William, thanks for a useful session.

The idea of using social networks / blogs / discussion pages as an at least partial replacement for email (and something that may be more effective), both for communication inside the Civil Service and with public more broadly came up again twice at sessions I attended. First David Varney raised it, where he commented on how effective we are at accessing information at home (where we 'pull' it from google), and how ineffective we are at doing it at work (where we get 'push' from emails). Gus O'Donnell then mentioned it in his session with Peter Jones as a key way of engaging with the public. So you've managed to get a consistent message being pushed.

It certainly struck a chord with me. I've thought for a while that we (the world at large, not just Whitehall) are in a transition period between getting the internet / email and working out how to use it effectively. It is not a nice or effective place to be. Most of us find it very difficult to escape from the tyranny of the in box. Your session was about the first glimmer of light at the end of this ghastly tunnel. But it still seems to me to be only a glimmer. I'll need to look into this a fair bit more, to see how it could work for me.

I work in the MOD, which (among other things) needs to be a very knowledge based organisation, and yet does not manage that knowledge well at all. This point was raised just yesterday at a DG level meeting on our head office change programme. I may be in touch separately, having spoken to our CIO, to get some help in thinking through how we might use your ideas in MOD.

Graeme Biggar Deputy Director, Defence Change Portfolio, MOD. (graeme.biggar873@mod.uk - 020 7807 8704)

Your PBwiki is so good it can now be seen on the Internet at Shortcut to: http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/live/video/GeoffBantock.asp. I tried it in the office and the video did not work when I tried it at home the video clip works beautifully. I am now going to try and add this link on the sidebar - Geoff Bantock geoff.bantock@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk