Dec 21

Big Digital Society, I Think Not

There have been a couple of articles this week which do nothing to make me feel any less concerned that we are failing to address the fundemental need for a knowledge society so that the benefits are there for everybody and not just the few.

Oct 2

Unpicking Personalised Learning

I owe everything I am to my parents; they saw to it that I had an education. I went to one of the early comprehensive schools where the ideal of equal opportunity for all set the baseline for what we did. Being the 60’s we were “banded” then “streamed” this was the time of the 1940 Education Act. I left there with 10 average ‘O’ levels and 2 good A levels and my parent saw to it that I went on to higher education. I returned after my first term, an alien. Suddenly nobody spoke the same language, I was adrift. In 1974 I emerged, the product of a Christian socialist education and entered the teaching profession. Hold that thought.

Aug 13

Moving on or moving back?

The new world of “Big Society” and citizen choices is, in reality, one of fixed price interventions where individual clients are invoiced and performance is measured in outcomes. What does this mean in reality? It means that front line organisations will need to know which clients were marketed using which channels, which clients responded to the marketing by accessing services, which clients were repeat customers and which were lost and why. What were the complimentary services delivered to those clients and what were the organisations that delivered them?

Jun 24

DAA11EU Impressions and Reflections

Conferences come and go but there’s always something that sticks in your mind. The Digital Agenda Assembly 2011 was structured around the pillars of the Digital Agenda and sought to set the scene for European Activity to achieve the targets for 2020. So what sticks in my mind? The venue; Autoworld was a pretty spectacular [...]

Apr 18

The Geek Layer

And Gov said “Let there be data” and there was data and he looked and he saw that it was open. In the past I’ve had my doubts and my rants about the claims made for open data and its potential for bringing transparency to political process. I think my frustrations came from the idea [...]

Oct 31

Big Society Digital Challenge

Like impatient children on a long journey we say “are we there yet?” To which the reply comes, “nearly” but should we be asking what else should be changing along the way? I’m a digital optimist: I believe that digital technologies can change lives though for me that means tackling the barriers to change at the organisational level. Digital politics are deeply embedded in the social fabric and shifting the balance in favour of the majority will not come quickly or easily.

Jun 2

Rebooting Rural

To those who understand, who get IT, who have vision and imagination that goes beyond a responsibility to shareholders there is no issue in understanding the potential for unlimited bandwidth in rural areas. For everybody else it is sometimes difficult to describe the one big idea that would make it a worthwhile investment.

Mar 6

Plus ca Change, Plus ca Meme Chose

In a truly digital society there is no reason why any digitally included person should not participate in society, or in the economy. Yet, because we organise ourselves on an industrial basis those who cannot join the mass movement to centres of production on a daily basis are excluded from the economy and relegated to a dependency on the state.

Jan 18

Being Digital 2010

In 1995 “Being Digital” by Nicholas Negroponte (Professor of Media Technology at MIT and founder of Media Lab) was a “must read” for anybody interested in how digital technology was having an impact on the world. The potential of digital technology as a catalyst for change was only just starting to gain traction in the mass [...]

Dec 12

A Holy Trinity

     On Friday Martha Lane-Fox Tweeted: “RT NewStatesman xmas issue: @Marthalanefox has agreed to be our celebrity subscriber of the week : HELP, not feeling v funny or inspired!” Along with I have no idea how many others I put forward my suggestions: access to the knowledge society as a fundamental right not as [...]