Developers are great but…

Doing wonderful things with data: creating apps that everyone can use to seamlessly skip through their lives, or educate/reveal information through linking the data is always going to be awe-inspiring and useful/needed. We know this, hence there is a real revolution in the way the developer community is being trusted to help government open data in a useful and appropriate way.

But equally there are other benefits to having people freely playing with data – what are they doing with it and why?

Take for example the fact that two of the apps developed independently from each other at Young Rewired State were for finding safe routes to school. This tells us more than just: oh there’s a clever app, let’s talk to the IT people and data people to get this live as a government service. It tells us that young people do not feel safe going to school and in a group of 50 people aged under 18, two groups have chosen to give up their weekend to try to develop a solution to this. (That’s quite a high margin).

To any business, organisation or government, this is extremely useful information. The solution is not the app, that might form part of it, but what the development of such an app tells us is that there is a fundamental problem, a very clearly defined one, that needs some attention.

I could go on to give countless examples, but I know that you are all brilliant enough to think through the implications of this for yourselves. And why I think that it is important that those beyond the geek community keep a very close eye on what comes out of making data available.

On that note, I am hoping to get some of the gen on the apps being created behind the closed Beta at data.gov.uk as I suspect that there some early lessons we can all take from this. And when they do open it all up, please take time to look through what has been done, and see what clues you can find to making your own businesses better – in and outside of government.

Sentiment analysis – analysis

Last night’s supper was brilliant for a host of reasons, not least of which being the food served at the awesome Rules restaurant in London. I was there with, amongst others, Chris Condron – a wonderful man I met through Young Rewired State. Conversation ranged from the antics of Edward VII and Lillie Langtry to sentiment analysis (the former I am comfortable with, the latter I was fascinated by).

Anyone working in the world of digital media is used to the feeling of playing catchy uppy, adopting the look of the slightly baffled whilst trying desperately to keep up and learn. That was me last night.

Today I hounded Chris for an explanation of sentiment analysis, and he gave me the following:

Crudely, semantic analysis gives you a non-statistical (unlike search engines) sense of what something (say, an article) is about.

Sentiment analysis uses semantic analysis techniques to measure that against a set of known criteria, eg is a text pro or anti something?

It’s already being used in the financial world. It could be a really cool tool (especially when run across live data [such as Twitter] rather than flat text articles) for brand management. Marketers can use it to test in real time the public’s reaction to a product launch.

Before rapidly handing me over to his much heralded colleague Dr Jarred McGinnis:

It’s a computer that analyses text for keywords and phrases and determines the positive or negative sentiment of the story. For example, “Paddington Bear sucks” would probably be determined to be negative where the statement “Paddington Bear is a hero” would be positive.

The technology is not very accurate but still useful. One example of its use is to monitor mainstream and social media for negative or positive trends with respect to your company or one of its products.

Now, I am rapidly becoming a huge fan of championing the ability of talented people whilst genuflecting to the power of the computer. As the work in my field diverges ever more on information, data and ontologies, so my respect for the statisticians and analysts grows; and my understanding of the limits of computers, and the limits of humans. I am not sure whether to proudly embrace my ever-increasing knowledge of librarian skills and understanding of the importance of cataloguing languages: Dublin Core and the like – or to run away. What I do know, is that it is increasingly important to spend time making sure that the human involvement in the digital revolution is carefully balanced with the awesome power of the computer.

So we come to sentiment analysis. Whilst doing my own homework on this tonight, I understand that it is essentially an ontology of words or phrases that are assigned positive or negative associations. Using this as a framework, you can throw a whole load of content at this wall of good and bad – and have it separated cleanly into positive and negative, using the brilliant processing power of the computer.

To give you an example that Dr J showed me http://www.newssift.com/index.jsp. Using the search box, I can put in a topic. The resulting page gives me bucket loads of information; the graph on the top left is the sentiment analysis, some useful MIS and source material is included and the main centre gives me the search results being analysed. I won’t do it for you, you go and play.

However, what has kept me most intrigued is the semantic search bit, (by semantic I mean refined associated search). Once you have run your initial search, the results page lets you add search terms to refine the results and gives you ever more detailed information.

Now, I don’t know how you would use this – I would say with a note of caution: this is just data being thrown at a pretty brutal analysis tool of positive and negative feeling (something a computer can only do by cataloguing good/bad feeling words against online content) – but it is the first step I have seen in digitally automating the mood of the nation on any given topic.

Please do let me know of other tools that you know of that have refined this further, (don’t google it – I already have!), and please do let me know your thoughts on this. I will certainly be playing about a bit more with this stuff.

Opening up the non-personal data in the Home Office

Over the last couple of months I have been working on getting some non-personal data sets published in re-usable form (as recommended in the Power of Information report here). This all a part of the digital engagement strategy, but something close to my heart because of Rewired State and Young Rewired State. I have already seen the huge potential of making this data available: the Rewired State creations page showcases what can be made for next to no money over the course of 12 – 24 hours – imagine the potential?

