Martin Uden, the UK’s Ambassador to the Republic of Korea (South Korea to most of us), is a prolific FCO blogger.  Today he wrote about a meeting he had this morning.

I normally don’t say much about the many private meetings that I hold in Seoul, but this morning I called on Kim Dae-jung, former President of Korea and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.  I went to see him to thank him for his continued attention to the imprisonment of his fellow Peace Prize recipient, Aung San Suu Kyi, and specifically for his contribution to the website set up for ASSK’s 64th birthday.

We discussed Secretary-General Ban’s visit to Burma tomorrow and the sad fact the ASSK’s trial is to resume the same day.  It was encouraging to see the very clear focus that President Kim has on the plight of ASSK and his strong support for pro-democracy elements there.  Coming from a man who did so much to bring democracy to Korea, I found it truly heartening.
President Kim kindly agreed that I could mention our conversation and his staunch support for the people of Burma.

Martin has crammed an enormous amount of into two short paragraphs that probably took ten minutes or less to write.

• He meets Heads of State as part of his job
• The former President supports the plight of fellow Peace Prize Recipient, Aung San Suu Kyi
• ASSK is 64
• There is a website supporting her
• Her trial is to resume tomorrow
• It is all about promoting democracy

It’s well worth following the FCO blogs.  A little rough around some edges and not every post is of interest, but there are some gems.

The best PR is the PR that is unsolicited and comes out of the blue.

A comment was posted this morning on the IDeA’s Policy & Performance blog:

The CivicSurf DVD is a fantastic introduction. And that’s not just my opinion. We invited our councillors to a 45 minute session and showed the film after a very brief introduction about online communities. The fact that they saw ‘people like them’ in similar circumstances got the key points across very effectively, and it generated some great questions and comments. I prepared a document that gave links to social media tools, blogs by elected representatives and online community websites to encourage further investigation and play. One councillor is now blogging regularly. But all who attended now have a better understanding of the possibilities for online engagement. Long story short, thumbs up to CivicSurf.

It was written by an Australian Local Govt Officer who requested a CivicSurf DVD a few months back.  I’m really delighted that the film helped convince his elected representatives within just 45 minutes.  It is exactly what it was made for.

You can follow the councillors (and some others) on Twitter: @OzGovLocalClrs

If anyone ever asks you why Civil Servants or politicians should blog, send them over to Martin Leach’s most recent post.

Martin is one of the DFID bloggers that we’ve been coaching.  He’s recently arrived in Kigali, Rwanda as Head of DFID Rwanda.  He’s just published a post called Dear Olly that drives home the human nature of the work that DFID in the developing world.

The post is really well written. It is personal. It links the UK with Rwanda.  It explains part of DFID’s important work in the country. It gives you hope that things are improving.

Please go read it, tell your colleagues to read it and tell your bosses to read it.  Then read some more of the DFID bloggers.  They are doing a fantastic job of telling the story of DFID’s work in a real and human way.

(Cross-posted from www.gallomanor.com)

Tony Tomkinson has been looking at his blogstats. In 12 months he’s had over 5,000 visits and he has analysed them by post.  Nothing earth-shattering there.  No rocket science involved.  No records broken.  You might say it is quite dull.

Dull to you and me perhaps, but to Tony it is very interesting  indeed, because it shows what his constituents are interested in and for a civic leader that is the way to get re-elected.

Twitter has exploded into the public consciousness recently thanks to the likes of Stephen Fry and the BBC’s fascination with it from Jonathan Ross, Richard Bacon and even most amazingly Terry Wogan.

Politicians are catching up rapidly.  No.10 Downing Street passed MC Hammer in popularity today and two services in particular help us find the more obscure users in the political sphere.

• Tweetminster follows MPs and Prospective Parliamentary Candidates
• CllrTweeps is building a list of Councillors who tweet

Both seem to be developing fast and are worth checking up on from time to time.

The US Embassy have obviously read page 27 of the CivicSurf booklet headlined “Answer email with your blog.”

