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Following on from the Canberra Barcamp last week, a subset of the organisers and a group of other volunteers are busy organising a government 2.0 event in Canberra.
The event, which is in initial planning stages, aims to bring together a group of government online professionals to share their experience and knowledge, building a reference group who can support each other in achieving their Department's egovernment goals.
While I am not expecting the event to be as large as the recent Government 2.0 Camp in Washington D.C., which had over 300 attendees and attracted a range of international visitors, I expect many of the most innovative egovernment professionals in Australia to attend and present.
You can find out more about the event, and be involved in the planning process at Gov2.0Canberra.
Friday, April 03, 2009
Organising a Government 2.0 event in Canberra | Tweet |
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Social Media in Government conference outcomes | Tweet |
The US "Social Media for Government" conference was held in Washington, DC last week.
It appears to have discussed a large number of topics that would be of equal interest to public servants and officials here in Australia, so I've attached a few below....
Another presentation was on Measuring the impact of Social Media in Government, given by Ari Herzog and Andrew Krzmarzick, as embedded below.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
BarCamp Canberra next weekend - 28 March | Tweet |
In case you've not seen the buzz around mailing lists, the second Canberra BarCamp is on next weekend, 28 March, at the Australian National University.
What's a BarCamp?
Think of it as an impromptu conference featuring talented designers, developers and other online professionals. They gather to share their knowledge and expertise in a series of 20 minute presentations.
Anyone can present at the event on a topic of their choice.
It is a great opportunity to share experiences and network within the Canberra online community.
More details on the BarCamp concept is available from the official site.
Register at the official BarCamp Canberra site or at the Facebook group.
Podcasts of previous presentations are also available online at http://barcampcanberra.org/blog/podcasts/
Thursday, March 19, 2009
The Google in Government Symposium - notes from the day | Tweet |
On Wednesday 18 March I attended the Google in Government Symposium, hosted by Hedloc.
I had planned to liveblog the day, as I liveblogged the recent Politics and Technology forum, however due to a lack of available wi-fi (the National Convention Centre still charges $40 for six hours access - which I was not personally willing to pay), I resorted to taking notes on PC, which I've provided below in an edited form.
I also twittered the event as a personal stream-of-consciousness record and thanks to the dozen or so people who asked questions of the presenters through me or discussed the event with me on Twitter.
The record of the Twitter conversation can be found here, or under the hashtag #cggov - note that the records are in reverse chronological order, so go to the last result to start at the start of the day.
The text below is an edited version of my personal notes from the day. It does not represent the views of any other individual or organisation. Any errors or omissions are mine.
Google in Government notes transcript
Google Enterprise Overview
Presenter: Paul Slakey - Director Americas and APAC, Google
Google Enterprise
Google Search Appliance
Google Maps/Earth
Google Apps
Destination Innovation
Presenter: Alan Noble - Engineering Director, Australia & New Zealand, Google
His view of the two major trends for innovation
Google is a big supporter of open standards, Open Social Alliance and Open Handset Alliance
Google is very interested in having governments make public data available online on same basis to all organisations and citizens - and has made submission in this vein in the current consultation process.
Some examples of openness
Two technologies changing the face of the web
Four trends on the web
Destination Search
Presenter: Richard Suhr - Head of Google Enterprise, ANZ & South East Asia, Google
Search challenges for Gov Agencies
New US president has made search front-and-centre
Singaporean government came to Google and said they wanted a better search system across all of their government departments. Google took one search appliance – runs all search for all of government. Operates 4 million pages, 300 different search experiences (in agencies)
Quick stats from Google
Customer (and staff) view
Google's trends...
Technical Overview and Case Studies
ATO website – people can now find information on the website, users gravitating to search as the first path for navigation, rather than menus – huge increase in search.
Presenter: Aaren Tebbutt - Account Manager, HEDLOC
DEEWR
Extras
Destination Geospatial
Presenter: Mickey Kataria - Google maps Product Manager, Google
Mission: 'Organise the world's geographical information and make it universally accessible and useful'
Features
Maps API - Premier version
Maplets
Mobile
Australian Electorate map for Federal election
UK Metropolitan police crime map – http://maps.met.police.uk
User-generated content
Google Earth
Presenter: Brian Atwood - Google Earth Enterprise Product Manager
Examples:
1. All data goes into Google Earth Fusion Software – processes and blends it together
2. Processed data goes to Google Earth Server which allows viewing of data in a 3D or 2D format
Case study - Virtual Alabama
Goals
Implementation
Case study - Energy Australia
Presenter: Lawrence Bolton, Manager Community Liaison and Infrastructure
In his area
Wanted a way to 'see' or 'visualise' data
Google Earth is being rolled out in pilot as the visualisation platform for their GIS data, using layers and rich information.