Not only does it mean that awesome web and mobile apps are created – but it also means that the people who actually need to use this information, can create what they need, in a way that answers the problem they are trying to solve – traditionally this would have taken weeks/months of customer insight, and the solution then developed by industry experts. I really like the approach of looking to the digital community, to find the people facing whichever problem an organisation is trying to solve – and then finding those who also have the ability to create solutions, the geeks, the coders. Young people are an obvious example, and we have proved the success of that; but it can also be applied to say those with long term illness – a group that I know the Scottish government is trying to reach and help.

I thought that it might be useful to explain how we in the Home Office have been approaching responding to the recommendation:  ‘The government should ensure that public information data sets are easy to find and use’, and what we plan to do next.

Taking the simple remit to locate the non-personal data, find the original source and publish that, we began by looking at all of our publications. Most roads led to the Research Development and Statistics unit. So we – in communications and the Office of the Chief Information Office (OCIO) – started to talk to the statisticians about getting access to the raw data. Because we did not really know what we were asking, and RDS did not really know why or what we were asking either, we had a series of telephone conversations, email conversations and finally a good old coffee and a chat. (I tell you what, this is what I love about this work – you get to meet the most incredible people. I had not any idea of the work of the statisticians and I am in awe, and a little bit in love, with what they do). At the end of that, we had a clear understanding of the process of data being analysed and released, the varying degrees of complexity and statistical implications of disclosure (which basically means if we go to too much granular detail, there can be a chance that individuals or locations could be identified <- that’s very bad). Now we all knew what we were asking for, we had an idea of what we wanted to do and so we began to do it.

We have separated data into two high level categories: data that is currently published, and data that is yet to be created.

For data that is currently published we are working closely with the statisticians to get the raw data and we are now publishing it here www.homeoffice.gov.uk/data (published by the rather wonderful Carly Moore in e-comms). (You will see that we also link to PDFs that have data in, just so that you can see what will be coming up). It is working, and we are looking at how we can make this all better: easier to sort and find datasets.

For data that is yet to be created, we are talking to the relevant parts of the Home Office about the data that is required, and will be publishing this on an ongoing basis. We are also preparing guidance to enable officials to produce future data in a format and to standards that will facilitate its reuse. In the longer term we aim to establish a process whereby data is published in reusable form as a matter of course, and is made available promptly, whilst maintaining appropriate controls regarding the security of personal or sensitive data (in accordance with the Hannigan report).

So that’s how we are handling this. Does that help? I hope you will keep an eye on how this progresses. If you do anything with any of the reusable data, do tag it #honpdata and then we will be able to see what you do.

I would seriously love to have a developer session where the statisticians and coders work together – that would be alchemy.

Young Rewired State – it happened

Young Rewired State is now over. The good news: 16 applications/websites were developed enough for presentation (within a weekend, with roughly 12 real time hours of dedicated work) <- that is pretty impressive. The projects will be uploaded here: http://www.rewiredstate.org/projects (and most are, the apps developed by the 15 to 18 year olds are from ‘how’s my train‘ onwards, no need to separate them on the site yet).

We diverged the Rewired State *thing* into a second event for young people, simply because we were curious, what would a different age group do? This curiosity built into something else when we found, through talking about the concept, that there were a few useful things that could happen:

1. government wants to bridge the gap with young people, (by ‘government’ I mean both civil service and politicians)
2. there are some scarily good coders, scientists and statisticians out there – and they are aged 15 – 18
3. someone needs to boot someone else in order to make the connection

We’re quite good at that.

The event happened – and you can follow #youngrewiredstate on twitter or !yrs on identi.ca to catch the tweets over the weekend (and prob after) or google *young rewired state* for the blog/tech press coverage.

Lessons learned

1. the society that we live in does not start at 18
2. we had a grand aim to *get young people to engage each other*, simply meaning give the tools and information and see what happens – in fact, the frustrations addressed the basic frustrations of life that government could solve (*for example* by giving up the data and letting the talented/passionate make it less horrendous to *for example* wait for a bus)

Interesting things and the most important things to note

• our message is harsh but the reality is that government departments, ministers and civil servants took time (Sunday afternoon) out to come and see what young people were taking their own weekends doing to try to help/make better things
• this event happened, as in we could afford to do it, because we were sponsored <- and a greater percentage of our sponsors were government (costs were food, travel, accommodation <- for the 15 to 18 yr olds outside London, server, printing)
• there were three girls (out of 50) this was not for lack of trying, Dan Morris and I spent a painful three weeks on the hunt for more girl geeks aged 15 to 18 (something needs to be looked at there, but…)
• Directgov are brave – we got funding from Directgov, and they sent a judge: Mike Hoban, and their directgov Innovate man: Brian Hoadley, proving their support and proving that they are listening <- this is good. We dedicated our one donated prize (an X-Box) to a recasting of the Directgov homepage, just to see what young people did with it. The reality was that they had little exposure and we have a raft of free feedback plus a few redesigns (here’s the winning one http://twitpic.com/f09io)
• the catalyst effect of #youngrewiredstate means that all we do is chuck a rock in the pool; but we do it with friends, colleagues, communities, Ministers and civil servants and see what happens
• we can inspire, Julia Chander from DFID (who already is doing awesome stuff in the social innovation space but really struggling with data, as in ‘what do you need?’) blogged her first post <- super chuffed about that

We can all see the 15-18 yr olds did what they signed up to do <- so much so that they were up and working, ahead of their mentors, on day #2 and perhaps ahead of the RS and Google people.

