Archive for January, 2010
Tweetminster Founder on User Experience at G2010 Event
Posted by: | Comments
Andrew Walker is Co-founder and Creative Director of Tweetminster, the Twitter based politics news and analysis utility. He will be speaking in the Open Data section of our G2010: Open Technology Event on April 22, 2010.
Andrew has worked on the internet as a designer, developer and strategist for 15 years. Formerly a research fellow at the Loughborough University School of Art and Design in computers and cognition and MD of London based digital media agency Thin Martian, Andrew has worked on hundreds of apps, games, communications and web projects for public sector and corporate clients ranging from Hansard to Xbox.
At Tweetminster Andrew has helped to drive the agile development of apps, analysis tools and semantic search technology to make political conversations more accessible, monitor the use of social media by politicians and analyse the debates that shape UK politics. He will discuss how open web data and technologies are impacting government communications and citizen interaction.
“The challenge facing any app developer, especially with government data, of making the user experience and banding as strong as commercial offerings. Government apps must compete for time with professional tools, news websites and social networks, or integrate into those environments – either way to be relevant to web users they’ve got to be intelligent, social and genuinely useful.”
Ordnance Survey and Open Data at Government 2010 Event
Posted by: | Comments
Peter ter Haar, Director of Products, Ordnance Survey, will be speaking at the Government 2010 Open Technology event on April 22nd.
Peter is responsible for all aspects of product management including product marketing, licensing, research, engineering, cartography and supply.
Before joining Ordnance Survey in November 2006, Peter already had more than 18 years’ experience in product management and business development in both the public and private sectors in GI, location-based services and mobile technology.
His previous roles include senior product, technical and general management roles in Geodan, Autodesk, Intergraph and the City of Amsterdam.
A public consultation is underway relating to Ordnance Survey data. More details here.
Data.gov.uk open for business
Posted by: | Comments
Don’t expect the fastest web site you’ve ever seen – but data.gov.uk is now open. However, with so much publicity – it even made the Today Programme this morning – the site is obviously being bombarded by people like me trying to write about it.
Data.gov.uk – is all about opening up public data so applications can be wrapped around it (without the need for a freedom of information request).
The site puts it, rather inelegantly, like this:
“This site seeks to give a way into the wealth of government data. As highlighted by the Power of Information Taskforce, this means it needs to be: easy to find;easy to licence; and easy to re-use.
“We are drawing on the expertise and wisdom of Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt to publish government data as RDF – enabling data to be linked together.”
Listen to both talking about the initiative – interviewed by the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones. In the interview Nigel mentions Ordnance Survey data. We’re delighted that Peter ter Haar, Director of Products, Ordnance Survey, will be speaking at our Open Technology event on April 22nd.
Government IT Blunders Cost £26Bn
Posted by: | CommentsAn investigation by The Independent has found that the total cost of the government’s 10 most notorious IT failures is equivalent to more than half of the budget for Britain’s schools last year.
Parliament’s spending watchdog has described the projects as “fundamentally flawed” and blamed ministers for “stupendous incompetence” in managing them.
Keynote Speaker Announced: Andy Williamson, Hansard Society
Posted by: | Comments
Andy Williamson of the Hansard Society
Dr Andy Williamson is Director of the Hansard Society’s eDemocracy Programme. He will be a keynote speaker at our upcoming event on April 22 focused on Open Technology.
A researcher, consultant and commentator on digital media and social policy, Andy’s work focuses on engagement and inclusion, online political communication and digital policy at a national and local level.
Andy was Deputy Chair of the New Zealand Government’s Digital Strategy Advisory Group, he has advised the Australian Federal Government and various government departments, parliaments, international agencies and civil society organisations.
The Hansard Society recently suggested 5 top priorities for the Director of Digital Engagement. We hope that Andy will discuss the 3rd and 4th, in particular, in more detail on April 22nd:
Give civil servants access to the social media tools that the public use and make sure that they know how to use them properly and effectively. As part of this, it will be necessary to train and mentor civil servants in how to engage effectively and genuinely with the public.
Innovate. Innovate. Innovate. We like the PoI suggestion of adopting the ‘backstage’ model and support this but we’re also keen to see a culture of innovation develop where creative, fast-to-market tools are created, deployed and shared. We want to see this go further, not just a percentage of the budget to seed innovation but a percentage to seed engagement too. We’re not advocating greater spend because we also see the value in a parallel systematic review of online spend to ensure it is being targeting correctly.
Open up the policy dialogue, within government and beyond to citizens. This leans heavily on the two priorities above but is important in itself. We want the policy dialogue to be open, transparent, accessible and timely.
Integrate government data into civic life, make information – data – available now, online and for free. Unless there is a good reason to restrict access the default position is that data is shared. We don’t just want a whole new series of PDF downloads and websites, this data needs to be provided in a range of formats, including being made available through simple to use APIs so that others can work with it dynamically.
Promote digital inclusion. Online government doesn’t work without online citizens so it’s important not to lose sight of the ‘customer’.
Digital Economy Bill Clause 17 Watered Down
Posted by: | Comments
Clause 17 of the Digital Economy Bill – the clause that incensed content owners such as Google, Yahoo and Facebook – is to be watered down by the government.
A spokesman for the Department of Business has said, “We have tabled a series of amendments which aim to clarify the breadth and scope of the clause and further reinforce the transparency of the process and the scrutiny of Parliament.”
Google to pull out of China?
Posted by: | CommentsRory Cellan-Jones, the BBC Tech Correspondent, has just uploaded an audioboo that reports that Google is expected to pull out of China.
It’s an interesting report that manages to get Ealing, snow, Rory’s dog and China into one report.
Open Technology: Transforming Government? Our next event.
Posted by: | CommentsOur next event, that was trailed a few weeks ago, will try to determine whether open data and open source are really the holy grails for transformational government that quite a few politicians seem to think they are.
Our intention is to look at the practical, common sense, business logic for government ‘farming out’ application development to the wider community by making available open data. Will it reduce the vast cost associated with IT in government? Will it make any strategic difference in the long run? Are we doing it right? Who’s doing it better?
We also want to look at how open source platforms should play a greater part in government computing. Are the current ‘core applications’ just too rigid and proprietary to be broken-up? Should incremental application development be built on open source as a mandatory requirement? Should IT development projects be fixed price and budget capped? Can open source software help?
What is government’s view? What about the political parties – how are they stimulating the debate? Is there money to be made – what’s in this for commercial businesses? Are there great examples of open data or open source initiatives that have resulted in tangible, practical and measureable improvement?
Like our inaugural event we intend to live web broadcast our next event free of charge (if we are successful in attracting enough commercial sponsorship). Like before we’ll also be offering paid places at the the live broadcast.
We’re working towards a date of Thursday April 22nd – and the event will be held in central London at a venue to be confirmed. We hope to start building the agenda over the next few weeks – so please visit often! And comment on this post if you really want us to include a speaker or case study. We’ll do our best.
Alcohol: It’s No Joke Campaign
Posted by: | CommentsI came across this campaign, inevitably, on Twitter. As a parent I do have a latent fear that my children might be taken advantage of or worse when, and if, they start experimenting with alcohol.
Like many of my generation I went through quite a few years in my late teens and early twenties where alcohol played too big a part in my life (especially during student Summer holidays in Greece). I survived but many young people don’t. And, in my day, the relative cost of alcohol was probably higher than it is today.
This campaign illustrates how the “public information film” is moving into the social media realm. Whether the choice of spokesperson is right is difficult to judge – will teenage kids care what Jo Brand and Bill Bailey have to say? I don’t know.
But I, as a parent, consider it to be quite a powerful campaign.
Cellan-Jones and Scobleizer
Posted by: | Comments
Scoble and Cellan-Jones
Rory Cellan-Jones, the Tech Correspondent for the Beeb, has interviewed Robert Scoble at his Half Moon Bay home in California. This is quite an intriguing interview – as much for the plethora of Seesmic Desktop screens that Robert has had installed on his desk. I can just about cope with my little Inspiron.
It’s interesting that Robert is predicting that Facebook is going to continue being the gorilla of the social networking space rather than Twitter – largely because, according to Scoble, Facebook acts as a portal into the wider social networking community such as the big blogs and even Twitter itself via the Twitter app. People tend to stick around more on Facebook as it’s more than a one trick pony.
Robert’s relationship with Facebook has been patchy – and he seemed keen to push Friendfeed in the past, although that outfit has had its fair share of woes.
More interesting though is Scoble’s prediction that Google is likely to be the stalking horse in the social networking space. Government needs to take note.
