Webmaster blog

So far I have not been very good at demonstrating our work visually. To begin redressing this I have had a go at visualising some of the results from last year’s political engagement research.
In one part of our survey, school students in the 11-19 age range were asked which topics they thought they should be [...]

Comments (0)

Usability testing for websites is something many of us should do much better, and I’m as guilty as anyone. So why, I thought, don’t we do it together?
A lot of money can be spent on usability testing, but that doesn’t need to be the case; testing on the cheap with a few [...]

Comments (5)

The only difference between engaging someone in public consultation and engaging them in user testing is, as far as I can see, the type of reward they get for taking part.
With user testing it’s easy: the client pays a company an extortionate amount of money to test their product; or, if it’s being done on [...]

Comments (0)

Ordnance Survey recently released the boundary data for council wards so that anyone can use it. On Saturday we built a demonstration of what can be achieved by combining it with other public data.
A bunch of us gathered in Birmingham to spend a day looking at data and mapping, at Andrew McKenzie’s Mapitude event on Saturday. [...]

Comments (8)

On Monday the Local Public Data Panel held a workshop in Birmingham with local council officers, bloggers and activists to address the challenges of releasing local data for anyone to use.
The aim of the workshop was ‘to generate ideas and understanding about what is needed to drive the local public data initiative at a local [...]

Comments (1)

There has been a concerted effort over the last couple of years to encourage local people to get their voices heard and to take control of local issues.
As a result of this burgeoning ‘hyperlocal news‘ movement, more and more blogs and community websites are springing up: people are finding and reporting on [...]

Comments (0)

We are trying to get better at engaging with people online, in order to offer our audience the best and most appropriate information and support that we can.
Like many organisations now, we are aware that our website is not where most people will be talking about us or our line of work. Therefore we need [...]

Comments (0)

I’m looking for a meticulous editor to spend two days editing existing web pages in line with a given style guide.
Ideally you should be based in Birmingham (UK) so I can work closely with you and assist with inevitable technical issues.
The work needs to be completed within the next two weeks.
If you are interested please [...]

Comments (0)

These are exciting times for civic engagement. The internet, coupled with interest from both activists and policy-makers, is daily throwing up new ways to test the relationship between citizen and state. We should grasp the opportunity to explore how to make the most responsible and effective use of these new tools for the good of [...]

Comments (0)

There has been a lot of noise lately calling on local authorities to embrace social media. Clearly this is only useful if it’s an effective way to engage with citizens, and if the authority learns from it to improve that engagement. A number of tools can be used to measure this, but now there’s one [...]

Comments (3)