Author: Jeremy

Somebody who likes nice things that work, without having to spend too much time working out why.

At the public sector web management group conference

Back from Birmingham, and from solving a few ‘local difficulties’ with my broadband supplier, with some observations on attending the inaugural meeting of the public sector web management group.

I travelled up the evening before on the back of a pretty grotty illness so I wasn’t expecting much in terms of my contribution or what I would pick up. I was right on the former but on the latter, the event was very enlightening.

The key (but I suppose unsurprising) thing was how much central government and local government webbies have got in common – similar concerns (central control, lack of budget or resources, great desire to improve things for the citizen) and a great deal of goodwill about sharing knowledge and expertise. Whilst our perspectives might be different our aims are pretty aligned.

It was good to finally meet up with people I only knew previously from their websites, blogs or rants and get their slant on the issues affecting public sector web. There was a genuine commitment to  try and improve our lot collectively and a small committee has formed to try and harness the goodwill and  keep the momentum going.

The things that stood out for me:

  • Strong desire to use our collective voice for putting forward an ‘industry view’ on matters of consultation and debate around the development of public sector online
  • Revelation from one of the speakers that the next stage of their intranet development is ‘turning it off in three years time’ – an obvious extension of the ‘corporate website is increasingly irrelevant‘ mantra
  • Good mix of visionaries and pragmatists – ‘Second Life is the future, you should give it a go’ vs ‘You cannot justify spending a single penny in Second Life until you get your email distribution and website usability right’ (couldn’t agree more…)

All in all, an excellent event. Credit to Dan Champion and Public Sector Forums for putting it on. Hopefully next time I won’t feel so crap and remember to take more notes.

Quick reminder – public sector web management group

I’ve mentioned this before, but a gentle nudge in your direction.

Next Wednesday (10th) is the inaugural meeting of the public sector web management group in Birmingham. If you think its important for public sector webbies to work together to share experience, best practice and improve standards then you should be there and get involved.

There’s an awful lot we can all learn from each other – I’m always rather chastened in the presence of local government webbies, they seem to be much more sophisticated in managing and developing their domains – and its important to support initiatives like this.

If you really can’t make it, you might be interested to know that the conference will be broadcast live in Second Life (is that still going? 😉 ). You’ll need to register in advance so check the details if that’s how you’ll participate.

Hope to see you there. (P.s. they’re not paying me for this ad!).

Social media isn’t the tools

Might sound blindingly obvious to webbies.

No doubt some of you experience the same conversations with policy colleagues. They’re desperate to have a shiny blog/wiki/forum (delete as appropriate), not interested examining interaction online with existing communities or partnering. They just WANT A BLOG, NOW!

Then you mention resourcing the initiative. Facilitation, moderation, community management. Whatever. This is the point at which you often lose them. When the realise the true scale of online engagement. They thought it was easy…

Anyway, this isn’t some rant about educating customers about the correct interactions, tools and uses of social media I promise. That can no doubt wait until another day (and another, and another…).

No, its a simple observation about how generating and keeping momentum in online engagement is absolutely paramount and not to be underestimated in its resource intensity.

Remember my post a few months back about the civil service network in Facebook? (do people still use Facebook..?). When I wrote about it, the network had reached a massive 13,022 members and was growing at a rate of around 200 per day. Full of thrusting young new faststream entrants who live online. Digital natives, if you will.

As the community built a head of steam. One of the wiser, (slightly) older heads in government who ‘gets this stuff’ asked a particularly pertinent question:

“Wow! 13,000 civil servants in one place! What do we do now?”

The response was staggering in its response – just a few dozen suggesting, variously, starting a new union, having a party, changing a lightbulb and (my favourite) forming a committee (how mandarin like)…

Can’t say I visit the network’s page very often given the staggering depth of conversation that goes on there but tonight I dipped in for a minute to discover…..

Nearly 8,000 members of the network have disappeared. Now I appreciate there’s staff turnover and all but that’s a drastic reduction in the numbers. It just goes to show that you can deploy the tools and create the spaces but without energy and enthusiasm you’re going to face an uphill struggle.

Even in Facebook with its exposure and scale. It just took me a minute to find the ‘leave this network’ link (bottom left of any network homepage if you’re interested) which leads me to conclude two things: its harder to leave than just to stay a member so its a real conscious decision to depart and I can’t believe that all those 8,000 have left Facebook in its entirety. Perhaps they really didn’t want their other ‘friends’ to know they are civil servants?

Another government webbie blogging

Darren Taylor, head of the central web team for the Northern Ireland Civil Service, has recently started blogging. Darren’s got a particular interest in accessibility so it will be interesting to follow his thoughts, especially as his technical knowledge appears to be light years ahead of mine.

He’s already posed a few thoughts in response to my recent post about government beginning to get social media, including a social networking site for MPs and a pan-public sector wiki for publishing FOI releases. Like the last one in particular and have heard others mention this before as a good idea.

Darren also makes a pertinent point about the flavour of the month social networking sites (Facebook et al) and asks ‘has much changed since Geocities’? Thinks may be a bit more sophisticated now and there’s more scale to the audience but I think the nub of his point rings true.