Postbureaucrat

I’m not going to store up humiliation for myself by posting predictions or New Year’s resolutions for ’09, but from where I’m sitting, I’d say the big theme will be Less. And I’m not being entirely pessimistic. It goes more or less without saying that we’ll all be working smarter and leaner, assuming fewer staff,…

“Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred.” Lev Grossman, Time Magazine Photo credit: Stephen McLeod Guido Fawkes is switching to a reputation and…

Second up in my series of four promised posts is a quick pointer to something we’re doing at DIUS towers. We’ve been experimenting for a few months now with how to use the social web for engagement in policymaking and have some successes and failures under our belt. But what’s the difference between a success…

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…