Government and the industry signed up also and has to be applauded for stepping wholly up to the plate.

It’s super hard to make these practical connections. Everyone is there for differing reasons, but the same goal: let’s make stuff better (we can worry about the *how* afterwards). A fact that is pondered in the Public Strategy blog.

Update: two blog posts that really round the weekend up for me are: from one of our *rather clever* mentors: Christian Heilmann’s and one of the 15-18 year olds who was involved in the dev: TFHell Jordan Hatch.

Young Rewired State

It’s this weekend and I will be blogging about it next week. But if you want to follow the action then the hashtag is #youngrewiredstate (so tweets will be short!) also #yrs, for the bleeding edge amongst you the identica link is here http://identi.ca/group/youngrewiredstate and one of our young developers is live blogging here http://www.scribblelive.com/Event/Rewired_State

Young Rewired State

Young Rewired State is the most exciting thing on the planet at the moment – well for me anyway!

• nearly 70 people aged between 15-18 years have registered (way more than we had dared hope for, and more signing up – even though we have closed the list)
• just over 20 brilliant Rewired State geeks on hand to mentor
• a small band of organisers revving up to a big pre-meet on Wednesday when we start prepping the laptops
• our judges are lined up
• Google is restocking the sweets and clearing the rooms (and talking to James about ports)
• the poster has been designed by the wonderful Richard Pope (yes we did sort the typo before going to the printers)
• Tim O’Reilly has tweeted about us
• the trains and hotels are being booked
• the young people are nagging for more data <- they are data gannets!
• the freenode irc for Rewired State is buzzing with plans and projects as groups and individuals start getting their ideas together
• and last but not least, our lovely sponsors have been invoiced (Thank you to Directgov, DCMS/CIO Council, 4iP, The Guardian and *hopefully* DCSF <- thank goodness for these sponsors, seriously would not be able to afford to do this otherwise, it is eye-wateringly expensive on the trains nowadays, and we have talent coming from everywhere across the country)

If you want to come along on the Sunday at 4pm to watch what has been crafted and designed over the weekend, you can, but you must sign up http://rewiredstate.org/young.

If you missed out the *what* and *why*. We are giving a bunch of young people as much government data as we can get our hands on (shoving it all up here first http://rewiredstate.org/data), access to some of the best developer minds should they need a bit of help, a weekend at the London Googleplex and see what happens. Why? because we want to showcase the extraordinary talent in this country, make some awesome apps, give the young people the tools and information to engage each other in what interests them, and just maybe add some weight to the quest for more/better/varied programming languages on the curriculum.

What can you do to help? Well at the moment the crisis is laptops, we need as many as we can lay our hands on. We have a titchy bit of money left over to hire them if necessary. If you can help with that great – we need them by Wednesday! Email me.

Please note:

1. The list for young people is closed, we cannot afford any more but we could squeeze you in if you can pay to get yourselves there and bring your own laptop (please make this clear when you sign up)

2. There are still spaces to come and watch the show and tell on the Sunday, but you must register – you have to be on the list to get past the Google doors.

Homework

There have been two publications this week that have caught my attention, and I have been a bit surprised by the lack of reaction to them. The first was from the Cabinet Office Strategy Unit, entitled Power in people’s hands: learning from the world’s best public services and the second from the Lords Information Committee on creating connections between people and Parliament.

Power in people’s hands

This is a very interesting report, driven by the fact that there is just not a great deal of money about and a recognition that the way out of any recession is innovation. This is good news for everyone, it means we are going to get creative. Liam Byrne MP writes the foreword and says that ‘in the next decade we need to be radical about power; realistic about money; and relentless on innovation’. The report has shown that there is a worldwide shift of power from the State to the citizen, but what excites me most is that Mr Byrne has picked out freedom of information and data to be the UK’s pièce de résistance : ‘We aim to be world leaders in making information on services accessible’. OK his words are not quite so dramatic, but in Ministerial speak that is quite a statement, the stall he has set out is the information one – and that is a huge win for the UK. We have a wealth of entrepreneurial and geek talent ready and willing to take such information and help create services that work at hyper-local and individual level. (You might just have to trust me on this one).

I suggest you skim read the whole report, but I am just going to cut and paste the bits that jumped out for me below if you need further convincing:

Overall, the importance of public services is likely to grow rather than diminish. For example, sources of increasing wealth creation – such as the emerging low-carbon, life science and pharmaceutical, and digital industries – will create new opportunities. But every person, and the country as a whole, will only have the potential to benefit fully if they have access to excellent schools, training and employment services.

…

… stepping up the drive to improve value for money by taking hard decisions on priorities as needs change, redesigning services, sharing assets better and cutting bureaucracy.

And for you working in local government and devolved: more exciting news, this does recognise you are the front-liners:

In considering lessons, it is also important to recognise that the public services that are covered in this study are delivered by the Devolved Administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and by local authorities. It will be for these bodies to consider the most appropriate insights. At a time of necessary innovation, however, the best organisations look outward – for practices which can be replicated and to spark new ideas and challenge existing ways of thinking.

Here is the bit that interests me most, Chapter Two expands and I recommend that you read all of it if the following interests you slightly:

Empowering citizens in the information age

A revolution in the use and re-use of information on public services is being stimulated by new online technologies, giving the potential to empower citizens to hold services to account far more easily than in the past. The leading-edge systems, such as StateoftheUSA.org and data.gov, are not only disseminating information rapidly. They are also breaking down government monopolies on information presentation and use by making it easy for people to analyse information themselves. At the same time, blogs, wikis and other web 2.0 tools are enabling citizens to get more deeply involved in validating information and collectively making decisions. In Cologne, for example, participatory budgeting uses new technology to give citizens a stronger voice over how public money is spent.

The shift required for governments to enable such changes is cultural as much as technical. It is no coincidence that American public services have been at the forefront of these changes,  for they already had an understanding that all government information should be in the public domain. Government should, however, do more than just liberate information. The global leaders will be those who invest in ensuring that information is high-quality and balanced, can be shared through common standards and facilitates joint working by professionals and citizens.

Fascinated yet? Whole report here.

So Cabinet Office is saying it needs to get revolutionary on us… and now Parliament, specifically the House of Lords, agrees. For those of you not clear about the role of Parliament and the role of the Cabinet, let me grab some explanations for you: can’t use my own words as I may explain it wrong, so forgive the use of even more quotes.

The Cabinet Office aims to ensure that the Government delivers its priorities. It does this by supporting collective consideration of key issues by Cabinet and its Ministerial Committees, and by working with departments to modernise and co-ordinate government, aiming at excellence in policy making and responsive, high quality public services.

Parliament is an essential part of UK politics. Its main roles are:

• Examining and challenging the work of the government (scrutiny)

• Debating and passing all laws (legislation)

• Enabling the government to raise taxes

*more detail on Parliament here

And so the fact that the House of Lords has come to a similar conclusion about its own work is equally as important.

Creating connections between people and Parliament

The report has been written by the Information Committee which ‘considers the House’s information and communications services’. The report has the tagline: are the Lords listening; and if you read my explanation of the difference between Parliament and Cabinet then perhaps it is important to us that they are. The report is in such an easy to use format that it negates the need for me to pull out the interesting bits. Go and read it here it seriously is a very important report. You could just read Chapters 3 and 4 if like me you are most interested in communication and data, but I don’t recommend it (read it all!).

CHAPTER 3: ONLINE COMMUNICATION AND ENGAGEMENT

• Online forumsCommenting on legislation

  Box 2: Recommendations on Online Communication and Engagement

The parliamentary website


The Lords of the Blog website

Parliament and YouTube

Parliament’s use of other social media

Embedding

Parliament on other websites

Increasing two-way online communication

What can be done on the parliamentary website?

CHAPTER 4: SETTING PARLIAMENTARY DATA FREE

Introduction


Making public data available online for re-use

Progress so far on releasing parliamentary data

Integrated information

Online information about Bills

The role the Government should play

Box 3: Recommendations on Parliamentary Data

And of course, always the best bit, the list of recommendations:

CHAPTER 11: SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS AND ACTIONS

Actions arising from our recommendationsActions the Committee has already taken:

Actions the Committee will take:

Actions the Committee recommends the House Committee should take:

Actions the Committee recommends the Administration and Works Committee should take:

Actions the Committee recommends the Government should take:

Especially good is this one:

“We recommend that information and documentation related to the core work of the House of Lords (including Bills, Hansard, transcripts of public committee meetings, evidence submitted to committees, committee reports, records of divisions, expenses and the register of Lords’ interests) should be produced and made available online in an open standardised electronic format that enables people outside Parliament to analyse and re-use the data.“

I am not sure that I need to conclude this post other than to say I hope that I have helped you find two very interesting reports! And apologies if I bored you…

Update on digital engagement in Home Office

My recent frustration at various conferences and unconferences over the last few months has been compounded by the fact that I am already struggling along the path of setting and helping embed a digital engagement strategy in the Home Office. I have to admit to being a little fed up of the endless hectoring – as it is seeming to be now – about how we *must* do this, we *must* engage properly where the communities are already collaborating. I think we all know this now – and many of us attending and speaking at these events are facing the realities of actually making this happen, and we need to do more to support each other. (I am particularly rubbish at this, not through belligerence, rather through busy-ness and actually struggling to find the time to share – hence my use of this blog and twitter account to do this in my *free time* rather than formally sharing the work we do).

What we are up to in the Home Office

In the Home Office we are about half way through the website rationalisation work, converging and migrating content slowly but surely to the decreed websites: Directgov, businesslink.gov.uk, corporate sites and the Police portal. Although this policy has not been welcomed with open arms necessarily, it has been an absolute boon in enabling the digital strategy to be embedded throughout the organisation – rather than being a *thing* that a group of people in the e-comms directorate do. I am not sure how it would have worked otherwise. (This sounds like I am far further along the path than I am – this is still in principle, but the path seems finally clear).

