The majestic epic brilliance of the got, got need machine…
But what’s also caught my eye is a web application knocked up by brewcamp colleague Simon Whitehouse from Birmingham. Called the Got, Got Need Machine it’s a way of working out based on maths how many stickers you need to buy in order to complete your collection based on probability and a whole load of sums. You can see it here:
Me and Simon have talked before about open data and data. I’m a bit of a sceptic. When I see it demonstrated it’s brilliant. But I think the open data community are too inward looking and too keen to impress each other rather than impress real people whose lives they could make a big difference to. Open data has not delivered on a promise to change the world. That’s not to say it won’t. But it’s reaching out as this does that will help it.
So, if data crunched to produce something can work for Panini stickers what could it do crunched for other comms projects?
A hack day? That’s breaking into the Pentagon computer, right?
Why would normal people go to something like that?
Why stare at banks of geeks staring at laptops coding?
As a spectator sport it fails. Utterly.
But the potential of it is immense.
Why?
Because getting several talented people in the same room means better ideas surface.
But you simply MUST make it open for everyone. By that, I mean they must be space for non-tecky people too and I’m not sure that always happens.
A room full of geeks will come up with geek ideas.
A room full of the digitally unconnected won’t know where to start.
It’s when you put them both you are beginning to be on the road to a winner.
Although not strictly a hack day, for me this pro-am blend is why something like Local by Social works as an idea. Or CityCamp. Getting real people in the same room as techy people to come up with solutions to problems.
After attending a couple of hack days and being out of my usual comfort zone and contributing little other than cups of coffee and a few – often bad – ideas here’s a few things that struck me.
WHAT’S NEEDED FOR A HACK DAY?
Some space. Some volunteers. Some time. The internet. Some people who know about stuff. Plug sockets. Coffee. Pizza is optional.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT?
It means people actively re-using using data – or information – to produce a web application or an interesting new website. There are some that say local government shouldn’t be doing this themselves. It should be people in the open data community. I don’t buy that one. Outside the pockets of open data innovation in the country, there’s a role for local government to produce things using open data. If there are no coders in a small town or if the market hasn’t moved there, then why not?
Similarly, if there is a need to present information in a more interesting way than just a static website.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR PR?
Yet again, it’s more evidence that Comms 3.0 is upon us. That’s a subject I’ve blogged about before which you can read here. It’s more evidence that the old school press officer is not the gatekeeper to the message. But the forward thinking comms person doesn’t need to write script and eat pizza. They just need an appreciation of what’s going on. They can also contribute with ideas and inspiration.
WHAT CAN BE BUILT AT A HACK DAY?
On Twitter, Digital Birmingham’s Si Whitehouse made the point that a hack day doesn’t always need to have something working at the end of it to be a success. It’s a fair point. Sometimes it’s enough to try out a concept or a new approach that could be expanded and invested in at a later date. Or just make connections. Or create the data itself.
WHAT AREA WORKS BEST FOR A HACK DAY?
As far as I’m concerned, an area that is sitting on piles of data and is quite keen on people to come and build things with it. It’s as simple as that.
Here’s a few examples of things produced at hack days.
GO FISH: Something that makes you explore a museum archive and tell a story.
At the WAG Hack Day in West Bromwich staged by Black Country Museums the excellent Ben Proctor and others built this something useful that demonstrates it. It’s a way of pulling nine items from the collection and you building your own story about them. It’s creative. It also gets you to explore the museum’s stores.
WHO WANTS TO NOT GET STABBED? A way of comparing how safe you are in rural and city locations.
An excellent game that uses crime and Google street view data. You can play it here. You get certain scenarios put in front of you and you get to choose which is safer. You’d be quite surprised at what the actual safe places are.
LOOQUEST: A game that directs you to nearby public toilets.
With a retro look, this hack by Neontribe is really quite wonderful and makes you smile, is a help and raises the problem of a lack of public lavs. I kept getting eaten by the toilet. You can play it here.
EDINBURGH PLANNING APP MAP: Takes planning applications and puts them on a map.
WARD MAPPER: A tool to compare and contrast vital ward data.
