When the Blair government came to power, in a flurry of optimism about its whiter-than-white-ness, one of its campaign promises was that Britain would at long last abandon the need-to-know secrecy of Sir Humphrey Appleby and embrace open government.

So it comes as a pleasant surprise to find that, online at least, this promise lives on. The PM’s official website helpfully provides links to transcripts of Prime Minister’s Question Time. But it has forsaken the dense, official text of Hansard, in favour of the more colourful alternative at www.theyworkforyou.com.

TheyWorkForYou, you may recall, won a New Media Awards last year for its efforts to help the public to keep track of what their MP has been doing.

It seems that even Downing Street places more trust in the unofficial version of events.

We promised you a podcast, and we’ve (just about) delivered. If you head over to the podcasts page, you can download a recording of the main speakers from Politics and New Media - where next?. We’ve had a great response to the event so far, so if you couldn’t make it and want to find out what all the fuss was about, now’s your chance to find out! The 16mb MP3 file shouldn’t strain your connection (or our server) too much.

Also, do let us know what you think of the podcast, by leaving a comment on this post. It’s our first podcast ever, and we’d really like your feedback.

Update: There’s now an RSS feed for the podcast, which you can subscribe to in either your RSS reader, dedicated software such as iPodder, or iTunes (where you’ll find it freely available in the “Podcasts” section of the Music Store). Enjoy!

It’s that time of the year again - time to launch the New Statesman New Media Awards.

We kicked this year’s awards off last night with an informal evening of discussion and conversation under the heading of “Politics and new media:where next?”. Helping us gaze into the crystal ball were Tom Steinberg, director of MySociety; Jo Twist, a senior fellow at IPPR and a former technology journalist at the BBC; and Alan Connor, broadcast journalist for BBC Westminster.

As everyone who went will tell you, it was a fascinating - and invigorating - evening, and a really exciting start to what should be the best New Media Awards yet. Indeed, feedback is already online from political blogger Guido Fawkes, and from David Wilcox over at Designing for Civic Society. If you couldn’t make it - or didn’t find out about it in time - have no fear: we’ll be putting a live recording of the event up on this site within the next day or two as a podcast. Details of future evenings in a similar vein - of which there will be a series - will be posted on this blog, so make sure you stay up-to-date (perhaps by subscribing to the RSS feed).

Update: Further feedback from Rob Fenwick and Paul over at “Never Trust a Hippy”. Guido Fawkes and Recess Monkey also recorded one of their podcasts at the event.