GovCamp this Saturday

Blogging has been very light here just recently – GovCamp is basically taking over my life. Will be back on track next week, hopefully.

Here’s the text of an email I sent round to members of the network last night – it’s important reading.

Govcamp is this Saturday, 23rd January. I wanted to get in touch with you all to clarify the entrance arrangements. You must have a ticket via the Eventbrite system to gain entry to the event – Google are pretty tight on security, and if your name isn’t down on the list, you really won’t be allowed in.

You can check to see if your name is down at http://ukgc10.eventbrite.com/ – if you are not listed there and you really think you should be, please get in touch with me by emailing d@vebrig.gs as soon as you can.

For those that are coming, please arrive in time for us to kick things off at 10am. Oh, and bring a printout of your Eventbrite ticket, just in case.

Bookmarks for January 13th through January 17th

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

  • Departmental Dialogue Index – "This research project has identified and developed a diagnostic tool, the Departmental Dialogue Index (DDI), that will allow Departments to better understand their propensity to engage with the public."
  • Zengobi – Curio 6 – Interesting Mac mind mapping software
  • Is listening neutral? | Podnosh – "The core piece of advice for any public service on how to make good use of social media is “learn to listen”. It’s the one part of the conversation that sometimes gets lost in the rush to publish."
  • CPSRenewal.ca: Column: Risky Business: Deputy Minister or Bust – "I cannot even recall the number of times I have been told that what I am doing on this blog, via twitter and other social media is incredibly "risky". I get the impression that many people assume that my risk tolerance is higher than the average public servant, and perhaps they are right. However if I am indeed more tolerant of risk, I would argue that it is because the way in which I frame risk is markedly different than how it is typically framed in the bureaucracy. "
  • Government 2.0: Communication and Engagement Are On a Collision Course – "In essence, in gov 2.0 terms an effective communication strategy is likely to be almost the exact opposite of an effective engagement strategy. The former chooses and controls channels, while the latter joins somebody else’s channels The former determines rules of engagement, the latter follows somebody else’s rules. The former assumes that citizens reach out to government, the latter is based on government reaching out to communities and groups."
  • How low is the common denominator? | Public Strategist – "Do brilliant ideas have to have polarised responses, or can they be brilliant and inclusive?"
  • The Power of Technology to Transform Government – Steve Ballmer on Open Government: "I’m encouraged by this forum. It’s another strong signal that leaders at the very highest level of the federal government recognize that information technology has the potential to transform government by making it more efficient, more effective and more responsive."
  • We Can Work It Out – NLGN – We argue that democratically elected councils must sit at the heart of a complex ecosystem of services and must develop their role in order to ensure greater co-ordination of support for people at the frontline. Skills quangos at the regional spatial tier should be streamlined to cut out the complexity of the current system, and local authorities must take the lead in commissioning welfare-to-work programmes from the corridors of Whitehall.
  • Space Of Waste – Yay for govbloggers! "Hello world! My name is Lucy Toman, and I recently started working in Municipal Waste Management in Defra."
  • WordPress official user interface mailing list – Just that: WordPress now has a dedicated mailing list to discuss issues around the user experience
  • Understanding participation: A literature review — Pathways Through Participation – The review brings together different bodies of literature on participation, including literature on community development, volunteering, public participation, social movements, everyday politics and ethical consumption.

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious.

You can also see all the videos I think are worth watching at my video scrapbook.

Learning Pool cop an elearning hotseat

On Wednesday 20th January, Paul McElvaney, Director of Learning Pool and Alison Stott, Project Manager at Essex Strategic HR will be hosting an online hotseat on the commissioning of Open, Distance and E-learning. This will be taking place in the Leadership Development Community of Practice, using the IDeA’s CoP platform. You need to register with the platform and join the community before you can get involved.

The way this will work is that a special forum has been set up inside the CoP in which questions can be left ahead of, and during, the day of the hotseat. Paul and Alison will then answer as many questions as they can before the end of the day. It’s like a day long asynchronous online Q&A session.

Subjects you might want to ask about include:

  • How to promote collaboration and sharing between organisations
  • How to save money and make efficiencies by working differently
  • When to consider commissioning e-learning and what criteria should be considered?

So go ahead and sign up with the community and start posting your questions! Alternatively leave a question in a comment to this post, or email it in to hello@learningpool.com and we’ll make sure it gets posted.

You can also get involved in the discussion using Twitter – just use and keep an eye on the tag #copel.

Bookmarks for January 11th through January 13th

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

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious.

You can also see all the videos I think are worth watching at my video scrapbook.

Google and China

Cripes:

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

via Tom Watson.

Update: Tom has thoughtfully blogged this too.