SOA
Adobe Co-founders to Receive the National Medal of Innovation and Technology at the Whitehouse in October
- Posted on September 18, 2009 at 11:02 am
Adobe’s co-founders to receive the National Medal of Technology and Innovation at the White House in October: http://bit.ly/w6I3Y
One Word = Accessibility
- Posted on September 7, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Today Lisa Harvey posted an excellent post on accessibility for the Government 2.0 Taskforce. Which immediately prompted some lively commenting on the post.
On person asked if the Government needed to impose the Federal Government’s laws regarding content publishing standards to consituents submission formats.
The short answer to the question is a resounding no. There is a simple answer as well which is Business Transformation, rather than impose a law on constituents the documents should be transformed during the submission process, some Federal and State Government departments already have the technology in place to do this. The issue is they have not yet identified the business need to write the business process to do this. It really is quite simple for those departments to implement an automated process which takes all the words and formatting from the submissions and converts them to all of the required formats with full accessibility applied, and all without any need for physical human interaction.
Government 2.0 Taskforce Roadshow – Encouragingly Refreshing
- Posted on August 18, 2009 at 3:18 pm
I attended the first Government 2.0 Tasforce Roadshow held yesterday in Canberra at the Australian Bureau of Statistics in Belconnen. Whilst the agenda was published on the Taskforce web site I really did not know what to expect on the day. Given the format the event took it would have been more useful to both the Taskforce and the participants, to have been forewarned of the open consultative format. This would have allowed the participants to prepare topics for discussion more thoroughly and would most likely have resulted in more useful input. The Taskforce had run a similar smaller event earlier in the day with Commonwealth Officers in attendance.
Nicholas Gruen opened the event with a brief overview of the format and introduced the panel members for the day, which were Nicholas Gruen, Ann Steward (CIO AGIMO) and Glenn Archer (CIO DEEWR). The attendees were then asked to suggest topics for discussion over the next 2 hours.
The topics chosen were:
- Information Management
- Copyright
- Information Quality
- Culture Change
There was a lot of discussion regarding Web 2.0 and how it could be used to implement Government 2.0 and most of the discussion was of some value.
The discussion regarding ‘Information Quality’ was very interesting and I raised the point that if service delivery methods were delivered electronically then data integrity would be greatly increased and the likelihood of information being incorrect or out of date was greatly reduced. Glenn Archer fully supported this view and raised a case in point which demonstrated this. Centrelink’s online service delivery solution which allows Centrelink customers to manage and maintain their own details is a huge success and proves an increase in both data integrity and validity. Imagine how much more that could be increased if Centrelink went a step further and delivered all of their services online, in particular unemployment benefit applications. Department of Human Services Illinois – case study
The discussion regarding ‘Culture Change’ was another one which completely surprised me with its content. It was acknowledged by the panel that there were issues within the Senior Executive Service (SES) with risk averse and innovation resistant attitudes making it difficult to implement change, it was noted that this attitude needed to be changed and a more Government 2.0 attitude adopted among the SES. I asked how they were planning to drive this change and whether the change would be driven from the top down or some other method.
The responses from all three of the panel members were very positive and Ann Steward advised that the change in the SES would be driven from both directions, from the top down and the bottom up. It was also mentioned that the Politicians wanted this change and therefore it would happen.
I personally find this an enlightening and fresh approach and feel that the taskforce have a long but rewarding job ahead of them.
For now, what can we do out here in grass roots land to help? Those who are attending the remaining Roadshows should read through the Taskforce issues paper, think about the questions they are asking in there, think about useful topics for discussion and go to the Roadshows prepared.
Federal Government Announces IT Innovation Council
- Posted on July 21, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Today the Hon Kim Carr Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, annouced the 24 members of the new IT Innovation Council.
-quote from media release-
“IT will be the principal means to deliver the economic and productivity growth needed to drive innovation across the entire economy,“ Senator Carr said.
“IT is critical to Australia’s directly employing more than 400,000 Australians.
“Council members have been drawn from across the IT spectrum and include representatives of industry, suppliers, users, education, research, government and unions.
“The breadth and depth of experience on offer in the council will ensure that it delivers on its objective to champion innovation through the use of IT.”
The Government’s National Broadband Network will be vital to delivering this smart technology.
Council Chair, Mr John Grant, Managing Director of Data#3 Pty Ltd said the Council would develop a strategic agenda.
“The Council will have a wide agenda to consider innovation within the IT industry itself plus the application of technology to create innovation across the broader economy. It will apply the Government’s published innovation framework as it works closely with all stakeholders to execute this agenda,” Mr Grant said.
“The IT sector has its own well earned reputation for having an innovative and entrepreneurial culture. Harnessing that talent for the greater benefit of Australian industry will be one of the Council’s greatest opportunities.”
-end quote-
I think this is absolutely brilliant and look forward in particular to the last statement being utilised. To date federal government have gone with a “what we know is safe” approach and have been afraid of innovation. I applaud this step in the right direction and harbour great hopes that innovation and change in IT in goverment become a reality.
