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The Gov 2.0 Taskforce this afternoon announced the launch of data.australia.gov.au featuring 59 datasets from Australian Federal, State and Territory governments released under licenses that permit reuse.
Alongside the launch the Taskforce announced on their blog the launch of a Mash-up competition challenging Australian developers to use one of more of the datasets to create a useful online application.
The competition is offering more than $20,000 in prizes across a range of categories including Excellence in mash-up, peoples' choice and Best Student entry.
The competition starts at 10am Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) on 7 October and closes at 4pm AEST on 6 November.
Solo entrants must be Australian resident or citizen and teams must include at least one Australian.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Gov 2.0 Taskforce announces launch of data.australia.gov.au with a Mash-up competition | Tweet |
Community based budgeting being trialled by a NSW Local MP | Tweet |
Community-based budgeting is an approach that involves a government allowing its constituents to nominate how some or all of the government's budget is spent in either a binding or non-binding manner.
It's not a new approach - in fact it's been used for thousands of years in different forms around the world.
What is reasonably new is using online tools to facilitate the process. This has been used successfully in various places around the world, (including Brazil) including at local council level in Australia.
However, for the first time that I'm aware of in Australia, the approach is about to be trialled at a state government level in NSW by Heathcote MP Paul McLeay.
The approach was announced via his website with a video, which details how the process will work.
It has also been the subject of a post by Paul at ON LINE Opinion titled, Web 2.0: citizens choose how to spend public money.
The article attracted criticism from the Sydney Morning Herald over the authors' choice of words regarding the Premier of NSW's use of Twitter. However it should also be noted that the quote was misattributed as only being from MP Paul McLeay, not from all of the authors, and the Herald didn't mention the point of the initiative in the first place.
However the experiment in edemocracy has attracted more positive views from others who have focused on the initiative, such as from Online Community Engagement's post Paul McLeay's e-democracy initiative - 3 cheers from us but the Herald is not impressed!.
I often wonder how the Australian public would prefer to spend 'government' budgets - the money that taxpayers give to the government to be used in their benefit.
Even with the understanding that the community won't have all the same information on which to make their decisions it would still make an interesting experiment to see the choices they make and the reasons behind their decisions.
Crowdsourcing Australian History using Web 2.0 | Tweet |
Nick Gruen over at the Gov 2.0 Taskforce has reminded me of a project I took a look at last year but have never mentioned in this blog.
It's the National Library of Australia's Historic Australian Newspapers archive, which contains digitalised versions of Australian newspapers from between 1803 and 1954 (which are not covered by copyright).
The archive began with the intention of using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to digitalise the newspapers to make them accessible and searchable online - a vital resource for researchers and geneologists.
However the project took this a step further - allowing the public to correct OCR mistakes in text with extremely low barriers to entry.
This led to over 2 millions lines of text being corrected in 100,000 articles in the first six months, with corrections undertaken by 1,300 users from around the world (78% from Australia). In fact there wasn't a single hour in a day when corrections were not taking place - and there were no instances of vandalism.
The IT Project Manager, Rose Holley has written a great report on the project, detailing how the crowdsourcing initiative was suggested, the process they used to understand and manage potential risks, test and establish the system and how successful it has been - including profiles of some of the top participants and what motivates them to contribute.
This report, Many Hands Make Light Work: Public Collaborative OCR Text Correction in Australian Historic Newspapers (PDF), is a must-read for anyone in the Australian public sector considering how they can get the public involved in their online initiative.
The project is ongoing - with more than 2,294 registered users in February this year.
So why not get involved yourself - even just to understand how such a system might work.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
NSW trialing video Hansards and auto-translation - looking for comments | Tweet |
As discussed in NSW MLC Penny Sharpe's blog last week, the NSW government is trialling video Hansard for proceedings in both NSW houses.
Videos are tagged via the Hansard transcripts to improve searchability - though at present the search system implemented finds the video clip, but not the precise time within the video.
In addition to the video, NSW is also trialling auto-translation of Hansard transcripts into Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish (though unfortunately not Klingon). This offers the exciting prospect of being able to provide the discussions in parliament in the languages of some of the different cultural groups across Australia. In my view this is even more significant for supporting Australia's multi-cultural democracy than watching parliament in action.
To trial the system, go to www.visionbytes.tv and login using nswparl as both the username and password.
If you have feedback, please comment on MLC Penny Sharpe's blog.
What's your view on collaborative legislation? - US Congressman piloting collaboration on Health Care Bill | Tweet |
Collaborative legislation is one of the potential outcomes for Gov 2.0 - a process whereby those affected by legislation can be directly involved in the process of developing it, or even write their own legislation as a 'community bill' for government to consider.
We've seen some work around the edges of this space over the last few years, with the New Zealand Wiki Police Act and even with the Gov 2.0 Taskforce in Australia, who made their beta issues paper available online for comments before finalisation.
Now one of the US Government's best know Gov 2.0 advocates, Republican Congressman John Culberson, has take a further step, making the proposed US Health Care Bill available online for comments and annotations by his constituents.
I'm very interested in whether a collaborative legislation approach could work in Australia and what could be the barriers to it being successful. Anyone have views on this?
Monday, September 28, 2009
Parliament House Clerk advocates online engagement for parliamentary committees | Tweet |
In a recent submission (PDF) to the Federal government's Inquiry into the effectiveness of House Committees, I C Harris, the Clerk of the House, suggested that
Technological developments offer tremendous potential to extend the reach of communities work in times of community participation.The submission provided an example of how one government committee had successfully engaged with public online forums to inform and encourage participation in inquiries and consultations and also discussed some of the other online tools potentially useful to government consultation processes, for example,
It is possible to envisage committees, for example, hosting on-line forums or blogs and participating in social networking sites in some form to reach groups, particularly younger Australians, and seek their input into particular issues. Use of technology in this way will be a useful adjunct to the more traditional methods of operation for committees.It also went on to details some of the benefits of using online engagement, such as increasing the reach of consultations and reducing travel costs.
With the Clerk of the House supportive of the concept of online platforms to improve consultation processes, I wonder how long it will take until the parliament - and government departments - begin more broadly using online channels to aid consultation processes.
There does appear to be a limited supply of people with professional skills in conducting these consultations, or even costing and planning them in Australia. I think this presents an enormous opportunity for anyone who has or can build significant experience in the area as they will be in high demand in the future.
Does your department have social media guidelines in place? | Tweet |
Various research reports have indicated that at least 50% of Australian internet users participate in social networks.
Forrester's Groundswell profiling tool suggests that 23% of Australians aged 18+ actively create content online; 31% are 'critics', providing comments and feedback online; and 50% are 'joiners' of social networks, forums and online groups.
So should we expect Australia's public servants - most of whom are internet users - to be any different?
It seems reasonable to me to assume that more than half of public servants are actively participating online - discussing topics of interest to them, leaving comments on forums, social networks and news sites and building their social profile.
We're also seeing more government departments officially employing social media to engage their customers, having staff who are responsible for creating and maintaining Facebook pages, blogs and other online presences on behalf of the department.
However how many government departments and agencies have formally endorsed and communicated the APSC's Interim protocols on online media use to their staff, or developed their own guidelines regarding social media?
What is the legal position of a department if it finds staff using social media in their own time in a way senior management disagree with but where there are no formal guidelines in place?
What is a department's effective position in situations where it is launching social media initiatives while simultaneously blocking staff from viewing these initiatives using departmental equipment? We don't block staff from viewing our radio, print or TV campaigns.
These are thorny issues for departments - particularly for those that are having to confront these issues on the back foot, rather than proactively assessing their situation and putting guidelines in place.
They will become even thornier if left unresolved - potentially leading to management/staff disputes, legal risks, media risks and political risks for Ministers.
So has your department taken steps to devise, endorse and communicate official guidelines on social media use? Or has it accepted the risks it is taking on by not taking these steps?