Case Study - Australian Federal Police
Presenter: James Harris - Team Leader Geospatial services, Information Services Australian Federal Police
Audited systems:
Selected Google Earth via a tender process, and are implementing an internal version so no-one external is aware of when the Federal Police have interest in a location. Initially using 8 terabytes of storage – with multiple globes.
Initial role out in April to testers, full rollout in June.
Looking to roll out maps, live feeds, custom build tools, link into corporate databases in future.
Case Study - NT Land Information Systems
Presenter: Phillip Rudd - Director NT Land Information Systems
Geospatial useful for key questions
Uses Google Earth alongside other tools (complex system - but it works well).
Department was gathering lots of map data, but could not effectively do much with it.
Originally deployed solution in production in 2006.
Emergency Management – 239 registered users
Land Information – open to all users (potentially 9,500 desktops) actual 1,619 logins
'We all think in pictures, not in words'
Uses:
Destination Apps and Security
Presenter: Paul Slakey - Director Americas and APAC, Google
Why are users unhappy?
Stats on current IT management
Forrester report Jan 2009 – should your email live in the cloud?
Monday, February 09, 2009
BarCamp Canberra coming up - 28 March | Tweet |
The second BarCamp Canberra has been confirmed for 28 March, to be held at the ANU.
In case you're not familiar with the concept (quoting from the official site),
A BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants. Here is a quote from the wikipedia description:BarCamps are a global phenomenon, regularly held in at least a dozen countries, from the US to India to New Zealand.
'BarCamp is an international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols.'
The UK has previously held a very successful Government-only BarCamp and, due to the nature of Canberra, many attendees of the previous Canberra BarCamp last year worked within or in areas related to government.
BarCamps are not-for-profit and cost nothing to attend.
More information is available at the official BarCamp Canberra site or at the Facebook group.
Podcasts of previous presentations are available online at http://barcampcanberra.org/blog/podcasts/
Note that I am personally on the committee coordinating the event and will be presenting on the day.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Virtual government conferences - when will they start in Australia? | Tweet |
I find conferences a very useful avenue for networking with other egovernment and online channel professionals. I often get ideas or insights that I can share across my team and agency - and implement in our sites.
However the attendance cost continues to rise. Sadly both the commitment in time and price means that I've been cutting back to a few selected courses each year.
I've partially offset the price factor by speaking at events (giving a 40 minute presentation to attend a 2 day $3,000 conference is equivalent to an 'hourly rate' of $4,500).
However this still leaves travel and accomodation costs and the time required to participate (which I can never get back).
A solution I'm seeing more of around the world is to hold virtual conferences - such as the Cognos Virtual Government Forum being held using INXPO's platform.
There are options for similar events via platforms such as Second Life and Webex, as well as ways to use free tools to achieve a similar end.
While these events have a lower networking factor than a face-to-face event (though it can still occur), they provide a similar presentation experience - with the capacity to pick and choose between canned or live presentations and engage in chat-based Q&A sessions or panels.
You do not need to leave your desk, and can tune out for other priorities, then catch-up again at your leisure.
So given the large size and low population density of Australia, when are we likely to see some locally run virtual conferences?
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
US Air Force planning to create its first virtual air base | Tweet |
According to the NextGov article Air Force opens bidding for virtual air base, the US Air Force is preparing to launch a virtual air base where airmen will attend courses in a 3D virtual world.
Simulators have long been used in training pilots and astronauts, due to the fatal consequences of mistakes by novices. This air base takes it a step further, with the Air Force looking to support up to 75 simultaneous users in a geospatially accurate real-time training environment.
As described in the NextGov article,The service initially hopes to create two furnished virtual classrooms that can stream audio and video, and to allow users to design their own avatars in uniform with a variety of physical attributes and appropriate rank. The synthetic base also must include buildings, vegetation, signage, roads, security, a flight line with planes and the ability to exchange documents, photographs and video. Once it buys the software and training, the Air Force expects delivery within two weeks.
The system, termed MyBase, is seen as a key component in the Air Force's future training programs. Here's a video from them explaining more...
This type of learning environment is adaptable to many different functions - including virtual seminars and roadshows, collaborative meetings, presentations, media events, group-based activities and real-time or time-delayed course training. Several universities in the US have already made courses available via 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life.