Ignoring the actual development of a digital strategy in a department – really not too much of a challenge as the Cabinet Office and COI have set out extremely detailed and good policies for us to work from; and really it is simply a matter of tailoring that guidance to the work of the department and its agencies – making it something that is integral to all digital communication takes all of the effort and talent of a major change management and internal communication programme.

Thus my gratitude to the work already mandated to take place with the convergence and rationalisation of all government websites: the first giant step has happened.

How we are embedding the principles of digital engagement

In the Home Office we will be drawing the strategy of digital engagement down through every part of the department: policy, strategy, marketing, press office and the communications directorate. The disciplines separated into:

• listen
• monitor
• engage
• broadcast

Policy: listen, monitor and engage (broadcasting consultations through all available channels as well as commentable documents)

Strategy: listen

Marketing: monitor, broadcast and engage

Press office: broadcast, listen, monitor and engage (as they would currently with online and offline press)

Communications directorate: broadcast, monitor and educate the rest of the department in appropriate use of social tools (by social tools this year I mean blogging, micro-blogging, commenting, creating commentable format documents, wikis and networks)

It is not quite as linear as this, Press Office and Comms will alert Policy to anything that may require intervention/response; and collaboration across the piece at timely intervals will enable the department to quickly learn how to use the internal and external community to do its job better. Nor is it as defined, we are working on this and need to learn more, from other departments.

Where are the current pressure points?

Press Office

Press officers seem confused as to how they should best utilise any digital engagement strategy, bringing in expert advice – absolutely right IMHO – as some of the social tools are broadcast mechanisms as much as they are for collaboration. This is something we are working through, hence my previous post about what is currently happening across UK government departments, specifically Press Offices. The common tool being twitter. Our latest thinking is:

• use a dashboard to monitor online conversation, trends and influencers
• be the owners of departmental tweeting – twitter is definitely a broadcast medium and the press office should be experts in its use and be aware of all tweeters in the dept (professional tweeting only, not those who have their own personal accounts obviously)

But this is something that is still being explored and I would love to have a conference/unconference specifically around press office and digital engagement

Education of communication teams

With the best will in the world, those who are working currently in online communcation are not necessarily totally up to speed on everything that is happening in the digital engagement space – but they need to be. For a start, they should all have a twitter account; read blogs or at the very least use rss feeds to keep abreast of news that interests them personally; be sent to conferences that talk about this stuff as a part of their job; be given access to the sites that they need in order to ensure they are confident in advising the rest of the department on what works best in which online communcation challenge.

In the Home Office, we have now finally – and only just – added a permanent agenda item to the weekly meeting on recent developments in digital engagement; and we are going to be setting out some simple things for people to do as a part of their current jobs to enable the necessary skills to be developed. (This does not mean going on half day courses on how to use twitter). It does mean following, reading and learning from people such as Steph Gray, Dave Briggs, Neil Williams, Julia Chandler, Stephen Hale – to name but a few (and probably annoy the rest) – who are doing this brilliantly in departments across Whitehall, almost daily developing new tools and methods for collaboration/engagement.

Again, this is work in progress and something that we are just beginning to address.

Data

To have a digital engagement strategy that does not include having a single entry point to all of our raw, non-personal data would be frankly bonkers. We are working towards this but the issue is not an unwillingness to do so; rather no single ownership or knowledge of all of the data sets we are currently publishing across the corporate and agency sites.

We have now drawn together an informal team across the department, whose job it is to gather bits of this picture – and we are in the process of deciding whether to crowdsource the information with the digital community as well as this *team*, or to create the single entry point and just add data sets as we find them (which will take longer).

We are seeking help from Andrew Stott, director of digital engagement in the Cabinet Office, and the power of information taskforce to nut this one – and I will post on this separately when we have a plan.

Devolution of trust

This was the most interesting thing that has come out of recent discussions: managing the risk of having devolved broadcasting and engagement – this seems to be one of, if not the, biggest concern. No longer is it as simple as marketing doing the broadcast ’sell’, press office managing the influencers and being the corporate voice and e-comms sorting the websites, with policy and strategy units setting the priorities and requirements. Now everyone needs to re-evaluate their role in an ever-changing consumer market, and trust that – with education and a certain amount of live testing – all colleagues do have the skill and nous to operate in this environment.

We are nowhere near resolving this one – and we are actively looking to other departments and governments worldwide for guidance.

Time

This is not something that is new, nor something that requires a ‘unit’ dedicated to *doing* it. It is simply a discipline that needs incorporating into current working plans and practices. In order to make it work well, it is necessary for digital engagement to be just an alternative method of behaviour that in time becomes the norm. Hence why it requires the principles of change management in order to be a success – as no one can really get away with assuming that someone else is going to do it for them.

But this takes time, something that the already lean civil service holds as a premium and any extra demand on a person or unit’s time comes at the cost of something else: and in my experience of the civil service – dropping anything will have a measurable impact on something.

Therefore digital engagement needs to be of proven and mandated strategic priority, with measurable benefit, in order to make this something that anyone can take seriously.

This can only be achieved by education and awareness in the senior civil service, strategic and policy teams. This is a deal-breaker, and one of the greater challenges.

