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Media commentators have called the Australian Government's budget "austere", "responsible" and "boring but good".
I call it historic.
Why so?
Look at the copyright information in Budget Paper 1: BUDGET STRATEGY AND OUTLOOK. Budget Papers 2, 3 and 4 have been released on a similar basis.
What is different?
For the first time in history the Australian Government has released major parts of the Federal Budget under a Creative Commons (CC BY) copyright license.
This means that the public has the right, without first asking permission via the Attorney-General's office, to copy, mash-up, reuse and publicly republish data from appropriately licensed parts of the budget. They are legally entitled to use this material, provided they attribute the source, to create new and innovative works and insights.
This differs from previous Australian Government budgets where the contents were locked up tight under Commonwealth Copyright. While substantial rights were granted for the reuse of material in news reporting and private study, there was no right to otherwise mash-up or republish material publicly without asking permission.
Is this only historic from the perspective of past national Australian Governments?
I don't think so.
To my knowledge this is the first budget released by any government in Australian at any level under a license permitting reuse in this fashion - federal, state or local.
That's a lot of governments over more than 200 years.
Is this only historic from an Australian perspective?
Internationally this may be even more remarkable.
While copyright provisions vary around the world, Australia well be the first nation in the world to publish a national government budget under Creative Commons licensing.
That make the 2010-2011 Australian Government budget a truly historic budget.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Australian Government releases historic budget - under a Creative Commons copyright license | Tweet |
Monday, May 10, 2010
Another step for Australian Gov 2.0 - PM endorses public service reforms | Tweet |
According to the ABC, the Prime Minister has endorsed all 28 recommendations in the APS review report, Ahead of the Game: Blueprint for Reform of Australian Government Administration.
This report includes recommendations for the use of Gov 2.0 in citizen engagement and open government, turning citizens into active participants in the process of government, rather than passive recipients of government decisions.
Reform 2: Creating more open government, discusses a vision of a future APS that,
captures ideas and expertise through the transformative effect of technology by:This is another plank in the Australian Government's Gov 2.0 push, following the recent release of its response to the Gov 2.0 Taskforce's final report.
- Citizens directly communicating their views and expertise to government through multiple channels, including Web 2.0 approaches (for example, online policy forums and blogs);
- Greater disclosure of public sector data and mechanisms to access the data so that citizens can use the data to create helpful information for all, in line with privacy and secrecy principles; and
- Citizens become active participants involved in government, rather than being passive recipients of services and policies.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Emergency management with Gov 2.0 | Tweet |
The internet has proven itself time and time again to be one of the fastest platforms of disseminating information during emergencies.
The latest example has been in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
One of the largest spills off the US coast in history (though far from being the largest in the world), the spill is now threatening the marine life and economic survival of sea-based industries in four US states.
To inform people about the unfolding emergency and share news as it happens, a group of companies involved with the spill and US government agencies has been operating a website and social media presence.
According to the article Oil Spill Social Media in Read Write Web, the group includes British Petroleum, who own the oil; Transocean, who own the rig; the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of the Interior.
The social media presence includes a Facebook page for conversations, Twitter for announcements, Flickr for images and YouTube for videos - all linked off the main site, Deep Water Horizon Response.
This type of presence can be put together very quickly when an emergency occurs. There is no cost to any of the social media tools, and they can be in place within minutes.
The approach works very well at informing the public in a more reliable and factual way than, sometimes, traditional media allows.
Provided organisations are attuned and prepared to provide information rapidly, without onerous approval processes, second guessing or political concerns, social media can be a very powerful emergency management tool in the public sector's arsenal.
Still a long way to go to reach a Government 2.0 world | Tweet |
With the release of the Australian Government's response to the Gov 2.0 Taskforce Final Report and the increasing push of governments around the world to encourage, and even mandate, the use of Government 2.0 approaches by public sectors and politicians, it would be easy to begin thinking that we're off and running towards a Gov 2.0 world.
However a few recent incidents I've become aware of, and been involved with, indicate that there is still a long way to go before public servants are broadly aware of Gov 2.0, let alone skilled in its use.
One example was when a very highly skilled and professional colleague elsewhere in the public service called me up and asked whether they could now begin using 'that Gov 2.0 tool' that everyone was talking about. They had heard that the government had just introduced a Gov 2.0 tool that would make it easier to engage online with their stakeholders. After some questioning, I realised they were asking about GovDex - which has been around for quite some time.
Another example was when someone from outside the public sector railed to me at a social event against the rising tide of government secrecy, complaining that government was hiding more and more information behind impenetrable walls. When I commented about data.australia.gov.au and some of the open data and online consultation underway, they at first didn't believe I was telling the truth, then conceded that while these things might be happening, said approximately that "the government doesn't care what the public thinks anyway, it's all a snowjob to keep us from complaining too much."
These examples are no surprise to me.
In the first instance I am aware of many public servants busy doing their jobs exceptionally well, but simply not having the time, nor always the interest, to learn about every new innovation or initiative under the sun. They don't frequent the right conferences, social events, mailing lists or online forums to get exposed to Gov 2.0. Even if they've heard about it, they don't often know enough to understand the risks or meaningfully consider the ways it may be applied to make their jobs easier or improve their effectiveness and efficiency.
The second instance is a classic example of how people tend to form strong views then cling to them for quite a while rather than going back and test them regularly. If the search tool on your intranet performs poorly and you upgrade it to make it effective, in my experience it can take 6-12 months and quite a bit of communication and nudging before people stop talking about their bad search experiences and start trying the new search engine. People are simply too busy to repeat their actions or rethink their views on a highly regular basis.
So what can be done to increase the speed towards a Gov 2.0 world?
The key, for me, is threefold:
- Leadership through example - Government 2.0 practitioners need to get out there and recommend, champion and drive the initiatives that teach others how these techniques and technologies can deliver new benefits.
- Formal and informal education - We need to make courses available more broadly for public servants to gain the expertise they need to understand how new media and public engagement using Gov 2.0 techniques can benefit them, giving them the tools to assess risks, consider different approaches, decide on an optimum solution and to deliver.
- Create relevant community experiences - Finally we need government departments to look for opportunities to deliver Gov 2.0 initiatives that people will want to use. This doesn't just mean they look pretty, are accessible and have a wow! factor. It means that they deliver real benefits to the community, address community needs and wants (not all of community - one audience at a time). If we focus on releasing data in raw form with no easy-to-use analysis tools, or creating public engagement tools and then not promoting them so people are aware they exist (due to our strict advertising guidelines) it will take much longer for the community to notice something positive is going on.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
AGIMO releases Govspace blog and blogging platform | Tweet |
On Monday, coinciding with the release of the Government's Gov 2.0 Taskforce report response, AGIMO launched its new blog and blogging platform at AGIMO.Govspace.gov.au.
More than simply a Departmental blog, Govspace, as discussed on Twitter by John Sheridan, is a blogging - and eventually a wiki - platform available for other Departments to use,
@purserj We want it to be able to host either blogs or wikis and be easily recognisable - like data.gov.au #gov2auI see this as a similar service to GovDex, which is used broadly throughout the public sector for engagement and collaboration purposes.
The Govspace platform is powered by Wordpress, which I believe to be one of the most powerful, widely used and well supported blogging platforms available on the market. There are tens of thousands of 'skins' to change the design (plus you can customise your own), plus there are thousands of plug-ins adding different kinds of functionality to the Wordpress service (you'd have to confirm with AGIMO which are supported).
So if you are looking to start a blog for your agency and your internal systems don't entirely (or on a timely basis) support what is needed, Govspace is now a viable option.
