Don't forget to sign up for the events during Innovation month

Innovation month (for the public service and its partners) starts in less than two weeks!

This year it's gone national, with events in almost every capital city and some regional locations as well.

So if you're  interested in innovation, don't forget to sign up for some of the great events.

Full and current details are at the Public Sector Innovation blog, however here's the events that are on:

7 July	Innovation Month Launch	Details TBC
8 July	Innovation Summit 2014: Pattern Breaking and beyond… The Pattern Breaking and beyond Summit will be an interactive, informative and inspirational event allowing you to walk away with practical tools on how to nurture new ideas, whether they are simple or more sophisticated, within your organisation.	Open event 9am – 5:30pm Scarborough House, Atlantic Street, Woden, Canberra Tickets: $48
10 July	Policy Visualisation Network Discussions The Policy Visualisation Network will be running a series of discussions in this half-day event based in Canberra with online participation available in various cities around the country. Speakers will be the Acting Australian Statistician of the ABS, Jonathan Palmer, Senior Researcher from the Department of Parliamentary Services Toby Bellwood, Director of the Capability & Standards Spatial Policy Branch at the Department of Communications, Tim Neal, Director – Coordination and Gov 2.0 at the Department of Finance, Pia Waugh, and Branch Head of the ABS Customer Services Branch Merry Branson.	9.30am to 12.00pm Various locations. Canberra Sydney Melbourne Brisbane Adelaide Hobart Darwin
10 July	Change Governance and Alternative Models for the Public Sector Changes and innovation in public sector management and governance affect all public service agencies and employees. This presentation will compare public sector management in Australia with other Anglophone countries. It will raise awareness of effective change mechanisms, and alternative models for the public service. Presented by John Halligan, Professor of Public Administration, Institute of Governance and Policy Analysis at the University of Canberra.	For APS members 2 – 3pm (AEST) Canberra
10 July	Foreign Ideas Three staff get a platform to share an innovative idea or unique external experience in a TEDx-style event. Topics will encompass a range of foreign policy, trade, aid and development issues.	DFAT staff only Canberra
10 July	Google Glass a certain reality The Department of Education will present a forum on wearable technologies. Alexander Hayes, from the University of Canberra and University of Wollongong – will look at the socio-ethical implications of wearable technology in education. Matthew Purcell (and students) of the Canberra Grammar School – will share their experiences of the application of Google Glass in school based learning and provide a demonstration.	Open event 10 – 11am Department of Education, Canberra
11-13 July	GovHack An open data competition that runs across the country simultaneously. GovHack seeks to draw participation from anyone in the community that has an interest in unlocking the potential of data, innovation and entrepreneurism. You will have access to freshly released data to create apps, data visualisations, mashups, ideas, art – unleash your creativity! Join in, enjoy the free food and compete for kudos and the chance to win amazing prizes!	Open event 3pm 11 July – 6pm 13 July (AEST) Ballarat, Brisbane, Canberra, Cairns, Gold Coast, Tasmania, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Adelaide, Mount Gambier
14 - 18 July	iDHS Online Forum POWER Challenge For one week, the iDHS Online Forum will host a Challenge asking staff to provide their ideas on how they should be recognised and rewarded for innovative ideas that lead to change in the department. The iDHS Team will host the challenge and will monitor the iDHS Online Forum throughout the week.	For DHS staff Online
17 July	Is Australia ready for the public service to be truly innovative? Hear public sector leaders and commentators discuss whether Australia is ready for a truly innovative public service. Traditionally, the words, innovation and public sector, in close proximity in the same sentence have caused some nervousness. Is it the fear of failure through doing something different? And, sometimes, is it just too hard to justify and rationalise some fails as part of the overall innovative process.	Open event 6:00pm to 7.30pm, Questacon Learning Centre, Deakin. $77pp (inc GST) for IPAA ACT Members $110pp (inc GST) for Non IPAA ACT members
17 July	Uncomfortable Ideas for the Public Service – ‘Failure: is it the dirty word that we can all learn from?’ Two senior presenters will discuss failure and its role in innovation at the first of this lunchtime speaker series about the uncomfortable ideas that might be inhibiting innovation in the public service.	Open event 12pm Canberra Presented by the Department of Industry, supported by NICTA’s eGov Cluster.
18 July	Risk and Innovation Canberra This workshop, run by the Australian Centre for Social Innovation, is for anyone serious about innovation and developing policy and programs that are more effective at creating social outcomes. The event will explore innovation and risk from a range of perspectives and will focus on how to reduce the risk of innovation and how to use innovation to reduce risk.	Open event 1 – 4pm Canberra
19 July	GovCampAU This year Innovation Month will feature the first nationally ’networked’ GovCamp. Building on GovCamps from previous years, the events will be an ‘unconference’ style with participatory sessions and social knowledge sharing on a range of innovation themes. So far, Innovation GovCamp events have been confirmed in Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane with other cities to follow.	Open event 10am – 5:00pm Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide (TBC)
21 July	Risk and Innovation Melbourne This workshop, run by the Australian Centre for Social Innovation, is for anyone serious about innovation and developing policy and programs that are more effective at creating social outcomes. The event will explore innovation and risk from a range of perspectives and will focus on how to reduce the risk of innovation and how to use innovation to reduce risk.	Open event 1 – 4pm Melbourne
