Today we’re really pleased to announce the launch of the next stage of the Safeguarding 2.0 initiative. Back in August last year we hosted a round table discussion in partnership with the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) to talk about how we might use social web technologies to better safeguard children - and today we can announce that we have received initial funding from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) to carry out the research phase of the project.

‘How do you know it works?’ is one of those annoying questions that people seem to ask about social media. For some reason they’re never satisfied with ‘it just does’ as an answer, so our next event is a dream-team partnership between FutureGov and Measurement Camp to get to the bottom of social media measurement.

Inspired by much of what was emerging out of the US as well as some of our own homegrown intiatives, I felt moved to pen what I rather grandly called a “Digital Innovation Strategy for London”. Intended in the first instance to clear my head and organise my thoughts, I ended up passing it on to some senior London government colleagues for thoughts on how we might make some of it happen. In the spirit of the reviews of 2009 that are going around at the moment, I thought I would share one of the versions of what I wrote (with the help of my trusted co-conspirator Carrie) around this time last year and leave it to you to decide whether I was on to something or whether I was missing a trick - and how much has come to pass.

When you get an email that contains the words ‘a couple of offers’ completely unprompted you tend to blink a couple of times, which is what happened when Rich Watts, Director of Policy and Development at Essex Coalition of Disabled People (ECDP) got in touch to offer some help with Safeguarding 2.0.

Last month, Andy Gibson posted about a project FutureGov is doing with Particitech to come up with a simple set of data standards for local government ePetitions in England and Wales. Since then Andy’s been consulting with a small-ish group of people on the standards - establishing what the standards should help to achieve and how they should look. A first draft has been written, but there are still lots of unanswered questions and we’d love a wider group to now get involved…

I’m very excited to tell you about FutureGov’s next event - The Crowdsourced Council: online tools for participative policy making. Not only is it a triumph of aliteration, it’s also shaping up to be a great session about tools and tactics for getting actual people involved in shaping policy. In partnership with Capital Ambition, we’ve invited some great people to show off their tools: The founder of Uservoice will be there along with the clever Audio/Videoboo people of Best Before Media, the co-founder of Yoosk, and the founder and CEO of Debatewise. We’ll also be introducing US company GovDelivery and getting a look at new tool Quiet Riots.

Swindon are working with the Leadership Centre for local government and FutureGov to explore ways of using new methods of on and offline engagement to help councillors to engage with local communities in new and interesting ways as part of the 21st Century Councillors programme. Here, Gavin Calthrop from Swindon Borough Council explains a bit about the project and how it fits into Swindon’s wider aspirations as a forward thinking local authority.

“More meaningful engagement with local people is one of the key principles of our Connecting People, Connecting Places programme. The future of public services lies in more collaboration with local people and enabling active participation in decision making and service delivery at a local level…”

Here at FutureGov we love nothing more than bringing together a wide range of people to think, share and collaborate on ideas and projects that will transform the way we do government, whether from inside government or in the social innovation space. Recently we have been in conversation with the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) discussing some of our ideas for social innovation but also how we can work with NESTA to help them achieve their wider goals of public service innovation, leveraging our exciting and diverse network of thinkers and doers in the government and social space.

Last week I spent a morning at the Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government (IDeA) talking about its idea for a new Knowledge Hub. Essentially it’s a proposal to take the IDeA’s Communities of Practice site to the next level using a combination of content aggregation from across the web, data mash-ups, and ’storytelling’ with the aim of moving local government to a more knowledge-sharing culture. It’s an ambitious project and very wide in scope…

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.