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Around the world governments are tightening their belts. After the recent global financial crisis many countries' governments have borrowed heavily from financial markets and released these funds as stimulus packages - placing them in deficit.
Australia is no different, although we have very successfully kept our deficit to a smaller percentage of GDP than most other western nations.
For government agencies, long used to efficiency dividends and a philosophy of doing more with less, it is important to constantly 'health check' their budget decisions to ensure that public money isn't wasted and is most effectively spent.
The US, UK, Canada and other governments have begun more intensively involving citizens and public servants in the process of identifying waste and potential efficiencies - a process which has produced some large results in a short time in some jurisdictions.
How are they doing this?
By employing Gov 2.0 techniques, providing access to budget and revenue data online in machine-readable formats and by engaging their staff and the community via social media tools.
Here's a few examples.
UK Spending Challenge
The UK recently launched a public 'Spending Challenge' asking UK citizens to contribute their ideas for reducing their national deficit.
Managed through a website and a Facebook group, the Challenge has attracted more than 31,000 ideas so far, with the government aiming to include the best in their October 2010 budget review.
US SAVE Award
The US is holding their second annual SAVE award which allow public servants to submit and vote on ideas for cost savings which can be applied within government departments.
Last year SAVE attracted 38,000 ideas and President Obama says (in the video below) that many are being integrated into agency budgets. The top four entries were voted on online by American citizens and the winner got to meet the President and received national acknowledgement.
For the 2010 SAVE award, so far there have been over 17,000 ideas submitted and 153,000 votes.
Canadian public sector data used to expose a $3.2 billion tax fraud
David Eaves has written a fabulous case study on how the release of public data in Canada uncovered systemic tax fraud within the charity sector and helped legitimate charities and the government close down these operations.
It is a very powerful case for making public data available to allow people outside governments to apply their expertise to assist governments.
How many of these techniques could be applied in Australia?
I'd argue that all of them have merit and could be applied in appropriate ways by our Federal, State and Local governments - potentially on an ongoing basis.
None of the examples above involved enormous government expense and, where the processes have been concluded (for the 2009 SAVE awards and in the Canadian example), there have been significant measurable returns on investment.
In other words, they've saved the community money in net terms - with the cost of running the different initiatives a tiny fraction of the savings to the public purse.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Using Gov 2.0 techniques to save money across government | Tweet |
Monday, July 26, 2010
Catching up in London... | Tweet |
I'm off to London for a few weeks on Tuesday and will be catching up and speaking with some Gov 2.0 people there to find out what's happening in the UK.
if you have any suggestions on contacts I should catch up with, please drop me a Tweet or email.
Social media and the federal election | Tweet |
While the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that the major political parties are "Parties miss the mark in Twittersphere", the current Federal election is likely to see social media used in more diverse and effective ways than ever before in Australia.
Why and how?
Here's some samples.
Statistics
- Australians aged 18+ in 2009: 16,812,886 (ABS)
- Australians aged 18+ who use the internet: 14,122,824 (ABS/Nielsen)
- Australians enrolled to vote: 13,869,021 (Australian Electoral Commission via ABC Campaign Pulse)
- Australians using Facebook: 9,300,240 (Facebook via ABC Campaign Pulse)
- Australians using MySpace: 1,400,000 (Nielsen via SMH)
- Australians using Twitter: 1,150,000 (Nielsen via ABC Campaign Pulse)
- Australian internet users spent 17.6 hours per week using the internet, but only 13.4 hours watching TV, 9.3 hours listening to radio and 3.4 hours reading newspapers. (Nielsen)
- Almost 50% of Australian internet users watch TV and use the internet at the same time. (Nielsen)
Sites
And here's a few of the sites supporting Australians through the election:
- Election Leaflets
Photograph and map electoral leaflets distributed across Australia
- Twit worm
An online worm using Twitter to measure sentiment, used in the leaders debate
- Twitter trends
A custom version of Trendsmap created by the ABC for the election to track mentions of electoral issues
- Twitter #ausvotes
The primary Twitter hashtag being used to discuss the election
- Australia 2
Site for people to share and vote for their top priorities for Australia
If you know of other websites and social media tools created for the election, please let me know.
Friday, July 23, 2010
View 100 Australian Governments' twitter feeds in one page | Tweet |
It's all well and good to say there's over 200 Twitter feeds from Australian federal, state and local governments - but to get a picture of the level of activity, and see what they're saying, look at eGovAU's Twitter feed here (note that it is a free service and occasionally down for maintenance).
This page displays 100 of the accounts based on those with most recent tweets, a useful way to view the most current tweets.
You can also follow the Australian-gov tweets list to view them.
Engaging with and trusting citizens to participate in the democratic process leads to great rewards for the state | Tweet |
The title of this post reflects the key statement that stood out for me in the London.gov.uk blog's post Economic benefits of data release
This article puts some solid numbers behind the value of open data initiatives in government, from the US's Apps for Democracy mash-up competition (50 entries in 30 days, valued at $2.5m for a $50,000 prize outlay) to Canada's exposure of a $3.2 billion tax evasion fraud when public financial data was released in machine-readable form.
We've already had several examples of open government initiatives in Australia. Both the ABS and Geosciences Australia release significant amounts of data under Creative Commons licenses, and a number of state agencies do the same. We've also had three mash-up competitions, the first by the Gov 2.0 Taskforce last year, the others through the NSW and Victorian governments.
I've not yet seen any modeling of the value of these Australian public data releases, which is a shame as I'm sure they would demonstrate value for money, however the international experience is quite clear,
Actively engaging citizens and empowering them through machine-readable data adds value to government processes and initiatives.
Now how do we share that message clearly with senior decision-makers?
