I’ve really enjoyed the discussion in the last couple of weeks on the taxonomy network mailing list and cetis-metadata list. Plenty of of food for thought.

Increasingly I find myself questioning the role of formal taxonomies in areas of human interaction such as service delivery, face to face interaction, social policy, social networks and so on. I like taxonomies for scientific disciplines - the cataloging of natural phenomena like trees, bugs, beetles etc. I don’t know if I like the term taxonomies being applied to public service provision. Category list maybe, but on the basis that this is inexact and a softer, fuzzier way of organising knowledge and information.

On that basis, isn’t it going to be the case that taxonomies will work for scientific disciplines and - here we go -folksonomies will work more effectively for areas of social life, networks and interactions?

A lot of the discussion has been around the use of the IPSV (Integrated Public Sector Vocabulary) and the message that seems to be coming out that this is a hybrid which can be used for both categories and keywords. How is that going to work in practice? My view at the moment ( and I am very open to other views on this) is that it would have been better to have a shorter category list (which is managable and brings some order to the information chaos of social networks and social information resources) and a much longer and deeper thesaurus which would be useful for professional indexers (professional indexers!!! - but isn’t this the way forward? Given the millions of pounds of investment in information *technology* why not a bit of investment in *information* and information management?)

I recently completed a report and added some metadata at the end. Including subject and keywords. For subject I scanned through the IPSV (all 193 pages of it) - for the keywords I didn’t even bother. I bashed out a dozen or so on the basis of my knowledge of the report as it’s author. Is this effective? Well it’s better than no metadata, I trust it more that a machine to do it for me (and also I have zilch budget to pay for automatic keyword tagging (automatic means paying for software).

And because we articulate language on the basis of social phenomena, this keyword metadata I create is going to have some meaning to other people who are working in that particular area. We are not worlds apart when it comes to describe certain aspects of technical systems (in this case CRM in the public sector).

The report itself was of a CRM workshop. How do I keyword it? Well, for one, I’m told that ISPV doesn’t cover this because it’s not public facing. But isn’t it? What about if I’m a member of the public who wants to know how my council tax money is being spent?

There’s a danger that there is a real air of patronisation around e-government. Who decides what is public facing and what isn’t? I get the feeling at times that it’s great to have the public phoning up complaining that their bins haven’t been emptied (and there is often an implication - blame the dustbin workers) - but what about the public asking how much the council website cost? Or those kiosks in the high street that no-one uses? Or the email systems which the council has but doesn’t bother to answer (year on year, over 20% of councils who were sent emails by the SOCITM Better Connected Survey NEVER responded)?

I would question how well some of the millions of pounds given to the recent national projects was spent. If e-democracy is going to mean anything it has got to involve a bit more than being able to email the councillor (my three have never responded to my email). I would suggest that generating some interest in what goes on in the town hall might involve less smoke and mirrors with the finances and better public scrutiny. Public scrutiny of council spending by lay panels? Well there are much more outlandish things that happen. I might sign up to that.

Totally off the point now - but that’s why these discussion list are so important - they generate discussion and get the grey matter working. From IPSV to folksonomies to local democracy - they are not so separate from one another either.