Concerns over job security

As website rationalisation takes hold, so online communcations teams begin to feel disillusioned that their roles in departments are either feeders for the franchise teams running content on Directgov, or putter-uppers of corporate content on the official departmental website. Not exciting particularly, nor challenging and career-developing.

Naturally, attention is focussing on the digital engagement world, and there is a decided move towards *ownership* of social media. Any new project that uses social tools, challenges the status quo, involves a map (:)), or is at least vaguely more interesting than the convergence of content, triggers a pinata-bashing type scramble for the work. This is not in itself a problem, but – and here I risk being beaten at work on Monday – the scramble does not necessarily result in rational thought as to whether the idea in itself was a good one. The huge risk here is that projects are taken on and assigned simply because they are different and engaging, rather than whether they are right.

This can be mitigated by rapid education of online communcation teams, increased internal communication and… time. But again – this is an issue that needs to be addressed somehow.

Conclusion

The challenges that I have listed above are ones that I am particularly interested in resolving publicly (as it were). And would welcome conferences/unconferences/geek dinners/conversation in addressing. Apologies if this seems very last year, but the reality is that however exciting new stuff is – it’s not as challenging (therefore exciting) as creating the right environment in the first place that will utilise future development as a part of its daily work.

PS If anyone is reading this who works in the Home Office and is bewildered as to what I am talking about, seeing as there is nothing apparently happening where you work, do hunt me down on the gsi email and ask me. This is all WIP and there is much to be done (as you can see) before we achieve the nirvana I have set out.

UK government officially geeks out

Today twitter was set alight by the news that Sir Tim Berners-Lee has been appointed as an ‘expert adviser on public information delivery’. No doubt he will be given Tsar/Czar status (why? why?) to join our very own press-styled twitter Tsar: Andrew Stott. (Wikipedia tells me that the term Tsar replaced the term Emperor; I think that sounds better: Emperor Berners-Lee and Emperor Stott – I digress).

The Press release is out (copied at end of this post) and details what exactly Sir Tim will be doing.

Having been a long-frustrated champion of sorting and gathering together non-personal government data, this is just beautiful news. Sir TBL has been repeating for over a year now a mantra along the lines of: first I wanted your documents, now I want your data (one of my favourite TED broadcasts on this is TBL’s and is here). (I also saw him speak last year at Nesta, old post here, and he was inspiring, sensible and, frankly, spoke in such a way that there brooked no argument with what he was saying as it was just so… obvious.)

It just makes sense – and the fact that data sets are in such a muddle in most organisations where I work, is almost testament in itself that nothing organised will come out of such chaos without serious intervention and dedication.

This time last year, and the year before, and even the year before that – those of us working in UK government felt as if we were paddling upstream with an earbud; I include in this the website rationalisation teams – who actually began this whole process of addressing the woeful presentation of government information on the web. Alex Butler has to be hat-tipped here, as I do not see her name much associated with this, but she has been a tireless revolutionary behind the scenes. (NOT being sycophanty, Alex – just saying )

In my view, here’s how we got here:

1. Transformational government report published
2. Website rationalisation taken seriously
3. Tom Watson MP inherits ‘geek portfolio’ in Cabinet Office
4. Power of Information Taskforce report published and recommendations taken seriously (my fave: rec 14 in particular)
5. Andrew Stott appointed as Director of Digital Engagement
6. Sir Tim Berners-Lee appointed as government adviser on data

All of this before the bewildered eyes of us cynics… now beginning the slow hand-clap and exchanging ‘am I dreaming?’ glances.

Of course, this could still all go wrong… but I am not sure how – it would have to be really bad. 

There’s not much more to say. The ‘insider’: Stott is joined by the birth mother of the Internet ‘outsider’: Sir TBL. If we screw this up, then I’m leaving the country. (That’s not a promise – my children would kill me). But come on…

Advert break:

As you know, we formed Rewired State earlier this year with the express purpose of working on and with non-personal government data; to show government what could be done, with limited costs and resources – if all data was free and available. We were wholeheartedly supported by those inside and outside of government; and of course are continuing our work running Young Rewired State, Rewired State for Parliament and are organising a series of Rewired State sessions with departments – we will continue to work closely with the POIT team, hopefully adding power to the arm of our new geek partnership of Berners-Lee-Stott, helping to shape and form the future UK data.gov.

Here is the Press release on Sir TBL’s appointment:

10/06/2009 18:08

Cabinet Office (National)

(Cab Office) Pioneer of the world wide web to advise the Government on using data

The Prime Minister has announced the appointment of the man credited with inventing the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee as expert adviser on public information delivery. The announcement was part of a statement on constitutional reform made in the House of Commons this afternoon.

The Prime Minister has announced the appointment of the man credited with inventing the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee as expert adviser on public information delivery. The announcement was part of a statement on constitutional reform made in the House of Commons this afternoon.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who is currently director of the World Wide Web Consortium which overseas the web’s continued development. He will head a panel of experts who will advise the Minister for the Cabinet Office on how government can best use the internet to make non-personal public data as widely available as possible.