At Hackitude in Birmingham, this rather fine model to demonstrate how data from data.gov.uk can be turned from something dusty emerged. You can read the blog from Stuart Harrison here.
SO, WHAT TOOLS CAN NON-CODERS USE AS A PLATFORM FOR SOMETHING INTERESTING?
There are scores of web tools you don’t have to be a coder at. You can be like me. Someone who dabbles and explores a bit.
Here’s a list I drew-up at the Black Country Museum hack day at The Public in West Bromwich. They had history data in mind but could as well apply to other areas of local government data and as a way to engage with residents.
Flickr.com – as a place to post images from museum stores and encourage people to submit new shots.
History Pin – a brilliant interactive site that you can literally pin old pictures onto contemporary Google Streetview images.
Sometimes you need to stop listening to geeks. Sometimes you need to start listening to people in pinstripe suits.
When it comes to open data there’s a gem of a report by Deloitte Canada. ’Understanding government‘ is a belter. It’s an assessment by suits for suits of what open data can achieve. It’s worth downloading.
Think of this post as a review. It’s worth reading the whole thing but here are some bullet points. The sub-headings are mine rather than from the report.
How social media helps open data…
“The social media culture in particular is driving governments to open up while offering the imagination and expertise necessary to improve public services.
“In response, government organisations are embracing the idea that public data should be broadly available in a re-usable format and that governing should be a collaborative enterprise between government and its citizens.
Open data can help…
“The good news is that open government initiatives can help engage the public in making the difficult budgetary choices governments are grappling with.
“It will place governments under an unprecedented level of scrutiny and accountability while offering the potential to improve public services.
Open data is not a threat…
“Rather than view the changing relationship between government and its stakeholders as a threat or an inconvenience ncreasingly see it as an opportunity to engage citizens, non-governmental organisations, businesses and other entities in the design of new services and the resolution of old problems.”
Open data may even have stopped the MP’s expenses scandal…
“If the UK had put its database of members’ expense re-mbursements in the public domain in the first place could the scandal have been avoided? Politicians who know that constituents are watching their activities are much more likely to be careful about how they spend public funds.”
The four benefits of open data…
Better inform the public;
Enhance accountability;
Strengthen communities;
Facilitate markets.
Make a noise about open data…
“Agencies should not quietly put data online. Rather, they should tell the public what they are doing and why, while seeking their participation and engagement. Data that sits in a file are not worth much. Information becomes powerful only as its consumers start to apply it in ways that create value.”
Let people build things…
“Let the users design.
“This form of user-driven application development, also known as crowd sourcing, user innovation or open sourcing provides governments with an unprecedented opportunity to engage citizens in unlocking the power of public data.”
What to do with user-generated content…
“Encourage users to create applications. Incorporate or adapt user-designed applications into publicly hosted sites. Seek and maintain a dialogue with apps developers. Create methods and channels for listening and responding to user demands for data.”
Don’t just let citizens analyse data. Government needs to be better at it…
“Government leaders recognise that in addition to leveraging community resources to analyse public data they must get better at analysing vast stores of public data – in addition to online resources.
“Leading governments are investing in building a core competency in data analytics.
“This involves acquiring the software tools to manipulate vast stores of public data – often provided by more than one agency – and investing in the people and processes to drive analysis and take action.”
Isn’t data a bit vast? Where do you start to look at data as government?
“Focus analytics on your core mission. Approach data analytics as a new core competency not a new tool set. Enlist key partners inside your agency. Leverage the online community.”
Closing thoughts…
“In an information-driven age, the ability of governments to seize the opportunity may ultimately determine whether a government fails or succeed.”
As one wag said: “A Prime Minister addressing a room full of geeks about open data? I’ve waited years for this.”
At the Wellcome Trust in London more than 200 people gathered for the International Open Data conference.
David Cameron delivered a recorded message and Minister Francis Maude was there in person. So was uber-geek Tim Berners-Lee.
Arranged by the Open Knowledge Foundation This was a chance to launch the UK Government’s data set of its department’s spend over £25,000.
That’s 194,000 lines of text and £80 billion of spending. The link to it is here.
