Showing posts with label whole-of-government. Show all posts
Showing posts with label whole-of-government. Show all posts

Monday, February 23, 2009

Government-related initiative tops Fast Company's "The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies" list for 2009

It's uncommon (at least in Australia) to see a government-related initiative promoted as a leader in innovation.

It's even rarer to see publications such as Fast Company, with its focus on the most innovative companies in the world, feature government-related initiatives.

However this year Fast Company's profile of "The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies" is topped by a government-related initiative. One which,

took a skinny kid with a funny name and turned him into the most powerful new national brand in a generation.
This reflects my view that the government could be one of the largest beneficiaries of the online channel. The internet allows government to have real conversations with citizens on an unprecended scale - participatory democracy in a way that has not been possible since communities grew too large to fit within a single town hall meeting.

To quote Fast Company,
Barack Obama's presidential-campaign team relied on technology -- what was known internally as the "triple O," or Obama's online operation -- to connect with voters better, faster, and more cheaply than ever before. The team has become the envy of marketers both in and out of politics for proving, among other things, just how effective digital initiatives can be.


More information can be gleaned from Stilgherrian's live blog of the Media 09 event, which featured Ben Self (a founder of the company BlueStateDigital who provided Obama's online community infrastructure) providing insights into how it was done.

Digital initiatives tick many boxes for government - in my view even more boxes than they tick for commercial organisations.

There are the cost, speed and reach benefits - the ability to contact, engage and solicit views from more people than ever before in a matter of hours or days at very low cost.

There is also the benefit of being able to speak with your own voice, making statements and holding conversations outside the moderation, influence and slant of media gatekeepers.

These benefits reach across all organisations, politicians and other individuals using the internet.

For government there are additional benefits in understanding the ongoing mood of a community and proactively creating and amending legislation and policy to better meet current citizen needs.

It is also possible to receive feedback on existing initiatives and develop collaborative policy and programs to help the finetuning process often necessary after legislation is introduced.

Finally, the internet allows government to mobilise a population behind a given cause or initiative, such as has occurred around the Victorian bushfires. For this crisis, for the first time ever, I've seen people 'retweeting' (forwarding) messages sent out via the KevinRuddPM Twitter account.

Of course there are hurdles that need to be considered - the need to be transparent (to a point), and the need to engage in a human-centric manner, rather than as a media statement robot.

These last two factors can be stumbling blocks for government. Transparency involves willingly admitting mistakes and committing to doing better. Speaking with a human voice requires a willingness to allow government representatives to do more than copy and paste the words of existing media releases - to inject their own style into communications.

These are both possible and in many cases already supported in other channels, such as radio talkback and live television. However often the internet is treated more as a long lead time press channel than as a real-time multimedia one.

For Australia to remain a leading nation in the world, I believe our governments need to overcome these hurdles, demonstrating innovative approaches to engagement and governance as we're now seeing in nations from the US to Estonia.

Time and citizen feedback will tell if we manage to do so in a meaningful way.

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Monday, February 02, 2009

Does it take a command from the top to create greater egovernment activity?

Does it take a command from the top to kickstart egovernment activity?

It surely varies across agencies and jurisdictions, but in the US there's a clear view that a top-down approach will help unclog some of the channels and create high level attention to generating significant egovernment activity.

On January 21, the new US President Barack Obama released the following executive memorandum Transparency and Open Government. While it does not specifically mention the online area, it is a large shot in the arm for advocates of government transparency and web 2.0 use.

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.
Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.

Government should be participatory. Public engagement enhances the Government's effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public input on how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation in Government.

Government should be collaborative. Collaboration actively engages Americans in the work of their Government. Executive departments and agencies should use innovative tools, methods, and systems to cooperate among themselves, across all levels of Government, and with nonprofit organizations, businesses, and individuals in the private sector. Executive departments and agencies should solicit public feedback to assess and improve their level of collaboration and to identify new opportunities for cooperation.

I direct the Chief Technology Officer, in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Administrator of General Services, to coordinate the development by appropriate executive departments and agencies, within 120 days, of recommendations for an Open Government Directive, to be issued by the Director of OMB, that instructs executive departments and agencies to take specific actions implementing the principles set forth in this memorandum. The independent agencies should comply with the Open Government Directive.

