'Evening All.

Hot off the press, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary has sent me this statement on the MyPolice 'web heist' fandango which rocked the Twitterverse to its foundations today.

Here it is in its full glory:

"We spoke with the owners of mypolice.org, and it is clear that we offer very different online products. Both however aim to improve engagement between the public and their police; and this is to be applauded.

"We remain very happy to work with www.mypolice.org to offer the best possible service to the public."

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.

• Presentations from the Scotweb2 event on 19 June... slides from Learning Pool (Social Learning: Does it return the investment?) and also Lichfield DC's Stuart Harrison on the Twhys, Thows and Twherefores of Twitter.  Read a brief event summary here and for more detail see the real-time coverage of the day's proceedings.
• Local Government 3.0: How councils can respond to the new web agenda is the new pamphlet from the Local Government Information Unit think-tank. Download a copy here. On a related note, Simon Wakeman interviews Andy Sawford, LGUI chief exec on the communications issues councils  face today.
• An interesting list of 40 social media staff guidelines
• Following on from the launch of Data.gov, the US Government continues its drive towards greater transparency and accountability with USASpending.gov, a new website which lets the public to track spending on public sector IT projects. Tech guru Tim O'Reilly gives his take.
• A video introducing Birmingham City Council's Podnosh's 'Be Vocal' site, part of the Birmingham Open City project which is one of the Timely Information for Citizens pilots funded by CLG. (via Dave Briggs)
• Sarah Lay of Derbyshire County Council talks about council's use of social media in the recent local elections, recorded at Localgovcamp. (via Podnosh) More from Sarah's blog here.
• Really useful Twitter tools for Community and Communications Professionals (via Carl Haggerty)
• In a fascinating post, Emma Mulqueeny updates us on progress with the Home Office's digital engagement strategy. Emma writes about the challenges which have cropped up and how, where possible, these are being addressed.
• DMCS has published an action plan for the Digital Britain White Paper on 16 June.
• And finally... the Department for Transport makes its debut on Twitter, alas its bio states: 'Please direct queries via the 'Contact us' section of the website'.  Oh well... (via Neil Williams)

Latest article for Public Sector Forums:

Software being developed by councils to improve online information for citizens should be 'mostly' open source , the Government has now confirmed.

The news follows an e-petition to Gordon Brown concerning the recently-launched Timely Information for Citizens pilot projects currently being run by 10 councils across England.  The list of schemes, funded by CLG, include plans to create online engagement tools, web communities, 'My Neighbourhood' portals and 'one stop shop'-style  websites.

The petition, which amassed 322 signatures in three months, read:

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to ask the Communities Secretary to require that all software produced by councils under the Timely Information to Citizens project be released under an open source licence."

It went on to explain:

"The Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) is running a project called Timely Information to Citizens (TIC). As part of this project, several local authorities are being given funding totalling approximately £1m to develop software and web services to improve local information and service provision. While CLG’s aim is that these projects are incorporated into a “best practice toolkit”, we ask the government to reduce duplication of effort and expense and make this software available for other users at the earliest opportunity by releasing each package on deployment under an OSI-approved open source licence. Though we welcome these projects themselves, as citizens we cannot and do not support this substantial sum of public money being spent to create private, proprietary software."

On Friday, the Government responded thusly:

The Government supports the principle that, where new software is being developed by the Timely Information to Citizens pilots, this should wherever possible be released under open source licence and available for use by other local authorities.

For many of the Timely Information to Citizens pilots, the focus is not on new software, but on how existing tools and techniques can be used to bring information together and present it in more useful and accessible ways. Several of the projects will utilise existing open source software to create new information sources and channels, and will share their experiences of doing so with other authorities.

Where the pilots will result in new software tools, ownership and intellectual property rights will usually remain with the individual local authorities. The Government supports the principle that, where new software is being developed by the Timely Information to Citizens pilots, this should wherever possible be released under open source licence and available for use by other local authorities.

For many of the Timely Information to Citizens pilots, the focus is not on new software, but on how existing tools and techniques can be used to bring information together and present it in more useful and accessible ways. Several of the projects will utilise existing open source software to create new information sources and channels, and will share their experiences of doing so with other authorities.

Where the pilots will result in new software tools, ownership and intellectual property rights will usually remain with the individual local authorities. However, most of the authorities concerned have already made a commitment to make these tools available as open source software, or for use by their partner organisations, and we are working to secure the commitment of the remaining.'

