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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Newcastle council online community hijacked by hackers

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.

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WebAim conducting survey on screen reader usage

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.

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National Diabetes Services Scheme releases

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.

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Have a great holiday season & New Year!

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)!

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