Socitim’s ‘Better Connected 2010′ report: what did it say? Join the discussion at Moseley Exchange
A few weeks ago Socitm released their Better Connected 2010 report on the quality of local council websites. Stuart Harrison has read the report, and in the last of our pilot digital engagement discussions he will share its insights and his thoughts on them.
Socitm is the membership association for ICT professionals in Local Authorities and the public and third sectors. Their Better Connected report, now in its twelfth year, compares local authority websites against a set of criteria designed to:
“…provide an informed view of the quality of the experience that members of the public are likely to have when engaging with local government through a website. We do this by examining how well each site deals with common queries and situations.”
Considering that claim, it seems a shame that in order to acquire a legitimate copy of the report itself you must pay £400 to subscribe to Socitm Insight. (You can, however, download a free spreadsheet showing how each council was ranked.)
So Stuart has kindly agreed to share his thoughts on the report with anyone who’s interested.
The discussion is being held in Moseley Exchange at 6.30pm on Monday (26 April).
If you intend to join us please take a moment to register on our Eventbrite page just turn up.
Update:
I’m going to try live-streaming the audio on Bambuser, and if I can find time I hope to release the audio mapped to any slides that Stuart might use. I might also get round to live blogging it here.
vCard
Email
Audioboo
Delicious
Flickr
Google
Last.FM
LinkedIn
Tumblr
Twitter
It is to be hoped that those of us further away from the venue (e.g. http://www.orkney.gov.uk , http://www.cornwall.gov.uk, etc, etc, etc.) will be able to engage interactively with this event using some appropriate technology (e.g. http://www.glowscotland.org.uk) .
SOCITM really must get its own house in order, for all events and meetings, on this type of interactive “virtual” participation, if it expects to be taken seriously by the wider LA community, or anybody else.
Sweyn Hunter
I’ll see what I can do, although these report sharing events are being run in my spare time; it was only ever the intention that they were a group of people getting together to share information that’s useful to them.
Please be aware that this event is not connected with Socitm in any way whatsoever: we are simply discussing Stuart’s interpretation of their findings, in the same way that we discussed a Hansard Society report last week and an Ordnance Survey consultation the week before.
Michael