Live and let learn

Back in September I started thinking about how Blogging in the Public Sector could benefit government agencies, especially in the education sector. This was mainly brought about by Andy Budd’s presentation for the British Government: Weblogging in Public.

It’s great to hear that Andy was invited back again to give a more expanded talk for people within the UK Government! Does anyone know if the Australian Government is consulting about similar ideas here?

Andy got to discuss lots of opportunities for blogging within the government:

However the thing I was most interested in was how governments could use external blogs to connect with the people they served. An external blog could really help demystify the workings of government, while at the same time creating a sense of empathy and trust.

(…similar to how the influence of Robert Scoble’s blogging helped to change the public perception of Microsoft). And on the topic of how to stop your own employees blogging:

I said that their staff would blog whether they liked it or not, and being draconian about things would just send bloggers underground. As such, I said the best option was to create a fair weblog policy that let staff know where they stood.

Andy ends with the exciting idea of a prime minister’s blog! How many people would read a personal word from there PM?! I’d certainly subscribe if I knew it was actually written by the PM! Well, what-do-you-know, apparently our PM has already started blogging!

More seriosly, in one of the comments to Andy’s post, it’s pointed out that the Premier of Belgium has an RSS feed and does a weekly podcast! How cool is that!