22 July	Idea management systems: the devil’s in the details This interactive workshop, featuring expert input from public servants with experience in developing and maintaining systems, will explore developing idea management systems and some of the challenges an organisation can face in implementing the popular innovation tool.	For APS members 2 – 4pm Canberra
22 July	Future State 2030 Future State 2030 looks at the future of the public service as we know it. How will government position itself to handle megatrends including shifting demographics, the rise of the individual, economic interconnectedness, economic power shifts, climate change and urbanisation? Run in conjunction with KPMG.	DFAT Building, Barton, Canberra.
22 July	The Great Innovation Debate; Innovation should make you feel uncomfortable	For DHS staff 12:00 – 1:30pm
23 July	Learning about Design This one day workshop, led by the Design Capability team from the Department of Human Services, will cover the what and why of design, design principles, frameworks and tools, and using design in the workplace.	For APS members 9am – 4:30pm Canberra (Fully subscribed and a waitlist for tickets is in place)
23 July	The Art of Intrapreneurship: How to innovate like an entrepreneur This short, 3.5hr hands-on workshop is for passionate and purpose-driven Government employees who wish to develop their entrepreneurial skills to create a more innovative & collaborative culture in their organisation. Facilitated by leading intrapreneurs in government, you will lead your own learning journey through a selection of the topics such as rapid prototyping and pitching, relational mapping, and piloting. These topics have been drawn from a combination of disciplines across entrepreneurship, social sciences and design-thinking that is currently being used in Government organisations to help drive innovation.	Open event 9:00am – 12:30pm Melbourne
23 July	Risk and Innovation Adelaide This workshop, run by the Australian Centre for Social Innovation, is for anyone serious about innovation and developing policy and programs that are more effective at creating social outcomes. The event will explore innovation and risk from a range of perspectives and will focus on how to reduce the risk of innovation and how to use innovation to reduce risk.	Open event 1 – 4pm Adelaide
24 July	Uncomfortable Ideas for the Public Service – ‘Leadership or Leadersunk: are new models of leadership needed for innovation in the public service?’ Two senior presenters will discuss leadership in the modern APS and how it can support innovation in the public service at this second event in the lunchtime speaker series on uncomfortable ideas that might be inhibiting innovation in the public service.	Open event 12pm Canberra Presented by the Department of Industry, supported by NICTA’s eGov Cluster
24 July	Risk and Innovation Sydney This workshop, run by the Australian Centre for Social Innovation, is for anyone serious about innovation and developing policy and programs that are more effective at creating social outcomes. The event will explore innovation and risk from a range of perspectives and will focus on how to reduce the risk of innovation and how to use innovation to reduce risk.	Open event 1 – 4pm Sydney
25 July	Creating a culture and environment for Innovation Dr Jill Charker, CEO of ComSuper will talk about how ComSuper is taking the first steps to create a culture of innovation and will touch on how ideas don’t have to be big to have a real impact before introducing Paul Lowe, Head of the 2011 Australian Population Census program. Paul will talk about how the problem of increasing lack of participation in the Census was addressed through an innovative communications campaign.	For APS members 1:30 – 3pm Belconnen
28 July	Local Innovations Show us how you've solved challenges in your workplace! The iDHS Team will be launching a new, permanent page on the iDHS Online Forum that highlights innovative ideas that staff have implemented in their work areas. Staff will be able to submit stories, photos, and other images detailing the problem they’ve solved and how. By highlighting staff creativity, the iDHS Team hopes to encourage innovating thinking as well as add to a growing culture that celebrates innovation and invention.	For DHS staff
24 July	Doing more with less: Do networks work? Communities of practice, working groups and networks can help organisations innovate by giving people a way to share knowledge and to collaborate on policy and program issues. A lively panel discussion will explore communities of practice, working groups and networks. How do they leverage the knowledge of members to develop policy? Do they impact program delivery? Are they always the answer for time-poor staff?	For DFAT staff only
30 July	Cross-agency collaboration – what’s the magic ingredient? Collaboration is a key component of effective innovation. This workshop, jointly run with the Department of Education, will look at what makes for successful inter-agency collaboration.	For APS members 9:30am – 12:00pm Canberra. From the Department of Industry and the Department of Education
30 July	Transforming Public Consultation in the UK using Electronic Channels Consultation with the public is core to government function and a critical part of service delivery and change; frequently these consultations are paper-based, labour intensive, and only elicit response from a particular demographic. This interactive webinar will cover how the Local Government Boundary Commission for England has transformed their consultation portal to broaden their consultee base, and how the Registers of Scotland is crowd-sourcing data from interested stakeholders via an innovative portal to perform their regulatory function.	Open event 1 - 1.45pm (AEST) Online
31 July	Uncomfortable Ideas for the Public Service – ‘Create or Decline: Can you be an effective public servant if you’re not innovating?’  Two presenters will discuss whether a changing world means that it is becoming more risky to stick with the status quo, and whether for individual public servants innovation will be a core part of their role. This is the third event in the lunchtime speaker series on uncomfortable ideas that might be inhibiting innovation in the public service.	Open event 12pm Canberra Presented by the Department of Industry, supported by NICTA’s eGov Cluster
1 August	Innovation 4 Public Purpose: A National Conversation	(TBC)

