This is a really great paper on using technology to get citizens involved in decision-making.

Some great case studies and lessons learned, as well as some useful pointers, with some UK examples as well as some USA ones.

Well worth a read if you're trying to convince your organisation to do things a bit differently.

http://www.publicagenda.org/pages/promising-practices-in-online-engagement

After a really long day at Google on Friday there was plenty to think about. The Googlers gave us an insight into their range of products, from tools to help you make money from your website through to creative uses of YouTube.
There's definitely more discussion with Google to come - they need our help to understand the issues faced by local government, and we've certainly got a role to play in shaping the relationship between Google and the local government sector so that everyone get.... Read More

"Ipsos MORI’s latest work provides an insight into how well local areas are performing based on analysis of the 2008/09 Place Survey national dataset"

You can download a copy here [opens in PDF]

Highlights the growing crisis in confidence in local government despite service improvement, with an equal decline in effective communications. Enter social media and other tools?

The star turn at the session we hosted at this week's Reboot Britain event on the future of local government and how we can work together to make it both relevant AND interesting.

Also worth checking out our short video gathering views on local government - some surprising comments, others less so unfortunately...