A range of new initiatives relating to access to information and communications technologies by disabled people, including a new online forum to discuss key issues with government, was announced by Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries Ed Vaizey and his senior digital inclusion policy adviser at last week’s e-Access ’11 conference. “By bringing older people [...]

A woman who was arrested last month for filming a public council meeting in Wales on her mobile phone is awaiting legal advice on whether she can take action against the authority. Police were called by Carmarthenshire County Council to remove Jacqui Thompson, a local community councillor who runs a blog campaigning on planning issues, from [...]

Demographic bias towards people with higher incomes and higher educational attainment has been found by independent research into usage of two of the UK’s leading ‘e-democracy’ web services have found, it was revealed last month. The research was conducted by Tobias Escher of the Oxford Internet Institute into two sites created by the UK’s leading e-democracy [...]

The government’s new ICT strategy states an aim to move away from ‘big bang’ solutions from the same few major suppliers to greater use of more innovative, flexible smaller suppliers. But will it really happen? James Bird (above), chief executive officer of IT provider Stone, assesses the prospects. E-Government Bulletin: What could be the benefits to [...]

A new model of the public library as the centre of a highly-digitised ‘local knowledge ecology’, forging partnerships with other bodies such as educational institutions, health bodies and businesses to provide information services to their communities, was presented at last week’s ‘Edge 2011’ conference in Edinburgh. Brian Gambles, Assistant Director of Culture at Birmingham City Council, [...]

A website providing guidance on obtaining and reusing public authority data for the benefit of local communities was launched today, in an attempt to ‘de-specialise’ and encourage public use of the ever-increasing amount of free public information which is being made available. The Making a Difference with Data (MadwDATA) site ( http://www.madwdata.org.uk/ ) features examples of [...]