Government 2.0 initiatives in Australia Part 1 (Public Sphere Camp series)

Last week I posted about some of the Government 2.0 initiatives around the world.

This week I'm posting about some of the initiatives going on in Australia.

There are a number of government and non-government organisations who are very actively participating online and a great deal of experimentation going on. In fact while we're not the absolute leader in this area, we're certainly amongst the forerunners in many cases.

What I've done below is provide mini case studies of initiatives at various levels, linking to previous posts I've made on these initiatives.

I've split this into several posts in order to cover more ground.

Local government
Mosman municipal council
As the first Australian council to adopt Twitter as a communications channel, Mosman city council has been one of the ground-breakers in the social media space at local council level.

The council has taken a committed approach to online media, using blogs and online consultation techniques to supplement and inform 'heritage' citizen consultation approaches such as town hall meetings.

Hornsby Shire Council
Many local councils are beginning to very actively use online consultation as an approach to inform decision making. Hornsby Shire Council is one who has gone this route with the Hornsby Shire Housing Strategy consultation. This consultation has attracted over 1,100 comments and contains some very thoughtful discussion of how citizens would like to see the Shire shape itself into the future.

Future Melbourne
A second and even more comprehensive example is the Melbourne Citiy Council's Future Melbourne consultation, which has combined a wiki, discussion forums, video and other online tools to involve Melbournians in the future shape of their city.

State government
Queensland government's SharemyStory
Road tragedies affect many lives. Apart from the victims, who may be killed or permanently disabled, there is an impact on the families and friends of the victims, on onlookers and on the community.

As one approach to raise awareness of these impacts, support people in grieving and help the community and individuals recognise and take steps to minimise the risk of road tragedy the Queensland government launched the SharemyStory site where survivors, relatives and friends could publicly share their stories.

The site now contains over 1,000 stories submitted by people in memory of those killed or injured in road accidents and is a very powerful reminder of the pain and harm these accidents can cause.

The site also offers way to support specific stories and to share specific stories across social media sites. It also has a Twitter channel.

Appropriate provisions are in place to protect the privacy of individuals and where people do not wish to share their personal information there are approaches the site administrators can take.