Making Government Better: New Online Tool

February 9, 2010 at 2:36 am · Filed under governance

A team of researchers from the LSE Public Policy Group and the OII have developed an online tool to help government organisations improve their communication with customers. The team was led by Patrick Dunleavy (LSE) and Helen Margetts (OII), and Tobias Escher (OII) developed and programmed the online checklist.

More information, access to online tool and report downloads:
http://www.governmentontheweb.org/

Paper forms, online applications and call centre scripts are the ‘face of government’ for most citizens. Earlier research by the team found that often forms were long, with confusing numbering. Some forms asked for the same information more than once and also requested information from customers that the government body already held. Our research found that this leaves customers frustrated, wastes the time of both customers and government staff, and often leads to inaccurate information where questions are badly designed.

The checklists were designed following work undertaken by the same research team for the UK National Audit Office on the Department for Work and Pensions. They allow government department staff to work through current forms (whether paper based, online or phone based) and identify aspects that are most difficult for customers to follow. They cover the language used, how customers prove their identity, how well help and guidance is provided for customers completing the form and the documentation customers are required to provide.

The online tool was launched last week at a seminar addressed by Sir Leigh Lewis, Permanent Secretary of the Department for Work and Pensions, hosted by the Institute for Government.

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New Book: Joseph Camilleri and Jim Falk “Worlds in Transition: Evolving Governance Across a Stressed Planet”, Edward Elgar, UK, December 2009

February 8, 2010 at 6:13 am · Filed under books, governance

The book that I worked on in 2006 as a Research Assistant with Professor Jim Falk is to be launched this Friday at the University of Technology; Sydney. The book is about the rise of ‘global governance’; driven by crisis such as climate and technological changes (I worked on the technology chapter).

The argument, and supporting studies, are built around a simple concept – that over the sweep of human history, ever more potent flows generated and shaped by ever more complex and sophisticated human activity, have increasingly developed across the boundaries around which prior governance institutions and processes have been erected. In this context the authors consider the growth of flows of finance, atmospheric pollutants, information, pathogens, and security threats, the challenges they pose, and the transformations to governance at all levels under way (link).

The book is to be launched by Helen Clark; the ex-Prime Minister of New Zealand. Well done Profs Jim Falk and Joseph Camilleri.

The book has its own web site (here).

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Tim Berners Lee on free data and the BBC’s Virtual Revolution

January 27, 2010 at 2:11 am · Filed under data, governance

Tim Berners-Lee discusses the launch of the government’s new open data project, and Dan Gluckman explains why the BBC was so keen to open the development of a new series about the social history of the web (link) Also see: http://data.gov.uk/

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Oxford Internet Surveys

August 12, 2009 at 2:50 pm · Filed under governance, internet, web2.0

(Another important ‘big picture’ Internet impact study from the Oxford Internet Institute).

Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS) research is designed to offer detailed insights into the influence of the Internet on everyday life in Britain. Launched in 2003 by the Oxford Internet Institute, OxIS is an authoritative source of information about Internet access, use and attitudes. Some of the areas covered include: digital and social inclusion and exclusion; regulation and governance of the Internet; privacy, trust and risk concerns; social networking and entertainment; and online education (link).

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OpenTech ‘09

July 6, 2009 at 11:17 am · Filed under communuity informatics, conferences, governance, open access, open source, web2.0

http://www.ukuug.org/events/opentech2009/

I attended the OpenTech ’09 forum on Saturday; organised by the UK Unix Users Group and friends at the University of London Union (ULU). For those interested in the social and political aspects of computing; this is an excellent forum to discuss new modes of political communication, privacy, advocacy and other issues that arise from the broader computing movement. There was an excellent talk on the two cultures of science/technology and the humanities from Bill Thompson who compared CP Snow’s pioneering work to present social circumstances. Bill basically argued that technological literary needs to rise considerably; especially in the political classes, otherwise we are doomed! He argued that many people in senior positions (as well as the broader public) do not understand the ‘power in code’ and this is perhaps why so many large government systems have failed in the UK (I just ordered CP shows book on Amazon for 10 quid).

Another interesting session was from a representative from the Guardian newspaper who discussed their experience of reporting the Ian Tomlinson death at the G20 protests earlier this year. The speaker explained how the video footage was released immediately  on the web rather the usual slower way through the print-edition. Although the analysis of this technique was not well communicated by the speaker, he did made the interesting observation that the Guardian in this instance had used their online distributing power to ‘crown source’ news rather than simply publish it. They had allowed others to use the video of Tomlinson’s death in Blogs and Youtube etc. rather than slowly releasing it thorough the print edition.

