I’m usually a bit skeptical of ‘social media training’ – after all, I didn’t need to sit in a classroom to learn how to use Facebook (though come to think of it their privacy settings could be the subject of a PhD) – but seeing Nathalie McDermott in action has totally changed my view. As [...]
Last November, we kicked off the Local by Social programme in Coventry
Swindon are working with the Leadership Centre for local government and FutureGov to explore ways of using new methods of on and offline engagement to help councillors to engage with local communities in new and interesting ways as part of the 21st Century Councillors programme. Here, Gavin Calthrop from Swindon Borough Council explains a bit about the project and how it fits into Swindon’s wider aspirations as a forward thinking local authority.
“More meaningful engagement with local people is one of the key principles of our Connecting People, Connecting Places programme. The future of public services lies in more collaboration with local people and enabling active participation in decision making and service delivery at a local level…”
Tom Watson MP will be speaking at next month’s Personal Democracy Forum Europe in Barcelona. In this short interview we give you a quick run down on Britain’s first blogging minister, the man credited with bringing digital engagement to government in the UK.
I might have known Dominic would be responsible for the surprise email I got the other day asking me along to a blind date with the new data.gov.uk site. The data site is a place where all the government’s data sets will eventually live, accessible to developers and others who want to use the data, in standard formats. There are about 1100 data sets on there at the moment – not all of them are formatted for use (most of them are still in Excel spreadsheets or similar) but at this early stage about 20 data sets have been converted to useable formats…
This is the transcript and presentation from my slot at the IDeA’s “Councillors Connected” online conference on their Community of Practice site.
Having failed wholeheartedly to get my comments into the Power of Information Taskforce on their recently published Power of Information Taskforce beta Report (can I send you the scribbles on my hard copy please?!), there is one recommendation that warrants a quick post of its own. In many ways, what I’m about to say seems a little academic given the job spec has already been published (quick work that!), but I’m going to say it anyway in the hope of influencing the kind of candidate the government plumps for.