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Today I'm at the Open Government miniconference at Linux Conf 2013.
I'll be liveblogging part of the day.
I'll be liveblogging part of the day.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Can governments crowdfund (some of the time) rather than tax? | Tweet |
Taxation has become the accepted approach used by most governments to raise most of their funds.
In its simplest form it involves taking a percentage share of the income earnt by citizens and other eligible entities, such as corporations and putting all this money in a big pool for the government's use.
The government then decides how to spend this money - providing public services and infrastructure, welfare and health care, and paying for the machinery of government.
Taxation is often supplemented by other revenue raising approaches including 'user-pays' tolls or levies and the sale or rent of goods, public assets or rights.
While there's plenty of debate over how the money in government's pool is spent, the main approaches used to raise these funds have remained largely unchallenged for centuries.
With the rise of the internet, however, another approach to funding government is becoming more viable - crowdfunding.
Crowdfunding involves asking people to provide funds for worthwhile projects on a micro-scale, many individuals each donating a small amount.
This isn't a totally new approach. Rich philanthropists have donated millions for worthwhile causes, communities have come together to fund (and build) small public works and individuals have adopted park benches and potholes for many years.
However the internet has lifted crowdfunding to a new level, with the potential to cost-effectively raise millions of dollars through tiny individual donations in a managed way.
The practice is already beginning to grow in the US, as illustrated in the video below. US platforms like Neighbor.ly already exist and new ones, like Citizinvestor are sprouting.
A european platform, Brickstarter, is being built with a pilot planned with the Finnish city of Kotka later this year.
In the Netherlands, a foot bridge is being crowdsourced by Rotterdam's government, testing the concept for broader use.
There's even some use in Australia. ScreenWest (WA's government film financing body), has a crowdfunding project in partnership with Pozible to support the funding of WA films.
While it is still too early to tell how useful crowdfunding will be for governments, the crowdfunding approach has been successful in raising funds for arts projects and commercial products, even for establishing the world's first Tesla museum (which I've invested in).
Micro-financing, a related approach supporting people to lift themselves out of poverty with loans too small for banks to bother with, has also proven successful in many cases (I recommend checking out Kiva, which I use).
Perhaps, over the next few years, rather than debating tax increases or expenditure cuts, governments will consider broader, internet-enabled options for funding some activities or infrastructure - such as crowdfunding.
All it takes is an open mind and a willingness to innovate in revenue raising. As the video below illustrates, this is already starting to get underway.
Friday, January 25, 2013
How much of Australia is represented by federal politicians tweeting? | Tweet |
Recently Twitter announced (as reported in Mediabistro) that 100% of elected US Senators and 90% of Representatives were using Twitter, and mapped the country to show electorate coverage by state.I track the use of Twitter by Australian federal politicians through my Australians Politicians on Twitter Google spreadsheet (about 66% use the service), and decided to similarly map Twitter use across Australian electorates and states.
I found there are some major holes in Twitter use outside of metropolitan areas, as shown in the map below by electorate.
Note that my data is current as at 21 January 2013.
Australian House of Representatives Twitter users by electorate
Zoom in for city electorates and click on an electorate for the details of the tweeting member.
Representative tweeters by tweets
I've scaled the map below by number of tweets to show the level of activity by member.
I've scaled the map below by number of tweets to show the level of activity by member.
Representative tweeters by followers
The picture looks a little different by followers, which has been scaled by member in the map below.
Australian parliamentary Twitter users by state (Senate & Reps)
At least by state, every jurisdiction has at least a few federal twitter users, and the maps below take in Senators as well as Representatives, giving a total level of tweeting by elected members by state and territory.Federal parliamentary tweeters by state/territory by tweets
Click on the map to see the total tweets by all elected members in a state or territory.
Federal parliamentary tweeters by state/territory by followers
Again the picture is a little different by followers, due to the impact of Kevin Rudd (Queensland) and Julia Gillard (Victoria), the most followed Australian politicians.
More to come...
I am in the process of mapping tweeting levels by political party and identifying the 'tigers' who are using the service very actively, compared to other politicians.I am also mapping government agencies in a similar way - crosschecking around 840 tweeting federal, state/territory and local governments to find out who are the most active and most followed tweeters.
Keep an eye on my blog for more of this information over the next few weeks.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Register now for the first free Gov 2.0 lunchtime event in Canberra for 2013 | Tweet |
Canberra's free Gov 2.0 lunchtime events continue for the fourth year in 2013, with the first monthly event featuring two great presentations:
- “R.I.P. to the media release, hello crowd sources” on the use of social media in real-time emergency communications by Darren Cutrupi of the ACT Emergency Services Agency, and
- "The British Invasion - how Gov 2.0 is taking the UK by storm" on the state of Government 2.0 in the UK, from British-based Ben Fowkes of Delib UK.
Update: Note that Ben isn't able to give a presentation on the UK GovCamp that was scheduled on 19 January as it was delayed due to snow.
For more information, or to register, please visit the Eventbrite page at: http://gov20february2013.eventbrite.com/
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Is it time to abandon the term 'Government 2.0'? | Tweet |
What's in a name? that which we call a roseThe term 'Government 2.0' was coined a number of years ago now, as a way of describing a set of new opportunities and activities for governments and citizens enabled by digital technologies and the internet.
By any other name would smell as sweet;
Romeo and Juliet - William Shakespeare
While many definitions for Government 2.0 are out there, the basic premise is that new technologies can improve the effective governance of nations.
This can occur both through governments reforming their activities, processes and transparency to be more 'citizen-centric', focused on the outcomes for communities than on ticking procedural boxes, and through citizens having greater involvement and influence over how they are governed.
However beyond this basis premise, Government 2.0 is a catchall for a range of very different activities - the release of data in reusable forms, the development of improved citizen engagement approaches and platforms, more direct political involvement by citizens via websites and social networks, the innovative use of digital technologies to redevelop government services, the breakdown of silos within agencies and more.
Many of these activities also have their own names, open data, connected government, digital democracy, crowdsourcing, open government, egovernment, digital innovation and so on - and these terms are often confused with or used instead of the term Government 2.0.
In my experience many public servants, media commentators and the majority of the public are unaware of or have different understandings of what Government 2.0 actually means. The term is not in any dictionaries I'm aware of and is used very differently by different governments and agencies.
If a term, such as Government 2.0, doesn't have a common meaning within government or with citizens, can it communicate what we want to say effectively?
I'm still undecided over whether Government 2.0 remains a useful term. It certainly helps bring together a disparate group of people working in closely related fields - citizen advocacy, open government, community engagement and egovernment, finding points of similarity and synergy that support all their work.
The term has a basis in reality - we can see the changes occurring in society, from the increasing influence of epetitions and online advocacy to influence policies, the move towards open data and copyrights across government, changes in both how government agencies and politicians engage, communicate with and influence their constituents and, more critically, changes in how citizens engage, communicate with and influence politicians, political parties and government agencies in turn.
Social media has helped citizens to form groups and movements and has allowed governments to win (or lose) hearts and minds. Increasingly agencies and politicians are bypassing mainstream media to communicate directly with citizens, cutting out an unreliable middleman.
So we need some kind of term or terms to describe how our society, government and politics is changing - and will continue to change.
But should that term be Government 2.0?
If not, what should it be?
Below is a great webcast from Tim O'Reilly, widely credited with creating the term 'Government 2.0', speaking about what Gov 2.0 means to him and why he created it.
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