In November 2007, a 33-year old woman working for a UK central government department started writing a blog. She chose not to disclose her identity, publishing her thoughts under the nom de plume Civil Serf.

It took a few weeks for people to notice her blog, but word soon spread around the political blogosphere, eventually reaching the blogs written by 'proper' journalists at the Telegraph and Times. Then, on 9 March, the Sunday papers ran stories on it. And Civil Serf disappeared.

If you're looking for the original Civil Serf blog, I'm sorry. This isn't it, and I'm not her. Somehow, someone did a remarkably good job of wiping it from the records... although I'm told the majority of her old posts are available via one popular RSS-reading service.

But if you're looking for something to read on the subject, try some of the following bloggers - many of whom are current or former civil servants themselves. You'll find plenty by searching Google's blogsearch, or you might want to jump straight to:

• Simon Dickson
• Jeremy Gould
• Dave Briggs
• Paul Canning
• Emma Mulqueeny
• James Barbour
• Speech by UK e-gov minister Tom Watson, 10 March

There are a lot of us who believe the UK public sector would benefit significantly from the more open, communicative, collaborative approach fostered by blogs, bloggers and blogging. The technology is simple, available and free of charge. There's mounting evidence that it works as a means of engaging with your stakeholder base. And there's an acceptance that the old way, locking everything right down, is not sustainable.

But equally, there are a lot of us who believe Civil Serf's efforts were doomed to failure. She was never going to be able to maintain her anonymity for long. And she was bound to say something which offended someone, and prompted retaliatory action.

A blogging free-for-all is clearly not the right way forward. But equally, this affair proves that the total lockdown can't reasonably work either.

We need to find a better way. Read some of the blogs listed above, and have your say. Let's see if we can't turn the Civil Serf affair into something positive for public engagement.

Oh... and needless to say, if Civil Serf should be reading this, get in touch. We have a lot to talk about.

Simon Dickson
Principal consultant, Puffbox Ltd
(who can't believe he was able to register this address)

PS: the Google ads (etc) on this page are added by the blog.co.uk platform, not by me. This is categorically not an attempt to 'cash in' on the story, or on the (possible) misfortune of the individual in question.