Craig Thomler's professional blog - AI and digital government thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective
Craig Thomler
I've worked in the online sector since 1995 in roles including founder, publisher, journalist, webmaster, marketer, channel manager, CIO, COO and visionary. I left the public sector in early 2012 to lead Delib Australia as Managing Director Australia and New Zealand. More...
Prior to that GetUp was in the Top 10 twice, in 2006 (David Madden & Jeremy Heimans) and 2007 (Brett Solomon). The ACTU was also in the Top 10 in 2007 for their Rights At Work site.
To quote the site, the award recognises,
the top 10 individuals, organizations and companies having the greatest impact on the way the Internet is changing politics.
This prestigious award seeks to recognize the innovators and pioneers, the dreamers and doers who bring democracy online. This year marked the toughest year ever in choosing the 25 finalists. The integration of politics and the Internet are reflected in this year's diverse, international nominees.
For 2009 two Australian nominations have reached the top 25, with public voting now open to select the final ten award winners.
The second is embarrassing to mention, because it is me, Craig Thomler, for this eGovAU blog. Thank you to those who nominated me - it has come as a complete surprise.
Balance between choice and flexibility on the one hand and fairness and the common good on the other.
Higher levels of engagement, meaning educating and enrolling the public as co-producers of value.
Improved accountability and transparency.
The report also outlines the benefits to public sector organisations of using Web 2.0 with multiple value propositions, including,
Enabling more effective social networking, citizen engagement and collaboration with the community.
Providing rich Internet applications for the community—information and services that are more personalized, faster, easier to use and able to be delivered through multiple channels (such as Internet and phone).
Enabling effective collaboration and teamwork — especially among disparate teams and across agencies.
Providing a presentation development tool for internal staff that offers higher productivity than the Web alone can provide.
The report goes on to provide a public value framework for governments to use when evaluating Web 2.0 technologies,
The Accenture Public Service Value Governance Framework helps public service organizations deliver high performance by providing an important model for public service executives to use in evaluating Web 2.0 technologies in terms of their ability to generate positive social outcomes, to serve the common good, to engage the public as co-producers of public value and to improve accountability and transparency.
A key factor in government 2.0 is that it doesn't have to be a government body that delivers the government 2.0 experience.
Sometimes government should simply be the platform providing the data and allow external organisations to provide the combined services and information that the public wants.
This can lead to faster, cheaper and more innovative service and information delivery. External parties are not bound by the same restrictions and overheads as the public sector, can draw on more diverse pools of ideas and compete to provide the best solutions.
Of course there needs to be oversight to ensure that accuracy and equity remain top of mind. Everyone eligible for a service should be able to access it, and information needs to be available in an accurate and timely fashion.
These concerns can often be managed through appropriate copyrighting (such as Creative Commons) or by having government provide a base-level service.
One of the best examples of government 2.0 in Australia fits these criteria.
OpenAustralia republishes Hansard records and the Members' Register of Interest for Federal government, making them easier to access, search and comment on.
Should government provide a similar tool?
I'd argue no. Provided government can make the information available in a basic way, and ensure the information is readily accessible to be republished by others, the government can focus its investments into other areas of improvement.
In my view this doesn't only hold for Hansard records. There are many areas across government where we would be better served by making data available in a simple reusable format and allow the not-for-profit and private sectors to provide services on top.
Below is a speech by one of the founders, Matthew Landauer, given to the employees of Google about the purpose and journey of OpenAustralia, with a glimpse into the future of the site.
A post about the speech - and the OpenHacking event OpenAustralia recently held is on the Google Code blog, Australia goes open.
I've been known to say, from time to time, that what you cannot measure you cannot manage. This is especially true in IT-based projects, which often involve significant investments and where deadlines and budgets can easily slide.
Given it has been estimated that 68% of IT projects fail to realise the benefits or outcomes they set out to achieve, it is vitally important that good measurement be in place to manage these investments and ensure that the responsible parties are accountable for the outcomes.
The US government has taken a major step towards public accountability over government IT investments with the release of the IT dashboard website.
"Everyone knows there have been spectacular failures when it comes to technology investments," Kundra said. "Now for the first time the entire country can see how we're spending money and give us input."
Featured at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York on Tuesday, the IT Dashboard provides information on US$76 billion of US Federal IT spending, breaking it down by agency and into individual projects.
The site is more than a list of numbers. It provides interactive graphics and charts which allows visitors to identify which projects are running behind schedule or over budget - as well as those on time and on budget.
The site also makes the underlying data available in open formats, able to be reused in citizen applications and cross-referenced with other information sources to generate new insights.
While the site is undoubtably a nightmare for CIOs who have inadequate cost accounting systems or a high level of date and over-budget projects, it provides an extremely valuable role in enforcing accountability on public spending and supporting both citizens and elected officials to visualise, understand and ask the right questions about government IT investment decisions.
In other words the site aids the democratic process and encourages Federal Departments to ensure that they are running their IT projects effectively - which Kundra has already seen happen in practice,
"I talked to the CIO Council and saw the data change overnight," Kundra said. "It was cleaned up immediately when people realized it was going to be made public."
Consider the benefits to the US if government IT failure rate could be cut significantly - potentially doubling the value of every public dollar invested in IT.
I would love to see a similar site in Australia as I believe there would be similar benefits to the democratic process, transparency, accountability and improved ROI for the taxpayer dollar.
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