The coalition government has been pushing for greater transparency of Council decisions and spending as part of their Localism Bill. So I wasn’t that surprised to read Nick Booth‘s post about a recent press release from Eric Pickles. Pickles has told Councils that they should be allowing hyerplocal bloggers to record public meetings. I’ve heard anecdotes that some Councils refuse to acknowledge hyperlocal bloggers or allow them the same access and rights as local media. [...]

I’ve talked about my MSc dissertation research before on this blog. In fact I originally set up this blog to explore some topics related to my research. Having had a bit of a break after completing my dissertation in August 2010, I have decided to publish it here, spurred on by the kind words of a fellow academic researcher Catherine Howe. My research question was: How do the attitudes and perceptions of citizens, Council officers, Councillors [...]

This Thursday 13th January between 1-4 pm I will be in the hotseat, quite literally! I’m hosting a online question and answer session in the Local by Social Online Conference about the social media project I have been involved with in Fenland, Cambridgeshire. The project aimed to improve engagement with customer groups who were hard to access in Wisbech. The project has been delivered with funding from the Local Government Delivery Council’s Customer Led Transformation programme. [...]

On Tuesday 9 November at 10:00 am I’m speaking at the Local by Social online conference. If you haven’t already come across it the conference is a brilliantly organised online event run by Ingrid Koehler and colleagues at Local Government Improvement & Development. The aim of the conference is to discuss: Using social media to improve engagement between councils and citizens Practitioners: creating and sharing knowledge online Exploring Open data for improvement and innovation I’ve [...]

Paul Henderson has written an insightful post about the use of one of my fave bits of social media technology (aka WordPress) in our Fenland Social Media project. Paul runs through the reasons why we chose WordPress for the project, what plugins were used and how they were implemented. Early on in the project, it was identified that in order to keep barriers to access as low as possible, we did not want residents to have [...]

Just a quick post about the Customer Insight in Public Services conference that I attended today. I was speaking about a partnership social media project in Wisbech, which was funded by Communities and Local Government. There were some really useful presentations. One that stood out for me was the work Lewisham Council had been doing, using customer insight techniques to drive improvements to public services. A variety of case studies were presented and some of the [...]

I mentioned in an earlier post a project I’ve been involved with in Cambridgeshire. Over the Summer we’ve been trialling ShapeYourPlace.org in Wisbech and the surrounding villages. It’s a community website where residents can raise issues and suggest ideas and local service providers respond. The site also pulls in feeds from other useful sources such as neighbourhood policing team details and meetings and community events and activities from Cambridgeshire.net. I’ve been working closely with the exceedingly patient [...]

I’ve finally finished my MSc dissertation which is a massive relief. After four years of part-time study I am looking forward to having my weekends back! And I plan to get back to blogging, now that I’ve more time on my hands. My research study investigated: Attitudes and perceptions of Council officers and citizens to using social media to engage with local government. My research was driven from a human-computer interaction (HCI) perspective, as I’ve [...]

I noticed an interesting article in the Guardian today about the coalition Government’s recent crowdsourcing experiment. The article reflects on how despite thousands of suggestions being received from members of the public, the Government’s published responses indicate that no policies are changing as a result. The coalition asked the public to respond to its programme on government websites. It received 9,500 replies online. However, its formal responses, published on each website, shows Whitehall regarded the process [...]

For anyone that’s familiar with my posts on social media or usability this one is rather academic and self-indulgent, so bear with me! I’m making fairly good progress with my MSc research, having completed a few interviews and some of my literature review. Every so often I take stock of the approach I’m taking and re-evaluate my research question and approach. I decided that writing about the issues I come across would be a good [...]