Another speaker from the Guardian talked about the paper’s very bold initiative to make much of their data open to the public. They have RSS feeds, an API system, and a sophisticated tagging system. I found their DataBlog one of the most interesting initiatives in that many of the facts that are researched by journalists have been aggregated for later use and open to the public. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog

The Guardian’s initiative to crowd source the expenses claims-documents of MPS was also discussed; along with the limitations and opportunities of this approach. http://mps-expenses.guardian.co.uk/

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Private Sheriffs in Cyberspace: Jonathan Zittrain OII Event: London, 19th May 2009

May 21, 2009 at 4:27 pm · Filed under communuity informatics, creative commons, deliberation, design, digital humanities, events, governance, humanities computing, internet, political communication, web2.0

On Tuesday evening I attended an Oxford Internet Institute sponsored lecture by Jonathan Zittrain, Professor of Harvard Law School, Co-Founder and Faculty Director, Berkman Centre for Internet & Society (at the salubrious legal offices of Wragge and Co). Zittrain talked about regulation on-line by major Internet players such as Facebook and Apple and asserted that many of the regulating methods employed by them were outside of the rule of law. His contention was that many ‘Web 2’ companies have immense and increasing social and economic power within the fabric of our lives and are regulating their sites in a rather ad hoc and random way in terms of banning application developers, individuals, and groups that do not adhere to their governance structures. He used a number of examples to support his thesis, plus introduced a simple graph to illustrate emergent styles of governance:

Top-down

Hierarchy >poligarchy

Bottom-up

As an example of a ‘bottom-up’ governance structure Zittrain cited Wikipedia which includes a deliberative system to manage thorny editorial decisions. As a top-down system of governance he cited Facebook; although Facebook is beginning to include the community in decisions relating to its structure and functionality. He used the term ‘social governance’ to describe this bottom-up governance approach and suggested ways in which this approach may be designed into a system (through flagging certain tasks that help tap into the ‘reservoir of good will’ of the community). A well-designed system should have mechanisms to ask users for their input.

Although I tend to agree with many of the arguments of Zittrain, I feel there is a tendency to overstate the importance of sites such as Facebook and Youtube to the broader public. Sure they are popular, but this isn’t the British Library, the University of California, or the Library of Congress we are talking about! They are just large and fashionable web sites; a small part of the fabric of our complex lives. And commercial companies will perhaps always act in their own interests; either commercially or ideologically.

I suppose what is needed is some sort of bill of rights/responsibilities that is general to the operation of the Web within a certain geographical region balanced with the specific values of the site in question. There is nothing wrong with sites asserting behaviour norms upon users; but then again governance structures should be transparent and open; not outside of acceptable norms of the broader public sphere. A site should never assert policies that are deemed racist nor discriminatory (perhaps this is Zittrain’s anxiety when he claimed than many sites operate outside of ‘the rule of law’). The relationship between the community and the platform should always be fair and equitable; especially in large user-based sites such as Facebook. In my mind, governance structures, whether online or off, should always be open and transparent.

One of the respondents to the talk, Ian Brown, a Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute (and author of the recent report Database state) asserted that the relationship between Citizen and State and Cyberspace needed to be reconsidered. He also claimed (from his experience) that that the issues raised by Zittrain are not well-known in the UK;  especially in senior government levels. As an historian (and not a legal expert), my  scepticism relates to the actual significance of the entire debate.  I suppose that the significance of the debates depends on the importance the public places on systems such as Facebook and their governance structures. I may agree with Eric Hobsbawn that Terrorism is more a perceived threat in the UK that an actual threat (to the state), but then again the public is led to believe otherwise so it now painfully significant.  So if the debates about governance are perceived to be important by the public; then they will become important. So we may have a ‘Facebook Parliament’ in the making deliberating about the rise of rudeness on Facebook . They should start with the Tube system!

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What is globalisation?

April 6, 2009 at 10:03 pm · Filed under gadfly, governance, video, video diary, web2.0

Given the events of the past week (the G20 protests), I thought I would resurrect a video I made a couple of years back on the subject of ‘globalism’. It is the most popular video I made for the illustrious series ‘morning coffee with Craig’. It had 547 views…only 4 billion to go!

