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Online voting has already become reality in some parts of the world, with the Estonian online election heralding the possibility of using the speed of online to expand citizen franchise from electing representatives every three to eight years, to voting on major legislative changes on a far more regular basis.
As reported in a Sign On San Diego article, Calif. may allow online voter registration, California is considering the first step of the shift to online elections, looking into allowing online voter registration, at least for voters who have signatures on file with the Department of Motor Vehicles for driver's licenses or identification cards.
Given the low participation in US elections, California sees this as both a cost-saving and a participation raising activity.
Here in Australia, where compulsory voting has resulted in an complex and increasingly expensive voting framework (which does work very well), we've not yet taken a serious step into online voting - however I expect it will only be a matter of time.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
California considering allowing online voter registration | Tweet |
Collaboration doesn't have to equal cost and complexity | Tweet |
A mistake I've seen many organisations make when considering online staff collaboration systems for staff is trying to achieve perfection at the get go - building systems from scratch or investing in high-cost branded technologies that requires significant time to implement and can be expensive to operate and develop.
More prudent, in my view, is to find a cheap way of satisfying the basic requirements while delivering quickly.
This helps get collaboration (the goal) underway and allows the organisation to progressively develop its understanding of what staff need with a low upfront investment and instant benefits. In other words, a low cost pilot - helpful in the development of detailed business requirements for a future system.
So how can organisations achieve this without expensive servers, months of development and hordes of testers?
In many cases organisations have strict 'environmental' rules - restricting the applications staff can use and websites they can access. These rules are in place partly to protect internal data and partly to protect an organisation from its own staff and their possible activities, introducing malware or other nasties into the organisation.
Using a web environment it is possible for even business users to configure several low cost servers and provide access to tools - within or outside the firewall - while shielding the network from harm.
The tools themselves are low cost or free, drawing from open source communities (tools such as MediaWiki and PhpBB), public online tools (such as Blogger and Ning) and fully featured solutions (such as Wordpress or Confluence - available via Govdex).
So if your organisation needs a quick solution for a blog, wiki or other collaboration tool, consider whether it is possible to run a low cost pilot before investing in a long-term solution
Building online employee communities | Tweet |
Trevor Cook has posted a great summary of the benefits of online employee communities, as discussed in a presentation by Alexei Fey, Senior Manager eBusiness, Savings & Loans Credit Union at the Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals conference in Sydney on 14 August.
Entitled Building online employee communities, the post covers many different ways of engaging online, from a CEO blog to Facebook.
US election goes Google | Tweet |
Reflecting and building on the approach taken for last year's Australian Federal Election, Google has developed a comprehensive election coverage site for the upcoming Presidential race between Barack Obama and John McCain.
Looking at how the site presents public interest information, I cannot help but wonder why this type of material is being provided by commercial entities - who could choose to push an agenda - and is not yet available from a public entity.
As a way to generate voter interest, support participation, provide supporting information and put candidates in front of the people, I hope that we see this approach continue to grow over time.
Given the influence the internet now has, and the impact of effective online use by political candidates, I can see any politicians that choose not to embrace online participation being as a severe disadvantage in future elections.
Turning that question back on public sector organisations - if your department or agency isn't adequately investing in the online channel there is also the risk of becoming increasingly less able to engage, be influenced by and influence your constituents.
My view is that online needs to begin to be treated as more of a customer service channel than as a media channel and be internally planned, managed, supported and funded accordingly.
Google Chrome web browser beta now available for download | Tweet |
The Google Chrome beta is now available at www.google.com/chrome.
I'm taking a look, and will provide impressions, as I did for Internet Explorer 8, later today.
Other information is available from ZDNet, who liveblogged the Google press conference, and from the Google Chrome media kit, which includes screenshots and videos.
