“ 'I want to know--'
'Look here. Upon my soul you mustn't come into the place saying you want to know, you know,' remonstrated Barnacle junior [of the Circumlocution Office], turning about and putting up the eye-glass.” (from Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens)
Information from government – has anything changed?
The direct route?
“Easy access to the public services you use and the information you need, delivered by the UK government.” This claim for the DirectGov website might provoke a hollow laugh. Whatever they claim (and whatever their motives), governments are not noted for being fleet of foot when it comes to sharing information. Dickens's Circumlocution Office is still going strong, although it might have changed its name to the Department of... well, I'm sure you can fill in the blank. So is DirectGov worth a moment of your time?
Yes and no, but more yes than no (how half-hearted is that?!). If you want to track down a central government department, office or responsibility, you may well get help from this site. The “Straight to” topics laid out on the home page are well chosen and expressed in normal, as opposed to civil-service, English. And the “Let DirectGov point the way” articles are a creditable attempt to bring together useful advice and pointers to where you can find further government information.
Surprisingly (I'm such a cynic) the search engine is very good. I searched for “immigration”, and I got 85 hits which appear to have been presented in a “most relevant” order, so an introductory article on nationality and citizenship comes first, followed by a news release on the points-based immigration system and details of a parliamentary bill on the topic. This is the sort of mix I would expect, and I was duly impressed.
The highest compliment I can pay to DirectGov is to say that I would usually try it first, before I turned to Google. Which is more than I could say for a great many official websites!
(From the Gateway to websites, select “Government”, then “Government & politics: national and international”. DirectGov is a Key Link.)
A bottle for your messages
WriteToThem is a brilliantly simple concept. I sit here and type in my postcode, and up pops a page setting my local councillors, London Assembly members, My MP and MEPs. With links to electronic forms to contact the said reps. What's not to like about that?
Of course, sometimes it does not work. If your representatives do not make available an address to which the electronic form may be sent, the system will break down. My local councillors can only be contacted using the council's own form. Which is a shame, because it limits the usefulness of an otherwise amazingly useful tool of democracy.
Despite this glitch (no fault of the website) WriteToThem is still great. The one-page run-down on who is responsible for what is alone worth a visit. First class.
(From the Gateway to websites, select “Government”, then “Government & politics: national and international”. WriteToThem is under “Your representatives”.)
'Look here. Upon my soul you mustn't come into the place saying you want to know, you know,' remonstrated Barnacle junior [of the Circumlocution Office], turning about and putting up the eye-glass.” (from Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens)
Information from government – has anything changed?
The direct route?
“Easy access to the public services you use and the information you need, delivered by the UK government.” This claim for the DirectGov website might provoke a hollow laugh. Whatever they claim (and whatever their motives), governments are not noted for being fleet of foot when it comes to sharing information. Dickens's Circumlocution Office is still going strong, although it might have changed its name to the Department of... well, I'm sure you can fill in the blank. So is DirectGov worth a moment of your time?
Yes and no, but more yes than no (how half-hearted is that?!). If you want to track down a central government department, office or responsibility, you may well get help from this site. The “Straight to” topics laid out on the home page are well chosen and expressed in normal, as opposed to civil-service, English. And the “Let DirectGov point the way” articles are a creditable attempt to bring together useful advice and pointers to where you can find further government information.
Surprisingly (I'm such a cynic) the search engine is very good. I searched for “immigration”, and I got 85 hits which appear to have been presented in a “most relevant” order, so an introductory article on nationality and citizenship comes first, followed by a news release on the points-based immigration system and details of a parliamentary bill on the topic. This is the sort of mix I would expect, and I was duly impressed.
The highest compliment I can pay to DirectGov is to say that I would usually try it first, before I turned to Google. Which is more than I could say for a great many official websites!
(From the Gateway to websites, select “Government”, then “Government & politics: national and international”. DirectGov is a Key Link.)
A bottle for your messages
WriteToThem is a brilliantly simple concept. I sit here and type in my postcode, and up pops a page setting my local councillors, London Assembly members, My MP and MEPs. With links to electronic forms to contact the said reps. What's not to like about that?
Of course, sometimes it does not work. If your representatives do not make available an address to which the electronic form may be sent, the system will break down. My local councillors can only be contacted using the council's own form. Which is a shame, because it limits the usefulness of an otherwise amazingly useful tool of democracy.
Despite this glitch (no fault of the website) WriteToThem is still great. The one-page run-down on who is responsible for what is alone worth a visit. First class.
(From the Gateway to websites, select “Government”, then “Government & politics: national and international”. WriteToThem is under “Your representatives”.)
No comments:
Post a Comment