This memorandum is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by a party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

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Saturday, January 31, 2009

Do our internationally accessed government sites speak the right language?

Comscore's media release last week indicated that Global Internet Audience Surpasses 1 billion Visitors, According to comScore.

While this is probably an understatement, as it only accounts for those aged 15+, the release highlighted the increasing diversity of internet users, with China very clearly in the top spot with 179,100,000 users, compared to the 2nd placed US's 163,300,000 users.

Australia didn't even make the top 15 list, with the Netherlands scraping in at 15th spot with 11,812,000 users.

It is immediately clear than people with English as their first language are a minority on the internet.

Looking at the top 15 countries, the only ones with English as an official language were the US, UK and Canada (which has French as well). These countries only accounted for 221,173,000 of a total 711,488,000 internet users.

Extending this out to the full 1 billion internet users, only around 31% of internet users are likely to have English as their first language.

This means that for internationally focused government websites there is an enormous need to consider two options:

Rewriting websites to use extremely simple language and navigation for people who have English as a second language (or even as their first!) This is possibly the greatest need for most government websites - speaking to someone at a party last week, although they lecture at an Australian university, English is their second language and some government-speak in websites does not make sense to them.

The other, and harder, option is to co-publish in other languages, such as (written) Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, German, French, Hindi, Russian, Korean and Italian (by rough order of prominence).

Yes there's a cost to both of these approaches. However are you willing to tell your Minister that your internationally focused website is only accessible to 31% of its prospective audience in its current form - and you're OK with that?

Fortunately our tourism industry has gotten this message, Australia's official (government) tourist entry point Australia.com.au is available in eight languages and with localised content for more than 18 countries.

But what about people seeking business ties in Australia, those wanting to register their IP, anyone with a need to understand local laws or to claim benefits?

Over in Europe it is common practice to publish government and commercial websites in multiple languages - they are part of a European community as well as a global one.

How connected is Australia to our global community? Perhaps the languages we use on our websites indicate that we're not as connected as we could be - and one can only wonder at the value of this lost economic activity to Australia.

This is a whole-of-government issue, so perhaps we need a whole-of-government solution. A central team that works with agencies on a prioritisation basis (by economic impact) to convert their material into other languages - centrally budgeted of course.

Or should we rely on the audience to seek their own translators - either machine-based online ones, their employees, friends and families (with potential limited english understanding) or even paid services?

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Tuesday, January 20, 2009

How accountable, transparent, collaborative and consultative is government? Could do with improvement according to latest report

Accenture has released an international report, Leadership in Customer Service: Creating Shared Responsibility for Better Outcomes looking at the opinions of 8,600 citizens in 21 countries towards their governments.

Australia, one of the countries studied, performed moderately well. Australians were almost evenly split amongst those who felt that government was good at seeking their opinions, with 34% saying Australian government was good or very good and 38% stating bad or very bad.

The entire report, which is very comprehensive, suggested a range of options for government to improve their ability to collaborate between departments or with non-government and commercial organisations, as well as options to improve accountability, transparency and consultation.

Without going into detail, a number of these recommendations hinged on use of the internet and Web 2.0 technologies to enable faster and more comprehensive engagement.

The report is well worth a read - but prepare to spend a few hours absorbing it.

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Monday, December 29, 2008

Europe showcases 40 innovative egovernment projects

The new Smart Regions website showcases 40 European egovernment initiatives between 2002 and 2007.

One of the primary messages of the site is the need for government to connect and work together, across teams, agencies, departments, levels of government, with business and with community. Only by doing so can states and councils become more productive and service focused.

All the governments, research institutions or voluntary organisations depicted on this website have one shared goal: to make their region better, stronger and smarter. And the secret to regional development is actually very simple: co-operation. The Smart Regions share infrastructure, exchange methodologies, copy succesfull achievements, have built strong stakeholder structures and managed to involve other sectors of society. Smart regions not only work together, Smart Regions are smart because they work together.

