From: Dan Jellinek [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 22 January 2007 15:33
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: E-Government Bulletin, 22 January 2006: Varney Review;
educational technology; US mid-term elections.
+++E-GOVERNMENT BULLETIN
- ISSUE 230, 22 January 2006.
- Incorporating Future Democracy Bulletin.
IN THIS ISSUE: Varney Review; Transformation strategy; educational
technology; US mid-term elections.
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++Special Notice: Mobile and Flexible Working in the Public Sector
- 25 January 2007, RIBA, London
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[Special Notice ends].
++Contents: E-Government Bulletin Issue 230.
Section One: News.
01: Directgov Faces "Monumental" Challenge To Engage Public
- monolithic portal could be big turn-off, warns expert.
02: Six Public Bodies Make Social Technology Shortlist
- awards recognise use of technology for sustainable development.
03: Councils Grapple With Drop in IT Resources
- spending drops to 2004 levels says Socitm.
04: Online Calculator Offers Personal Inflation Rate
- Government moves to quell criticism of inaccuracies.
News In Brief: 05: Access Group - home internet access taskforce for
schoolchildren; 06: Index Unaware - survey on vulnerable children;
07: Sharing Debate - Downing Street online consultation.
Section Two: Focus - E-Democracy
08: Mission Critical: Phil Noble, Director of Politics Online, talks to
Derek Parkinson about the lessons learned from the campaign trail in the
2006 US mid-term elections. The internet may yet produce a credible
independent candidate for the 2008 Presidential race, he says.
Section Three: Focus - Education.
09: Learning The New Way: All schools are required to have a "learning
platform," or set of collaborative tools for teachers, pupils and
administrators in place by 2010. Mel Poluck writes on trailblazer Kent
County Council's endeavours to meet this goal.
[Contents ends].
++Special Notice: Email Management '07 - Best Practice and
Compliance in the Public Sector, 17 April 2007
- Early Bird offer lasts until end February
- CBI Conference Centre, London
http://www.headstar-events.com/email07/
With concerns about information law compliance and an urgent need to
maximise efficiency, public sector bodies need to develop better
strategies to manage their ever-growing email mountains.
Email Management '07 will provide a focus for sharing best practice.
Compare email retention and retrieval policies with your peers;
formulate policies for good HR practice; minimise the risks of virus
infiltration and security breaches; plan requirements for infrastructure
and storage solutions; realise the knowledge management benefits from
handling email effectively; and much more.
Places normally cost 295 pounds plus VAT for public sector and 495 for
private sector delegates, with additional delegates booking at the same
time receiving a 100 pounds discount. However if you register before 28
February you will save 100 pounds per delegate by typing 'ebFeb' after
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And if your organisation might be interested in exhibiting at the event
or sponsoring it, please contact Claire Clinton on:
[log in to unmask] .
[Special Notice ends].
++Section One: News.
+01: Directgov Faces "Monumental" Challenge To Engage Public.
Cabinet Office plans to cull small central government websites and
transfer content to "super-portals" such as Directgov may make it more
difficult to engage specific groups in the population and deliver highly
targeted messages, an online branding expert has warned.
As part of the Transformation strategy, the Cabinet Office is conducting
a review of central government websites to assess their viability. Of
the websites examined so far, only 26 of the websites are certain to be
retained, while 551 will go it says. Information of continuing relevance
from these websites sites will transfer to Directgov, or Businesslink (
http://fastlink.headstar.com/cio1 ).
"A problem for government is that it needs to speak with many different
voices, so that it can talk to a very specific audience," said Daniel
Lewington, head of digital strategy at Enterprise IG, an online branding
agency that was invited to tender for work on the Directgov service in
early 2006.
