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Regardless of how egovernment progresses, Australian citizens are moving forward to create the tools they want online.
The latest example is is a site named Open Australia.
Built based on the UK site They Work For You and the New Zealand site of the same name - TheyWorkForYou.co.nz, Open Australia feaures a fully searchable record of Hansard, provides MP voting records and details of their appearances in parliament and allows people to receive a notification whenever their MP speaks.
Crikey.com.au has rated this as "Quite possibly the best thing to happen online for democracy in Australia this year"
At the moment the site is focused on the House of Representatives, which means I cannot get a notification on all speeches by my Department's Minister, who is a Senator.
However I can track all mentions of him in speeches with a simple search (to the extent of being able to see which other parliamentarians named him) and have these delivered to my newsreader via RSS.
This type of site significantly lowers the barriers to accessing information on the activities and decisions of parliamentarians, which also impacts on the public servants in their departments, particularly those formulating policy.
The volunteers who built and manage the site are working towards including the Senate, Committees and voting records as well.
This type of site is designed to foster greater participation and accountability amongst politicians and it will be interesting to see what impact it has over time.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
OpenGovernment now in Australia - something all public servants should be aware of | Tweet |
Australian use of social media skyrocketing | Tweet |
Universal McCann have completed some excellent research on social media use based on a sample of 17,000 users across 29 countries.
The latest wave was completed in March 2008.
The key findings were that blogs and online videos have gone mainstream and are tools that organisations need to consider within their marketing and communications mix.
Social networks had reached critical mass. Note that since this research was completed, Facebook has overtaken MySpace as the market leader.
I've embedded the slideshow below, or it is viewable at slide share as Universal Mccann International Social Media Research Wave 3
The highlights for Australia:
Blogs
62% of Australians online read blogs (up from 21% in Sep 2006)
29% of Australians online have started blogs (up from 18% in Sep 2006)
36% of people online (globally) think more positively of organisations that blog
32% of people online (globally) trust blogger's opinions on products and services
Social networks
50% of Australians online have created a profile on a social network (21% of the Australian population)
Shared videos online
77% of Australians online have watched online videos (up from 25% in Sep 2006)
28% of Australians online have shared videos (12% of the Australian population)
Listened to Podcasts
40% of Australians online have listened to a Podcast (up from 14% in Sep 2006)
Subscribed to RSS feed
24% of Australians online have subscribed to an RSS feed
The slideshow
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Usability testing - doing it like Google | Tweet |
Techcrunch has provided A Peak Inside Google’s Gmail Usability Lab.
It's an interesting look at how one of the most web-savvy companies in the world conducts usability testing.
It is not much more sophisticated than Centrelink's usability lab in Adelaide or Immigration's lab in Canberra.
UK government principles for participation online - where's Australia's principles? | Tweet |
I've just found the UK civil service's Principles for participation online and are mighty impressed.
As a result I've slightly modified my profile, I'll also be promoting this in my office where I know we have at least several other bloggers and quite a bit of online engagement coming up.
In Australia, while we have an excellent Australian Public Service code of conduct, we do not have anything specific for the online channel.
This does raise the question - do we need a set of principles, or does The Code cover it already?
eGovernment progress in New Zealand | Tweet |
In Development has linked to A report on the progress of New Zealand e-government.
This is the first official report from the NZ government on egovernment since 2004.
From a quick look I'd say it is doing reasonably well. They've done a lot to understand what citizens need and address this in clear and simple paths through various government agencies.
There's some excellent success stories in the report and I'm looking forward to sitting down and reading it in depth, probably this weekend, after which I'll provide some highlights.
It is also very significant for me that the report was released via an official NZ government blog (being run as part of a six month trial) - there is a lot of commitment being demonstrated via this approach.
