Simon’s Blog (the official one)

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I’ve just submitted an idea into the competition recently announced by the  Power of Information Task Force - ‘Show Us a Better Way‘ - tell us what you’d build with public information and we could help fund your idea! Here’s the idea:

What is your idea’s name
The Widget Factory
A short description of your idea
Getting Governmnet Information and Services closer to citizens through existing websites serving communities of location and interest.
Describe you idea. How does it work and who does it help?
Widgets are small areas on a website or blog which deliver information or services provided by a trusted third party. A good example is the JustGiving Fundraising Widget. This widget is tailored for the particular fundraiser and can be placed on his/her own website. The widget shows a progress bar (amount raised vs target), the comments made by the last 3 donors, information about the charity and a button to donate. See http://ruralnet.typepad.com/pride2007/ for an example.

The Widget factory would demonstrate this approach for two or three Government Services with the objective of getting this idea ‘mainstreamed’ so that all future online Government services had a ‘make your own widget’ facility that could be used on a ’self-serve’ basis by bloggers or those who maintain websites for communities of location or practice.

We would ‘go with the stones that rolled’ and work with the Government Departments that were willing to collaborate but ideally would like to produce two widgets:

1 - ‘Tell Us Once’ about the birth of you child. This widget would be designed to be placed on any website where parents already gather: eg NetMums; Nursery and Schools websites etc
2 - The crime stats widget. We are always told that the fear of crime is higher than is warranted by the statistics. This widget would filter national statistics for a particular geographic area or interest group (eg older people) and display them next to the national average figures. This widget could be used on websites serving a particular geographic community or a particular target group (eg older people).

Let’s see what happens. Comment on this idea on the showusabetterway website.

Thanks for coming to the ICT Workshop at the ACRE Conference. Over the next few days I will be put up some notes here to ahelp you make sense of the bookmarks I have gathered together for you here:

del.icio.us/s1m0nb3rry/acre

Simon