Register now! Gov 2.0 Canberra lunch - 31 May

After some interruptions I've now organised the next Gov 2.0 Canberra lunch, featuring two fantastic speakers, Senator Kate Lundy and Kate Carruthers.

Being held at the Parliament House Members' Guest Dining Room on 31 May, Senator Lundy will be speaking on the Gov 2.0 Expo she's attending in Washington - giving a round-up of the event, what is happening in the US Gov 2.0 scene and providing an international perspective on the Government 2.0 trend.

Also speaking will be Kate Carruthers, one of Australia's foremost online strategists. Kate's talk will cover some of the social media learnings from the corporate sector - what government can learn and build on to create more successful Government 2.0 initiatives.

If you wish to attend, please register at http://egovaugov20lunch0510.eventbrite.com/

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Australian Gov 2.0 showcase launched

If you've not on Twitter, or regularly visiting AGIMO's new Govspace blog, you may not yet be aware of the Australian Gov 2.0 showcase.

The showcase has been established as a place for the Australian Government to publicly share case studies, videos and information about various Government 2.0 initiatives taking place.

The first goal of the showcase is to allow the Australians attending and speaking at the Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington on 25 May to demonstrate what is happening in Australia in the area.

If your department has any public Gov 2.0 initiatives, you should consider listing them in this showcase, to increase awareness of what your Department is doing, to support other Australian Government Agencies in understanding and planning their own initiatives and to help highlight the successes Australia has achieved on the global stage.

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Nudge your public sector colleagues about Government 2.0 - today!

Contrary to some media and public perceptions, most public servants are hard working and dedicated to their jobs.

This makes us busy people - sometimes too busy to keep an eye on what is going on at the peripheries of our professions.

That's why it is important for those of us who understand and follow what is happening in the Government 2.0 scene to occasionally nudge our colleagues. This is so they don't miss out on the opportunity to understand what is going on and figure it into their strategic and tactical planning.

This week - despite being enormously busy - I've found a few minutes to nudge three groups of my colleagues about ground-breaking Australian Gov 2.0 initiatives that will impact on their areas.

This including advising one group about a new research paper that used Australian blogs and forums in its literary review, concluding that these forms of citizen media offered enormous potential to build a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of community issues than could be derived from quantitative research alone. That's important for good policy.

It involved bringing to the attention of another group the release of the Australian Government budget under Creative Commons licensing, and of the Government's other statements about copyright and FOI. These policies will influence how we release public information into the future. That's important for good organisational strategic planning.

Finally it involved flagging a set of blogs and social media discussions which demonstrated how the public was using new media to talk about government services. This led to some healthy follow-up discussion on whether potentially defamatory and/or negative comments by individuals online should be given 'oxygen' by government or media. Regardless of the substance of posts it highlighted that people were very actively using online media to publicly share their thoughts and opinions about Government in ways that could influence others' views, rightly or wrongly. That's an important tool for Government communicators, policy and service delivery staff to monitor customer sentiment and address misconceptions or service issues.

Which of your colleagues have you nudged about Government 2.0 this week?

Why not nudge some of them today!

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Australian Government releases historic budget - under a Creative Commons copyright license

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.

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Another step for Australian Gov 2.0 - PM endorses public service reforms

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:

• 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.

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.

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