South Australia bans anonymous election comments online

I've been alerted by CloCkWeRX in a comment in my post, Australian Labor Party launches social media website, that the South Australian government has passed a law banning anonymous online comments about the South Australian election.

According to the article South Australian Government gags internet debate in News.com.au,

The new law, which came into force on January 6, requires anyone making an online comment about next month's state election to publish their real name and postcode.

Intended to force media outlets to police the publication of online comments in their sites in order to prevent anonymous comments or comments involving fake names, this revision to the South Australian Electoral Act potentially could be interpreted broadly across any websites hosting public comments.

This could mean the provision would apply across blogs, forums, social networks, Twitter and other online services that support public comments.

If this is the case, and the ACT is enforced across South Australian hosted sites containing public comments, this may encourage organisations to move their website hosting away from South Australia to other Australian states or overseas. It is also unclear whether or how the South Australian government would enforce the Act across other jurisdictions hosting social media websites containing public comments about the South Australian election.

It is also unclear how the law applies to online opinions posted by those aged under 18 years old, who might still have an interest or school assignment involving state politics. There could be privacy issues in having a state government government force minors to publicly publish their real full name and postcode when commenting on electoral issues during election periods.

Privacy and security issues may also apply for people in witness protection programs, who would avoid using their real name and postcode on online comments to avoid detection by criminals.

Whilst not a lawyer, it appears to me that this amendment will be very difficult to enforce - a view shared by the South Australian Attorney-General, Michael Atkinson, who is responsible for overseeing state laws.

Mr Atkinson is known for his opposition to a national 'R' rating for computer games, despite the average age of Australian gamers being over 30 and 'R' rated movies being legal in Australia. He was also involved in a recent South Australian law which prohibits the display of promotional material for 'R' rated movies in areas children may enter. My understanding is that this ban is despite whether the promotional material itself portrays 'R' rated images.

Quoting the AdelaideNow article, Outrage as Rann Government, Opposition unite to gag internet election debate,

In a press conference today, Mr Atkinson said the law was "all about honesty''.

He conceded it would be difficult to police but the most "egregious and outrageous'' breaches of the new laws would be identified.

As none of the news articles actually quote the relevant section of the South Australian Electoral Act, you can find it at the Electoral Act page in the South Australian Legislation. Refer to Section 116.

 I apologise for not published the relevant section of the Act here in my blog, I am currently unclear on whether this would be considered a breach of copyright.

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Australian Labor Party launches social media website

In a first for a major political party in Australia, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) has embedded blogging, tweeting and video in the heart of its website, relaunching www.alp.org.au as a Politics 2.0 website.

Termed 'Labor Connect' the redeveloped site aims to foster active policy debates, stating that,

We know we won’t always agree about issues and it would be pretty boring if we did. Labor Connect will not always be endorsed policy and its aim is to create debate and discussion about progressive policy development in the Party.

The ALP calls its relaunched site a 'beta' and says there are many additional social media features yet to release. Their comment moderation process is very simple, with four basic guidelines:

• Stick to the topic
• Be respectful
• Be honest
• No Junk Mail

Nielsen recently reported that 9.9 million Australians were active on social media sites and that they used social media for longer than any other nation they studies, with the average Australian spending 6 hours and 52 minutes per month on social media sites.

Besides the site's value in an election year, perhaps it is also an example of what the government is looking for from the public service in departmental engagement.

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UK launches data.gov.uk (and how Australia could top it)

Just in case you missed this the other week, on 21 January the UK launched the data.gov.uk website with 2,500 government datasets available for access and reuse by the public.

This leapfrogged the US's data.gov, which now has around 1,000 datasets available.

The UK site also extends the government open data space in several other directions, with a wiki and forum supporting discussion and collaboration between people reusing datasets in the site and a Ideas tool for submitting ideas on what data should be released and how it should be combined to provide new and useful insights.

The site also includes a gallery of applications developed to make use of government data, making it a central place to locate these applications.

I believe this is the new world leader for open data websites from government - though I look forward to the day when Australia tops it (in data.gov.au).

