this debate ever since they got their new leader. As you might expect, President Obama has announced that there will be an official site with all details of stimulus package spending - it is called http://www.recovery.gov/ but is just a shell at the moment. Its probably quite good that there is also a non-official site!

  • tagged US citizens monitor stimulus plans with the tag Transparency over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Public Service Summit Presentations/Videos with the tag nobel over 4 years ago.

  • created Public Service Summit Presentations/Videos over 4 years ago.

    Just is just to let people know that we have now posted videos of all the plenary speaker presentations at the Public Services Summit in December. Hopefully many of those who attended will be interested in viewing their favourite and those who did not attend might also be interested in having a look. I wouldn't want to offend anyone by saying which my personal favourite was, but the highest ranked according to attendee feedback were: Carlotta Perez on the role of state and markets in shaping...

  • tagged Comments are Us with the tag TheConnectedRepublic over 4 years ago.

  • created Comments are Us over 4 years ago.

    Tim has made some further improvements to the site in order to encourage people to comment, so you will now see a nice little box on the right hand column, indicating who has commented on a post (if anyone has) and showing their avatar (if they have one). We are keen to get people involved and encourage more dialogue, so if reading something provokes any kind of thought in you, do please share it with other people. Also if of course if you have any good ideas on how we can better encourage or...

  • tagged Post-Bar Camp reflections on engagement with the tag Transparency over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Post-Bar Camp reflections on engagement with the tag Consultation over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Post-Bar Camp reflections on engagement with the tag engagement over 4 years ago.

  • created Post-Bar Camp reflections on engagement over 4 years ago.

    On Saturday I attended the second UKgov web barcamp #ukgc09, met lots of great people and heard lots of interesting stuff. Steph Gray (from DIUS) and I ran a session on consultation/engagement which was interesting although in one hour we only scratched the surface. Anyway below are some of the ideas the discussions suggested for me:1)    my idea for the X (internal) (the department/council etc) - a site open to all staff (and possibly partners?) where people can make suggestio...

  • created beta version of power of information draft report over 4 years ago.

    The UK power of information draft report is now up at http://poit.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/poit/. Apparently it is in beta form for the next two weeks - so there is plenty of opportunity to comment on what the taskforce say and so influence their final report. From a quick glance it looks like they are getting a lot of useful, helpful comments. It helps that they have a very supportive group of people following their work outside government but it does show how well this form of consultation can ...

  • commented on Social Media 2009 - time to grow up over 4 years ago.

    I think the most interesting development in this area is likely to be platforms that make it easier to pull together all the different networks people get involved in. Potentially this will hollow out a lot of the main existing platforms, e.g. I will stop going to Facebook and just have a place where all of the inputs from my different networks (Facebook, Ning, Linkedin, Twitter, etc) are pulled together. It seems to me that the biggest problem for people today is the fragmentation of places ...

  • tagged Insurgent parents - scary stuff? with the tag Education over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Social Media 2009 - time to grow up with the tag social media over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Targets are inevitably counterproductive with the tag UK over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Targets are inevitably counterproductive with the tag management over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Targets are inevitably counterproductive with the tag Efficiency over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Targets are inevitably counterproductive with the tag targets over 4 years ago.

  • edited Targets are inevitably counterproductive over 4 years ago.

    Thanks to Public Strategy, I came across an interesting article by John Seddon on Avoiding Avoidable Contact. The article is a vigorous attack on the UK Cabinet Office for putting out new guidance on how government bodies should set targets for reducing avoidable contact (contact with the public that does not generate real value, e.g. enquiries about what an official letter meant or when a query is going to be dealt with etc). One key element of the attack is a general rejection of the UK gov...

  • created Targets are inevitably counterproductive over 4 years ago.

    Thanks to Public Strategy, I came across an interesting article by John Seddon on Avoiding Avoidable Contact. The article is a vigorous attack on the UK Cabinet Office for putting out new guidance on how government bodies should set targets for reducing avoidable contact (contact with the public that does not generate real value, e.g. enquiries about what an official letter meant or when a query is going to be dealt with etc). One key element of the attack is a general rejection of the UK gov...

  • tagged Second Life a must for planners? with the tag planning over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Second Life a must for planners? with the tag localgovt over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Second Life a must for planners? with the tag secondlife over 4 years ago.

  • created Second Life a must for planners? over 4 years ago.

    I am a bit of a sceptic about Second Life, but even I recognise that it has huge value for any public body that is planning a new building or redesigning an area. Thanks to Dave Briggs, I came across this useful summary of Birmingham's use of virtual worlds for just these planning processes - http://ideaperformance.com/2009/01/27/birmingham-and-second-life/

  • tagged Let’s keep our head on: second thoughts on France‘s recovery plan with the tag economic recovery over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Let’s keep our head on: second thoughts on France‘s recovery plan with the tag broadband over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The Power of IP Video with the tag cisco over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The Power of IP Video with the tag video over 4 years ago.

  • commented on Giving Citizens an Effective Voice over 4 years ago.

    A valid point. I am not proposing that any of the voting is decisive, i.e. it would still be up to the politicians to decide what they thought was best after the results of any consultation exercise and of course any exercise is likely only to involve a small percentage of those who might be affected. Nonetheless you are absolutely right that any result is pretty worthless for politicians if they have no sense of who was involved (or whether they were humans or web robots!). So I agree you wo...

  • edited Giving Citizens an Effective Voice over 4 years ago.

    At Saturday’s UKgovtweb barcamp I am hoping to run a session on consultation with the UK Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills’s Steph Gray. He will bring a wealth of experience in relation to innovation consultations. I will bring one of my current obsessions – how do you aggregate citizen input into public sector consultations? With the best will in the world ministers and civil servants face an impossible task in trying to “take onboard” hundreds ...

  • removed Giving Citizens an Effective Voice from the tag Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Giving Citizens an Effective Voice with the tag Consultation over 4 years ago.

  • edited Mass Citizen Input over 4 years ago.

    Now Obama is President the Change.gov site is now longer active and vistors are encouraged instead to go to the official whitehouse site. However, it is still (at the moment I write this) possible to look at the interesting experiment on mass citizen input which was the citizen briefing book. This enabled citizens to input ideas and comment on and vote up or down the suggestions of others. The most popular suggestions make interesting reading: 92970 points for ending marijuana prohibition 7...

  • tagged Giving Citizens an Effective Voice with the tag Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  • edited Giving Citizens an Effective Voice over 4 years ago.

    At Saturday’s UKgovtweb barcamp I am hoping to run a session on consultation with the UK Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills’s Steph Gray. He will bring a wealth of experience in relation to innovation consultations. I will bring one of my current obsessions – how do you aggregate citizen input into public sector consultations? With the best will in the world ministers and civil servants face an impossible task in trying to “take onboard” hundreds ...

  • edited Giving Citizens an Effective Voice over 4 years ago.

    At Saturday’s UKgovtweb barcamp I am hoping to run a session on consultation with the UK Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills’s Steph Gray. He will bring a wealth of experience in relation to innovation consultations. I will bring one of my current obsessions – how do you aggregate citizen input into public sector consultations? With the best will in the world ministers and civil servants face an impossible task in trying to “take onboard” hundreds ...

  • created Giving Citizens an Effective Voice over 4 years ago.

    At Saturday’s UKgovtweb barcamp I am hoping to run a session on consultation with the UK Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills’s Steph Gray. He will bring a wealth of experience in relation to innovation consultations. I will bring one of my current obsessions – how do you aggregate citizen input into public sector consultations? With the best will in the world ministers and civil servants face an impossible task in trying to “take onboard” hundreds ...

  • tagged Saving young murderers/victims in New Orleans with the tag public safety over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The Art of Public Strategy with the tag mulgan over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Online tracking of the stimulus plan: an excellent example with the tag Transparency over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Online tracking of the stimulus plan: an excellent example with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • tagged UK: provision of universal super-fast broadband could directly create 600,000 new ICT jobs, with £18 billion added to GDP with the tag broadband over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Organizing for America with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • commented on Obama: Memo on Transparency over 4 years ago.

    For an assessment of this move including input from my colleague Alan Balutis see http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20090122_6430.php

  • tagged Recovery through innovation with the tag Social_Innovation over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Vote for your Park: nothing but a bad idea? with the tag ParticipatoryBudgeting over 4 years ago.

  • removed Vote for your Park: nothing but a bad idea? from the tag Participatory Budgeting over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Vote for your Park: nothing but a bad idea? with the tag Participatory Budgeting over 4 years ago.

  • removed The carbon risk, and market opportunity from the tag Credit crunch over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The carbon risk, and market opportunity with the tag Creditcrunch over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Lessig on Government 2.0 with the tag video over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Lessig on Government 2.0 with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Lessig on Government 2.0 with the tag nobel over 4 years ago.

  • commented on Lessig on Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

    Something not quite right above. I will try to get it sorted. In the meantime here is the link http://blip.tv/file/1591006/

  • shared a video: Lessig on Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

    Here is an interesting presentation from Lawrence Lessig on Government 2.0. It is the presentation he gave at the Cisco Public Services Summit in Stockholm in December.

  • commented on Recovery through innovation over 4 years ago.

    This was indeed a fascinating workshop and it was interesting to see Barroso embrace social innovation so strongly. One issue that was clear in the discussions, however, is the variety of ways people interprete the phrase "social innovation". One aspect I was particularly keen on was the need to empower those on the edge of the system so that they are able to experiment with radically new approaches and solutions. This seems to me to be the major source of real change. There is a slight para...

  • tagged Recovery through innovation with the tag Europe over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Recovery through innovation with the tag Innovation over 4 years ago.

  • removed Recovery through innovation from the tag innovatoin over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Recovery through innovation with the tag innovatoin over 4 years ago.

  • commented on Mass Citizen Input over 4 years ago.

    Thanks, Hans, you are obviously more of an expert on this than me. Can you give me a few examples of interesting attempts to aggregate citizen input? I think what David Price is doing with debatemapper (http://opentopersuasion.com/category/debatemapper/) is very interesting, but I think we need much simpler tools (and of course there will be different tools for different situations).

  • tagged Obama: Memo on Transparency with the tag Transparency over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Obama: Memo on Transparency with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • uploaded a PDF file: Obama: Memo on Transparency over 4 years ago.

    Following his fantastic inaugural speech yesterday, the new US President got off to a great start on the issue of transparency with a memo to heads of all executive departments and agencies underlining his commitment to unprecedented openess in government. Way to go, Mr President! No doubt he read the whitepaper on Government 2.0 we shared on this site before Christmas :)-

  • tagged Mass Citizen Input with the tag Consultation over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Mass Citizen Input with the tag US over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Mass Citizen Input with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • created Mass Citizen Input over 4 years ago.

    Now Obama is President the Change.gov site is now longer active and vistors are encouraged instead to go to the official whitehouse site. However, it is still (at the moment I write this) possible to look at the interesting experiment on mass citizen input which was the citizen briefing book. This enabled citizens to input ideas and comment on and vote up or down the suggestions of others. The most popular suggestions make interesting reading: 92970 points for ending marijuana prohibition 7...

  • commented on War and Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

    To give things a slightly more encouraging perspective here is a blog that Dave Briggs alerted me to that has daily postings from two friends - one in Gaza, one in Israel. http://gaza-sderot.blogspot.com/

  • removed MuniGov 2.0 from the tag web2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged MuniGov 2.0 with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • removed Web 2.0 Education from the tag web2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Web 2.0 Education with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged War and Web 2.0 with the tag Israel over 4 years ago.

  • tagged War and Web 2.0 with the tag twitter over 4 years ago.

  • tagged War and Web 2.0 with the tag YouTube over 4 years ago.

  • tagged War and Web 2.0 with the tag war over 4 years ago.

  • tagged War and Web 2.0 with the tag social media over 4 years ago.

  • commented on War and Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

    Many thanks, Rolf. The wiki is excellent - really detailed and comprehensive and a brilliant case study in social media and the news.

  • tagged Vote for your Park: nothing but a bad idea? with the tag UK over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Vote for your Park: nothing but a bad idea? with the tag Participatory Budgeting over 4 years ago.

  • commented on Vote for your Park: nothing but a bad idea? over 4 years ago.

    I have mixed feelings on this. Like you, I think anything that tries to involve citizens more must be good and allowing them to make real financial decisions means both that there is a real reason to get involved and that involvement has a clear impact. On the other hand, the Park example does illustrate how the process can go wrong. I absolutely agree that they should have done much more to encourage people to make a sensible decision and not just vote for the nearest park (as I must confess...

  • tagged How do you like it - too wide or too narrow? with the tag chr over 4 years ago.

  • tagged How do you like it - too wide or too narrow? with the tag Consultation over 4 years ago.

  • tagged How do you like it - too wide or too narrow? with the tag Australia over 4 years ago.

  • edited How do you like it - too wide or too narrow? over 4 years ago.

    Steven Clift flagged up the Australian consultation on Future Directions for the digital economy which took the form of a blog. My initial reaction was that this was a great thing to do, but my second reaction was to worry about how they were going to handle the response - what do you do with hundreds of responses on broad strategic issues? how can you respond to them or take them on board? And of course the flip side of this is that it actually discourages responses - why should I as a citiz...

  • edited How do you like it - too wide or too narrow? over 4 years ago.

    Steven Clift flagged up the Australian consultation on Future Directions for the digital economy which took the form of a blog. My initial reaction was that this was a great thing to do, but my second reaction was to worry about how they were going to handle the response - what do you do with hundreds of responses on broad strategic issues? how can you respond to them or take them on board? And of course the flip side of this is that it actually discourages responses - why should I as a citiz...

  • edited How do you like it - too wide or too narrow? over 4 years ago.

    Steven Clift flagged up the Australian consultation on Future Directions for the digital economy which took the form of a blog. My initial reaction was that this was a great thing to do, but my second reaction was to worry about how they were going to handle the response - what do you do with hundreds of responses on broad strategic issues? how can you respond to them or take them on board? And of course the flip side of this is that it actually discourages responses - why should I as a citiz...

  • created How do you like it - too wide or too narrow? over 4 years ago.

    Steven Clift flagged up the Australian consultation on Future Directions for the digital economy which took the form of a blog. My initial reaction was that this was a great thing to do, but my second reaction was to worry about how they were going to handle the response - what do you do with hundreds of responses on broad strategic issues? how can you respond to them or take them on board? And of course the flip side of this is that it actually discourages responses - why should I as a citiz...