"A good example is the Talk To Frank website, which targets messages
about drugs to young people. You couldn't expect to talk about drugs
with young people on a big orange website like Directgov," Lewington
told E-Government Bulletin. While there is no suggestion that the Talk
To Frank ( http://www.talktofrank.com/ ) website is one of those
earmarked for closure, there are risks as well as benefits to to the
Cabinet Office approach, he said "On the face of it it's a good thing to
put everything citizens need in one place, but it's monumentally hard to
get right. The danger is that government appears monolithic, and that's
not just a problem for the UK. Most governments appear monolithic," he
said. "There's an important difference between 'unified'and 'uniform'.
We like differences. Individualism means that increasingly, we don't
like to be all lumped together," he said.
One of the main benefits of concentrating services in one place is that
citizens can learn about the services that government provides,
Lewington said.
+02: Six Public Bodies Make Social Technology Shortlist.
Six public sector bodies have made it onto the shortlist for this year's
eWell-Being Awards, an annual national event promoting the use of
technology for sustainable development. The awards are hosted by
SustainIT ( http://www.sustainit.org/ ), a sub-group of the charity UK
Centre for Economic and Environmental Development (UK CEED -
http://www.ukceed.org ).
Three of the six public sector bodies are Scottish: Digital Fife (
http://www.digitalfife.com/ ), a project funded by Fife Council to
create a web content management system for local community groups;
Gorbals Library and Real Learning Centre, a Glasgow City Council project
to improve access to the internet; and Fuel Zone (
http://www.fuelzone.co.uk ), another Glasgow council project using the
Young Scot smartcard to offer incentives for healthy eating through a
points and prizes system.
The other three are UK Online Centres, for boosting take-up of e-
government services through public internet access and training; the
Environment Agency for a free public searchable online database of
potential environmental hazards; and Nottinghamshire County Council
adult social care, for a telecare project using smartcard technology to
help people being cared for in their homes and their care workers
receive information from the council.
Overall winners and commended entries will be announced at a London
ceremony in late March. E-Government Bulletin is a media partner in the
awards.
+03: Councils Grapple With Drop in IT Resources.
Local authorities are faced with diminishing resources following five
years of Implementing Electronic Government (IEG) funding, according to
the local government Society of IT Management (Socitm
http://www.socitm.gov.uk ).
Both revenue and capital spending on ICT has dropped back to 2004 levels
and there has been a freeze on recruiting new IT staff and consultants,
according to the society's annual 'IT Trends' report.
"Now that the IEG drive has gone and councils have crossed the finishing
line - well, some have limped across, while others have dashed - local
authorities are saying that although IT was a priority, it isn't any
more," the report's editor John Serle told E-Government Bulletin. "This
is unfortunate in the context of the Transformation agenda.
"There are significant differences in capability among councils," he
said. "By sharing expertise and resources, councils could access better
skills. The question is whether they will actually do it or not. When it
has been tried in the past, councils have tended to be selfish about
what they have and don't necessarily want to share with other
authorities."
There is also a need for councils to properly exploit existing
technology investments before moving towards shared services, Serle
said. "As new government initiatives are announced, there is an
assumption that we can just press a button and there will be an instant
improvement," he said. "But local authorities are working on different
timescales for technology investments. They can't instantly change
direction on shared services; they need a sourcing strategy that works
towards it."
Socitm has also criticised central government's lack of understanding of
local government in the recent report by Sir David Varney, "Service
transformation: a better service for citizens and businesses, a better
deal for taxpayers". The report calls for the rationalisation of
government websites and sub-200-seat call centres. While this may work
for central government it is probably not appropriate for local
government, Socitm says.
+04: Online Calculator Offers Personal Inflation Rate.
An online calculator which people can use to work out their own personal
inflation rate has been launched this week by the Office of National
Statistics (ONS) amid fears that indices used to measure national
inflation do not accurately represent individual spending habits.
Inflation in the UK is measured against the Consumer Price Index
(CPI) and the Retail Price Index (RPI), based on average expenditure
patterns calculated from a basket of 650 possible products per
household.
Kevin Smith, ONS Senior Prices Manager, told E-Government Bulletin the
aim of the free 'Personal inflation calculator' (PIC -
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pic/ )
is: "to give people a better understanding of where inflation rates come
from. A lot of people say they don't match their experiences," he said.
Users type in their monthly spending habits in up to 23 on-screen boxes
arranged by type of purchase, from mortgage repayments to clothes.
Results, measured against the RPI, are presented as a graph or table.
While prices of some consumer items have been on the rise, the public
tend to ignore falling prices among other types of products such as
electronic goods, Smith said.
News In Brief:
+05: Access Group: A working group is to be set up to examine ways
of ensuring all schoolchildren have access to the internet outside of
school, with Schools Minister Jim Knight as chair. The Home Access
Taskforce will bring together the players across sectors to address the
fact that more than 800,000 young people in England have no internet
access at home. For a BBC Online report, see:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/bbc5 .
+06: Index Unaware: Only a quarter of respondents to a survey on
children at risk were aware of the IS Index, which will store and offer
information on children to healthcare professionals beginning in 2008.
The YouGov survey also found 40 per cent did not believe the index would
be useful, with fears compounded by previous government IT
failures:
http://www.liquidlogic.co.uk .
+07: Sharing Debate: The Downing Street website is set to launch a
series of online seminars and webchats involving senior ministers over
the next few weeks as part of a public debate on information sharing
launched this week by the Prime Minister:
http://fastlink.headstar.com/pm1 .
[Section One ends.]
++Special Notice: Geographical Information Systems (GIS) In the
Public Sector, 16 May 2007
- Royal Institute of British Architects, London
- Early Bird offer lasts until end March.
http://www.headstar-events.com/gis07/
A huge proportion of public sector service data has an address or
location element. Our conference offers all senior managers a broad idea
of what Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are out there; how they
could improve services; and how they could save your organisation time
and money.
Places normally cost 295 pounds plus VAT for public sector and 395 for
private sector delegates, with additional delegates booking at the same
time receiving a 100 pounds discount. However if you register before 30
March you will save 100 pounds per delegate by typing 'ebMar' after your
name.
For more information see:
http://www.headstar-events.com/gis07 .
[Special Notice ends]
++Sponsored Notice: Devon Museums embrace Imaginarium's
Community-Generated Content Space.
Imaginarium offers innovative new software allowing national, regional
or local networks of public sector or third sector bodies to publish
websites and information under a coherent brand.
The Community Generated Content Space (cSpace), based on open source
software, has strong potential across the culture, learning, voluntary,
community, local government and related sectors. It allows each member
to promote their own events, learning opportunities, news or other
services, accessible through a comprehensive range of search and
categorisation tools.
The recently launched devonmuseums.net uses cSpace to enable more than
100 museums to punch above their weight. Each can generate and manage
their own unique web space, with a distinctive regional identity,
achieving high Google positioning. Visit our website today to explore
how your area could use this unique technology:
http://www.imaginarium.co.uk/cspace .
[Sponsored Notice ends].
++Section Two: Focus
- E-Democracy.
08: Mission Critical
by Derek Parkinson.
On paper at least, mid-term elections in the US have nothing to do with
the president, their purpose being to select candidates for seats in
Congress, state legislatures, and governors in some states.
In practice, the 2006 mid-terms were a referendum on the Bush
presidency, and especially his policy in Iraq, says Phil Noble, director
of Politics Online, a US-based organisation that analyses the impact of
new technologies on politics ( http://www.politicsonline.com/ ).
While Republican candidates were forced onto the back foot defending
Bush's foreign policy, Democrats had a great opportunity to re-connect
with voters, says Noble. These elections were also the first in which
the Democrats fought with Howard Dean as party chairman.
After Dean blazed a trail through cyberspace in the run-up to the 2004
presidential elections, using the internet to raise funds and mobilise
grassroots on an unprecedented scale, it might be hoped that he could
work the same magic for the party as a whole.
Such hopes came to little, says Noble. "The Democrats managed to shoot
themselves in the foot," he says. Although they made significant gains
in Congress and state elections, these can easily be reversed and the
Party is fundamentally divided over the Dean approach to rebuilding the
party, suggests Noble.
