Comments on: The power of information

By: Mission Creep | Neil Williams » Blog Archive » How to be an interesting civil service blogger (and not get fired)

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 08:31:35 +0000

[...] what this means for the rest of us, see this speech by Tom Watson, Emma’s reaction and this discussion started by Jeremy [...]

By: Speech on Government 2.0 - Tom Watson MP, Minister for Transformational Government, Cabinet Office

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:56:29 +0000

[...] http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/?p=1899 [...]

By: Who’s driving Gov 2.0? : Binary Law

Who’s driving Gov 2.0? : Binary Law — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:58:08 +0000

[...] We’re fortunate to have a new encumbent as Minister for Transformational Government at the Cabinet Office who really gets it – Westminster Ã¼ber-blogger, Tom Watson. His vision is encapsulated in his recent speech at the Transformational Government Event. [...]

By: Will Rowan

Will Rowan — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 15:14:06 +0000

aha! a visionary! Very good, and little to disagree with in what you say.
Paul Canning mentions ‘the marketing’: he’s right.
1 Externally, government content needs to be presented in a context that makes sense to the citizens that need to use it (I’m paraphrasing T Blair, circa 1997). Localisation is a huge trend in web services: is that what you meant by ‘pinpoint accuracy?’
2 Internally, a culture of transparency & co-operation is the only way to get data-driven services out of civil servants’ hands & onto citizens’ screens & keyboards.
The first of those points is a technical challenge – it’s a big one, but ‘doable’
The second, changing the culture of the civil service, (or *any* huge, multi-facetted organisation) is the bigger challenge. It’ll take longer that the technology.
I hope you may you stay in the role long enough to make a start!

By: Ministry of Truth » Blog Archive » Munging the Grimmer Twins

Ministry of Truth » Blog Archive » Munging the Grimmer Twins — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:09:50 +0000

[...] Putting aside the entirely irritating use of “2.0″ looking at his speech it would appear Tom Watson has decided to start agreeing with David Cameron and George Osbourne. Do we need more evidence of a Government that is really being led by the Opposition? First on ‘Crime Mapping’ [...]

By: William

William — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:05:16 +0000

Tom: great speech I thought. Generous of you to say the suppliers and officials in the room “get it”; I reckon it’ll take a while for many of the suppliers and public servants and suppliers I met there to get to grips with the full implications.

Transformational Gov is upside down, and it’ll take a while to make it right side up.

I appreciated your well-chosen words about Civil Serf. If she triggers a civil service blogging code then that’s a good outcome.

Looking forward to hearing more about your talent pool. I wonder if I know any of them.

By: M. Cawdery

M. Cawdery — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 19:22:33 +0000

The reason why whistle-blowers are essential these days is because the Government, having promised to be honest and transparent, are just not doing that. Spin, spin and more spin is all they do and employ Xspurts to ensure its done well.
“the spirit of the code and bringing the civil service into disrepute” is in the eye of the beholder. When Ministers screw up, bringing that into the public domain is NOT breaking the code of Honesty and it most certainly does NOT bring the Civil Service into disrepute; indeed, it gives some confidence to the general public that there are some honest people in it!

By: Hello, Rohan Silva | DavePress

Hello, Rohan Silva | DavePress — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:40:25 +0000

[...] I, like Nick Booth and presumably countless others, got an email from someone called Rohan Silva today, who has an @parliament email address. Rohan writes: I thought you might be interested in how Cabinet Office minister Tom Watsonâ€˜s speech yesterday on new technologies and the internet “mashed up” Conservative Party policies, speeches and ideas from the past 18 months. (Comically, the link to Tom’s speech isn’t actually working at the moment: http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/?p=1899 – and it’s not been published on the Cabinet Office website…) [...]

By: Podnosh Blog : High Fibre Podcasting » Archive » Is Tom Watson MP stealing or reading? The Tories think the former.

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:15:25 +0000

[...] They wanted to point out similarities between the speech Tom Watson made yesterday on The Power of Information and previous speeches and announcements made by the Conservative Party.Â The body of the e-mail is below, but I’d just like to reflect on this old media reflex in a new media world. [...]

By: paul canning

paul canning — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:16:48 +0000

very good Tom. I am dead cynical about egov leadership in government but I may have found my man :}

the big – huge – gap to my mind though is the marketing:

- Ensuring that all content held on government web sites is fully accessible to the major search engines.

.. is really the very, very basics. We have to improve this otherwise citizens simply won’t find us: the ‘findability’ stuff. We won’t solve this from within ‘walled gardens’ and that’s unfortunately how we’ve performed thus far (my despair at DirectGov).

NB: blogged at length on this subject :}