public blogging big time

Topic: Public Sector blogging

Tom Reynolds, intrepid ambulance-man and blogger, has published a book Blood, Sweat and Tea based on his blog. He blogs about the every day experience of a first responder in London, and it's really good - certainly on my list of regular reads.

The Guardian published an article today about him today, which looks not just at his blog and book, but at the role of public sector bloggers.

Over the course of three years his weblog, Random Acts of Reality, has rapidly become a must-read chronicle of life as an ambulance worker for both other bloggers and the wider public
>snip<
The blog and the book are dripping with irreverence and wit and, for anyone who has not worked directly for the NHS, offer an eye-opening insight into life on the healthcare front line. Reynolds describes the blog as "kind of the truth behind dramas like Casualty".
>snip<
...Reynolds says, his blog, and possibly other public sector blogs, can and do get to the "truth of what's happening" on the ground. They cut through the "nonsense" of TV dramas and "official" accounts of the NHS that politicians or NHS press officers present. "With more NHS staff blogging, more people will know what it is really like ... and more people will get angry about the things that people should get angry about."
>snip<
...he adds: "It may be a hugely simplistic way of looking at things, blogs as a lobbying tool, but maybe MPs will start reading them. Maybe it happens already."

Perhaps MPs do read blogs. Certainly, at least one minister has one.

Unfortunately, the article, while mentioning that other public sector blogs exist, doesn't mention them, even in the online version. Mr Reynolds - like most other bloggers - is a little more generous and his blog roll (list of links to other bloggers) contains a number of other public sector blogs.

This blog doesn't fit into the genre of his blog, the anonymous or semi-anonymous day-to-day work life of front line public servants, such as an ambulance dispatcher, teachers, parking attendants, GPs, police and magistrate.

Perhaps this blog would be more interesting if it did. Or perhaps you might just snooze away at such entries as:

After over two hours of defending the honour - or at least the administrative time - of local government in a meeting featuring possibly the dryest biscuits in Whitehall, I still had to get out of the building. I narrowly managed to avoid bisection by the swinging glass security panels at the departmental headquarters and made my way to the exit. Alas, my escape was to be thwarted as I found my shoe caught in the revolving door. I nearly pitched headlong into the glass ahead of me as a searing pain crossed the top of my foot. Worse still awaited me, as a Government Office employee turned to catch me jerking my leg to free my foot and my shoe from the revolving trap. I could feel my credibility slip as I limped off to Victoria station.

The IDeA will soon be unveiling its new Communities of Practice platform and it includes blogging software (where you can choose to have some posts quite public and others less so). I hope that more people in local government will take up blogging as a way to share practice and experience.

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