"Dean's approach is to try and build the party in 50 states. He thinks
that to revive the party it's necessary to build grassroots," says
Noble.
"But the focus of the Democrat leadership in the House of
Representatives and the Senate was to take back the Senate. One's
short-term, one's long-term," he says. "Dean may be party chairman, but
he's still an outsider."
Nevertheless, the elections had some important pointers for the future.
Chief among these is the use of video, and sites such as YouTube in
particular, to discredit candidates, he says. Many candidates deploy
"trackers", staff who follow rival campaigns. "In the running for the
Virgina Senate the incumbent George Allen, who's one of these 'Good Ol'
Boys', made a derogatory remark about a tracker, referring to him as
'macaca'," says Noble ( http://fastlink.headstar.com/allen1 ).
What might have been a little local difficulty for Allen ballooned into
big trouble for his campaign, thanks largely to YouTube, says Noble.
Allen's initial denials were contradicted by videos that appeared on the
website, unleashing a steady stream of questions about his attitudes
towards racial minorities. "It brought him into a downward spiral, his
campaign never really recovered, and he lost to Jim Webb," says Noble.
According to Noble, there were no striking innovations to compare with
JibJab, the Flash animations created by independent film makers that
captured the public imagination in 2004 by mocking both presidential
candidates. While political blogging by citizens had an influence on the
2006 election, it was sporadic and depended on traditional media to
break out of the "blogosphere" and reach a wider audience, says Noble.
"They find a particular issue and spike into the mainstream, but a lot
of the time they're chattering to themselves," he says.
Overall, online campaign tools made steady progress in 2006 rather than
a quantum leap, he suggests. "It's getting broader and deeper - outside
the 'Joe Citizen' kind of stuff," says Noble.
While Howard Dean wrestles with party insiders over how to renew support
for the Democrats, a credible campaign from an independent candidate may
yet turn out to be his biggest impact on the 2008 presidential election,
thinks Noble. Although we've seen independent candidates before, such as
Ross Perot and Ralph Nader, they tended to be a sideshow after the early
stages of the campaign.
"Perot campaigned in all 50 states in '92 and '96. It's complex to do
this, but not hard. Ralph Nader made it onto more than 40 state ballots,
so you don't have to be a multi-millionaire to do it," he says.
Since then, the political landscape has shifted in favour of an
independent candidate, he thinks. "Is the environment right? Yes, the
public perception is that they're all a bunch of crooks, they're all
sucking wind. We're not getting that see-saw of public support between
the two main parties," says Noble.
"Can you do it via the internet? Can you raise the 'bazillion' dollars
needed for a campaign? Yes, we know that from Howard Dean," says Noble.
"The big question is 'Who's the guy?'". According to Noble it's unlikely
to be a figure such as Rudy Giuliani or Michael Bloomberg, the former
and present Mayors of New York respectively, because they are too
closely associated with the city. In addition, any campaign by Giuliani
would almost certainly be derailed by hostile questions about the messy
breakdown of his marriage.
"If Giuliani ran I'd say there's about a 40 per cent chance that his ex-
wife would rip his balls off in public," says Noble.
Whatever fate befalls Bloomberg or Giuliani, the broader issue is public
disenchantment with the mainstream parties and candidates.
"The mood is 'We want a new type of politics,'" says Noble.
[Section Two ends]
++Sponsored Notice - WT2
- 9am - 5pm, 20 February at Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London
E1 6LA
WT2 is a conference that will explore how the wave of emerging
technology innovations can positively transform how our civic
institutions operate, how our public services are delivered and how
welfare, education, environment, health, security and transport
priorities are met.
The first Working Together event took place in 2004, in the midst of the
Gershon Review, and looked at how public procurement practice could be
adapted to improve opportunities for small firms in London's burgeoning
technology sector to secure Government contracts.
2007's event will focus on the extent to which the public sector is able
to harness emerging technology innovations:
http://www.working2gether.net .