The site also points out that,
E-Government is as much about changing mindsets, building a vision on service-delivery and showing leadership in getting organisations to work together, as it is about technology.


Let's hear more of that here in Australia!

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Friday, December 05, 2008

Is self-organised government coming?

Reading the Connected Republic this morning, Paul Johnston has written an interesting post, Us Now: On the Road to Self-Organised Government?, about the new documentary, US Now, which explores the power of self-organising groups and what they might mean for society and the public sector.

The film has just previewed in London, however clips, a blog and other information is available at the Us Now website and the Us Now Youtube channel.

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Wednesday, November 26, 2008

eGovernment best practice from Utah's CIO

Ari Herzog has begun a series on social media best practice in his blog, AriWriter.

Kicking it off is a fascinating interview with Utah's Chief Information Officer, David Fletcher, providing an insight into how Utah has implemented its online strategy, taking it to win the Best of the Web award for US state governments twice (so far), in 2003 and 2007.

Drawing a few highlights from David's piece...

The state has over 830 services online, was an early adopter of blogging by public servants, services such as Twitter (as covered by USA Today) and online chat (24x7) and the use of video online via Youtube. Do I need to also mention they use wikis?

For many of these initiatives Utah is leveraging free online technologies rather than reinventing the wheel and spending large amounts of public funds. And Utah isn't keeping the performance of Utah.gov a secret - they publish their analytics online.

In August this year the state instituted a 4-day work week for public servants, based on Utah's ability to provide so many services on a 24x7 basis online.

Amazingly, although the state only has 2.6 million residents, the Utah state portal receives over 1.1 million unique visits per month. That's a much higher rate of citizen online participation with government than we see in Australia (for example Australia.gov.au reportedly gets around half this number of visitors (not even unique visitors) for 8x as large a population).

The state has also cut down the time for businesses to register at local, state and federal levels - cutting what could be a several week process down to 30 minutes.

A number of their services have over an 80% adoption rate - which I take to mean that under 20 percent of registrations come via other channels.

And if you want to learn more about the state of Utah's online presence, you can visit David's blog or find him on Twitter at @dfletcher - he's truly walking the talk!

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Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Is the future portals or mash-ups?

While many governments around the world pursue the 'one portal' approach, a few commentators are arguing for a different type of model - many correct doors rather than one big door.

This means reaching out to embed government content in the websites citizens choose to visit rather than simply attempting to encourage all web users to go to a single central portal for all government-related content.

This approach is described well in the Read Write Web article, E-Government Meets Web 2.0: Goodbye Portals, Hello Web Services, which states, in reference to the online channel that,

Gartner's conclusion is that governments "should make sure that their information, services and applications are accessible through a variety of different channels, some of which are not controlled or directly owned by government."


This is similar to how government agencies already distribute physical publications beyond their own shopfronts - into libraries, doctors' surgeries, lawyers' offices and into the shopfronts of other government agencies. It also reflects how government has a presence at various community and commercial shows, festivals and other events.

In both these cases government reaches out into other organisations' venues in order to better reach citizens in the places they frequent.

I'm a proponent of this 'any door' approach being extended online. As an egovernment practitioner I do not necessarily care how people get to the information and services my agency provides online, provided that they get to them.

This means I am a supporter of central portals as an avenue outside my agency's own website to reach our customers. It also means I am a fan of greater cross-agency collaboration on information provision, where agencies with similar audiences work together to provide government information to citizens.

Most importantly it means I am a supporter of rss, mash-ups and embedded web services - any technology that allows my agency to reach beyond the confines of its own website to reach our customers in whatever websites they choose to visit - commercial, public or citizen-run.

After all, with research indicating that government sites only make up about two percent of online visits by Australians, if I want to magnify the effectiveness of my agency's tools and information online, I need to increase their reach.

For example (hypothetically), if my agency produced a video relevant to the customers of any organisation involved in the family law system, it would be worth our while to look at how we could reach beyond our own website traffic to the traffic of other involved websites.

Using Youtube, we could generate a video that can be embedded into any site across the family law system, thereby potentially magnifying the reach of its content.

Assuming that my agency has 10 percent of the traffic to the family law system, this could, with the agreement and support of other organisations, result in up to a 10x boost in traffic to the video - all targeted at the appropriate audience.

If we also had the video included in the australia.gov.au portal this would lift usage further, but in a less targeted way, as the portal does not specifically target the same audience as we are attempting to reach.

The approach in this scenario applies for any type of government information distribution online. It also means that government needs to think more about how it provides information online, and how easy and attractive it is for other organisations to embed the information, not just link to it.

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Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Should the government provide online services where competitive commercial sector services exist?

In the past it has been the practice for many governments around the world to avoid playing in the centre of commercial spaces, where competitively priced services are already provided by private businesses.

Government interventions in these markets are managed through legislation and direct intervention as a last resort (in cases of market failure) - as we are seeing in the current financial crisis in some countries.

The philosophy behind this approach is often that in markets where the private sector is willing to provide goods or services, competing on price, options and customer service, it is less likely that a government can add the same level of value.

Instead government concentrates on the 'margins' - situations where people are unable to afford or access the mainstream private sector services.

This, in essence, is how the public housing and unemployment benefits systems function. In both cases there are private sector options (private rentals/home purchase and jobs), while governments provide safety nets for citizens unable to access these alternatives.

Should government follow a similar approach online?

Looking at the online world, the costs and barriers to providing information and services have declined, broadening the range of services that may be offered by private enterprise.

Reflecting this, should governments follow the same philosophy of avoiding playing in commercial spaces, again only focusing on marginalised citizens?

Or should government provide public alternatives to existing commercial services?

This is a big - and highly political - question, which can be seen by the Commonwealth government's stance on internet filtering. While there are many commercial products available (from retailers, ISPs and online) including both charged and free services, the government is pursuing an approach of providing its own products, licensed from commercial providers, to ensure availability.

Similarly, should government provide 'web infrastructure' tools such as geospatial services, when large commercial organisations are already providing these services?

Geospatial services are a case in point.
We've seen the WA and QLD governments roll out their own public geospatial services specifically for their own state use, with the Commonwealth soon to follow suite at a national level via the AGOSP program.

These services provide similar functionality to both Microsoft and Google maps, and in fact Perth's public transit authority has its timetables available in a Google maps beta (but not in the state's own geospatial service).

Equally, for search, the Commonwealth government licenses the FunnelBack search technology, designed in Australia by the CSIRO, for use in Australia.gov.au and other sites (including the CSA website) rather than implementing Google's free service, as the US government has done.

In both these cases governments have followed a competitive tendering process to select the technology that best met their documented needs. The solutions are also under the control of Australian governments, rather than being owned and operated by foreign owned companies.

However, as demonstrated by Sensis this month, as reported in the SMH's article Sensis concedes defeat to Google, sometimes where the market is going is also important.

Sensis is discontinuing its Yellow Pages search and maps technologies. It will instead rely on Google to provide both services. As Google search was reportedly used by more than 7 million Australians per month, rather than the 184,000 who used Sensis's search engine there's clear commercial reasons why Sensis would want to stop sinking funds into trying to keep up with Google and instead leverage Google's audience.

Is this a valid choice for government?
Rather than custom developing or tendering for services that copy publicly available (and generally free) online services, should government agencies 'piggyback' instead?

This is a hard question to answer. Various Australian government agencies already piggyback on publicly available services - such as MySpace, SecondLife, Youtube and Google Maps.

On average Australian government websites get 25 percent of their traffic from Google search (based on Hitwise's statistics) - far outweighing the level of traffic from the central state or Commonwealth gateways.

On this basis, Australian government is already piggybacking on publicly available commercial services - and highly effectively.

However when introducing its own internet filters, customised geospatial services or search tools, Australian government is choosing to not piggyback - taking on the burden of building usage and investing in the ongoing development of new features to remain current with the commercial market.

I'm not about to venture an opinion on whether or not governments should follow this route, these decisions may be made for reasons of national security, flexibility or specific public needs.

However the options should be carefully considered by the initiators of these projects.

The decision to 'go it alone' needs to take into account the competitive landscape.

