Official blogs and wikis needn't be boring

While the Defra wiki - trashed by libertarian politicos and then relaunched - continues to be mentioned as a warning to government servants of the perils of online collaborative tools, a linked blog and wiki is doing rather effective service for the local authority improvement and development agency IDeA.

The wiki, appropriately enough, is about partnership ... or rather Performance Management in Partnership. Hmmm, sounds a bit dry, particularly when you read on and find reference to procurement, coordinating systems, and risk management. But that's where the blog, and the chatty email updates from policy officer Ingrid Koehler come in. There's commentary on policy developments, reports on events, useful links ... and Ingrid's holiday snaps, both blogged and Flickred. I liked The Burg(h)ers of Calais.

If Ingrid is away, Adrian and Vicki help out. You feel there are real people in there. Their conference reporting makes you believe other officials are human too:

David Cook had the best "back to the floor" type tip. He regularly listens in on randomly selected customer calls to the council on tape on his drive home. This helps him get a finger on the pulse of what the main customer issues are, and also on how customer service is being handled in the council.

The technology is not fancy. The wiki runs on a commercially-hosted service, Editme, and the blog is on Blogger. As always, it's the people who make the difference.
Meanwhile, over at the Defra wiki, the Defra science strategy team have popped in a rather intriguing article on political philosophy:

The idea is known as One Planet Living. It’s rather simple really: if everybody in the world lived as we do in the UK, we would need three planets to support us. It is often presented as the latest fad in Green political thought. In fact, it's an idea that dates back several centuries.

The article goes on to say that great thinkers like Max Weber, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke were all acutely aware of ‘green’ political issues, and serves to show that no one political tradition has sole green credentials. This has prompted one commenter, signing in as Matt Qvortrup, to remark:

If the Greens are to consolidate their gains and expand, they need to recognise that part of their message is a conservative one. It is deeply attractive to certain conservative instincts and this should not be a matter for embarrassment but for celebration.

I shall monitor the page closely for signs of the return of Guido Fawkes and his co-conspirators. I sense the Defra civil servants might welcome a bit of action. There's no point having a blog or wiki if you don't get noticed.