Great work by Dom Campbell on procurement, and I really love the title: Its Time People Started Getting Fired For Buying IBM from the WeMedia site.
Embedded below, if you can’t see it, here’s a link.
Tag: ict
Bookmarks for March 30th through April 5th
I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.
- The Collapse of Complex Business Models « Clay Shirky – Awesome stuff from Shirky.
- Reflecting on my MSc research by Michele Ide-Smith – "By researching the attitudes and perceptions of authorities and citizens I hope to gain a better understanding of perceived barriers, threats and opportunities of using social media for community engagement"
- Cinch – "Cinch is a free and easy way to create and share audio, text and photo updates using your phone or computer. Cinch enables you to capture and report on your experiences in a way that simple text just can't do. Using a simple interface, you can make and broadcast your content creations through Facebook, Twitter, CinchCast.com and more."
- The State of the Internet Operating System – O’Reilly Radar – "Ask yourself for a moment, what is the operating system of a Google or Bing search? What is the operating system of a mobile phone call? What is the operating system of maps and directions on your phone? What is the operating system of a tweet?"
- Penval’s Digital Inclusion Manifesto – Well done Paul Nash. This is what the digital inclusion debate needs – proper, thought through ideas. Genuinely constructive contributions. Not just people bleating about the problems.
- tecosystems » Forking, The Future of Open Source, and Github – Is the future of open source going to be based on communities such as Apache and Eclipse or will it be based on companies that sell open source? Neither.
- Dr Dennis Kimbro & his views on recruitment – Really interesting and thought provoking piece on talent management, and attitudes to it, in local government.
- In quest of simplicty – "We expect IT to be complex and costly, but the lesson of the past 5 years in IT – where we’ve seen the consumerization of enterprise IT (“enterprise” is often a coy way of saying “this has to be complex and expensive – no questions!”) – is that IT can be both simple and cheap."
- Law and social media – dull but important – "Social media throws up issues of privacy and identity which are far more complex when you have a complete record of someone’s time online and a also a need to balance the personal with the professional roles of an individual. "
- Powerful petitions with real teeth set to bite – "Local people can now demand their councils take action on underperforming schools and hospitals, drink disorder, anti-social behaviour and other concerns under new rules giving real power to local petitions, announced Communities Secretary John Denham today."
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 March 18th through March 20th
[Something is going wrong with this again. For some reason this hadn’t been posted before now.]
I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.
- Embracing Government 2.0: Leading transformative change in the public sector (PDF) – PDF warning! Link to paper from Grant Thornton on gov 2.0 – some interesting case studies.
- Government webpage for every citizen in the race to create a paperless society – Times Online – “All public services could be delivered online within four years under an ambitious pledge by Gordon Brown to create a paperless state and save billions of pounds”
- What is eSpace? | NHS CFH eSpace – “eSpace is a community based online collaboration tool dedicated to improving healthcare and wellness by sharing knowledge and experiences of technology enabled change.” via @dominiccampbell
- What Is Open Government For? – “It is quite clear that, depending on what is the primary driver to be “open”, the meaning of openness changes, as do the effort put on different aspects of an open government strategy and plan.”
- Central government reorganisation squandering millions on IT – “More than £150m was spent on IT by government departments going through a process of restructuring but there is little evidence of any benefits, finds a new NAO report.”
- Fake Experts – “It is possible that the most frustrating thing ever is to have to sit through meetings with people who have declared that they’re experts, and then discover that they aren’t.”
- The problem of incentives in knowledge work – “I’m struggling with the issue of incentives in organizations trying to promote improved knowledge management and more effective use of new collaboration tools such as blogs, wikis, and the like.”
- Multimedia Wikipedia: Can Video Be Collaborative? – Interesting – never mind the tech, how does video fit with the ethos of Wikipedia?
- The Problem with Big Data – “He who has the most data wins. Right?”
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 March 16th through March 18th
I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.
- comment.ofqual.gov.uk – Lovely commentable document style consultations from Ofqual
- MINDSPACE: Influencing behaviour through public policy – Institute for Government – "Influencing behaviour through public policy explores how behaviour change theory can help meet current policy challenges, such as how to reduce crime, tackle obesity, or ensure environmental sustainability."
- How Not to Run an IT Project: A Case Study – Well worth a read.
- Open Election Data project – "A new project to help local government open up their election results"
- MIT TechTV – The Future of Government/Citizen Engagement – "From the Mayor of Newark's tweets to the President's online town halls, technology has already changed how the public engages with their government. In a world of ubiquitous broadband, this interaction can radically change how government operates and develops policy. This panel will explore how broadband can transform government/citizen engagement."
- 10 Search Engines to Explore the Deep End of the Invisible Web – I'm not sure how useful this actually is, but it's kinda interesting.
- Local by Social – "This document outlines how local authorities can use social media to achieve more for less. It also highlights the risk to councils if they ignore the technological advances of social media and the people using them."
- Socialtext: The 5 Most Critical Requirements for Enterprise Social Software – "How do you choose the Enterprise Social Software solution that will produce the greatest benefits for your company? In this white paper, we will show you the five most critical requirements for success."
- Carnegie UK Trust – Democracy & Civil Society – Making good society – "Making good society, the final report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society, argues that civil society has been pushed to the margins in key areas including politics, finance and the media and that this must change."
- Case studies of corporate (social) learning – Great list of examples
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.
Meeting with Microsoft
I had a very interesting hour today, chatting with James Brown and Dave Coplin at Microsoft. James works with the public sector all over the world, while Dave concentrates his effort on the UK. Dave also came along to last weekend’s govcamp – good man!
We had a great discussion about the state of public sector IT and the big issues, like open data, innovation and collaboration in government.
No one once claimed that Windows 7 was their idea.
I think it’s important that big vendors like Microsoft – and Google, IBM, SAP and others – are involved in these discussions. Here’s a few reasons why:
- These guys know a lot of stuff, and they aren’t afraid to share it
- Like it or not, a lot of public sector organisations buy their IT from bigco. If we – by which I mean the community of people interested in open and effective government – want real change to happen, these guys need to be involved in the conversations
- Further, for long term technology enabled change to be sustainable within the huge – and not so huge – organisations that make up the public sector, the big boys have to be involved
- Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the issues we are all talking about are platform neutral. It’s in everyone’s interest that government becomes more innovative and collaborative, whether you are a civil servant, a one man govweb revolution, or a multinational supplier
Both James and Dave are keen to be a part of the conversation and the discussion around open government and the use of technology in organisations to drive improvement and efficiency. Dave even volunteered to write something for this blog in the near future – and now I’ve written it here, it looks like he’ll have to.