Read full post...

View summary...

UK makes learning to program mandatory in all state-run primary and secondary schools from September

In the UK, from September this year (the start of their school year), all primary and secondary students in state-run schools will be taught how to program computers as a mandatory part of their national curriculum.

Announced as part of the UK's 'Year of Code', the introduction of this new mandatory computing curriculum was necessary, the UK Education Minister said, "if we didn't want the Googles and Microsofts of tomorrow to be created elsewhere."

This is stimulating the development of innovative programs, like Everyone Can Program and prompting massive retraining of teachers to support the curriculum.

Year of code promotional video

This type of vision is rare amongst governments globally, and this step is likely to give the UK an enormous boost to its economy over the next twenty years - by which time every adult in the UK under the age of 38 will have had some experience in coding.

Of course this doesn't mean that every child in the UK will choose to become a computer programmer, just as mandatory maths in schools hasn't raised a nation of mathematicians in Australia.

However it raises the bar unilaterally for the entire population and is likely to make the UK the most technologically-savvy and advanced nation in the world over time.

This initiative is attracting significant attention in Europe and North America, however has been largely ignored in Australia - where the attention is on future cuts to school spending, a review of the national curriculum and the decision of the Federal Government to invest in Latin.

In my view Australia's current position on education is extremely worrying for our future.

The declining number of IT graduates has already been recognised as a critical threat and there have been a number of reports about a growing shortfall in digital skills.

Most government agencies I speak to talk about how hard it is to attract good digital talent - or retain it - and digital literacy is an issue not only across the Australian public sector, but across the private and not-for-profit sectors as well.

We aren't going to address this with a focus on teaching Latin, increasing the religious content of our curriculum, or even by maintaining the status quo of mandatory English and Maths.

For Australia to remain relevant, competitive and successful - with the standards of living that Australians have become used to, we need to look seriously at where coding and other digital skills fit within our education system, while also addressing the shortfall of teachers we have to teach these skills.

Read full post...

View summary...

The economic value of open data to Australia

This morning I attended the breakfast launch of the Open for Business: How Open Data Can Help Achieve the G20 Growth Target report.

The report was written by Nicholas Gruen (former chair of the Gov 2.0 Taskforce) and his team from Lateral Economics, with support from Victoria University and commissioned by the Omidyar Network (the not-for-profit organisation established by eBay's founder).

It makes a compelling economic case for open data, estimating aggregate direct and indirect value for Australia was in excess of $15 billion per year. This was based on estimating the economic value of open data just across the G20's seven priority areas, which I've provided below as a table.