  • created War and Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

    Inevitably the tragic situation in Gaza is reflected in social media, but it is interesting to see the willingness of the Israeli Defence Forces to use both YouTube and Twitter to push their views. http://www.fastforwardblog.com/2008/12/31/war-20-the-idf-are-using-youtube-and-twitter/ I am sure there are also plenty of examples of facebook/twitter/youtube be used to make the opposing case as well.

  • tagged Advice on embracing social media with the tag US over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Advice on embracing social media with the tag social media over 4 years ago.

  • created Advice on embracing social media over 4 years ago.

    The US Federal Web Managers have made a plea for greater use of social media by US public agencies and work through systematically the barriers that are currently holding this back and how to overcome these barriers. A useful list (and quite a few barriers that would not have immediately occured to me). http://www.usa.gov/webcontent/documents/SocialMediaFed%20Govt_BarriersPotentialSolutions.pdf

  • tagged Web 2.0 Education with the tag web2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Web 2.0 Education with the tag Education over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Tracking buying patterns with cameras with the tag security over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Tracking buying patterns with cameras with the tag video over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Video of Philip Rosedale talking about the virtual society he founded, Second Life with the tag secondlife over 4 years ago.

  • tagged MuniGov 2.0 with the tag localgovt over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Obama should embrace social media to create a more effective and transparent government with the tag social media over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Obama should embrace social media to create a more effective and transparent government with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Your Seat At The Table with the tag Transparency over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Your Seat At The Table with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • tagged MuniGov 2.0 with the tag secondlife over 4 years ago.

  • tagged MuniGov 2.0 with the tag localgovt over 4 years ago.

  • tagged MuniGov 2.0 with the tag web2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • commented on MuniGov 2.0 over 4 years ago.

    tks, Norm. looks a great site. I wandered around for a bit and was amused by the secction entitled "our definition of Web 2.0" which had a long quote from Wikipedia but no very clear definition of Web 2.0. I appreciate the problem since Web 2.0 is probably not worth defining, but the heading makes it look as if they thought they would have a go and then suddenly got cold feet!

  • commented on Video of Philip Rosedale talking about the virtual society he founded, Second Life over 4 years ago.

    I am afraid I was not that impressed. He was clearly trying to push his product (which I suppose is only natural) but he came over to me as rather self-satisfied and not having anything that original to say. I liked his point about socially exploring knowledge but I am not sure virtual worlds are really the best tool to do that. He mentioned the oddity that 5000 people can be looking at the same thing on Amazon and not able to chat to each other and I do think people will aim to build tools t...

  • tagged Reflections on a Nobel Journey with the tag nobel over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Reflections on a Nobel Journey with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Reflections on a Nobel Journey with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • edited Reflections on a Nobel Journey over 4 years ago.

    Usually we see learning as moving from ignorance and uncertainty to knowledge and certainty, but sometimes the movement seems more in the opposite direction. One of the biggest gains for me from the recent Public Services Summit that Cisco hosted in Stockholm and Oslo was to raise questions and re-open issues. I have no doubt that we are at the start of a great period of change, but the difficult part is sorting out hype and dreams from the trends that will bring real change. Just when I thou...

  • created Reflections on a Nobel Journey over 4 years ago.

    Usually we see learning as moving from ignorance and uncertainty to knowledge and certainty, but sometimes the movement seems more in the opposite direction. One of the biggest gains for me from the recent Public Services Summit that Cisco hosted in Stockholm and Oslo was to raise questions and re-open issues. I have no doubt that we are at the start of a great period of change, but the difficult part is sorting out hype and dreams from the trends that will bring real change. Just when I thou...

  • tagged Web 2.0 and the Public Sector with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Web 2.0 and the Public Sector with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Web 2.0 and the Public Sector with the tag Transparency over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Web 2.0 and the Public Sector with the tag empowerment over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Web 2.0 and the Public Sector with the tag Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Web 2.0 and the Public Sector with the tag nobel over 4 years ago.

  • uploaded a PDF file: Web 2.0 and the Public Sector over 4 years ago.

    This is the version of the Government 2.0 paper that we used at the Public Services Summit in December. Its a slimmed down and improved version of the original draft. We plan to do a final version early in 2009. At the event the strongest push back was on transparency where there was a strong sense that the need for confidential advice put major limits on what could be achieved - I am not sure I buy that, but lets leave that to another day! Another interesting bit of feedback was the suggesti...

  • tagged Public Services Summit kicks off with the tag nobel over 4 years ago.

  • created Public Services Summit kicks off over 4 years ago.

    As you may have picked up, Cisco's IBSG team is very much involved in the Public Services Summit that Cisco co-hosts with the City of Stockholm each year. The event kicks off this evening and we are hoping to give it a real Web 2.0 feel by encouraging delegates to blog, twitter and flickr with the results of this activity captured on http://www.cisco08.com/. It will be interesting to see how delegates respond to this - hopefully the site will be pretty lively during the 3 or 4 days of the eve...

  • tagged The carbon risk, and market opportunity with the tag Credit crunch over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The carbon risk, and market opportunity with the tag climatechange over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Us Now: On the Road to Self-Organised Government? with the tag Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Creating a Sustainable Public Sector: the Role of ICTs with the tag Sustainability over 4 years ago.

  • edited Us Now: On the Road to Self-Organised Government? over 4 years ago.

    Yesterday I saw Ivo Gormley’s film US Now at the RSA. It’s a beautifully made film about the power of self-organising groups and what that might mean for society and the public sector. As well as clips from interviews with Clay Shirky, Charles Leadbeater and many others, the film follows some interesting real-life stories – an internet-based group of football fans that bought a football club with all the investors voting on team selection etc; a social networking site whereb...

  • edited Us Now: On the Road to Self-Organised Government? over 4 years ago.

    Yesterday I saw Ivo Gormley’s film US Now at the RSA. It’s a beautifully made film about the power of self-organising groups and what that might mean for society and the public sector. As well as clips from interviews with Clay Shirky, Charles Leadbeater and many others, the film follows some interesting real-life stories – an internet-based group of football fans that bought a football club with all the investors voting on team selection etc; a social networking site whereb...

  • created Us Now: On the Road to Self-Organised Government? over 4 years ago.

    Yesterday I saw Ivo Gormley’s film US Now at the RSA. It’s a beautifully made film about the power of self-organising groups and what that might mean for society and the public sector. As well as clips from interviews with Clay Shirky, Charles Leadbeater and many others, the film follows some interesting real-life stories – an internet-based group of football fans that bought a football club with all the investors voting on team selection etc; a social networking site whereb...

  • tagged Age: Why grey is the new green with the tag IBSGWhitepaper over 4 years ago.

  • edited A Swedish Model of Direct Democracy over 4 years ago.

    Heard yesterday at Ivo Gormley's film showing about a swedish experiment in direct democracy where a candidate stood and got elected on the basis that all her decisions would be decided by the vote of registered voters rather than her. For more details in english see http://demoex.net/en . There is also lots more but unfortunately only in Swedish!

  • tagged A Swedish Model of Direct Democracy with the tag sweden over 4 years ago.