What’s the point in that? The aim is to open the Government’s books to allow residents, journalists and business a chance to have a look.
Pithily one newspaper commentator posed the question: ‘A great leap forward or masochistic folly?’
It is madness isn’t it?
Tim Berners-Lee.
Actually, no. It’s a movement supported by left and right alike which has the aim of cutting waste, allowing entrepreneurs to flourish and a fairer society.
The event may have been Whitehall focussed but there are powerful golden strands that run through all government. Local and national.
Local government has already been asked to publish items of spend over £500 under the label ‘spending transparency.’
They have until January 1 to do it and as Cameron and Maude 100 of more than 300 odd councils had published.
There is a feeling within Whitehall that some will quietly choose not to publish calculating the flak they get for not completing a slightly arcane process is less than the grief a particular financial skeleton may pose.
It’s unlikely Whitehall will allow this to pass without prompting closer inspection.
Walsall Council House.
It’s also unlikely local government will not be asked to publish more as open data. There is more to come. Much more.
Here are some broad messages from the day for local government:
SO, WHAT’S THE BIG PICTURE?
Open data won’t be an easy ride for people in authority. As Francis Maude said: “It’s going to be very uncomfortable for government and local government. Media outlets will find things that will cause embarrassment.”
It’s not going to go away. It’s easy to like open data in opposition, says Maude. You can shine a light at others’ decisions. However, he pledged there were two key advocates – him and the Prime Minister.
The aim is to move influence away from the traditional centres – “information is power. This is a power shift,” says Maude, “to move the decision making away from Westminister.
Expect better decision making on spending – “Once you know you are being scrutinised you’ll be more careful. MP knows this all to well,” Maude says.
It’s FOI turbo charged – It would have taken journalists years of submitting FOI requests to build up the picture revealed in the £25k data sets, the Guardian say.
HOW DOES THIS AFFECT THE PRIVATE SECTOR?
Contracts should allow for open data to be released – The presumption for contracts is transparency, says Maude.
It’ll create wealth – Open government data will create a £6 billion industry, says the Minister.
A website to point the spotlight on the private sector too – Chris Taggart has built opencorporates to shine the light at which big companies are doing well from public sector contracts.
HOW WILL ALL THIS BENEFIT GOVERNMENT – CENTRAL AND LOCAL?
Waste detection – By spotting where the waste is money will be spent better, Francis Maude says.
Procurement needs to get its act together – know what is in the contract before you sign a deal since the detail what it will purchase will be closely monitored, the Minister says.
WHAT IS NEXT?
Historical data will be released – There will be open data from previous administrations. This will help to compare and contrast with the current era.
More public agencies will follow – There are 100,000 public bodies. There’s no timescale for these just yet.
There will be a right to data – David Cameron has pledged that people will ask and receive data for a personal and business use. This is massive for local democracy.
Open data will move from spending into crime – Expect interactive crime maps in the New Year, Maude says.
SO, WHO WILL BE LOOKING THROUGH THIS DATA?
Journalists – the media needs to be data savvy. Data journalism will become more and more important, says Tim Berners-Lee.
“Chatting people up in pubs was one part of your job,” he told journalists in the room. “Poring over data and equiping yourself with the tools to look for the juicy bits will be important.
“Data journalism will be part of the future.”
Right now, local newspapers haven’t grasped what data journalism is. Don’t hold your breath just yet either.
Traditional news is emergency services calls, court and council agendas. It’s not data mining with csv files.
What may put it on the agenda are national stories re-written with a local.
Hyperlocal bloggers – many bloggers have geek tendancies that will happily work with online tools. Stories from all this will be broken by an 18-year-old rather than a laptop. That’s quite exciting. Tools such as timetric.com where graphs can be built using data and embedded in blogs can help with this.
Geeks – an inexhaustable army of geeks will pore over the data – “what happens when the flashflood of geeks go away?” mused Tim Berners-Lee. “It’s perennial.”
Industry – Data company Spikes Cavell have released spotlightonspend.org to interpret local government data. This hasn’t been without criticism from the opendata community who argue against councils dealing solely with the company and not releasing open data too.
