Tim's Blog

There are a lot of people working on supporting young people through the internet, or supporting young people to engage with the internet.

Over on the BarCampUKGovWeb discussion list Ian Dunmore shared a question posted today on the Public Sector Forums:

"I've been asked by a couple of people in my council if they can use the
likes of Bebo and Facebook to add a group to, to encourage young people to engage with the council. Firstly, it's Libraries and secondly our youth
people who want to promote a youth portal that is being developed."

In my reading for the Youth Work and Social Networking research I'm currently involved in, and in trying to prepare a series of briefing papers on Social Networking Sites I've been struck by how complicated an issue this turns out to be.

The answer depends on (at the very least):

On Saturday at BarCampUKGovWeb I asked whether it was possible to use the data from DirectGov to direct website users to their local government services, without needing to send them via the pretty orange pages of local.direct.gov.uk.

Thanks for a tip-off from Paul Clarke, I got in touch with Andy Key from Hampshire who has helped out with a few pointers to some currently unofficial (but possibly soon-to-be-supported) ways of making use of Local Direct Gov data:

The answer is No, Yes, and Maybe.

Web services: not yet. This is something I've been asking for and the Local Directgov team are looking at doing. [...]

I'm on the train back to Leicester after the first BarCampUKGovWeb and thought I should get down in blog form some of my early reflections.

6 Things I leant from BarCampUKGovWeb

• We need to talk (and commission technology?) in terms of narratives and stories of user experience: What do we want to do for people? Unless I can describe in technology neutral terms what it is I want to do, and unless I can explain a) exactly how technology will help me do that, and b) why a technological solution is preferable over any other form of solution - I'm probably not going to end up with the technology that fits my needs. Stories are powerful. And we should be using them more.

There is useful data in local direct gov - but can we get at it with a web service to create mash-ups for public benefit?

<warning - slightly geeky post coming up>

Last year we tried to raise awareness of the Youth Opportunity Fund and Youth Capital Fund with the Actions Speak Louder campaign. The campaign, targetted at young people - involved a national awards ceremony and publicity campaign - but the goal was to help young people find their local Youth Opportunity Fund grant making panel.

I've just been in a session at BarcampUKGovWeb where we've been talking about how government provides information to young people, and involves young people in conversation with government (although we ran short on time to get onto that second and most important one). There's a lot to be talked about here - and 20 minutes only got us started. Below is a quick mindmap of what I gathered from the discussion:

I'd be happy to share the mindmap with anyone else who was in the session who would like to add to it. And very keen to continue the discussion...

Whilst I'm on the topic of upcoming conferences and events, two days before I'll be exploring how various speakers think we should keep young people safe online, I should be at BarCampUKGovWeb - an altogether different sort of event.

A BarCamp "an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees." Participants are encouraged to contribute short sessions to the event - and I've just been thinking about the sorts of sessions I could present.

The BarCampUKGovWeb focus is on: