Due to time constraints, many Local Government Service leads are inevitably ‘heads down’ and perhaps overwhelmed by the variety of technology on offer. It can be hard to team up with neighbouring boroughs because that adds complexity and may slow things down through collaborative decision making. They need more ‘heads up’ time to reflect and review what is going on elsewhere, and try to be open minded and consider wider options – we as SMEs on the other hand need to present our products in terms of their benefits, in plain English, not as a technology offer.
Tag: procurement
Blogged elsewhere: Why tech SMEs are Crucial to Public Sector Digital Transformation
I was asked by my friends at AdviceCloud to write something for the TechUK blog about how small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) can support public sector organisations in their efforts to transform.
Technology is not the be-all and end-all of digital transformation. However, any organisation looking to disrupt itself in this way must have a sufficiently flexible technology stack to support the radical change that is needed – and tech SMEs are in the perfect place to deliver what digital transformation demands.
Read the whole thing on the TechUK website.
What I’ve been reading
I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.
- Exploring how digital technology can support young people to engage socially and economically in their communities : Tim’s Blog – Tim is "launching an open research project to find key messages for youth-focussed digital innovation"
- A manifesto for teaching computer science in the 21st century – John Naughton tells Michael Gove what's needed.
- Knowledge Hub architects defend switchover as lever is thrown. – "The architects of the new local government Knowledge Hub, an online platform for exchange of ideas between council officers, politicians and the public, have defended the switchover from its predecessor Communities of Practice (CoPs) after criticism from some users."
- Bring your own device to be piloted at Cambridgeshire council – "Four week trial will initially be restricted to Android and Apple operating systems"
- The Emerging Government App Store: IT Public Procurement Nirvana? – "Over the last couple of weeks I have had numerous conversations with government executives and IT leaders about cloud computing, open source, shared services, software reuse. These are all different perspectives on IT sourcing, and they are often made problematic by clumsy public procurement procedures."
You can find all my bookmarks on Pinboard.
What I’ve been reading
I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.
- 2011 London Social Business Summit – Great content from this event.
- Introducing South West LocalGovCamp #swlocalgc « Carl’s Notepad – This should be a good one!
- ’100 million comments a year’ – mutual support and advice in a shrinking state – How government could be making better use of online communities – great stuff from Will Perrin.
- Misleading money-saving claims help no one – Ben Goldacre exposes the lazy thinking involved in some "research" about council spending – curiously promoted by CLG.
- BBC News – Google’s Chromebook – lost in the cloud? – Interesting review of the new Chrome based laptops.
- A little local difficulty – honestlyreal – A very useful primer on Local DirectGov
- How To Run A News Site And Newspaper Using WordPress And Google Docs – Really nice workflow system.
You can find all my bookmarks on Pinboard.
Bookmarks for September 20th through October 1st
I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.
- Social intranets: Enterprises grapple with internal change – Great stuff on deploying social tech within big organisations.
- Open Government Licence – "You are encouraged to use and re-use the Information that is available under this licence, the Open Government Licence, freely and flexibly, with only a few conditions."
- Four roles for social media in workplace learning – "Whether or not l&d professionals or senior managers embrace social media doesn't really matter in the long run, because there is no turning back, only futile resistance."
- Anthologize – "Use the power of WordPress to transform online content into an electronic book."
- “The Case for Personal Information Empowerment”: Mydex publishes groundbreaking White Paper – Worthwhile reading. I don't entirely agree, but a cogent argument.
- GCHQ spooks top UK Linux installations | THINQ.co.uk – "Whispers in the courtly corridors around Westminster, the seat of British government, have it that British intelligence uses Linux because it is secure, good at number crunching, and doesn't cost much to deploy."
- A framework for the social enterprise – Useful and interesting white paper on knowledge and learning within large organisations.
- Government Should Do its Own Data Homework | Jeni’s Musings – "It cannot be the case, long term, that you need to be an expert hacker to reuse government data."
- Behind the scenes at ShapeYourPlace.org – Great stuff from Paul Henderson on the techie bits behind a nice local government social media engagement exercise.
- Meeting the public sector communications challenge – "But what public sector communicators need to do is continue to demonstrate the value of communications, not as an end in itself, but as an agent for making things better for the public."
- Open Courses: About 10 Weeks Seems To Be It, Then? – Great post from Tony Hirst on open courses and online learning.
- Open Government as a Means to Shake the IT Suppliers Landscape – "…I have not (yet) seen any sustainable business model coming out of government “app stores”."
- Where do the good ideas go? – "Given the challenges we face as a country and as a planet, there’s a tremendous opportunity to make crowdsourcing really work here and now. But it will take courage, patience, and a process which taps into the varied time and talents of the crowd, in its widest sense."