What alternative services are available for citizens - which do online audiences already prefer and why?
Why should citizens choose the government alternative and will the government's service deliver the outcomes citizens desire?
Is the government prepared to invest in continuous development? Or will the service fall behind commercial alternatives?

Without a full consideration of these factors, like Sensis's failed mapping and search service, these government offerings may not, in the longer-term, deliver the benefits desired.

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Thursday, October 23, 2008

How does government convince IT contractors to work for less?

One of the recommendations of the Gershon report was that the number of IT contractors be cut by 50% - replaced by full-time staff.

Given the cost of contractors, it makes enormous sense to take this step. 

However, with virtually full employment in the IT industry, falling IT graduates and a lack of talented IT people in cities such as Canberra, how does the government go about enticing contractors to shift into staff roles?

Certainly there are perks for being employed rather than contracted - sick leave, security and more of a traditional career path.

However these perks are less relevant for GenX and GenY workers, who have a different view on what are and aren't perks than do older, more established and more security conscious baby boomers.

In the current environment the majority of the benefits for being employed rather than contracted are on the employers' side - a stable workforce, less on ramp (and off ramp) costs and reduced payroll costs.

So I will be very interested in seeing how government will go about meeting this recommendation without high unemployment, a depressed private sector or a surplus of IT workers.

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Friday, October 17, 2008

Gershon report released

The Gershon Review of the Australian Government's Use of Information and Communication Technology report has been released by the Department of Finance, and it makes for an interesting read.

Peter Gershon's key findings were that,

1. There is weak governance of pan-government issues related to ICT.
2. Agency governance mechanisms are weak in respect of their focus on ICT efficiency and an understanding of organisational capability to commission, manage and realise benefits from ICT-enabled projects.
3. The business as usual (BAU) ICT funding in agencies is not subject to sufficient challenge and scrutiny.
4. There is a disconnect between the stated importance of ICT and actions in relation to ICT skills.
5. There is no whole-of-government strategic plan for data centres. In the absence of such a plan, the Government will be forced into a series of ad hoc investments which will, in total, cost in the order of $1 billion more than a coordinated approach over a 15-year period.
6. The government ICT marketplace is neither efficient nor effective.
7. There is a significant disconnect between the Government’s overall sustainability agenda and its ability to understand and manage energy costs and the carbon footprint of its ICT estate.
Some of the key activities outlined will have major impacts on the way in which ICT is managed in the public sector, such as,
  • reducing the use of contractors (by 50%),
  • having CEOs responsible for capabilities setting for ICT,
  • standardising business processes and architectures,and
  • focus increased scrutiny on effective funding of ICT BAU activities - in areas from desktop computers through to financial system costs per transaction - in order to reduce costs on legacy systems.
There were some very interesting points regarding the vulnerabilities of the Federal government in the IT area, partially due to the concentration of power in Canberra. For instance,
  • Federal agencies largely have a Canberra-centric IT model, with 79% of IT staff based in the city.
  • This exacerbates the IT skills shortage, leading to the greater use of contractors (23% pof the workforce) - who cost significantly more (average $186,000 per annum) than ICT staff ($92,000 per annum) based on fully loaded costs (includes equipment, training and other costs)),
  • It also places enormous reliance of Canberra's single power grid, for which 85% of the power comes from a single feed.
There was considerable discussion of how to create professional IT career paths, to better manage the ICT workforce, improving staff retention and corporate knowledge.

Also discussed was cross-agency planning and purchasing, where already slow, out-dated and complex procurement processes lead to sub-optimal outcomes and do not take best advantage of government's buying power. That's not to mention the need to revisit data centre management to also take advantage of central buying power.

I also particularly welcome the recommendation to strengthen AGIMO's role to be a proactive lead in Government ICT to help realise efficiencies and reduce duplication.

The next step is for the government to have a think about the report's recommendations and take some actions in a reasonably short timeframe.

I await with anticipation.

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Monday, October 13, 2008

Victoria's eGovernment Resource Centre a finalist in the global award for 'Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics in 2008'

Recognising over 10 years of reporting on egovernment topics from around the world, Victoria's eGovernment Resource Centre has been selected as one of the ten finalists for the 9th annual PoliticsOnline award for the top individuals, organisations and companies having the greatestimpact on the way the Internet is changing politics.

