Top story in today's e-Gov Bulletin is something of a historic event - the appointment, they report, of the 'first council social media officer':

The first local authority worker employed to handle and shape a local authority’s social media output has been appointed by Brighton and Hove City Council.

"As the council’s social media officer, Jane Postlethwaite’s responsibilities include creating strategies to develop its use of sites like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, and monitoring online discussions about the council."

This news will doubtless have come as a surprise to many, not least Futuregov's Dominic Campbell who was employed as Barnet Council's social media officer back in May 2008, as well as Al Smith, communications adviser on Web 2.0 to Newcastle City Council since 2008.  But that slight factual error - which eGov Bulletin have since corrected - isn't really the point.

There's a far more interesting story to report here. Which is that just very recently the same Brighton and Hove City Council, like many other local authorities in its position, disclosed it was looking to axe more than 150 staff jobs, as well as cut spending on social care and children's services due to budget constraints.

In spite of this financial crisis, the Council - evidently - regarded social media to be of such importance to warrant employing a new, full time dedicated member of staff (albeit according to the job ad, only on a temporary six month basis).

The prominence e-Gov Bulletin gives this appointment seems to suggest it represents some pivotal watershed moment in social media's journey towards mainstream acceptance in local government.  But as the saying goes, one swallow doesn't make a summer, just as one social media officer doesn't make a trend. At the recent GovCamp it was argued the recession is a reason for Government to employ more, not fewer, digital people. My hunch is it's more likely that when the post-Election crunch comes on public sector job cuts, the 'social media officer'-type posts  will be those particularly vulnerable.  All the more reason why those working in these roles need to be building up hard evidence - now - to demonstrate the value they bring to their organisation.

So Jane, from myself and and no doubt lots of readers here: All the best of luck in your new role.

A quick peruse of MySociety’s excellent TheyWorkForYou.com reveals the Conservatives have been rather busy lately tabling a raft of parliamentary questions (PQs) – several dozen in fact – about the cost of redesigning government websites.   Specifically, the sums spent by Whitehall on revamping their web offerings since 27 June 2007, the date Tony Blair handed over the reins of power to Gordon Brown.

Sure enough, the PQ responses made brief headlines towards the tail-end of last year, when the Telegraph reported that government departments had spent £4m on redesigning their websites.  The Taxpayers' Alliance lobby group immediately jumped on what they saw as yet another example of Whitehall waste, with Campaign Director Matthew Elliot commenting:  ”This astonishing £4 million figure shows departments must concentrate on content rather than the appearance of government websites. Many of these sites look a lot better than they actually are.”

However the outrage may have been slightly premature. Because since then, a further 13 government departments and agencies have come forward with details of their spending.  And as UKAuthority.com reports, their responses bring the total cost of Whitehall’s website redesigns to £10m – more than double the £4m sum previously thought.

The figures include a £513,000 redesign of the Department for Health website and £216,000 spent by the Department for Work and Pensions on a web redesign last year.  Work by the Department for International Development to redevelop its website has also cost close to £1 million, according to the figures ministers disclosed.

Some of this work was clearly important to improve the quality of government websites. For example the Ministry of Justice, which redeveloped its site last year, reported that visitor numbers to justice.gov.uk had more than doubled since the Department was formed in 2007.

Other departments’ responses were somewhat more difficult to comprehend, such as how the Communities and Local Government managed to run up a whopping £1.2m bill developing its new – and very unremarkable – departmental website. Or why the Office for National Statistics, say, needed to pay £218,000 in July 2009 to enhance its online ‘Publication Hub’, after already spending £4m on improving its online operations.

An interesting footnote to this is that the Central Office of Information is drawing up guidance to help departments evaluate whether their websites are useful, usable and deliver value for money.

This comes in response to a National Audit Office report several years ago which found ‘little improvement’ in the quality of government websites since 2002, noting around a quarter of organisations could not say how much their site cost.   Judging by a number of responses to the Tories’ PQ, many departments and agencies still can’t.  And if costs can’t be measured, can they be managed?  It might finally be time for some answers.

We all want digital inclusion - so I was delighted to see the launch this week of the Race Online 2012 campaign by Martha Lane Fox, the Government's Champion for Digital Inclusion.

Of particular note is new research unveiled by the campaign which attempts, possibly for the first time, to quantify the potential financial benefits to the UK ( including government) from achieving greater digital inclusion.  The Economic Case for Digital Inclusion – an independent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers - estimates this to be worth a staggering £22 billion.

One of the 'key findings' highlighted in this report is that:

Government could save at least £900 million a year [their emphasis] in customer contact costs if all digitally excluded adults got online and made just one electronic contact per month.

The actual estimate is some £918m which, by anyone's measure, represents a significant sum of hitherto-unidentified government efficiency savings.  So how did they arrive at this?

According to the report, the figure refers to 'the potential efficiencies that can be derived from switching contacts and transactions to online channels' from more expensive ones.  As the research says, interestingly, in a section headed 'Evidence', 'from the perspective of public service transformation, digital inclusion is primarily an issue of channel strategy and migration.'

The £918m sum, says the report, is based on 'evidence from 19 local authorities' on 'average costs of transactions in different channels' gathered in 2008.

And unfortunately, this is where things start to get a little confused.

It begins on p.47 where an interesting table is provided giving a side-by-side comparison of these relative costs-to-serve. This apparently shows that on average, 'face-to-face' costs a hefty £10.53, 'telephone' £3.39, while 'online' comes in at an amazing 8p.

These are, of course, only one of many, often widely-varying estimates of transaction costs as Mick Phythian documented recently.  PwC could, for instance, just as easily taken figures derived from Socitm's national benchmarking exercise, which sampled far more councils, and were published in March this year and quoted by Martin Greenwood in his presentation a few days ago at the Government 2010 conference.  (Socitm's research, just for reference, put the average cost of servicing face-to-face enquiries at £6.56 and web transactions at £0.27.)

The source of PwC's research is given in a footnote as 'Customer Contact Profiling Report – ESD Toolkit' by 'Aston Campbell Associates 2008'.  Sadly the link given in the report doesn't work, however following some quick Googling I was able to track down this particular research. I believe PwC meant to link to what this PowerPoint presentation from June 2008.

Slide 7 of the presentation, headed 'Channel Costs' indeed shows face-to-face contact costing on average around £10.56. But on closer inspection, it transpires this was just the figure reported by the London Borough of Lambeth, one of the 19 councils surveyed.  Next to this is an entirely different figure from Chorley Borough Council who put the cost at £6.49 - tying in nicely with Socitm's estimate. PwC seem to have chosen to ignore this, which is slightly odd.

The 8p cost for 'online' contact and transactions cited in The Economic Case for Digital inclusion is also a complete mis-reading of the original research.  The 8p doesn't refer to 'online' - it's for contact solely via web forms that are integrated with councils' back-office systems.  In fact, this same presentation highlights that when councils measured the average cost of dealing with email enquiries, this came out at a whopping £6.33.  Which according to the research, makes email actually more expensive than face-to-face contact.

Another rather significant finding of the research, which I failed to find in the PwC report, was that those most likely to be among the 'digitally excluded' were also those least likely to shift channels, which would dampen expectations for potential efficiency savings.

None of this should really come as a surprise to anyone with an interest in customer contact in government, not least PwC as a major provider of consultancy on Transformational Government.  As this landmark UK government study highlighted back in 2006, if electronic services aren't integrated, meaning that councils have to manually re-key electronic data into back-office systems (still extremely common in local government), the true cost of a web transaction can exceed contact by other 'traditional' channels.

Channel shift isn't simply a case of getting people who don't use the web to make electronic contact with government and bingo, efficiency savings. As Bad Science would say, I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

You can download the PwC report here.

I'm hugely excited by this. Sir David Varney, Gordon Brown's personal advisor on Transformational Government and architect of the Government's approach to data sharing, personalised public services and transformation in general is to face his critics in a public debate next month.

In a rare public appearance, Sir David - a man with a whole agenda and industry named after him - will go head-to-head with, amongst others, none other than arch-nemesis Ian Brown, one of the authors of the Rowntree Database State report.

The discussion, going by the title of Data Sharing or Database State? takes place as part of this year's forthcoming Battle of Ideas festival.

All very timely too, given a whole new public discussion on government data sharing, public privacy and the implications of the 'transformational' agenda now seems to be taking shape. Even to the point where I turned on the TV the other day to see Philip Schofield moderating a debate about the Vetting and Barring Register on the This Morning sofa, as only he can.

Following the Government's point-blank dismissal of the Rowntree report, it's encouraging (if not nothing short of a miracle) to see very senior policy makers, for once, actually being willing to engage in public debate about data sharing, particularly at a forum such as Battle of Ideas.  It brings to mind a memorable moment last year at a Public Sector Forums conference on identity when Meg Hillier, the ID Cards minister at the time, pronounced:

"The debate has already happened, the 2006 [Identity Cards] Act is passed and further opposition is pointless"

– a view apparently not appreciated or endorsed by all those present.

So congrats to Jo Herlihy, organiser and chair of the Database State debate session for securing Sir David's attendance. This should definitely be one to watch. The only thing is, why do I get visions of Sir Bonar Neville-Kingdom addressing Open Tech 2009?

Very quietly last week, the Government published this report. It's worth reading because it sets out plans to build what is effectively the ultimate 'Big Brother' database.

The project, being led by the Department for Communities and Local Government, is called EPDM, short for 'Effective Partnership Data Management'.

Though sounding fairly innocuous, EPDM has been described by those involved in the project as the 'silver bullet' for the public sector's data sharing problems.

The remark came from consultants Xantura, who were commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government last year to develop what they called

'a strategy and programme of work to challenge assumptions and constraints to the sharing of data between public sector agencies'.

The plan, it now transpires, is to give every individual an ''Integrated Citizen Record' which will track their every interaction with government and trigger automatic alerts to other databases on any change.

At the centre of this is the 'data-sharing platform' which will enable police, councils, NHS bodies and other government agencies to exchange personal information they hold on citizens.

