I received a fab little video this morning from LGTV in which Martha Lane Fox was being interviewed on the benefits of being digitally included, as part of her ‘Race Online’ campaign. Its great to see someone so close to Central Government sending out such powerful messages. Take a look at the full interview here
We’ve been looking at the Nesta - Make It Local call for local authorities to release public data in a linked way.
Make It Local
“Make it Local aims to encourage collaboration between local authorities and digital media developers, to provide innovative, web-based services for their communities.”
Friends will know that this gets us very excited.
It certainly seems to have enthused a lot of other people too, judging by some of the conversations online and offline I’ve been having in the past week or so. And, having attended WMRO’s excellent Open Data: Challenges and Opportunities event the other week I’m sure that the region is going to be entering some great bids. More - Nesta - Make It Local event this Friday
France & Germany line up to bash Internet Explorer
Here’s a link to the article that might be of interest to you!
I’ve just read an interesting article from the BBC site which makes reference to London’s attempt to free up some of the public sector data in order to see how people might use it. Birmingham is doing a similar project called Timely Information - but I hadn’t realised until now that 4ip Channel 4’s innovation fund are offering a £200,000 reward for the best of the ideas that come out of the mashup. If I were a hacker, that would give me another good reason to work into the small hours. And when you’re analysing the released datasets, why not check out the Council’s ‘Be Heard’ database. This is an online portal for all of the City’s consultation. Eg. what people want. Hackers, you have the data, and you also have a font of information from the public, on what services they need or would like to see developed. Check out the piece from the BCC here
Well, it may be 5 years too late but at last Central Government has decided to catch up with the times and revise the primary school curriculum to include Internet Safety and prepare our children for the digital age.
It has long been the belief of IT educationalists that there is no point in restricting young people’s access to the wealth of information held on “t’internet”. But, wouldn’t it be better preparing our future generations by providing them with the knowledge and understanding of not only the benefits, but the dangers of “t’internet” and enabling them to make informed decisions and judgements for themselves. Because we all know, if you tell a young person not to do something … the likelihood is that they WILL go and do exactly what you’ve told them not to!
In Birmingham we are currently trying to find ways of measuring our usage of Social Media tools. Suggestions we have are based very much around measuring the number of times an organisation Tweets, how many followers it has, how many comments are on its blog, what the analytics are, etc.
Now, my level of interest in such things hovers somewhere around zero, to be honest. But the discussion did make me think about another way in which we could categorise our use of social networking tools, particularly in relation to other means of communication.
For instance, if we look at how widespread the adoption of a communications tool might be, we see quite a range. Most organisations right now have individual enthusiasts who have set up their own social networking presence, often without the knowledge of the wider organisation. We can compare that with a communications tool such as the telephone which is available to anybody who has contact with the public. And in between these two ends of the range, there’s another which is typified by one or more employees within each section or department being given the responsibility of using that particular tool. More - Social Media and Councils: A Fragmented Adhocracy?
With our aim to be a leading European digital city in 2010, it is not surprising that we have developed strong links with our European cities to exchange information and collaborate on project work, debate digital city developments and exchange experiences.
Whilst we may have a lot to learn (and the pace of technology change means that won’t lessen), we also have a lot to offer and collaboration has got to be key here to get the best from technology and promoting greater digital inclusion. Already we are a member of the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) that was established to increase the global competiveness of European business, Chair of Eurocities Knowledge Forum and participate in European funded projects such as DEHEMS (trialing of a smart meter to assist home energy efficiency and change behaviour).
….or at least that’s the fancy title of the pilot project we’re running with funding from the department for Communities and Local Government. As announced by Hazel Blears, Birmingham is one of ten English councils who secured funding for a ‘Timely Information for Citizens’ pilot project.
The idea behind ‘Birmingham - Open City’ is to develop a community of practice around developing new resources to empower citizens. When Digital Birmingham were working up the bid we went on the basis that we shouldn’t presume what kind of services could be developed, or indeed, what kind of data sources could be made available to develop them. Instead we’re focusing on putting some resource into generating the collaborations, discussions, creativity and debate from which new services can spring.
… then what would it be? Okay, I’ll narrow that down a bit: if you could remove a government-imposed obstacle to allow Birmingham City Council to help you improve the sustainability of your community, what would that be? More - If you could change one thing…
2008 saw a lot of movement around the opening up of public data and particularly in relation to location based services using that data. We’d already seen some positive signs with the commission of the Power of Information report back in 2007 and last year saw the innovative Show Us A Better Way competition.
It was very interesting to see that all five ideas which Show Us A Better Way are hoping to help develop are ones which use geographic data, especially as there have been so many issues with public sector bodies “misusing” Ordinance Survey data and derived data. Anybody interested in this would find it useful to take a look at the Guardian’s Free Our Data campaign. Of course, a cynic might think that the whole competition was devised to apply pressure to open up OS data to public bodies. More - 2009 - A Public Sector Data Explosion?
Digital Birmingham is a Birmingham City Council initiative and part of a city wide strategic partnership of more than 30 public, private and voluntary organisations
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