Death of the web team?
Where does responsibility for digital communications sit within a large organisation? That used to be a fairly easy question (“In the web team of course!”) but it’s not so simple any more. These days, it begs two rather more difficult questions: which bit of digital and what kind of responsibility do you mean? Digital communications [...]
Found/interesting: 28 Dec to 5 Feb
Look what I found interesting: Why I’m going dark for purdah – Steph explains why he won’t be blogging during the election period. (I won’t be writing about work stuff during that time either for the same reasons, but intend to resume blogging about other interests and this could be a good time to do [...]
Notes from the 3rd annual UK government unconference (#ukgc10)
This is just a quick one to send you over here, to the team BIS tumblog Alistair set up, where I liveblogged my notes from two sessions at Govcamp 2010 today (alongside posts from @alistairreid and @lesteph). Namely: Setting up a group for public sector web professionals – progress from Socitm and how to get [...]
Found/interesting: 9 Nov to 24 Dec
I haven’t done one of these bookmark posts in a while, and I’m some way off posting anything new here. So here’s a look at what I found interesting enough to bookmark recently. The state of the UK gov blogosphere – Great post by Dave Briggs. Why websites matter less and less – “Summary: Our [...]
How to read minds and influence people
Knowing what your customers are thinking is the first step towards making them happy. But how do you know what’s in their heads (without being Derren Brown)? I’m some way closer to being able to read my website users’ minds than I was this time last week – thanks to two unrelated events which turned [...]
Found/interesting: 15 October to 7 November
Look what I found interesting enough to bookmark recently: BBC Democracy Live – Nifty live political TV and news thingummy via Simon Dickson. JobFact – community of anonymous employees – Compare your salary anonymously. Optimal Workshop – online card sorting tool – Fantastic and free online IA toys. Cybersoc.com: guide to using social media (in [...]
Found/interesting: 11 October
A few hand-picked bookmarks. The wraps come off data.gov.uk! – Harry Metcalfe posted this exclusive preview of data.gov.uk – the UK government’s free open data store, currently in private beta. Teach us a Lesson – Crowdsourcing the directory of learning – BIS and Becta competition seeking ideas to create a user-friendly national index of informal [...]
Survival of the flattest: how to futureproof your website’s IA
Whitehall websites are built on shifting sands. Reshuffles, changes to the machinery of government, and (until 2011) convergence projects mean that hundreds of pages of content could, at almost any time, suddenly have to be deleted from one government site and added (in suitably re-purposed form) to another. With that in mind I’ve been thinking [...]
Hello, I'm Neil Williams. I'm a government web geek, a dad, a husband, a grower of veg, a keeper of hens and a lapsed comedy writer, roughly in that order. 