This evening they announced via Twitter that they’d set up a new blog to share information based on the emails and calls they receive. It’s really basic stuff. Someone emails or calls the embassy about something because they can’t find the information elsewhere. So publish that information on a Google friendly website AKA a blog. Next time people find without having to call or email. Everyone’s time is saved.

It’s great to see the US Embassy using Social Media tools this way. It’s not clear if this is a rogue experiment coming out of Grosvenor Square or an international thing. Either way it’s great to see.

We’ve just started Round Two of the DFID blog coaching programme and we’ll be seeing posts from some new far-flung places as the additional group of bloggers come online.  As Simon Dickson, who developed the DFID blog site, has pointed out the DFID blogs have more subscribers to RSS Feeds than the main DFID site and more than the FCO bloggers.  It’s an indication that the project is working.

The idea of providing coaching does seem to be gaining traction amongst local authorities. We’re putting together two proposals for community engagement sites this week and both have asked for coaching.

There is more information on this site about the coaching programme we offer.  Use the menu link or the rather large button on the right.

There is an old maxim (at least 2 years which is very old for social media) which say email is for work and the web for play.  It is a maxim that I hope is becoming rapidly outdated as more and people within the public sector come to realise the value of the information to their jobs being provided online.

There are three ways to keep in touch with what the CivicSurf project are doing:

1. Visit this site regularly - once a fortnight might do you, but you might forget
2. Add the RSS Feed to your subscription list  - Plain English video on what in the world is RSS
   
3. Sign up to receive emails whenever we publish something new - click link or use the form top right

The best way is number 2.  It means you won’t miss a thing, you’ll get the information when you want (rather than by an email cluttering your inbox), and you can share it via an intranet or your own blog.  FYI RSS feeds are covered in the CivicSurf Blog Coaching Programme.

Liz Azyan is conducting some research into Local Government and Social Media.  On her beautifully themed blog she has just posted an interview with Cllr James Cousins about his blog.  It is well worth a read.

It was interesting to read that he had the self-discipline to run the blog unpublished for 6 weeks or so to build a few posts and to be sure in himself that he wanted to launch the blog.

CivicSurf Evaluation Report

Running a project has lots of high points: coming up with a brilliant idea; getting the funding in place; starting the actual production; seeing the bits coming together; getting feedback; publishing the evaluation report.

“publishing the evaluation report”.  A high point?  It’s not exactly an adrenaline rush and if I’m being perfectly honest it isn’t exactly fun.  But we, at Gallomanor, do recognise the importance of fairly evaluating the work we do.  Of working out where the mistakes were made, figuring what the real strengths of a project are and deciding what we’ll do better next time.

As part of the funding from the Ministry of Justice for CivicSurf we were obliged to write an evaluation report and in the interests of openness they’re going to publish it and are happy for us to publish it here.  Click on CivicSurf Evaluation Report to view it [PDF, 60k.]

I can’t claim it is a masterpiece of evaluation, but on the plus side it only runs to five pages.

For those who don’t want to open the pdf the key learning points are below the fold.

Before you go there though, a few things:

1. The report could be read as being critical of the councillors from Norfolk and in general.  This is not intended.  We appreciate the workload for which councillors volunteer and we appreciate that amognst all the calls on their time participating in a “project” might not be that high on their list of priorities.  So let it be said again.  The councillors from Norfolk, Tony, Jenny and Peter, are brilliant.  They were generous with their time and feedback and they have persevered with their blogs and, I hope, are still finding them useful tools for doing their “jobs” as councillors.
2. A few thank yous are needed.  Tim Anderson, Griff Wigley, Gavin Ricketts, Andrew Brown, Dave Briggs, Mary Reid, Tom Watson, Richard Brunstrom, Andrew North, Steve Webb and the MoJ team who supported us.  Thank you.
3. This isn’t the end of project.  The site will continue and expand.  We want CivicSurf to be a place for councillors, civic leaders and officers to come to for advice and resources on becoming an effective civic leader blogger.  We’ll continue to support any organisations that want to arrange a viewing of the documentary.  We still have copies of the DVD and booklet.  And we’ve produced a blog coaching programme that is proven to help civic leaders become more effective leaders through blogging.

Read the rest of this entry »