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The European Union is currently going through a process to decide on the content of a new egovernment declaration.
To support and facilitate this, an independent group has launched an open online brainstorm to solicit bottom-up feedback on what citizens believe should be done.
This is being facilitated through a site, Co-creating an open declaration on public services 2.0 and a uservoice suggestion market.
This type of consultation is extremely easy for an organisation or individuals to establish online and provides an opportunity to source feedback from non-traditional sources.
What will be interesting in the future is whether it will be the government concerned running such a consultation, or whether it will be run by independent parties and then attract media attention for what was left out by the government.
The only way to control or even influence these discussions is to become part of them, embracing the new tools available today.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Europeans asking - what are the top things government should do in the next three years to transform public services? | Tweet |
Government 2.0 initiatives in Australia Part 1 (Public Sphere Camp series) | Tweet |
Last week I posted about some of the Government 2.0 initiatives around the world.
This week I'm posting about some of the initiatives going on in Australia.
There are a number of government and non-government organisations who are very actively participating online and a great deal of experimentation going on. In fact while we're not the absolute leader in this area, we're certainly amongst the forerunners in many cases.
What I've done below is provide mini case studies of initiatives at various levels, linking to previous posts I've made on these initiatives.
I've split this into several posts in order to cover more ground.
Local government
Mosman municipal council
As the first Australian council to adopt Twitter as a communications channel, Mosman city council has been one of the ground-breakers in the social media space at local council level.
The council has taken a committed approach to online media, using blogs and online consultation techniques to supplement and inform 'heritage' citizen consultation approaches such as town hall meetings.
Hornsby Shire Council
Many local councils are beginning to very actively use online consultation as an approach to inform decision making. Hornsby Shire Council is one who has gone this route with the Hornsby Shire Housing Strategy consultation. This consultation has attracted over 1,100 comments and contains some very thoughtful discussion of how citizens would like to see the Shire shape itself into the future.
Future Melbourne
A second and even more comprehensive example is the Melbourne Citiy Council's Future Melbourne consultation, which has combined a wiki, discussion forums, video and other online tools to involve Melbournians in the future shape of their city.
State government
Queensland government's SharemyStory
Road tragedies affect many lives. Apart from the victims, who may be killed or permanently disabled, there is an impact on the families and friends of the victims, on onlookers and on the community.
As one approach to raise awareness of these impacts, support people in grieving and help the community and individuals recognise and take steps to minimise the risk of road tragedy the Queensland government launched the SharemyStory site where survivors, relatives and friends could publicly share their stories.
The site now contains over 1,000 stories submitted by people in memory of those killed or injured in road accidents and is a very powerful reminder of the pain and harm these accidents can cause.
The site also offers way to support specific stories and to share specific stories across social media sites. It also has a Twitter channel.
Appropriate provisions are in place to protect the privacy of individuals and where people do not wish to share their personal information there are approaches the site administrators can take.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
APS Values and Code of Conduct in practice guide updated to including blogging and social media | Tweet |
I'm not quite sure when these edits happened, but reading through the APS Values and Code of Conduct in practice last night I noticed that they have been updated to comprehensively include blogs and social media (particularly Section 15: APS employees as citizens).
If you've not read this recently, it is worth reviewing to see how online channels are now integrated within the code of practice for Australian federal public servants.
This extends the effect of Circular 2008/8: Interim protocols for online media participation.
Social media participation by public servants in Australia is slowly becoming an accepted part of the landscape.
Twitter opened door on Iranian election (while offline media stayed silent) | Tweet |
The events of the past few days in Iran have demonstrated the capability of Twitter to circumvent controls on traditional media, allowing people to communicate and provide images of what is going on on the ground.
In case you've not yet heard through television, radio or the press, there have been a series of massive protests in Iran over the election results, with loud claims that the election had been rigged.
These protests, punctuated with vivid images, have been documented using Twitter as a media channel. Coverage via traditional media, which has been tightly controlled by the state, has been delayed and impeded by prohibitions such as not being able to leave the capital, Tehran, to witness events elsewhere in the country.
Iran is well-known for being a country with a high level of social media use across its population, sometimes called the third largest nation of bloggers.
This is another demonstration of the shift in power from central administrations towards individuals, it is becoming more and more difficult for governments to control real-time message flow - particularly when there are widespread dissenting views.
If you want to follow it yourself, try these Twitter searches
- Iran situation highlights strengths, weaknesses of Twitter - The Inquisitr
- '#CNNFail': Twitterverse slams network's Iran absence - CNET
- The day Twitter kicked CNN’s behind & @ev bought me a whisky - Scobleizer
- Live-Blogging The Uprising - The Huffington Post
- Activists Launch Hack Attacks on Tehran Regime - Wired
Friday, June 12, 2009
US reports on open government brainstorm - do Australians share these views? | Tweet |
The US government has been running an online consultation on the topic of open government via the OpenGov suggestions market.
A summary analysis report on the first stage of the brainstorm has now been released, outlining the main suggestions and topics US citizens found critical for open government.
Some of the highlighted recommendations included,
- each agency should appoint a senior representative to lead transparency initiatives;
- government should adopt common data standards;
- all open meetings should be webcasting;
- online government services should be made reusable by the private sector - if citizens own the services they should be able to build on top of them;
- Post all FOIA request responses on the web so everyone, not just the requester, has access and impose penalties on agencies not following FOIA, or creating excessive delays (such as in India where public servants can be fined);
- Digitize all government research reports and make them available free;
- Use well-designed feedback systems instead of central control to improve web design;
- Make government websites mobile platform-ready;
- Government should communicate a governmentwide strategy for using social media tools to create a more effective and transparent government;
- Allow government employees to engage in social networking.
I wonder if Australians would have similar views if the Australian government ran a similar consultation.
Here is the complete summary analysis report (PDF)
Also of great interest is the reason the US government used online consultation rather than having internal policy experts develop an open government policy,
Traditionally, proposed policy is crafted by government representatives—who though knowledgeable, do not always have access to the best possible expertise and information—and subsequently posted to invite public comment. The challenge lies in the fact that this process is designed to engender incremental rather than transformational change. Creating a transparent, participatory and collaborative government, however, is a foundational shift, and success requires that we are able to access the best and most creative ideas for accomplishing this goal, wherever they reside.
The vision for this exercise, therefore, is to invert the policymaking process by enabling informed public dialogue to inform policymaking at the front end. The collaborative three-phase process employed opens up tremendous possibilities for real-time innovation. People are invited to:
- Brainstorm—share ideas on how to make government more open, participatory and collaborative, discuss and vote on the ideas of others;
- Discuss—dig deeper on the ideas and challenges identified during the Brainstorm phase; and
- Draft—collaboratively craft constructive recommendations for an Open Government Directive.