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.
How to make Government IT deliver savings
Interesting ebook report from The Network for Post-Bureaucratic Age:
Update: Mick provides his views on the report:
Rather than auditing ICT, what we need in reality is a proposal, by some authors with an understanding of what makes good services delivered by central and local government, of how we audit end-to-end government services and in the process identify areas of true regulated bureaucracy that can be removed. Further, any attempts at rationalization should account for multi-channel service delivery. Many of the applications in the “new conditional” world link together and off onto web sites or corporate applications, this could provide some of the open data desirable for the commonweal, which whilst not of general interest will still have value to the local community.
Further, in a couple of instances, Mr Maxwell examines and compares the costs of ICT in local and central government, which can be a very misleading practice. Even with the amount of regulation, financial accounting in government is a dark art with the use of on-costs and recharges varying from authority to authority to the extent that costing for IT services is not straightforward and one can easily be comparing apples and oranges. Perhaps, another area to standardize?
Bookmarks for June 3rd through June 7th
I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.
- Armchair Auditor – Nice clean and simple example of what can be done with open government spending data by @adrianshort
- Supreme Court’s untendered website cost revealed – "You need to ask yourself whether £360,000 seems like a fair price for such a website. I'd suggest it isn't. Even with a significant allocation for design, I'd have thought you could produce a similar result – with better functionality – for 95% less."
- Why I’m fed up of talking about social media, really – "Sure it’s great that lots of councils are interested in social media and what it can do for their communications. But what is really starting to annoy me is that too many councils are asking the wrong questions."
- Zotero | Home – "Zotero is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, cite, and share your research sources." – via @jjn1
- Local Data wiki – Great idea to create a wiki explaining opendata to local government types.
- Centre for Digital Citizenship – "The CdC’s mission is to promote outstanding research on the changing nature of citizenship in a digitally networked society and to contribute to the analysis and development of policy in this area."
- Yammer Introduces Microsoft SharePoint 2007 Integration – Potentially significant move.
- So You Want to Switch to Android…One Man’s iPhone to Nexus One Migration – "Android is ready for prime time. It’s not going to beat the iPhone – not yet – but it’s ready for mainstream users."
- Publishing itemised local authority expenditure – advice for comment | data.gov.uk – "The Prime Minister has made a specific commitment that new items of local government spending over £500 be published on a council-by-council basis from January 2011" – and here's how to do it.
- Good and bad transparency – Great post from Steph on the implications of opening up government data.
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.
Dom Campbell on agile procurement
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.
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 21st through March 29th
I find this stuff so that you don’t have to.
- Would Anyone Ever Say that Open Government Isn’t Great? – "Let’s not demonize good old e-government and let’s not overhype open government or government 2.0. Because what they have both in common is the willingness to help government become better."
- Bristol City Council – blogging our web presence development work – "Us folks here at Bristol City Council have decided that as we continue to develop our web presence, in support of our wider business objectives, it’d make sense if we listened to the collective wisdom of our local digital community."
- 3 principles of innovative organisations – 100% Open – "As if we needed reminding, this exponential increase in connectivity and information sharing is fundamentally changing the way organisations operate and innovate."
- Posting information online could preempt FOIA requests (3/18/10) — GovExec.com – "Taking advantage of technology and preemptively posting frequently requested information online could help agencies address new Freedom of Information Act queries and tackle backlogs"
- The Seven Needs of Real-Time Curators – "I keep hearing people throw around the word “curation” at various conferences, most recently at SXSW. The thing is most of the time when I dig into what they are saying they usually have no clue about what curation really is or how it could be applied to the real-time world."
- How Not To Tender For e-Consultation Software | Delib Blog – "This is an issue that’s vexed us for some years here, but having just seen the most ridiculous tender process we’ve ever come across, we really have to say something for the good of all. After all, if we ignore history, we are bound to repeat it."
- Coding Horror: The Opposite of Fitts’ Law – "If we should make UI elements we want users to click on large, and ideally place them at corners or edges for maximum clickability — what should we do with UI elements we don't want users to click on? Like, say, the "delete all my work" button?"
- Passion at work: blogging practices of knowledge workers – A Phd dissertation on blogging in the workplace. Not read it yet.
- my_$publicservice.org – "What really matters in the end is that we listen, and having listened respond and improve."
- Gordon Brown and Tim Berners Lee: Back to the Future? – "The result may be for the UK to remain stuck into its ambition to be seen as a leader in e-government (and now government 2.0) without ever really making it."
- Public Sector Transformation Summit by Michele Ide-Smith – Great post with an awesome embedded slidedeck.
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.
Dave Briggs 