Dissident

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 would struggle to get at the contents of a 51/4 inch diskette these days), or the software application itself (surely Word97 is not yet obsolete?). However, as the article points out, the objective is to make “digital data as resilient as paper”. And anyone who’s spilt coffee on the printout of that latest policy statement knows exactly how resilient paper is!

Ah yes, I remember how we were once told that CD-ROMS were virtually indestructible, and that preservation of the data was guaranteed in perpetuity. I guess anyone who’s tried to rebuild software on a malfunctioning PC using the original manufacturer’s CD-ROMS can testify to this being a myth.

I’m reminded of a quote from a senior executive at the old Sperry Rand Corporation (now Unisys) when questioned about the longevity and integrity of digital data on Sperry’s (circa 1960) drum storage technology. The riposte was “it will last indefinitely, or 5 years, whichever is the sooner”. It seems we still haven’t cracked this little nut!

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 dropped by the Podtech offices and hung out with Robert to find out. How does he avoid overload and process so much information? Find out in this in 11-minute interview, where you can find out:

• Which RSS reader does he use and why?
• How does he configure it to save time?
• What are simple keyboard shortcuts anyone can use?
• How does he find and pick feeds?
• How can you catch his eye with your posts?
• How does he use RSS feeds for building relationships?
• How does he use sites like Techmeme/DIGG vs. niche blogs?

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 the lines of establishing a facilitated stakeholder community, consisting of all interested people, groups and agencies across the further education sector, and through this 'community', encourage  transparency on the impact (burden) of requests for new or changed information. Typical changes are in the way that schools and colleges measure success, and change requests can originate from many different sources, from Ministers and government bodies (e.g. Ofsted) to individual schools and colleges.

However, I soon learnt there is a language issue to overcome first. My initial soundings on the concept of using an on-line community approach to evaluate, process and agree changes to data standards and reporting requirements did not go down too well, and the concept of employing on-line facilitator's for managing change though this embryonic community was akin to talking about encounters of the third kind!

However, I've made some headway by making sure that instead of discussing  'communities', I refer instead to 'stakeholder collaboration', which is going to require 'change coordinators' to manage discussion and connections between the stakeholders (thus, for on-line facilitator, read 'change coordinator).

So lesson learnt here - speak the language that  people  you are working with understand.   The concepts of communities (of interest or of practice) and on-line facilitation are steps into the unknown for some people, and  anything unknown is perceived as a project risk!

More of this later when I've either been given the go ahead (or not) to progress with my 'stakeholder collaboration' and 'change coordinator' strategy.

My thanks to Nancy for enabling me to produce the job specification for my 'change coordinators' from her posting!

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 meeting pointed out, search engines don’t use government metadata - at all. IPSV is not used. So really then, what is the point?  The report went on to say that delegates wree not sold on formal taxonomies for websites, and definitely not centralised taxonomies like this Vocabulary. The ability to produce a site map from a taxonomy is a benefit, but a fringe benefit at best. Current thinking appears to be arriving at a much less prescriptive model of metadata, in which, rather than forcing editors to select a term from a taxonomy for the area of business the content relates to, they’re provided a ‘finger buffet’ of metadata to choose from, including schemes for geographic, demographic, subject (i.e. topic) and business tags. (I think we're heading into the realms of folksonomies here).

However, this will no doubt upset those that want to see a tidy hierarchical view made possible by a formal taxonomy, but does that matter if it provides vastly richer possibilities in terms of interrogating and presenting content?

One of the central selling points of LGCL and now IPSV was the broad view of government services relating to a given term (e.g. see everything that all government agencies and local authorities have on animal welfare), but the reality is that's both a pipe-dream and of absolutely no use to the vast majority of users.  A broad view of government services however that relate to, say, a single mother, under 30, recently made redundant, with children under 5 living in Birmingham would be of real value. This is only possible though if one gets away from thinking like librarians and stops trying to neatly categorise every single one of a council’s services and information nodes based on universally understood terms.

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 preverable to building several sets of data about a citizen's residantial status. The ICO guidance asks a series of questions together with explanations which outline the ICO's latest approach, answers to which will determine the permissibility of using the data.  The questions are as follows:

• Is it necessary for the local authority to use the information to carry out its statutory functions?
• If council tax information is used for another purpose, what effect will this have on the people the information is about?
• Would using the information cause unwarranted detriment to any individual?
• Would using the information for another purpose benefit those the local authority provides services to?
• Is the information particularly sensitive?
• Will the information be adequately protected from improper use or disclosure?
• Is there an alternative to sharing information in a form that identifies individuals?
• Do individuals understand how the local authority will use their information?

The guidance is available for Download ICO_Tax_Guidance_2007.pdf .

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 of an entrenched attitude that every project or initiative should have a web site - in fact this was usually the first thing that project teams did once they had been handed funding. No thought was ever given to what would happen to the site once the project had completed and funding no longer available.  This 'silo thinking' is endemic across the public sector, and created huge problems in being able to find relevant information - that could well be split across several sites. The fact that it's easy in web-land to provide links between sites and content hasn't occurred to many of the site owners. Removing out of date or irrelevant content is clearly a step in the right direction, and should remove some of the clutter from search engine results.

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. I think part of the answer to this conundrum is to start integrating things like discussion forums into the enterprise's Intranet search index - the best of both worlds maybe?

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 taxonomy, and particularly where the new breed of search engine is able to return relevant results AND cater for the serendipitous nature of some search queries. Interestingly, Verity (now part of Autonomy) had developed a collaborative taxonomy facility for their K2 search engine, where common terms could be identified for taxonomy labels. Sounds to me that they had recognised the limitations of the inflexible top-down taxonomy approach and were heading towards the realms of folksonomies without realising it. David concludes by stating:

Folksonomies are not only frequently more useful than top-down taxonomies; they better reflect the bottom-up, messy, ambiguous, inconsistent, social nature of meaning—despite Aristotle and the tradition his genius spawned.

Wish I'd said that!