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As posted in the Online Community Consultation blog, Newcastle Council was recently stung by having hackers take over its online consultation community and redirect the site to an independent site containing adult content.
As discussed in the post, Red faces in Newcastle, the lesson to be learnt is to ensure effective security is in place to prevent hacking.
There's a secondary point discussed around the length of the sign-up process, which needs to be as short and as simple as possible to keep the barriers to participation low. I didn't see the Newcastle Council community site, so cannot personally comment, however from the post it appears that a more complex sign-up process had real impacts on the number of participants.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Newcastle council online community hijacked by hackers | Tweet |
Friday, December 26, 2008
WebAim conducting survey on screen reader usage | Tweet |
WebAim is currently conducting a survey looking at the usage of screen readers and the personal experiences of their users.
If you're a user of a screen reader, or are interested in accessibility for vision-impaired people and use of screen readers (as all government web and intranet managers should be), the survey is available from the Webaim blog post, Screen Reader Survey.
There's some interesting comments already on the issues around use of captcha technology (even audio equivalents).
Results will be published in a few months.
National Diabetes Services Scheme releases | Tweet |
The National Diabetes Services Scheme (NDSS), an Australian Government initiative administered by Diabetes Australia, last month released the a national online map of the spread of diabetes in Australia.
Located at www.diabetesmap.com.au), the service is a wonderful example of how online map systems (in this case Microsoft's free Virtual Earth tool) can be 'mashed-up' with data to provide new ways of visualising and understanding data.
More details are available in the NDSS's media release, National Online Map Launched to Track Diabetes in Australia.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Have a great holiday season & New Year! | Tweet |
To the over 7,000 unique visitors my blog has received in the last six months, have a fantastic and safe holiday season and I look forward to further conversations in the Australian egovernment space in 2009.
With many international voices in the egovernment space indicating that government needs to build more connections and networks to improve and innovate online policy and service delivery, I hope to meet and work with many of you in the future in cross-agency and whole-of-government initiatives - through peer-based networks, not just top-down driven projects.
In case you haven't read them, the most popular posts on my blog have been:
- Internet a more important information medium than TV, radio or print
- Make government data freely available
- Drawing the lines - effectively structuring government online teams
- Lessons to be learnt from the Grocery choice website
- Cut costs by expanding your intranet
Keep an eye out for Santa (NORAD tracks Santa)!
Australian government Digital Futures blog now closed | Tweet |
The Department of Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) has now closed its blog on Digital Futures, with a Thanks and so long... message.
The majority of responses to the blog (and yes I systematically read all the comments that the Department published on the site) related to concerns around the government's mandatory internet filtering plan.
Other comments indicated a strong positive response to the idea of the government blogging and using the online channel for greater consultation.
I'm hopeful that the DBCDE will consider upgrading their platform to one more effective for blogging and dedicate resources to the maintenance of an ongoing blog to create a conversation with the public, rather than a brief (14 day) consultation. Ongoing conversations tend to start strong, fall off and then build over time - the first two stages of which are visible in the DBCDE's effort.
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