Reloading commentable documents: introducing Read+Comment

At TeaCamp today, I’m taking the Campers through one of my new projects, Read+Comment, designed to offer hassle-free publishing of commentable documents online.

It’s based on some work I’ve done recently for BIS, updating the Commentariat WordPress theme so that the team can roll out more flexible sites around their strategies and consultations, and do it without needing technical support hence saving money and time.

From an outsider’s perspective, it looks like digital engagement in the UK in this specific area are going in three directions:

1. Collaborative drafting and detailed commenting on a document, using platforms like WriteToReply
2. Crowdsourcing, reviewing and prioritising ideas, using platforms like Delib’s OpinionSuite
3. Ongoing engagement around a strategy, where the document or questions are the stimulus for a wider discussion, using blog-based platforms and social media channels, like Commentariat

Personally, I’ve always been interested in refining and perfecting number 3 – it’s where there’s the greatest potential in the short and medium term to engage stakeholders beyond those with a strong professional interest, in meaningful discussion about what government should do.

So I see Read+Comment as the next phase – a platform that makes it possible to publish a document online, and build an engagement platform around it, in hours rather than days, for hundreds rather than thousands of pounds, while staying within government rules on websites.

The Directgov Review is a nice example of the platform in action, garnering over 100 considered views in a couple of weeks, from a wide range of informed stakeholders. The cloud-based platform coped fine with the spike in traffic when the site was launched, and the team moderating the comments went from a standing start on a Friday, to a live site on a Tuesday, with virtually no training or support.

Looking forward, there are two big milestones on the roadmap over the next few months: one, to build a bigger support infrastructure around the site as the volume of hosted documents grows; and second, to build in a monitoring and tracking dashboard into the WordPress backend, so it’s easy to see how your project is going and report on the results.

If you’d like to test out Read+Comment on one of your projects, please drop me a line or give me a call on 020 3012 1024.

100 days later

Just over three months ago, I left a secure job (well, it was then) in the civil service for reasons I’ve never quite been able to explain coherently. So how have the first 100 days of postbureaucratic life been?

I left planning to take a bit of time, do bits and pieces, and wait for inspiration to strike. To be honest, it still hasn’t, really. There are so many fantastic opportunities for the public sector to use digital more efficiently and creatively and support the great work being done on the inside, it’s hard to know where to start.

For now, I’m enjoying a lifestyle that mixes a couple of days at home each week, with a couple of days contracting or meeting clients. I get to see my toddler more, go shoeless to the office on warm days, and more or less maintain the lifestyle I had before. Setting up a new firm has been exciting, and I’ve had some fabulous conversations with interesting people that I didn’t get to meet while I was still on the inside.

Frankly though, I wasn’t expecting the scale of public sector cuts, nor the severity of the recruitment and spending freezes – thoughts of establishing a bigger business operation are on ice for now, at least. I’m probably not alone in hoping that mainstream government (my wise and far-sighted clients excepted) will rediscover the space between zero and profligate spending in relation to digital, and that not every consultant offers poor value. Pro bono is great, but even in a big society people need to eat.

So over the next few weeks I’ll be revamping this blog, merging it into an expanded site for Helpful Technology Ltd, which I’m describing as a firm offering digital innovation for people with more sense than money. It:

• offers no-nonsense advice and strategic help, based on a solid understanding of clients’ goals and the context they work in
• builds and implements a range of tools and websites, putting these principles into practice with an eye on the user experience and building sustainable relationships with audiences and clients
• delivers training, coaching and mentoring to people interested in doing this for themselves, helping to develop skills and confidence
• supports a number of its own ‘ventures’ – projects we support or own ourselves, where we put our ideas to the test with our own time and money

Over the last few months, it’s been great to work with half a dozen Departments and organisations beyond government on strategy or small digital build projects. Coming up in the next month or two are some exciting collaborations in the ‘ventures’ space too, including:

• Read+Comment: a low-cost, hosted platform for online commentable documents, as used last week for the Directgov Review, and which I’m looking to put on a sounder footing in terms of support
• Postbureaucrat: a news source and weekly email rounding up the best writing online about digitally-enabled change in the public sector (and a great opportunity to reach forward-thinking public servants, hint hint)
• Meet The Communities: a networking event for leaders of online communities, government clients and the agencies who work for them to explore how sustained, two-way partnerships with online communities can help government and citizens communicate better, more openly, and more cheaply (just finalising the venue)
• Government Jobs Direct: a major revamp to the site offering links to vacancies information in the wider public sector

That said, I have capacity for new projects so if you could use some extra resource, whether on strategy or small project builds, please drop me a line. And if you can help solve my inspiration problem, I’ll be eternally grateful!

