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Below is my liveblog of the PublicSphere event.
Thursday, May 07, 2009
Liveblog of PublicSphere #1 - high broadband for Australia | Tweet |
High speed broadband for Australia - the unexplored country | Tweet |
This morning I am presenting at Public Sphere #1 - High bandwidth for Australia in a personal capacity.
The event will discuss what high speed bandwidth can do for Australian society, business and government.
I have previously posted some ideas on this topic and will be talking today about how the killer applications and services for a 100Mbit plus service are likely to not have been invented yet.
For those not attending the event, I have attached my presentation below and will add a transcript in the near future.
I will hopefully be liveblogging the event after my presentation throughout the morning.
Tourism Australia wins a Webby Award | Tweet |
Mumbrella has reported that Tourism Australia's www.australia.com website has won a People’s Voice Winner in the Tourism category of the 2009 Webby Awards.
More information is in Mumbrella's article, Webby Awards for Tourism Australia and Lonely Planet.
I'd like to congratulate the Tourism Australia team for doing a great job creating a world-class website.
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
A blueprint for making government data reusable online | Tweet |
US federal Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra, has outlined a blueprint for government data at the 2009 Government Web Managers conference.
As reported in GCN, Kundra advised that,
Government data prepared for public reuse should be offered in multiple-formats, be machine-readable and adhere as closely as possible to lightweight standardsThis is likely to be a guiding principle for the upcoming www.data.gov site, which has the express purpose of making US government data available for citizen reuse as a governmentwide repository of data feeds.
This vision goes far beyond merely making a limited set of US government information publicly available in proprietary formats. In Kundra's words, “We need to make sure that all that data that’s not private can be made public”.
Per an earlier GCN article,
By opening vast realms of data that federal agencies are now keeping in-house, Kundra hopes to spark new ways of using that information to better serve citizens and even create new industries.
In principle that would be a fantastic outcome for any government to achieve for its country - but is it realistic?
Kundra has addressed this topic as well,
Kundra cited examples of how the publishing federal government information has already “fundamentally transformed the economy” in certain areas. When the National Institutes of Health published its results from mapping the human genome, the agency “created a revolution in personalized medicine," in which hundreds of new drugs were created. When the Defense Department opened Global Positioning System readings for public use, an entire new industry of geolocational devices was born.
In Australia we're beginning to see governments unlock their vaults of data, with services such as CData from the ABS being one of the most impressive steps.
However in this, as in most other areas of egovernance, there's many challenges to overcome before either the US or Australia can fully realise the potential benefits of allowing the community to innovate with public data from a range of agencies.
Tuesday, May 05, 2009
"we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative," - President Obama | Tweet |
The title of this post was used recently in the White House blog to announce the expansion of their online presence to reach into a range of social media including Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, adding to their presence on Flickr, Youtube, Vimeo and iTunes.
Named White House 2.0, the post also quoted President Obama calling on government to "recognize that we cannot meet the challenges of today with old habits and stale thinking."
It's clear that the US is taking a strong stance on online participation, with the current President spearheading the use of social media to "reach beyond the halls of government" to engage the public.
It will be interesting to see how the US position continues to unfold, and what other national governments learn from the US experience.
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