  • tagged A Swedish Model of Direct Democracy with the tag e-Democracy over 4 years ago.

  • created A Swedish Model of Direct Democracy over 4 years ago.

    Heard yesterday at Ivo Gormley's film showing about a swedish experiment in direct democracy where a candidate stood and got elected on the basis that all her decisions would be decided by the vote of registered voters rather than her. For more details in english see http://demoex.net/en . There is also lots more but unfortunately only in Swedish!

  • tagged Harvesting human feelings from blogs with the tag Visualisations over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Beautiful Pictures of the Blogosphere with the tag Visualisations over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Harvesting human feelings from blogs with the tag Mashups over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Harvesting human feelings from blogs with the tag chr over 4 years ago.

  • commented on Us Now over 4 years ago.

    Many clips from this film are now available at http://www.usnowfilm.com/. I hope to see the film this evening and will try to do a post about it tomorrow with the best clip!

  • tagged Smart Work Centers: will they work? with the tag ConnectedUrbanDevelopment over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Beautiful Pictures of the Blogosphere with the tag chr over 4 years ago.

  • created Beautiful Pictures of the Blogosphere over 4 years ago.

    I don't know what it all means, but these pictures of the blogosphere are beautiful - http://datamining.typepad.com/gallery/blog-map-gallery.html

  • tagged Public Sector Futures: Workforce and Workplace Sustainability with the tag nobel over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Public Sector Futures: Four Propositions with the tag nobel over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Public Sector Futures: Workforce Propositions with the tag nobel over 4 years ago.

  • commented on TwitterGov: many tools available over 4 years ago.

    Ok. I said my scepticism about twitter was weakening - now diogo has totally blown it away! Many thanks.

  • tagged Draft Whitepaper on Government 2.0 with the tag IBSGWhitepaper over 4 years ago.

  • removed Draft Whitepaper on Government 2.0 from the tag IBSG_Whitepaper over 4 years ago.

  • tagged UK Web 2.0 catalogue (or wikilogue) with the tag UsefulSites over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic VI with the tag nobel over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic V with the tag nobel over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic IV with the tag nobel over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic III with the tag nobel over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic II with the tag nobel over 4 years ago.

  • created UK Web 2.0 catalogue (or wikilogue) over 4 years ago.

    Steph at the UK's department of Innovation Universities and Skills has created a useful site for tracking Web 2.0 innovations in the UK. He has delicious tagged 74 examples of Web 2.0 use in the UK and invited people (including of course the originators of new projects) to continue to build the catalogue by using his tags. see the site at http://sandbox.dius.gov.uk/digitalgovuk/

  • tagged The Power of Twitter with the tag twitter over 4 years ago.

  • created The Power of Twitter over 4 years ago.

    I have always been interested in but a little bit sceptical of Twitter. However, my resistance is being worn down! One member of this community - Meeta - has flagged up to me the use of Twitter in Mumbai during the recent terrible events where citizens used Twitter to arrange blood supplies, to arrange for lists of injured/dead, and to keep each other abreast of developments. On a more mundane level our most recent member Crispin arrived via seeing a tweet about the draft Govt 2.0 paper we p...

  • tagged What would radical change look like? with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Peak Moment: Oil and Gas -- The Next Meltdown? with the tag Creditcrunch over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Organising without Organisations with the tag shirky over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The City as the Platform with the tag cities over 4 years ago.

  • tagged What does Shirky mean for the Public Sector? with the tag Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  • tagged What does Shirky mean for the Public Sector? with the tag shirky over 4 years ago.

  • tagged All together now? with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Public Sector Futures in The Connected Republic I with the tag nobel over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Draft Whitepaper on Government 2.0 with the tag IBSG_Whitepaper over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Twitter Use By Government with the tag twitter over 4 years ago.

  • tagged I don't care about the citizen with the tag Creditcrunch over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Mumbai hostage network with the tag publicsafety over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Build your own timeline with the tag timelines over 4 years ago.

  • removed Build your own timeline from the tag TheConnectedRepublic over 4 years ago.

  • shared a video: Us Now over 4 years ago.

    A taster for a film that Ivo Gormley (a member of this community) has made. I hope to see the whole film at a showing at the RSA on Wednesday and hopefully one day the whole thing will be available online.

  • created The Human Intranet over 4 years ago.

    Fantastic presentation by Andy Gibson from the School for Everything http://www.slideshare.net/andygibson/the-human-intranet-presentation?nocache=8704&type=powerpoint He sets out in very clear and simple terms what he sees as different about Web 2.0 collaboration. Good fun but also great content.

  • edited Vote for the London Park that most needs renewal over 4 years ago.

    Tiago put me on a bit of participatory democracy going on near me - a scheme whereby the mayor of london will allocate improvement funding to the two parks in London that receive the most votes from people saying they need improvement. http://www.london.gov.uk/parksvote/ I suppose it is great that they are doing this, but a couple of things struck me: 1) there is no deliberative element to this at all - so I suspect most people like me will just vote for the park nearest them or the park th...

  • created Vote for the London Park that most needs renewal over 4 years ago.

    Tiago put me on a bit of participatory democracy going on near me - a scheme whereby the mayor of london will allocate improvement funding to the two parks in London that receive the most votes from people saying they need improvement. http://www.london.gov.uk/parksvote/ I suppose it is great that they are doing this, but a couple of things struck me: 1) there is no deliberative element to this at all - so I suspect most people like me will just vote for the park nearest them or the park th...

  • edited Outsourcing Privacy? over 4 years ago.

    Here is a fantastic presentation on privacy in the connected world. It contains lots of fascinating thinking (and quite a few interesting new smart devices in the middle section). It is quite long but I am sure you will agree that it is worth it. http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/11/web-meets-world-privacy-and-th.html

  • created Outsourcing Privacy? over 4 years ago.

    Here is a fantastic presentation on privacy in the connected world. It contains lots of fascinating thinking (and quite a few interesting new smart devices in the middle section). It is quite long but I am sure you will agree that it is worth it. http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/11/web-meets-world-privacy-and-th.html

  • tagged Obama is coming...but are we ready? with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Obama is coming...but are we ready? with the tag US over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The Obama Stats with the tag US over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The Obama Stats with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Two small cities using Twitter with the tag twitter over 4 years ago.

  • edited a video: Pain in the Ad over 4 years ago.

    A great story to illustrate the power of social media is the recent firestorm sparked by an Ad for Motrin who sell pain relief. I am sure their marketing staff needed it after their ad offended lots of mums (and dads?) who shared their anger via Twitter, Facebook, blogs etc etc. The video is the original ad and here is a link if you want to explore the firestorm http://scottgavin.info/?p=238

  • shared a video: Pain in the Ad over 4 years ago.

    A great story to illustrate the power of social media is the recent firestorm sparked by an Ad for Motrin who sell pain relief. I am sure their marketing staff needed it after their ad offended lots of mums (and dads?) who shared their anger via Twitter, Facebook, blogs etc etc. The video is the original ad and here is a link if you want to explore the firestorm http://scottgavin.info/?p=238

  • commented on All together now? over 4 years ago.

