Bernie Goldbach shares some of my misgivings regarding Mobhaile, the Local Government Computer Services Board's new public information initiative . Most pertinently he asks -
"What's wrong with rolling out an Irish-wide blogging system? The model has been tested since 1999 by several Irish bloggers. The back-ends are simple modifications of Perl, PHP, and scripted environments. There's no need to replicate document libraries or to deal with anything more complex than a MySQL database. The rabid uptake of this model across the world proves anecdotally and systematically how well-oiled and carefully grown micropublishing systems build effective communities.In the blogging world, affinity groups connect effortlessly. If the government provided the superstructure in the form of web hosting, occasional training, and cross-channel marketing, the results would work themselves. "
Approaching my 2 year blogging anniversary I have to agree with these astute observations. I too attended the Mobhaile stand at last month's ICT Expo and saw very little that I imagined could not be easily replicated with the standard tools and services of the blogosphere.
Mobhaile should be redesigned with semantic web technologies. I already designed an ontology for the Galway City Community Forum. John Breslin would also be able to help here with SIOC.
Posted by: Ina | February 12, 2010 at 02:15 PM