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Having a static website rather than a blog is like having a cardboard cutout of you at a party instead of going yourself."
Tim Ireland used this analogy, three or so years ago when we met to discuss how to get more MPs and councillors blogging. There have been some good initiatives to get more civic leaders blogging since then such as ReadMyDay, the Political Blogging Project and individual and successful attempts at using proxy blogging to get MPs blogging.
Slowly but surely the number of blogging politicians has risen and so generally has the quality, but researching the subject made us think that the "early-adopter" bloggers had made the jump but that the majority of councillors were still holding back. The case for starting a blog simply wasn’t being made. The downsides were clear but the upside were not.
The Ministry of Justice Innovations Fund II approved a bid from Gallomanor and Norfolk County Council to help set this record straight. We’re filming a group of six Norfolk County Councillors as we train them on how to blog. The film along with a introductory booklet will be distributed to public sector organisations to help them convince their decision makers, their civic leaders that using the internet and blogging in particular are good communication tools. We’ll also be setting up a series of Q&A session with local bloggers for the first 25 local authorities wanting to run them.
There is a project blog at www.cllr2pointzero.wordpress.com where more information is available.
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