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.

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…

This year’s European elections marked an all time high for disengagement and an all time low for turnout, reaching a meagre 43% pan Europe (that’s 20% - or a third - down on 30 years ago), worse even in the UK at an mightily undemocratic 34.7% (up from 24% 10 years ago mind). But just as many in the start up world view a recession as the ideal time to start a new venture, what better time to get creative and take some risks to re-engage the public than when things are at rock bottom?

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.

As FutureGov passes its 18 month anniversary, I’ve recently been spending my quieter moments contemplating where next for FutureGov … Outwardly we talk about being focused on “Digital Democracy” and “Public service transformation”, which in both our hearts and the hearts of the wider FutureGov family means a passion for better government, rebalancing the role and power of the state to one that better empowers individuals to self-organise and work with government as just one partner in making the world better for them.

We are in the midst of a significant shift in the way we think about and relate to public services. Led both from inside government by the Prime Minister himself as well as more disruptive social, economic and technological change outside government, traditional delivery models and provider-client relationships are being challenged as never before. Driven in no small part by developments in the web, the speed and scale of change is happening on an unprecedented scale and leading us to question the notion of public services in our new, hyper-networked world.

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 we have just gone live with the FutureGov Nework social networking site! We have developed this site as a really straight forward, open and easy to use place to start to capture those things that we all do to improve public services - share stuff we’re all working on wherever we are, look at what other people are doing and, most importantly, talk.

Two weeks ago now (wow how time flies!) I was lucky enough to spend a few days in Washington DC at the eDemocracy camp and the Politics Online Conference. Hosted and organised by the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet (IPDI), I headed to the events eager to see how things had changed since my trip over last year given Obama’s intervening election. And they were again an honour to be part of, with the mood clearly having changed from excitement about all the possibilities ahead to enthusiasm for the reality of delivering the open government directive.