Show Us A Better Way winner.
A while back blog commenter mittfh (how will we say that on the radio?) pointed out how few views many council information videos get on YouTube. This one for example has only 20 views at the time of posting this link.
It shows how hard it is for government to communicate public information on-line. Perhaps the tech-savvy members of the public could show government, local and national, a better way?
In fact that's the idea behind the government's innovative Show US a Better Way Competition which asked the public to suggest news ways of communicating public information. The winner has just been announced. It's a proposal for a site called Can I Recycle It - which will help you find recycling services near you.
All the ideas for new government information services to be developed as a result of the competition have come from the public and there are some interesting proposals: a site that will help you find a local public toilet, a site to help you find cycle-paths and a website that will help you locate nearby post-boxes. My personal favourites among the unsuccessful entries were SeeCCTV and something called Baby Blob..don't ask why.
PS. If you emailed in about Tom Watson inadvertently saying "tetrabyte" in the interview on PM, it is of course terabyte.. Given the state of the art I wonder if you could fit a terabyte in a Tetrapak carton? Probably...
UPDATE: Met up with Dan Jellinek yesterday. He'd just finished chairing the e-democracy 08 conference which discussed the way government engages with the web. We discussed mittfh's comment, crime maps and some other iPM'ish issues. Interesting stuff.
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Sad, I know, but my IT colleagues fell about when I related Mr. Watson's gaffe to them, as did my fourteen-year-old son. I'm afraid any credibility the minister had built up over the course of a fairly reasonable interview came crashing down round his ears with that slip. According to the Cabinet Office website he 'has a well-established interest in technology' - or what passes for it in government circles, perhaps.
I suppose surprise is rather a naive reaction when we consider our illustrious tradition of failed public-sector IT projects, or the fact that the government are asking the general public for suggestions for the next one!
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How to pronounce my nickname...
Good question! I've used it for various online forums (fora?) for 8 years, and it's only since joining the PM blog the need has arisen for it to be pronounced.
The current favourite appears to be something along the lines of "mitt-fuh" - at least that's what it's been pronounced as on FrogFests - and at least once on the 'regular' PM programme...
And for the benefit of those who read comments out on air - I am male (or at least I was the last time I looked down there...)
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Excellent a mystery solved! (The pronunciation of you nickname I mean)
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That's not the only Tom gaff. The winning website is not a new idea and has already been done by someone else. Here it is: www.recyclenow.com
So the gov are spending at least £20K on duplicating a site that already exists while praising the winning entry for being an innovative idea? Hello?
If they've got that much money to waste then at least exchange it for some fireworks and give everyone a show while it burns! Or pay for a cancer patient's drugs to give them an extra 6 months of life with their family. Just don't waste our money re-inventing the wheel.
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Elsewhere ( http://tinyurl.com/699k7w ) I came across another reason for the results to be of mixed fortune, and fully expected to hear about it during iPM.
Of course, while there are resources like Microsoft's Virtual Earth (see http://maps.live.com/ ) and Google Maps being used to show "mashed" data, and various mobile networks show postcode areas, they can demonstrate uses of the tools, but the lack of open (or affordable) access to data will hold UK development back (some companies may have other ways to get the data - for example look on various property search sites and one can assume they have used the geographic data collected from GPS devices - the estate agencies had a large number of mobile employees - an ideal source of the data independent of any central/costly suppliers).
I checked some prices for the US 5-digit ZIP code data, and there's a range from $20 to $40. The more detailed data (in the form 12345-1234 called ZIP+4) can cost from $250 to $800, so not impossible for small businesses. How do those prices compare with the UK, I wonder (I've never been tempted to look in detail about the PAF database, but believe that rather than get full access, there are per-lookup charges - probably 'required' by Royal Mail as a money making exploit!)
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