Government
UK government departments and organisations frequently change their names, merge or disappear altogether. The same applies to their websites and documents held on those sites. Tracking down copies of older reports, data and superseded guidelines and regulations is becoming increasingly difficult, especially as so many sites are now being closed down. Information is supposed to [...]
Continue reading about The case of the disappearing press release
Tweetminster, Channel 4, The Guardian and the New Statesman are teaming up to map voter turnout in the UK general election today (6th May 2010). See http://tweetminster.tumblr.com/post/568070812/help-us-map-voter-turnout-on-may-6th for details. Twitter users are being asked to tweet #ukvote followed by the first half of their postcode and the information will be plotted on a map in [...]
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Wordle of Gordon Brown’s speech “Building Britain’s digital Future” http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/1813010/Gordon_Brown_on_building_Britains_digital_futurel Gordon Brown outlined the UK government’s plans for “Building Britain’s Digital Future” this morning. (Twitter hashtag #bbdf). On re-reading the draft of my comments on the event it struck me that I have become a Grumpy Old Woman. I might been more positive had I [...]
Continue reading about A Grumpy Old Woman’s view of Britain’s Digital Future
Those of you who have been following the comments to my earlier blog posting (Please Use Firefox 2 or IE 6) or my Twitter tweets might be interested in an item I wrote for my newsletter Tales from the Terminal Room, July 2002. Entitled “Inland Revenue’s Cookies Fail Crunch Test” – sorry about the awful [...]
Continue reading about gov.uk security stupidity nothing new
This would normally fall into the “I don’t belieeeeve it” category had I not already heard of the problems endured by UK central and local government departments in trying to move on from Internet Explorer 6. Out of curiosity I decided to see what pittance I might receive from the state when I retire so [...]
Police forces in England and Wales are now providing access to local crime statistics via online maps. These allow the public to drill down to ward level and view crime trends in their area. The statistics include information about burglary, robbery, theft, vehicle crime, violent crime and anti-social behaviour. The maps should be available via the [...]
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The presentation I gave at ‘Managing Information in the Public Sector – The Future – Relaunching ALGIS’ is now available on Slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net/KarenBlakeman/web-20-in-the-public-sector-presentation and on Authorstream at http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/karenblakeman-109455-web-2-0-public-sector-laria-algis-uk-lariaweb2-others-misc-ppt-powerpoint/ . The slides are based on earlier Web 2.0 presentations but I have included examples from local government authorities and public libraries. Apologies to those of [...]
Continue reading about LARIA/ALGIS Presentation: Web 2.0 in the Public Sector
Gordon is now on YouTube and Number 10 is busy Twittering away. It seems, though, that they are so pre-occupied with their new toys and the digital environment that they have forgotten to check what is going on in the real world. In the House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 12 May 2008 pt [...]
The UK Government is closing 95 per cent of its web sites in what it claims is a drive to make important information more readily accessible for internet users. The cuts will save £9 million and are part of what they call a “Transformational Government Strategy”. The official press release, which is short on detail, [...]
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HM Revenue & Customs: Home Page This is the web site of the new UK government department responsible for, amongst other things, VAT and Income Tax and formed by the merger of the Inland Revenue and HM Customs and Excise. Having spent so many hours, days and weeks trying to find my way round the [...]
