Still funny after all these years

DirectionlessGov was created as a joke in only a morning, just before Christmas. It didn't take long, and hasn't had much more work done since it launched. But, 5 years on, it's still relevant, with roughly stable levels of media coverage and users. If you think that isn't a long time, here's a different way of looking at it: when DirectionlessGov launched, YouTube didn't yet exist.

It's been a fun time; but we do have to ask the question, given we've not changed what it does in 5 years, why is it still relevant and useful? Shouldn't DirectGov have realised it exists and incorporated the simple idea into what they do by now? Or is it still just plain crazy.

One comparison that always surprises me is that our friends in the US at the Sunlight Foundation randomly complain about a different government website. Over here, we don't seem to do that much; because almost all of them are so much better than DirectGov. Not because they're actually good (the new FCO site is well done), but simply because DirectGov sets the bar that low.

But, I'd really rather that I didn't have to do this any more. I'd much rather be working on other new projects, because DirectGov, with its huge budget and staff, did something better than a group of people cooked up in a morning while Stef was sleeping. Making DirectionlessGov irrelevant should not be a hard problem, but it does appear to have beaten them so far.

I hope Directionless will not get a 10th Birthday party. But I'm not going to bet against it.

School Closures

Congratulations to Direct Gov on launching innovate.direct.gov.uk. Launched at govbarcamp with one blog post, and claims of promise. Small steps to start with, but that's ok.

Then it started snowing, and various public services started to not work very well any more.
Tom Watson MP registered www.schoolclosures.org.uk, and called on someone to build a mashup.
Directgov stepped up and took a swing. As an aside, the fact that a Minister of the Crown would make that call shows just how far some have come. More impressively, Directgov did very well.

The intial prototype was greated with adulation on the web. As it should be. Not only was it usable, it was developed fast, and well by an organisation with a reputation for only being able to do the opposite. So there was only one direction it could go from there. Maybe they're not as directionless as we sometime claim...

On the 5th January, a message appeared that "The alpha prototype is offline at the moment for maintenance.". Which is fine. it's an alpha of a prototype. Not a full service. And a second version appeared buried in directgov which forwarded people off to the local authority sites which have that information. But it was still snowing and people had the URL. 6 days later, the "alpha prototype" address is still showing that page.

An update appeared earlier today. There is only one point in bold there, and it shows just how completely the people who seem to have taken it over on day 2 missed the point (that, or the original team got hit by a snowball and had all the clue knocked out of them).

But to recap, we have one site at schoolclosures.org.uk which has the label "alpha prototype" and is probably permanently closed, and a second, working service which is buried within the directgov monolith. If you can find it (good luck with that), it's reasonable. Nothing flashy, but once you can figure out where it is (which is quite hard), it does the job.

So why didn't directgov point schoolclosures at the new page (great URL of http://local.direct.gov.uk/LDGRedirect/index.jspLGSL=1140&LGIL=8&ServiceName=Find+out+about+emergency+school+closures). They said they did this, but that's just plain not true. They just didn't do the simple and obvious step of pointing people who knew of the prototype at the service. Of course, if you follow the directgov groupthink, it doesn't matter that it's buried, as people will look through the site for lots of detail. A nice URL doesn't matter (to them).

As a result, the big bold text shows that they have so far done one thing: learnt the wrong lesson.

Directgov should be happy that people were talking about their service, and if it isn't wasn't clearly stated that it's an alpha prototype jut fix the labelling because the only people who matter are those who look at the site.. As a bit of help with that, the fact that it had a tag of "beta" might have been a source of some of the confusion.

But they got comments and feedback; hopefully they'll figure out why people made those comments before using them as justification for doing something that follows their own processes and prejudices at the expense of a useful service. While it might be extremely unlikely, so is the fact that the first iteration of schoolclosures.org.uk existed at all.

This should be considered a large success for directgov. Maybe they'll just call it a cockup instead of realising what a decent online service they had for their users, then decided to turn off.

Apparently, they're going to bring it back "imminently" after addressing comments. Good luck with that.




On an unrelated note, it's exactly 2 years since we lost Chris Lightfoot, I do wonder what he would have said about, well, everything really. RIP Chris. We still miss you.

DirectionlessGov - potential new version

Do you think there might be group of people who would be willing to put some work into editing relevant areas of a version of directGov "so that it was true"?

DirectionlessGov heckled?

Amusing, but not suprising...

Direct.gov.uk Terms and Conditions

Anyone got any ideas for some fun we could have with this on www.directionlesgov.com