PSIM   Public Services Information Management

Essay title:       Is public sector information 'neutral' ?

Signposts:

Ø      Information as encoded messages transmitted through channels from a sender to a receiver

Ø      The problem of 'information' when no information is transferred (' the dog not barking in the night' Conan Doyle(?),Silver Blaze in Collected Stories of Sherlock Holmes)

Ø      Organisational power centres structure, collate and organise data

Ø      The language of communication, including 'shared universes of meaning'

Ø      The 'how' of communication rather than the what (fonts, tones,colours)

Ø      Do all public information providers 'spin'?

Ø      Lies, damned lies and statistical data

Ø      Media professionals have their own professional agenda

Ø      What exactly counts as the public sector?

Ø      Clarity v. Mixed signals

Feel free to include several of the above (7-8) dropping some themes whilst incorporating others.

Mike Hart