Information Evolution and Revolution
Search, information, cetgorisation, tagging, social bookmarking, social media – it’s all here in another excellent video from Mike Wesch.
Forget digital preservation; it’s paper we need!
I was amused by an article in the July/August 2007 edition of Information World Review regarding the problems caused by (lack of) digital preservation of e-documents at the National Archives (TNA) – though I should add the intention of the article was not to amuse. It seems there are problems accessing data created in legacy versions of Microsoft systems, though I wasn’t entirely sure if this was because of the medium used to store the data (I think most people…
Robert Scoble interview: How to read 622 RSS feeds each day
Uberblogger Robert Scoble is truly one-of-a-kind. For those who don’t know, he became famous as a technical evangelist at Microsoft and quickly became their most outspoken and influential blogger. He now interviews people like Bill Gates, and the worldwide media reports on his every move. One of his most mindboggling skills is information management. He currently reads 622 RSS feeds a day — it used to be 1,400 feeds a day! How the hell does he do it? Tim Ferris…
On-line interaction and fear of the unknown
An excellent commentary and explanation about on-line facilitation from Nancy White over at Full Circle. Very topical for me at the moment as I begin a new contract working as Interim Head of the Information Authority, a new Secretariat sponsored by the DfES and the LSC. One of the key responsibilities for this newly established body (the Information Authority) is to balance need against burden for all information and reporting requirements across the education sector. My initial thoughts were along…
Blog policy
Public Sector Forums has linked a recent blog I published on the topic of the Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary (IPSV) with an organisation I’m presently undertaking contract work for. I would like to emphasise that the thoughts and opinions I express through this blog are my own, and do not in any way represent the policies of organisations I work for (or shortly don’t…in this case!).
What good is IPSV?
I’ve previously commented on this topic and think I’ve made my views fairly clear. However, it’s comforting to know that I’m not alone in questioning whether IPSV serves any useful purpose. I picked up a report on a recent meeting of local authority webmasters and managers held in Birmingham (England), where most present appeared to conclude that IPSV, now the official Government Metadata Standard, served no useful purpose and should be ignored and not implemented. As a delegate at the…
New Guidance on use of Council Tax data
I saw this earlier this week on Public Sector Forums and reflected on its significance. The Information Commissioner’s Office will today (26th Jan) publish revised guidance for local authorities wishing to make secondary use of Council Tax Data, for example to populate CRM systems. Previous government guidance on data sharing has created uncertainty in many local authorities on whether they can use this data for other council functions, despite the prevailing common sense that having one authoratitive data set is…
Government culls web sites
For anyone that didn’t catch this headline on the BBC web site yesterday – "Hundreds of government websites are to be shut down "to make access to information easier" for people.Of 951 sites, only 26 will definitely stay, 551 will definitely close and hundreds more are expected to follow". For anyone even remotely connected to the public sector, as well as ordinary citizens, this can only be good news. The proliferation of webs sites across central government is a consequence…
Intranet vs. Social Media
I thought Euen Semple’s blog today comparing the ineffectiveness of most Intranet (enterprise) search engines with social media as a means of getting to relevant information and knowledge was spot on. Not much I can add, so suggest you read the source. All at bit close to the heart, since I’m currently doing some work with a large gov agency who are implementing a new Intranet search engine, and also a local gov agency who are developing social media tools….
Folksonomies
Picked up an interesting commentary from David Weinberger about Folksonomies in response to some criticism from the Taxonomy camp. Fully agree with David’s comments. Based on experience I’ve had in implementing enterprise search solutions, users presented with either a taxonomic organisation of content vs. doing a keyword or free-text search for what they are seeking, the vast majority of users will choose a free-text search. The reason being that users don’t want to spend valuable time trying to understand the…