FixMyTweet Presentation at #bcsmc

March 19, 2010 by Ian Cuddy · Leave a Comment 

Lichfield DC’s “Genius in Residence” Stuart Harrison, presents the FixMyTweet application at the Black Country Social Media Cafe in Wolverhampton last week.

Filed under: Live blog, Slides
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Engaging Children and Young People Online - CluedupinHull.com

November 30, 2009 by Ian Cuddy · 1 Comment 

Children and young people are notoriously one of the most difficult groups for councils to engage with online.  The history of initiatives aimed at the young generation has seem a long line of well-meaning councils try, and fail, to ‘get down’ with the ‘kids’.  So how do councils engage successfully with this ‘hard to reach’ group and earn their trust?  How can they use the web to reach this audience in a way that isn’t patronising, preachy or terminally embarrassing?  Can councils be cool and fun?

Fortunately, one local authority has some answers.  Leading the way in this field is Hull City Council and its award-winning project, CluedupinHull. com.   Launched 18 months ago, CluedupinHull has proved an outstanding success. Targeting two age groups, 12 and under, and the over 13s, the site provides a trusted online source of information designed for and by children and young people in Hull - and one they actually want to use.

PSFbuzz met up with Debra Coombs, Integrated Content Manager at Hull City Council and her team to talk about CluedupinHull and the secrets of its success.   We discussed how the project was set up, how users are engaged, the issues and challenges involved, as well as what advice the team would offer to other local authorities looking to venture down this route.  See below for a video of our conversation.

Our thanks again to Debra and her colleagues Patrick O’Malley, Martin Brabazon and Gary Hass for their time.

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PSF Mobile Working and Infosecurity Events, 24 Nov

November 25, 2009 by Ian Cuddy · Leave a Comment 

On Tuesday over 100 people joined PSF on a trek to Milton Keynes for our public sector Mobile Working and Information Security forums. Slides from both happenings will be available asap, but to give you a taster Ken Eastwood, who chaired for Mobile Working, has blogged about the event and the future of the recently-rescued Nomad local government mobile working project he now leads.

Ken shares his slides here:

PSF Milton KeynesView more presentations from Ken Eastwood.

Here’s some photos of the day also courtesy of Ken:


You can view the complete #psfbuzz Twitter action here (there’s 200-plus tweets so this may take a while to load), with thanks to Steph Gray and Dave Briggs for the search hack.  And of course, many thanks again to all our sponsors, speakers and attendees for making the event such a success.

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PSFBuzz North East is Go!

July 7, 2009 by Ian Cuddy · Leave a Comment 

Newcastle welcomes us today for our second, highly-anticipated conference devoted to Effective Social Networking & Web 2.0 Strategies for Local Government, alias PSFBuzz North East!

Building on the success of our first event in Manchester, the event will be once again featuring the pioneers and innovators in the field of Local Gov Web 2.0.  The focus of this particular confenence will be on understanding where, why and how success has been delivered (and also, just as importantly in some instances, where Web 2.0 apps will definitely fail).

Here on PSFBuzz we’ll have videos, presentations and tweets live from the conference, being chaired once again by the redoubtable Dave Briggs as only he can.

And even if you’re not here in person, you can join in via the goodness of Twitter and follow the action in real-time with the official hashtag #psfbuzz.

We’ve an action-packed agenda today and a veritable star-studded list of speakers, as follows:

09h45-10h10 “Social media - a revolution in local government communications?”
Simon Wakeman, Head of Communications, Medway Council
The rapid growth of social media presents many opportunities and challenges for council communicators. Simon’s presentation will discuss examples of Medway Council’s use of social media, as well as considering the wider effects of the growth of social media on council communications teams.

  • Use of social media in Medway Council campaigns including podcasting, Facebook and Twitter
  • Social media relations - case studies, best practice
  • Impact on council communications teams
  • What social media really means for the organisation

10h10-10h35 Mash ups and we’re not talking potatoes
Mike Saunt, Founder, Aston Technology
Covering the three Web 2.0 areas of Social, Technology and Data (Mashups) with a background view to how and why the Government’s view of information has changed from owners to custodians. Covering topics such as the use of Twitter, Facebook and pros and cons and the need to remember more traditional methods of digital communication. Covering AJAX (dynamic web pages with JavaScript) advantages but taking into account accessibility etc. Live mashing taking Travel News data from the BBC and publishing on a map on a live website. Summarizing that Data is the new ‘Intel inside’

  • Web 2.0 - Social, Technical, Data
  • History of government data access
  • Social options and the pros and cons
  • Live mashing with the BBC
  • Data is the new ‘Intel inside’

11h15-11h40 Accessibility vs. Social Media
Jack Pickard, Web Developer
Councils are being pushed towards accessibility and pulled towards social media. Are the two compatible? What can be done to improve the accessibility of social media? What do local authorities need to consider as regards accessibility when starting to use social media?

