I’ve been wrestling with how to bring together and publicise the bloggers who have always been around, and those who are springing up following the publication of the guidelines.
So, I have started hacking together http://publicsectorblogs.org/ which takes a bunch of feeds, bungs them into one using Yahoo! Pipes and then republishes them on one page using SimplePie. Sophisticated it ain’t.
There is a combined feed to subscribe to via Feedburner, and an email subscription option too, but I see this more as a tool for people to quickly scan rather than anything else – there’s probably too much of it to begin with.
The bloggers I have used so far aren’t just civil servants, or local government officers, but anyone who works for or in the UK public service, and who write about it now and again. This is an inclusive kind of thing! They are (in no particular order):
- Jeremy Gould – Ministry of Justice
- Steve Dale – Consultant working with Improvement & Development Agency
- Tom Watson MP – Cabinet Office Minister
- Mark O’Neill – Department for Culture, Media & Sport
- Digital Pioneer – anonymous Civil Servant
- Emma Mulqueeny – Consultant working with various Whitehall departments
- Paul Canning – Cambridge City Council
- Simon Dickson – Consultant working with Number 10 and NHS, amongst others
- Andrew Brown – ex-Councillor in Lewisham
- Carl Haggerty – Devon County Council
- Ingrid Koehler – Improvement & Development Agency
- Caspar Aremi – NHS
- Me
If anyone has any further suggestions, do let me know in the comments.
I do need to make some improvements to the site, the most important one being to highlight where each post has come from. But this is my first time with SimplePie – and I suspect my use of Pipes complicates matters – and so any offers of help are appreciated!
Um Miliband? 🙂 and the people over in FCO: https://blogs.fco.gov.uk/roller/
Jenny Bee: http://www.jennybee.net
Justin Kerr-Stevens: http://extendedreach.wordpress.com/
Lords of the blogs: Bloggers from the House of Lords: http://lordsoftheblog.wordpress.com/
Oli Barrett: working with the Prime Minister on the Catalyst awards: blogging here: http://www.emmamulqueeny.com/
but thank you for remembering me 🙂 will keep an eye out and PLEASE do this, it is really fabulous
Of course, of course, of course. Good points all, will sort.
Sorry! I put myself down for Oli… er here he is: http://www.dailynetworker.co.uk/
I knew what you meant 😉
Thanks for the inclusion 😉
Ewan McIntosh has a great blog about public service and education management
http://edu.blogs.com/
But i am not sure if he is actually employed in the public service.
Its a bit of a mish mash of politicians, public servants, consultants and people who have some kind of relationship with government (some of which look a touch vague).
One obvious one you have missed (but may not have known about since he hadn’t blogged for over a year until very recently) is Owen Barder, the original civil servant blogger before the Daily Mail ungraciously tore apart many years of posts last summer: http://www.owen.org/blog/
Oh Lord, now I am worried that you are referring to me in your ‘vague’ comment Mr Gould.
I tried to make the list reasonably representative, with people from different parts of the public sector to keep things interesting.
It’s also a tricky call in terms of who to include because of what people actually blog about. For instance, would a blog written by a civil servant which is just about, oh, I dunno, bird watching or something be relevant here? Probably not.
I will certainly include Owen though, good call.
I would say yes. If a civil servant is blogging, stream them – the civil service is of national and international interest (to some :)) and the people which make up the civil service need to be recognised. Should they choose to blog in a digital generalist way, then include them – if they are specialist (spare parts for minis, then not that no!)
If i contradicted myself there apologies, I mean include them if they are generalists or specialists in government stuff, if they have specialist areas outside of government/public sector and are blogging only about that… then no.
However, the beauty of what you are doing here is identifying the talent across government.
Can see the dilemma though. When I was scribbling the list for you, I wanted to include Hammersley, obviously… but his blog is entirely irrelevant, however he is a talent in government – so people should know that he is there… ho hum
NB ALL – I am not ‘cambridge city council’ – just like master gould isn’t ‘misery of justice’ ;]
also, as you’d know, I blog about a range of stuff, not just egov.
but the idea of somewhere to source ‘public sector bloggers has obvious value. just needs some riders.
n.b I have a few others in my egov links.
Thanks for the inclusion. How about:
Steph Gray
Public Strategist – another pseudonymous civil servant
and some related groups:
mySociety
Ideal Government
Connected Republic
A great example of what can be done and it give me a model to ‘borrow’ for work I’m doing syndicating content for Digital Challenge. I’ll follow its functional development with interest….
As a public-sector person that’s just started a blog, unashamedly using KingsCrossTV as a model, it’ll be interesting to track the whole, pblic sector, communities, web blogging thingy going on here…
I’m going to chip in here on behalf of consultants/contractors/temps in localc and central government. There are quite a few of us around and we have a tendency to work across departments, which can add a different perspective on integration and use of social media tools…
I’d also suggest adding some local gov bods – not sure if you captured Dominic Campbell as well: http://www.futuregovconsultancy.com/
Thanks for the feedback all. Am starting to think that this is too big to be handled by a single aggregated feed, and actually it might be better presented by splitting up the feeds into some sort of categories.
Again, any suggestions on how the hell this might be done are welcome!
Hi Dave,
This is great stuff – but why limit to UK only.
There’s some great eGovernment blogs in the US, New Zealand, Canada – to name a few English speaking nations.
The UK certainly has a lead on some other jurisdictions, but it’s not leading all the innovation.
Cheers,
Craig
Hi Dave, don’t forget to add me 🙂
Are you limiting this to the govt of the day? For inclusivity you could extend to Webcameron, Boris Johnson (actually especially him, as he is a public servant now). Not aware of any lib dems blogging but would be surprised if none are.
those links:
http://neilojwilliams.net/missioncreep
http://www.boris-johnson.com/
http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=webcameron.index.page
Hi Neil, don’t worry you are on my list to add!
Am actually working on a v2.0 of this site, hence the lack of additions. Watch this, or rather that, space….
Is it just for officers or can my blog of a lowly local councillor be added, please? Also, are there widely-recognised guidelines on what councillors should and shouldn’t post? I thought I’d seen it mentioned here, but I didn’t find it when I searched and I didn’t reach you on Jabber/XMPP/GoogleTalk.
Hello Dave,
I was wondering if you might consider adding my blog to your list
Kind regards
John
Hello Dave,
I’ve gone through life in recent years with three aims in life.
1. See Stoke City beat Arsenal 3-1 to dump them out of the FA Cup
2. Start a blog.
3. Have it listed on Public Sector Bloggers
U’ve done the first two. Can you fix it for me to realise the third? : )