What strategies might be employed to adopt greater use of Web 2.0 in government agencies?

The title of this post is derived from the question the US government is currently asking American citizens in the Open Government Brainstorm.

The site allows individuals to suggest ideas for open government, and rate those of other - providing a prioritisation list that the US Federal government can then choose to act on.

Other questions the site asks the public to consider are,

• How might the operations of government be made more transparent and accountable?
  
  
• How might federal advisory committees, rulemaking or electronic rulemaking be better used to drive greater expertise into decisionmaking?
  
  
• What alternative models exist to improve the quality of decisionmaking and increase opportunities for citizen participation?
  
  
• What strategies might be employed to adopt greater use of Web 2.0 in agencies?
  
  
• What policy impediments to innovation in government currently exist?
  
  
• What is the best way to change the culture of government to embrace collaboration?
  
  
• What changes in training or hiring of personnel would enhance innovation?
  
  
• What performance measures are necessary to determine the effectiveness of open government policies?

They all seem to reflect the same questions we're grappling with in Australian government - albeit in a more fragmented manner.

The Open Government Brainstorming site is build on an online tool, Ideascale, which I've used personally. It is extremely easy to use and fast to set up.

I often wonder what it will take to get Australian governments to use similar cheap and fast online tools to consult the Australian people.

However at least we can leverage off the ideas suggested in the US using this site.

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Aussie pollies being invited to tweet

In an example of how the public is pushing government towards embracing the online channel, the TweetMP site has been launched to encourage tweeting by Australian politicians.

The site features a method to invite Australian Federal parliamentarians to set up a Twitter account, includes a full list of publicly tweeting MPs and their latest tweets.

There is also an API that allows MP twitter feeds to be integrated into any website - which OpenAustralia is now using.

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Apps for America competition launches - cash prizes for best mash ups of government data

In conjunction with the Data.gov launch, Sunlight Labs in partnership with Google has launched the Apps for America 2 competition to find the best mash ups using US Federal government data.

Over US$20,000 is being given away for open source online applications using the Federal datasets at Data.gov based on the following criteria:

1. Transparency: Does the app help citizens see things they couldn't see before the app existed?
   
   
2. Permanence: Will the app be usable over a long period of time? Does the idea have survivability?
   
   
3. Design & Visualization: Does the app look great? Does the app visualize data in a new and interesting way?

The UK government holds similar competitions.

I wonder what innovation the Australian government could unlock if it made public data available in machine-readable formats, then held its own competition.

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Data.gov launches - allows public to mash up US federal data

The US government has taken the first step towards meeting President Obama's pledge to make US taxpayer funded information freely available online in reusable formats late last week with the launch of the Data.gov website.

At launch the site featured dozens of datasets from around 20 Federal agencies ready to be used by the public, commercial and NGO sectors in mash-up applications and services.

The public is also able to suggest additional information to be made available through the site.

I am an extremely big fan of making public sector data available online (where there are no security issues), particularly when the data is readily available for online reuse through APIs, XML, RSS, KML/KMZ and similar machine-readable formats.

A speech by the US Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra launched the site and made the purpose extremely clear in the video below. Kundra expects more than 240,000 datasets to eventually be available online, per the post at Governing People by George Fahey, Data.gov opens.

The post also comments that,

The first applications built on this data has already arrived (see FBI Fugitive Concentration).

This demonstrates how quickly the public can make good use of public information when it is made public.

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Australian Bureau of Statistics launches 'βetaWorks' blog

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has launched a blog that allows the public to comment on ongoing development of the ABS website.

Named ABS βetaWorks, the site is to my knowledge the first of its kind in the world for the public arena.

It features a number of improvements that the ABS is working on in the online arena, with the ability to add comments or suggestions via a moderated feature.

It also allows the public to suggest further improvements to the site.

The ABS has several years of experience in the blogging area, with its Statistically Speaking blog.

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