Social media & local government

Have come across some interesting bits and pieces recently on the topic of how local government should be using the social web to better communicate and collaborate – exactly the sort of thing we are trying to promote on the Community of Practice.

First up is a presentation by Simon Wakeman, who is Head of Marketing and PR at Medway Council in Kent. Simon’s slides include some interesting research results, plus some details of how Medway have used podcasts to reach out to younger people:

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Second is some slides from Dominic Campbell, who was lucky enough to be appointed Social Media Manager at Barnet Council recently. Dominic discusses how web 2.0 can help Barnet implement their Communications and Engagement Strategy.

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Another tip from Dominic led me to Barnet’s YouTube page (yes! They have one!) which feature some great clips of Charles Leadbeater – he of We-Think fame – talking to the Council about the future shape of local government and local governance in the UK.

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There are some great initiatives going on out there in local government where forward-thinking folk are making the most of web technology to bring councils closer to the people they serve. As with the eDemocracy debate though – is this stuff too fragmented? How can we bring everyone together?

Ads in Feeds? Please, no.

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Hmmm. So FeedBurner is going to start allowing folk to embed Adsense in their RSS feeds. I don’t like ads on blogs much, I have to say, and getting content through RSS usually lets you avoid them. I really don’t like the idea of ads in my feeds.

There is one thing that is worse, though, and that’s partial RSS feeds (damn you, BBC!). Maybe with ads in feeds being more easily accessible – previously it’s only very well read bloggers that have ads on their feeds – we’ll start to see a two-tier system. Get the partial feed for free, or the full one with ads.

What an awful thought.

Anyway, DavePress is remaining ad-free, both on the site and in the feed. Just thought you might like to know.

Further ICELE debate

Steven Clift rightly points folk to the discussions going on at the UK & Ireland eDemocracy exchange about the demise of ICELE, in the comments to my previous post on the topic.

Here’s a sample of what folk are saying – the archive is public if you want to see more.

Ella Taylor-Smith:

I think there is room for an organisation to -like ICELE – to be a central contact/info point for e-democracy in the UK (I’ve widened it there from local). Where they’ve collected data and case studies on a specific topic (like e-petitions) I’ve found it useful.

Paul Canning:

This just highlights for me the absence of any national central point of reference for egov. It’s splintered all over the place, so no one actually working in the area has ‘heard of’ most of the worthy stuff…

It just pains me that the Australian state of Victoria and other governments like Hong Kong and New Zealand have managed ‘one stop shop’ portals to egov for practitioners but all Downing St has led with is endless, endless different initiatives with different websites whilst at the same time preaching to the rest of us about ‘just’ directgov and businesslink.

Andy Williamson:

Our role now as advocates for eDemocracy is not to reduce the pressure but to increase it and argue strongly for a centralised, properly resourced and commissioned eDemocracy agency.

Mick Pythian:

I think perhaps first of all we need to know what the great British public expect of e-Democracy or even Democracy and attempt to champion that…

Rather than assumptions, I’d like to see more evidence from this country (cultures and systems vary, along with connectivity). This includes more ‘measured’ pilots.

Now, if I were to try and draw folk together to provide a post-ICELE way forward, these are all people who I would insist have to be involved – people who have a genuine interest in making things better, who have a clear idea of what eDemocracy might mean. To this dream team, I’d add others, like Shane McCracken, Steve Dale, Ingrid Koehler, Steve Hilton and Dominic Campbell.

It would be fascinating to see what could be achieved just by bringing people together, dispensing with titles and the other paraphernalia of traditional government working groups, and non-organising our way into Getting Something Done.

An EU Political MySpace?

From EU Observer:

Plans are being developed to launch a social networking site for MEPs and MPs to boost contacts between politicians across Europe and promote a trans-European democracy.

Myparl.eu – officially to be launched in October – is a website currently under construction that aims to work along the same lines as the popular MySpace or Facebook social networking services, but in addition to linking social contacts is supposed to foster debate about legislative proposals coming both out of Brussels and from national parliaments.

Sounds exciting, eh? Here’s the real belter though:

The site is planned to be open to the public, who will be able to react to the issues with letters to the editor. However, only MPs and MEPs will be able to post comments.

One for the ‘really badly not getting it’ pile.

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