11h40-12h05 Speech Enabling Social Networks
Ian Stewart, UK Sales Manager, BrowseAloud

  • Why Speech Enable Social Networks
  • Enhance the Accessibility of Social Networks with BrowseAloud
  • Who has joined the BrowseAloud Community?
  • See BrowseAloud on Your Social Network Site

12h05-12h30 Unblocking Access and developing a Web 2.0 Usage Policy
Carl Haggerty, Enterprise Architect, Devon County Council
Carl’s presentation is going to focus on unblocking access to Web 2.0 and Social Networking tools, which is a key issue for most Local Authorities. This aspect of the presentation will also include getting senior management buy-in which Devon CC has achieved and where their Chief Executive become the social networking/social media champion. This presentation will also look at the development of a Web 2.0 usage policy. Devon CC have one already but delegates will be asked to feed in their challenges prior to the event and during the presentation, the challenges will be fed into the existing document so that a policy document can be emailed to delegates post event.

13h45-14h10 Losing control: why people will say what they want about you anyway
Alistair Smith, Communication Adviser - Web 2.0, Newcastle City Council
Since late in 2008 Newcastle City Council have been looking at how they communicate with the public. Broadcasting is no longer a viable option, since everybody has the capacity to broadcast. With this in mind how can a public body meaningfully join conversations and what value does this bring?

  • Monitoring the web: what are people saying about you and when should you join in?
  • Collaborating: if people are producing content and you want that content, why should they give it to you?
  • Value: what do numbers mean and when are they meaningful?
  • Brand: what does your brand mean in the conversation?

14h10-14h35 Twitterplan - Tweeting planning applications and the future of government data
Stuart Harrison, Webmaster & Lead Developer, Lichfield DC
Built by Lichfield District Council and Lincoln City Council earlier this year, Twitterplan is a system that allows Twitter users to be instantly notified on planning applications in their area. Lead developer and Lichfield District Council webmaster Stuart Harrison will be giving a guided tour and demo of the system, as well as talking about the background of the project. He will also talk about the potential for similar developments in other council areas and how councils can open up their data simply and easily to make some of these ideas a reality.

15h20-15h45 How to get started - four steps to incorporating social media into council communications
Dave Briggs, Digital Enabler
Better engagement through Facebook : how local authorities can maintain an effective presence in social networks

A number of councils are now making the effort to maintain presences in social networking sites like Facebook. But how successful are they? What can a council just about to embark on their Facebook journey learn from the experience of others to help engage better with local residents and communities?

  • There is a problem with the vocabulary of Facebook - does anyone really want to be a fan or a friend of their local council?
  • But it is important that councils are providing information and support where people already are
  • Is there a better way for councils to be in Facebook than through traditional profiles, pages or groups?

We’re looking forward to an event which will hopefully match the ‘buzz’ of Manchester, but also exceed it!

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PSFBuzz Web 2.0 Awards - Nominations Open Soon!

June 4, 2009 by Ian Cuddy · Leave a Comment 

Public Sector Forums are pleased to announce the launch of the PSFBuzz Web 2.0 Awards 2009.

Following the intense interest and activity around PSFBuzz, we’ve been inspired to celebrate the creativity, innovation and excellence of public sector use of social media and Web 2.0 technologies.

The PSFBuzz Awards will be an opportunity for the government web community to recognise and applaud the success of colleagues in this relatively new space.

The awards ceremony will take place in December 2009 as part of an interactive conference.

Nominations will open shortly, with the awards categories to include:

  • Best Blogger
  • Best Mash Up/Hack
  • Best Use of YouTube
  • Best Use of Twitter
  • Best Use of Facebook
  • Best Website
  • Best Digital Team
  • Best Online Community
  • Best Mobile App
  • Best PR/Marcomms Campaign (Internal/External)
  • PSFBuzzer of the Year.

The panel of judges for the PSFBuzz Awards will be led by none other than LocalGovCamp’s Dave Briggs. At the event there will be short presentations from each of the finalists, plus ‘People’s Choice’ awards as voted for by the government web community at large.

And we haven’t mentioned yet there’ll be a drinks reception/shindig/soirée post-event to celebrate both the success of the winners and the festive season.

More details will follow very soon, so start prepping your acceptance speeches now…

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Today’s web 2.0 conference so far

April 30, 2009 by Simon Wakeman · 3 Comments 

Today I’m at the Public Sector Forums web 2.0 conference in Manchester.

Conference picture

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.

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