So most - but not all - of the councils involved in the projects have indicated they will take the open source route where developing new software.  An encouraging step, though one which would seem to give the distinct impression of being an after-thought.

Tom Chance, Green Party's intellectual property spokesperson, told PSF the Government's response showed it was 'waking up' to the money-saving potential of open source approaches – and now it needed to 'get off the fence' and start mandating open source licensing.

'Had the Government taken up our policy on open source five years ago, we'd now see every local authority providing RSS feeds, using Twitter, and delivering ground-breaking innovations rather than lagging several years behind the trends', he said.

The person behind the petition was Adrian Short, who PSF readers may recall instigated the Mash The State campaign aiming to get every UK council website to provide RSS feeds.

Giving his reaction to the Government's response to PSF today, he said he saw it as part of 'a continuing culture shift' towards open source across government.

The CLG, said Short, was in a good position to help promote not just open source software but also tools, techniques and an 'open source culture' among councils and their contractors.

'Producing open source packages and working together with other councils and independent developers will be new territory for many councils', he told PSF.  'They'll need to work together to realise the long-term benefits of cost reduction, rapid maintenance and robustness that open source brings, when built in a truly open and collaborative way.'

Though encouraged by the Government's support for open source 'in principle', Short said there was still much more work to do in getting it to see open source as the 'default' option when developing new software.

He concluded: 'Let's hope that there are plenty of councils and independent developers that'll be helping these projects make good on open source's promise.... and that their contributions are welcomed, valued and used.'

• The Hansard Society's top five priorities for Andrew Stott, the Government's new Digital Engagement Director. Not on the list: Move to Stoke, despite 108 votes of support. (How that started, incidentally).
• Tom 'Minister for Twitter' Watson sensationally quits – UKAuthority.com looks at what this means for Gov.UK.
• 'What is and what isn't acceptable on expenses?' ponders the brilliant Local Government Officer.
• Big discussion on the blog of Chris Kendall, Director of the Planning Portal on What makes a good LPA web site? Lots of interesting responses. (via Dave Briggs)
• Brighton & Hove is the most talked about council on Twitter, claims a new report (For the full Top 20 list, download the full report here.)
• Using Web 2.0 tools to drive take-up and engagement: Simon Wakeman's slides from Socitm's Take-Up Seminar earlier this week.  Also, Steph Gray's presentation at the Scottish Government's 'Digital Summit' seminar.
• A Practical Guide to Implementing Web 2.0 in Your Organisation – via @stephendale
• The Digital Britain 'Unconference' Final Report is out.
• MySociety unveils its latest project, Mapumental, which tells you where to live if you want to commute. (Video here). While there check out HassleMe.
• MySociety's Tom Steinberg: What the government doesn’t understand about the Internet, and what to do about it :“...almost anything meaningful that the government can do on the Internet will cost less than even the consulting fees for one large traditional IT project.”
• The White House: Wrap-Up of the Open Government Brainstorming: Transparency
• And as LocalGovCamp nears, here's the latest plan of proceedings.

From PSF:

Public Sector Forums are pleased to announce the launch of the PSFBuzz Government Web 2.0 Awards 2009.

Following the intense interest and activity around PSFBuzz, Public Sector Forums have been inspired to celebrate the creativity, innovation and excellence of public sector use of social media and Web 2.0 technologies.

The PSFBuzz Awards will be an opportunity for the government web community to recognise and applaud the success of colleagues in this relatively new space.

The awards ceremony will take place in December 2009 as part of an interactive conference.

Nominations will open shortly, with the awards categories to include:

• Best Blogger
  
• Best Mash Up/Hack
  
• Best Use of YouTube
  
• Best Use of Twitter
  
• Best Use of Facebook
  
• Best Website
  
• Best Digital Team
  
• Best Online Community
  
• Best Mobile App
  
• Best PR/Marcomms Campaign (Internal/External)
  
• PSFBuzzer of the Year.

The panel of judges for the PSFBuzz Awards will be led by none other than LocalGovCamp's Dave Briggs. At the event there will be short presentations from each of the finalists, plus 'People's Choice' awards as voted for by the government web community at large.

And we haven't mentioned yet there'll be a drinks reception/shindig/soirée post-event to celebrate both the success of the winners and the festive season.

More details will follow very soon, so start prepping your acceptance speeches now...