First up was Mike Saunt from Astun Technologies - setting the scene for the day with his thoughts on social media in public sector use. Early on Mike questioned whether people would want to follow council news on Twitter - it’s a fair question, but my take is that so far 272 people are following @medway_council on Twitter - it won’t be everyone’s desired way of hearing from their council, but if it reaches people who may not traditionally have received information from a council then it’s a good idea, especially as the barriers to entry for a basic news Twitter feed are quite low.

Mike’s presentation highlighted some examples of social media in use today:

Planningalerts.com - a good service for the end users, but Mike challenged the audience to think about the impact of a third party controlling the customer interaction
The much discussed FixMyStreet - again a third party service that’s providing a customer service interface between a council and its residents
Mashing up BBC Travel News live with Google Maps - via a bit of scripting to create traffic news maps
Cleveland Police - providing location based information, albeit not tagged with standards-compliant location data

Mike also had a useful example of how introducing location-specific information on a website (for waste and recycling) actually reduced inbound phone calls by around 1000 calls per month - a really good example of how effective use of the web can reduce avoidable contact (NI14).

Mike’s presentation concluded with a call to action for local authorities to free up their data, providing open and appropriately tagged RSS feeds, so that community can make the most of data in ways that suit them, rather than on the council’s terms.

Second up was Simon Smith from CMS suppliers GOSS Interactive.

Simon talked about how people’s expectations of how they receive information are changing, and that means we need to think about integrating these tools into what councils do on the web.

Simon also suggested that people don’t want to come to council websites to do stuff (which I’d argue with to an extent), which suggests councils need to get out there interacting where the people are already (which I’d agree with wholeheartedly).

The question of accessibility on third party social media sites like YouTube and Flickr is also worth considering - the public sector must make its content accessible to all, yet using social media sites alone doesn’t fulfill that obligation.

The value of RSS also formed part of Simon’s talk - along with being prepared for that data to be reused, possibly in ways that the council may not have originally envisaged. For me that’s an important point: opening up access to data isn’t just about providing feeds for everything, it’s about preparing the organisation culturally for a new level and speed of scrutiny from people who haven’t traditionally been empowered to scrutinise public sector activities - something that was traditionally the domain of mainstream media.

GOSS was also behind the www.nottinghamcc.gov.uk website, which features extensive user customisation opportunities - something I’ve questioned the value of before. Simon was honest enough to admit no-one knows if it’ll work or not, but in his view it’s an approach worth trying. For the record, I’m not convinced about the value of widgety, customisable council homepages - because I think most council website users are probably very task focussed and visit fairly infrequently - so we should focus on making it easy to find the right information and conduct transactions online rather than letting people customise their own homepage.

Cross posted from Simon’s blog.

Filed under: Live blog
Tagged: astun, goss, mike saunt, simon smith, simon wakeman

PSFBuzz is starting to buzz. Who’s talkin’?

April 29, 2009 by Liz Azyan · Leave a Comment

To introduce this post, have a look at this video about Web 2.0 - Transforming government.

So today I’m here in Manchester to attend the PSFBuzz Web 2.0 event. This event features many topics and speakers that I’m looking forward to hear from. The list of speakers and topics are as follows:

