Local by Social

We always hoped that Social by Social would be a book that could be chunked up and re-written for different audiences interested in social tech for social benefit – and now co-author Andy Gibson has done a great job for local government.
Local by Social: how local authorities can use social media to achieve more with less was commissioned by IDeA and NESTA. As Ingrid Koehler writes at our companion site – socialbysocial.net – “this document does provide a compelling argument for how social media can be used as a tool (and not as an end in itself) to support engagement, democracy, improved services and perhaps even especially efficiency.”
There’s more details here on the IDeA site, with additional links.
If you are looking for further front-line insights on Web 2.0 for customer service in local authorities, see the latest excellent presentation from Michele Ide-Smith.

The Naked Council: designing local services from scratch

Localgovcamp last week was even better than I expected, and I was so wrapped up in the many discussions I rather neglected my reporting. Fortunately Michele Ide-Smith was live blogging, and has given us a mini-wrapup here with further links. I’ll just repeat my thanks to Anke Holst and Hadley Beeman for organising, and offer this chat with Anthony Zacharzewski of The Democratic Society, who gave me a preview of his session on The Naked Council. (read more...)

Open data good – plus open comms even better

The Data.Gov.UK project to open up government data for re-use to public benefit has produced a flurry of comment ranging from geeky ecstacy to scepticism about how far it can be used in practice for better service development. On Twitter of course. There’s even mainstream suggestions of dis-benefit.  The Telegraph started it’s report:

Communities could find themselves being “ghettoised” by a new Government website which will provides facts and figures about every aspect of life in Britain, its creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee has admitted.

Dominic Campbell of the consultancy Futuregov was in the thick of the commenting. In favour of the project, but irritated by the inward-looking way the discussion was going. (read more...)

Innovation and engagement depend on conversations inside, first

Just before Christmas Dave Briggs wrote a typically thoughtful post about Is government a knowledge business? which led to an interesting discussion which I might sum up as “organisations can’t have useful conversations and collaborate with people externally if people aren’t talking to each other internally”. Roland Harwood has just tweeted “Ironically the biggest challenge of open innovation seems to be internal”. Wonder how Civil Pages is working inside the civil service.

Tories would favour smaller firms for public service contracts

A Tory government, if elected this year, would adopt a post-bureacratic approach and change procurement policies for public service to enable smaller firms to bid, according to Stephan Shakespeare. This could produce a “golden age” for entrepreneurship. He was speaking at the Entrepreneurship Country conference. More here from event organiser Julie Meyer.

Social media for public services: how about an Open Innovation Exchange?

The Crowdsourced Council event earlier this week was for me interesting at three levels. First for the idea expressed in the name – that councils should use a variety of different methods to find out people’s opinions, engage with (read more...)

Local government knowledge hub – much more interesting than it sounds

Yesterday I went along to a meeting that, on the face of it, was about how UK local government and public agencies might share knowledge in future. Limited interest? No, because it generated a discussion touching on how far all citizens might have access to much “official” information; the impact this could have on local (read more...)

What do you think of official Get Help Here?

A nice personal email from the marketing people at Directgov – official gateway to government information and services – invites me to take a look at their new tool Get Help Here.
It’s aimed at 16-20 year olds, providing a decision tree to “offer advice on retraining, providing help with finding  a job or financial assistance” in these tough times.

We’re keen to find out what you and your readers think of the tool and, if they like it, to hopefully share with friends and family. Directgov is trying to reach users who are online but are currently unaware of the services we provide. If we can get people looking at and sharing tools like “Get Help Here”, hopefully we’ll contact more of the people who will really benefit from the content that sits on Directgov.

(read more...)

Open government isn’t easy

The Politico blog offers us an update on the Obama Administration’s open government initative to be transparent, participatory, collaborative. On the one hand the call for federal employees fell a bit flat – possibly because they didn’t get official instructions. On the other hand the public brainstorming produced, among other things, further campaigning for marijuana legalisation. “End the Imperial Presidency” got most votes. Will Downing Street be tempted to emulate?

Asking people how to run open government (US only)

In January US President Barack Obama circulated memos to public agencies saying Government should be transparent, participatory, collaborative. Yesterday senior adviser Valerie Jarrett announced on the White House blog how that will be put into practice …. through an open process:

Today we are kicking off an unprecedented process for public engagement in policymaking (read more...)