egovernment – Whitehall Webby

John Naughton on the White House’s use of Drupal

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?

Craig Newmark on the challenges to transformational government

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.

This is what I mean by ‘more senior strategic web roles’

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.

Its getting busy north of the border

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.

A week is a long time in politics

Well…. please forgive my lack of appreciation of the passage of time, I’m trying to adjust to a new pace of life and my body mind clock is all over the place.

In fact it’s been a month since I left the civil service, and a lot has happened – both personally and back in Whitehall. I’ve not really kept up with it all as I have been without decent connectivity for much of the time.

But catching up with messages and feeds the thing that sticks out is the fuss about the new government director of digital engagement role. Simon suggests that someone called my bluff. I don’t think so exactly. Its good to see the government beginning to take this seriously, but it is the beginning and one job (with a seemingly impossible job description too) not a sea change yet.

I’m not going to go over all the very good issues and perspectives that have been raised about this role, you’ve probably seen it all already if you’re interested in the issue.

A couple of points from my perspective:

It’s unequivocally a *good* thing, whatever the media might think, whatever the dangers of it going wrong. Doing something is better than nothing – which is why we are where we are.
It would be an even better thing if whoever gets the job recognises / supports / harnesses all the good stuff already going on and those who have been responsible for doing it. The value is in the network, not in the concept. There is a danger that someone coming in might want to do it their way and ignore what has already happened. But as I say above, doing something is better than nothing.
The job description looks impossible and, I think, slightly misses the point. There is no director of engagement in government (you might argue there is no culture of engagement either) so this raises the bar and expectations well above where they should be. The fact that there seems to be little or no money / resource / control to deliver this stuff also makes the gig look tricky. But not impossible.

I’m going to watch this one with great interest.

Incidentally, as I write this I’m listening to Ryan Tubridy on the radio (he’s kinda the Simon Mayo of Irish radio but also has a very popular late night TV chat show so he’s part Jonathan Ross too). He’s talking to some well known Irish bloggers (including the great Damian Mulley) and accusing bloggers in general of being narcisistic and vain, liking the sound of their own voice etc etc (I paraphrase).

Excuse me?

Words simply fail me. Its bad enough when the papers rack on about the ‘twitter tsar’ but when highly paid media personalities start accusing others of being narcisistic and vain I think they really really don’t get *it* at all.

The future is online – I’m glad the government realises it.