Chairperson - Dave Briggs (Coolio! - one of the first few people that responded to me on twitter! Thanks Dave!) from Davepress.net, an overall digital enabler, will deliver the opening remarks and also deliver a session on Facebook. He’s got some great ideas on this and I for one, can’t wait to hear them!
Next we have Mike Saunt, founder of Astun Technology. I’ve never met Mike before but I’m really looking forward to hear talk on those three areas that we’re all interested in; social, technology and data mashups. This one sounds a little techy and tho I’m not quite there with my coding skills, I’m sure the implementation that Astun Technology has develop will woo us all! Have a look at what they’ve done on iShareMaps. Quite clever and interesting stuff you got there Mike! Please tell us a bit about that too
Next up is Simon Smith, UK Sales Manager from GOSS interactive. GOSS is a leading supplier of websites, hosting and Web Content Management solutions - GOSS iCM - and supporting services. You might see one of GOSS iCM babies in action at My Nottingham - Notthingham City Council website. He will be talking about the do’s and the don’t in marketing and internal communications in relation to web 2.0. I know from separate conversations with several local govvies, this particular area is quite tricky and still quite vague. I’m really looking forward to hearing the answers to all those unanswered questions on how to engage citizen and staff from Simon tomorrow. How about you?
A bit later in the morning we will hear Paul McElvaney, Director, Learning Pool & Becka Johnson, Learning and Development Advisor, Cardiff County Council give a talk about Cardiff County Councils’ strategy when adopting web 2.0 technologies. I haven’t come across anyone from Cardiff County Council, so I’ll be very intrigued to hear what their up to! How did they manage to fly under my radar??? Paul will be talking about motivating the workforce using social media technologies to deliver learning and development strategies. Through my own observation, I find this topic to be critical for all local govs who are or wish to be in tune with the potential of the “new social web”. And I truly believe that in order to harness that potential, the ideas and inspiration must come from 360 degrees of the workforce. Its almost like when we were first introduced to the telephone… in order for the system to work, everyone must have one and knows how to use one. So Paul, we’ll be looking forward to hear more about this from you tomorrow.
Next is Tim Davies, Director of Practical Participation. Now I’ve seen and heard of Tim Davies from the start, but I don’t think we were ever formally introduced. His done some great work on Youth Participation that you can check out on his blog here. Now Tim will be discussing a very hot topic which involves youth engagement. Now, I remember reading Don Tapscott’s book on “Grown up Digital” that talks about the Gen Y effect, which proved to be a fascinating read. I also follow Danah Boyd’s research on youth behaviour with social networks and its also all very fascinating. So to say the least, I think Tim’s presentation will be nothing less than…. FASCINATING!
After lunch, Simon Wakeman, Head of Marketing from Medway Council will be talking about social media and councils. I have met Simon personally when I interviewed him for my research at Medway Council. Simon runs a successful blog on marketing and communications that often talk about all the issues we face with social media when engaging with citizens. If you haven’t read his blog or subscribe to it… I suggest YOU DO IT NOW! You can do so by visiting his newly revamped website here (I like the new design Simon!). For Simon’s presentation, I can’t wait to see the “four step model to getting started with social media in local government communications” - brilliant!
Later in the afternoon we have Paul Canning (eGov consultant) and David White (SEO expert) talking about the stuff I find most exciting if you want to know about how to get your website noticed! I used to dabble in a bit of internet marketing myself and trust me, there is more to the web than just building a website. A lot of hardwork and development strategies must not go unnoticed. But if you listen to the right people and follow their strategies and implementations, it can can have a positive impact on your web presence. Though some of these strategies have changed since the emergence of web 2.0 and this is what Paul and David will be talking about. Looks like we will be listening to a lot of examples here, so keep a close eye on this presentation. I guarantee you will walk away learning something totally new and perhaps some unknown internet marketing terms as well.. (I wonder how I can increase my google pagerank???)
Last but not least, there’s Alan Holding, Principal Digital Development Officer, MDDA - Manchester Digital Development Agency. Alan will be talking about MDDA’s use of social media tools to support and promote their activities. I’m intrigued to know whether or not other councils have a “Digital Development Agency” and whether or not each council should have one? Well we’ll certainly be getting the answer when Alan demonstrates what MDDA is up to. I’ve never met Alan before, so I will be listening in to his presentation very closely.

So that’s it folks, the round up for tomorrow’s event. Be sure to look here for futher details on the event. And please don’t forget the official PSFBuzz blog developed by Dave Briggs at http://www.psfbuzz.com/ .

See you tomorrow!

Liz

Filed under: Liz's Stuff
Tagged: psfbuzz, web 2.0 government

Looking to create some PSFBuzz!

April 25, 2009 by Liz Azyan · 1 Comment

Hey there wonderful people!

Looks like I’ll also be attending the PSFBuzz. Yipee! Thanks to Nick Hill and Ian Cuddy for extending their kind invite to me. I’m really looking forward to hearing what all the speakers will talk about. Also looking forward to meet alot of familiar and unfamiliar faces. If you haven’t followed me yet, I’m at @liz_azyan on twitter… so start following!

Thanks also to Dave Briggs for creating this *wicked cool* blog especially for PSFBuzz. I’ll be blogging about the event as it happens here as well as on my blog at http://www.lgeoresearch.com . So be sure to tune in “When it happens, As it happens” We’re in Real-time baby!

Liz Azyan - LGEO Research

Filed under: Liz's Stuff
Tagged: psfbuzz, web 2.0 local council

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