Here are some o the things I’ve been reading July 5th from 09:59 to 13:20:

• Sustainable independent and impartial news. WriteToReply consultation – "Sustainable independent and impartial news; in the Nations, locally and in the regions" is a 12 week public consultation document published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that "seeks views on the proposal for a contained, contestable element to be introduced to the next licence fee settlement."

  This WriteToReply republication of the original consultation document allows interested members of the public to comment on the consultation document at a paragraph level.



• The Investigatory Powers Tribunal – Welcome to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal website. The IPT exists to investigate complaints about conduct by various public bodies, in relation to you, your property or communications.


• paulcanning: A SocMed history moment – "This is a historical moment. A question from Iranians, via social media, gets asked of the US President. Mark this one down"


• What's wrong with Flips? – The Daily Grind – A Flip Pro would be breaking new ground, and that’s an order of magnitude more risky. Are people ready for it?


• Social media in public service: ideas for the Capital Fund at LocalGovCamp « Policy and Performance – "We were (ARE) looking for ideas: CLG’s Efficiency and Transformation Capital Fund potentially includes some significant funding for innovative and effective social media projects. The ‘only’ criteria are that projects can roll out quickly, achieve real outcomes against local priorities (as set out in Local Area Agreements), be scaleable and applicable across authorities, promote empowerment, link to the Total Place approach as that develops…!"

These are my links for July 1st through July 4th:

• It's The Ruddy Future – "Hello people! So glad you've pulled your finger out – and used it to click through to our lovely website. Just by being here, you've already taken your first step towards a super sexy, rewarding career in technology.
  Well done you!"


• Do you care about Wales? Can you code? Fancy helping TheyWorkForYou then? | Quixotic Quisling – "TheyWorkForYou are looking for volunteer coders interested in working on Welsh Assembly data. If that’s you, please join the new discussion list and let’s figure out how to do it."

  If you don’t know TheyWorkForYou then take some time to familiarise yourself. It’s a well established site taking parliamentary data and presenting it in a queryable form. It’s free, loaded with information and very useful indeed.



• Directgov | Innovate | – "Welcome to Directgov | innovate. We developed our platform to enable conversation with the developer community around innovative use of digital technologies in the government space."

  We blog and encourage people to submit examples of apps developed in the government space using government data or demonstrating innovative use of technologies.



• CKAN – Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network – Home –


• Socrata –


• About Socialbrite.org | Socialbrite – "an affiliation of passionate social media consultants and strategists who believe in collaborating to produce positive change. Through training workshops, reports, case studies, learning materials, blogging and consulting services, we want to make sure that everyone has access to the knowledge and tools that the social media revolution offers."

Will Perrin has a knack of helping people understand how the web is changing government. Today he publishes what was until now a private paper on how Whitehall can be transformed.

In Transforming the way we work – from Whitehall to Blackhall he writes about an alternative Whitehall, one that embraces how the web can accelerate change:

The leaders of Blackhall have changed a predominantly ‘need to know’ culture to one underpinned by a ‘need to share’.  They have begun to change the business model from a paper process base to a knowledge based model.   There is far more permeability in Blackhall between government Departments, the wider public sector, the third sector, stakeholders, citizens and business. Policy formation in Blackhall takes weeks or months, rather than months or years, involving more people to create better outcomes with less effort. Officials share knowledge with others across government and with those outside government such as the third sector, font line workers and managers. This is enabled by a pervasive Blackhall electronic working environment. Officials publish information from their screens that can be read by anyone connected to the GSI and selected people outside it, without using email.  The majority of work in Blackhall is published internally so that colleagues can find it using search in the same way they google for information on the internet. A Blackhall working environment would be electronic, pervasive, accessible from wherever you are in the UK and in many cases overseas.  Implicit in this is a standard ability to work on the move with any laptop, blackberry or internet connection.

He continues with what needs to change.

The difference between Whitehall and Blackhall is a managerial determination to make it happen. It might sound difficult to get a multi-hundred year old monopoly to change.  But the civil servants themselves are changing outside the workplace as they use Easyjet, Gmail, Facebook and instant messaging in their private lives.  When they get to work they slip back into an earlier era because the tools aren’t there.

