Jack Thurston

I spent Saturday at “barcampUKgovweb” and met a very interesting group of people who care about how government behaves online. Among the 60 or so participants, there was a roughly even split between people working for government, people working for companies and people who are - for want of a better term - civic hackers.

Eight years – and a lifetime – ago, I was working as a political aide to the UK agriculture minister Nick Brown. It was a difficult time for British farming. Prices were down, the backwash of mad cow disease was impacting the livestock sector, the strong pound was hitting exporters and there was genuine discontent [...]