collaboration – Page 11

Bookmarks for August 18th through September 8th

September 9, 2010

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

Civic Commons code-sharing initiative bids to reduce government IT costs – "Around the United States, city governments have created a multitude of software. Unfortunately, most of the time the code from those projects is not shared between municipalities, which results in duplication of effort and redundant, static software."
Anonymity, trust and openness on the social intranet – "In some organisations, the cloak of anonymity could help to establish the first part of that trust relationship, and reassure colleagues that leaders are, in fact, really listening; once it exists, it’s easier to step out of the shadows with a greater degree of trust and openness."
The end of history – "History will, of course, look after itself. It always has. But the future history of our time will be different from our histories of past times, and that will not be because we have an eye to the future, but because we are always relentless focused on the present."
Why aren’t we all working for Learning Organisations? – "…the authors suggest a way for managers to switch from a ‘command and control’ to a ‘systems thinking’ mindset in order to achieve genuine organisational learning."
Quixly – Cool way to host and deliver paid-for content, such as e-books.
Understanding Marin County’s $30 million ERP failure – It's not just UK government that cocks up IT projects.
Google Wave open source next steps: "Wave in a Box" – "We will expand upon the 200K lines of code we've already open sourced (detailed at waveprotocol.org) to flesh out the existing example Wave server and web client into a more complete application or "Wave in a Box.""
Should Governments Legislate a Preference for Open Source? – "It's easy to legislate a preference for Open Source, and difficult to implement a level playing field upon which Open Source and proprietary software could compete fairly. Thus, a number of governments have enacted the preference as an easy-to-legislate way of solving the problem, but I submit not optimally. Having a preference gives proprietary software an opening to portray themselves as the "injured party", when the reality is that historically there has been a preference for proprietary software in both legislation and internal process of government purchasers, and this still exists today."
Wiki life – "The point, in the end, is that Wikimedia by its DNA operates in public and benefits accrue — not just as product and engagement and promotion and distribution but also as strategy. That’s the next step in creating the truly public company or organization."
First Impressions: VaultPress (WordPress Backup) – Nice summary of the premium backup service for WordPress (sadly just in beta at the moment).
Sink or Swim – Donald Clark on the birth of Learning Pool and why the public sector needs it more than ever.
Damien Katz: Getting Your Open Source Project to 1.0 – Great notes on successful open source development.
Harold Jarche » The Evolving Social Organization – "For decades, organizational growth has been viewed as a positive development, but it has come at a cost."
O’Reilly, Open Government and the Ingenuity of Enthusiasm – "It is quite clear that performance management and procurement, as well as many other government processes, need to be revised, reformed or radically changed. But this won’t happen unless we recognize that government and its employees need to remain in charge, need to stay as the custodians of neutrality and transparency, and we, the people, developers or users, can just help them do a better job but not replace them in any way."
Research findings and recommendations for Councils – Some fantastic shared learning here from Michele.
sigil – "Sigil is a multi-platform WYSIWYG ebook editor. It is designed to edit books in ePub format."
Enterprise 2.0 Perceived Risks: Myth or Reality? – "…security is a personal thing, a personal trait that everyone needs to nurture and treasure accordingly."
Using Free, Open-Source Software in Local Governments – "…how is it that local governments have failed to capitalize on the cost-saving and productivity-enhancing benefits of using open source software, especially given the budget crises they face?"
Open Government Data – "This event will bring together movers and shakers from the world of open government data — including government representatives, policymakers, lawyers, technologists, academics, advocates, citizens, journalists and reusers."
WordPress › Email Users « WordPress Plugins – "A plugin for wordpress which allows you to send an email to the registered blog users."

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious. There is also even more stuff on my shared Google Reader page.