He will oversee the work to create a single online point of access for government held public data and develop proposals to extend access to data from the wider public sector, including selecting and implementing common standards. He will also help drive the use of the internet to improve government consultation processes.

The Prime Minister said:

“So that Government information is accessible and useful for the widest possible group of people, I have asked Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who led the creation of the world wide web, to help us drive the opening up of access to Government data in the web over the coming months.”

Tessa Jowell MP, Minister for the Cabinet Office said:

“I’m delighted to welcome Sir Tim Berners-Lee as expert adviser on public information delivery, I know he will bring great enthusiasm and extensive knowledge to the role. The internet is a key information source for many people and it’s vital that we make the most of it.

“From the performance of a local school to the most recent statistics on crime we need to make sure that people have the facts they need to make informed choices and hold public services to account. Sir Tim’s advice will also be invaluable when it comes to how the internet can be used to make sure government engages with as many citizens as possible.”

Andrew Stott, Director of Digital Engagement at the Cabinet Office, said:

“I’m delighted to be working with Sir Tim Berners-Lee and his panel on this key part of the Power of Information agenda; they will provide the expert challenge and insight we need to drive action across the public sector.”

Notes to editors

1.  A note setting out the context and terms of reference for Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s work is attached.

2. Sir Tim Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the World Wide Web, an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory. He wrote the first web client and server in 1990. His specifications of URIs, HTTP and HTML were refined as Web technology spread.  He is currently the 3COM Founders Professor of Engineering in the School of Engineering with a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he also heads the Decentralized Information Group (DIG). He is also a Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of Southampton, UK.  He is also the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), co-Director of the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) and a Director of the World Wide Web Foundation, started in 2008 to fund and coordinate efforts to further the potential of the Web to benefit humanity.  In 2001 he became a fellow of the Royal Society.  He was knighted in 2004 and awarded the Order of Merit in 2007.

3.  Nigel Shadbolt is Professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deputy Head (Research) of the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. He is a Founding Director of the Web Science Research Initiative, a joint endeavour between the University of Southampton and MIT.  He is a Fellow of both the Royal Academy of Engineering and the British Computer Society.  Between 2000-7, he was the Director of the £7.5m EPSRC Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration in Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT).   AKT was particularly influential in establishing the viability and value of web-based semantic technologies.  He has recently been awarded a further funding by the EPSRC to build on this work.  Professor Shadbolt has published over 300 articles on various facets of his research, and has written and co-edited nine books.

4.  The Power of Information Taskforce, chaired by Richard Allan, was established last year.  Its report set out 25 challenging recommendations for the government on how to improve its use of the internet to empower citizens.

Their blog is: http://powerofinformation.wordpress.com
The report can be found: http://poit.cabinetoffice.gov.uk
The Government’s response is on http://blogs.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/digitalengagement

Recommendation 14 was to establish a central point of access for government information.

Cabinet Office Press Office 22 Whitehall LONDON SW1A 2WH
Tel: 020 7276 1273 – Fax: 020 7276 0618 http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk Out of hours telephone 07699 113300 and ask for pager number 721338

Snapshot of UK govnt use of social tools – and Press Office involvement

Caveat: this is not exhaustive, it does not include all departments (even the Home Office!) It is literally a snapshot and I sincerely hope it will be taken and used by anyone who needs it. I am aware that Ross Ferguson in COI is preparing a repository for this sort of information, so I will not duplicate with another collaborative space, but here is the info for the time being (I have not summarised, nor offered opinion – this is just the information I have been given… enjoy):

DIUS (Steph Gray)

At DIUS, we’ve been experimenting over the last six months with a variety of social media tools and online engagement projects, particularly in the area of consultations and collaboration with stakeholders.

• We developed an interactive version of the Innovation Nation white paper (http://interactive.dius.gov.uk/innovationnation/) published earlier this year, inviting stakeholders to comment on the text of the document and engage in discussions online with policy officials.
• The centrepiece of the Department’s Science and Society consultation (http://interactive.dius.gov.uk/scienceandsociety/) has been a ‘hub’ style site, incorporating a blog, video hosted on our YouTube channel (http://uk.youtube.com/diusgovuk), shared calendar, links to online mentions of the consultation and ‘widget’ versions of the consultation questions for bloggers and stakeholders to embed on their own websites.
• We’ve hosted blogs to support the policy development process in some of our key policy areas including Higher Education (http://hedebate.jiscinvolve.org/) and Informal Adult Learning (http://talk.dius.gov.uk/blogs/adultlearning/), continuing discussions which have started offline, into online spaces.
• We sponsored ‘Meet the Freshers’, an online soap opera on the social network Bebo (http://www.bebo.com/meetthefreshers), supporting our £3m student finance campaign. The partnership included input into the direction of the series, video messages and online promotion linking to a campaign profile page on Bebo where young people can ask questions and get advice on student finance issues.
• Our Science & Innovation news desk use Twitter (http://twitter.com/DIUS_Science) and Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/diusgovuk/) to promote new events, visits and press notices and provide multimedia materials for journalists and bloggers.
• Internally, we’ve been helping press and policy teams to keep up to date with stakeholder news and mentions of the Department’s work on blogs with easy-to-use online ‘dashboard’ tools such as Netvibes – including one we set up to help track mentions of the key issues and partners DIUS needs to engage to address the current economic challenges.(http://www.netvibes.com/diuscommunications#Economic_Challenges).

