Blog posts by Harry Metcalfe

Just before Christmas 2009, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority approached us to see if we’d be interested in producing the online part of their first consultation on MPs’ Expenses. This was exciting, to put it mildly — so we leapt in with both feet. As is often the case with this kind of work, the […]

I had a fantastic day at myPublicServices on Thursday. It was a real success. For the first time in a long time (perhaps ever!) I was truly conflicted after lunch: all the sessions looked great, and I could only go to one. Annoying!

Last Thursday, G2010 — a conference on Government 2.0 — finally arrived. As others have said, it was a fantastic day, with many interesting people in attendance and on Twitter. We ran a panel on Digital Engagement.

The UK’s version of data.gov, ably put together by the Cabinet Office, has just launched in private beta. We got to have a sneak peak, and it’s great! The site is a blend of the US’s equivalent, data.gov, and Directgov | Innovate. It’s got a listing of available data packages, powered by the Comprehensive Knowledge […]

In five weeks, mostly during August 2009, we put together a bespoke site, built using Ruby on Rails, that communicated the client’s key messages, linked into their existing web presence, allowed users to submit events and for those events to be moderated, allowed organisations with lots of data to import it en masse, and — […]

Just discovered (via Twitter) that NHS Choices have released a new tool for users to rate hospitals. Fantastic. Government should embrace user generated content more often than it does, and feedback on Hospitals is a great application for it — but their implementation could do with a bit of tweaking. First: the tool has been […]