Social entrepreneurs – Chris Taggart has built openlylocal.com as a platform for local government data and has been a pioneer in the field.
Real people – Fascinatingly, The Guardian had a team of four working for four days on the data before it was published. They didn’t think they could glean everything themselves. What they did do was make it possible for the public to use the tools to search for stories. This is the wisdom of the crowd as an extra pair of hands in the newsroom. You can download their app here.
BUT IT’S NOT ALL GOOD NEWS….
There’s no funding for people to cross check the data – As one questioner pointed out the tools that held government to account – journalists – have historically been cross subsidised by other sources such as small ads.
There’s no funding for these resources. There’s a question mark against the sustainability and effectiveness of tools.
Creative commons credits:
Tim Berners-Lee: Paul Clarke via wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee
Was this the first data visualisation? Florence Nightingale uses statistical data to argue for healthcare reform for soldiers in the Crimean War.
Open data cutting edge? Like top hats, Christmas trees and giant factories the Victorians got there first.
They may not have built a chimney sweep Google death map. But their approach was similar. Collect the data. Publish it. Draw conclusions. Argue for change.
Don’t believe me?
Look at Florence Nightingale in her funny lace bonnet. Historian Dr Stephen Holliday in BBC History Magazine August 2010 writes about how she used statistics to
Florence Nightingale - 'funny lace bonnet.'
revolutionise the care of soldiers in the Crimean War.
By using statistics – data – she painted a picture to show a revolution in care was needed.
“When she reached Scutari the base for casualties from the Crimea,” Halliday writes, “Florence calculated that deaths from disease were seven times those arising in battle and used the campaign to campaign for better food, hygeine and clothing for the troops.”
Battered by the force of Florence’s figures and cutting edge reporting that forged the reputation of The Times the British government was forced into changes.
After the war Nightingale used her Royal connections coupled with arguments based on charts and tables to press for better standards for soldiers who even in peacetime had death rates double that of civilians.
The result? Death rates fell by 75 per cent.
Florence herself said that statistics were “the cipher by way we may read the hand of God.”
We may have lost that religious zeal but it’s an argument Tim Berners-Lee would recognise as a modern-day Florence Nightingale with a passion for data.
Tim Berners-Lee - 'a modern Florence Nightingale'.
Did she get it right all the time?
No. Here’s the warning from history.
By misreading available data Florence Nightingale later helped kill thousands of people.
How?
She used statistics to wrongly argue cholera was an airborne disease. It wasn’t.
It took London GP Dr John Snow to collect his own data on death rates in his patch to argue they were caused by a contaminated water supplies.
So what’s the message to today’s open data pioneers?
That first data visualisation you have in front of you may not be the whole picture.
The map that Dr John Snow drew to discover that cholera was a waterborne disease.
There may be more to it.
Remember the phrase ‘lies, damn lies and official statistics?’
Statistics were once hailed as the magic cure-all that revealed a hidden truth.
It’s been said that all data in some form or other is political. Let’s not see open data similarly tainted.
Back in the olden days all a press officer had to do was a write a press release and book a photo call.
Boy, how things have changed and more to the point are changing rapidly.
How web 2.0 and web 3.0 will affect the communications unit – or press office in old money – is something that I’ve spent a great deal of time mulling over. Why? Because it’s my job.
I’m a senior press officer at Walsall Council. The job I walked into in 2005 is almost unrecognisable to the one I do now. Yes, it now includes, Twitter, Facebook and other forms of social media – or web 2.0 if you are a bit of a geek. But it’s also open data and the challenges of web 3.0.
The nice people from Local Government Improvement and Delivery have asked me to lead a session at their Local by Social online conference on November 3 2010 at 3pm. Looking at the speaker line up it’s something of an honour. There’s plenty for people to get their teeth into on a whole range of subjects.
I’d very much like to hear what your thoughts are. Take part ion the session. Chip in. Listen. It’s all fine.
Firstly, here is a presentation designed as a starting point and to get the ball rolling…
Secondly, here are a few thoughts I blogged a month or two back. You can read the full version here.
