Posts Tagged ‘local government’

Youth Parliament Elections campaign – a social media case study

Monday, July 12th, 2010
Make Your Vote Count! Scottish Youth Parliament Elections

Campaign graphic

Later this week I’ll be attending a national awards ceremony, at which one of our campaigns has been nominated for an award. ** UPDATE – we won! **

Edinburgh’s 2009 Scottish Youth Parliament election campaign has already won a Bronze award in the Marketing Society’s Star Awards – the only local authority campaign to win in any category. It was also a finalist in the CIPR national awards, in the category of best campaign under £10k.

It has now been shortlisted for the “Government to Citizen Communications” category of the Good Communication Awards, and I’ll be representing my organisation at the ceremony on Thursday.

The tremendous reception that the campaign has received is thanks to the enthusiasm, innovation and hard work not only of my colleagues, but also of the young people involved in the elections, and I’m proud to represent such a campaign as just one of the many people who worked to make it happen.

The following gives a flavour of the efforts, and hopefully offers some inspiration to others, especially those involved in e-participation and youth engagement.

More about the campaign and our use of social media

Scotland’s first GovCamp

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

A quick note for those involved in working with government in Scotland, particularly in digital engagement. The end of July will see Scotland’s first GovCamp.

There’s no agenda as yet – in the tradition of GovCamps, we’ll be setting that on the day, but there will no doubt be a strong Web 2.0 and social media theme.

The Informatics Forum in Edinburgh will provide an inspiring space for discussion and engagement, the sharing of experiences and creation of new ideas.

You can find out more, and book your free place for the event, at http://scotgovcamp.eventbrite.com

Also read this preview of the event by Improvement Service reporter David Friel.

Thanks to Lesley Thomson, from the Scottish Government, for getting the ball rolling.

EDIT – the event now has an official site at http://scotgovcamp.wordpress.com

Election Count 2.0 in Edinburgh

Friday, May 7th, 2010
Election map showing Twitter updates

Twitter Election Map

Over the past year or two there has been a palpable surge of interest in using Web 2.0 in the public sector, and in most cases that’s a very positive thing. The added value that such platforms can bring to the services we deliver is obvious, opening new channels of outreach and improving engagement and involvement.

During last night’s election count, the City of Edinburgh Council were putting Web 2.0 to marvellous use by keeping citizens bang up to date with progress of the count taking place over at Meadowbank Stadium.

The following is a summary of what the council did on the night.

More about Election Count 2.0 in Edinburgh

Better Connected 2010 – comparing the 4 star homepages

Monday, April 26th, 2010

As we’re currently considering designs for our organisation’s new website homepage, I thought it would be interesting to bring together all of the 11 local authority websites which were awarded the full 4 stars by SOCITM’s Better Connected 2010 report.

View homepage screenshots from the top 11 councils

Better Connected 2010 and the changing web

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Hot on the heels of their (always hotly debated) annual report on the state of local government websites (Better Connected 2010), we were pleased to welcome SOCITM reviewer John Fox to a workshop session this morning to provide what he described as a “web content ra-ra-ra presentation”.

Disclaimer – I haven’t had the chance to read the full #BC10 report yet. I hope to add my own perspectives to this blog once I have. What follows is a summary of John’s presentation on the report and what he thinks it means for local authorities.
More on Better Connected 2010 and John’s presentation

Cybersquatting 2.0 – protecting your name in Social Media

Monday, June 8th, 2009

The rise and rise of Social Networking Sites has brought about new risks to an organisation’s online brand, but whilst my last post explored Web 2.0 mistakes which organisation could make themselves, another type of risk is what others may do with your brand if you don’t get there first, through Social Media Cybersquatting. The risks of cybersquatters in a Web 2.0 world

Report from Scottish Public Sector Barcamp 27th March

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
Microsoft Offices at Waverley Gate

Microsoft Offices, Edinburgh

At 5pm last Friday, dozens of like-minded web enthusiasts gathered at the Microsoft offices at Waverley Gate, Edinburgh, for a Scottish Public Sector Barcamp meetup. On the agenda was everything from Web 2.0 and social media to the credit crunch and website rationalisation, and we only had two hours to put the world to rights.
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Don’t just sit there – debate!

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

I love argument, I love debate. I don’t expect anyone just to sit there and agree with me, that’s not their job.

Margaret Thatcher

Debate and discussion are vital to the progress and development of web accessibility. With that in mind it’s great to see that, as ever, there is plenty of discussion going on out there in the fora, blogs and Tweets of those interested in the subject.
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