LG/WWW

Last Friday I attended a meeting of the LocalGov Digital Steering Group. The group of local government digital practitioners of which I'm currently Vice Chair along with Carl Whistlecraft . Comms Lead Sarah Lay has already written a great blog piece about it, so in the LocalGov Digital spirit of sharing and collaboration, rather then repeat what she's written read about what happened here and then come back to get my take on it, please. For me, the meeting felt like the end of the beginning; the completion of the discovery phase and a move into outputting tangible products to assist everyone in local government who deliver services and information digitally. Up until now, I know that some have seen LocalGov Digital purely as a think tank, but the Steering Group and wider network are digital doers and in the near future you'll start to see things like the Content Guidelines published. The Guidelines collate and add to best practice from around the world to help

Today the sites we're producing as part of our Choose Digital Project moved into their Alpha phase. You can read about why we're creating two new sites , on the Choose Digital Blog. We're inviting comment from local residents and businesses, peers in other local authorities and our own councillors and staff; in fact anyone who wants to. We've released templates for home pages, landing pages, services and information pages. One of the first things you'll probably notice is a warning on every page. This is because the sites are far from finished, in fact they're barely started in terms of design, development and content. So why release a site to the public so early in the process? I wrote in the past about the Government Service Design Manual and how some of it could be adapted for local governments . The basic framework for creating a digital service is something that certainly can be applied to every design and development process for a public facing s

In recent experience I think it's true to say there's growing interest in sharing and collaboration between local governments. Whilst this may take shape through formal shared services or jobs there's also an undercurrent of dialog which is creating informal coalitions of knowledge and ideas, both online and in person, between hundreds of local government members and officers. That's the good news. From events I've attended this year there seem many more interested in joining in, but unsure as to how beyond traditional conferences. I recently wrote about why I'm running another LocalGov Digital Hangout and as even unconferences need some sort of structure I though this could be the topic of September's. To this end, I thought the hangout might focus on these four questions: Which tools can local governments use to share ideas and collaborate more effectively? Are there any good examples of sharing and collaboration between local governments?