Don’t be down with the kids

I started my career in market research, where soliciting the views of under 16s is frowned upon without rather a lot of faffing around getting hold of parental consent. Online, surveys tend to ask if you’re older than 16, and if not, chuck you out.

On balance, it’s probably a good thing that dubious marketers and market researchers aren’t able to ask intimate questions of youngsters unregulated, but the problem is that similar approaches have tended to be adopted by organisations looking for public comment on policy. Tim Davies, who is basically best described as the all-round guru on strategies for youth engagement through social media, highlighted this problem recently.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I had rather more strongly-held and frankly interesting views on politics and public policy when I was 15 than I do now. To be told to go away isn’t really good enough, if as Tim says, there really isn’t any legal basis for doing so.

So in developing my new platform for online commentable documents, I’m keen to ensure the default moderation policies take a more thoughtful approach to enabling young people to take part, without putting themselves at risk. Thanks to help in the comments of Tim’s post, I’ve come up with this, which I’m hoping to link to from the comments form itself as well as within the standard moderation policy:

If you are aged 16 or under, you may want to talk to your parent/guardian about the ideas on this website and the opinions that you want to express. Please don’t leave any personal details that might identify you (apart from in the email address box, which won’t be published anyway), and you may want to use your first or last name only, rather than your full name.

It’s just a start, and I’d welcome suggestions on how it might be improved.

Photo credit: Morguefile

Helpful Technology meets… Podcast: Harry Metcalfe on technology for social good in India

Photo credit: PA via the Daily Telegraph

At the end of July, the Prime Minister and seven Cabinet colleagues visited India at the head of a huge British delegation of businesspeople, politicians and, unusually, entrepreneurial web developers.

I caught up with one of them, Harry Metcalfe of The Dextrous Web, and we talked about the hack day he took part in, how missed mobile phone calls are turning simple technology in interesting social applications, and what the UK might learn from India as government becomes more local and society takes on more of the roles that government used to have:

Helpful Technology meets: Harry Metcalfe on hacking in India by lesteph

Thanks Harry!

The innovation problem

Innovation vs Process. Social Media Ninjas vs IT Managers. Agile vs Waterfall. A few tidbits from the fringe of recent O’Reilly’s OSCON conference caught my eye in the last week or so, and helped me think about these age-old battles in a new way.

Simon Wardley‘s session takes a bit of following if enterprise IT isn’t your bread and butter, but is packed with rewarding gems, specifically using the lifecycle analysis curve (introduction, growth, maturity, stability, decline) as a model for understanding the respective roles and purpose of innovation and process: or why your fast-growing organisation seems to be getting more bureaucratic:

(hat tip, Dennis Howlett).

Rolf Skyberg, Head of Innovation at eBay has some great slides analysing innovation models, particularly mapping out the new idea development process, from ideation through filtering, implementation, integration and monetization – and that you can do it the conventional way or the innovative way, but at some point those tracks have to merge. It’s a fairly elementary point that corporate ‘innovation schemes’ generally fail to acknowledge, leading to frustration and waste. It applies to government crowdsourcing too: at what point does the innovation track merge with conventional policymaking and delivery – and what happens to good ideas along the way?

(hat tip: Dave Briggs)

I think lifecycle analysis and an understanding of how innovations become process (and how process is then in turn innovated) might help to resolve a few old chesnuts.

How about disproving the old one-CMS-to-rule-them-all silver bullet? Fact is, web technologies are at different stages on the curve:

As, perhaps, are we all