In the days before the web the press office needs to:
Have basic journalism skills.
Know how the machinery of local government works.
Write a press release.
Work under speed to deadline.
Understand basic photography.
Understand sub-editing and page layouts.
For web 1.0 the press office also needed to:
Add and edit web content
For web 2.0 the press office also needs to:
Create podcasts
Create and add content to a Facebook page.
Create and add content to a Twitter stream.
Create and add content to Flickr.
Create and add content to a blog.
Monitor and keep abreast of news in all the form it takes from print to TV, radio and the blogosphere.
Develop relationships with bloggers.
Go where the conversation is whether that be online or in print.
Be ready to respond out-of-hours because the internet does not recognise a print deadline.
For web 3.0 the press office will also need to:
Create and edit geotagged data such as a Google map.
Create a data set.
Use an app and a mash-up.
Use basic html.
Blog to challenge the mis-interpretation of data.
But with web 3.0 upon us and the pace of change growing faster to stay relevant the comms team has to change.
Oh, the weather outside is frightful but the idea of doing cool things is always delightful.
Last year, the idea of tweeting when your gritters was going out was revolutionary.
Around half a dozen councils were leftfield enough to do it and the idea spread.
Public sector web standards organisation SOCITM picked up on it making it mainstream with their report for subscribers.
Is that enough?
Can we stand still now?
The fact is local government needs to innovate like never before.
Someone famous once said when you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for everyone telling you you’re nuts.
So, where’s the innovation this year? Here’s some ideas and pointers on how straight forward they are…
1. MAP YOUR GRIT ROUTES
In the West Midlands, there’s some amazing innovation from mapping geeks.
Bright people from Mappa Mercia including the excellent Andy Mabbett last year built a grit map on Open Street Map to show grit routes in Birmingham. They dug out the routes from pdfs on the council website.
Birmingham City Council have linked to it from their transport pages and we at Walsall Council are tweeting it when the weather gets bad.
That’s a good example of working with a talented and community-minded online community.
Advantage: Community engagement.
Disadvantage: You need mapping geeks to be grit geeks too.
2. TWITTER GRITTER
Everytime you go out you tweet the fact. If you’re not doing it you should. It’s not enough to provide a service at 2am. You need to tell people. Why? Because they won’t know your council tax is being spent in such a way and they may well ring your harrassed staff at a time when they are thinly stretched.
Advantage: Community engagement. Cuts down unneccesary contact.
Disadvantage: You’ll need some kind of rota or it’ll all fall on one person’s shoulders.
3. YOUTUBE
A short clip to explain what the gritting service is all about. Shot on a Flip video It’s a good way of communicating what is being done.
Embedding the video in the service’s pages should be straight forward. Linking to YouTube and posting via Twitter and Facebook is easy. Tweet the link when you’re team are hitting the road
Advantage: Creates blog-friendly web 2.0 video content.
Disadvantage: You need a Flip video. The process isn’t instant.
4. MAP GRIT BIN LOCATIONS
Publish grit routes as open data? Why not.
But beware the perils of derived data that quicksand argument that means anything based on Ordnance Survey is mired in dispute.
Advantage: Publishing open data increases transparency
Disadvantages: It can’t be based on OS maps.
5 FACEBOOK
As local government Facebook sites mature and grow there’s more reason to post grit updates there too.
Drawbacks? Not all phones will allow you to post to fan pages and you may have to log on at a PC or a laptop.
Advantage: You reach the massive Facebook demographic.
Disadvantage: Your Facebook fanpage is harder to update than a profile.
6. LIVE TWEET
A trip around the borough in a gritter with a camera phone geo-tagging your tweets. It works as a one off and builds a direct connection.
At Walsall, we tweeted the testing of the gritters in a dry-run for winter including geotagged shots from the cab itself as it trundled around the streets.
Advantage: A service from a different perspective.
Disadvantage: Labour and time intensive.
7. TEXT AND EMAIL ALERTS
Sometimes we can be so struck by new gadgets that we can forget the platforms your Dad and mother-in-law have.
Simply speaking, there are more mobile phones in the UK than people.
Many councils are charged around 8p a text to issue an SMS. That’s a cost that has to be picked up from somewhere. But using the standard costs per enquiry of around £7 face-to-face and £5 over the phone the 8p charge starts to look viable.
Advantage: You can reach large numbers of people and cut down potentially on unavoidable contact.
Disadvantage: It costs.
8. BIG SOCIETY TWITTER GRITTER
Not every council has the resources to tweet its gritting. In Cumbria, the community of Alsthom high in the dales regularly gets cut off in the snow. Fed-up with the council response the town clubbed together to buy their own gritter.
Community and digital innovator John Popham floated the interesting idea of the community stepping in to tweet gritting activity. In effect, a Big Society Twitter Gritter It’s a fascinating idea, would share the burden and may fill the gap where a council doesn’t have the digital skills or the staff.
Advantage: If there are residents willing it’s a good partnership potentially.
Disadvantage: It’s dependent on volunteer power.
9. QR CODES
What are they? Funny square things that your mobile phone can identify and can download some information about. I don’t pretend to fully understand them and I’m not sure if they’ve reached a tipping point in society just yet. However, Sarah Lay of Derbyshire County Council is looking at adding QR codes to grit bins to allow people to report problems. It’s a fascinating idea that needs looking at.
Advantages: Tech-savvy citizens can use them to pinpoint problems.
Disadvantages: A format that is still finding traction amongst the rest of the population.
10. OPEN DATA
What can you publish as open data? Wrack your brains and consult the winter service plan. There’s grit routes themselves. There’s the amount of grit stockpiled. There’s the amount of grit spread day-by-day.
Advantage: Open data is good for transparency.
Disadvantages: Day-by-day updating could be tricky as engineers are snowed under. If you’ll forgive the pun.
Links:
Creative commons:
Walsall grit pile Dan Slee http://www.flickr.com/photos/danieldslee/5087392858/
Four Seasons bridge http://www.flickr.com/photos/fourseasonsgarden/2340923499/sizes/l/in/photostream/
Twitter gritter Dan Slee http://www.flickr.com/photos/danieldslee/5115786276/
A few months on and the shine is wearing. Yes, they deserve praise for innovation but bright people have pointed out that you can do so much more if you publish a little bit more than a handful of categories.
Change was one of the themes of a session in Birmingham by Vicky Sergeant of SOCITM and hosted by Birmingham Council on the subject of publishing spending transparency open data.
It was a chance for people to bounce ideas and was an alphabetti spaghetti of a gathering with SOCITM, LGA and LeGSB.
Will Perrin from the Local Data Panel that helps shape data.gov.uk policy delivered a clear message:
It’s now down to councils to be brave and stand on their own two feet.
In the words of social media pioneers: Just Flipping Do It.
The combined efforts of the groups at the meeting are likely to publish at some stage some valuable advice on how best publishing spend can be put on line. These are things that struck me in the meantime.
Here are 12 key pieces of advice I took from the day
1) Publish open data-related FOI requests. Great idea. Further research shows you’ll have to be careful about publishing personal data not just in the name and address field but also in the text of the response.
2) The size of the dataset would double if it included ALL spend.
3) You can run a programme if you are clever to remove – or redact – at source personal data from social care and children’s services data.
4) You may need to make it clear to suppliers that this change is taking place. Not all are following this whole debate. In fact, I’d be amazed if any of them are.
5) Commercial confidentiality is a grey area. As Will said, the Information Commissioner’s presumption is to publish in the public interest but there is worryingly no case law to show where this has been tested.
6) Publish a unique identifier for your authority when you are publishing open data. Finance people will know what this is. It identoifies the line of data as being from a specific council.
7) Put an email address as a first point of contact for residents queries. Maybe people don’t have to go down a 20-day Freedom of Information response route first to get an answer.
8)Set-up an Open Data Panel in your council to keep-up the pace of publication.
9) Use the licence that can be found at data.gov.uk. It’s been looked at by government lawyers. Creative Commons while great hasn’t really been tested in law in the UK.