FCO (Claire Collins)

The Press Office in the FCO has an embedded web team managing the digital news output – working closely with other digital/web collegues.

Within the team in press office is a news editor, an assistant news editor and the photographer.

In terms of social media:

Twitter:

We manage the FCO’s twitter channel http://www.twitter.com/foreignoffice updating frequently throughout the day on news events. We also use twitter to respond to comments and direct messages. Twitter is now seen as a mainstream form of communication in press office.

Flickr:

As the photographer is based in press office and part of the team – we populate the flickr site – in real time – and the site acts as a photographic news channel supporting our news articles. Press office direct the wires and journalists to flickr to download images rather than distributing via email:

http://www.flickr.com/foreignoffice. Anyone can download the photos and comment on the photos.

Press office blog – hosted on tumblr:

We are ‘beta’ testing a press office blog which will act as a way of rebutting inaccuracies in the press and be a way for us to promote upcoming ministerial events etc. We will also use the blog to highlight letters to editors – all in all a useful tool for press office and getting positive response in testing.

YouTube:

Press Officers regularly commission videos for ministerial visits or events in London which are hosted on YouTube – and pulled across onto the website by the news editors.

FCO blogs – press office are involved with this.

There are also the various campaigns which individual press officers work on – which have a social media angle – such as ‘64 for Suu’ or the London Summit. These campaigns are a collaboration between the web team (DDG), press office and strategic communications all increasingly taking into account social media.

DCMS (Mark O’Neill)

We use YouTube for Ministerial films and we are looking at (finally) doing some videoblogging which will be hosted somewhere

We have internal blogging which is available to anyone who wants to use it – mainly the Board and internal service providers. We have external blogging for Ministers.

We have our own platform for consultations but are looking at Communtariat and UserVoice for some future initiatives.

We are piloting Yammer for internal microblogging but so far there is no demand from the business for a corporate Twitter account. Similarly we have not had any demand for a corporate presence on Facebook though a number of our sponsored bodies are doing interesting things.

Oh and we use Netvibes for simple news dashboards.

Press Office use all the above and lead on content.

DEFRA (Daniel De Cruz)

Beta testing a blogging policy official at http://blogs.defra.gov.uk/3rd-sector. Press office enthusiastic but not yet doing anything.

DWP (Neil Franklin)

• Putting a WordPress environment into place
• Viral video (youtube etc)
• Monitoring (using bespoke dashboard – still being built)
• Talking to Press Office about boosting monitoring capability

DFID (Julia Chandler)

Sent you two quick tweets:

juliac2@hubmum neillyneil covered us I think, but to confirm, DFID is on twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Facebook, Youth reporters too

juliac2@hubmum oh yes – and your question – Press interested but not really involved yet. they do help with checking blogs/moderating comments

Press office are interested, but so far have not involved. As mentioned, they moderate blog posts pre-publication (hasn’t resulted in too much upset, but has helped with a couple of potentially risky comments) and they help with moderation.

Twittering is very experimental – but reasonably steady – again, we sit opposite, so run any drafts past them.

Flickr and YouTube they leave to us, but one or two press officers (particularly those who work with 2 of our junior ministers who are interested) have got involved in doing quick video interviews when the ministers have been overseas.

Our white paper team were involved in our open consultation, but press not really involved.

HM Treasury (Daniel Atkinson)

Externally we have a corporate Twitter account which we used to post the highlights of the Budget and had ministerial tweets during G20. Normally it’s used to announce website updates although we are looking to broaden its usage.

We’ve used our Youtube channel to help explain the Budget, feature Q&A sessions from the G20 summit and highlight ministerial activities.

Flickr we use to share images of the Treasury for those who require them which has helped to cut down on the number of individual requests we receive for generic images.

Internally we have a blog by the permanent secretary. This has proven a popular means of engaging staff  in both the wider work of the department and specific events.

The Press Office has been enthusiastic at our use of social media although we’re working on collaborating more closely. The Press Office also check social media content when necessary.

Twitter responses

Local government/authorities

alncl@hubmum Monitoring of soc med fed back to press team by me (where relevant).

alncl@hubmum Twitter, YouTube and FB at the moment, Flickr in the pipeline. Press office feed RSS to Twitter and FB, more planned with YouTube.

martinxo@hubmum #snappoll SM used by webteam only at the mo’, slowly talking to other depts/services, press office not the best place to start IMHO

Commission for rural communities

russelltanner@hubmum we’re using Twitter, Youtube, wikis (internally), commenting/ discussions on website, led by comms team

BERR

neillyneil@hubmum See my lists of gov YouTubers and Twitterers on my blog. & Here at BERR @digitalbritain is led by a press officer.

neillyneil@hubmum …and exploring SNMRs now, inspired by @lesteph

Neil’s blog post is here on UK government on twitter http://neilojwilliams.net/missioncreep/2009/the-uk-government-on-twitter/