Posts By Liz Azyan

Requesting help to create really useful events for local government web managers & digital teams

Happy New Year everybody! Hope you’ve had a lovely holiday and looking forward to the new 2013. We accomplished and overcome many things in 2012. We survived the end of the world, celebrated the Queen’s Jubilee, hosted the London Olympics and (most importantly) GOV.UK was launched! It’s been a good year – Express Yourself! ItsRead… Read more »

Democratizing Softwares: Bristol City Council’s Open Source Strategy Success Story

Last week I wrote about how “What Open Source & Open Standards means to Government and citizens” in response to the open standards consultation that is currently running until the end of April 2012. This time I’m going to bring to you one of those rare but truly inspiring case studies for open source inRead… Read more »

Announcing the Open Gov Summit 2012

Open source is answering the call at government agencies at all levels as they look for opportunities to carve out costs and improve security, transparency, public participation and collaboration. Why? Open source is stable, trustworthy, and secure, and its solutions are being used across government agencies to create efficiencies, eliminate vendor lock-in, meet mission-critical ITRead… Read more »

Make Conversations Possible: What Open Standards and Open Source means to government and citizens

Over the past week, we have been inundated with articles surfacing in response to the UK government’s first open standards roundtable discussion hosted by the Cabinet Office that was held on the 4th of April. It was described as “a resounding call to scrap the government’s policy on open standards“, as Mark Ballard from ComputerRead… Read more »

What you should know about ‘The Really Useful Event 2011 – Data Discovery Workshop’

Register to ‘The Really Useful – Data Discovery Workshop’ NOW and vote for the open data challenges Download the ‘Data Discovery Workshop’ Agenda A. Its one of a kind The LDG Community in conjunction with the Transparency team at DCLG and the LG group are planning a series of events and activities over a 6-monthRead… Read more »

Let’s not just make open data sexy… let’s make it really useful!

To register for the Really Useful event of 1st of July go to http://reallyuseful2011.eventbrite.com and vote for the challenges at http://ru11.ideascale.com Ever since the launch of open data here in the UK by Sir Tim Bernes-Lee in January 2010 with data.gov.uk (who ReadWriteWeb says actually put the US version Data.gov to shame due to theRead… Read more »

You know you’re doing something wrong with your council website when….

You know you’re doing something wrong with your council website when you mostly say ‘YES’ to this list Are you a web manager or just someone who wishes to know how your local council website is performing? Or maybe just a curious observer of public services online? If you are, you should continue reading…. Good,Read… Read more »

Lessons learnt from local council website redesign by Kevin Brewer from Derby City Council

Last year, I started a group exclusively for local govvies on Huddle called LocalGovWebStars with some help from a good local gov buddy of mine, Ken Eastwood (Assistant Director at Barnsley MBC and founder of publicsectornomads.com) to talk about website redesign projects in local gov. The group resulted in some very interesting discussions and tips.Read… Read more »

Come Dine With Me: Local Gov Web Usability Tasting Menu.

It seems many of us are working on all sorts of different stuff nowadays. I’ve been listening to everything that’s going on in local government and feeling quite overwhelmed with how much is going on (even with the budget cuts!). We still have lots to worry about but with even fewer resources. There are aRead… Read more »

Reshaping public services online by getting the basics right

Frustration There is nothing more frustrating than being in government right now if you are looking for change or motivation in your work. With almost no funding available, fewer colleagues to carry the burden, feeling of loss and uncertainty, we are facing an all time low. Everyone knows that with fewer resources, it makes itRead… Read more »