Directionlessgov.com got a mention in today’s Guardian.
With 30 million quid to spend each year, hopefully they’ll have nice, useful things to show for it. For those keeping score, our state of financial accounting means we don’t quite know how much Directionlessgov.com costs each year, but it’s somewhere in the region of £8.89 – the cost of the domain name registration.
Looking at Direct.gov.uk’s plans for the future, one thing that various people have talked about in a variety of places is a project called Bureaucracy Bingo or, less pejoratively, UK Feedback. Given the main comment usages of DowningStreetSays.com and theGovernmentSays.com there’s really demand for a CSA conversation site. Although I don’t particularly want to run that one, it’s too depressing as it is.
Taking it a step further, there’s apparantly a great site in the Netherlands which lets their civil servants talk about being civil while also serving. Doing that here would need a good name…
Today was the Labour Leadership Conference in Manchester (this time they closed 3 streets round our flat to most traffic, rather than sealing 2 for the last conference). Apart from the very impressive speed that the security cordon dropped round the venue, it was pretty much a non-event (apart from the outcome).
At an Electoral Reform Society meeting this evening, for the first time ever, I met and had a conversation (more of a monologue from his side, since I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing) with someone who believes strongly that, not only are ID Cards are a very good idea, but he was very strongly in favour of them to cure all society’s ills. While it may just be that I spend time in what he described as “wishy washy liberal” circles where we don’t understand that “if you’ve not done anything wrong then you have nothing to fear”, he was an example of those whom Labour ministers point to as supporters of ID Cards.
So there’s at least one of them in the country; although as one of the few (3?) Labour activists in (I think) John Redwood’s constituency, he seemed used to supporting lost causes.
Disruptive Proactivity