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‘Database state’ report

April 1, 2009 at 1:09 pm · Filed under governance

An interesting new report has recently been released from a senior researcher, Ian Brown,  from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) .  It charts the cost and scale of data collection and the methods used in data preservation and maintenance.  As listed on the OII web site; the report has also been receiving a lot of press (view report).

Press: The Database State report has been covered by the Times Online: 10 government databases ‘will break the law’; The Guardian: Right to privacy broken by a quarter of UK’s public databases, says report; BBC News: Call to scrap ‘illegal databases’; The Independent: Quarter of UK’s databases are ‘illegal’; The Telegraph: One in four government websites illegal, and Reuters: Quarter of state databases “should be scrapped”.

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Labor’s ‘deafening silence’ as web censorship trials delayed

January 31, 2009 at 9:23 pm · Filed under governance, politics

One of the largest ISPs signed up to participate in Labor’s ambitious internet censorship trials has said its application has been met with “deafening silence” from the Government, raising questions over the workability of the proposed scheme and the effectiveness of the trials.

The Government originally planned to trial the mandatory internet filters before Christmas but the timetable has been pushed back considerably and the Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has still not released details of which ISPs have signed up to take part in the trials or when they will begin (link..the Age)

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Google: global search trends

December 14, 2008 at 3:26 pm · Filed under governance, internet, open access, political communication, technology, web2.0

Google has released some of its search results. Releasing results like this is extremely important as it gives citizens access to some of the ‘meta-narratives’ that influence our lives. If large corporation such as Google only have acesss to these ‘meta-narratives’; it means that they can manipulate these trends and patterns to their own advantage (link)

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Online Democratic Deliberation in a Time of Information Abundance

September 14, 2007 at 11:17 pm · Filed under collaboration, communuity informatics, deliberation, design, digital humanities, gemeinschaft, governance, humanities computing, political communication, politics, social media, software, web2.0

This article of mine recently appeared in the journal, Fast Capitalism.

The intensified use of the Internet by civil society groups and governments for political purposes has left many questions unexplained—especially in terms of the Internet’s effects upon deliberative democratic processes. The Internet was first imagined as a means to revitalize deliberative processes. However, poor design and lack of usability research meant that many ambitions went largely unrealized. With a new wave of Internet technologies, ‘deliberative design’ has become even more important to stem what many claim is a trend towards political fragmentation and disaggregation. In a time of ‘information abundance’ mounting political communication online may also undermine collectivist, deliberative democratic processes, distinct from the ambition to renew these processes. There is therefore a pressing need to design Internet technologies that serve deliberative democracy, rather than unwittingly undermine it (link)

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What is e-Framework?

August 29, 2007 at 8:27 pm · Filed under collaboration, digital humanities, e-science, education, governance, humanities computing, web2.0

The e-Framework for Education and Research is an initiative by the UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and Australia’s Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST). The primary goal of the e-Framework is to facilitate technical interoperability within and across education and research through improved strategic planning and implementation processes (link)

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Ten Major Issues in Providing a Repository Service in Australian Universities

May 18, 2007 at 6:51 pm · Filed under digital humanities, e-science, education, governance, humanities computing, social media, web2.0

By mid 2006, all Australian universities had established, or were partway to establishing, institutional repository services. The development of institutional repository services can often be related to the open access movement, which seeks to make valued research outputs openly available by encouraging academics to place their publications into repositories, enhancing their availability and bypassing the high cost of journal subscriptions. However, many universities have extended the functionality of their repository services for other purposes, such as giving scholars the opportunity to develop their own research portfolio, providing a means of improving research reporting, establishing an electronic publishing service, or giving access to collections of images or other research outputs. The potential for development seems endless (link).

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UK Government Restrictions on Street Photography

February 27, 2007 at 1:51 am · Filed under governance, political communication, politics, social media, software, technology, web2.0

(the software for No 10 was developed by MySociety.org)

Signing up to ask the Prime Minister to Stop proposed restrictions
regarding photography in public places

The UK Govt are about to propose restrictions on photography in
public places which could make street photography and documentary
photography against the law. There's a petition on the Downing St
website against the Government's proposals to restrict the use of
photography in public areas. Sign up to the petition now. (thanks to Nettime for the link)

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Photography/

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E Government in Britain

February 18, 2007 at 3:20 am · Filed under deliberation, governance, politics, web2.0

E Government is an established field and practice in the UK. The Guardian Online has an entire section devoted to e-government and its recent controversies (link).

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