10) There are a lot of codes in local government finance. If you don’t know what a CIPFA BVACOP code is make friends with someone who does.
11) Don’t plough a lone furrow. As a council or an officer don’t be alone. The Communities of Practice website is an excellent place to learn and discuss.
12) Guidance maybe getting drawn-up but don’t let this stop you. The LGA, SOCITM and others are looking what would work best. Don’t wait for them, however.
13) Communications is important. You need to explain it internally as well as to elected members, residents and suppliers.
14) Getting management on board. Yes, local government is being asked to do this. Yes, a enthusiastic volunteer is still better than 10 pressed men.
15) Publish monthly. Some in the web community are baffled as to why publication can’t be done at the end of every working day. As a compromise the Local Data Panel are saying publish monthly but within a month of month end.
Ian Carbutt from the LGA made some excellent points at the meeting. He points out there are three main areas that have several sections to them.
What and who its for: Local authority ID code, directorate, goods and services, service department.
Payment details: invoices, invoice number, net amount, VAT, gross amount, date of payment.
Supplier: name, contract title, supplier company number or VAT reference.
Pick from those three paints a better, more complete picture and may lead to fewer FOI requests.
Just 12 months on and he’s out of date. Or rather, he needs rebooting slightly.
If web 1.0 was the equivalent of pinning up a digital public notice with web 2.0 we started to learn how to listen.
With web 3.0 we’ll be learning a whole new set of skills. The role of open data will be central to journalism and hand in hand as a consequence with PR. I wrote an idiots guide to it here a few months back and boy, I’m still learning.
With the open data revolution gathering pace reporters must now also be at home navigating a data store as they are on the Town Hall press benches. Press officers must do likewise.
Why? Because the avalanche of public information that will be released has the potential to sweep all before it and drown the unprepared.
Mathew Ingram, the communities editor of The Globe and Mail in Toronto, famously has said “the golden age of computer assisted reporting is at hand.”
Open Data logo
Data journalism is a phrase that will become as familiar in journalism colleges as Teeline shorthand and exam favourite The Oxdown Gazette. What is data journalism? It’s the use of apps and mash-ups to mine for news amongst released data. Isn’t that for geeks? No. Where once a council committee report would bear fruit the data set is the new news source.
Open data brings transparency and openness.
Think of it as FOI turbo charged and you’re not even close.
Hyperlocal bloggers who are at home on the web are light years ahead in the interpretation of open data compared to print journalists.
Some journalism courses understand this. The excellent Birmingham City University gets it in spades.
So where does this leave the press officer?
The fashionable thing to say is the press officer as gatekeeper will be redundant by web 2.0 and buried by web 3.0. For me, that’s hooey.
But the old-style press officer who has served time as a hack and can only write a press release is a dead man walking.
What is needed to keep pace with the information arms race are new skills.
The ability to work with or create a mash-up will become as important as having a notebook or a sharp pencil.
Will the press officer for web 3.0 be an allrounder? Definitely. Will they have to have the command of every skill? No. But the team he belongs to sure as hell collectively will have.
At the risk of sounding in years to come as a BBC Tomorows’ World clip, here is how the web 3.0 communications team needs to look:
In the days before the web the press office needs to:
Have basic journalism skills.
Know how the machinery of local government works.
Write a press release.
Work under speed to deadline.
Understand basic photography.
Understand sub-editing and page layouts.
For web 1.0 the press office also needed to:
Add and edit web content
For web 2.0 the press office also needs to:
Create podcasts
Create and add content to a Facebook page.
Create and add content to a Twitter stream.
Create and add content to Flickr.
Create and add content to a blog.
Monitor and keep abreast of news in all the form it takes from print to TV, radio and the blogosphere.
Develop relationships with bloggers.
Go where the conversation is whether that be online or in print.
Be ready to respond out-of-hours because the internet does not recognise a print deadline.
For web 3.0 the press office will also need to:
Create and edit geotagged data such as a Google map.
Create a data set.
Use an app and a mash-up.
Use basic html.
Blog to challenge the mis-interpretation of data.
But with web 3.0 upon us and the pace of change growing faster to stay relevant the comms team has to change.