    Here is an interesting piece on the difficult transition for Obama's Army as their man makes the transition from campaigning to reigning http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-transition14-2008nov14,0,3704695.story

  • edited a PDF file: Draft Whitepaper on Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

    This is the first draft of a whitepaper that a group of us have been working on. We are very interested in all feedback either via comments on this post or if you want actually to edit the text you can do so via the wiki we have been using at http://draftgovt2paper.pbwiki.com/ (although you will need to email me to get editing access rights). Any additional examples that you think are particularly interesting or compelling would be great. Also very interested in any reactions to the overall ...

  • uploaded a PDF file: Draft Whitepaper on Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

    This is the first draft of a whitepaper that a group of us have been working on. We are very interested in all feedback either via comments on this post or if you want actually to edit the text you can do so via the wiki we have been using at http://draftgovt2paper.pbwiki.com/ (although you will need to email me to get editing access rights). Any additional examples that you think are particularly interesting or compelling would be great. Also very interested in any reactions to the overall ...

  • commented on It's 10 PM ... Do You Know Where Your Constituents Are? over 4 years ago.

    Very nicely, done! It does show that every non-motion-picture video can really pack a punch!

  • tagged Mashing up public records with the tag UsefulSites over 4 years ago.

  • commented on Mashing up public records over 4 years ago.

    Thanks, James. A useful list. We have a few lists of different kinds elsewhere - I have tagged them with the label useful sites.

  • tagged US Views on Government 2.0 with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Mashing up public records with the tag Mashups over 4 years ago.

  • commented on Site update over 4 years ago.

    I like having video at last - let's hope people find good things to share!

  • shared a video: On Being Human over 4 years ago.

    Connected Republic member Simon Willis reflects on Summer School with the Young Foundation.

  • commented on What comes first - e-government Web 2.0 services or government cultural change? over 4 years ago.

    Just for the record the presentation was given by David Osimo at Cisco's e-leaders forum in Paris on Oct 17. I think it is an interesting perspective and I certainly agree that what matters is not the use of particular tools but the culture change that using them can bring.

  • tagged Public Sector Social Networking with the tag SocialNetworking over 4 years ago.

  • tagged More good stuff from NZ with the tag New Zealand over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The Connected Republic 2.0 with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged France embraces Web 2.0 with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged France embraces Web 2.0 with the tag France over 4 years ago.

  • tagged High Hopes for Obama with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Interview with Marshall Ganz, Designer of Obama's Organization with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Incremental change isn't enough with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Incremental change isn't enough with the tag canada over 4 years ago.

  • tagged New German Bitkom White Paper on Web 2.0 with the tag Germany over 4 years ago.

  • tagged New German Bitkom White Paper on Web 2.0 with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged e-Democracy - Alive and Kicking! with the tag chr over 4 years ago.

  • tagged e-Democracy - Alive and Kicking! with the tag US over 4 years ago.

  • tagged e-Democracy - Alive and Kicking! with the tag Obama over 4 years ago.

  • tagged e-Democracy - Alive and Kicking! with the tag MySociety over 4 years ago.

  • tagged e-Democracy - Alive and Kicking! with the tag e-Democracy over 4 years ago.

  • created You ask, but can they answer? over 4 years ago.

    Just came across another interesting site that lets anyone post a question for a public figure and others vote on whether it is a question worth asking. As a question wins support, the organisers of the site try to get the public person to answer it. The basis of the site is that we all have a fundamental right to ask questions of public figures. I think that is fair enough, but it is worth looking at it from the public figure's point of view too - for example, with this site, plus writetothe...

  • created e-Democracy - Alive and Kicking! over 4 years ago.

    Today I participated in e-Democracy 08, the annual e-democracy event in London. There was an interesting opening presentation by My Society’s Tom Steinberg who assessed progress over the last 12 months. Not surprisingly, his initial focus was the recent US elections and to my outsider’s eyes I thought his analysis got it just right. He highlighted President-elect Obama’s success in securing mass participation, but noted that much of his online campaign was about usin...

  • commented on Interview with Marshall Ganz, Designer of Obama's Organization over 4 years ago.

    Interesting piece. The key change seems to be going for mass involvement and then not treating the volunteers as cannonfodder! I like the idea of encouraging them to use their own stories as a way to reach out to people and of giving them greater access to the organisation's information so that have more leeway to get the best value from it. My only question would be: where is the real empowerment? Its campaigning with a more personal, friendly feel, but how am I (or the group of friends I re...

  • tagged To Portal or Not to Portal? with the tag portals over 4 years ago.

  • created High Hopes for Obama over 4 years ago.

    The victory of Barack Obama certainly seems to have raised lots of hopes for more transparent, citizen-led government. Here is an interesting site that is trying to get a crowd-moderated issues to the president-elect. I think it is very interesting, but I wonder whether it isn't too open - it lets people raise anything they want and that is just too miscellaneous for me to get my mind round!

  • tagged The Connected Republic 2.0 with the tag pdf over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Digital Swarming with the tag pdf over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Digital Swarming with the tag IBSGWhitepaper over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The Connected Republic 2.0 with the tag IBSGWhitepaper over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Digital Swarming with the tag Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  • uploaded a PDF file: The Connected Republic 2.0 over 4 years ago.

    This is the IBSG whitepaper Martin Stewart-Weeks and I wrote in the first half of 2007, setting out our vision for the public sector in a connected world. It updated the original Connected Republic paper to reflect the emergence of Web 2.0. I think it is wearing relatively well and thought it worth uploading given that it was the impulse that led to the creation of this site.

  • commented on Public Sector Social Networking over 4 years ago.

    Here is another one - this time focussed on the police. http://www.policefacebook.com/

  • created Public Sector Social Networking over 4 years ago.

    Just came across an interesting attempt to build a Facebook for the public sector - ttp://www.govloop.com/. In some ways this project has similar aims as this site, but it is clearly going for quantity rather than quality! Actually, looks quite a useful thing and could be a good place to test how people react to things or seek advice. Hopefully, however, the best place for conversation will still be here!!

  • created Real-time Personal Politics over 4 years ago.

    Congratulations to the new helmsman of the US! My good friend Mark sent me an example of what Web 2.0 politics means today: From: Barack Obama <info@barackobama.com>Date: Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 9:13 PMSubject: How this happenedTo: XXX Mark -- I'm about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first. We just made history. And I don't want you to forget how we did it. You made history every single day during this campaign -- every ...

  • created The power of the Video Republic over 4 years ago.

    Many thanks to Diogo for highlighting this great video from Demos and accompanying report. http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=h0JX5jWv-tk&eurl=http://www.demos.co.uk/ Not being young anymore, I am a bit cautious about too much emphasis on "the next generation are totally different with new needs and demands etc". It seems to me that today's young people are saying very similar things to young people in the past. And one day they too will be middle-aged! However, connectivity is offering them (...

  • tagged Government 2.0 - Best Practices? with the tag UsefulSites over 4 years ago.

  • created Government 2.0 - Best Practices? over 4 years ago.

    Another useful site which is a wiki trying to pull together "best practices" in relation to Government 2.0. Plenty of examples here - some of which are no doubt true great practices, others perhaps not. http://government20bestpractices.pbwiki.com/

  • created A Rose by Any Other Name over 4 years ago.

