How do you make a huge public service institution more open? How do you advance the idea of openness in an organisation founded on British Empire-era discretion and rigid central control? How do you communicate big, radical ideas like open source and content sharing to media people whose idea of openness is a premium rate phone line? How do you translate a monolithic, broadcast-model state broadcaster into a network-model ‘common platform’ that drives enterprise, learning, democratic participation and community coherence while still entertaining and informing?
Well, you could start by hiring a ‘blogger in residence’. I’ve just take a job under that title at the BBC and my brief is to wander the corridors doing two big things: recording examples of openness in action and agitating for more of it. The idea is to build a constantly-updated record of my journey through the organisation, run some events, trigger some debate and maybe even leave behind some useful documentation. The whole thing is scheduled to take about six months. You can keep up with my progress here at the Common Platform blog (subscribe to the RSS feed).
