Australian Government launches data.gov.au

Joining the US, Canada, the UK, New Zealand and a host of other jurisdictions already leading the way around the world, the Australian Government has now launched its official government data sharing website, www.data.gov.au

Announced by Special Minister of State, Gary Gray, in the post Release of data.gov.au on AGIMO's blog, Minister Gray said that,

...The release of public sector information in the form of datasets allows the commercial, research and community sectors to add value to government data in new, innovative and exciting ways.

Data.gov.au plays a crucial role in realising the Australian Government’s commitment to informing, engaging and participating with the public, as expressed in its Declaration of Open Government and Freedom of Information (FoI) reforms.

The new site currently lists around 200 datasets and links to other Government data catalogues such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Spatial Data Directory and the Queensland Government Information Service plus many other government data sites.

It includes tools to allow the public to suggest datasets they'd like released, to rate and comment on all datasets within the site, provide feedback and improvement suggestions and submit mashups or other data-based initiatives.

There's also a showcase of mashups and prominent Australian Government data-based initiatives.

Government agencies may submit datasets online and AGIMO has provided support for hosting datasets in a cloud-based storage solution if they're unable to host them effectively in their own sites.

It is quite an impressive site. AGIMO has clearly been listening to the community and building on the experiences of other government data sites around the world.

It will be interesting to see how rapidly the number of datasets grows and the innovative uses people put them to, developing services and new insights to support citizens, create value and drive public policy initiatives.

Below is a list of other government data sites around the world sourced from Govloop (built using Socrata) as a comparison.

Powered by Socrata

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What's your government agency's social media exit strategy?

While diamonds may be forever, Department and agency names, communications campaigns and government programs are not.

This poses an interesting challenge when planning social media strategies - how do you effectively exit from a channel when a campaign ends (as the money stops and people go), or reframe a social media presence when your agency is restructured, renamed and repurposed.

I have seen very few examples of effective channel closure or transition. In many cases the Twitter feed or Facebook page just continues to 'hang around' after it is abandoned - or an agency continues to engage through its name from two years ago.

The classic website solution is the forward, whereby agencies forward visitors to an old website (or campaign microsite) to their main or new website. However this approach doesn't work in most social media channels where forwards do not exist.

I have seen some use of generic terms, to allow Departments to change staff, structure and name but retain their social media identities. I've also seen examples where agencies have a manual forward in place - such as "This Facebook page is no longer active, please visit our new page at ... " or where people are invited to friend or follow a replacement account. However none of these approaches work in all cases.

So what is the solution for morphing your social media identity to match your changing agency identity?

Do we need the owners of social media services to allow name changes or automated redirects?

Is there a more effective strategy for Departments to retain their social media presence, as they retain their phone numbers, when names change and campaigns end?

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Doing good while improving security with ReCAPTCHA

There's still many government online forms and consultation systems that don't make use of 'human recognition' tools such as CAPTCHA to help verify that the people filling in the forms are humans and reduce the attractiveness of online government forms to large-scale automated attacks by bot-armies.

However, even where government has added CAPTCHA security, I've yet to see an instance where this has been used for good, as well as security.

CAPTCHA, for those unfamiliar, is a technology whereby, when completing an online form, the user is asked to type in one or more words or calculate the product of a sum before submitting their response. The words or sum are presented in an image with 'background static' designed to make it hard for a computer to read.

In most cases, humans are able to decipher and type in the correct response whereas automated form completion systems, often used for spamming, are not.

Many CAPTCHA systems are also enhanced with audio CAPTCHA (where words are read out, amidst static and background noises), supporting vision-impaired people.

These systems are not perfect, however they do increase the barriers to hackers, reducing the prospect for spam submissions or attacks.

They also add a little time to each submission attempt - possibly ten seconds. This is negligible to an individual (in most circumstances), however as millions of people complete CAPTCHA forms each day, this adds up to a lot of time overall.

Initially CAPTCHA tools just presented random words, however a system supported by Google is supporting organisations to 'do good' as well as improve their security.

Named ReCAPTCHA, the system has integrated the work being done to digitalise books and documents. Rather than using random words, users are presented with words that computers could not understand during the document digitalisation process.

Each time a user completes a ReCAPTCHA, they are helping to decipher and digitalise the world's literature and records - preserving it into the digital age.

Assuming an average of two words per ReCAPTCHA, and each being repeated many times in order to validate the entry, there's a miniscule contribution by any particular individual.

However if, for example, 50 million people each verify themselves using ReCAPTCHA each day, with each set of two words presented ten times on average, a total of 10 million words in old documents and books that have been deciphered and correctly digitalised. Each day. That's 3.6 billion words per year.

So if your organisation isn't using CAPTCHA security on forms, or even if you are using a custom CAPTCHA technology, you might wish to consider exploring the use of ReCAPTCHA - which is free to reuse from Google.

Alternatively, of course, Australian institutions could develop their own type of CAPTCHA approach (for old newspapers, for example - or archival records). It would be a meaningful extension to the work the National Library of Australia is already doing.

Below is a video on the work being done with ReCAPTCHA.

Learn more about ReCAPTCHA.

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Organisations should really, really stop using Internet Explorer 6 (says Microsoft)

Microsoft has launched a website specifically designed to get organisations to stop using Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) and upgrade to newer browsers.

The Internet Explorer 6 Countdown website has the stated goal of watching global use of IE6 drop below one percent, stating that,

10 years ago a browser was born.
Its name was Internet Explorer 6. Now that we’re in 2011, in an era of modern web standards, it’s time to say goodbye.

The site indicates that only 3.2 percent of Australia's internet users still use IE6 while global usage remains about twelve percent.

