Mainstream media takes first steps in adopting open data hacker culture

On Monday 4 February The Age hosted the Data Newsroom event, where teams had an opportunity to dig into three previously publicly unreleased datasets,

1. Political party funding data, which lists what companies donate money to which political parties.
2. A database that includes the archives of all Age articles along with key words and relationships between those keywords.
3. Weather data for Australia going back one-hundred years. 

 As reported by the Australian chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN), 14 teams consisting of journalists, hackers and citizens took on the challenge of producing an article from one of the datasets and convincing a 'Dragon's Den' panel of data journalists of the merits of their approach.

Four shortlisted teams got to go to the public lecture by web inventor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, at Melbourne  University where the winner was to be announced.

To follow what happens and who wins, follow the OKFN blog at http://au.okfn.org/2013/02/05/the-data-newsroom/

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Infographic: The top government Twitter accounts in Australia

In January 2013 I found that the total tweets by all government agencies and councils in Australia I track had exceeded one million.

As a reflection of that achievement I've worked through the data I have on the use of Twitter by government agencies and councils in Australia to produce the following infographic (scroll for more).

I'll be producing state by state (including territories and federal), local and topic-based infographics as a follow-up over the next few weeks, with more detailed information.

I'm considering writing an academic paper on the use of Twitter by government in Australia in case there's any academics out there who would be interested in co-authoring.

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Infographic: How Aussies with mobile phones spend their weekends

Google has released a fascinating infographic detailing the mobile use of Aussies in their blog post, Insights into the Mobile Aussie Weekend.

Useful for communications and policy people in government, it provides insights into how Australians are using their mobile phone to search the internet over weekends based on Google's statistical data.

A Day in the Mobile Aussie Weekend

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Register now for BarCamp Canberra

BarCamp Canberra is back, with the 6th annual event to take place on Saturday 16 March at the Inspire Centre.

The free event, which annually attracts 100-150 people, is a participation-based unconference, where every attendee is encouraged to actively participate in workshops, give a presentation on a favoured topic and to network with other attendees.

Given it is Canberra, alongside design, technology, data and similar topics, policy development and Government 2.0 are regularly subjects of discussion and presentations.

Note that third of tickets have already been booked for the event, so if you want to go, register now at: http://barcampcanberra2013.eventbrite.com

Full details are at the BarCamp Canberra website: http://barcampcanberra.org/

To learn more about BarCamps, visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp

Caveat: I'm on the unorganising committee for BarCamp Canberra.

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Infographic: Which federal politicians are tweeting?

I'm continuing to work on statistics around government agencies and politicians who use Twitter in Australia.

Next week I'll provide detailed statistics on agencies, however given the date of the next Federal election was announced this week, I thought I'd provide a little more information on which of our politicians are tweeting, using the infographic below.

Interestingly while the Government is slightly better represented on Twitter than the oppositions (when including Independents and Greens), the shadow Ministry is better represented than the Ministry, particularly Shadow Parliamentary Secretaries (effectively junior Ministers) who are far likelier to use Twitter than their counterparts.

More statistics are available in my post last week and via my Google spreadsheet, which can be accessed via this post: http://egovau.blogspot.sg/2012/10/update-77-of-australian-federal.html

Federal politician Twitter accounts in Australia | Infographics

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