G20 priority area	open data value  per annum to Australia
Anti-corruption	$1.5 billion
Employment	$3.4 billion
Energy	$1.7 billion
Fiscal and Monetary policy	$3.6 billion
Infrastructure	$3.6 billion
Trade	$1.6 billion

Relative progress on open government data areas
Source: http://theodi.github.io/open-data-barometer-viz

The report suggested that Australia was still doing very well in the open data space, ranked 3rd amongst G20 nations (7th or 8th overall globally) - but that there was still much room for improvement and learning from other countries.

During the presentation Martin Tisne from the Omidyar Network said that Mexico and India had demonstrated leadership in opening up education data, while South Africa had taken great steps with open budgetary data - making the point that different nations have excelled in different aspects of openness, but few had demonstrated consistent strength across all aspects of open data.

The report included a great deal of detail on different areas in which governments could achieve economic value through open data - and also highlighted that the cost of realising these benefits could be up to a third of the value received, giving a clear signal of the need for government to invest in this area, not simply allow it to thrive or die on its own with no support.

Both Nicholas Gruen and Tony Shepherd, head of the Commission of Audit, highlighted the need for senior Ministerial leadership, and Gruen noted that no Australian Prime Minister had ever been a passionate supporter of open data, to Australia's detriment where the US and UK had significant political as well as public service leadership for openness.

The presentation also highlighted some of the current pitfalls for entrepreneurs seeking to take advantage of open data while there was no consistent commitment to its release.

Gruen illustrated this point by discussing APSjobs.info, a site created at a past GovHack, that mashes up data on public servant movements from APSJobs.gov.au. He said there was clear added value realised via APSJobs.info, which could be a useful reference tool for recruiters and agencies seeking to identify the best talent.

The report states that:

APSJobs.info's business model was predicated on its development of successful technical methods to 'scrape' the data from pseudo-print PDFs. However frequent changes to the formatting and layout of these files meant continuous re-development of the PDF conversion software to continue to access and add value to the data. The skills required to perform such work (data-mining and text-analysis) are in great demand, and the cost of frequently using such resources exceeded the benefits to Pivotal Analytics.

APSJobs.Info is now defunct - a casualty of government inconsistency.

The Open for Business: How Open Data Can Help Achieve the G20 Growth Target report is highly material in establishing the value of open data to governments and the steps they need to take to realise the economic value that could result from greater release of reusable data.

Hopefully Australian governments will continue to build their commitments to open data and we'll see some of this value filtering back into our economic.

Read full post...

View summary...

Mirror, mirror - can modern societies survive looking into the internet and seeing their own reflections?

One of the most major challenges for governments and societies around the world today is the rapidly declining trust in politicians, institutions and governance systems.

I'm willing to make the claim that politicians today are no more corrupt, self-serving or beholden to special interests than politicians were fifty, a hundred or even a thousand years ago.

Regardless of the political system in place, it takes hard work, compromise, negotiation and a willingness to be pragmatic and flexible in one's values and ethics to achieve high office. Even the cleanest and most ethical politicians have to deal with people with different standards, and must find ways to accommodate diverse views in order to achieve great ends.

I'm also willing to say that it isn't the economic situation. The world has faced huge financial strains in the past, and while governments may rise and fall (as Greece's has done), or constitutions may be redrawn (as in Iceland) the underlying governance systems have rarely changed as a result.

No country changed from a democracy to something else as a result of the GFC, and none changed from 'something else' to a democracy as a result of it either.

Maybe its our institutions - are government agencies, courts, armies and police failing in their jobs?

Well no, to a large degree public services around the world remain highly capable of delivering the services they are required to deliver. Of course there's always room for improvement, and successive governments have changed the configuration and goals of public services - but the core capability remains largely intact, at least to-date.

So what do I believe is causing the rapid decline in trust, potentially the greatest threat facing governments today?

It's the rise of the internet and supporting technologies.

The internet - particularly social media - has become a mirror that society cannot escape.

Every action and decision taken by elected politicians is now almost instantly communicated, critiqued and analysed by thousands or millions of people - many looking for the slightest sign of deviation from a past statement, position or decision.

