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The government’s Localism Bill was published yesterday, as was a guidance document. The latter confirms that power will be devolved to the community and that data will be made public for the scrutiny of that power.

“The Big Society is what happens whenever people work together for the common good. It is about achieving our collective goals in ways that are more diverse, more local and more personal.

“The best contribution that central government can make is to devolve power, money and knowledge to those best placed to find the best solutions to local needs: elected local representatives, frontline public service professionals, social enterprises, charities, co-ops, community groups, neighbourhoods and individuals.”

Central to this is a continued commitment to releasing public data for the public to use:

“Public access to public data provides the evidence base for public pressure and action, both on the part of those proposing new ways to deliver services and on the part of service users thus enabled to make an informed choice. This is what we mean by ‘transparency’: the ability to see how government actually works - or doesn’t work.

“…there can be no local innovation without local control of resources. Nor can local decision- making succeed without access to the government data on which informed judgement depends”.

The approach is to “focus on outcome, not process, and to release such knowledge into the public domain as raw data - so that anyone can analyse and visualise the information, spot trends and make connections that would otherwise go unseen”.

I haven’t yet seen anything that puts an expectation on the voluntary sector to release data, and to do so in an open format, but if they are to deliver services that the public are expected to scrutinise then inevitably it will need to happen. And it will, rightly, need to happen across the board - regardless of whether an organisation is delivering a public service or not.

The question then is what data should be released, and how? NCVO is already encouraging charities to release data and Open Charities has opened up the charity register; the Charity Commission itself, however, seems to be lagging behind at the moment.

I expect it won’t be allowed to lag for long though. The voluntary sector may well be about to find itself under a lot more scrutiny, not just from government and funders but the general public too.

There is more discussion around open local data on the Open Local Data Blog.

I have been developing a draft Twitter strategy and policy, based on Neil Williams’ draft strategy for government departments.

Although a long way from finished, I am releasing a very early draft now because Neil’s has received prominent media attention.

My version is already substantially different from Neil’s, and I still have a long way to go. There’s a lot that I want to rearrange, re-work or cut completely; it does not constitute the Citizenship Foundation’s strategy for using Twitter.

My main reason for releasing it now is that there are some inaccuracies in the original, particularly in regard to replies and direct messages, which are in danger of informing government strategies.

But hats off to Neil, for doing a superb job producing a draft from which people like me could work.

Download the latest version of my Draft Twitter Strategy.

Updates

• 29 July, 13:30: File replaced with version 2. It should be read as three related but independent documents: ‘Strategy’, ‘Policy’ and ‘Appendices’.
• 28 July, 09:28: the draft strategy document will periodically be replaced with newer versions while it’s under development.

Feedback

This is feedback that I have already given for Neil’s document, reproduced here in case it’s useful.

• Not sure I agree that having a Twitter account renders web feeds (eg RSS, Atom) redundant. Twitter is immediate and pretty ephemeral: I might stumble across something on Twitter but I’ll track it using a feed reader.
• A strict clearance procedure can be counter-productive as it can severely undermine the immediate and conversational nature of Twitter. Not easy to avoid in the public sector I imagine, but my take on it is to delegate oversight responsibility down to line managers.
• I don’t think it’s possible to have an ‘organisational voice’ in a conversation. An organisation as an entity does not have an individual, informal, human voice: it is the collective voices of the staff (on behalf of the organisation) that engage in discussion, not the organisation itself. Therefore I don’t agree that a corporate account should be anonymous: it should be clear who the person behind it is. I’m waiting with interest for ConnectTweet, as I think it may solve a lot of issues.
• Having a high following/followers ratio is generally seen as a good thing, not a bad thing, by reputation grading services.
• @replies no longer work like that: people will only see your reply if they are following both you and the person you’re replying too (explained on Twitter and reported on Mashable)
• You don’t need to be following someone to send them a DM, only they need to be following you (DMs explained by Twitter)
• I don’t think ‘friends’ and ‘following’ are different. As I understand it ‘friends’ was replaced by ‘following’ as a clarification (‘What is Following’? (Twitter Help))