John Naughton follows up Tim O’Reilly’s post that the White House website is now powered by Drupal with the following comment:

Particularly interesting is the fact that the team cites greater security as one of the reasons for moving. this suggests a pretty sophisticated — for policymakers, anyway — understanding of the argument that proprietary software is, paradoxically, likely to be less secure than open software.

Somehow, I can’t see the UK government getting that. Brown & Co still think Microsoft is cutting edge.

They may well do John. But its the geeks, not the politicians, that push these things on. Have you not noticed all the WordPress love around Whitehall over the last two years?

Nothing to see here, I’m just taking the opportunity to refresh this site a little. I’ve had it in mind to update the site for a while since I noticed how many templates wordpress.com now offers.

I’ve also just finished building a hosted wordpress site (of which more shortly) so I thought it was time to pay some attention to my own site.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Does this represent a thaw in the lack of activity here?

Possibly.

But I’ve said that before haven’t I….

Props to Ian Cuddy at PSF for spotting that John Suffolk, the UK government CIO, has recently taken up blogging. Its great to see this level of openness from a very senior official (he even has a link for his work email account at the bottom of the page) and also his decision not to follow the crowd and get WordPressing (might upset one or two people…)

But am I being a bit of a webbie pedant when I see that he’s using Comic Sans as his main content font? I mean, its not comic its criminal.

Come on John, smarten up a bit please if only to satisfy the eyes of web developers across Whitehall (if you need the number of one of them for a bit of design advice I’d be only too happy to help). But please, please keep up the blogging.

Craig Newmark, founder of the awesome Craigslist, was in London a recently as part of the Travelling Geeks visit to the UK. I was lucky enough to meet him (briefly) at Reboot Britain. Its not often you get to meet a god of the web…..(Incidentally, Craig gave an interesting talk at Reboot Britain on how the internet aids democracy. Worth checking out – its the sixth vid clip down).

On his blog, and back home in the US, he reflects on the challenges to transformational government in the UK and US (hint, its not rationalising websites). He says something that I am hearing (and agreeing with) increasingly often:

“the tech is the easy part, the real challenge involves professional and emotional buy-in and commitment…”

Though he refers to government tech workers, I think the challenge lies beyond them and points more towards the non-tech literates (or tech illiterates?). In particular, the senior decision makers who have the power to enable change.

If you hadn’t already seen his piece, its well worth a read.

Well kinda, sorta, not quite yet…..

Its been almost four months since I left Whitehall – at the same time its both flown by and feels like a lifetime ago. Now I’m pretty settled I’m starting to think about gov things again and taking keener notice of what’s going on (and there’s been quite a bit…..). But that can wait for just a little longer.

In the meantime, there’s a fantastic literary festival taking place just down the road from me next week and a couple of intrepid irish bloggers are doing their best to provide online coverage for the events. It seemed churlish of me not to offer to give them a hand given how much free time I have at the moment.

Listowel Writers Week is in its 39th year and has an amazing line up of authors and workshops.  I can’t believe that such a brilliant cast list is assembling a couple of miles from me, and I can’t wait to help Paul and Patrick capture some of the flavour of the festival. Its quite a while since I’ve done anything resembling social reporting and I’m quite excited about it.

As well as the fringe blog, we’ll be using the usual array of tools and channels to push out the content far and wide across the web. Now all I have to do is try and locate my Flip camera which has mysteriously disappeared somewhere into the depths of my house

Its a bit short notice but if you’re reading this and want to come along, drop me a line and I’ll do my best to help you out.

Its been a long time in the gestation, but the latest iteration of the Ministry of Justice website just went live.

It looks fantastic, well done the team.

Its great and all that the civil service is beginning to take online seriously, and I welcome the fact that in the near future there will be a director of digital engagement roaming the corridors of power.

But look at what’s happening in the US. This is clearly a serious attempt to embed digital media / communication / outreach across government organisations by bringing in serious players into senior roles. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Contrasting this with the UK role, I think that’s what I meant when I said that there aren’t more strategic web roles in UK government.

I’m not familiar with the terminology, so am not exactly clear what ‘agency’ means in American administrations (I presume its an equivalent to our departments) nor quite how senior a director role is – but I presume its pretty high up the tree judging by the job description.

Scotland that is, not Ulster

Old mucker Alex Stobart, another recent escapee from the civil service and organiser of the first government social media type event in Scotland, is building up a head of steam pushing the web2 agenda in the public sector.

He recently launched a website, Scotweb2, to map developments in scottish government online participation, collaboration et al.

But that’s not all, as well as getting a scottish public sector barcamp off the ground later this month, there’s a Scotweb2 event on 19th June and he’s also involved in bringing ****** ********** **** (something really good) to Scotland the same weekend (Update: Wasn’t supposed to mention that yet. More news when I have it).

Nice one Alex, keep it up.

Ever since I started confiding in friends last year that I was considering leaving the civil service, one of the questions I have been asked is “What will happen to Whitehall Webby?”.

I confess I thought a fair bit about this. It was pointed out to me that I would no longer be in Whitehall after all, and as I have always found the blog tough to keep up to date with it did seem like it might be a good time to call it quits.

Then I hit an enforced layoff as I was put under pressure at work to not blog. I knew by then I was leaving (but they didn’t) so I thought the best course of action was to lie low until I departed. I also made it clear at the time I left that I intend to take a few months off before I decide what to do next.

But, despite all that, two things remain clear to me.

1. After many years playing around working in this web world, I still love the possibilities and opportunities it presents. Pretty much every day brings something exciting.
2. I really care about how the interweb can make government better. The last two or three years have been a real ball and some of the stuff that has begun to happen over the last twelve months or so has been awesome. But its just the tip of the iceberg. There is so much more to follow, I’m sure of it.

So, despite the fact that I’m not on the inside anymore on a day by day basis, government online is still the thing I feel most passionate about, professionally speaking.

Therefore I’ll continue to use this soapbox to throw out ideas, observe and comment on developments, and add my tuppence to the state of the industry. As well as all that I hope to continue to support, encourage and work amongst those doing a fantastic job pushing the online agenda forward in government.

But not just yet. Let me enjoy the holiday for a little while longer.