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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Other than at AGIMO, I'm unaware of any other senior public sector managers directly responsible and tasked with driving Gov 2.0 and new media initiatives.
That changes next Monday when Tom Burton, formerly General Manager and Managing Editor of smh.com.au, arrives at the Australian Communications and Media Authority to drive their Gov2.0 and engagement strategy.
Rapid changes in media and communications markets are fundamentally changing communication and media industry and consumer behaviour. New web tools are now available to engage and dialogue with a broad range of users and stakeholders. These give users quick and easy access to Government and in turn help inform and drive better decision-making for Government and its agencies.
I look forward to helping lift the ACMA's communications and media engagement, but also building a strategy to open up as many channels to the ACMA for genuine dialogue.
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