[Infowarrior] - Public Communications: Whitehall 2.0

[Richard Forno]

Original URL: 
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/02/government_info_sharing/
New(ish) Labour plans Whitehall 2.0
By Joe Fay
Published Wednesday 2nd April 2008 11:36 GMT

The UK government has dulled the glamorous sheen of Web 2.0 by pledging
guidelines on how civil servants should exploit use social media for
developing policies and getting their messages out to the public.

The Cabinet Office has published an Interim Progress Report
(http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/reports/power_of_information/interim_progre
ss_report_html.aspx) on its information strategy, carried out by Tom
Steinberg and Ed Mayo, which details Whitehall¹s efforts to ³get² social
media in its efforts to communicate with we the people.

The interim report¹s appearance coincided with the setting up of a Power of
Information Taskforce ­ which will include Steinberg ­ to flesh out the
strategy and which was revealed in a speech by Tom Watson, MP, Labour¹s
minister for transformational government.

In his speech, Watson argued that freeing up data ³will allow us to unlock
the talent of British entrepreneurs² while ³engaging people ­ using the
simple tools that bring them together ­ will allow the talents of all our
people to be applied to the provision of public services².

Watson promised the COI and the Cabinet Office would ³produce a set of
guidelines that adheres to the letter of the law when it comes to the civil
service code but lives within the spirit of the age².

We think this means Civil Servants need an approved way to dip into sites
like mumsnet to share their wisdom on, for example, how to claim maternity
benefits. We presume it doesn¹t mean putting in place a bureaucratic
procedure to ensure that all civil servants Wikipedia edits on Avril Lavigne
have been signed off by the Cabinet Office and Number 10.

Watson said draft proposals would be ready for the taskforce by the end of
this week.

Government also needed to adopt social media, Watson argued. ³Whitehall is
arguably Britain¹s most important knowledge factory,² he said, ³but we¹re
using out of date tools.² So, it would appear Sir Humphrey and pals will be
forced to thrash out policy and career paths over blogs, wikis, forums and
shared workspaces instead of over the port and cheese board.

Watson also pledged to overhaul the way information produced by government
bodies, for example regulatory information or Ordnance Survey mapping data,
is disseminated and charged for. ³There has been a lively debate about
whether the overall benefits to the economy and society are better served by
giving the data away at marginal cost.² He said he had asked the Treasury
and BERR to help build arguments in this area.

More disturbingly, perhaps, Watson reminisced about how hard it used to be
for ³any community organiser or activist to ³get people together to do
something². He recalled how he spent his formative years in ³endless hours
of turning the handle of a manual duplicating machine whilst my dad
fermented [sic] revolution in the pub.²

He went on to claim that ³social media has removed the requirement for my
son to turn the handle for his dad. It allows people to organise a
demonstration or a lobby at a single click, with global effect.²

Which is funny, as we¹d never thought organising spontaneous demonstrations
was part of the government¹s remit. ®