[LINK] Competition to free-up government information

[Tom Worthington]

At 05:33 AM 7/07/2008, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
>... U.K. Government announced, "The Power of Information Review... 
>UK government established a Wordpress website 
>...   http://powerofinformation.wordpress.com/

The UK  government use of a blog is courageous (in the "Yes Minister" 
sense of the word: that is it  may get you fired). The style is a 
little too informal for a government activity and there do not seem 
to be any guidelines about how to use it.

The blog does not have a government web address, or a government logo 
and it is not even clear what country the authors are from, let alone 
that they are government office holders. That might have been done 
deliberately to make it look less bureaucratic, or so it could be 
done quickly. But it is also difficult to work out what the blog is 
about and exactly who did it.

The About page talks of "<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Mayo>Ed and 
<http://www.mysociety.org/moin.cgi/TomSteinberg>Tom's report" in the 
first paragraph <http://powerofinformation.wordpress.com/about/>. But 
it doesn't say what the report is, or provide a link to it. The 
implication is that we should know who Ed and Tom are and about their 
report. In the next paragraph there is mention of Cabinet Office 
Minister Tom Watson MP, so I guess that is "Tom", but Ed doesn't get 
another mention and the only further mention of a "report" is an 
"Interim Report" 
<http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/reports/power_of_information.aspx>.

Hopefully the people at the UK Cabinet Office responsible for the 
blog, have made sure they are complying with all applicable laws, 
including, the requirement to archive everything on the site, 
including all changes to all documents and have procedures for 
removing objectionable content and handling complaints.

But then I hope it works out for them. In Australia AGIMO have taken 
a much more cautious approach, perhaps a little too so. Somewhere in 
the middle would be a good compromise.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University