News & Comment

Archive for November, 2009

‘Spooks’ and the fear of online participation

Posted by Ben on Nov 23 2009 | Bad examples, Democracy and government, Social media, web 2.0 and other buzzwords

Anyone else catch this (the episode and the drift)?  I watched the latest episode of Spooks over the weekend (and enjoyed it, so what?) and, part-way through, realised that it was actually a dramatisation of what's going on in the heads of those risk-averse types who see in online participation cause for terror and dread and disruption, rather than opportunity and progress and value. I don't want to give the… read more

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Give us your ideas for panelists @ Delib’s next debate

Posted by ChrisQ on Nov 13 2009 | Delib news and events

Following the great success of our last debate event back in July, we're holding a new debate in Parliament in January (18th)  - kindly hosted by Danny Alexander MP. The title of the debate is "Election 2010 will be decided by technology not policy" At present we're looking for speaker suggestions for our panel.  Last time we had the fine selection of Guido Fawkes, Nick Robinson, Michael White, Grant Shapps and… read more

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Me and Shel Israel

Posted by ChrisQ on Nov 12 2009 | Delib news and events

So, there I was chatting away to a nice lady (Orla) next to the toilets of the the Lewis Media Centre (there is a relevance)  explaining (rather loudly) why I was so excited to hear Shel Isreal talk when - *TAP* (on the shoulder) - and there was the great man himself introducing himself to me. Well - introduce himself wasn't exactly what he did (as he kinda expected me… read more

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EU Considers Fuel Saving Road Trains

Posted by CraigH on Nov 12 2009 | Delib news and events

I have to say the many hours I've sometimes spent on the motorway, this idea has crossed my mind.  I'll look forward to the trials in the UK where I can hopefully express my views and get involved. satre1

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HMRC Charter launch

Posted by ChrisQ on Nov 12 2009 | Delib news and events

Last night was the official launch of HMRC's Charter - which we ran the online consultation process for earlier in the year.   It was really great to catch up with the Charter team to (Fiona and Andy) and also meet the other guys who worked on the project too - including the Quiet Room- who did all the last minute tweaks. The most impressive aspect of… read more

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“Open source software more secure than commercial code” according to top US CIO

Posted by ChrisQ on Nov 10 2009 | Delib news and events

Sadly I missed the Government Open Source conference in DC on Thursday, however I picked up this interesting tidbit from NextGov under the headline: "Open source software more secure than commercial code". Ask any (most) big proprietary software companies and they'll throw you the line that the main weakness of open source software is that it's insecure as every single hacker in the world's got access to the… read more

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Final days in DC + Open Gov the movie

Posted by ChrisQ on Nov 08 2009 | Delib news and events

So we're finally back in the UK ; - ( We had an amazing week in Washington with our hosts - the guys from NAPA. The last few days were pretty action packed - with a whirlwind tour of the OpenGov scene, as part of the documentary I've been making which I've been calling "OpenGov the movie".  OK - it may well be an OTT title, but it kinda does… read more

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Washington Day 1: thoughts (part 2) on White House Citizen Participation

Posted by Ben on Nov 05 2009 | Democracy and government, Engagement, Participation

Part 2: projects and pragmatism

So in the previous exciting installment, I tried to briefly summarise how the current US administration has taken hold of the principle of participation.  The next part of our conversation was about the work of realising that principle in activity, about the challenges of actually adopting more participation into the process of governance. I'm not gonna pretend to have answers to these; I'm just gonna represent… read more

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US: An overview of the National Dialogue on Health, IT and Privacy

Posted by JessG on Nov 05 2009 | Consultation, Democracy and government, Opinion research, Participation

Take a look at our video about the National Dialogue we ran on Health, IT and Privacy, which asks the question "How should we expand the use of information technology and protect personal privacy to improve health care?". On the eve of the 2008 Presidential Election, citizens and stakeholders from across the US convened to create a vision for the future of America's health, IT and privacy policies. We worked… read more

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Washington day 2: security, burgers and Open Gov beers

Posted by ChrisQ on Nov 04 2009 | Delib news and events

So following Ben's more considered analysis of the US participation scene from yesterday, I'm gonna give you a much thinner (but equally exciting) run down of our adventures in DC today:
  • 7 ro 9: fight with the hotel WIFI.  WIFI wins.
  • 9 to 11: meeting with Ed, Liz and Steve @ the Department of Homeland Security.  Really great to finally meet the DHS guys - and all round pats on backs for
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