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Government 2.0 is slowly coming of age, which means there are now many examples of innovative and successful sites and applications emerging around the world.
However it can be hard to find them.
Here are some places I look,
White House open innovations showcase
The US White House lists a number of clever, and very different, websites which demonstrate many different aspects of Government 2.0 thinking. As they are designed to stimulate government thinking and provide successful examples of working initiatives it's a great source of inspiration for public servants.
eGovernment Awards (by country)
There are a number of different eGovernment Awards around the world which generally include some of the most impressive examples of Government 2.0 activity. An obvious place to start is Australia's own e-Awards run by AGIMO. There are similar awards run in other countries such as the UK's e-Government National Awards, the European eGovernment Awards and the Electronic Government (EXCELGov) Awards for the Americas.
Twitter
If you want to innovative Government 2.0 ideas there's no better place to ask for help than some of the government-focused people on Twitter. One of them, somewhere in the world, is likely to have come across an idea and shared it via tweets. Often you can identify a number of innovative ideas simply by looking at the right twitter stream. This can be done without even registering for Twitter simply by searching Twitter for 'government 2.0', 'government innovation' or similar terms. Alternatively you can create an account and locate a group of government people to follow - possible via a service like WeFollow.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts provide regular updates when topics you select are discussed online. Setting up searches for terms such as 'government 2.0' or 'gov 2.0' (two of my alerts) are able to provide a daily or weekly dose of relevant results, including some of the most innovative government activity.
Where else do you look online to find innovative government 2.0 initiatives?
Friday, August 07, 2009
Seeking innovative Gov 2.0 ideas? Here's some places to look | Tweet |
Have you voted for your priorities for Government 2.0? | Tweet |
The recent Public Sphere: Government 2.0: Policy & Practice, run by Senator Kate Lundy's office captured a number of views on government 2.0 in Australia.
These views are now in the process of being prioritised based on public feedback.
The prioritised views will be submitted to the Government 2.0 Taskforce to use in their work preparing a paper on how to progress Government 2.0 in Australia.
If you've not yet visited the Australia 2 website to define and comment on your top Government 2.0 priorities you've only a few weeks left to register your views.
Visit the Public Sphere priorities at Australia 2.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Do you monitor social media conversations about your department? | Tweet |
As a marketer I find the internet a dream channel for monitoring customer sentiment and concerns.
Social media and search engines can be easily and cheaply tracked to provide fast feedback on various initiatives. This helps organisations shape their campaigns and responses to external events.
I'd recommend that this is equally of enormous value to government, where perception and citizen sentiment can strongly influence political views and processes.
If your department isn't keeping an eye on what people are saying about you and your key topic areas (and Minister) online, then you may be missing an enormous opportunity to get early warnings on potential growing issues, to adjust campaigns and programs to take advantage of trends or to tap into popular sentiment to shape new ideas.
One example of effective use of social media monitoring is from the US Army, who closely monitor blogs and social networking sites to track the public response to various events.
The article, Air Force checked blogs, Twitter to gauge New Yorkers' anger about flyover, from NextGov, discusses how the US Army used online monitoring to track and respond to the public anger resulting from their fly-over of New York in April.
Within an hour of the flyover the Army knew it had the makings of a public relations disaster on its hands and was able to begin putting in place a response.
The Army has also used the learnings from this experience to educate further activities and use online media to ensure that citizens are receiving the facts about events.
This type of approach has many applications across government, from emergency management through to reviewing the response and level of accurate coverage of ministerial announcements.
So if you're not yet using the online channel to track citizen sentiment you may be doing your department and Minister a disservice.
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Building a business case to move from IE6 to a modern web browser | Tweet |
Here's some notes useful for a business case justifying an upgrade from Internet Explorer 6 to a more modern web browser that I prepared last week for a colleague at another organisation.
It supports the priority in Australia 2 to Upgrade all government web browsers.
Please add to them in the comments if you see points I've missed.
Goal
Encourage a government Department to upgrade from Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) to an industry supported web browser.
Background
The IE6 web browser was originally released by Microsoft in 2001.
Over the last eight years it has been updated twice, Internet Explorer 7 was released in October 2006 and Internet Explorer 8 in March 2009 (with developer previews available since March 2008).
Since 2001 the entire web browser market has changed. Netscape ceased developing Navigator (in December 2007) and new browsers entered the market including Apple's Safari in November 2003 (version 4 released June 2009), Mozilla Firefox in November 2004 (version 3.5 released June 2009) and Google Chrome in December 2008.
These entrants, and the long-standing Opera web browser, have significantly driven innovation in the market.
IE6 support
The IE6 browser, being two versions behind, is no longer supported by Microsoft and is in rapid decline in community usage.
Major websites and organisations are progressively ceasing support for IE6, meaning that increasing numbers of websites are not accessible using the browser. For example, Google, the top accessed website in Australian and across the world, has advised that it will no longer be supporting IE6 for its applications.
A campaign to encourage people to shift away from IE6 has been operating online for several years with significant success and has support from Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Balmer, who stated that,
Microsoft recommends end users that are browsing the web with Internet Explorer 6 to upgrade today to benefit from numerous improvements including security features and usability enhancements.Web standards
Interoperability is key to enabling developers to continue to create great user experiences on the web. Our commitment to the technical community continues with our significant investment in Internet Explorer 8.
We continue to believe in the importance of supporting the end users and encourage the technical community to work with us in securing a good transition for the users that today are using IE6.
IE6 does not adhere to web standards as defined by the WSG and as reflected within the Acid2 test.
As stated in Wikipedia's page about Acid2,
Acid2 tests aspects of HTML markup, CSS 2.1 styling, PNG images, and data URIs. The Acid2 test page will be displayed correctly in any application that follows the World Wide Web Consortium and Internet Engineering Task Force specifications for these technologies. These specifications are known as web standards because they describe how technologies used on the web are expected to function.Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3 and Safari 2+ all successfully pass the Acid2 test. IE6 and IE7 fail to pass the Acid2 test (as did earlier versions of other web browsers).
This test will eventually be supplanted by the Acid3 test, which is currently only passed by Safari 4, Opera 10 beta and Chrome 3.0.17.
It is not yet necessary for organisations to use Acid3 compliant web browsers as not all the test conditions within Acid3 have been passed by the W3C at this time.
Browser market shares
IE6 is currently in rapid decline, with the primary users being organisations who have not yet upgraded to more modern web browsers. Home users have predominantly upgraded to more modern web browsers.
It is estimated that Internet Explorer has between 52 and 74% web browser market share in July 2009 depending on the specific measurement site (source: Usage share of web browsers). Firefox has between 18 and 31%, Safari 2.6 - 4.1%, Chrome up to 3.1% and Opera up to 3.3%.
Internet Explorer 6 is estimated at having 15 - 25% market share globally. However in Australia this share is reportedly much lower, at around 9% (StatCounter)
Benefits of an upgrade
- Moves the organisation to a supported web browser,
- greater compatibility with web standards,
- future-proofs the organisation's web browsing for several years (as major sites cease IE6 support),
- aligns staff with citizens' use of the internet - statistics for Australian web use show that the Australian public predominantly use modern browsers,
- provides a greater level of security whilst browsing,
- supports tabbed browsing (opening multiple pages in one master window),
- allows use of modern web features within the organisation's intranet,
- there is no product cost for an upgrade from IE6 to a modern web browser.
- Some legacy internal systems may not be fully interoperable with modern web browsers,
- security impacts will need to be investigated to ensure there is no increased risk of systems penetration,
- greater ability to access modern websites may increase internet use for work purposes - thereby increasing network load.
- Political risk for Minister if questions asked within parliament on reasons for use of old and unsupported technology (as is already occurring in the UK),
- organisation will continue falling further behind current web standards,
- organisation will progressively lose access to key online services as they cease IE6 support,
- greater security risks due to less security in IE6 than more recent web browsers,
- increasing difficulty in upgrading internal systems that require web browsers as modern versions of content management systems and other web-based solutions are less and less likely to support IE6,
- need to invest in optimising (dumbing down) the organisation's websites for IE6 simply to support staff,
- difficulties in meeting web standards if testing cannot be conducted on modern, web standards compliant, web browsers.
Contribute to the study on public sector innovation | Tweet |
The Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR) is holding a series of focus groups through August to give Australian federal public servants the opportunity to share their views on innovation in the public sector.
If you're a federal public servant interested in having your say on public sector innovation, you can learn more at DIISR's site on the page, Advancing Public Sector Innovation - Focus Groups.
You can also follow the project on Twitter as @PSInnovate.
