It’s been talked about for a while now, but last week saw the launch of ICELE’s new ‘Blog in a Box‘ platform/toolkit.

A follow on from the ‘Read my Day’ project, Blog in a Box is meant to make it really easy for councillors and other local authority figures to put together a blog, get guidance on how to make it work, and have their blog listed in a nationwide blog aggregator.

It’s a great idea in principle, and local authority blogging is probably one of the quickest wins in terms of promoting e-Democracy across the UK. The only thing i don’t get with it is why it’s using proprietary software, rather than the hugely successful and well used platforms like Wordpress and Blogger.

I know Blog in a Box has been customised to give new users a clear workflow, but the same could have been done with other platforms, especially Wordpress. More important, additional benefits could have been achieved through tapping into the huge amount of usability research Wordpress has done on its global system, as well as the free upgrades and hundreds, if not thousands, of extra modules and widgets that are available for it. I guess ICELE needs to be revenue generating so can’t just give away Wordpress, but selling blogs that you can otherwise get for free seems like a difficult market to be getting into.

I’m convinced that open source really is the way forward for getting e-Demcracy off the ground, so this seems like a little bit of a missed opportunity in a way. That said, it’s the end result that matters, so if this does provide an easier way to get people in power online and blogging (and the content aggregator, though a little rough right now, is especially exciting) then more power to it!