Comments on: Freeing data, reducing pain

By: Neil Williams

Neil Williams — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:17:20 +0000

@Whitehall Webby don’t hold back, you’re a free man now!

By: Mizan

Mizan — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:28:45 +0000

I am currently looking at DTD of this great idea. Looking for some spare time to build various conversion modules for CMS’s, widgets, browser add-on, Office plug-in or stand-alone app to convert the XML to Word, RTF, PDF, Voice, ODT etc. This way we can get better Comms buy-in.

Not sure how well Office plug-in and browser add-on will be accepted by Dept IT people.

By: Whitehall Webby

Whitehall Webby — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:10:13 +0000

Heads of digital engagement sounds like a good idea. Heads of ecomms used to be self organising and was all the better for it before it ‘matured’.

By: Neil Franklin

Neil Franklin — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:05:44 +0000

Everything is happening at your door… consider it the cost of success!

Policy people and private office are referencing your work and are asking us to do the same. The organisation is waaaaay off being nimble enough to do the stuff you’re doing, so we need to collaborate, and crack some of these common issues.

And if your capacity to innovate is decreasing, we may be able to look at ways of increasing it elsewere. This way we can make sure that innovation doesn’t happen for innovation’s sake, but we can continue it and really embed it in our work. That’s what we all want.

Strategy needn’t be restrictive. It’s just a way of looking at the bigger picture. A wise old man on top of a mountain once said to me: strategy is like life… it’s what you make it! (alright he didn’t, but it sounds good)

So – maybe a bit OTT, but we need a place to discuss

By: Steph

Steph — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:53:51 +0000

Woah, woah there Mr F – secretariat at DIUS? Life in an organisation of 140,000 people has *changed* you, man

But let’s have a first meetup soon, definitely.

There’s an issue in that by trying to take a strategic, big tent approach at DIUS, we’re reducing our available capacity to do this kind of more technical innovation a bit, so we’re likely to struggle to keep up the pace. But we’ll try.

By: Neil Franklin

Neil Franklin — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:43:43 +0000

We may have something in the pipeline. Need more strategy and co-working behind all these things though… Heads of Digital Engagement group needs to start quickly with the secretariate at DIUS. We need help to embed best practice, deal with security, common approach to working with contractors etc.

I think UKGovbarcamp showed that there’s someone in every govt dept ready to work on interesting projects…

By: Whitehall Webby

Whitehall Webby — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:35:16 +0000

I am so excited about this piece of work. Need to get the website managers using this across govt – heads of ecomms + heads of consulation teams? Though it might need more of DIUS’s excellent hosting provision to make it a reality in the short term?

By: Stimuluswatch.org

Stimuluswatch.org — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:11:04 +0000

[...] in popularity. Several sessions at the recent UK Government barcamp discussed this in relation to consultations and data [...]

By: Neil Franklin

Neil Franklin — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 10:19:40 +0000

Valuable piece of work and widgetisation is certainly the way forwards. But as good as it is, it’s still a sticking plaster over the fundamental issue of publication processes in Government. Print versions of documents (and PDFs by default) are considered the first and most important to be finished by policy peeps, when we know that XML versions should be worked on first allowing a variety of reuse options – PDF being one.

With all the successes we’re having getting policy to engage a little more through consultations, should it be that difficult to get them to sign-off a digital version of the document first? Could this tool reinforce the position of the PDF as primus inter pares in the medium term?

Hopefully we can win round the @quillpushers before too long…