Postbureaucrat

I’ve been musing recently on an interesting quandary: why aren’t advocates of public participation and engagement more successful in engaging the policymakers who design consultations? Why is it that we continue to live in a world of PDF consultation documents, when so much research and – let’s be honest about this, government money – has…

I  get asked from time to time for examples of how social media is being used in government, not just at DIUS but elsewhere. From mentions on Twitter or in blogs I follow, I can generally reel off two or three examples of X. But for a while I’ve wanted to have a more structured…

Quick plug for something I’ve been contributing to elsewhere: we’ve been working with the TUC and Get Safe Online to launch a new toolkit to help improve workers’ Internet security awareness and skills. From the press release: While employers are improving their Internet security systems, their good work could be undermined if they fail to…

Herewith in a half-dozen crisp pen-portraits, a description of some of the characters you are sure to meet as a missionary for social media in the curious jungle of social media in the enterprise: Macaques are fun and infuriating. They love to experiment, grabbing something and leaping away to play with it. They’re sociable types…

Seems all the cool kids are doing a series of themed blog posts, so I’ll join the party: over the next few weeks I’m going to cover four topics from my ‘Someday/Maybe’ list of applying social media in government: Licensing Accessibility Guidance Evaluation Let’s start with the one I’m most sketchy about: licensing. Image credit:…

Imagine the scenario: They Who Must Be Obeyed want feedback on the new report they’re publishing next week. It’s a dozen or so pages long with fairly basic formatting (yes, I do indeed live in a dream world). Let’s assume for now that they genuinely do want feedback, and want it fast and cheap. The…

You don’t need to understand technology to grok understand social media, but frankly, it sometimes helps. Or at least a basic grounding in how AJAX is different from PHP, and why CSS won’t sort out your SQL will help you to follow what a developer is on about and whether they are likely to be…

I think it was clear it was going to be a good day during the introductions. Around fifty youth workers, technologists and others with an interest in youth participation from as far away as Lancashire, Devon, Norfolk and Wiltshire had gathered at DIUS on a Saturday morning for UKYouthOnline, organised by Tim Davies. With that…

I spent an interesting hour in the company of a long-serving colleague today, as part of a project we’re doing to look at the baseline skills and awareness of social media in the organisation. Peter (not his real name) first worked in the Department for Education in the late 1960s, and painted me a picture…

One day, when I can retire from all this social media stuff and become comfortably rich on the conference circuit, I’ll pepper my sell-out keynote speeches with colourful metaphors like the following: Social media is poop scoop, not turd polish. Accept that sh*t happens So much communication today – from the public and private sectors…