According to the report, information currently stored in separate databases will be funnelled into a network of local 'data hubs' run by Local Strategic Partnerships. (LSPs by the way are non-statutory bodies, led by councils, which bring together government, voluntary groups and private businesses to tackle local issues).

Like a souped-up version of the Identity Cards database, EPDM will create a central record of all information held on a citizen using, says the report, 'regularly refreshed data sets extracted from LSP partners' systems'.

Similar to an advanced version of Gordon Brown's Tell Us Once project, the single change of circumstances service currently being trialled by government, EDPM will notify each partner agency of any changes to any database.

Proponents of the project claim the plans will 'significantly improve service delivery' and lead to 'improved outcomes' by 'proactive targeting of services' based on 'advanced analytics' and 'automatic triggering of citizen event notifications'.

In other words, public bodies would have such detailed information about citizens they would able to 'predict' needs and take pre-emptive action.  The project proposes to test a series of what it calls 'intervention campaigns'.

However there is a further twist in that the EPDM system will have a further, core explicit purpose, namely to spot benefit fraud.

The EPDM 'data hubs' will enable records in different databases to be linked, helping to identify irregularities and discrepancies which could indicate fraud, similar to the National Fraud Initiative's 'fishing expeditions'.

According to the plans, a prototype system would be built to enable 'controlled searching across partnership data'.

The CLG report estimates that trialling the system with five Local Strategic Partnerships could save over £1 million alone in reducing fraud and overpayment of Housing Benefit.

The Department last week invited bodies to come forward to volunteer to act as pilots 'as part of a coordinated EPDM programme'.

The legal basis of the project is, however, not yet clear, as are the details of exactly who (and how many people) will be able to access these extensive – and potentially lucrative – pools of detailed personal data.

The CLG stated in its report that access would be 'strictly' controlled and the chosen solution would need 'to implement a rigorous set of control and audit reporting to eliminate inappropriate use of data. These reports will enable administrative users to view all data accesses that have been made – by whom and by data sharing protocol.'

It added: 'In this respect the solution will implement a data sharing control infrastructure that will limit access to data through either pre-approved data sharing protocols, created and managed in the system and through data sharing consents, once again recorded and managed within the system. '

The detailed report on the EPDM programme published on 30 July can be downloaded here.

The Department for Work and Pensions' Government Connect project has just issued an alert to councils 'strongly advising' them to review any Windows Mobile deployments for security reasons. The missive, included in this GC bulletin put out on 1 July, reads:

The current CESG policy/ guidance states that Windows Mobile version 6.1 is not deemed suitable to access, store or process RESTRICTED (IL3) data. This policy statement goes on to clarify that any such device can be used for data at IL2 and below, subject to extant HMG guidance & policy, such as Memo 35 (and the recently released Good Practice Guide 10).

Councils are strongly advised to review any current deployments of Windows Mobile in line with this guidance, with a view to ensuring such devices will only be used at IL2 and below, and that appropriate measures are applied to protect any sensitive data residing at the endpoint.

This note, I would guess, was prompted by a story I produced a few weeks ago for Public Sector Forums on how the Gov Connect project was forcing some councils to abandon or severely curtail 'mobile working' activity – hampering projects which, until recently, were providing councils with very real and substantial benefits.

For the uninitiated, Gov Connect is a £40m flagship Government IT project which, since 2005, has being trying - until lately with not much success - to connect all 470+ local authorities in England to a secure network called the GCSx.  This work is regarded as hugely important to Whitehall's Transformational Government agenda, as is apparent if you visit the GC website. The problem, however, was as of last year few councils had actually signed up to GC because they could see no business case.

Then last year the DWP effectively made Gov Connect mandatory.  In light of the Datagate controversy, it told councils they couldn't access its master database (and so process benefit claims) unless they used a secure 'approved' network. With the only such available network in England being Gov Connect, the business case was suddenly made overnight.  Recently, council IT departments and their suppliers have been working overtime to meet the security conditions for connecting to GCSx - part of which require authorities to adopt a new, secure mobile working policy.

That's a brief potted history. The latest fly in the ointment is that CESG, the Governments' IT security advisory body, ruled last year that devices running Microsoft's Windows Mobile are not safe to use for 'Restricted' data.  Meaning a lot of current systems being used by mobile workforces in local government are not allowed to connect to GSCx.  Leaving councils will apparently little option but to turn off mobile devices, ditch their existing IT equipment and meet the costs of buying and installing whatever is needed to stand behind new ones. (And we're talking tens of thousands of devices for some councils here).

Two things strike me about this latest DWP note.

a)  The Department is only asking councils to 'review' things and is NOT shouting 'Switch off your devices now!' – suggesting a softening of stance, and

b) It implies there are councils out there currently unaware of the Windows Mobile 'issue' – and who therefore may be in for an very unpleasant surprise,  given this news comes just two months before the deadline for all councils to be GC-compliant.

The wider ramification, not to be forgetten in all this,  is that the only 'approved' alternative to Windows Mobile available to government users in this scenario is the BlackBerry.  So has the Government (or rather CESG) helpfully handed RIM a public sector monopoly on a plate?