Birmingham Digital City's Blog

Is Birmingham a digital city?

chrisprice2 — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:06:00 +0000

We have won awards for blogging, eGovernment, outsourcing but are we getting the best out of ICT? If you would like to see Birmingham among the best digital cities, help us identify what needs to be done.

I run Digital Birmingham, a small team aiming to make Birmingham the best. You can see our work at http://www.digitalbirmingham.co.uk.

We’d like to open up the Digital City debate. The Council has formed a Digital City Group. We would like to share our discussions openly and invite contributions. Our first posting is about the Power of Information (http://digicity.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/the-power-of-birmingham/). My question is what is the best way to engage you? Is it through posting the issues, sharing the meeting records, tweeting, streaming a video? Answers please.

If you to want to keep in touch, add our RSS feed to your reader

Tagged: birmingham, digital, digital city, e-government, ICT

The Power of Birmingham

chrisprice2 — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 12:59:59 +0000

Will Perrin, who led the Government’s Power of Information Task Force presented at the first Council Digital City meeting. This report recognised the increasing use and value of social media and of data mashing. Informally he recognised that Birmingham was leading in the social media area (not the Council but the bloggers)
Will came back to Birmingham last week and at a meeting of council people, Digital Birmingham, bloggers, Screen WM etc, the idea of a Power of Birmingham initiative was created. The idea is to bring together those interested in social media and data mash-ups to create a business approach to:
• Improving engagement for public service.
• Engaging the wisdom of the crowd in responding to city issues.
• Showing the world how to use the technology.
• Creating bids for money for projects.

The question for me is who should be part of this, how can it be organised and where’s the money. As the lead for Digital Birmingham I can help make some of this happen. You have existing links and partnerships, monthly coffee events and the world if social media to add to the mix.

What is your view?

Tagged: birmingham, digital, power of information, Will Perrin

Digital Birmingham

Dave Harte — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 21:21:37 +0000

Digital Birmingham is a city-wide partnership designed to encourage people, business and communities to gain the benefits of digital technologies such as the computer, internet, mobile phone and digital TV – to name but a few.

It is helping Birmingham make the transition from an industrial city to a digital city by driving forward the use of these technologies in order to increase prosperity, knowledge and quality of life of its citizens.

Tagged: birmingham, digital