    Interesting article by the UK Guardian's Michael Cross, who likes what the Power of Information Review is trying to do in terms of empowering people by opening up public data, but seems to dislike the label "Government 2.0". Oddly, though almost any label quickly loses its appeal - who doesn't groan at the label "Web 2.0" these days? - but you still need to use the label. Maybe he should just switch to talking about the Connected Republic? http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/03/gov...

  • created Atheist Bus Campaign over 4 years ago.

    The guys at Gallomanor have an interesting post about the Atheist Bus Campaign. Its not a sentiment I agree with, but it is a good illustration of ridiculously easy group formation. There is no way this sort of thing would have happened without Web 2.0!

  • removed Hub Culture from the tag UsefulSites over 4 years ago.

  • tagged UK Model for Public Information with the tag UsefulSites over 4 years ago.

  • created UK Model for Public Information over 4 years ago.

    All UK public sector organisations have a duty to inform the public of their policy on publishing information and have their policy endorsed by the Information Commissioner. To help this process the UK Information Commissioner has published a model publication scheme. It seems pretty good and is a good encouragement for more transparency. http://www.ico.gov.uk/Home/what_we_cover/freedom_of_information/publication_schemes/publication_schemes_eng.aspx

  • created What does Shirky mean for the Public Sector? over 4 years ago.

    This is really a continuation of my earlier post on HCE by Clay Shirky, but this time I will try to focus on the public sector implications. For me, the starting point has got to be ridiculously easy group-formation and I can certainly see many ways that the public sector can tap in to this new opportunity. Firstly, I think there is a lot to be done in promoting the opportunities for group formation as a form of social capital. So I love http://www.groupsnearyou.com/ and think all local autho...

  • tagged Multi-channel citizen engagement: the Ipatinga PB experience (PB part 3) with the tag e-Democracy over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Participatory Budgeting and e-Democracy (part 2): the Belo Horizonte case with the tag ParticipatoryBudgeting over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Participatory Budgeting and e-Democracy (Part 1) with the tag ParticipatoryBudgeting over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Multi-channel citizen engagement: the Ipatinga PB experience (PB part 3) with the tag ParticipatoryBudgeting over 4 years ago.

  • commented on Multi-channel citizen engagement: the Ipatinga PB experience (PB part 3) over 4 years ago.

    Thanks again, tiago, for a fascinating post. I definitely agree that online should support and reinforce face-to-face particularly in this sort of context where it is all about community building. It would be interesting to do some European experiments in places where internet penetration is high but community feeling is perhaps not so high!

  • commented on Hub Culture over 4 years ago.

    Sounds interesting, Stan, although to be frank I am not quite sure what Hubculture is about/offering. Is Hubculture for individuals or organisations? And in either case what is basically offering them? (And of course what does it want in return!).

  • tagged Why isn't Johnny using Video? with the tag SocialNetworking over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Why isn't Johnny using Video? with the tag video over 4 years ago.

  • commented on Why isn't Johnny using Video? over 4 years ago.

    I should have been clearer - what they meant was video as a real-time two-way communication tool. So video phones or taking advantage of the possibility of video on web and audio calls etc.

  • created Why isn't Johnny using Video? over 4 years ago.

    I have just read a fascinating article in CIMI's Netwatcher (a subscription-only newsletter which unfortunately I cannot share here) on video, presence and social networks. The starting point is the contention that video is not really taking off and Netwatcher sees this as reflecting deeply engrained attitudes to voice vs video. From the age of two, we start using at-a-distance audio devices (phones) and at-a-distance visual devices (TVs); but phone conversations are two-way and broadly simil...

  • tagged Collaboration as 'Productive Disputatiousness' with the tag Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  • tagged NZ State Services blog with the tag chr over 4 years ago.

  • created NZ State Services blog over 4 years ago.

    New Zealand's State Services often get asked how public bodies should blog - so they went ahead and created a blog both to show how it should be done and to get some real benefits for themselves. http://blog.e.govt.nz/. (And yes I did steal this find from feedback from Martin's recent Govt 2.0 event in Sydney!)

  • tagged Is public participation in democratic government really a good thing - or is the question moot? with the tag e-Democracy over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Participatory Budgeting and e-Democracy (Part 1) with the tag e-Democracy over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Participatory Budgeting and e-Democracy (part 2): the Belo Horizonte case with the tag e-Democracy over 4 years ago.

  • commented on Participatory Budgeting and e-Democracy (part 2): the Belo Horizonte case over 4 years ago.

    This is fascinating. I think ICT can certainly help to make it easier for people to participate and therefore drive up participation. However, it would also be good if it could allow more frequent, smaller scale PB. I think this also might help participation. Also maybe the participation should continue, e.g. having decided to go for the sports complex, citizens should be involved in deciding how it will work and then in running it. Do you know if this is happening?

  • removed A New Vision for the Welfare State from the tag Govt2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged A New Vision for the Welfare State with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged A New Vision for the Welfare State with the tag Govt2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • created A New Vision for the Welfare State over 4 years ago.

    The UK public services design consultancy Participle have published a manifesto calling for an overhaul of the Welfare State. They called their vision Beveridge 4.0, a reference to the UK social reformer Sir William Beveridge, who in the 1940’s put forward a set of ideas that shaped the Welfare State. Beveridge wanted to tackle the five giants of want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness on the basis of co-operation between the state and the individual. He suggested that public ser...

  • commented on New site launched - Power to the People! over 4 years ago.

    Unless there is member demand I am not sure how quickly we are going to add back true wiki capabilities. I certainly think I was wrong to think that we could write a whitepaper on Government 2.0 via a wiki. One reason I think this is that a whitepaper is not modular. So it would have been better to have tried to do a wiki of public sector transformation where people could add material on any aspects or examples that appeal to them. So the approach would have been - lets put together all the i...

  • created Organising without Organisations over 4 years ago.

    I have finally got round to reading Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody and it was a revelation. I am afraid I thought Clay had just jumped on the Web 2.0 bandwagon, when in fact he is the most interesting writer on it that I have yet come across. Isn't it great to be wrong!? What I thought I would try to do is to give my slanted view on the book and start a conversation on what Clay's analysis means for the public sector. For me, the starting point for the book is how ridiculously easy it has...

  • commented on when the going gets tough ... over 4 years ago.

    I am sure you are right, Alan, that both financially and psychologically the current financial crisis means that people will feel less ready to go for transformation. And there is certainly likely to be an impact on ICT spending. On the other hand, a crisis can encourage innovation and an increased readiness to do things in very different ways!

  • tagged New UK Public Sector Group blog with the tag chr over 4 years ago.

  • tagged New UK Public Sector Group blog with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • created New UK Public Sector Group blog over 4 years ago.

    Again with thanks to Dave just come across a new UK public sector blog which shows how blogging is not just for ministers and leaders but can be used right across an organisations. Congratulations to the UK's Department for International Development for this new site - http://blogs.dfid.gov.uk/

  • tagged UK local govt Web 2.0 experiments with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged NZ experiments with Web 2.0 with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Ning Diabetes Community with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • created Ning Diabetes Community over 4 years ago.

    Great site that Dave Briggs alerted me to. It is a Ning-based site that brings together people who have diabetes and it shows how lively such groups can be when they have a strong bond. http://tudiabetes.com/ The public sector should definitely be encouraging and linking to such groups.

