resources – Dave Briggs

Share your stuff with LocalGov Digital!

I’m well chuffed to have joined the steering group for LocalGov Digital, the informal network of bods doing interesting stuff with computers, the internet and change within local councils.

I’m leading on communication and am kicking off a few pieces of work to drive up levels of awareness of and engagement with the network.

The first of these is to pull together some great examples of digital resources in the sector. Stuff like:

Digital, IT or technology strategies
Service manuals, playbooks and how to guides on digital and transformation
Templates for conducting user research or assessing a digitised service
Presentations outlining an organisation’s approach to digital and change

…and anything else folk think might be interesting!

Do you have anything like this that you wouldn’t mind sharing with all the good people of LocalGov Digital (and anybody else who browses their website? Just get in touch by email: d@vebrig.gs.

I’ll publish details here of the pages once they are live on the LocalGov Digital website.

Thanks!

Photo credit: Jonathan Simcoe on Unsplash

Great resources for online community building

At the weekend I got my copy of Rich Millington‘s new book, Buzzing Communities, through the post. It’s excellent and provides everything you need to know about building successful online communities.

Thinking seriously about community building is something that I think digital engagement efforts in government and beyond are lacking a lot of the time. In many ways, I think it is the secret sauce that will take online engagement to the next level.

One of the key parts of this is a platform-agnostic mindset. Whether your efforts at building a community work or not is unlikely going to be down to your decisions on technology (unless your decisions are really bad of course). Instead, community management is a set of skills with which you start a small community and build it up by encouraging activity, fostering conversations and meeting the needs of members.

No matter whether your chosen medium is a forum, a blog, a Facebook page or even just a Twitter feed, you can use community management techniques to foster engagement and encourage people to stay involved.

So, I thoroughly recommend Rich’s book. While you’re at it, here are some free bits he has made available too:

A mega list of blog posts on building successful online communities
A template community strategy
An e-book on successful community launches (requires signup to an email list)

Bookmarks for April 25th through April 30th

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

More plugins for securing your WordPress install – Useful guide for making WP a bit more impregnable.
Introducing the Hybrid Organisation –
Hacking UK Politics with IBM Middleware: open data, mashups, and uh… WebSphere – Cool looking mashup by guys at IBM described by James Governor
CIOs Brainstorm About Government 2.0: Good Ideas But Not Bold Enough – "So, why do government people insist to “build something” with web 2.0 rather than realizing that in most cases people self-organize and select the channel they want to use or the community they want to belong to? Why do they focus so much on “citizens” and so little on “employees”?"
Government Online | Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project – Interesting statistics from the US on general e-government stuff.
W3 Total Cache – "The fastest and most complete WordPress performance optimization plugin. "
Social on the Outside needs Social Business on the Inside :: Blog :: Headshift – "The focus of my talk was the idea that hanging shiny social media baubles on the cold, hard external walls of a corporate organisation runs the risk of creating a false brand promise unless this work has strong internal underpinnings in the form of social business structures that can do something about the noise, insights and feedback that outbound communications generate."
Web 2.0 training materials – A fantastic resource from the Scottish Government Library Services. Great material, and a wonderful example of sharing.
CASE STUDY: How Walsall museum is cooler than Ben Stiller – More great work and great blogging from Dan Slee and Walsall Council.
WW2History.com – Launching 4th May, 2010 – "A multimedia resource on the most devastating conflict in history, brought to you by award winning historian and filmmaker Laurence Rees."

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.

Bookmarks for March 8th through March 13th

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

Roundup: Social Media Monitoring Tools – WebWorkerDaily – Useful list of dashboard-like monitoring tools.
It is not about our App, It is about the User’s Data and Context | Zoho Blogs – “…whichever app the user happens to be, it pulls relevant information from other apps, and displays it in the right context”
Google Apps Marketplace – “The Google Apps Marketplace offers products and services designed for Google users, including installable apps that integrate directly with Google Apps.”
Google Reader – Play – “elcome to Google Reader Play, a fun, fast way to browse the most interesting stuff on the web, personalized just for you. We’ll keep track of the things you star, like, or share, and we’ll show you more stuff you’ll like the next time you use Reader Play.”
Plan for Welsh councils to work together collapses – “Local government reorganisation which cuts the number of councils is the only realistic option.”
Crown Copyright switches to Creative Commons – Information World Review – “Click-Use, the licence that for the last decade has authorised anyone to reuse government and Parliamentary information, is to be phased out by May.”
Google – public data – “The Google Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate.”
Steve Bridger › Putting your people at the heart of your social media strategy – “This was the title of a talk I gave at the end of February and I think it is important, and frankly, worth repeating over and over.”
Social Media Resources – The Altimeter – Useful wiki, full of lots of social media goodness.
publicSIRO – Public Sector Information Security News – New blog from Ian Cuddy cataloging public sector data losses.

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.