 In one of my day jobs, I work for a UK county council. I asked the IT department if they would host a #Mastodon server. Much to my delight and surprise, they replied with a very detailed response (basically, no expertise, no money, too many security checks and no staff). Is there a group on Mastodon that helps support local governments get onto Mastodon? Thanks :) 13 comments
 @stadsplanering @natureworks feels like there should be an organized project to build an inital hosting platform for fedi gov instances with easy access from existing gov ex-teitter tools to cross post, some turnkey with easy offboarding to establish their own hosting or cname domains. Kinda my areas of it expertise, but it would need some level of funding and a team.  @engarneering Are there any gov grants in the offing? @stadsplanering @natureworks @natureworks please tell me ur IT department answered every call with "IT have you tried turning it off and on again?" @natureworks Hosting a mastodon server isn't that hard, what most it departments fear is having to functionally support it as well. One thing that would possibly be of help is to see if not only your own country council would benefit from a .gov.uk mastodon server for example, perhaps there already is one? To sway anyone you could point out that the Swiss are making open source the defacto standard π   @natureworks @natureworks While I like the idea, I question what the server would be actually used for. Specifically, how it will be used, and how it would benefit the people involved. I mean I do know what a Mastodon server is, and how it works as basically a Twitter replacement, but that doesn't answer the reasons to have it "officially" supported by the IT department. Like any corp or government thing, you have to do a cost benefit analysis and make the costs seem low while the benefits seem high. @otto42 @natureworks The other thing, I learned, is that gov needs written policy for that stuff. Folks in gov are risk adverse (not without cause) and written policy gives them support to pursue new things.  @natureworks Maybe @koen could help? They mostly do stuff in NL I believe, but they have experience with this sort of thing  @natureworks I'm aware of https://fedigov.eu but I don't know what they can offer beyond the info on the website... @natureworks I'm working on getting my county to get on Mastodon. IT staff (one person :) is a bit worried about it, but I'm getting help from many people. If they join they'll be the first county in Poland on Mastodon. |
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@natureworks Important question indeed. I also feel a need with like a more simple PDF or similar with just basic information on how much time it takes to set it up, basic knowledge level to maintain it and so on would be very usable.