In Australia we've seen some exploration of these technologies by the Victorian state government in its Melbourne Laneways project for public consumption.
My view is that some of the more immediate benefits for the public sector are in internal use of such environments by geographically diverse agencies to create learning and collaborative environments.
In fact the ATO has demonstrated such an environment already in its ATO Showcase as one of the innovations they are exploring for future roll-out.
For public use of these environments today by government the equity issue needs to be well considered.
Personally I've always felt that gradual degradation is an appropriate approach, providing a virtual 3D environment for broadband users, degrading to voice and powerpoint for 'thin' broadband and dial-up users, down to distributed multimedia for computer users without internet connections and to hardcopy or physical meetings for those without computers.
The other consideration is the proportion of the audience falling into each of these groups, and if this has not been established I'd be very cautious about providing more advanced options.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Summary of take-aways from the Driving Interoperability and Collaboration in eGovernment conference | Tweet |
A frantic day catching up yesterday, so I did not get to write this post until this morning.
On Monday I presented at Ark Group's Driving Interoperability and Collaboration in eGovernment conference in Brisbane.
There was a great line-up of speakers, and I had a long list of take-aways from the day.
Here's my key ones. Note these reflect my perception of the speakers' topics - not necessarily the words they used.
Overall takeaways
- There's a lot happening across the egovernment front at all levels of Australian government, with enormous benefits beginning to be realised for the government, for constituents and for business
- egovernment initiatives still remains highly siloed, with little information being shared between governments, departments, or even within agencies
- virtually all state and federal governments recognise the need to follow whole-of-government approaches, but are doing so only within their own governments, not across jurisdictions in a co-ordinated and managed way
- Enormous cost and time benefits could be realised with more centralised co-ordination (not control)
By speaker
Kim Denham
(CEO Australian Computer Society)
- Broadband is a critical utility for Australians.
- It's crucial to ensure that Australia has an appropriate network in order for long-term national success
Dominic Feik
(Director Business Services, Dept of Innovation, Industry and Regional Developments Vic)
- A successful business case is a good story, supported by evidence, relevant to stakeholders
- Storyline is critical - provides structure for the case
- Use case studies to build a picture of the outcomes
- Create and manage a stakeholder list - develop a clear strategy on how to influence and engage key decision makers (sometimes has to be from a distance)
- Use 'guided' rather than 'blank slate' consultation
- Number one reason for project failure is if the wrong people/skills are attached to the project team
- Other reasons for failure include:
- Poor consultation
- Poor research
- Too much focus on implementation, not enough on business case
- Searching for benefits in the wrong places
Gary Shaw
(Director Information Queensland)
- QLD government has a state-wide address verification system, usable across state government websites, intranets and applications (I want one at Federal level!!)
- QLD has done a fantastic job in developing a geospatial system - involving collaboration across many government agencies.
- There is insufficient collaboration across Australia government
Qld invested $7.5 million in a geospatial display system (building a metadata atlas and other tools),
WA invested $26 million in a similar, but separate system (more bells and whistles),
NSW is looking to invest in such a system - separately
Vic is looking to invest in such a system - separately
Federally AGIMO is investing in such a system
Surely Australian government only needs one such geospatial system - open enough to support the needs of various states and levels of government, and provided/managed centrally as a national public good.
This would support the needs of businesses and individuals to deal across council and state borders, rather than requiring them to use separate tools for separate jurisdictions.
Tim Turner
(Lecturer at UNSW@ADFA)
- Government has focused on a 'one-size fits all' approach to online, but recently moved into portals based on demographic ('youth', 'family') and 'live event' models ('moving home', 'starting school').
- While AGIMO indicates that 60% of the internet using public has visited a government site at least once in the last twelve months, there is not much detail on how/why they visited or how frequently.
- Key limiters to government engagement online appear to be (from AGIMO):
Usability, navigation and content
Knowing what can be transacted (promotion)
Wanting to deal with a 'real person' (little work in Australian government on real-time online contact via video, audio or text) - Government also needs to considered the relationship that constituents have with government.
- Identifed four key relationships/roles:
Customer - single-session interactions, commercially oriented, no identity requirement, expects the same experience whether public or private organisation providing product/service
Client - multi-session interactions, relationship orientated, 'professional' engagement, identity required, expects the same experience whether public or private organisation providing product/service
Citizen - single-session interactions, about business of government, preference for anonymity, no commercial alternatives
Subject - multi-session interactions, usually initiated by government, heavily rules/procedural based, identity required, no commercial alternatives - Government services (process/tone/approach) need to take into account the relationship the constituent has with the service - people shift from one relationship/role to another across different engagements.