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

Bookmarks for July 28th through August 5th

August 5, 2010

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

NHS spends millions on websites that fail patients, says government report | Society | The Guardian – "The NHS spends up to £86m a year on thousands of websites that are difficult to find, badly designed and irrelevant to patient needs, according to a leaked government report."
Open data on the cheap at Helpful Technology – "…without the cost and complexity of building and mantaining a full API to their database, a corporate public sector organisation has been able to support reuse in a quick and simple way."
Retooled — Retooled is a place to find and share experiences of the rollercoaster of redundancy. – "This site was begun by a group of employees who were all made redundant when our company MG Rover closed. We hope by sharing our experiences, Retooled will be valuable to anyone who is going through redundancy."
Straight Statistics – "We are a campaign established by journalists and statisticians to improve the understanding and use of statistics by government, politicians, companies, advertisers and the mass media."
Data.gov.uk chief admits transparency concerns – "Cabinet Office official Richard Stirling, who leads the team that runs Data.gov.uk, said that if he was at the Office for National Statistics he would have concerns about statistical releases and people making assumptions "that aren't quite valid"."
i-volunteer.org.uk – "i-volunteer is a social network that connects volunteers, charities and volunteer managers across the UK."
Does Outsourcing Destroy IT Innovation? – "…those that outsource IT on a wholesale basis "struggle to use IT to drive value and have limited strategic flexibility as the business context evolves and hardware prices plummet.""
The community right to build – do we know if it will work? – "We think that when these reforms come out in the wash at the local level, it will often be the role, and the responsibility, of local (parish and town) councils and their committed volunteer councillors to make planning work positively for local places."
All systems (about to) go – "[the knowledge hub] will be a place to discover a wide range of materials and content to support the development and improvement of local public services."
Council stages CovJam to help shape Coventry’s future – "In what has the potential to become a blueprint for cities around the globe, the council staged the world's first city-wide online conversation with nearly 900 local residents, businesses and public bodies."

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious. There is also even more stuff on my shared Google Reader page.

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

Wave goodbye

August 4, 2010

So, Google Wave will soon be no more:

But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily “liberate” their content from Wave.

I guess it was always a technology looking for a problem to solve. However, I did think they might have tried pushing it into organisations a bit before giving up – it seemed a potentially really powerful tool for collaboration amongst teams, and Wave hasn’t been a part of the Google Apps suite for that long.

Word is though that Google are working on a Facebook style social network and maybe some of the Wave stuff will make it into that.

I guess the other thing is that at least they are open sourcing bits of the code, so someone else might be able to pick it up and do something useful with it.

Thanks to Google, then, for innovating and trying new stuff publicly, and not being afraid to fail. A lesson to us all.

What is the Knowledge Hub?

July 23, 2010

The Knowledge Hub is an ambitious project by Local Government Improvement and Development (what was the IDeA) to provide two main things: a new platform for the Communities of Practice to replace the rather clunky current one; and to provide a service for data sharing and hosting – a little like data.gov.uk but for local stuff.

Steve Dale, the architect of the incredibly successful Communities of Practice, is the guy behind the Knowledge Hub, ably assisted by luminaries of local gov 2.0 like Ingrid Koehler. It should be great.

I’ve embedded a video below which explains the Knowledge Hub in a practical sort of way.

The procurement process for the technology bit of the Knowledge Hub was recently completed and at a meeting of the steering group on Tuesday (27th July) we’ll get to find out who the winner is and what the finished thing might look like. My understanding is that the Knowledge Hub will then launch in the new year.

Learning Pool were delighted to be asked to produce the animation for the video above, and we think it has come out pretty well. If you think you have a use for something similar, do get in touch!

Bookmarks for June 7th through June 17th

June 17, 2010

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

What Does Government Transformation Mean, Exactly? – "Rather than fantasizing about the myth of transformation, governments have to accept that future is no longer predictable and focus on what changes are necessary to make them more flexible and nimble to adapt to uncertainty."
open data doesn’t empower communities | internet.artizans – "Open data doesn't empower communities. I'm not saying open data is a bad thing, but we need to highlight the gap between the semantic web and social impact."
The battle for data, the battle for design | Public Strategist – "The availability of data is a critical enabler, but what matters in the end is what it enables."
Re-use of open data and applying the same idea within WCC – "…the beginning of a universal API for the organisation." Wowza.
Better Junk Mail – Quick Analysis from the Enterprise 2.0 World – "The positive side is more along the lines of companies realizing the smarts they have in their employees heads and the horizontal connections – and then, of course, re-orienting work to take advantage of them and (we’d hope) figure out compensating employees beyond the org. tree."
Government 2.0: If Engaging is Difficult, Keeping Engaged is More So – "What keeps me going is the use of my blog as my personal knowledge base. Many times, when I prepare a client inquiry, a presentation or a research note, I can go back to the blog and find an example, a nugget, a pesky comment that help me do the job I am measured and paid for."
Empire Disruption – BankerVision – "My experience is that big organsiations create situations where the politics of success dictate you grow your control of people and resources, even when that is counterproductive to the task you're actually supposed to be achieving. "
Lists made easy + social + fun! – twtPickin – Nice tool for collaborating on lists with twitter buddies
Diplodocus – A community for international digital government people – "…a community of people doing international facing digital work for governments"
iAnnotate for iPad – "iAnnotate is both an elegant PDF reader and a powerful annotation tool that finally lets you work with your PDFs. You can open documents from email, sign and send out contracts fast, enter notes for edits, sketch diagrams, copy text, and add highlights or underline with the drag of a finger!"

You can find all my bookmarks on Delicious. There is also even more stuff on my shared Google Reader page.

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

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