Category: egovernment

On my (relative) silence, some good events, and upcoming speaking gigs

For regular readers I’m sorry that its been a bit quiet around here lately – especially as I embarked on a series of six posts about models of social media adoption but have only managed to write four of them so far (I promise I will do my best to get the final two completed in the next few days). Work colleagues (and my mother) would tell you this is nothing new.

There are several reasons why its all gone a bit tumbleweed:

  • My summer holiday – last year I also found it hard to get back into the groove of writing when I returned from my break (despite – this year as well as last – resolving to write prolifically whilst away).
  • Returning to a groaning intray – been trying to get a number of projects off the ground, and been thrown several new pieces of work – they all get in the way of thinking / posting time.
  • Another recent short weekend break – disrupted my attempts to get ‘back in the groove’.
  • Most importantly, suffering from social media overload – nothing I have read recently has inspired me or drawn me to do anything. In fact, there seems to have been an awful lot of social media navel gazing going on at the moment. Its not like I have nothing to say, but when all I hear is noise, I don’t really want to add to it (this despite the fact that there are plenty of things I want to write about. But if I’m not inspired, it doesn’t feel right to be broadcasting my thoughts either).

So, let’s hope I snap out of it soon. Not for your sake (necessarily) but for mine. If this all sounds a bit sorrowful, hey – it’s my party!

Anyway, whilst I remember there are three events taking place shortly that you should think about participating in (if you don’t know about them already).

Two are taking place this Saturday (27th September), both in London. First up is the UK Youth online, run by Tim Davies. Its being held at DIUS in Victoria Street. Second is Barcamp London 5 overspill, organised by Harry Metcalfe (a brilliant idea, might I add). Both of these events look like they are going to be cracking. I was hoping to go to both (don’t ask) but sadly family obligations have got in the way so I may only be able to pop in for a short time, if at all. But I recommend them both to you.

A little further away (both in time and in distance from London) is Scot Web 2, being held in Edinburgh on 30th October. Organised by the ever resourceful Alex Stobart from the Scottish Executive/Government. It’s a barcamp style type event focusing on social media in the public sector. I’m trying to work out how to get there myself.

Also, I’ve reluctantly (because I don’t really enjoy it) agreed to speak at a few upcoming events. If you’re planning to attend any of these, please do say hello and either settle my nerves before the event, or tell me I was fabulous afterwards (I hate to hear the truth..). These include:

  • Mashup* event – Government 2.0 on 7th October – not really sure what I am doing here as it looks quite ‘techie’ but I guess I will find out shortly.
  • Public Sector online on 21st October at Inmarsat – talking about ‘web2.0 and beyond’ with other speakers (so hoping this will be some kind of panel thing).
  • Online Information on 2nd December at Olympia, London. I’ll be participating in a panel discussion here about ‘web2.0 after the buzz’.

There, so i finally wrote something…. 🙂

Teacamp this Thursday

For those web people not away on their holidays this week, a quick reminder that its Teacamp on Thursday afternoon (21st) from 2pm to 4pm.

If you haven’t been before we meet in Cafe Zest on the second floor of House of Fraser on Victoria Street in London. Pop along and meet others interested in all aspects of government web. Its open to all, not just civil servants.

Steph Gray – social media swiss army knife

If you’re not aware of his work, you should check out Steph Gray’s blog. Steph works at DIUS (the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills) and as far as I know is the first person in government employed to deploy and embed social media skills and techniques across the organisation. And over the last few months he has been quietly getting on and doing a bloody good job.

I’m a believer that there is never one online solution to a problem (which is why I don’t like enterprise or corporate ‘solutions’) especially considering how many good cheap or tools there are out there across the web. What we need to do more of is experiment, lots. If you’re going to do that kind of thing properly, you probably need someone like Steph – who is a pretty good blueprint of the ideal social media evangelist in government:

  • He’s not a designer, but has a good eye for design
  • He’s not a programmer – but has a working knowledge of programming languages and operating systems to set things up (including this wonderful tool)
  • He’s not a builder but knows how to deploy tools such as blogging platforms, customise them and make them work
  • He has a strong communications skillset
  • He has bags of common sense
  • He knows where his expertise ends, is honest about it rather than trying to blag it, and always knows someone else who can help.

All of these are crucial and frankly, without that mix of skills, it would be very difficult to do what he is doing in any organisation (that is unless you had bags of money to recruit lots of people to cover the bases above).

Most importantly, its his full-time job, not part of it or an add-on. So he has time and space to get things right.

Steph’s done an impressive amount of work so far in the last six months, some of which is visible, some of which is not. He’s written some great pragmatic guidance illustrating ways of explaining the benefits of all this stuff to the business, rather than blindly evangelising social media for social media’s sake. And he’s been good enough to share it around to colleagues across government.

If departments are serious about investing in social media, creating online engagement opportunities etc, here is a very good yardstick to measure by.

If you’re a head of communications in government, thinking of experimenting in this area, you could do a lot worse than speak to Steph. Better still get him to help you find the right person.

Don’t like truncated feeds or partial emails

In my real life away from work (as if there is one nowadays) I read feeds and receive emails about interests not connected with government. One thing that gets my goat is reading a partial feed or an email with teaser text followed by a link so that I have to click through to read the rest of the article.

Today I got a response to a petition from the Number 10 website (its really nice that they have created a response mechanism for petitions that get a decent audience. It shows that they are listening and I think its a great service altogether).

This is what the email said:

You signed a petition asking the Prime Minister to xxxxxxxxxxxx

The Prime Minister’s Office has responded to that petition and you can view
it here:

http://www.number10.gov.uk/xxxxxxxxxx

Prime Minister’s Office

Petition information – http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/xxxxxxxxx

If you would like to opt out of receiving further mail on this or any other
petitions you signed, please email optout@petitions.pm.gov.uk

Question: why do I have to click through to find out the government’s response? Its a small thing, I’ve no idea what usability experts find out from thousands of depth interviews of internet users (perhaps I should) but it doesn’t feel right to me. Personally its one click through I could do without. Any chance it could be fixed?