website – Dave Briggs

What does a councillor’s website need?

Not one of my more informative posts, this one, more a cry for help.

I’ve been approached by a couple of councillors to develop a website for them, and I’m interested to know what sort of features would be required for such a site to be considered best of breed.

For example:

Blog style layout
Events/meeting listings
Local maps
Easy methods of contact
Feedback through comments, etc

None of these seem particularly exciting to me! Anyone got anything really good that ought to be included – or great examples of Councillor websites?

Bookmarks for July 17th through July 23rd

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

Rewired State – hack UK online – "A one-day hack providing expert advice and prototyping for UK online centres, providing technical options for improving searching on the UK online centres website for a local centre, leading to an improved and more effective experience for the web user."
Government 2.0 – Best Practices Wiki / Australian Govt Social Media Handbook DRAFT – Interesting attempt to draft social media guidance via a wiki.
St. Augustine’s Tips for Knowledge Workers – "It is undoubtedly true that modern technologies can keep us from getting our work done." Undoubtably? Not sure about that.
Creating The Contribution Society – "It seems to me that social software, and architectures of participation, are two means to delivering on the promise of a Contribution Society, where your worth is at least partially measured on what you contribute, rather than what you own."
Big Society needs Big Democracy | The Democratic Society – "Instead, the Big Society and the network need to focus on creating a wider conversation in communities, which can move away from the Whitehall and Westminster world, and promote local solutions. They also need to create a deeper democratic conversation in those localities, to increase the effectiveness, legitimacy and coherence of local action."
Readness.com – the social news service on Readness.com – "a browser extension for Google Chrome that suggests content you'll enjoy based on what your friends read, as you browse the web."
Four authorities to experiment with Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ | Society | The Guardian – "Liverpool, the Eden Valley in Cumbria, Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire and Sutton and Cheam in south-west London will become "vanguard communities". All four authorities approached the government to experiment with running the parts of their public services they think they can administer better."
MockFlow: Free online Wireframe tool – Cool wireframing tool for websites and apps, with a (limited) free option.
Australian government’s Declaration of Open Government – "The Australian Government now declares that, in order to promote greater participation in Australia’s democracy, it is committed to open government based on a culture of engagement, built on better access to and use of government held information, and sustained by the innovative use of technology."
tecosystems » The #thesiswp Controversy: WordPress, Themes and the GPL – Great summary of the recent WordPress open source community bust up. A good insight into the politics of some of this stuff.

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 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.

Bookmarks for March 13th through March 15th

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

HR in the 21st Century – Collection of very interesting posts and thoughts on HR in the age of Enterprise 2.0
Opinion Space – "The U.S. Department of State is interested in your perspectives and input on a series of important foreign policy questions. "Opinion Space" is a new discussion forum designed to engage participants from around the world."
Nextgov – Federal technology news, best practices, and web 2.0 tools – Looks an interesting resource.
When It Comes to Open Government, Nobody is Perfect – "The journey toward transparency, participation and openness is not one in which government should travel alone."
100% Open – Interesting looking new body to emerge out of NESTA – will be watching this!
Under construction: behind the scenes of a government website (soft) launch – Great post from Neil on the soft launch of a new site for BIS – which will save money and hopefully be adaptable to any changes ahead.
WordPress › Use Google Libraries – This looks very clever indeed.
Forrester Blogs – Forrester's blog network has had a bit of a makeover – loads of good stuff in here.
Top 10 Google Apps Marketplace Apps – Useful list of the better additional apps you can get from the Google Apps marketplace.
ShiftSpace – "ShiftSpace is an open source browser plugin for collaboratively annotating, editing and shifting the web."

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.

Visit Cambridge site hacked

Cambridge City Council’s Visit Cambridge tourism site has been hacked, with various unsavoury pictures and links added, reports the Cambridge News:

CAMBRIDGE’S official tourism website was still offline today after pornographic images were posted in place of pictures of the historic city…

It comes after horrified bed and breakfast owners were shocked to log on to the site, run by Cambridge City Council, to find hardcore images of couples having sex and people exposing themselves for the camera.

Ooops. Here’s a screenshot from Cambridge News’ site: