What's the government's role in improving access to information about government online?

I love the work that Matthew Landauer and a small group of non-partisan, patriotic Australians have done to set up OpenAustralia.

If you're not aware of the site, it's designed to make the discussions on parliamentary floors visible to the public in an easily accessible way.

The site also provides information on Members' interests (on the record) and with further development could also support parliamentarian voting records, track bills and their amendments (and who is proposing them) and more.

OpenAustralia is modeled on (and uses the open-source software developed for) a similar (not-for-profit) UK site, TheyWorkForYou. Further sites of the same type are appearing around the world and attracting significant audiences - demonstrating there is a public interest in political processes and activities by elected representatives.

My question is, should this type of site be developed by individuals in their spare time, or it is an area that the Australian government needs to invest in itself to support the democratic process?

Below is a presentation with more information on OpenAustralia.

OpenAustralia - Everyday democracy for everybody in Australia - Matthew Landauer

View more presentations from Brianna Laugher.

And here is a video by the founder/developer of TheyWorkForYou.

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Is Australian egovernment innovation on life support?

I've been reading a post by James Dellow at his Chieftech blog, Using Twitter as a benchmark for Australian local government use of social media.

He compared the 90 out of 468 (approx. 20%) UK councils using Twitter to the 3 out of 677 (less than 1%) Australian councils using the tool to engage online, asked the question,

If you work in local government in Australia I would love to know more about what’s stopping you from experimenting with social media and social computing.

Of course the UK isn't the only nation making extensive use of Twitter and other online tools to engage citizens. The US is on a similar path, with over 300+ US government agencies and politicans officially using the service.

Governments across Europe and Asia are also adopting this and other online tools in a strategic and integrated way.

If anyone has an answer to James' question, I'd like to read it as well.

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Organising a Government 2.0 event in Canberra

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.

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Google maps talk in Sydney by creator

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?

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BarCamp Canberra 2 outcomes

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.

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