Searching for examples of civil servants taking part in other people's sites

So, we've been busy interviewing everyone and anything that won't run away from us.  As usual, asking questions has produced even more questions.  And that's where I'm hoping some of my many (6) readers might come in.  Can you perhaps point us to:

1. Examples of places where civil servants or other public officials successfully engage in other people's user-created sites? (I'm loath to say in other people's discussions, because if they were making useful additions to wikis, that'd be fine too).
2. Examples of public servants who have been stopped from engaging for what seem like either good or bad reasons.
3. Examples, good or bad,  where governments gave either monetary or other support to non-government user-created websites.  What did they give? What did they get out of it?
4. Stand out, clear-as-daylight examples of Uncontroversially Good Things that happened when government officials did deign to contribute to other people's sites. And vice versa.

The feedback from people here and on the UK & Ireland DoWire list and on eMint has already been brilliant and perhaps more useful than they know. Please keep rack  your brains and/your inboxes/Google/your friends' brains to help with these questions - the better answers we get, the more we have the chance to shape the way that Government evolves to react to the user-generated era.

Comments

[ShaneMcC]

1. One of my favourites is TalkSwindon (www.talkswindon.org) where Cllrs and officers join in the discussions on this independently funded and run site. The council even formally ran part of a consultation on parking charges on the site.

[W]

OK - we've started a thread at Ideal Gov and I'll report back if we get anything helpful.

[Watching Them, Watching Us]

"2 Examples of public servants who have been stopped from engaging for what seem like either good or bad reasons."

"Home Office "Field Intelligence Officer" being investigated for contact with Spy Blog ?"

http://spyblog.org.uk/2005/08/home_office_field_intelligence.html

"Minor changes to the Civil Service Code might affect whistleblowers"

http://spyblog.org.uk/2006/06/minor_changes_to_the_civil_ser.html

[Amber Rose]

We’ve had experience of civil servant interference, good and bad.
A positive example would be this latest campaign is to get people involved with discussions on the future of science and technology is from a DTI initiative: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/G2399
Simon Birkett is the chairman for the Transport and Environment Committee of the Knightsbridge Association. He’s got an ongoing campaign about clean air in London. He’s regularly updates his campaign and posts to the Camden notice boards. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/U4944143
Camden Council is regularly using the site. They like to post notices: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/C35787?s_view=weblinks
For some reason when it comes to issues about development and planning departments, we tend to get a few more complaints from councils. We had one case where a group of residents set up a campaign against a proposed development in their area. The council asked us to remove the posts, but there was clearly enough people backing this campaign. In this case, the council was impinging on people’s free speech. And it’s not the first time that this has happened.
We also had an unfortunate incident with a council in East London. They hadn’t seen the funny side to a user’s satirical article implying that their planners took bribes. According to the council, it was rather libellous because there was only “one planner” in the office. And on that occasion we really had to take the notice down.

[Andrew Brown]

My local environment head honcho, Nigel Tyrell (who you might recognise from the discussion around the launch of Neighbourhood Fixit), has a blog and has been known to turn up on other people's blogs to take up their points.

http://lovelewisham.wordpress.com/

http://lewisham-kate.blogspot.com/2006/11/thankyou-lewisham-bloggers.html

[Andrew Brown]

Oh and how could I have forgotten the Head of Communications for Lewisham got down and dirty with us as part of a conversation on the council's role in developing councillors presence.

http://andrewkbrown.wordpress.com/2007/03/15/lack-of-councillor-coverage-in-lewisham-life/#comment-3400

[alex]

Owen Barder of DFID was a blogger until the Daily Mail got him.

Jeremy Gould at Home Office survives

http://whitehallwebby.wordpress.com/2007/05/24/digital-communication-isnt-about-websites/

[Tom L]

Owen Barder is more than capable of sticking up for himself, if he can be bothered. Let's hope DFID don't overreact about this, particularly given what Tom et al has to say in the Power of Information report.

Nevertheless, it was a very sly mugging by the Mail and even prompted me (of http://www.aidworkers.net/ ) to hijack a friend's blog to bemoan the sorry episode:

http://www.humanitarian.info/2007/05/30/bardergate/trackback

It's sad that Owen has not resumed blogging, despite having a reliable readership in the humanitarian aid community. More's the pity ...

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