Government
Open data: free to use and republish
Open data is the idea that some data should be freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or similar. The philosophy behind it is long established, but the term “open data” itself was more recently coined. It appeared for the first time in 1995, in a […]
Where has all the GOV stuff gone?
Reblogged from Legal Web Watch January 2015 Digital Champion, Martha Lane Fox, first mooted the idea of a single government website back in 2010. Some thought the theory was sound but that delivery would be impossible. Once the project was approved, the process of transitioning government information to GOV.UK began in 2012, led by the […]
Justice going digital (2)
You can view the progress of development of GOV.UK’s 25 digital exemplar services, of which 4 are the MoJ projects shown above, from the Digital Transformation dashboard. The Government Digital Strategy and Departmental Digital Strategies commit us to the redesigning and rebuilding of 25 significant ‘exemplar’ services. We’re going to make them simpler, clearer and […]
Justice going digital
Whatever you may feel about some of the cost-saving justice changes afoot, there’s no doubt that the government’s “digital by default” strategy will both help achieve some of the savings they crave and deliver better services. The Justice Secretary in the foreword to the MoJ Digital Strategy believes: It will transform the services we provide, […]
Justice on the move
Interested in access to justice? You bet. I’m not talking here about the withdrawal of legal aid though I urge you to follow #savukjustice and sign the petition if you have not already done so. What I’m referring to is the migration of content from the Justice website to GOV.UK. We’d just got used to […]
Simpler, clearer, faster (maybe)
So the the GOV.UK site from the Government Digital Service won the Designs of the Year 2013 award. This is proving to be somewhat divisive: FOR are those designers who appreciate its “agile, user-centred design” AGAINST are those who like a pretty website, and UNDECIDED are those like me who would like to be FOR […]
What’s up GOV?
Have you visited GOV.UK yet? If you’ve recently used any government service you will probably have been directed to GOV.UK. On 17 October 2012 it replaced Directgov and Business Link as the place to go for government services. And on 15 November the first government departmental and agency websites started their migration to the Inside […]
Rough Justice – not so Gov 2.0
Who is Stephen Walter Pollak? [No relation to Charon QC’s post on BBC’s Rough Justice] A long time ago in a land far, far away I reported that under the 2006 Cabinet Office “Transformational Government Strategy” at least 550 government websites would be closed, with only 26 certain to be retained (basically, I speculated, one […]
Sleeves rolled up
To gauge how on the ball these ConDems are, I did a quick trawl around the Gov dept sites which reveals that … Most departments haven’t had time to do anything but post a rather ominous message along the lines of: Content on this site is under review following the formation of a new government. […]
Crown Commons
With the launch of the data.gov.uk beta website – providing access to over 2,500 central government datasets – comes a new licensing model for government information which it is intended will be launched government-wide by the end of May 2010 to replace the existing “Click-Use” licence. The new licence is interoperable with the Creative Commons […]
Towards Gov 2.0
Democracy – as Abraham Lincoln famously defined it – is the government of the people, by the people and for the people. Hitherto, we’ve been able to exercise our democratic rights only at the ballot box, by lobbying our MP and perhaps in public demonstrations. Can Gov 2.0 – the application of Web 2.0 to […]
Unlocking the power of information
As regular readers will know, one of my pet subjects is unlocking the power of public sector information, and I’ve actively campaigned for it as it relates to legal information. The ball is now really rolling on this with the introduction of two new services from government: From OPSI – Public Sector Information Unlocking Service […]
Consultations aggregator
Just came across Tell Them What You Think, an extremely handy site which aggregates government consultations and enables you to: search all current government consultations for words and phrases browse all latest consultations by department set up alerts via email or RSS to tell you when consultations of interest are published There are several departments […]
They’re working for us (dot org)
The folks at mySociety are really moving on Society 2.0. mySociety is a charity which builds natty Web 2.0 sites that give people simple, tangible benefits in the civic and community aspects of their lives. It also aims to teach the public and voluntary sectors, through demonstration, how to most efficiently use the internet to […]
Who’s driving Gov 2.0?
We’re fortunate to have a new encumbent as Minister for Transformational Government at the Cabinet Office who really gets it – Westminster über-blogger, Tom Watson. His vision is encapsulated in his recent speech at the Transformational Government Event. And his plans for the immediate future are ambitious: I see my job as helping you to […]
