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Following on from the Canberra Barcamp last week, a subset of the organisers and a group of other volunteers are busy organising a government 2.0 event in Canberra.
The event, which is in initial planning stages, aims to bring together a group of government online professionals to share their experience and knowledge, building a reference group who can support each other in achieving their Department's egovernment goals.
While I am not expecting the event to be as large as the recent Government 2.0 Camp in Washington D.C., which had over 300 attendees and attracted a range of international visitors, I expect many of the most innovative egovernment professionals in Australia to attend and present.
You can find out more about the event, and be involved in the planning process at Gov2.0Canberra.
Friday, April 03, 2009
Organising a Government 2.0 event in Canberra | Tweet |
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Google maps talk in Sydney by creator | Tweet |
Google maps were originally developed in Australia and one of the founders of the original company, Dr Lars Rasmussen, now a Google employee, is giving a talk at the Powerhouse museum, "From Australia to the World – The Rise & Rise of Google Maps" on 2 July.
It should be an interesting presentation both on how an Australian company 'made it' on the world stage (having to sell itself to a US company in the process) and on the importance of maps for visualising data.
Google maps have played a key role in informing and supporting people through a number of disasters (including Victorian bushfires) over the last several years - picking up the load where government provided services were not able to cope with peak traffic.
Note this isn't a criticism of government emergency services - it's a reflection on how public agencies rely on the private sector to support them, just as the government relies on traditional media to get disaster information out to the community rather than creating its own specific disaster TV channels, radio stations or newspapers.
Governments can use existing online services to support them in the same way - just as the Vic Premier's office relied on a free gadget creation tool, Facebook, Youtube and other free online services to communicate messages about the bushfires.
I think there is an ongoing need for increasing government collaboration with private services such as Google maps and other mapping services provided by companies such as Microsoft, OpenLayers and open street map.
Why should government provide a service where the private sector does it as well, if not better, than the public sector can?
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
BarCamp Canberra 2 outcomes | Tweet |
Last Saturday the second BarCamp Canberra was held, featuring 25 presentations on an assortment of online focused topics, both ICT and business related.
With roughly 75 attendees, including the first Member of Parliament to attend an Australian BarCamp, Senator Kate Lundy (who is also on Twitter as @katelundy), the themes for the day focused on developing the online channel in government and emergency management.
On the emergency front, Pamela Fox (mash-up queen) provided an excellent insider's view of how Google developed and managed the maps of Victorian bushfires, and also provided access to her whitepaper on how government could further assist the public by making mapping data available alongside emergency RSS feeds. Side benefits she highlighted included less load on government web servers, improving reliability in high usage periods, greater capacity for the public to make use of emergency information and lower-cost more efficient information distribution and discovery.
Tom Worthington's presentation on how to get bushfire emergency authorities to work together was also very insightful, providing an understanding of how far Australia is from a nationally consistent system (very useful for emergencies that cross state borders).
James Dellow provided an excellent view on the progress of egovernment (gov 2.0) in the UK, and his slides are available online.
The Twitter feed for the day was immensely popular, trending as the 3rd top discussion at times through the day. It can be viewed at #bcc2.
Some other posts about the day are visible at:
Tom Worthington's blog
Ruth Ellison's blog
A selection of photos from the day are visible here and here.
Social Media in Government conference outcomes | Tweet |
The US "Social Media for Government" conference was held in Washington, DC last week.
It appears to have discussed a large number of topics that would be of equal interest to public servants and officials here in Australia, so I've attached a few below....
Another presentation was on Measuring the impact of Social Media in Government, given by Ari Herzog and Andrew Krzmarzick, as embedded below.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Guest post: Supporting a major government project with social media tools | Tweet |
I am pleased to present this guest post from a colleague who has done a fantastic job of incorporating online tools into the government project management mix.
I feel that the work Nathanael Boehm and his team have been doing on the Training.gov.au project is an example of how social media can improve the ability of government to support consultation with stakeholders and customers and to deliver successful outcomes.
Guest post:
Nathanael Boehm is a web user interaction designer currently working for the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) on the Training.gov.au project. In addition to web design he is involved in the project and contract management, training and social media aspects of the project. In this guest blog post on eGovAU Nathanael talks about why the Training.gov.au team decided to use social media and how they did it.
The Vocational Education and Training sector in Australia is complex, with many stakeholders playing a role in delivering training information and industry regulation. Collectively they are known as the National Training System and the information infrastructure supporting this System is legislatively referred to as the National Training Information Service. This Service is currently provided by NTIS.gov.au, a website developed by the now decommissioned Australian National Training Authority.
In order to accommodate current policy, stakeholder expectations and user needs, Training.gov.au is being developed by the Department to replace NTIS. The new service is planned to be launched later this year.
The Training.gov.au project team was firmly committed to following a User-Centred Design (UCD) approach. Due to the complex nature of the National Training System, this meant coordinating input and expert opinions from thousands of organisations and key personnel.
The method for managing consultation had to take into account all of the dependencies and linkages between Registered Training Organisations (RTOs), Registering/Course Accreditation Bodies (RCABs), State Training Authorities (STAs), the Commonwealth, legislation, National Quality Council (NQC), Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF), Industry Skills Councils (ISCs) and other players.
To solve this the centerpiece of the project team's thinking was the launch of the Training.gov.au Project Blog which to my knowledge was the first ongoing Australian Federal Government blog.
There wasn't much effort or cost involved, we had existing web hosting infrastructure in place and web skills in the team. Therefore, over a few weeks, the team combined a WordPress theme with static information about the project and launched the Training.gov.au Project Blog.
In the spirit of engagement we aim for a very personal style. Each blog post is attributed to a member of the team, not the team as a whole, with the main blog contributors being Jo, Marty, Jonathon and myself. We try to steer clear of government speak, jargon and acronyms as much as possible.
We're aiming for openness and transparency - people appreciate that they know what we're doing and where we're up to every step of the way. They also appreciate the insights into how the project is being conducted and it gives the Project team an opportunity to show both that we're working really, really hard and that we are talking to our stakeholders.
The blog has been well-received by our stakeholders and users. It allows us to broadcast useful information that would otherwise not be available through traditional channels, simply because we're not prepared to spam everyone involved with an email telling them how our training sessions last week went. But there's still value in that content and the blog allows us to leverage it.
The blog also provides a method for our stakeholders to respond. In addition to formal response mechanisms, like the interest registration form, they can easily post comments attached to blog posts. With Jo out in the field promoting the blog as part of her engagement activities the number of comments and visitors is rapidly increasing.
In addition to deployment of the blog we stepped up our external in-person on-site engagement activities - preceded by bringing on a dedicated stakeholder engagement officer. We have a Twitter account @TrainingGovAu, although that is a secondary channel. We're not really pushing it at this stage but we do use it to engage in the Twittersphere when needed and to provide an additional entry point to blog content.
In the last few weeks we've also started using DOPPLR to demonstrate how much on-site engagement we do around the country and to assist with coordination of travel with stakeholders. Although the incorporation of DOPPLR into our social media strategy is under evaluation, our goal is to let people more readily see when we will be in their region or city if they want to attend a system demonstration or training.
Yes it's hard work doing all this engagement - the easy option would be to lock ourselves up in a room for 12 months and just build the website. However that doesn't give the project team any satisfaction in our work or any assurance that we're going to deliver a solution our stakeholders will like or that people will want to use, in support of the policy and business objectives.
In summary, the project team cannot read our stakeholders' or users' minds. It is essential to the success of the Training.gov.au project that we engage and consult broadly. Online social media has been a fundamental component of achieving this by closing the gap between the project team and the people we're delivering for.
