Many thanks to Bernard De Broglio for passing me this link after we met at an event last week discussing online participation for local government with members of the Australian Government Web2 Taskforce. It tells the story of how Birmingham City Council in the UK spent 2.8 million pounds sterling on a website that was [...]
I am always explaining to risk averse media specialists that the ability of organisations to control the message has gone in these days of interactive media. By way of example I show them sites like Qantas Sucks and Council Gripe. This eveining I came across this wonderful example (thanks to Bob Crawshaw whose Twittering alerted [...]
We’ve were having a debate amongst ourselves a few weeks ago about anonymity in online community forums. We take a fairly standard approach to the issue with our public forums. Anyone can sign up and leave a comment under a psuedonym of their choosing as long as they have a valid email address. They can [...]
Newcastle City Council recently went online to host selective consultations with their community. Their new online engagement site, which they choose to build themselves rather than using a specialist provider, asked users a series of personal questions (presumably to allow sampling) before allowing access to an area where feedback on issues would be sought. As [...]
We are sometimes asked about the “accessibility” of the internet as a legitimate tool for community engagement. The inference being that not everybody has access to the “net”, so is it an equitable technology. The first response is that, in Australia at least – and I would imagine most other countries that are likely to [...]
Recently I get asked more and more about risk management in the context of online attacks and criticisms from the community. For the past 12 months we have offered clients a web forum linked to a sophisticated reporting tool. For some this is seen as the most proactive way to forestall web attacks from other [...]
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! We are running a consultation for the Minister for the Hunter about the future of the rail spur into Newcastle. So far the majority of respondents are in favour of the line’s removal – or at least replacement with a lighter form of rail, though it must [...]
I’ve written on this blog before about the fear of many institutons that they might be hijacked by either an individual or a group using multiple logins to dominate a consultation process. We have always advised clients that this is not a risk so long as the interpretation of the results of a consultation is [...]
Earlier this year the City of Melbourne embarked on a collaborative process using a wiki for the Future Melbourne project. It is a really positive sign that a City Council should make such a strong committment to public participation that it undertakes such an innovative initiative. This demonstrates an openess to innovation that is sadly [...]
I’m sitting at the Bang the Table display at the IAP2 Conference in Glasgow. A fantastic gathering of specialists in community participation and a great place to share ideas about emerging best practice in online engagement and participation. I thought (given that this is a quiet moment) that I would attempt to set out 10 [...]