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I was chatting with friends on Twitter the other day regarding how useful it would be for Australian government to see positive and practical examples of online government engagement initiatives.
With fortunately timing, Crispin of Bang the Table recently posted about a new report from the US based Public Agenda's Centre for Advancement in Public Engagement which provides a number of examples of effective public sector online engagement initiatives from around the world.
The report also has some practical principles for constructing an online engagement strategy.
View the post, and the report, at Promising Practices in Online Engagement.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Positive and practical examples of online government engagement initiatives | Tweet |
Monday, November 02, 2009
NSW government launches data.nsw.gov.au with over 400 datasets | Tweet |
The NSW government has released a catalogue of over 400 datasets at data.nsw.gov.au, making it probably the second largest government data catalogue in the world (after data.gov in the US).
From the discussions I've seen and taken part in, this is far beyond what was expected.
Many of the datasets are only available as PDFs or as tables in webpages and the copyright terms, however this is only to be expected in a first release of this type.
Overall it's a tremendous resource and will hopefully encourage other Australian governments to take similar steps.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
And the GovHack winner is... | Tweet |
GovHack wrapped up tonight with drinks at CSIRO's Discovery centre.
Although many of the Govhackers had already departed for their drives and flights back to Sydney, Melbourne and other parts of Australia, around 30 people remained for the award ceremony.
At the awards, Tom Coates spoke about how only 20 years ago Tim Berners-Lee had written the document that laid out the core concept for the internet. He said that today we are seeing a whole new revolution based on the opening up of data and that this enables the community to help governments work - a transformational shift.
After deliberation, the judges gave honourable mentions to the teams
- What The Federal Government Does
- Project TeaLady
- It's Buggered, Mate
The Lonely Planet Award went to Rate My Loo for embodying the spirit of the day.
Second place went to Know where you live.
And the winning mashup was LobbyClue.
Well done to everyone involved!
Below are a few photos from the award ceremony - taken with iPhone so excuse the low resolution.
Tom Coates speaking at the GovHack award ceremony.
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A couple more great Govhacks | Tweet |
Here's some of the other mashups created at GovHack...
- Picture Australia location search
- What is my postcode? (View data by postcode)
- Who represents me? (System that maps addresses to their representatives and polling booths for reuse in other services)
- LobbyClue (mapping Australian political lobbyists)
Govhacking in Canberra | Tweet |
This afternoon I've been able to spend a few hours hanging out with a group of talented web developers, designers and programmers at Canberra Uni.
They've gathered for the Gov 2.0 Taskforce sponsored GovHack event, to develop new mashup applications and services using government data released at data.australia.gov.au and data.nsw.gov.au.
There's been a great deal of creative work done, from exposing the PowerHouse's data as a service, to an application for rating ACT toilets called Rate-a-Loo to mapping government agencies by function - such as this image of Transport-related agencies, to the creation of a 'lite' Australian version of FixMyStreet, appropriately named It's Buggered, Mate.
So far around 20 mashups have been submitted - based on 24 hours work.
I'll report on the winners later today.
Here's a few photos of the day...
Senator Lundy saying a few words at the GovHack event.
Tom Coates from San Francisco, who was an international guest at the Govhack event. Tom has been involved with around 12 GovHack events around the world.
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