News & Comment

Archive for September, 2009

A more social civil service is needed for a true open governance

Posted by ChrisQ on Sep 28 2009 | Democracy and government, Engagement

Sadly I missed the Civil Service Live event in June when Will Perrin presented his thoughts around how the civil service should start to wise up about social media.  Reading his presentation, I liked the way they nicely summed up the fact that over the last 30 years it's been business as usual for the civil service but how the disruption of social media… read more

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Government and the market

Posted by Gez Smith on Sep 25 2009 | Advice, Democracy and government

e-Participation is still a new and growing area, moving forward in various directions and various speeds in various places. The audit of local authority e-consultation we're about to publish has captured some really interested findings, and more on that soon, but as always, behind what people are doing online lie the forces that are driving them to do it. … read more

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Six Pieces about Sentiment Analysis

Posted by Andy on Sep 22 2009 | Advice, Opinion research, Social media, web 2.0 and other buzzwords

I've been researching sentiment analysis, and I think I've found pieces to suit a range of tastes and interests.

Tasters

First the notes from a 2008 talk given by Lillan Lee from Cornell University. Lee's topic is "...the flood of interest in: sentiment analysis, opinion mining, and the computational treatment of subjective language."

This is a good 'who, what, why, how', featuring:

  • - background
  • - useful stats
  • - an exploration of the broader implications
read more

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ePB – a discussion paper

Posted by MichaelaD on Sep 16 2009 | Delib news and events

In April we arranged a gathering of Participatory Budgeting aficionados to talk about the potential of online Participatory Budgeting (ePB). This meeting has helped form a discussion paper on the subject written by the PB Unit which can be found here. In addition the PB Unit have out together some guidance for people deicding whether ePB is something that shuld be included in their PB process. You can see… read more

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Q: How do you get young people talking to MP’s?

Posted by CraigH on Sep 14 2009 | Delib news and events, Opinion Suite, Participation, Projects and client work

A: A Robot. Simple.  Not my first thought either, and that's why it's great.  Here's a smart way from V-The National Young Volunteers Service to do just that.  It's a website where young people can take control of a robotic arm that is in the Houses of Parliament. The robot arm is equipped with a marker pen and a stack of paper and whatever you type is written out… read more

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Brum vs Utah

Posted by Ben on Sep 08 2009 | Good examples, Social media, web 2.0 and other buzzwords

OK, so the whole of the digital government Twitterati has come out of the woodwork to 'have their say' on what a bad job Capita have done of the new Birmingham Council website, how it's outrageous that it cost £2.8m, how they all would've done it better using WordPress/Drupal/paper and sellotape/whatever is their consultancy specialised weapon of choice blah blah blah.  Mostly, I'm not interested in their griping and… read more

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Obama’s democracy 2.0

Posted by ChrisQ on Sep 08 2009 | Delib news and events, Democracy and government, Good examples, Social media, web 2.0 and other buzzwords

In the context of Senator Obama's radical and successful use of the internet to win the Presidency, commentators wildly speculated about how President Obama would then use the internet to govern.  Having amassed 1 million+ followers, would he run the first ever Twit-ocracy and use Twitter to solve his country's problems?  Would he run an enlarged collaborative People's Cabinet via Facebook? Months into President Obama's period of governance, we… read more

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A US perspective on e-democracy – views from across the pond

Posted by ChrisQ on Sep 04 2009 | Consultation, Engagement, Good examples

Back in November last year we worked on a project with the National Academy of Administration (NAPA) aimed at creating a debate and gathering ideas around the issue of "Health IT" - called the National Dialogue on Health IT.  The project itself was relatively low-key given it was run in the final weeks of the Presidential elections and most people in government had bigger things on their minds. Having… read more

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Seven August things to help you convert the skeptics

Posted by Ben on Sep 03 2009 | Democracy and government, Engagement, Participation, Social media, web 2.0 and other buzzwords

Chances are, if you're reading this, you're already somewhat sold on the whole idea of the internet and the opportunities it presents for better involving people in decision-making/governance – and that means you almost certainly know and are frustrated by someone who, for whatever reason, doesn't 'get it'. If that's the case, here's a few things from this month that might help change their mind: 1. Seattle suggests correlation between
read more

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COI launch new Digital Policy blog

Posted by BeccaW on Sep 02 2009 | Democracy and government, Good examples

The Central Office of Information has just launched a new, public, departmental blog. Following the COI’s internal blogging efforts on CivilBlogs, and the results of a review on the topic of ‘Improving Government Online,’ the Digital Policy team decided to throw open their discussion to the public, and set up Digigov to talk about digital policy online with “other departments, agencies, web developers, bloggers and academics.” Adam Bailin is running the… read more

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