Category: public sector blogging

Gadzooks! I missed my birthday :-)

As I’m going through one of my (reasonably regular) “neglecting the blog” phases at the moment I failed to recognise that somehow Whitehall Webby has made it to the ripe old age of one.

I started writing here on 29 April 2007, when I was helping the Cabinet Office to produce a report on government communicators’ use of social media. It was an experiment to demonstrate the opportunities of civil servants blogging (jury’s still out on that one I think…)

Since then I’ve published 91 pieces on the site, not bad considering I find it all so difficult, and had 336 comments (some of which, admittedly, are mine… ).

The most popular post over the last year has been the ‘about me‘ page, with over 1,100 views. However the posts I wrote on the civil serf affair got the most interest at the time (as most other government web related blogs experienced).

Over the last twelve months I’ve tried to to publicise examples of good government use of web, particularly innovative stuff. This includes the launch of the Ministry of Justice website, the Wales Office wordpress site, the Foreign Office’s social media big-bang, and more recently the excellent experimentation coming out of Number 10.

A common theme throughout my musings has been the role of webbies in government, and how we can organise ourselves into a group of experts who are recognised as such in Whitehall.

This thinking led to what has been my highlight of the last year – setting up the UKGovWeb Barcamp and bringing together civil servants, consultants, freelancers and others with the intention of encouraging the building of a community of committed people around government online.

So far thats bearing fruit. Many of us meet regularly at “teacamps” and colleagues in several departments are beginning to create self-organised groups in their organisations with the intention of working together to offer networking and training opportunities.

So, the future looks bright, and this blog has actually made it through a whote year – something I often thought wouldn’t happen.

End of term report completed, lets hope there’s another one next year.

Some things that have caught my eye recently

Time flies, and suddenly I realise that I haven’t posted here since the excitement of the civil serf affair. Rather than the usual (unintentional I assure you) long essay, here’s a few things that have interested me over the last few weeks – and might be of interest to you too:

  • Networking Democracy – really interesting debate beginning over at Our Kingdom about how government can use the internet to assist a national debate. This is related to the Governance of Britain programme, which I have talked about before.
  • Andrew Brown‘s been busy using Del.icio.us to create a feed of cabinet papers from Lewisham Council. What a brilliant idea! – and an easy way to syndicate content if you’re not all RSS enabled. Hoping to use this idea shortly.
  • The BBC has published some guidance for its staff engaging in social networking. Its thorough but succinct and most importantly its out there for everyone to see. (I have had some involvement in the development of similar guidance for civil servants but that’s not published yet. Frankly, the BBC guidance and the civil service code cover the bases for any civil servant unsure about what they should/n’t or could/n’t do online).
  • Almost as a companion piece, Colin McKay has published a great piece of guidance on how to do social media ‘stuff’ in large organisations. Worth reading for tips on getting people onside and stuff in ‘under the wire’ (according to Wikipedia, Colin is a professional skateboarder – you kept that quiet!)
  • I saw Clay Shirky speak at the RSA last week about his new book ‘Here Comes Everybody‘. David Wilcox has a good video clip of part of the presentation. Can’t wait to read the book.
  • Some more public sector blogging – nine members of the house of Lords have launched a team blog. Be interesting to see how that develops.

Civil Serf – final thoughts

As this story will be digital fish and chip wrappings tomorrow, I thought I’d just clarify my position in light of continued interest in the story from the media.

Civil Serf is an individual who expressed her personal individual thoughts. She is not a corporate PR machine attempting to control the ‘message’ and shouldn’t be treated as such.

She made a mistake.

She realised her mistake and did the right thing – protected herself.

Nobody died.

Leave her alone.

I hope she’s okay and safe (and feeling safe).

Tom Watson on transformational government

Tom Watson, the MP blogger and cabinet office minister responsible for e-government, spoke at a conference yesterday about how technological change will redefine government’s relationship with the citizen. Its well worth a read.

Interesting to note his thoughts on the civil serf story – a very promising approach and much more measured than the scare headlines that have been knocking around in the press (have they learnt nothing from last time?)

Looks like there will be interesting times ahead for us working in and around government online.

Civil Serf – what went wrong

There’s been a lot of discussion across the blogosphere, and in the press, about the disappearance of the Civil Serf blog yesterday. The Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph both published articles about Civil Serf and shortly afterwards the blog disappeared.I’ve been quite taken aback by the response. You’d think some terrible contravention of human rights had occurred the way people have been talking about it.The facts are simple, Civil Serf crossed the line. The Civil Service Code is clear about integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality being critical to acting as a civil servant. Even if all she’s guilty of is being indiscreet, then she’s certainly not acted in the spirit of the code.

If you work for an organisation, any organisation, and choose to criticise it anonymously (but leave enough clues to identified) you are asking for trouble (this isn’t the first time I said that). End of.

The fact that the person in question is a civil servant does not make it in the public interest to ‘lift the lid on Whitehall’, because a civil servant is more aware than most of their terms and conditions of employment and why they’re important. So they have less excuses if they do cross the line.

For the record, I enjoyed reading the blog. I recognised the tone but 1. although its not my experience, I know some colleagues sympathised more and 2. Working in any large bureauocracy (public or private) is frustrating. Its easy to single out the public sector but its a pretty obvious target.

Obviously I think civil servants are absolutely in their rights to blog their thoughts, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing what I do here. But that right needs to be placed in context whoever you work for.