government – Dave Briggs

Making British Government easier to learn

My friend and colleague Jason Caplin pointed out today that the LSE have open up the lectures for their undergraduate course on British government and how it all works.

It’s a fantastic resource, and great that they have shared this openly, as it’s something that would be of use to anyone working in and around government.

However, the formatting isn’t all that great and it doesn’t work brilliantly on mobile. Plus, there’s no ability for learners to ask questions, leave comments or discuss the topics.

So, I very quickly threw together a WordPress site to rehouse the videos, using a nice simple responsive theme and layout. I also enabled comments, so there’s a bit of a social element there as well.

I’d be really interested to know from folk if this has been a worthwhile endeavour, and if you make use of the site. Also, if you have any suggestions for improvement.

The site is at http://britgov.learninglabs.org.uk/

Happy learning!

Link roundup

I find this stuff so you don’t have to:

“Technology at least as good as people have at home”

devices A quick pointer to an interesting project in central government in the UK.

It’s looking at redefining the technology used by civil servants to get their jobs done.

There are a number of interesting issues around this agenda. The experience people have at home with software – particularly web based applications like Facebook, Amazon and so on – means that the systems they use at work are increasingly clunky and depressing.

As Stefan Czerniawski says in his blog post:

Traditional software is big and complicated, packed with features which most people don’t use most of the time. That has two consequences. The first is that they need training and support to be useful, the second is that it is difficult and expensive to change them. Modern software tends to be lighter, more focused, more flexible and more social. That makes it much easier to match the tool to the job.

It will be good to see what recommendations emerge from this project in the future.

Integrate Your Apps | Zapier – Sync the Web – An ifttt for business web applications. Potentially vey handy.
What Organizations Can Learn from "If This Then That" (IFTTT) – Nice post from Nick Charney on ifttt – which I wrote about the other day
Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People – "Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People"
Don’t forget about ePetitions – they can be part of a more collaborative future – "There is a massive cultural resonance to a democratic mechanism like petitioning – maybe we could think about using this cultural resonance and familiarity in a more innovative and open way."
Is regular door knocking a must for councillors? – "(An alternative title for this entry could be, ‘If I go looking for problems, I’m bound to find some’.)"

What I’ve been reading

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

Are open standards a closed barrier? | Government Digital Service – "Fresh out of a roundtable discussion on the Open Standards: Open Opportunities consultation, Linda Humphries discusses whether open can really mean closed."
eParticipation needs to be carefully integrated into the complex world of existing participation processes | British Politics and Policy at LSE – "While technical problems can sink eParticipation initiatives, the core challenges are on the social side. Ella Taylor-Smith discusses what eParticipation actually means and how it should be evaluated."
#Unacceptable IT is pervasive | | G-CloudG-Cloud – "Real progress has been blocked by many things including an absence of capability in both departments and their suppliers, by a strong resistance to change, by the perverse incentives of contracts that mean its cheaper to pay service credits than to fix the problem and by an unwillingness to embrace the potential of newer and smaller players to offer status quo-busting ideas."
Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government 1 / 5 – "Canada's commitment to open government is part of the federal government's efforts to foster greater openness and accountability, to provide Canadians with more opportunities to learn about and participate in government, to drive innovation and economic opportunities for all Canadians and, at the same time, create a more cost effective, efficient and responsive government."
GDS design principles – Interesting and important stuff for webbies to consider.
Making the case for a FOSS CMS | Digital by Default – Matt Jukes shares his thinking on choosing a CMS.

You can find all my bookmarks on Pinboard.