  • commented on New site launched - Power to the People! over 4 years ago.

    I've got all the wiki stuff on Government 2.0 and plan to do some further work on it and then share it again on this site. Just finding it hard to get the time to do it. (Also frankly the wiki did not work very well - writing a whitepaper on such a broad topic is not very modular and so it was hard for people to engage with the project. Next time what I would like to do is have a draft version of a document and then let people write their comments in its margins. That might work better.)

  • made a comment which has since been deleted.

  • created What would radical change look like? over 4 years ago.

    Like many of you, I spend a lot of time talking about public sector transformation, but what would radical change really look like? What would count as “Government 2.0”? Technology can certainly help governments become more efficient and it can make it much easier for citizens to access public services, but, while both those types of change are very important and can involve dramatic changes, neither is truly transformational. Renewing my car tax online is wonderful, but it is sim...

  • created New site launched - Power to the People! over 4 years ago.

    We have now launched the new improved "Connected Republic". We loved the content created in the old site, but felt that the separate elements -- blog, forum, bookmarks, videos -- made it more complicated to contribute to the site. So we've unified everything together in postings. Blog posts and comments from the old site have been moved across. Please now use the Postings area for articles, link/video sharing and starting discussions. Everyone can do this. You can also tag any posting with a...

  • tagged UK local govt Web 2.0 experiments with the tag UsefulSites over 4 years ago.

  • tagged French Government launches digital conversations with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • created UK local govt Web 2.0 experiments over 4 years ago.

    Very useful site bringing together (on a wiki) all the things UK local authorities are doing in terms of using Web 2.0 to reach out to citizens: http://localgov.pbwiki.com/ .

  • created Participatory Budgeting over 4 years ago.

    There seems to be a fair amount of interest in Participatory Budgeting in the UK and there is a useful site to pull it together - http://www.participatorybudgeting.org.uk/. .

  • commented on Competitive Government vs. Democratic Government over 4 years ago.

    Fascinating idea, but does not seem that real to me. After all, we do have competitive governments already in terms of one party and administration replacing another. Now of course you can say that they are all the same, but why is that? If a couple of thousand of us who hated the status quo could colonise the moon, how different a society would we really create? And if we did manage to do some things differently, why can't we work for them in our current contexts?

  • tagged Public Policy playing catch up to the forces of the market ? with the tag Sustainability over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Government 2.0 - a longer perspective with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The Realism of the Web with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Connected Urban Development conference with the tag Sustainability over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Government 2.0 - Two Cheers for the Romantics Part 2 with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged CUD global conference II with the tag Sustainability over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Connected Urban Development - last note with the tag Sustainability over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Content through Collaboration with the tag Education over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Content through Collaboration with the tag Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The Road Not Traveled: Education in MENA with the tag Education over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Government 2.0 - Fad or Future? with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Opening Up the Debate with the tag e-Democracy over 4 years ago.

  • tagged eFestival of Ideas with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Reflections on India with the tag Education over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Is the public sector ‘fit for purpose’? with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Is the public sector ‘fit for purpose’? with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Quick reality check: are we kidding ourselves? with the tag e-Democracy over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Perils of modernity with the tag e-Democracy over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Social networks the platform of the future with the tag SocialNetworking over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Sharing and Stimulating Public Sector Innovation with the tag Innovation over 4 years ago.

  • tagged 2,761,832 - is this a totally different game? with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Yes, but what about accountability? with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Networking Democracy - Can National Conversations Work? with the tag e-Democracy over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Safe to Play with the tag Privacy over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Quick reality check (contd) - some wise counsel with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged eFestival of Ideas with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged You can’t live your whole life on the Internet... with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Goodbye to Consumerism, hello to Produsage? with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Look what God has wrought - the rise and rise of government blogging with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Free at last? Maybe not... with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Virtual Bali - a window on the UN Climate Negotiations for People Worldwide with the tag Sustainability over 4 years ago.

  • tagged OneWorld: web 2.0 to promote sustainability with the tag Sustainability over 4 years ago.

  • tagged OneWorld: web 2.0 to promote sustainability with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged OneWorld: web 2.0 to promote sustainability with the tag Social_Innovation over 4 years ago.

  • tagged The bees and the trees: Geoff Mulgan’s ten thesis on social innovation with the tag Social_Innovation over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Ministerially-led, customer-driven Government Departments with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged I am a Civil Servant with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged One Machine to rule them alll with the tag Web 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Government Data and the Invisible Hand with the tag Transparency over 4 years ago.

  • tagged It’s the network, stupid with the tag Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Government 2.0 - an adventure in wiki-land with the tag Government 2.0 over 4 years ago.

  • tagged One-to-One Computing: Is this the Best Option for Learners? with the tag Education over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Embracing a multiplicity of Conversations with the tag Collaboration over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Social innovation to promote active ageing with the tag Social_Innovation over 4 years ago.

  • tagged Public Services and the Efficiency Treadmill with the tag Efficiency over 4 years ago.

  • created Public Services and the Efficiency Treadmill over 4 years ago.

    Recently I had an interesting meeting with a large innovation UK local authority who felt that they (and other public services) needed to embrace radical reform or face the prospect of having to run ever faster in order to keep still. Their worries reflected the budget crunch that most UK public sector bodies are having to deal with. But their main fear was that as incomes rise, the demand for public services rises too only without a corresponding increase in citizen's willingness to pay the ...

  • created Embracing a multiplicity of Conversations over 4 years ago.

    I love the wealth of tools Web 2.0 has to offer and in an interesting sign of the times this week I joined two different Web 2.0 public sector collaborative groups. One arose from a European Union workshop on an e-government vision for 2020. Here the group went for Ning, which I had not used before and was glad to try. The other group was set up by the UK Department of Innovation Universities and Skills. They went for Basecamp from 37signals, again a new platform for me, but it seems pretty c...

  • created I am a Civil Servant over 4 years ago.

    Well, actually I was a civil servant, but this is the title of a set of principles for online participation the UK Transformational Government minister Tom Watson has just published. Writing some clear simple principles that will give civil servants the confidence to participate on the web in the right way is a really positive move. To the outsider it may seem a straightforward task, but it is easy to imagine the internal obstacles this project must have run into (from the lawyers of course, ...

  • created Ministerially-led, customer-driven Government Departments over 5 years ago.

    A year ago the UK government created a new ministry called the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. Its dynamic and progressive Permanent Secretary (Ian Watmore, previously the UK’s first Government CIO) wants the department to be innovation by name, innovation by nature and he is trying to drive this forward in terms of the slogan “Ministerially-led, customer-driven”. That set me thinking … In the private sector being customer-driven or customer-centric is easy to understand ...

  • created Government 2.0 - an adventure in wiki-land over 5 years ago.

    It's great to be able to announce that we are now ready to test the wiki facility on this site and see if we as a community can manage to collaborate on some thoughtleadership. Not surprisingly, we thought we would start with the topic of Government 2.0 and with a bit of help from Martin and Russell I have put together a series of seven principles as a starting point for the discussion. We are using Mediawiki - which is the same tool used for wikipedia and which takes a little bit of getting ...

  • created Sharing and Stimulating Public Sector Innovation over 5 years ago.

