Getting access to blogs and social media - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

A couple of planning law blogs: Planning Act 2008 - http://www.bdb-law.co.uk/blogs/anguswalker Plan-It Law - http://www.plan-it-law.com/ Those with a social policy angle: Neighbourhoods - http://neighbourhoods.typepad.com/ Ground Control - http://annaminton.blogspot.com/ Scottish planning: Action for Planning Transparency - http://actionforplanningtransparency.blogspot.com/ And of course Planning magazine's blog: Planning Blog - http://planningblog.wordpress.com/

http://www.UrbanDesignForum.co.uk is a place for those with an interest in urban design issues to exchange advice & information directly with colleagues.

The way the question has been phrased is likely to lead to your "IT Bods" getting a case of the frights, and saying no in automatic response. (this is stand risk management approach in most technical areas) Having seen both sides of the fence, I can understand some of the common frustrations. Line departments blame IT for being obstructive and unresponsive, IT blames the line departments for coming up with half baked ideas, and not telling them until the day before they’re needed. (e.g. “oh, it’s just pushing a few buttons” – nameless head of directorate on moving a 400 user system that required new BT landlines, giving roughly 9 weeks’ notice. BT’s lead time for a new line is 90 days) If there is a business case for social media (or anything else), the most productive approach is to collate your thoughts on a sheet of A4, and then have a chat with your local IT representative about what you want to achieve, and how you would measure success. DO NOT try telling them the technology and configuration you want (this will go down about as well as a junior programmer telling the head of DC which planning apps to approve) Your best bet for getting a social media solution approved and implemented (and yes that is two different things), is to talk to other areas that have a similar need, and go to IT as a group. Even if your local IT account manager is on board, he can better sell/justify a solution for the “Environmental Health and Transport” Directorate, than he can a system for a couple of planning officers. If your council has a dedicate web team, have a chat with them, as they tend to accumulate information on who is after what, and how it fits within the IT infrastructure. The issues you are likely to run into with social media relate to the following; 1. Network Security - there are many ways to implement new systems, many of them allow hackers backdoors into your social service, etc. data. Doing the architecture right is not easy, and may require lateral thinking (e.g. an external host). Since the beginning of the month security breaches put the council in the firing line for £500k fines from the ICO. 2. Network Architecture – After finding a secure way to do the job, the network team have to figure out how to put the changes in, without compromising any existing service. Again this complex work , and it will be prioritised based on your business case against all the other ways of using the network engineer’s time (e.g. implementing a statutory required system for social services) 3. Legal – your legal services department may have a view about officers making comments or suggestions on items that may end up “served” on their desk. The argument here is that only a qualified officer should have the facility, and the normal rules for supplying advice would still be in effect. If you talk to legal about this aspect first and get their OK before talking to IT, the IT managers are likely to be impressed that you have thought this through, and their “question everything” threshold is likely to be substantially lower. 4. Legal – if you send an e-mail or letter, it is recorded and any subsequent dispute can be resolved by going to these records. Many social media solutions do not have this “record everything” ability built-in and switched on. Legal are likely to ask for this, and IT will need to shop around and possibly do some creative configuring, but if you have the money and resources, this will not be a show stopper. The above is slightly long winded, but it should give an insight into how these requests are looked at.

Hi Ian, I guess I was looking at how people were going about accessing other people's blogs/forums/etc rather than setting up their own. My post was prompted by some folks saying they couldn't access our blog. It is quite common for IT departments to block a range of sites. ''Social media" sites are often caught in this regardless of whether they are work-related or not... We've had the situation here at the IDeA where certain sites are blocked, but then following a request to IT we have been given access - just wanted to feel out what other folks have experienced. John

Due to all the hackers and crimeware out on the internet these days, the normal network team has to set up the rules to exclude/block anything it has not been specifically told to include. Hence the same advice applies, as hosting and participating are two sides of the same coin for the usual mechanisms that police the activity on a corporate network. (for example if you are trying to use instant messaging it see’s that “traffic type” trying to move, and moves to block it, unless it has been told otherwise) Forum type boards (e.g. PAS), accessed using a browser, are normally a permitted “traffic type”, but could be blocked by rules governing the web address it is trying to get to. In this case, you should just need to tell the network team (via the appropriate methods) what it is and who needs it, possibly with a “why” and a “sign off”, dependant on local policies. Blocked addresses are usually a sub 5 minute job for the network engineer, although you could have to wait for 24 hours or more if your organisation has outsourced it’s network management. It should be noted that some security systems scan and block based on the contents of what is in the messages being passed. For example an e-mail complaining about “the erection next door” gets blocked as spam, or it detects a photograph (enforcement evidence) being moved, or a strange file extension like .DWG that it doesn’t know about (it’s AutoCAD by the way). And yes I have had long conversations on all the above examples on behalf of DC & Licensing officers with various local authority IT teams. Hence if it a web based service you are planning on using on a regular basis, or need to access to get regulatory information, it pays to tell IT and get the social media site logged as a supported application/system. This should also ensure it gets covered in the disaster recovery plans. (for example the WDF website has to be accessed every quarter by Waste Disposal Authorities, your office being burnt down is not listed as an exemption in the legislation) When you tell your network team about the site(s) you need, remember to tell them about any type of files or attachments you may need to send or receive, so that these are permitted through any content blocking system. If the site(s) are normal for all officers in a team, then ask to have it included in the normal user set up, that way you do not have to request them every time somebody joins the team. Most of the above should be included in the presentation IT gives on the staff induction course, when they explain about the corporate IT security policies, why you have them, and how they work.