Photo by Paul Clarke

The whole concept of unconferences and participant-led events is just so mind-bogglingly amazing that it’s hard to put into words – just to see people coming together and start talking to each other who possibly wouldn’t have before… that’s why I do it, and that’s what touched me most about the day.

About Ann Kempster

Ann Kempster is Digital Communications Manager for the Government Communication Network based in the Cabinet Office. She has worked in the UK Civil Service for the past 7 years. She is also co-organiser of CommsCamp13, an unconference for professional communicators in government, with Dan Slee and Darren Caveney of Walsall Council and Comms2point0.

Ann blogs (not enough as she’d like) at www.annkempster.com.  You can also find her on Twitter at @annkempster

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Episode links and resources

• CommsCamp website
• UK Government Communication Network
• Comms2point0
• Blog post by Kate Bentham on her CommsCamp experience

60-second snapshots

On the role of digital in the comms mix:

On the power of unconferences:

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  @UKgovcomms
  @comms2point0
• Twitter hashtags: #commscamp13

Content comes first when it comes to delivering sustainable digital public services at Devon County Council. Carl Haggerty, Digital Communications Manager for the Council shares his insights on the importance of a digital content strategy, where his approach to designing services, not websites or platforms, is transforming the way the organisation interacts with its citizens.

Carl also discusses the UK Digital Government Service, and asks the question of whether there needs to be a Local Government Digital Service.

Developing the digital content strategy was about asking: What is the content? What’s it saying? How is it managed? How is it being shared? How is it being governed? All those kinds of issues about the content – that’s the only thing that mattered, it didn’t  matter which technology platform it sat in.

About Carl Haggerty

Carl Haggerty is Digital Communications Manager at Devon County Council, which is essentially about championing and developing the digital agenda within the council as well as being responsible for the councils corporate web presence and intranet. Carl is fascinated and keen to explore how people interact with information and technology to enable and facilitate local and global change.

Carl is also the Citizenscape Product Owner with Public I – A leading supplier of e-participation products and services to the public sector by supporting the strategic use of technology for communication and engagement and democratic renewal. His role is to champion strategic technical enhancements and the end user experience.

Carl has worked in Local Government for 16 years, with the last 10 in and around ICT, Communications, Web and Social Media. He was the first county council employee to publicly blog about his work and has been instrumental in encouraging and exploiting the use of social technologies within the council. Carl continues to promote the benefits of the web and social technologies across the Council. Carl has had a varied background working in Local Government on issues such as Strategic ICT, Communications and Marketing, Sustainable Development, Community Engagement & Development, Tourism and Economic Development.

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Episode links and resources

• Carl Haggerty
  Blog: http://carlhaggerty.wordpress.com
  Twitter: @carlhaggerty
  LinkedIn – http://www.linkedin.com/pub/7/1b2/99b
• Devon
  Council website
  News Centre
  In Devon
  Devon Strategic Plan
  Devon SEND pathfinder
  Policy Devon
  Tough Choices campaign site
• Open Space South West
  www.openspacesouthwest.info
  http://carlhaggerty.wordpress.com/2012/05/16/announcing-open-space-south-west-openssw/
  http://carlhaggerty.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/behind-the-scenes-of-open-space-south-west-openssw/
• Blog Posts
  http://carlhaggerty.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/devons-content-strategy/
  http://carlhaggerty.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/news-centre-the-content-strategy-in-action-sort-of/
  http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/03/07/does-local-government-need-a-local-government-digital-service/

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  @DevonCC
• Tags: #gov20 #localgov

From deploying Yammer for policy and program support, to creative use of YouTube for recruitment, and through to using QR codes to create the world’s first Wikipedia town, the UK’s Monmouthshire County Council is a leading example of how local government can move beyond social tech to social communication for internal and external engagement.

Helen Reynolds, Communications Officer for Monmouthshire County Council discusses a selection of these innovative initiatives, and also shares her experience with introducing these ideas into local government, and how influence rather than ROI matters for public sector use of social media channels and tools.

By being in social spaces where people are, and by being relevant and providing information that’s timely and worth engaging with – that’s how we build our influence as government.

About Helen Reynolds

Helen works for Monmouthshire County Council and is responsible for the council’s social media programme.  She has also advised a number of other public sector organisations on making the most of new technologies for better engagement. As a result of the work she’s done Monmouthshire Council has taken a number of innovative approaches to engagement, won UK social media and PR awards and the authority has become a vastly more approachable organisation.

She’s particularly passionate about making government accessible and easier to understand.

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Episode links and resources

• Helen Reynolds’ blog 
• ROI of social media in public service
• Social media for social care: how Monmouthshire foster carers support each other with Yammer
• Monmouthpedia including Monmouthpedia Day
• Monmouthshire County Council social media page and guidance for staff (linked at the bottom) and council blog
• Some feedback on Twitter 
• Facebook and youth services
• Opening up social media access to all staff
• Recruiting on Youtube

Videos

On Monmouthpedia

On the foster carers Yammer community

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• Tags: #Monmouthpedia #monmouthshire #localgov #innovation #socmed

We’re joined by Julio Gonzalez Altamirano from Open Austin and Matt Esquibel from the City of Austin to talk about open government, open data, and civic application development in the city.

A lot of credit goes to the Austin community – the technical expertise and the energy helps the City develop that kind of mindframe as we’re going forward.

About Julio Gonzalez Altamirano and Matt Esquibel

• Julio Gonzalez Altamirano is the founder and a key leader in the Open Austin network, working closely with the City to support greater open govenrment outcomes and mobilizing local citizens to participate in Open Austin activities.
• Matt Esquibel is Programmer Analyst Supervisor for Internet/Intranet Web Design in the Office of Communications & Technology Management at the City of Austin in Texas. Matt has been leading the open government initiatives for the City of Austin, and is the key liaison point with the Open Austin community.

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Episode links and resources

• Interview with Matt Esquibel on GovFresh
• Open Austin website for civic activists and participants
• The new City of Austin website and Open Data Portal

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Hear from Michael P McDonald and Micah Altman of the Public Mapping Project, which is an organization that is using open source software to enable people to create their own redistricting maps and send them to local government for potential adoption. Using a tool called District Builder, citizens can make their own maps based on demographics, voting patterns and legal requirements (among other criteria) and submit them to local government for consideration for redistricting.

Redistricting is a very, very difficult problem – it’s so complex that we know no one person is going to find the optimal solution… having that added crowdsourcing power means we can discover new ways of drawing districts that maybe people just hadn’t thought of before.

About Michael McDonald and Micah Altman

• Dr Michael McDonald is Assistant Professor of Government and Politics in the Public and International Affairs Department at George Mason University, and a visiting fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. His research interests include voting behavior, redistricting, Congress, American political development, and political methodology.
• Dr Micah Altman is Director of Research and Head/Scientist, Program on Information Science for the MIT Libraries, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Altman is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institution. Prior to arriving at MIT, Dr. Altman served at Harvard University for fifteen years as the Associate Director of the Harvard-MIT Data Center, Archival Director of the Henry A. Murray Archive, and Senior Research Scientist in the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences.

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Episode links and resources

• Public Mapping project for participatory redistricting
• District Builder software to enable citizens to collaborate on creating redistricting scenarios

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• Tags: #eparticipation #edem