    Last week I had an interesting conversation with Ivo Gormley from ThinkPublic, an interesting group of young designers and others committed to making public services better for everyone. Ivo (an antropologist) by background told me about an interesting film he hopes to complete shortly on Government 2.0 and which I hope we will at some point feature on this site. He also talked about some of the work ThinkPublic have been doing in the health service to develop bottom-up approaches to business...

  • created Transforming Local Government over 5 years ago.

    This week I have been attending Cisco's e-leaders forum in the glorious city of Liverpool. The event brings together about sixty decision-makers from local authorities across Europe for two days of discussions on how they are using technology to transform their activities. As ever, it is striking to see the diversity of participants (from large cities like Liverpool and Amsterdam to small towns like Dunkerque or rural areas like La Manche) and yet the similarity of interests and experiences. ...

  • created Networking Democracy - Can National Conversations Work? over 5 years ago.

    This morning I came across a great UK experiment in online democracy - Networking Democracy, an OpenDemocracy project to explore how the internet can be integrated into a national political process. The idea arose from Gordon Brown's decision to launch a national debate on a British Statement of Values as part of his plans to reform the Governance of Britain. So the government wants to get people involved in a debate on these issues and is considering having various regional events and other ...

  • created The Case for Self-Directed Services over 5 years ago.

    A little while back I blogged (slightly sceptically) on the idea of giving budgets to service users so they can directly shape the services they receive. Via the new SIX site I have just come across a very persuasive pamphlet by Charlie Leadbetter, J. Bartlett and N. Gallagher using the evidence of UK pilots in this area to make a very convincing case for what they call "self-directed services". They identify six components of this approach: a personalised support plan that reflects an in...

  • created PMA 44 - A Challenge and an Opportunity over 5 years ago.

    My colleague Alan Balutis and a group of Washington experts have been doing some fascinating thinking about the next (44th) U.S. President's Management Agenda ("PMA 44"). There are a wealth of insights in their Public Manager Articles, but a couple of different aspects really struck home with me. The first was the HR issues. The U.S. - like many developed countries - faces a retirement tsunami that will hit the public sector particularly hard. As well as the potential loss of expertise, this ...

  • created Opening Up the Debate over 5 years ago.

    Citizen empowerment should certainly be about opening up debates on public issues so more citizens can engage and shape them, but it is a topic that seems a bit neglected. Probably because people think it is too difficult (and maybe because those who currently control policy debates are happy to continue doing so!). A little while ago I came across an interesting tool which aims to help people collaboratively map debates. I was intrigued and while browsing another favourite site of mine, whic...

  • created The Realism of the Web over 5 years ago.

    There have been quite a few posts on this blog about the Public Services Summit last December, but for me the highlight of the event was David Weinberger’s inspirational presentation The Realism of the Web. How can you not love a guy who begins his talk by saying that he does not think the web has been hyped enough? It’s a fantastic presentation and captures some really important things about how the Web opens up new possibilities and changes the way we need to think about things. David focu...

  • created Government 2.0 - Fad or Future? over 5 years ago.

    Martin has already blogged on the specialist session we did recently on Government 2.0, but I thought people might be interested to hear some of the excellent debate for themselves. So we have now put short podcasts of the opening presentations on the public services summit event website. What was fascinating about the session (and the podcasts) is how each presenter approached the issue in their own way with a slightly different perspective on what the greatest potential benefits of Web 2.o...

  • created Exploring the Empowerment Agenda over 5 years ago.

    I finally managed to read an excellent document that my good colleague and friend Martin alerted me to - Vern Hughes's paper on the Empowerment Agenda. The paper advocates moving from the current supply-side service delivery model (where citizens are seen as passive recipients) to a model that puts power in the hands of citizens and users. This sounds great, and, although there will obviously be lots of opposition (particularly from established suppliers!), it is definitely the direction we ...

  • created Goodbye to Consumerism, hello to Produsage? over 5 years ago.

    Australian academic Axel Bruns has just launched a website (soon to be followed by a book) where he celebrates the new era of “produsage” – the idea being that in certain collaborative communities “the creation of shared content takes place in a networked, participatory environment which breaks down the boundaries between producers and consumers and instead enables all participants to be users as well as producers of information and knowledge - frequently in a hybrid role of produser where us...

  • created Making Sense of Empowerment over 5 years ago.

    Last night I was at the UK's Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts and took part in a fascinating discussion on empowerment, hosted by the RSA's chief executive Matthew Taylor and featuring an interesting contribution from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury Andy Burnham. What was particularly striking was the way each participant seemed to come at the debate from a different perspective. For some empowerment was about moving away from a consumerist approach to public services (with...

  • created The Good Old, Slow-to-Change Public Sector over 5 years ago.

    As an ex-civil servant, I always get annoyed when I hear people bashing the public sector especially if they seem to be arguing from a private sector - good, public sector - bad perspective. Of course, my current employer is perfect in every way (!), but you would have to have lived a very strange or fortunate life not to have come across many private sector examples of incompetence, nonsensical bureaucracy, empire-building etc. So it is odd how many people love to do a bit of public sector ...

  • created Varieties of Education over 5 years ago.

    The last week has been a bit education-dominated for me. Some of my corporate colleagues are working on a vision presentation about 21st Century Education, which makes a dyed-in the world twentieth century person like myself feel a bit old, while a bit closer to home IBSG have just brought out an excellent whitepaper (which is on the downloads page) that explores how education can be transformed in a systematic and sustainable way. I also very much enjoyed Sir Ken Robinson's Ted talk on educ...

  • created Babes in the Digital Woods over 5 years ago.

    This morning I received my letter from the acting chairman of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs apologizing for having lost data about my family. The letter went pretty much straight into the (recycling) bin, but the whole sorry saga has done a fantastic job of highlighting the issue of data handling to most of the UK population. Having worked in a variety of public sector organisations, I am not in the least surprised that something like this can have happened and clearly there are many aven...

  • created The Great e-Petitions Debate over 5 years ago.

    As David Wilcox mentions, there were some fairly polarised views on the value of e-petitions at e-Democracy 07. In particular, the No 10 Downing Street e-petition site came in for some criticism. The arguments against were: 1) the site allows no deliberation 2) the petitions have no clear impact and it is not clear who (if anyone) pays attention to them 3) there is no transparency about who has been signing all these petitions, why they did it, what impact it has had on them etc; 4) it made ...

  • created Politicians and e-democracy over 5 years ago.

    Yesterday I went to Headstar's excellent e-Democracy 07 conference. The final session had three UK politicians (Andrew Miller, Theresa May and Ed Davey) giving their thoughts on e-democracy. Not surprisingly, they were strongly focussed on the use of Web 2.0 by politicians, political parties and representative assemblies and all three of them made clear that they wanted to embrace these tools. None of them of them, however, seemed to have much sense of the real transformational possibility of...

  • created What’s holding Enterprise 2.0 back? over 5 years ago.

    Yesterday I came across a couple of interesting presentations - meet Charlie and meet Charlotte - which I enjoyed but which made me think. The Enterprise 2.0 vision they describe is attractive, but it seems to me is only happening very slowly whether you are in the private sector or in the public sector. Why is this? The most obvious explanation (as ever) is culture - fully embracing these tools involves a willingness to be open - which is quite a radical shift for most people myself include...