How could we top it with data.gov.au?

Here's some ideas:

• Build in a data analysis and visualisation module that allows people without technical expertise to combine, model and view datasets, no matter their origin (like IBM's Manyeyes).
• Then allow people to embed these visualisations into their own sites.
  
• Support community submission of data that can then be shared and used by government alongside government datasets to improve insights and understanding - including allowing the appropriate Creative Commons copyright to be embedded into these datasets as part of the submission process.
• Comments on datasets - allow every set of data to support a discussion to allow people to ask questions to clarify what the dataset contains and discuss how it could be presented in a more usable way.
  
• Allow tagging of datasets and applications - so that over time there's a bottom-up folksonomy that people can use to find related data or search on, rather than relying on government metadata (which may not match the community's mental models).
• Support data correction through the site - if someone detects an error in a dataset there should be a clear path to notify the submitter of the data and have it corrected.
• Vote on applications, allowing the community to provide feedback on how useful and valuable they found them. The voting mechanism should be able to be embedded with applications in other sites, rather than rely on people returning to data.gov.au to vote.
  
• GEOmapping engine, to map locations such that they can be placed on maps, rather than having to have people build their own tools to transform the data.
  
• Collaborative data modelling projects - where the community is invited to work together to model data, assisting the government and community.
  
• Data competitions with cash prizes. Similar to the NetFlicks Prize, provide the tools for government agencies - and even commercial entities - to create competitions to solve tricky data problems through crowdsourcing.
  
• Create user profiles and including information on how many applications / data visualisations and other activities they have undertaken in relation to the data site. People respond to competitive challenge and recognition - like in the Australian National Library's Manyhands project.
• Create webinars and run physical events to raise awareness of the site and to show Australians (developers, corporates, not-for-profits, interested parties) how easy it is to reuse government data.
• Hold annual awards for the best applications, including peoples' choice awards based on user votes and awards for schools and students to encourage an interest in and innovative uses of data.

If you have other ideas on how Data.gov.au could be better than the UK and US efforts, please add them in the comments below.

To finish up - here's a good presentation from Sir Tim Berners Lee (who has led the work on data.gov.uk) on why we need to make government data available in raw reusable form, to the public.

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Don't forget to complete Whirlpool's National Broadband Survey (by 31 January)

Whirlpool's survey is one of the few surveys that provides a comprehensive view of internet usage in Australia. I've used the results that are published (freely) from the survey for a number of years to develop strategies for audiences, both within the public and private sector.

However to keep its value, people have to complete it.

It's open until 31 January at: http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/

Results will be available sometime in February.

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Over 110 people registered for free BarCamp Canberra on 6th February - have you registered yet?

If you're in Canberra - or live down the road in Sydney, don't forget to register for BarCamp Canberra at http://bcc2010.eventbrite.com

The free community-run event is being held at the ANU on Saturday 6th February. There will be great speakers on topics ranging from technology and software through to social media, e-Democracy, progressive policy and social innovation.

So far over 110 people have registered to attend, so it's likely to be a big event.

Don't know what a BarCamp is? There's a description on the registration page:

BarCampCanberra is a free-to-attend community-run conference where anyone can come and watch, participate or present on anything they are passionate about - either something interesting they've been working on, an idea they'd like to present or to brainstorm the solution to a problem with a bunch of like-minded smart people.

BarCampCanberra is part of the BarCamp network of conferences which started in Palo Alto, California back in 2005. BarCamp originally started with a focus on technology, open-source programming and data but has now grown to encompass more topics.

On February 6 2010 we'll be holding our third BarCamp in Canberra and will be inviting people to attend and present on topics ranging from technology and software through to social media, e-Democracy, progressive policy and social innovation. We will be holding both presentation and collaboration style events so people can either come with a 20-minute talk or a 5-second idea that will seed futher conversation.

We already have some fantastic sponsors on-board who will be providing us with a venue for the event along with facilities, food and drink, prizes and giveaways.

Coffee and agenda coordination will start at 9, with the first presentation starting at 9:30.

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