Finland and Norway are highlighted as leading nations, with only 0.7 and 0.8 percent usage respectively.

Some nations are still heavy users of IE6, including China where a massive 34.5 percent of internet users are still on the web browser, and in South Korea where usage is at 24.8 percent.

Internet Explorer 6 usage around the world from the Internet Explorer 6 Countdown website

I've spoken to many web developers who estimate that developing for IE6 adds around 20 percent to the development time and cost of websites - so there are sound productivity and cost reasons for upgrading, besides the security and access benefits. In fact organisations still using IE6 are already unable to fully use many popular and important websites.

If your agency remains on Internet Explorer 6, this website might be worth bringing to the attention of your senior management.

After all, as Microsoft states in this site, "Friends don't let friends use IE6".

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What is muting Australian public servants online?

Over the last two years we've seen a concerted effort by governments across Australia to increase the level of online engagement, debate and discussion involving public agencies.

In 2009 the Government 2.0 Taskforce, commissioned by then Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and chaired by Dr Nicholas Gruen, conducted a six month process of engaging public servants via online channels, pioneering the use of blogs, Twitter and Facebook to demonstrate how it was possible for the public service to effectively communicate, engage, consult and be consulted online.

Late in the same year the Australian Public Service Commission replaced its Interim Protocols for Online Media Engagement (originally released in late 2008, with the updated Circular 2009/6: Protocols for online media participation.

Early in 2010 the Australian Government released its response to the Government 2.0 Taskforce's final report, agreeing with all except one of its recommendations (and simply deferring the remaining recommendation to after another related review was completed).

Since then we've seen the MAC innovation report, Empowering change: Fostering innovation in the Australian Public and the Ahead of the Game report from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, outlining steps to reform the public service.

There's been the Declaration of Open Government, the initiation of the Government 2.0 Steering Committee, the launch of GovSpace (a blogging platform operated by the Government and open to all agencies to use).

We've seen more than 260 government agencies and councils join Twitter, wide ranging activity on Facebook and a proliferation of social media policies at local, state and Commonwealth level.

Agencies in Australia are using social media in ways that would have been unacceptable and unachievable even two years ago, some demonstrating world class engagement online. Some states have comprehensive action plans in place and official usage of social media by agencies in some places is approaching one hundred percent.

I don't have the same level of information about Commonwealth agencies (there is no central register of activity or survey results, as there are for some states), however most have established some form of social media beachhead in support of campaign or corporate needs.


With all this official usage you might expect to see vibrant and active online communities of public servants discussing shared issues and best practice, or to see public servants listening to and contributing actively to online policy discussions.

Many groups set up for public servants seem to have reasonable memberships - several hundred people at least - however most of these members are silent, with at most 10% carrying on a halting conversation.

Blogs and forums established to discuss public issues are dominated by the same regular contributors, providing valid and thoughtful views for the most part, however still representing a fraction of the more than 100,000-strong Australian public service.


So what is going on? If over 75% of the Australian online public are actively using social media (as Neilsen has reported), what makes public servants different, what is muting Australian public servants from participating online?


There are a large number of public servants who keep their personal lives very separate from their work lives. They happily connect to their families and friends via social media channels, but don't perceive them as professional development or business tools.

I also still encounter public servants unaware of the Australian Government's Government 2.0 program. They either have never learnt about it through their usual newsgathering channels, dismiss it as an IT initiative, or are simply uninterested as they don't perceive Government 2.0 as having any direct relevance to their work or career.

There's also a number of institutional barrier in place. Despite the growing official adoption of social media in government, the 2009-2010 State of the Service report indicated that only 31 percent of APS staff and 28 percent of service delivery employees have access to social media and networking tools in the workplace.

Where there was access to social media and networking tools, the report indicated that the tools are being under-utilised for various reasons, including lack of staff awareness or interest (similar to my point above), or there was a lack of resources and agency policy restrictions.

In addition, only 10% of agencies reported that they had technical guidance available to employees on how to use social media and networking tools. Staff may not always feel they have the permission or the education required to use social media in a professional manner at work.

This is compounded by the use of adaptive filtering tools which do a fantastic job of blocking inappropriate websites, however may also block appropriate and important websites and social media channels used actively in agency business. As these tools work on the basis of blocking categories rather than individual sites, a simple misclassification by a vendor can limit a department's access to key sites for days or weeks. Social media channels - with a wide range of fast changing material - are often prone to being blocked.

There's also pressure on staff due to workload. There's limited time to innovate, experiment or improve work practices via social media and Government 2.0 approaches when staff are flat-out getting their jobs done the 'old' way.


So where does this leave Government 2.0 and social media adoption?

We have a strong and growing core of activity, with a small number of engaged participants and a wider group adopting these tools as their agencies recognise that the changes in Australian society preclude them continuing to use old approaches.

In many cases public servants engaged in communications and consultation activities simply have to include social media in their mix to generate effective outcomes.

Cost pressures are also taking their toll. As budgets tighten, public servants look for more cost-effective means to engage. I've often seem the most enthusiastic adoption of social media channels when budgets have been cut or in crisis situations where traditional media channels aren't responsive. Albeit this is sometimes constrained by a lack of expertise or shortages in manpower.

However many public servants still haven't made the link between social media and their jobs. They haven't had the time to reflect or consider - nor been presented with compelling cases of why they should adopt new tools - particularly where old ones continue to work reasonably well.

We haven't yet reached a tipping point, where the argument for and knowledge of the new approaches now available has overcome the resistance and systems geared towards more traditional approaches.

So in my view it is simply a matter of education, example, clear political and senior will and time - but how much time? No-one can really say.

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