Empowered people tend to be good at conversation, understand their place in networks, have experience of how networks help get things done.

So it is very good news that the new Government Empowerment White Paper acknowledges that social media (the conversational web) will play a part in the emergence of more active citizens and stronger communities. [...]

Cquestrate Intro Video from cquestrate on Vimeo.
Last week I met Tim Kruger. He’d asked me to do a little bit of work on a very bold plan that he hatched today.

Cquestrate is an organisation and a website which plans to crowdsource technical solutions to the huge problem of recapturing the [...]

A month ago I asked if your blog helped you learn. There were dozens of responses both here and on the Bad Science blog – mostly from people who keep personal or professional blogs which help them learn. (Thank you)

This was all in reply to the Charity Commission using blogging as an example to [...]

A simple summary from Steven L Clift about key ingredients for government websites if they are to help strengthen democracy:

The typical e-government experience is like walking into a barren room
with a small glass window, a singular experience to the exclusion of
other community members. There is no human face, just a one-way process
of paying your taxes, [...]

I do like the idea behind this new web service from the Department of Communities and Local Government which tells you about your Local Area Agreement.
Local Area Agreements (LAA) are negotiated between a local council (plus the local strategic partnership, like BeBirmingham) and central government. Together they create a list of key improvements [...]

After the suspension of a civil servant for blogging Cabinet Office Minister Tom Watson has finally got some guidelines up to help civil servants join the online conversation. They are based on the civil service code and a big conversation which was encouraged by Tom on his blog and evolved into Richard Allan’s task [...]

On Tuesday I wrote this blog post about the Central Office of Information beginning a consultation on the use of social media and metadata in government. The “consultation” was first spotted by Emma Mulqueeny. This morning the press office e-mailed this response:
“The social media guidelines are aimed specifically at Civil Servants and any informal [...]

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

Here’s a short film we made last week for Be Birmingham, the city’s recently revamped Local Strategic Partnership.
The film is a short piece which includes Dame Ellen MacArthur talking about the launch of the partnerships CO2 challenge for 2008 – that each of us [...]