Planning information tailored to your needs
I was Twittering today - and following the plethora of Social Media and Digital Inclusion fora - or was it forums - and made a few interesting discoveries;
1 - the http://www.communities.idea.gov.uk/c/1232132/home.do
Councillors Connected: The Social Media Online conference - running til 8th April, “This conference will help you explore new tools and ways of communicating with local people, collaborating with the community and improving local services.”
Some interesting ideas coming out and also a relief to know that I am not the only person to battle with the feeds from Twitter into Facebook, to get confused between Yammer and LinkedIn and to struggle with the fine line between work and ‘life’ - having managed in recent weeks to tell DC10plus network followers on Twitter various personal facts and conversly totally bemuse my ‘friends’ on Facebook with Digital Inclusion discussion.
The most interesting thing I picked up today was number 2 on my list
2 - TwitterPlan.com which is powered by PlanningAlerts.com (the latter allow the public to sign up to receive Planning Alerts from ever widening areas around their given post code - simple site - works well assuming your LA is signed up - put together by Lichfield and Lincolnshire - thumbs up to that) … anyway back to TwitterPlan … you can have local alerts leap out at you in amongst Tweets telling you that Hazel Blears has made an announcement, your closest friend is about to meet Barak Obama (really), and someone else has lost their briefcase … brilliant … Emails you have to decide to open, and face it on a busy Tuesday an email from the LPA may just cause you to hit delete - however - the fact that your neighbours are applying for an extension appearing in a list of other random facts might just attach your attention.
The benefit of Social Networking is the multitude of different platforms available for reaching people - and TwitterPlan is a great example of taking a successful application a step further.
3 - the third thing - and for DC10plus, the most exciting is the fact that Communities has tweeted me a little press release saying that 10 Councils were to share funding for pilot projects “keep people better informed”
Congratulations to all the Councils - and in particular to Norfolk and to Birmingham, two of the founder members of the DC10plus network
http://www.communities.gov.uk/news/corporate/1197083
Today’s announcement is for the first round of pilots that will be followed by a second round in the Spring. The successful councils are
- London Borough of Barnet - will create an online consultation tool showing information on planning applications in a more useful format. It will allow users to track applications, comment on decisions and communicate with other users
- Birmingham City Council - will develop an online community that will enable local people to influence the planning and delivery of services
- Cambridgeshire County Council - will develop a one stop shop website for use by parents and carers of disabled children that will include specialist information from third sector organisations
- Gloucestershire County Council - will create 18 online community notice boards for neighbourhoods that will provide information on local services and allow people to contact service providers. There will also be dedicated space on notice boards for partners such as police who will provide crime maps for the area
- Kent County Council - will provide online information on local services in a way that allows people to choose which areas of information they use to provide a customised online service
- Lancashire County Council - will provide tailored information on support to citizens affected by the downturn such as advice about debt, jobs and training
- Leeds City Council - will create an interactive information site for older and disabled users of adult social care that will enable users to find out about different options for services near where they live and see the reviews of services by other older and disabled people in their area
- Liverpool City Council - will develop the ‘My Neighbourhood’ portal that will allow people to request services, report problems in their neighbourhood and track how they are being dealt with
- Norfolk County Council - will create community websites to provide up-to-date local information and support local campaigns
- Wigan Council - will provide an interactive database to help people find opportunities for local volunteering and participation.
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