Outside Goodness
Media Release: Councils question boundaries and boards of Local Health Networks
Media Release: NSW Councils applaud Federal Government's stimulus spending
Media Release: NSW councils congratulate Gillard and look forward to recognition
Media Release: NSW councils support proposed inland rail link
Saving millions? There's an app for that
via flickr.com
The LGA has just released a report on how councils are using tech to save millions. It features a number of examples on how geo-spatial data has been packaged up in apps to help local people access services more conveniently and save money. Whether it's bin men working smarter, fewer phone calls to inquiry centres, freeing up staff from time-consuming checks or reducing parking ticket machine maintenance costs, making the most of modern technology and data sharing has seen huge cash savings across the country.
One of the examples is Gloucestershire which has the world's first cashless parking payment via an iPhone app.
See the report here. Good stuff!
Local Government Weekly: Issue 34/10
Cllr Andrew Wallis: councillor blog
via cllrandrewwallis.blogspot.com
Most of the examples in my LocalGov2.0 example blog have been about the institutional use of social media or open data in local government. But there are at least as many examples of councillors who are using social media to engage with local people, and I've decided that I'm going to start featuring a few here, perhaps aiming for one councillor blog a week.
I've been put off this a little bit, not because there aren't some great examples, but because I lay myself open (slightly and perhaps only in my imagination) to the charge of political bias. Too many Conservative blogs? Too many Labour? Since I take a slightly random approach to featuring stuff, as in- ooh, that looks cool, I'll grab it - I could easily end up with a run of, say LibDem, blogs without meaning to.
But this blog is primarily for me. It's my well of examples for training and talks and to include in papers and so forth. I'm just sharing it because I hope it's useful for others. And I need some councillor examples in the lead up to a series of events. So, councillor blogs it is. I have put in place a Google spreadsheet though to help me keep track of who I've featured, what party and what region they're from so I can try to achieve some balance and so it's transparent who I've featured. And I've also added a Google form for people to submit examples of councillor blogs they'd like to see featured. You don't have to use the form....
Anyway, enough of that. Let's look at the first blog.
Councillor Andrew Wallis, an Independent from Cornwall County Council and a parish councillor, has the dubious distinction of being first. He's been going for not quite a year and posts regularly. He uses Google's Blogger platform, which is completely free - I used it for years and think it's pretty good. It's easy to get a decent looking blog up in short time, and Cllr Wallis's blog looks pretty darn good. Clean and professional, with lots of images.
If I were giving advice for councillor blogs (which I have done), I'd say he ticks almost all the boxes. There are easy to find contact details, links to other his other online profiles (Twitter) and a clear statement of his role at the council. And lots and lots of references to the place he serves. (The only thing he does which is contrary to my loose recommendations is that he has the title cllr in his blog's web address, which could make things tricky if for some reason he leaves the council but wants to continue blogging. But too late to change easily).
The blog is a mix of reportage on local fun stuff - events which haven't happened yet and those that have and reflections on council issues - some of them pretty technical, but explained in easy language for the resident who wants to know. He even recently discussed what it means to be Cornish, which I don't much about, but do know to be thorny. And importantly, he links to other local bloggers. Blogging without linking is speaking into a void.
Media Release: Councils welcome NSW Government rethink on development contributions
Media Release: Parking policies are for community benefit, councils say
Transparency in the Council: Kensington and Chelsea and the big spreadsheet
via rbkc.gov.uk
Kensington and Chelsea have joined the growing number of councils that are exposing their expenditure data. Although there are only 20ish so far, that number is getting bigger all the time, so much so that I've made the decision that I'm no longer going to feature councils that just publish expenditure data in this blog. You have to be doing something a little bit different. RBKC is doing that.
Yesterday I featured them in a post about what format expenditure data should be published in - advocating for the time being both CSV and PDF - and if you have to choose only one, go with CSV. (XML even better, but let's not get ahead of ourselves).
RBKC are publishing expenditure data in both pdf and csv, but they're also placing the expenditure data in context. Not only does it sit alongside information about senior officer salary details and members allowances, but this rather nifty visualisation of their overall budget as well as making links to information on how the council manages money and its performance.
You can see the list of councils publishing open data in this Google spreadsheet. This spreadsheet is noteworthy on its own. It's a collaborative effort between CLG, LG Group and Chris Taggart of Openly Local, and is now the master list - avoiding duplication of collation.
Some links for light reading (27/08/10)
- How do we save longdesc?
- Rant: HTML5 != CSS 3
- HTML5 presentation
- WebKit HTML5 Search Inputs
- Periodic Table of the Elements
- 45 Free Applications For Designers And Developers
- 5 Steps to Have Fun and Profit From IE6
- jQuery Plugin Checklist: Should You Use That jQuery Plug-In?
- Ultimate Collection of CSS3 Tutorials and Techniques
- 25 Excellent CSS3 Button Tutorials
- Pure CSS3 Bokeh effect with some jQuery help
- Create Animated Landscape using Pure CSS3
- A CSS-only scrollable timeline, Part 1
- CSS3 Rocks
- CSS Counters: counter-increment and Friends
Let's talk Central Bedfordshire
via flickr.com
Central Bedfordshire is one of those newly created councils, so letting people know what's going on, who to talk to and creating conversations is key and probably a bit of challenge, too.
Central Beds has a spiffy website and an engagement platform (based on WordPress) called Let's Talk Central. It's firmly entrenched in the positive getting people to talk about what they like about their area, with opportunities to say how they could be made even better.
Alongside, this they're employing cheap and free new media tools - like Flickr (where I spotted they won a prestigious public loo award), YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
You can see them describe how they did it in the comments here (requires CoP login).
Social beats cash: a local campaign case study
via flickr.com
It seems like we're miles away from an election right now, but the next local polling in England might just be the social media election we didn't quite get in May.
Stephanie Noble describes a local election in Newark, New Jersey and the role that social media played in getting an 'underfunded', underdog candidate a place on the city council. Since she's a social media consultant, we probably need to take it all with a teeny grain of salt and there are certainly questions I would ask about ROI of certain tools.
However, she does describe a whole array of social media tools including the first use I've heard of Foursquare (a location based game) in a local campaign. I doubt Foursquare would work in the UK, but since it began in New York it may have greater penetration in a city just across the river. She describes how they measured penetration of messages using link-shortening service (bit.ly) and includes certain measures of success on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube.
In the end, her candidate won by just 11 votes. A squeaker! In hotly contested races, social media may just provide the edge.
The big payback [1]
Why participate on the web? Web metrics give you some of the story – visitor numbers, content accessed – but how do you quantify trust? And how do you explain to senior staff the benefits of participating online in the first place?
Social Web – Reputation Management Cycles diagram by Laurel Papworth – CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
I’ve used this graphic many times to help get the point across.
BIG PICTURE: Case study: How Flickr can work on a local government website
Dan Slee has blogged about how Walsall Council has used Flickr and its local community to spruce up its web pages. He has step by step information about what they did and what kind of things you need to consider as well as other helpful links.
If you're proud of your area and proud of your local people, this is a great way to show that.
Flickr is an online image sharing website, that is as much about social networking around images as it is an image repository. Just about every area I've ever looked for already has a Flickr group dedicated to sharing images about that place.
Annual Reporting and State of the Environment Reporting Requirements of Local Councils (44 kb)
Comparative Information on NSW Local Government Councils 2008/09 (33 kb)
