May 17
Today Cabinet Office announced the publication of guidance for civil servants on the use of social media as well as guidance for Departments to overcome the technical barriers to civil servants accessing the internet and social media channels.
GDS was pleased to welcome a group visit from the Norwegian Government last week. The following is a guest post from Heather Broomfield, Open Data manager at Difi - the Norwegian agency for Public Management and eGovernment.
Last week a delegation from Norway visited GDS to see how they are realising their goal of ‘delivering their digital products that meet peoples needs’. Prior to travelling we were all familiar with Martha Lane Fox’s DirectGov 2010 report and particularly liked the ‘Revolution not Evolution’ motto. We wondered to what extent this was being realised. In GDS change is in the air from the second you walk in the door, it didn’t take us long to realise that something really different was happening here. A few hours in the building made it clear that this revolution is actually taking place. ‘Revolution not evolution’ is not just a fancy line in a public document. Read more about Norway’s visit to GDS
‘I love this site! …This is perhaps the finest example of a government website in the history of the Internet.’
Member of the public‘What idiot thought a single web site was a good idea? The separate ones are bad enough.’
Civil servant
These are genuine comments at the extreme ends of the feedback we received for the Inside government beta. Over the six weeks of the beta we received a lot more in between, and we were grateful for every last item of praise and criticism.
This post is about how we captured that feedback, what we learned from it and what we are going to do as a result. Read more about feedback for the Inside government beta
Today we’re publishing a series of Good Practice Guides (GPGs) for potential providers of identity assurance for government services. They can now be found on the Cabinet Office site.
Read more about the Good Practice Guides
This week I spent a few days visiting Estonia with Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, Liam Maxwell, the new Deputy CIO and colleagues with Cyber Security responsibilities. We came to see how a small country of 1.3 million has developed a culture and system of Governance and public service provision using the Internet and transparency as core principles.
Read more about Estonia’s technology economy
On 28th February, GOV.UK released a second beta – INSIDE GOVERNMENT.
So, six weeks later, what have we learned? From the benefits of ‘storytime’ to the real value of precocious developers, Pete Herlihy outlines some of the things the team learned delivering this release.
On 4th April 2012, Dr Andy Hopkirk facilitated a roundtable on behalf of ICT Futures on Competition and European Interaction. Liam Maxwell, Deputy Government CIO, examines the appropriateness of this facilitation based on information which has since come to light.
On Saturday 16th June, Westminster City Council with Go ON UK and GDS will be holding a hack day to help the homeless.
We need your help in making sure that the tools that come out of the day are useful, accessible and inclusive, for one of the least-served groups of digitally excluded people.
Today, the Digital Advisory Board was announced by Francis Maude. Martha Lane Fox explains the Boards remit and introduces the other members of the Board.
On Monday 23rd April, Race Online 2012 handed the baton on to Go ON UK.
GDS twitter accounts
