I just found out through Dizzy that No. 10 plans to launch a TV channel. It certainly does no harm if it helps to provide greater transparency, although I presume it won’t be too much fun to watch either. But the ‘funny’ thing Dizzy has found out is that their announcement wasn’t followed by taking precautions from the inevitable online prank. And a prank is exactly what happened, have a look at this…
This isn’t the first cock-up by the government’s web 2.0 operation. As Guido has embarrasingly noted in his blog, the widely publicised Ask the PM a question YouTube campaign never actually happened. Both of these msitakes are avoidable and embarrasingly amateurish. Which is shocking seeing how the open source government work under Tom Watson is looking great and the UK is becoming a much talked about world vanguardist in the open government field.
UPDATE: LabourMatters tells me that the PM did actually answer the question, it simply was delayed for 10 days. My mistake there.
//the widely publicised Ask the PM a question YouTube campaign never actually happened//
Yes it did, No.10 were 10 days late in replying that’s all.
As I understand it, the ‘TV channel’ is part of the re-vamped No.10 website which we reported upon here: http://www.labourmatters.com/2008/07/19/gordon-brown-getting-a-new-website/
Thanks for the update – that Guido bloke is full of himself anyway – we even reported on the replies, by the way: http://www.labourmatters.com/2008/07/10/prime-minister-responds-to-youtube-questioners/
I take it you’re not a Labour Matters reader? 😉
I wasn’t aware of the site until your first comment the other day. Now I’m a daily reader!