These are his slides from the presentation he gave of these ideas a year ago.

They include compelling illustrations of how little Whitehall has changed communication conventions, regardless of changes in technology. How much is this like the place where you work?  How easy will it be to change from Whitehall to Blackhall.

After a brief consultation process and suggestions  from a number of folk, including this lengthy burble from me, Birmingham City Council has launched birminghamnewsroom.com, a wordpress based site for their news service to the public.

Birmingham News Room describes itself as

...your first stop for all the news from Europe’s largest local authority.

The aim is to improve our news delivery, so we want the newsroom to be a useful resource for both journalists and members of the general public.

Last rites to the press release?

Deborah Harries, head of news at the council, blogged about where they are at:

The press office at Birmingham City Council has moved into the 21st century and after months of hard work we’ve finally launched our online newsroom. This is an exciting development for my team and hopefully this site will prove to be a useful resource for journalists, bloggers and residents.

We haven’t quite read the last rites to the press release but the world of media relations is changing. (my emphasis)

People consume news in many different ways now and we’re keen to reach a wider audience through the burgeoning and exciting range of social networking tools available. Don’t get me wrong, this is far from the finished article and we’re looking for your views to help further develop the service.

Included is:

A dedicated Youtube Channel, managed partly through vodpod,  with straightforward self made content like this:

There is a series of photos in their self hosted gallery ( I’d like to be able to link to and use these images) and the twitter account, which popped up a while ago. Plus the all important RSS feed(s?) and yt’s good to see comments enabled on individual blog posts/news items.  I imagine trackback is too?

What do I think?

I think it’s wonderful. I’ve got a head full of things that could be done next or perhaps a litle differently, but they can wait.  It’s through using social media that you get good at it and here the council has created a wonderful place for doing just that.

Congratulations to Geoff Coleman, who’s been nursing this for some months, and Deborah Harries for just getting on with it.

(Declaration – from time to time I get paid by Birmingham City Council – not for this though!)

These are my links for June 27th through June 30th:

• Poynter Online – Youtube Launches Citizen reporter Support – The site has just unveiled a new effort to improve and promote videos that are newsworthy: the Reporters' Center. The Reporters' Center launched Monday with about 35 instructional videos from professional journalists on how to handle a range of reporting challenges, including: understanding privacy issues (and staying out of jail), shooting video with your cell phone, fact-checking assertions, conducting a good interview and covering a humanitarian crisis safely.


• Building Britain’s Future: the next step to better policy discussion online at Helpful Technology – "a fair crack at how we might present big policy documents online. To me, this is one of the big challenges in digital engagement right now: we have a fair number of tool options for consultations, and are getting better at applying the ‘classic’ social media tools of Twitter, YouTube and Flickr – but the practicalities and small-p politics of presenting large documents in anything more than a downloadable PDF are still daunting. Like Digital Britain or New Opportunities, BBF is not (primarily) a consultation, so has to struggle with the thorny question of what to do with feedback and whether to solicit it at all."


• http://mypolice.wordpress.com/ – MyPolice.org is a web-based service that fosters constructive, collaborative communication between communities and the police forces which serve them. MyPolice originated at (and won!) Social Innovation Camp, June 2009. Sicamp is a challenge to turn back of the envelope ideas which use the web to tackle 'stuff that matters' into a reality. In just 48 hours.


• Reuters Editors » Blog Archive » Rethinking rights, accreditation, and journalism itself in the age of Twitter | Blogs | – Reuters understands hat social media can also be journalism: "To a 23 year-old athlete, used to putting out a “news feed” of every detail of her personal life and training on various social media platforms, there simply isn’t a distinction. Her life IS a news feed. Her blog IS a publishing platform. Her Facebook page IS the daily newspaper of her life."


• The Conservative Party | News | Speeches | David Cameron: Giving power back to the people – "Information is power – because information allows people to hold the powerful to account. This has never been more true than today, in the information age. The internet is an amazing pollinator, spreading ideas and information all over the globe in minutes. It turns lonely fights into mass campaigns; transforms moans into movements; excites the attention of hundreds, thousands, millions of people and stirs them to action. And constantly accelerating technology makes information infinitely more powerful.