Mashups and user generated content in the public sector
Written 02.10.07 by: Jonathan Briggs
Jonathan Briggs of the OTHER media was one of the keynote speakers at Public Sector Online held on Friday 27th September at Inmarsat. Nearly 200 delegates from across local government and government agencies met to hear speakers from Google, the DVLA, BBC Media and Directorgov together with presentations of case studies and round table discussions.
Jonathan’s session stressed the importance of designing the web to be a two way communication medium and in particular thinking about how reputation and user generated content affected transactions with the public. He urged public sector bodies to experiment with blogging both within their intranets and on the their public websites.
This theme was echoed by other speakers and especially by Ed Parsons of Google who demonstrated the importance of allowing users to build their own systems and views of the world through mashups based on services such as Google Maps and published data. He suggested that by combining data from different sources and presenting it visually it was possible to empower citizens to make choices and take action in areas such as education and local government.