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Digging digital government: recent major works and what they mean

Major works by Whitehall webbies in the past six weeks have repeatedly got top billing on No 10′s legendary grid, and even made front page news.

This feels very different from even a year ago, when web teams had to work hard just to get their voices heard on the importance of the web for customer service, its power to humanise and its potential for government-citizen participation.

But now, and for the first time, it’s starting to feel like we can retire some of those old soapboxes and get out our toolboxes instead.

Here is a rundown of the biggest developments either by or affecting central government digital folk in the last month and a half:

• Your Freedom
  Launched today, this national debate about legislation, civil rights and the role of the state is by far the biggest online crowdsourcing exercise yet attempted in the UK. As such it’s also the first real test of the readiness of all parties – the public, public sector and politicians – for digital democracy on a large scale. It’ll take serious commitment from all three to be a success and, while it’s way too early to draw any conclusions about the algorithms of democracy, as I write the amount of constructive engagement by users considerably outweighs the inevitable speak your branes-esque commentary (despite sabotage attempts); and the commitment to listen from Whitehall and Ministers is clearly set out. There’s even a Twitter feed about how the technology is holding up in the face of higher than expected demand. As a precedent, a catalyst for change and a demonstration of the cultural shift from traditional PR to digital engagement, who could ask for a higher profile case study?

• Release of website performance data
  Last Friday, for the first time ever, all central government Departments reported the costs, usage figures and in some cases quality metrics for their websites. It’s not complete and it’s not totally consistent, as others have noted, but it’s a huge start to a process that recognises the important role of government websites, will be repeated annually and expanded to more government bodies. David Pullinger, Head of Digital Policy at COI, has the inside story and incisive analysis.

• Spending Challenge
  Effectively a ‘Your Freedom’ for the public sector, what’s interesting about this is that it’s taking place in the open, using free open source software (there, Simon, I said it!) to collect ideas in private while publicly showcasing a flavour of the ideas being sent in. And because it’s been promoted to every employee of every part of the public sector, it sends a clear message about the power and importance of two way digital techniques for mass participation in decision-making.

• Transparency commitments and the freeze on marketing and advertising spend
  Together these two developments present a huge challenge but also unprecedented opportunities to Whitehall’s digital communications professionals, leaving no room for doubt that digital channels and skills are going to be right at the heart of delivery of publications and campaigns from now on.

• Commentable coalition programme
  Now closed for comments, this site is still worth reflecting on for the fact that the first major publication of this parliament was a commentable website, not a PDF. (Alright, not just a PDF). Also noteworthy for the very fact that the comments are closed. It was time-limited, running for just a few weeks, during which it received nearly 10,000 comments – more comments in a shorter period than any previous outing for the Commentariat-inspired format, and as such it remains probably the biggest case study to date for that platform.

A few observations arising from all this:

• An obvious point but let’s spell it out: online participation in government policy has now moved from the fringes to the mainstream – it’s become the norm, no longer the domain of a handful of early adopters.
• Open-ended engagement looks set to give way to shorter, time-limited consultations – the coalition programme and spending challenge sites were both burners, built to be used and thrown away.
• After many successful precedents, online consultation is becoming more trusting and open – the Your Freedom site uses post-moderation and trusts its user community to flag up abuse, quite a departure from everything that’s gone before.
• Whitehall’s web teams are becoming more collaborative – every last one of the developments listed above have involved Departments pooling their digital resource, for example to share ideas, compare notes and muck in on specifications, wireframes, testing and moderation. Good for gov webbies, good for the public purse.
• The much-discussed culture change needed for ‘government 2.0′ is happening now - very high profile commitment from Ministers + hierarchical nature of the civil service = crowdsourced opinion taken seriously by Department officials.  Only the thickest-skinned of Sir Humphreys can ignore this latest groundswell, surely?

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