June 2011 – Page 5 – Dave Briggs

Just because you can say something…

June 6, 2011

…doesn’t mean that you should. Of course.

A bit of a Twitter flurry this morning about a case of a civil servant apparently being disciplined because of their use of the service.

The account in question, nakedCservant, is protected, so the updates aren’t public, and as I have never requested access, I can’t see what they are saying. However, according to this report, the civil servant behind the account was critical of ministers and government policy.

Various folk have called this out as being an example of a crack down on public servants being allowed to use services like Twitter in the workplace.

I’m not convinced it is.

The issue here is the message, not the medium, and it reminds me very much of the Civil Serf affair a few years ago. Whilst I don’t know the exact detail of this case, it’s clear that the civil servant is almost certainly in breach of the civil service code in terms of the content of their tweets.

In other words, the Twitter bit of this story is irrelevant. The result would be the same if this person were saying these things in emails, memos, letters to the newspaper, whatever.

I’ll go through my usual list of points when these stories emerge:

1. If you want to stay out of trouble, don’t slag people off in public.

2. Don’t rely on anonymity to protect you. Unless you’re very good, if somebody wants to find out who you are, they can do.

3. Having ‘these are my views, not those of my employer’ in your Twitter biography means absolutely nothing in reality. It’s no protection at all and I worry when I hear people being advised to do it as a way to feel safe about this stuff.

4. Never publish anything on the web you wouldn’t be happy to show your boss, your mother or a journalist. Assume everyone can see everything you write and that way you won’t be surprised when it turns out they can.

5. We’re in a strange situation at the moment where our personal and professional identities are in a state of flux and can’t be separated in a reasonable way. Most people, especially those that work in public services, can easily be traced to their employers online with a bit of Googling.

Maybe at some point in the future this will be sorted out, and we’ll have a common understanding of where work stops and home starts. But until then, be careful and if you have to think twice about posting something online, don’t post it!

Update: Steph adds on Twitter “don’t do politics” – and he’s right.

Update 2: Jimmy Leach blogs the view from the FCO.

What I’ve been reading

June 5, 2011

I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.

Google’s Chromebook set to transform how we think about computers | Technology | The Observer – “On 15 June, Google will officially take the next step on its road to global domination. From that day onwards, online shoppers will be able to buy the Google Chromebook, a device that the search giant hopes will change the way we think about computers – and in the process rain on the parades of Apple and Microsoft.”
Open-source is great, let’s explode a couple of myths – Some sensible stuff that’s useful reading for anyone overdosing on the OSS kool-aid.
Workshopping in Peterborough | Kind of Digital – Quick summary of our digital engagement workshop. Want one? Just ask!
Reconciling identity and place | Curiouscatherine’s Blog – Yet more great thinking out loud by @curiousc
Alpha.gov.uk: What’s in Your Stack? – Interesting interview about the tech behind AlphaGov
Faster Future Campaign – Interesting looking rural broadband project based in King’s Lynn.
nexters | big ideas. inspiring society. – “Nexters is the big society network’s new programme to support the UK’s best social entrepreneurs.”
Where technology should be used to improve policy-making, and is not – “what about all the conversations where people share problems, suggestions, even solutions, which do not happen on an e-participation web site, but pop out from online communities where people socialize for reasons that have nothing to do with politics?”
FibreValley – Fibre Valley – Digital Worth Valley – Interesting new community broadband project in Yorkshire.
On becoming Executive Director of Digital in the Cabinet Office – The new digital director speaks!

You can find all my bookmarks on Pinboard.

Auditing digital engagement

June 2, 2011

One of the things that comes out of the training we do is that evaluating online engagement is hard. What’s more, just finding out whether you are doing the right things is tricky too.

Looking at other people’s good practice can help, but unless you have a couple of days spare, finding the time is tricky.

So, we’d like to present our Digital Engagement Audits as a nice quick solution to this problem.

What we’ll do is do some research into your current online engagement efforts and provide some feedbeck. We’ll also take a look around your local area and tell you about the communities, blogs and tweeters already active nearby. Finally, you get an action plan of some quick tasks that will help improve your efforts.

You get a report, and a web conference that goes through all the findings. The process shouldn’t take longer than a week, and it aims to be practical, quick and lightweight.

The cost is £1,500 + VAT and you can get one now by simply getting in touch and asking for one.

More details on the dedicated page, or here’s a PDF flyer you can download, print and show to your boss.

Cross posted from the Kind of Digital blog.

Localism needs bespoke, not scale

June 1, 2011

David Wilcox does his usual excellent summarising and commenting job on the latest snafu involving BIG Lottery funding and the internet.

It’s all about a grant of £1.89 million to the Media Trust, to fund the establishment of “connected news hubs around the UK to support citizen journalism and to help communities and charities get their voices heard”.

Hmmmm. I’ve said many a time before that the future of journalism debate is one of the most boring in the world – certainly one of the least relevant to actual people with proper lives with real things to worry about.

So the use of the word journalism in this project concerns me – it brings to the table assumptions and values which I’m not sure belong in this context.

This follows a grant of £830k under the People Powered Change programme to Your Square Mile to develop a network of local community websites. It’s described as a “digital one stop shop” – excellent!

Excuse my sneering, but 1999 is calling and it wants its slogans back.

David writes in his analysis:

The issue is perhaps not so much why the Media Trust got the funding, but why Big Lottery didn’t spend some time exploring the difference between citizen journalism, community reporting, and hyperlocal media. Or if they did, could we please see the report? That would be transparency.

One thing that is becoming clear is that communities come before websites. That is to say, the motivation for starting a community web project must come from the community first and not a solution being imposed from elsewhere. It’s been tried countless times and doesn’t work.

The experts in the field, such as the Talk About Local guys totally get this, which is why their nationally-focused solution takes the lead from local need, and is platform neutral. No one size fits all model there, and rightly so.

It’s also why social media surgeries work so well. Nobody there has a service to push – the ‘surgeons’ listen to people’s problems, or what they want to achieve, and they advise on the quickest, cheapest solution.

There is often an assumption that a centre of power must always fill a vacuum. In this case, there is no doubt that local communities organising themselves online can benefit both those communities and the local council, if it chooses to listen.

That doesn’t mean however, that the council should be the provider or indeed the instigator of the websites. Far better to bring in a third party, who understands this stuff and who will advise the different communities what the best solution is for them – not develop a single platform and assume it will work for everyone.

Likewise with these big national programmes. What if the Your Square Mile product isn’t what communities want? What if the MediaTrust’s understanding of a ‘connected news hub’ (actually, does anyone have an understanding of what one of those is?) doesn’t match anyone else’s?

The point of localism is that different communities have different needs, which means they need different tools and solutions. Yet still ‘scalable’ single solutions get funded. But of course you can’t scale bespoke, even though bespoke is what is needed here.

aBook

June 1, 2011

Lovely spoof from the BBC ‘Horrible Histories’ show:

In case you can’t see it – here’s the link.

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