The Great E-mancipator

Social media and revolutions

greatemancipator — Tue, 15 May 2012 16:48:48 +0000

A person who should be able to say something about what happened in Libya is Dr Moez Zeiton, who indicates in a piece in the MIT Technology Review entitled “Connected Conflict – The Internet amplified but did not create the bravery that freed Libya” that whilst that Facebook may have helped promote the revolution to Western readers, it was less important to those in Libya itself.

This is yet another person who is bringing a bit of rationality to the debate – can we end it now?

Filed under: engagement, Social media Tagged: Libya, MIT Technology Review, Moez Zeiton

The election result will not be Tweeted (in advance)

greatemancipator — Sat, 12 May 2012 19:56:41 +0000

Thanks to the MIT Technology Review for making me aware of a paper by Daniel Cayo-Avello entitled “I Wanted to Predict Elections with Twitter and all I got was this Lousy Paper”. It provides the latest antidote to those who see social media as some sort of godsend for political participation and haven’t read the wonderful book ‘The Victorian Internet’ by Tom Standage which puts technology in its place, as just as what it is, technology.

As is stated in the conclusions:

Social media users are not an unbiased and representative sample of the voting population
Not everyone using social media is interested in or following politics
Just because it’s on social media doesn’t mean it’s true
Analysis of the humour and sarcasm within social media isn’t easy

This doesn’t mean social media aren’t a useful and expressive tool, it just means don’t read more into them than they are ever likely to deliver. The paper does provide a useful bibliography (and analysis) of the papers on the topic.

Filed under: citizen, e-government, engagement, Social media Tagged: Daniel Cayo-Avello, The Victorian Internet, Tom Standage, Twitter

The design method

greatemancipator — Thu, 10 May 2012 08:31:47 +0000

On a slightly tangential track, and those who know me know I love tangents, I found a great post on Richard Layman’s blog on urban design. His recent post ‘All the talk of e-government, digital government, and open source government is really about employing the design method’ actually says it all in the title, and if that isn’t clear to you he writes that all these things are essentially about process redesign – how true!

As well as promoting the work of John Friedmann, of which I wasn’t aware but now am going to read, he links this to design method and design thinking, which wouldn’t appear to be a million miles away from systems thinking. Richard then goes on to criticize the thinking that believes social media, apps, web and cloud will change government. He recognizes that it’s all really about processes – it doesn’t matter how good an app is, if the process behind it is rubbish, it’ll be rubbish. Similarly he states that ‘”open government” is really about process redesign’.

If all town/transport planners were as broad thinking I suspect the world would be a different place…

Filed under: e-government, engagement, transformational change Tagged: e-government, Open Government, Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space, Richard Layman

Good progress

greatemancipator — Sun, 06 May 2012 15:06:55 +0000

It has recently been down to UK Member of Parliament Michael Dugher to try and determine the state of the G-Cloud and Greening Government IT Strategy. In an a list of questions and (sort of) answers published in Hansard that will have amused journalists by their vacuity, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude effectively responds by saying that all will be revealed in the near future in the annual reports. I do know that the Green IT Strategy was in preparation when I was last in conference with the Green Development Unit in March 2012, but the bigger wait is for the ICT Strategy annual report itself.

The major revelation from the questioning was that, at a cost of £4.93 Million the G-Cloud is expected to save an estimated £340 million, which is amazing! I wonder if this saving includes that from the Public Sector Network (PSN) or is it purely from the cloud? Over what period will that saving be made – five years, ten years, twenty years? However when Mr Dugher asked Mr Maude about the number of data centres government maintained in May 2010, March 2011, September 2011 and March 2012, all Mr Maude could say was that “In February 2012, Cabinet Office collected baseline information on the number of data centres maintained by Departments in order to progress commitments to consolidate and rationalise data centres to help save energy and costs in line with Government ICT Strategy. This information will be published alongside ICT Strategy annual update report, due shortly. Information on the number of data centres across Government prior to this February 2012 is not available.” However, back in May 2011 some figures were provided by Cabinet Office to the Public Administration Committee dated 30 March 2011 in a written answer stating “A survey commissioned by CIO Council during June 2010 identified 220 Data Centres across Central Government”, which I suspect was an underestimate since I clearly remember someone, possibly Andrew Stott, quoting a figure nearer 400 to the Local CIO Council a couple of years ago.

When Michael Dugher asks the Minister for the Cabinet Office what progress he has made on the implementation of G-Cloud computing, the response is a resounding “The G-Cloud programme is making good progress”. I’m sure you’ll all be pleased to know…

Filed under: e-government, Metrics, transformational change Tagged: Francis Maude, G-cloud, Green IT, Hansard, Michael Dugher, PSN, Public Administration Select Committee

A digital nation

greatemancipator — Thu, 03 May 2012 11:06:47 +0000

A new report from Canada examines Provincial and Territorial eGovernment Initiatives. Entitled ‘Becoming a Digital Nation: An Evaluation of Provincial and Territorial eGovernment Initiatives‘ PDF, 89 pages, 8Mb. The report notes in the Introduction that in the report, in order to” provide context for this assessment, we applied the same methodology to three other jurisdictions: California, Massachusetts, and Wales. Our study indicates that Canada’s provinces and territories are doing well in this comparison with four provinces ahead of the international jurisdictions and all the others competitive.” Which may upset all three, although they all did pretty well compared with the Canadian average.

Interestingly the latest usage statistics are provided on page 7: “Most recent data show over half of Canadians (56.5%) use the Internet to search for government-related information, while 26.9% utilize the Internet to communicate with their governments”, which may assist those concerned about the limited UK usage! I’m please to say that Socitm’s ’Planting the Flag’, that I played a small part in producing has been used as a part of the background material and the methodology employed in measuring the web sites is not unlike that used in Socitm’s Better Connected exercise.

Of the 13 jurisdictions studied, it’s hardly surprising that there is some difference between the most populated territories and the lesser ones. There are also issues around the number of languages with not just English and French being required in many places, but in some there are native languages to deal with. As a summary the report states on page 48 that: “Areas of improvement focus on providing more advanced ways for citizens to give or get more information through online Contact Us forms or feedback surveys”, which I’d always argue for in the form of feedback loops.

Filed under: citizen, e-government, transformational change Tagged: Better Connected, Canada, Planting the Flag, Socitm, Stratford Institute