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I've been reviewing a very interesting presentation from Paul Ramsay, one of my blog's Canadian readers.
Titled RoboCop, Public Service in the Internet Age, it asks whether government is simply on the internet, or is part of the internet.
It frames this question based on whether government is simply using the intranet to replicate the services it provides via other channels, or using the new medium to go further.
This is a topic I resonate with. For many years I've been telling people that what we see on the internet today is similar to what we first saw in films - stage shows re-enacted on a flat screen.
It took many years for movie makers to learn how to use the medium to go beyond what was possible on a stage, and the types of movies we see today bear little resemblance to our first stumbling efforts in the medium.
The internet is the same. It's not just digital paper, online radio or short videos - it's a mass medium that takes all these elements, twists them 180 degrees and adds on seamless global surfing, collaboration, citizen empowerment and much more.
From what we've managed to do so far at my agency we're simply on the internet - providing electronic versions of print concepts - 'fact sheets', 'newsletters', 'forms', 'media releases' and 'data tables'.
I am hopeful and working hard to ensure that in the next few years we'll break through the perceptual barriers to build understanding across the department of what is really possible with the online channel and how we can support our customers and staff in entirely new ways.
New medium = new rules
New medium = new opportunities
New medium = new challenges
How do you see the internet changing your organisation?
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Is government on the internet or part of the internet? | Tweet |
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Impressive use of geospatial data | Tweet |
There are some very clever people in the US, and a group of them have built some very interesting geospatial systems for displaying government data.
For example David Fletcher's blog has made me aware that the US Census has developed the OnTheMap service for analysing employment data. It offers a number of tools for creating map overlays to help filter and present data in value-add ways.
It's well worth a look and a think about what could be done in Australia with the latest census results.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Set the data free! Mash it up! | Tweet |
Mashups are, in my opinion, a fantastic tool for allowing people to creatively use data to solve problems or create value.
For those unfamiliar with the term, it refers to situations where individuals or organisations combine (mashup) data from different sources, often in real-time across the internet to provide hybrid applications.
Some of the more interesting mashups I've seen have involved adding real-time public transport, job vacancies, photos, house sales or rental data from one or more websites to maps stored on another website.
Some of the better known mashups include:
- Flickrvision - photos on maps,
- Bikely - cycle routes around the world,
- HousingMaps - drawn from Craig's List and Google maps to create a location-based view of properties for rent or sale,
- Twittervision - tracking real time 'twitters' (mini blog posts) around the world - I find it a very zen experience to watch, and
- WAPetrol - a mashup showing the cheapest places to buy petrol in WA.
There are plenty more listed at the Google Maps Mania blog.
The only recent example I've seen even nominally in the public arena within Australia was Google's Australian election mash-up last year. This was a world first, combining electorate information, news stories, video and Google maps into an interactive picture of Australian politics.There's an introductory video to this mash-up at YouTube.
I expect we'll see an even more slick version for the US election this year.
The Bureau of Meteorology does makes its data available to third party websites for use in mashups. While I was at ActewAGL we used this data (with their permission) to provide weather information about the ACT - though it functioned more as a feed than a mashup.
We were also working towards creating internal mashups of our sales and customer details to gain a better picture of the demographic spread, effectiveness of location-based marketing and to give us another axis with which to develop customer insights. I do not know if this project has progressed since I left the organisation.
There's plenty of other private sector mashups emerging - some used for commercial purposes, such as the maps in RealEstate.com.au, but the public sector is strangely silent.
I'd love to see the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) mashup some of its data, or make data available in a form usable in mashups. I'm sure it would stimulate some interesting uses which in turn might lead to new insights.
I've also been slowly moving my Agency towards using some of our publicly released data, together with Google maps, to provide a basic social picture of Australia. This is information is already provided in list form so it's an easy first step.
Unfortunately there's plenty of more important activities on our radar, so we're not there yet - though I did manage in my own time to create an electorate map of Australia and embed some of our public data within it.
Over in the US there's a lot more activity, dating back several years. The mid-2006 article Emerging eGovernment mashups provides an early look at some of the uses the US public sector is developing for mash-ups.
