Sat watching the case of Baby Peter unfold on the television last year, as with the vast majority of you I’m sure, I was left feeling hugely saddened, frustrated and powerless to help prevent such events from ever happening again. I am not a social worker nor do I work for any one of the numerous agencies involved in the extremely complex and challenging world of child protection. However, it did get me thinking about where I might be able to provide some support, specifically around how we might be able to draw on social technologies to contribute to safeguarding children.

We’re currently looking at the role of social media in recruitment - not only using the web to recruit, but also what we should expect candidates for public sector leadership roles to know about the world as a place where people are online and networked.

There are plenty who claim to know about the web because they’re on Facebook or someone they know is on Twitter, but how can we really test whether leaders (both current and prospective) embody the principles of networked working and the social web?

How can we know whether they truly understand the impact that the web has on public services? How do we tell whether they actually ‘get’ the big deal about social innovation? Is it even possible to test ’social web-ness’?

What would be the killer interview question to test the knowledge and commitment of someone who wants a leadership job in the public sector?

So the time has come to reveal the name of the lucky winner of our competition to win a trip over to the Politics Online Conference in Washington DC at the end of April.

Right. Sorry to be awkward everyone, but here’s the thing: we had a load of entries to the big FutureGov competition and as the newbie around here I was tasked with making one person’s lucky day and announcing them the winner right here. But the winner I lovingly selected couldn’t make the date of the Politics Online conference and no other entries grabbed me in the same ingenious way.

So a bit of a first for me coming to a conference semi-officially to blog it rather than participate and tweet as a form of stress relief. Although that has meant spending all day in a suit AND a tie to try and fit in with the local government crowd, something I’m less and less comfortable with but does mean I fly under the radar quite nicely with so few in the sector on Twitter!

The applications have been assessed, the marks have been counted and now the results are in. With the unenviable task of whittling down over 70 applications, the advisory board to the camp has decided on its final 6.

Hosted by the socially active Young Foundation, supported by public sector heavy weights NESTA and the Cabinet Office’s Office of the Third Sector and hard wired by the Yahoo! Developer Network, things are well set for48 hours of mass collaboration, creativity - and fun!

As a quick follow up to my last post on the future of London government, I thought I would share a video made available today by the London Borough of Barnet on YouTube (quite an innovation in itself I say!).