In the continuing fight for the greater availability of public information, it may seem churlish to observe that sometimes what’s wanted is not more information, but less. The picture above shows a typical display on a Countdown sign at a London bus stop. This particular stop has buses from two routes. At a quick glance, [...]
I have read three blog posts in the last few days which together strike me as indicators of a welcome trend. The first two were both from the new Government Digital Service blog, the first from Mike Bracken on his first few weeks in government as Director of Digital. It’s a very upbeat assessment, but [...]
A new e-petitions site for government was launched yesterday. It is clean, simple and elegant, with clear government branding consistent with other cross-government sites. So far so good. But managing a cross government service is a tricky business, for reasons I have explored before. Government is a veneer that sits above departments, and like any [...]
This is how conversations work, or rather how one conversation played out on twitter this morning. Tricky subject, no right answer, constructive discussion.* But perhaps most important of all, those issues are being discussed in public for a government proof of concept which hasn’t yet even been launched. It is that which is more radical [...]
The pope, it is said, asked Michelangelo, ‘How do you know what to cut away?’ And Michelangelo replied, ‘It’s simple, I just remove everything which doesn’t look like David’ Hadley Beeman wonders how best to characterise the new approach she is devising to aggregate public data to allow questions to be asked of it and [...]
My post last week on apps for elephants has prompted some interesting discussion. Steph Gray had some eminently sensible practical thoughts on how government could balance the need to adapt to changing demands with the need to support openness and flexibility: Of course Government should be developing smartphone apps (though probably not iPhone exclusively) as [...]
The government is an elephant, as I have noted before. It tries to dance, but finds it hard, and the smaller animals around it can get hurt. The solution may be for the elephant to stand stock still, to do nothing for fear of treading on something more nimble, but more easily hurt. Or it [...]
Data is good at asking questions, but rarely gives clear answers. Simon Dickson
Responses to information are inseparable from their interests, desires, resources, cognitive capacities, and social contexts. Owing to these and other factors, people may ignore information, or misunderstand it, or misuse it. Whether and how new information is used to further public objectives depends upon its incorporation into complex chains of comprehension, action, and response. Archon [...]
4IP announced a new investment last week: Everybody has economic transactions with the government, whether outgoing in the form of tax, or incoming in the form of benefits, loans or grants, and in these times of fiscal austerity the project has widespread relevance by making the huge numbers we hear on the news mean something [...]