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Yesterday, a colleague and I attended the first Read Write Gov event, held at Peterborough City Council. There were three very good presentations from Dominic Campbell, Steph Gray and Hadley Beeman, in addition to the practical workshop arranged by Dave Briggs. For the first event, the attendance was around 20 individuals, many from Cambridgeshire with some travelling from as far away as Coventry and Great Yarmouth.

Upon arrival I managed to speak face-to-face with numerous contacts in Twitter, discussing ideas, development platforms and a whole host of other things.  This is one of the key benefits of Twitter; it aided in ‘beaking the ice’ as the vast majority of delegates were already communicating in the online world.

Dave Briggs commenced the event with introductions and background on the speakers and opened the floor to the first speaker, Dom Cambell.

Dom Campbell, of the FutureGovConsultancy is currently employed as the Interim Social Media Manager at the London Borough of Barnet (LBB). LBB have been doing alot of work around engagement, consultancy, advertising and discussed gaining value from the social media tools that are implemented. Dom referred to the WhereILive website, a community focused, interactive website, targetting engagement with the residents along with the leaderlistens blog.

Dom discussed how LLB’s implementation of the Google Alerts service has proactively enabled the Authority to deal with comments being posted online about the Authority. This is something that I have already implemented at GYBC. Already the findings are interesting and I feel this is something that will be of benefit in gaining feedback and response to the launch of our new site.

Steph Gray, Social Media Manager at DIUS presented the issues and problems around making social media happen in Government. Steph’s presentation began with the phrase “I want one of those”. Steph discussed the problems of implementation and the commitment, technology and follow up required to ensure the request is delivered, required and maintained. Steph provided a the following 10-point list of key aspects to consider when implementing social media within Government.

• Interactive websites need interactive organisations
• Focus on content, not platform
• Find and support the pioneers and champions
• Be honest about scope and boundaries
• Protect information that needs to be protected
• Integrate with other sites and channels
• Make it FUN
• Enable remix
• Enhance progressively - accessibility, interactivity and engagement
• Evaluate intelligently and share openly

The final presentation was given by Hadley Beeman of the London Deanery. This presentation in particular was of great interest to me, as this covered the issues and considerations required to be met when developing a new application.

Hadley presented the Synapse system, a collaboration tool between the London Deanery, NHS Trusts, Students and a whole host of other individuals and organisations involved in the development and training of junior medical staff. The system is effectively a central hub of communication, based at the London Deanery, developed mainly with PHP, my preferred web development language. The collaboration tool is designed to remove the paperwork present in the current manual system, provide additional value to the users and simplify, if not remove, the vast majorit of manual processes undertaken.

Hadley and her team began the project back in February. As there were no initial ideas as to the business requirements for such a system, Hadley was granted a research period of two months inorder to understand the needs and requirements.

The system involves a user dashboard, a “one stop shop” for students to find out the information that affects them during their studies. One of the key functions that was highlighted was the ease of enabling students to find out which individuals play key roles in their development, a system previously undertaken using a complex formula.

Hadley raised a number of issues that were encountered during development and also issues that had to be overcome due to previous problems. One of the key issues was around scepticism of the systems’ success and the other on security. Due to the publicity and concern around the previous doctor application system was implemented, the attitude has been ‘once bitten, twice shy’.

The final activity was a workshop called the social media game. The game involved delegates drawing up project requirements and then identifiying social media tools that could assist with the projects requirements, within an allocated budget.

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