On a side note the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research might start with a revamp of their existing web site to make it accessible. It is not accessible in its current form it generates 179 warnings on the homepage alone when an accessibility tool is used on it.
How does a Conservative Government Change it's Spots & Adopt Social Media
- Posted on July 1, 2009 at 6:25 pm
I attended the very first Government 2.0 lunch today in Canberra which included the head of the newly formed Government 2.0 Taskforce, Dr Nicholas Gruen (link to twitter profile). The topic being discussed was how do we as engaged citizens working within and outside Government, assist the taskforce in it’s mission of putting in place a pathway for Government to transform to Government 2.0. The taskforce at this point has a lifespan of 6 months, I do not think this is long enough.
Whilst the conversation was lively and animated, it was not structured and there were multiple coversations going on at once. The people involved are all very passionate about assisting with change in Government and nearly all have very strong personalities and views. There was much discussion and examples of what is currently not working in Government or is oudated and needs to be addressed. End result was that only a few people really got to speak their mind and I am not sure how much of what was being said was truly useful to the taskforce at this point in time. It was a great lunch and there was much enlightening and useful information.
My advice to the taskforce regarding Social Media would be to create a list and priortise, of course at the top of the list would be a Whole of Government Framework for Social Media Engagement. All the agencies and different levels of Government are mostly very new to this, even on an indiviual personal level (individual employees), they need a high level set of “Rules of Engagement” as a starting point. As part of the taskforces project based funding they should perhaps look at running an internal staff based Social Media program in one of the Agencies, uses could be polling staff for opinions, internal interest groups (Agency soccer team) and organising social events. At the same time they could perhaps run an external Social Media program with another Agency which engages with citizens through applications such as Facebook and Twitter.
This is a massive task, policy needs to be rewritten as does some exisiting and nonexisting legislation.
Each Agency will need existing staff either trained, and trained well in Social Media or engage an existing Social Media resource, with individual agencies adopting the Whole of Government Framework and adapting to their Agencies needs.
Possible uses and benefits to Government in engaging in Social Media are enormous, the Victorian Bushfires are a prime example of disaster monitoring, engaging with citizens for opinions on policy changes, changes in legislation etc, the feedback is in realtime and immediate, hugely powerful.
Another truth which Government needs to realise is that even though they are blocking Social Networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, some of their employees are still using these tools through wireless and mobile devices. Social Media Policy has now become an urgent issue for Government as it is already happening and in this situation firewalls are useless.
The Public Sphere, Gov 2 – The Twitter Stream
- Posted on June 23, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Yesterday I attended Public Sphere 2 which was run by Senator Kate Lundy in the main committee room at Parliament House. The topic of this Public Sphere was Open Government: Policy & Practice, all Public Spheres run by Kate Lundy have the over arching topic of Government 2.0. My role in yesterdays event was to monitor the twitter stream for questions put to individual speakers and to retweet outstanding relevant tweets as well as intermittently tweeting the latest stats on the #publicsphere hash tag.
One thing which astounded me was that there were virtually no questions directed at speakers from the twitter stream after an initial burst of 10 questions during the first morning session. There was only one single question directed at a speaker during the rest of the day. To give some perspective on this there were 31 presentations and during the first session there were 4 speakers, why were there no questions from the twitter stream for the other 26 presentations. This was a stark contrast to how the twitter stream behaved during the first Public Sphere, there were way too many questions from the twitter stream during Public Sphere 1, we had to choose only 2 questions per speaker.
I thought about it today and I believe the reason for this is the subject matter of Public Sphere 2. Public sphere 1 was about the National Broadband Network and how high speed broadband would change the way we use the Internet. This is a very hot topic for all Australians and is not just a topic for people who have a strong interest in Government, therefore the audience were more informed and more passionate about the broadband topic and already had a very strongly formed opinion on the topic. Hence way more questions were put to speakers. The broad topic of Government policy regarding Government 2 had not already been a hot topic on twitter hence the majority of twitter users who participated were less prepared.
The lack of questions from the twitter stream did not particularly worry me yesterday as the twitter stream was going ballistic, it was extremely hard to keep up with it and remain focused. My eyes never left the screen except for a period when the wifi went awry. Over 2600 tweets flew past my eyes yesterday, from over 300 participants. The topic is still doing well today and the tweets are up to over 2700 tweets with 322 participants. I have left my hash tag search in place from yesterday and have again been monitoring the stream today and answering questions where I can.
In fact the conversation in the stream has turned to an effort to expand Public Sphere and take it to the NSW Government with many contributors very eager to see this happen. I see this as a natural stepping stone to expanding the Public Sphere model we have developed across all levels of Government, this will give all levels of Government easy access to public opinion on Government making it incredibly open and collaborative.
I would like to see the new Gov 2.0 Taskforce announced by Minister Lindsay Tanner yesterday implement the Public Sphere model as a whole of Government framework collaborating with the public.
