By Majeed Saleh
The new group of online technologies referred to as ‘web 2.0′ offer valuable opportunities to public sector bodies but also present major challenges, a leading consultant in the field will tell public sector ICT manager this month.
Ewan McIntosh, a consultant who advises the Scottish government on learning and technology futures, will be delivering the keynote speech to a conference on web 2.0 in the public sector hosted in September by the public sector Society of IT Management (Socitm).
Web 2.0 is a catch-all phrase covering several types of service, McIntosh told E-Government Bulletin in an exclusive interview ahead of his speech.
One of the best-known types of web 2.0 service is the social network, whereby sites such as Facebook, Bebo, and Twitter connect people with friends and colleagues in many different interactive ways, he said. Such networks are based on the principle that people are now not simply consumers of information but also potential participants in information building, McIntosh said.
Accordingly, modern organisations may find that these tools are a more efficient way of sharing knowledge and ideas about how to move the organisation forward, he said.
In education, web 2.0 may change the way that we learn, McIntosh said, and in this field Scotland has a head start on the rest of Britain. There is a great deal of social media work going on in Scotland generally, and there is already widespread use of tools such as blogs and wikis in the country’s education sector, he said. An example is NHS Scotland’s My Community Space, which links people and resources in innovative ways, such as the ability to tag and share e-learning resources: (http://www.mcs.scot.nhs.uk/).
As well as creating their own tools, public authorities are also using established sites such as Facebook and Bebo to ensure they are “going where the interested parties are”, McIntosh said.
The NHS, for example, has been using Bebo, a social networking site aimed at teenagers, to disseminate messages on sexual health to young people (http://www.bebo.com/NHS-Direct).
Another phenomenon linked with ‘web 2.0′ sites is that of ‘mash-ups’, in which content from more than one source is brought together to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
This is the principle underpinning Google Maps, for example, a facility unveiled last year allowing people and organisations to create their own personalised maps by ‘geotagging’ locations with photographs and video. The facility was used by BBC Berkshire during last year’s summer floods, to upload content provided by users that created a visually rich geographical depiction of the floods in the region (http://fastlink.headstar.com/maps1).
Overall, McIntosh said the public sector faces two main challenges with regards to web 2.0.
The first is authenticity. “There’s no point in having a blog where you just put out your press releases,” he said. The most effective blogs are those written by the people involved in the day-to-day work of an organisation.
A good example can be seen in a series of blogs run by the curriculum development agency Learning and Teaching in Scotland, he said. The blogs are written not by the communications department or the chief executive but by staff best placed to comment on professional development, curriculum assessment or technology.
“They have a forum where they can be passionate about [those topics] without people looking over their shoulder saying ‘you can’t say that’”, McIntosh said. “It was a gamble that LTS took and it’s paid off – the result is that people feel increasingly that they can communicate with the people making decisions”.
The second challenge is getting the community to use these new tools, he said. This is a complex problem but one that is helped by making services as relevant as possible to people’s lives.
“Information you get [from a public authority] on your mobile phone, if you get it at all…tends to be marketing stuff or fairly useless information. Councils need to think about what information is useful to people at that particular time and how they can use a combination of text messaging, web browsing on mobile phones to get their information across better.”
Ultimately, it is the involvement of citizens in the creation of web 2.0 services that makes them of such potential value and power to public sector bodies in a democracy, McIntosh said. One of the best known examples of local authorities using web 2.0 has been Redbridge Borough Council’s customisable home page, ‘Redbridge i’ (http://www.redbridge.gov.uk/).
“Redbridge i is made up of lots of little ‘widgets’”, said McIntosh. “Imagine if those widgets were created, or co-created with constituents of that local authority.”
NOTE: ‘Web 2.0: what it is and why it matters – a briefing for public sector managers’ is hosted by Socitm in London on 10 September: http://www.socitm.gov.uk/socitm/Events/Web+2+seminar+10+September+2008.htm