- For transactional engagements (Customers/Citizens) - improve usability and appearance of trustworthiness
- For relationship engagements (Clients/Subjects) - improve usability and evidence of justice
Jonathan Gray
(Senior Researcher, NICTA)
- Some great tools now coming out of NICTA
- Seeking government agencies to partner with to pilot pre-commercialisation of IT-related solutions
Jo Bryson
(Executive Director Office of eGovernment, WA)
- Ongoing need to break down silos within and between organisations. Critical factors in doing so are;
- Awareness and understanding
- Consultation and engagement
- Promotion - Need to share information, not withhold it
- Is a significant mental shift for many long-term public servants, but a necessary one for effective governance
- ICT will only realise true business benefits with a business-centric approach NOT technology-centric
- WA has developed a great set of checklists for Ministers' offices (PDF) and Secretaries to appropriately question CIOs to ensure that business value is top-of-mind (great tool - should be used nationally!)
- There is real business value in electronic transactions over physical ones
- Physical network accounts for less than 25% of Medicare's business
- Estimated that move to electronic transactions has effectively reduced Medicare's necessary headcount by 50% (compared to headcount required if all processes remained manual)
- Implemented ability for customers to check their interactions with Medicare online (publicly available but not yet being promoted)
- Has developed a national medical backbone for providing and billing services across GPs, specialists and hospitals (ECLIPSE), which has enormous benefits for the health sector (but is largely invisible to constitutents)
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Intranet day - global event | Tweet |
It has felt a little like 'Intranet Day' in the last few days as I've posted a number 0f times about intranet developments.
It really was Intranet Day on 18-19 June - a global online event where intranet managers were able to discuss their intranet strategies and a number of large organisations such as the BBC, IBM and Microsoft demonstrated their intranet functionality.
The podcasts and slides from various presentations on the day will be available shortly at the IBF website.
I confess that I missed the event - hadn't even heard that it was taking place until it was over - so am eagerly awaiting these presentations. I'll post again once they are up.
If you also missed the event it is worth looking out for some of the Intranet Tours in Australia.
Or simply organise your own as I've done in the past.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
The power of participatory culture - in government | Tweet |
Stephen Collins of Acidlabs has delivered an extremely powerful presentation on the power of participatory culture and the evolution of social media as an extension of the natural tendency for humans to form communities.
These communities empower organisations, fostering a positive culture, improving staff retention, supporting collaboration and breaking down silos - making individual employees, teams and the entire organisation more powerful, effective and successful.
The approach holds as well, if not more so, for government organisations as for the private sector.
I cannot recommend this presentation highly enough!
Slouching towards intertwingularity: The power of participatory cultures
Friday, June 13, 2008
Tell me the topics you'd like covered in my eMetrics presentation | Tweet |
I'll be speaking at Ark Group's conference Driving Interoperability and Collaboration in eGovernment in Brisbane in late August on the topic of eMetrics - using them to benchmark and drive the ongoing success of eGovernment initiatives.
If you're planning to attend this conference - or even if you're not - let me know via comments to this post the areas you'd like to see covered within the eMetrics topic and I'll endeavour to cover them in my presentation.
My presentation will be posted on my slideshare site and blog after the event.
For an extract from one of my previous conference presentations on the eMetrics topic, see my post eMetrics primer
For the full presentation I gave on web strategy recently at a conference, see my post Web Strategy in Sydney
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Web Strategy in Sydney | Tweet |
Earlier this month I presented at the Ark Web Strategy conference in Sydney.
It was quite a mixed event, about 40 attendees across a spread of government and industry, although a few less people from the business world than I would have expected.
Having been around for awhile I did know or know of about half of the speakers, and as usual people like Donna Maurer from Maadmob and Rebecca Rodgers from Step Two Designs were both entertaining and provided valuable insights.
In particular Rebecca's presentation made me rethink aspects of our website's search approach, leading my team to make some adjustments to further simplify our search results for a more relevant experience. Less is more!
Some of the less known speakers also did an excellent job, with Josh Borg from AGL providing a very frank and open presentation on his experiences redeveloping the AGL website and Gian Wild from Monash University providing a passionate view of accessibility. I'm reusing some of her examples to help communicate the accessibility message to staff at my agency.
As for myself, as the first speaker I chose to take a big picture look at the purpose and process of online strategy to 'keynote' the event.
