Ruth Carnall, NHS London's Cheif Executive lent her support to the Go London Social Innovation competition last week. Here she chats about the benefits of an open call for ideas and the importnace of becoming active as an integral part of everyday life. 

We're really pleased with all the great ideas that have come through, as well as people using our chatter stream to talk about what inspires them to get active. 

Go London! 

Over at TweetyHall we are asking if and how we should create hashtags for councils on Twitter.

We’re looking for opinions on whether this is something worth doing. We would like to work with you (as residents, politicians and councils) to allocate each local council area a three letter tag. In this way we hope to be able to help keep things simple, easy to remember and make it easy for you to find information on your local area during the local elections and beyond.

Does your council already have a hashtag?

We also don’t want to start from scratch with a new tag if one is already being used successfully by a council or residents so please let us know.

What should your hashtag be if you don’t already have one?

Well one way might be to take a look at the national rail station codes as these are all unique three letter combinations which local people should (might!) be able to recognise as relating to their area.

Of course this system isn’t perfect, for instance many councils have more than one station in their area and their may be conflict in two tier areas with county and district councils both seeming like the best fit for a certain tag. But given there are around 500 councils and 2300 station codes, we’re hoping that with a bit of common sense we can work around these!

You can read more and join the debate on the TweetyHall Blog.

Last but not least in the slides from Monday's FutureGov Network meets Measurement Camp event. Thanks Ingrid!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the FutureGov meets Measurement Camp event yesterday, hosted at Edelman's swanky offices.

Here's a bunch of stuff from the day:

• Slides presented by Dominic Campbell of FutureGov


• Slides presented by Steph Gray of BIS


• Slides presented by Neerav Shah of Lithium


• Slides presented by Giles Palmer of Brandwatch


• The Twitter hashtag (#fgmc)


• A lovely photo set by Paul Clarke


• A video of Ingrid Koehler of the IDeA


• A video of Will McInnes of Nixon McInnes


• A blog post by Brian Hoadley


• A Wordle by Noel Hatch of Kent Council

We've had some requests for feedback from the group sessions so it would be great if people could post their insights from the discussions.  You can comment here, send us a tweet or whatever you like, just as long as you let us know so we can share with everyone!

Finally, attendees can claim a 10% discount for Monitoring Social Media Bootcamp when you use the discount code 'FUTUREGOV'.  Nice.

Just to quickly point you to this new report from the RSA and direct you to their website to read more.

Worth a look (as is most of their research) ...

Today is the FutureGov meets Measurement Camp session - to follow all the action check out the hashtag:

#FGMC

We'll stick the slides up here as well...

Last week at Gov20LA (an gov20 unconference held out on the West Coast of the US for the first time, expertly pulled together by @You2Gov @Lovisatalk) I met a long time Twitter hero of mine, Adriel Hampton.

Not only is Adriel one of the nicest people you will ever meet, but he is also one of the most enthusiastic with it - particularly about Gov20. He even ran for Senate last year using social media to push his profile...

Here Adriel discusses one of the major themes of #Gov20LA - what does Gov20 actually mean to non-government geeks, should we care and if so what do we do about it? There are certainly a number of diverse views floating around on the subject...

Check out his full post over on his blog.

I used to consider myself a *relatively* balanced individual not too prone to obsessive compulsive tendencies. That was until NASA's social websites came into my life of course...

Whether it's following tweeting Astronauts and their colleagues on the ground or watching space shuttles do backflips in space live on NASA TV (yes - it really does exist!), I have found myself becoming somewhat of a space stalker.

And now NASA have even started reaching out to cling-ons like me, running their own Tweetups and appearing at others.

Here's a presentation from a recent NASA appearance at the Houston Social Media Club on Feb 4, 2010 about #NASA's successes in social media and open government.

Enjoy! But watch out - you'll get hooked too, trust me :)

Literally just back from #Gov20LA - and lo and behold what appears in my Twitter stream but GovFresh's video of the event!

More on the event itself shortly over here, but for now check this out for a flavour of what went on over the weekend.

Some people say this was no big deal. I disagree.

With 11,696 questions (and admittedly only time for 0.2% to be asked!) that's some engagement exercise.

To read how Google managed all the information, take a look at their blog.

We thought you might be interested to hear that NHS London's Go London social innovation competition is now live!

We're pretty excited about this one as it has so much potential to get people thinking about new ideas to get London physically active. As the site says:

"By encouraging conversations about the opportunity for and benefits of being physically active we hope to capture bright, innovative ideas that drive up participation in physical activity resulting in a competition to make the winning idea a reality.

The call for ideas is open until Friday the 19th of March, with the competition being held on Friday the 9th of April at City Hall."

So take a look at the chatter, spread the word and get involved. We look forward to hearing from you!

The Improvement and Development Agency for Local Government (IDeA) is developing a 'Knowledge Hub' for the sector in the UK as the next stage on from its current site, which offers 'Communities of Practice' for local government types to get together and share information and ideas.

The Knowledge Hub represents the next step and there's a steering group, which FutureGov is on, that meets regularly to review progress and guide the IDeA's thinking. 

These are the notes from the latest Knowledge Hub Advisory Group meeting, which took place last month, and far from being a dry committee session it looks like they got crazy with the post-its.

The thinking has already moved on significantly from the first meeting - initially the plans felt very much like an attempt to control all local government knowledge (see our blog post from the first meeting!).  However there's been a shift in mindset and the current proposals look much more porous and like the IDeA is moving towards becoming an important node in a wider network of applications, sites and other information sharing mechanisms.

Time will tell how the Knowledge Hub will develop but there's only one way to shape it and that's to get involved so let us know what you think in the comments or you can contact Steve Dale directly.

Ideas for how we might use Foursquare in government anyone?

(thanks to We are Social for sharing)

Apparently today is Data Privacy Day 2010. To mark the occastion Google have published their 'Privacy Principles':

• Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services.


• Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices.


• Make the collection of personal information transparent.


• Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy.


• Be a responsible steward of the information we hold.

Not quite the values of VRM FutureGov's Carrie is a passionate supporter of (ask her for more details on that one if you're interested - well worth a coffee and a chat), but interesting to see nonetheless.

For more on Google thoughts on privacy, you can read their full their blog here.

Online is not the only potential solution to the problem of how to engage people in the democratic process but many factors make it a good place to start.

However so many projects start to drift towards the 'just another website' zone rather than really looking at how to really use social media to make a difference to democracy.

Why? Because the shiny technology distracts everyone from the fact that this is all about people. The good news of course is so is democracy.

We need to embrace the idea that this really is social – you can't expect the public to have relationship with 'the council' – they need to interact with actual people and this involves finding ways to equip officers and members to take part in these conversations.

Want to read more, click here

As many of you will know, UK GovCamp 2010 happened on the weekend, generating lots of pre- and post-event debate.

Although I wasn't able to make it along to the event itself, catching up on my reading one contribution that stood out was this presentation from Michele Ide-Smith and Paul Henderson on the work they are leading on in Cambridgeshire.

Plenty of lessons on approaches to researching and boosting local digital engagement.

The future is a date, but it’s also a story about our lives today.

Recently, the near-collapse of financial systems, looming fears of climate change, and continuing ‘wars on terror’, have reinforced predictions of an apocalyptic future, that have long been a part of science fiction. But where do our individual aspirations of ‘a better life’ collide with these dark futures?

From this question came ‘The Power of 8’.  Following a video appeal, designer Anab Jain assembled a heist-like cast that included a biotechnologist, a policy advisor, a permaculturalist, an educator, a retired civil servant, an urban designer and an architect. To imagine optimistic, collective expressions of our futures, today.

A series of public engagement efforts brought to the forefront concerns around climate change alongside a deep-seated nostalgia for a ‘green’ world. Buried amidst this, the group sensed a hope that ‘fantastic technological innovations might still triumph and save us from doom’. So they created an alternate ecosystem of the future called ‘Acres Green’, where people balance a pragmatic requirement to live closer to nature with their natural human impulses to subvert and control it. Prototypes, films and installations illustrate this ambiguity between the natural and the technological: Prosthetic trees bear multiple fruits, synthetic pollinating creatures called the ‘Beamer Bees’ live in harmony with radiowaves, and robotic flocking clouds create microclimates, bringing rains to specific areas.

The project has produced one vision of many possible futures, hoping to exemplify an inclusive approach to the development of our shared future, lives and environment.

Check out the project site for our stories, methods and ideas!

The Wikipedia entry on the 2008-2009 Icelandic financial crisis is a very good overview of how "big boys" play with "big numbers" - for short term benefits for themselves, never thinking long term, let alone the public.

The entry refers to "sovereign debt" as a key issue.

But nobody questions the sovereignty of issuing Cash and spending it into the economy. Everybody assumes that money has to be borrowed as Credit, so that the beneficiaries get their interest payments.

Money as Debt, also known as Credit is a crime on humanity. It started in 1694, when the Bank of England was founded. More on http://moneyasdebt.wordpress.com

Sabine [enraged]

This site is most remarkable in its design, layout, content and, above all, intentions!

Through the Forum for Stable Currencies, we've been trying to raise awareness about the national or public debt and its devastating consequences at the House of Lords and Commons since 1998.See http://forumforstablecurrencies.org.uk

I trust that this vehicle will speed up the process considerably!

With best wishes for more and more power to your coding and communicating elbows,

Sabine

Organiser, Forum for Stable Currencies

http://forumforstablecurrencies.info

This presentation is an overview of what's wrong with the financial system worldwide: national debts are the systemic longterm cause that hardly anybody understands. But people who create their own currencies a la LETS do!