Social media 'could transform public services' - BBC website

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8382252.stm - By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News.

This article describes the usefulness of Web 2.0 in providing user involvement in health and public services. This report is from the MyPublicServices conference. This provides a useful solution to current problems that centralised systems don't give patients and users enough involvement, but plans such as relying on Google tools for the management of systems are misguided. This conference investigated ways of involving users to a degree that is practical.

"Social media could transform the NHS and other public services in the same way that file-sharing changed the music industry, a conference has heard.

Growing use of tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, offered an opportunity to reinvent services, delegates heard.

The MyPublicServices event debated ways to harness these conversations, many of which are critical, to make services better and more inclusive.

If this was not done, many services would be undermined, speakers said.

"It's happened to the music and travel industries and it's going to happen to public services," said Dr Paul Hodgkin, founder of the Patient Opinion site that organised the MyPublicServices conference.

Said Dr Hodgkin: "The question is how do we cope with it in a useful and productive way and not spend decades beating each other up?" "

Here are more interesting articles about this debate -

Tories attack leaked five-year IT plan as 'unambitious' - BBC News Website - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8387972.stm.

The politics of crowdsourcing - BBC News Website -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/12/the_politics_of_crowdsourcing.html -

- "Politicians in opposition and in government are latching onto the idea of using the web to engage with the wider public
Rory Cellan-Jones
BBC's technology correspondent"

- "This leak isn't likely to generate lurid headlines, as the report on transforming government by using "interactive (web 2.0) tools and processes, cloud computing technology and service-oriented architecture (SOA)" isn't exactly dynamite.
Still, the Conservatives have come up with quite a clever idea - they've put the document online and are inviting the public to comment on every part of it as they frame the party's response. "