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Capitalising on the huge Australian audience on Facebook (over 4 million people) and MySpace, the Victorian government has bolstered its online response to the Victorian bushfires by developing a widget that provides news and updates while encouraging donations.
The widget is available from the Premier's website and is also in Vic Premier's own Facebook profile. It is down the page in the left-hand column.
For those of you who use social media, you can install the Facebook application from http://bit.ly/4mGlr4 and the MySpace application from http://tinyurl.com/c4s6v3.
The widget was developed using SproutBuilder, a (currently free) tool for creating widgets.
Just in case you were wondering how long it takes or how hard it is to build these widgets, Dave Fletcher has posted in his Government and Technology Weblog, v. 2.0 that he built a widget as a practice for an eGovernment Product Management Council meeting. Using SproutBuilder for the first time, it took him about 15-20 minutes. These widgets can be embedded on any website or leading social media site, such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, Blogger and Typepad.
The Vic government is also using YouTube, Twitter and blog-like comments pages via the Vic Premier's site to help engage and communicate with people in relation to the bushfires.
I hope that other governments across Australia will learn from these examples and do more themselves to better engage people via their most preferred channel for interacting with government.
After all, in these cost-conscious times, it's also the most cost-effective channel for getting direct messages to the public.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Vic government releases Facebook/Myspace widget for bushfire support | Tweet |
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Journalists leaping onto Twitter - should government? | Tweet |
The micro-blogging platform Twitter was the breakthrough social media tool for journalists in 2008. It became a pipeline for breaking news for both professional reporters and citizen journalists, with the massacre in Mumbai, the Hudson River plane crash and Obama's inauguration highlighting its effectiveness as a source of live, user-generated online content.The statement above, from a recent article published in MediaShift, How Journalism Students Used Twitter to Report on Australian Elections, highlights how rapidly Twitter has become a relevant and important tool for media and citizens to tell stories and share news.
The story provides a good case study on how Twitter can be used by journalists (albeit from an educational standpoint) and leaves me with one main question.
If Twitter is increasingly important as a tool for news dissemination and citizen engagement, should government be making a solid commitment to the platform?
We do have government 'twitterers' in Australia already. On the political level Malcolm Turnbull, Kevin Rudd's office and the Greens are all twittering.
At a Department/Agency level, the Training.gov.au project twitters, as does Mosman council and QLD government's SharemyStory.
It has also been used to share information during the Victorian bushfires by CFA - which I avidly followed during a trip back from Sydney where Twitter on my phone was my only media option.
However these initial toes dipped into Twitter pale alongside the uses the US and UK are now putting Twitter to in government circles.
So how should government determine if it should make greater use of Twitter (and in what ways?
I'm a fan of the hands-on approach. I recommend that you set yourself up with a Twitter account, find a few interesting people from one of the many top twitterers lists out there, then listen to them using the service.
Don't simply use it once then leave, that's like turning on a TV for five minutes, only catching ads and walking away with the impression that all television is advertising. Instead use it for several weeks, or even several months, particularly during a major news event. You will gain an appreciation for the benefits and downsides of Twitter - without having to necessarily start 'twittering' yourself.
What will it cost you? A bit of time and in return you'll be able to properly assess the value of the system and become the strategic expert on the topic for your agency.
Surely that's worth the investment of a few hours.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
How well do Australian government sites meet WCAG 2.0? - still some way to go states new report | Tweet |
While I've not yet seen an official statement confirming whether Australian government will support the second version of the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0), there has been a report released by UsabilityOne reviewing 12 Federal Government websites against the guidelines.
The Accessibility Industry Report found a number of issues across the sites that would need to be addressed for them to be WCAG 2.0 compatible.
To quote UsabilityOne,
None of the websites audited adhere to all criteria in the latest accessibility guidelines.
Have you looked into making your site compliance with WCAG 2.0?
Or are you waiting for the official government position?
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
UK government's HM Revenue & Customs service now collecting opinions online alongside tax | Tweet |
The UK government's HM Revenue & Customs service (roughly equivalent to the ATO) has launched an online consultation site seeking public input into its proposed charter.
Named Have your say the site asks citizens to answer questions around the proposed charter and provide their views of what it contains and should contain.
It's a fairly basic consultation process that could be supported through many survey tools, however it is equally very powerful in inviting citizens to directly comment on policy before it becomes enshrined in law.
Over in the US the new President has also instituted a mandatory public review stage for most legislation, making it available online for public scrutiny and comment before it is considered by the Senate.
These steps represent the scope of the shift the internet can provide democracies, taking representative democracy back to the people via direct policy consultation.
Naturally not all citizens choose to comment, however the process can add an additional level of realism to government legislation, ensuring a higher consultation bar than has been possible using paper-based communications tools.
I'm looking forward to posting about the first Australian initiative of this type - so if anyone know of one, please drop me a line.
Monday, February 09, 2009
BarCamp Canberra coming up - 28 March | Tweet |
The second BarCamp Canberra has been confirmed for 28 March, to be held at the ANU.
In case you're not familiar with the concept (quoting from the official site),
A BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants. Here is a quote from the wikipedia description:BarCamps are a global phenomenon, regularly held in at least a dozen countries, from the US to India to New Zealand.
'BarCamp is an international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols.'
The UK has previously held a very successful Government-only BarCamp and, due to the nature of Canberra, many attendees of the previous Canberra BarCamp last year worked within or in areas related to government.
BarCamps are not-for-profit and cost nothing to attend.
More information is available at the official BarCamp Canberra site or at the Facebook group.
Podcasts of previous presentations are available online at http://barcampcanberra.org/blog/podcasts/
Note that I am personally on the committee coordinating the event and will be presenting on the day.
