DATA eh? (formerly web re:Brand): 6/1/10

Friday, June 25, 2010

GovCamp Toronto speaks to converted but that's the point for now

First up, attendance was great form the City of Toronto. Is that important? I think so. Among the many were CIO, Dave Wallace (my ultimate boss here in I&T), Howard Wunch (a more immediate boss in the Web Centre), Trish Garner (OK she is my direct boss). Outside of I&T, Neil Evans from 311 and Michael Williams the General Manager for the EDC division (which is all about Economic Development & Culture - hence the EDC tag) were there. That's two heavy hitters showing interest. In all I counted about 20 City staff there. I think that shows good uptake from us.

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Thursday, June 24, 2010

My table presentation was so dull even I had to leave ...

NOTE: This is content from the web re:Brand posts going back to November 2010. We have kept the re:Brand posts as a legacy archive but, on a go forward basis as of October, 2011, the new DATA eh? content takes over this space.

I'm surprised to find no blog action from the GovCamp of last week. Doubly surprised in a way, since my table topic was "entering the blogosphere".

I wondered from the planing outset whether there would be any uptake on this topic at a camp revolving largely around opening up data? Event organizers suggested it as a possible topic to our toronto.ca/open team and I thought it worth a shot - not only to add variety to the event topics but because I'm blogging and I wanted to find others doing the same. I can say categorically post event: "there isn't any uptake".

I think the main reason is the live conversation is still largely around getting data released (and all that means and/or implies) as opposed to talking about blogging about it. At least this is true from the government inside perspective. It was still a bit of a shock though - out of all the government employees in attendance on this night - that no one stopped by the table to say they were blogging. There are lots of examples of the engaged community blogging of course but I can't find a gov employee blog per se. I'm not certain that makes me exclusive but chances are good if I gave a "gov employee blogging party" few people would come.

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Monday, June 14, 2010

A rant by any other name is still a rant ... no?

This website remains an embarrassment, year after year. Show us the money, or at least some results for our money ON A REGULAR BASIS. Why don't you use maps like the ones that real folks use everyday? Why is there no directory of staff and services? Why is so much old information still available? And who really cares about a 're:Brand'? Aren't grand scale website overhauls (at long intervals) generally accepted as folly now? Who's running the show? No more excuses.>

I always like it when people sugar coat their statements like this - perhaps it would be better if they told us what they really feel. But, seriously, the above comment - and ones like it on the wall - do nothing to enable us to make a better website. All it is is a rant and that may fulfill a need (one we haven't offered up previously) but, again, doesn't offer us anything of value.

Note: I suspect the reference to the "maps" is related to the launch of a new maps for road closures (http://map.toronto.ca/roadrestrictions/index.jsp). The mappers are indeed looking for feedback. It could be they haven't seen it - hard to tell.

A while back I wrote about customer service being only as good as your last performance. That would appear to be true here again - for the current web has clearly failed this person. But, and I'm speaking personally as opposed to "Mr. re:Brand", I would really like to see some more positive energy around the fact we are inviting comment at all. Isn't that a small victory for the masses?

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