Look over there – still blogging, only elsewhere

Something’s got to give. I’m either going to give this blog up for lost, change it’s focus or pick it up with renewed energy.

I have yet to decide.

In the meantime, I’ve been at it elsewhere. Mainly on the GDS blog, where I’ve posted about:

• the way government has been publishing news and the way it might be done on GOV.UK, called Have I got government news for you?
• the types of people who will make use of corporate information on GOV.UK, called What we know about the users of Inside Government
• analytics for the Inside Government section of GOV.UK since its launch, called Inside Government – traffic, demand and engagement numbers so far

It’s a honour to post there, among some seriously smart and creative people. It’s one of my favourite blogs to read.

I’ve also been posting alongside Neil Williams on Inside Inside Government, which we use to explain new features and ideas for Inside Government. It’s been particularly enjoyable writing for that, I think we’ve got a good style going there and the feedback has been great.

Actually I’ve been a bit lax there too recently. But not to worry, I’m brewing up a couple of tasty announcements.

Minding the product at #mtpcon 2012

What an honour it is to have been called up to the small band of product managers at the Government Digital Service.

Wanting to do the absolute best job I can, I jumped at the chance to tag along to Mind the Product 2012, where product managers from around Europe met up to learn how some of the best in the world go about their business.

Of the many pearls of wisdom shared, here is what stuck with me since…

From Whitehall to Kingsway… my big move forward and back

Been updating my bio and my creds pages this evening to reflect the fact that I have changed jobs.

It’s an overdue refresh. I actually transferred to the Cabinet Office and the Government Digital Service in December 2011, but I saw out the remainder of my two-year secondment to FCO which. But now I am full time at GDS and loving it.

There’s a proper, serious start-up culture here; it’s an atmosphere I’ve been craving to work in. Everyday feels like a mission to shake things up and everyone is pulling in the same direction with the aim of radically and rapidly changing the way Her Majesty’s Government thinks and does digital. 

On my desktop this week… ‘The Golden Hours’ by Saddo

‘Golden hours’ by Saddo

‘The Golden Hours’ is a show about two different visions on time, memories and death by artists Aitch and Saddo.

This is a piece (or a group of pieces) from that show. I love the mish-mash mythological styles, especially the colouring, in Saddo’s work.

Check out the rest of the pieces from the show on Saddo’s Flickr page. And here’s a write up.

Time to break down the last barrier to social media access in government

Foreign Secretary William Hague answering questions on the situation in Libya and also on the Arab Spring on 9 June 2011 via Twitter

We’re not short of social media strategies in the government, neither are we short of social media guidelines for staff. But we are short of ICT access and on more than one occasion these social media projects have hit this same frustrating [fire]wall.

Organisations restrict access to social media for a number of reasons. The most common are concerns about creating security vulnerabilities, incurring spiralling technology costs, opening up reputational risks, losing sensitive data and suffering dips in staff performance (as they log on to watch the latest hilarious random video lulz).

It’s obvious that governments are particularly sensitive to these concerns and that this has caused them to be slower than other organisations to take advantage of social media. These days this lethargy is a problem for more than just digital teams; increasingly its policy and service delivery teams that are feeling frustrated by the blocks on their access.

Currently it is more common for access to be restricted than open. But there are a number of ways that the innovative people of the Civil Service have found ways to get the access they need -  be they in media, marketing, research, policy making, consultation, engagement, service delivery or even ministerial roles. These workarounds include:

• Allowing staff to use their own devices – they would have it on them anyway but it does mean that they have to pay for it out their own pocket
• Whitelisting domains – sometimes it is the stripped back mobile versions rather than the ‘full fat’ versions that get the OK
• Permitting access through gateways, portals or virtualisation – it’s overcomplicating but it’s something
• Monitoring and throttling usage – to encourage respectful use and keep costs down but breeds resentment
• Requiring a business case – perhaps a bit over the top just to get real time information
• Providing standalone machines – not terribly green or cost effective
• Installing secondary browsers – to enable use of social web channels that couldn’t be accessed on the old browsers used as standard in depts

After the watershed – five reasons why nothing can be the same since the launch of Gov.uk/government

GOV.UK 100 days signed sign by @psd

On February 28th the hangar door of Aviation House opened and gov.UK/government took it’s maiden flight. It might not be up there with what happened at Kitty Hawk in 1903, but this will go down as a decisive event in the way government publishes and engages – digitally or otherwise.

Inside government is the second part of the GovUK beta to go live and although in the history books it will all rightly be discussed as one and same, for me at this stage in the development /government is the most radical and exciting part.

Your best guide to the project and the site is Neil Williams, the gov.uk/government product manager. But before I lose you to him, you might spare me just a couple of minutes to share an unofficial insider’s view (someone who has worked with, for and now in digital teams in the government; a hard-boiled sceptic, now convinced through first-hand experience of the gov.UK project)

So here are five reasons why I think the release of the Inside government beta is a watershed moment:

I’m not dead, I’m a dad

 

When a ye olde colleague emailed me with the strange question, ‘Are you dead?’ I replied, ’No, I’m a dad’.

He was asking because I hadn’t blogged since Pixie Lott was number one, and he was disappointed because he found my blog had been one good way to keep up on digital in government.

I told him that it was simply that I now had additional responsibilities at home in the form of a bouncing baby boy. And, when Ben was taking a break from bouncing to finally go to sleep, blogging was really quite far from my thoughts.

Still, if I was going to take his flattery I also had to take his point and get posting – check – even if I’m slightly cheating by riffing on what I emailed back to him in the form of four recommendations for blogs that cover central government’s use of digital.

I picked my recommendations based on the fact that I like reading them and they have posted regularly through the year offering genuinely unique insights. So well done them.