[Sponsored notice ends].
++Special Notice - Building the Perfect Council Website.
- Olympia 2, London
- 12 July 2007
http://headstar-events.com/council07/ .
Following the huge success of last year's conference, we are pleased to
present this second annual event where a wide range of experts and
practitioners will offer their view of how you can create the perfect
council website: easy to use, compelling and engaging.
A partnership between E-Government Bulletin and the Society of IT
Management's Socitm Insight Programme, the event will draw on the
collected wisdom of eight years of Socitm's annual 'Better Connected'
review of all UK council websites and feature the Better Connected
reviewers' own insights, plaudits and brickbats.
Interactive workshops will cover issues in detail including usability,
and the use of third party software. For details and to register see:
http://headstar-events.com/council07/ .
[Special Notice ends].
++Section Three: Focus
- Education.
+09: Learning The New Way
by Mel Poluck.
Since the release by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) in
2005 of the strategy document 'Harnessing technology: transforming
learning and children's services,' UK schools are all now required to
make extensive use of information and communication technologies.
The strategy requires schools to ensure that, by 2010, all
schoolchildren have access to a 'learning platform' - a suite of
electronic learning technologies fully integrated into the school's own
management systems.
Last week, in a drive to meet this requirement well ahead of schedule,
Kent County Council launched a pilot version of its own learning
platform for primary and secondary schools in the area.
"We want to put [Kent Learning Zone] in before that date so by 2010
they'll be confident to use it," a spokesperson told E-Government
Bulletin. "We want to get in early."
The Kent Learning Zone portal allows materials to be shared both within
the classroom and across the county, which is the largest UK Local
Education Authority (LEA) by number of schools with 615 primary and
secondary schools. The subscription service offers web- based email,
document sharing capabilities and instant messaging for use by pupils
and teachers. At the time of the project's launch earlier this month,
eight schools had signed up.
The aim is for the platform to become a gateway to all official online
educational resources across the county and a place to share and combine
resources for teachers and pupils. It will allow teachers to create
tailored courses, so that individual pupils can learn in a way that
suits them. A course or module for teaching for example, could be
gathered from various sources, so parts of the BBC's shortly-to-be-
launched online learning resource 'Jam' could be "plugged in" to the
Learning Zone.
Future additions to the Zone will include integration with the existing
Schools Information Management System (SIMS), allowing school offices to
share grades and reports with parents and teachers.
Online safety is one concern that Kent is trying to tackle from the
outset. To ensure this system and other classroom uses of the internet
are safe for children to use, Kent's Children, Families and Education
Directorate has recently revised its e-Safety Policy guidance for
schools ( http://www.clusterweb.org.uk?esafety ).
Kent's e-Safety policy document, overseen by an e-Safety Strategy Group,
comprising teachers, Child Protection officers and Kent Police, now
includes information about reporting and classifying incidents of
concern and advice on who to call on for help in specific situations.
"As social networking is being used by more and more schoolchildren
every day, we felt it was important to include information about social
networking and personal publishing and how to stay safe when using this
technology," Kent's Digital Curriculum Officer Rebecca Chapman told
E-Government Bulletin. "Kent feel very strongly about e-Safety,"
she says.
"The safety and effectiveness of wider virtual communities depends on
users being trusted and identifiable," says Chapman. "This may not be
easy, as authentication beyond the school may be difficult as
demonstrated by social networking sites such as Bebo"
( http://www.bebo.com/ ),
she says.
"Kent feels schools should engage in a discussion about e-Safety and
acceptable use within school and tailor their policy to suit the needs
of the individual school and their pupils."
Inevitably, there are other hurdles to jump before the 2010 target that
schools develop their own learning platform is met. And - common to so
many new e-government ventures - the trickiest relates to cultural
rather than technical readjustments.
The culture of this kind of information sharing poses a challenge, says
the spokesperson, particularly given that schools in Kent have been
autonomous for a long time. "It will be tough to get people round to
[that] way of thinking."
[Section Three ends].
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