The burial of human remains at sea requires a marine licence. That must be one of the more arresting first lines of any government web page. Its combination of human tragedy and bureaucratic process packs a lot into eleven words. You won’t find that line, or anything else on the subject, at Directgov. That’s neither surprising [...]
It really is quite simple. If you wouldn’t have said it before there were social media, don’t say it now just because there are. If you work for an organisation, don’t be rude about its leaders, products or policies in public. Don’t imagine that online anonymity is an invisibility cloak. If you work in the [...]
From the random juxtaposition of things in a feed reader come two posts, one human and passionate, the other dry and analytical, each illuminating the other. Here first is Julian Sanchez writing about The Trouble With “Balance” Metaphors: Legal scholar Dan Solove, for instance, argues forcefully that “privacy” is not a monolithic value defined by [...]
This is a great day for everybody who has been on tenterhooks for the last four years after watching the Helsinki Complaints Choir in action. I have just discovered that a dvd plus no fewer than three cds of complaints choirs from around the world is about to be released. For those too eager to wait or [...]
Users of social media are in a difficult middle ground in which social norms have not yet fully formed. Interactions are often conversational and immediate, informal and spontaneous. But they are also recorded, broadcast and archived and can be received far away in time, space and – critically – context from the place where they were transmitted.
Three years ago, Owen Barder was the subject of an attack by the Daily Mail for his blog. It caught my attention partly because I knew Owen slightly and admired what I knew and partly because as a then much more tentative public sector blogger it was a reminder of just how unclear boundaries and [...]
The pope is a catholic, it goes without saying. But perhaps it would be better if sometimes he were not. When papal elections come round, there is always a little comment in the press coverage to the effect that the college of cardinals can elect anybody they please – they don’t have to choose one [...]
My post from May last year on who is blogging in government is picking up a lot of fresh attention at the moment (with thanks to Dominic Campbell and others for sharing it round). The questions of whether the approach is a useful one and, if it is, who falls into which category are still [...]
My post last week on apps for elephants has prompted some interesting discussion. Steph Gray had some eminently sensible practical thoughts on how government could balance the need to adapt to changing demands with the need to support openness and flexibility: Of course Government should be developing smartphone apps (though probably not iPhone exclusively) as [...]
The government is an elephant, as I have noted before. It tries to dance, but finds it hard, and the smaller animals around it can get hurt. The solution may be for the elephant to stand stock still, to do nothing for fear of treading on something more nimble, but more easily hurt. Or it [...]