The Government may shut down this blog.
If you like reading this blog and want to see it and others continue then I would ask that you take some action today.
I have received and email from ICELE that I have reproduced below from the government supported platform that hosts this and other blogs. If you want these blogs to continue then please contact the minister responsible.
Dear Blogger,
You may have recently seen some news that ICELE (www.icele.org) is scheduled for closure by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). ICELE is the operator of Bloginabox/ReadMyDay, the blogging platform that you are using.
It is with regret that I can confirm that the Minister, Parmjit Dhanda MP at DCLG has confirmed in writing to us that funding for the centre will no longer be available and hence the centre has closed with effect from 30th June 2008.
Between now and the end of July, DCLG are conducting a review of the existing tools and products managed by ICELE, including Bloginabox. This will hopefully establish how best it might be taken forward.
The Minister has given a commitment that all existing platforms, tools, products and directories provided by ICELE will be maintained during the review period and advice and assistance to existing users from ICELE staff will continue in this interim period, for which DCLG has provided additional funding.
As part of the review we strongly encourage you to send your comments about this decision and the future of the tool. In the interim we are able to offer an assurance that ICELE has funded the license arrangement for Bloginabox until the end of September and hopefully DCLG will take action to ensure it continues beyond this.
Please send all correspondence to:-
Parmjit Dhanda MP Minister for Local eDemocracy Departmnet for Communities and Local Government Eland House Bressenden Place London SW1E 5DU
Email: mailto:Parmjit.dhanda@communities.gsi.gov.uk
Comments: 4
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Here in Oxford the council chose to establish a number of "eDemocracy Forums" for different parts of the city and look as if they too have got short changed by someone who has designed and charged for stuff easily done using open source systems. Such government bodies do not seem terribly good at procuring anything webby-technical in general!
So you could easily just move it to another host, like Blogger or Wordpress.
I couldn't even tell from ICELE's nothing-talk what exactly it is - is it part of the DCLG, or some kind of QUANGO? Who funds it?
*Members agree to a code of conduct and the portal has the relevant disclaimers to avoid legal issues
*Members get instant political templates and the platform can be used with council peer support
*There are no advertisements
*There is accompanying "good practice" support and guidance
*Membership builds a national directory of bloggers and a nationally aggregated feeds
*There is a sense of 'community'
....
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