On the 1st February 2009 the Power of Information Taskforce (an independent taskforce advising the UK government – http://powerofinformation.wordpress.com/ – its draft report, including a set of twenty five recommendations. Other than a number of recommendations regarding mapping, OS licensing and that area, which I wouldn’t disagree with, many are not new for local government but demonstrate how far ahead of the central lot we are. Number 16 about publishing notices electronically, is incredibly old hat in local government terms and was probably one of the first things done by many authorities over eight years ago…They’re also still going on about ‘Show us a better way’, when a number of the ideas were operational across the 410 local authorities in England and Wales. A new one is a Power of Information beacon award for local government (No. 17) – to which I say, not another bloody award! What is needed at central government is some central control on all the initiatives enforced upon local government, so that they are vetted and form into a core plan. With information security and Government Connect security constraints coming from one side, the information commissioner from another and requests to open up from another, councils are being thoroughly confused.
Another new web site is a Vanguard one aimed at the public sector:
http://www.thesystemsthinkingreview.co.uk/
It wasn’t working in MS Internet Explorer 6 and not the prettiest one I’ve seen but its the content that counts!
The Great E-mancipator 