#datagovuk launch: what I failed to say…
By Dominic Campbell • Jan 22nd, 2010 • Category: Features
Admidst all the excitement of yesterday’s launch of the UK Government’s data repository, Data.Gov.UK, there was one tweet I failed to send up front. Congratulations! Congratulations to the team behind this huge undertaking. I apologise for not being clear enough about this up front. As I tweeted at the time:
I most definitely regularly fall into the second category and as a result forgot the most important thing - to recognise the hard work that has gone into this project.
At the same time, I do still stand by other comments I made on Twitter yesterday and previously (and by the comments of others such as Paul Clarke).
Above all alse, my main issues is with communications in the open government and digital engagement space. On the whole it is pretty dire. Until we as the government community learn to more effectively translate our techie enthusiasm into real world meaning, we can never expect to achieve the mainstreaming of Gov 2.0 that we all claim to want.
Sure one of the main audiences is the Geeks. But take this Guardian article for instance, an amazing opportunity to reach a far wider audience. But with phrases like “a platform built quickly using agile project management to provide a core capability”, how can we ever expect the rest of the civil service to engage let alone the wider public. Time to put the geeky evangelism to one side for a minute and get engaging.
Aside from this, I stand by the fact that the people behind this work need to start to walk the walk in terms of the organisational culture they are looking to achieve. Still wedded to behind closed door development, direct messages over Twitter rather than open conversations and exclusive launch events for the in crowd (something which may now be behind me I fear!), until honesty and openness is at the heart of everything the people at this leading edge do nothing will change. Why not openly talk about the competitive advantage taskforce member Nigel Shadbolt’s company may get from the implementation of RDF? Why not publish the exact cost of the data.gov.uk project? Again as I tweeted yesterday:
But again putting all that to one side, let me leave you in no doubt that what the Cabinet Office team have achieved through data.gov.uk is nothing short of remarkable. Masses of data pulled together with the community for the community (of developers) that begins to provide a way for British citizens to get to grips with their government.
Next stop - effective communications and culture change…
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i didn’t follow the launch. however, i did find time to check out the website and i had the same reaction as you. awesome that it’s got this far, but then underwhelmed by what was available on there, and then excited by all the places it could lead, and then worried that the right people won’t get behind it and it’ll just remain a geeky plaything, and ultimately concluding that a) the geek speak doesn’t matter. I suppose the mainstream will interact with the applications (i like the UK pharmacy one already) and won’t need to even know it’s part of some open data initiative; b) i should be more patient and c) maybe the company should do something with the data ourselves which is the best way to create something that we would like to see. Now we just have to find the time. Exciting times ahead indeed…
Thanks for opening up. Great post.
David - thanks appreciated. Thought it was important to clarify my thinking in long form.
Adil - I have very similar thoughts about myself and what FutureGov needs to do next as well. Although I do think geek speak matters because it becomes accepted as normal and ok and seeps into everything from experience. Not a good thing. Up for chatting over ideas for what to do with the data?
It’s taken me a while to come round to replying to this. I agree with the sentiments, both in congratulating the data.gov team for making something happen and for the more serious issue of culture, behaviour and leadership.
This was by far the most frustrating thing for me when I worked in Whitehall. The lack of transparency, openness, collegiateness, shared thinking, crowdsourcing etc etc - I absolutely tore my hair out and raised the irony of it with the powers that be frequently who “always agreed” but never changed their behaviour. In my mind if the community cannot live and behave by the norms of the geek community and embrace the behaviours, then they have no right to extol the virtues of social media / web2 etc and they will be found out for being a sham.
I totally respect the need for caution and propriety, after all I was a civil servant, but you can’t on the one hand champion social media in government and on the other seek to manage and control the agenda. It just cannot work, and it won’t.
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