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The New Zealand's Inland Revenue department has launched an online consultation around proposed changes to student loans - with the main topic being around totally web-enabling the process for managing student loan accounts.
The consultation is at studentloanforum.taxpolicy.ird.govt.nz and might be a useful example for other government departments who might be considering online consultation.
The comments made are visible within the forum once logged in - which may be a useful way for other jurisdictions looking at student loans to also gather ideas.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
New Zealand online consultation on student loans | Tweet |
Build it or they will come | Tweet |
In 2007 a combined SMS and online electoral monitoring system went into action in Nigeria to report electoral fraud. Based on increasing mobile use (as fixed infrastructure is very limited in the country), mobile phones were able to provide voters with a voice when ballots were not conducted fairly. Similar systems are now being used in a range of other countries across the world to broadcast any electoral issues to the world.
Next, due to the effective application of online social media, in 2008 the preferred Democrat nominee for the US Presidency was beaten by a relative newcomer with little national profile. That relative newcomer then went on to successfully win the US Presidential race.
Earlier this year when UK Parliamentarians were caught charging expenses that the public deemed inappropriate they sought to protect their privacy by providing PDF documents, blacking out a significant portion of the documents for privacy and legal reasons. However the UK Guardian newspaper created a website (in less than 5 days) where the public could transcribe pages and cross-match critical information. Within 10 minutes of release over 320 members of the public were busy transcribing a few pages each, and within a few hours more than 2,000 pages had been reviewed. Now over 197,000 pages have been reviewed by over 22,000 UK citizens.
The Guardian was not alone in this effort, other websites such as www.whattheyclaimed.com began similar efforts to improve parliamentary transparency.
Most recently the Iranian election has been internationally scrutinised through the actions of hundreds of thousands of young Iranians using Twitter and similar online services to send messages, photos and videos out of the country. The medium has been used to organise protests, identify electoral fraud and keep the world informed of developments in a country which restricts journalists and the free press.
Internationally many people have supported the protesters in Iran by providing ways for them to send their messages out as the government systematically, and unsuccessfully, attempted to block online communications channels. The combined efforts of thousands of people around the world outmaneuvered the Iranian government and ensured that the voices of Iranian citizens continued to be heard.
And finally, in China, which has the most internet users of any country in the world, the government attempted to bolster its 'great firewall' (known internally as the Golden Shield Project) with software required to be installed on every PC. Despite using sophisticated software and a rumoured over 30,000 public officials working full-time to ensure that the Chinese people do not see material online that the government deems inappropriate, the Chinese have been unable to prevent their citizens from accessing the free media of other countries or using the internet to share their thoughts on the Chinese regime - both good and bad.
Resistance to the new measure has been intense. The Chinese government has already had to soften its approach from making the software compulsory to install to simply making it available with every computer.
These examples represent the change going on across the world. Out of Africa, across the Middle East, Europe, the Americas and into Asia, the internet is reshaping the relationship between governments and their citizens.
Governments who have attempted to limit or prevent citizen access to the internet have failed in almost every jurisdiction. In most cases the government dare not take the extreme step of disconnect their citizens completely, as the internet has become critical for private enterprises and the government in conducting their business.
Governments are finding that attempting to control new media use by citizens, or simply to continue to use old patterns of governing, is progressively seeing their control over the public agenda weaken.
Where governments are not building public services online, members of the public are banding together to do so - effectively disintermediating governments.
The lesson for me is that if governments are to lead their people, they need to acknowledge and accept the changes that are occurring, reform their own culture and operations where necessary and get out in front and demonstrate leadership.
Fortunately for Australia, increasingly our governments are recognising and acting on this.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Global Intranet report found that organizations without a 2.0 strategy risk outright failure | Tweet |
Prescient Digital have released the results of their Intranet 2.0 Global Survey, reporting that organisation without a 2.0 strategy risks being left behind, or outright failing.
The survey, with 561 responses globally (13% from government), found that Intranet 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and other vehicles have become mainstream, and are present in nearly 50% of organizations (regardless of size) in North America, Europe, and Australia and New Zealand.
Toby Ward, CEO of Prescient Digital Media & author of the Intranet Global Survey said in a press release that,
“Employees want to work for progressive and innovative organizations, and expect 2.0 environments from employers of choice.”
The survey found that organisations that had deployed Intranet 2.0 tools such as wikis, blogs and forums had spent very little doing so, with 46% having spent less than US$10,000 and only 19% having spent US$100,000 or more.
A summary of the Global Intranet 2.0 report is available freely online.
Victorian Government Inquiry recommends that Vic Gov opens most data for free public reuse | Tweet |
The Victorian Government's Economic Development and Infrastructure Committee recently released the final report (PDF) for its Inquiry into Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information and Data.
The Inquiry was designed to look at and report back to the Victorian Parliament on the potential application of open content and open source licensing to Victorian Government information, particularly considering the economic benefits, improvements to discovery and use of data, the ICT requirements and potential risks, impediments and restrictions.
With 46 recommendations, the report is quite a hefty read (238 pages) - however there are three key recommendations the report highlights, which I hope are both adopted by the Victorian Government and considered by other governments across Australia.
These were,
- develop a framework for free or low cost access to all possible public sector information,
- that the government use the Creative Commons licensing model for most (around 85%) of public sector information, tapping into a simple to understand and widely used system - with the remaining 15% subject to appropriate licensing based on the need for restricted access, and
- that the Victorian government develop a central directory enabling easier discovery of public sector information and the access conditions attached to it.
A fourth recommendation is also worth noting, to quote,
The Committee also considers the use of open source software (OSS) within and by the Victorian Government. One of the Committee’s recommendations is that the Government ensure tendering for software is neither licence specific nor has proprietary software-specific requirements, and that it meet the given objectives of Government.This recommendation will help level the playing field for open source software in government. While open source is already widely used in the public sector, the lack of a responsible single vendor has sometimes raised the perceived risk of open source. Also often software has been selected on the basis of initial purchase/implementation costs rather than on the total cost of ownership, which can be manipulated by vendors of proprietary software to encourage very low-cost take-up of products but with expensive ongoing maintenance and development.
The next step is for the Victorian government to consider and adopt some, all or none of the 46 recommendations - the first of which is,
Recommendation 1: That the Victorian Government release a public statement indicating that it endorses open access as the default position for the management of its public sector information.Recommendation 39 is also very interesting from a national perspective,
Recommendation 39: That the Victorian Government work with other jurisdictions towards national harmonisation in enhancing access to and reuse of PSI.
Many in the government 2.0 community will be waiting with bated breath.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The fifth great media shift in the last 500 years | Tweet |
Every now and then a work shines through with absolute clarity.
The video below, sent to me by a former colleague, provides such clarity regarding the fifth great media shift in the last 500 years - the internet.
It may be very useful for public servants in educating their colleagues about the changes occurring around the world.
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