Interesting elsewhere – 19 August 2011

Things which caught my eye elsewhere on the web USENIX 2011 Keynote: Network Security in the Medium Term, 2061-2561 AD – Charlie’s Diary It’s nearly impossible to underestimate the political significance of information security on the internet of the future. Rather than our credentials and secrets being at risk – our credit card accounts and […]

Transparent government

I have read three blog posts in the last few days which together strike me as indicators of a welcome trend. The first two were both from the new Government Digital Service blog, the first from Mike Bracken on his first few weeks in government as Director of Digital. It’s a very upbeat assessment, but […]

Petitioning the elephant

A new e-petitions site for government was launched yesterday. It is clean, simple and elegant, with clear government branding consistent with other cross-government sites.  So far so good. But managing a cross government service is a tricky business, for reasons I have explored before. Government is a veneer that sits above departments, and like any […]

Interesting elsewhere – 5 July 2011

Things which caught my eye elsewhere on the web Adrian Short » Blog Archive » Designing with the Delete key Getting rid of all the clutter on your website doesn’t require a great deal of design insight or technical skill. But it needs a lot of discipline. So once a day just delete something that […]

Civility in service

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 […]

Interesting elsewhere – 3 June 2011

Things which caught my eye elsewhere on the web How Alphagov might change UK government for the better – The Dextrous Web Addressing 80% of users’ needs compellingly and ignoring the rest is a sound principle of design, but government can’t do that. So, if we’re to use Apha.gov for the 80% –which we should […]

Saying goodbye

Many years ago, I used to work with somebody who in a previous life had been a restaurant manager. One of the lessons she had taken from that experience was how to say goodbye. At the beginning of a restaurant meal, people are where they want to be. They are there for an experience, and […]

On track to nowhere

There has been a lot of work in recent years on ways of improving the process of public consultation. It’s not something about which I have any great expertise or direct involvement, but I am conscious of great efforts to produce consultation material in forms which are not just useful and accessible themselves, but which […]

Alpha gorilla

Everybody who has had much to do with the development of government web services knows that there have been failures of imagination, failures of bravery, failures of technique and failures to seize opportunities – as well as successes in the teeth of opposition and incomprehension. Few have had the opportunity to start from scratch (though […]