By being in the top ten, the eGovernment Resource Centre is being acknowledged alongside the Democratic Nominee for the US Presidency (mybarackobama.com) and is being recognised as more significant than the UK's Prime Minister's website (number10.gov.au)

I'd like to congratulate the team at DIIRD in Victoria who work on this site as probably the most effective and consistent voice in Australia on egovernment topics, helping to bridge the gap between policy and practice.

A representative from DIIRD has been invited as an honoured guest to the World Democracy Forum in Paris for the award ceremony, although I understand this will probably not involve the people who work every day to make the site a success.

The full announcement is at the eGovernment Resource Centre.

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Thursday, October 02, 2008

Building a better Vic whole-of-government intranet

Yesterday (Wednesday) I was privileged to attend a think tank in Melbourne discussing the future of the Victorian Government's whole-of-government intranet, CentralStation.

Being the only state government in Australia I am aware of with such a tool, I was surprised to learn that it had been originally created in 1996. To my knowledge that makes it one of the earliest whole-of-government initiatives in the world supporting public servants across state departments, authorities, local government and other public bodies to collaborate and share information more effectively for the benefit of citizens.

The intranet has been redeveloped several times and currently has a dual focus, providing both whole-of-government content and collaboration tools.

The event was attended by around 30 representatives from state agencies. It was also attended by an invited five person expert panel of experienced online professionals from the Vic private and educational sectors and from the non-Vic public sector (such as myself) to provide an external perspective on the initiatives Victoria is considering.

I think the event went well, with some excellent contributions from the group and several 'ah ha!' moments.

My views from the day on the approach were as follows,


A whole-of-government intranet,

  • can provide 'communal good' services assisting councils and department to work together in ways which cannot be cost-effectively provided by individual government agencies,
  • must support and complement departmental intranets rather than compete with them,
  • requires strong central governance to maintain content standards and review processes, while allowing autonomy to engaged groups,
  • needs to consider a 'narrow and deep' approach to content and community by focusing on assisting and supporting key groups to achieve their goals rather than simply providing an infrastructure which groups need to self-develop, and
  • requires an ongoing promotional strategy to engage public servants and ensure the intranet's functionality has sufficient awareness.


From reflecting on the day, my impression is that whole-of-government intranets are useful tools for aggregating and distributing services and information across government bodies, such as,
  • cross-agency collaboration tools,
  • cross-government expert discovery (people finder focused on skills rather than names),
  • cross-goverment information sharing based on topics of common interest (shared bookmarks, forums, blogs and research),
  • build awareness and share best practice functionality implemented in specific department/council intranets (possibly providing their central operational infrastructure, and
  • support ongoing development of a cross-government public sector identity (what is it to be a public servant in Victoria).

I wish the CentralStation team at the Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development (DIIRD) all the best in taking the outcomes of the think tank forward in the next generation of Victoria's whole-of-government intranet.

I would also suggest that other jurisdictions could learn a great deal from Victoria's experience in operating their whole-of-government intranet for the last 12 years.

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Thursday, September 25, 2008

Red tape reduction via smarter online forms

There's a lot of activity in the online forms space across Australian government at present and it is proving to be an area of real cost savings and environmental benefits for public sector organisations at all levels.

Business.gov.au has supported a centralised whole-of-government approach to business focused forms for several years now and its forms section has grown significantly, particularly in the last twelve months, as agencies have recognised the potential, geared up and invested in the area.

This has been recognised in an Australia article looking at initiatives by councils, Online forms cut council red tape.

The AGOSP (Australian Government Online Services Portal) initiative at AGIMO is also implementing a forms capacity, via business.gov.au, for citizen forms, and this offers significant benefits for any agencies looking to leap into the realm of 'smart forms' - online forms that can be prepopulated or adjust in response to customer answers and then send the data back in a secure format (as email or directly into agency systems).

If you're an Australian public sector organisation at any level who needs to collect data from customers, it's worth checking this out and viewing the presentation given by Anthony Steve of business.gov.au.

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