Websites have sprung up to collate and consider every public political statement - and some of their private ones too. Tools such as Polliwoops ensure that even comments that politicians later delete remain accessible - Google's cache is another way to find deleted media statements made in a politician's early career, and even government-funded platforms such as PANDORA are repositories of deleted Prime Ministerial speeches (removed so as not to 'confuse' voters).

Old-school politicians, who chameleon-like reflect the views of the physical audience in front of them, are potentially finding instant mass communication the greatest challenge. Gone are the days where a politicians could travel from event to event, each time subtly adjusting their message to appeal to the audience at hand.

Now every inconsistency, weasel word, off-the-cuff remark and error of judgement by elected politicians (as well as many unelected ones and public figures) is captured, shared and discussed online.

And that's just the facts - the internet is also full of commentary, predictions, suppositions and lies about political leaders, some benign, some actively trying to understand or help and some trying to bring them down.

The problem isn't that our politicians are flawed, our economies failing and our institutions corrupt - many countries have been there before and survived, even thrived.

The problem is that society is now seeing both truth and fiction in greater quantity and detail than ever before - the mirror of the internet is always on, and no society can choose to look away from it.

It is easier to believe politicians when all we see are the good things they do. It is easier to believe in a system of government when we don't think about the deals done to support it.

However people today now expect some form of purity from their political leaders that has never been achieved in history - they want leaders better than they are, without flaws, with no need to compromise and who appear mystically in a leadership role without years of learning their craft and making mistakes on the way.

How would the political leaders of the past have been effective in today's mirror society?

Would any of them successfully been able to face the mirror without flinching?

Can any aspiring political leaders now make it into parliament without casting a mixed reflection?

Even a political leader who is pure and uncompromised in every way will find that hostile elements - rivals, other parties, lobby groups, disruptive citizens - attempt to distort their reflection into a funhouse caricature that the public reject.

I wonder whether our system of government can survive the relentless focus of this mirror. Whether we'll attract competent politicians, see ongoing mass civil disobedience or simply lose all trust and faith in the people who put themselves forward to be elected and the system they are elected into.

Will we learn to accept that all political systems, their institutions, leaders and decisions, are flawed under sufficient scrutiny. That everyone has something they're not proud of, or can be distorted into inappropriateness, in their past, and accept that our leaders and system are what they are - faults and all?

Will we demand systemic change - that our electoral systems are reformed and the people inhabiting the current system be removed, possibly even tried?

Or will we simply opt-out. Treat politics and our governments as an annoyance that we evade wherever possible and only engage when we have to - leaving us at the mercy of politicians who choose to use their powers for actions not in the interest of the public?

I really don't know which course will be taken in many countries around the world, but I do expect to see many more governments fall over the next twenty years, hollowed out through loss of talent and put into the hands of petty tyrants, or collapsing under their own weight.

However what I hope to see are governments and societies finding ways to truly look at themselves in the mirror. To rationalise that while they can no longer persist with the myth that they are the 'finest of them all' they're actually not that bad looking - despite the wrinkles and scars.

I also hope to see governments recognise that they need to experiment more at the core, not simply around the edges - reverse trends towards political functionaries being the majority of elected members and institute practices which turn parliaments back into the servants of their societies, rather than their masters.

This will take real political courage and will to change.

Ironically political courage may be one thing that increases as the as the mirror's reflections become more and more defined.

Soon anyone seeking to enter politics will need to have courage simply to put themselves forward for election, because if there is a single blemish on their reflection they will be hounded relentlessly.

Standing up to that scrutiny, displeasure, disappointment and abuse in order to make a difference through public office will take enormous public courage.

Ultimately, however, societies will need to find a new accommodations. We will need to accept that there's as many pure politicians as there are unicorns, and when we look into the mirror of the internet the reflection we see isn't solely that of the politicians we elect, it is a reflection of our entire society and the choices we have made to create it.

If we want to feel something other than disappointment or horror when we look at our reflection, our society's reflection, in the internet, then we will have to consciously, personally and collectively, make the decisions that will allow us to gaze on it with pride.

Read full post...

View summary...

Only four weeks to GovHack - register now!

GovHack, the largest open data competition in Australia, is only four weeks away.

With over $70,000 in national prizes, and local prizes in each of the 11 locations around the country, there's not much time left to join the already over 1,000 registered participants to mash-up government data.

Register now at www.govhack.org/register-2014/

Read full post...

View summary...

It's nice to see government agencies share with each other

One of the most frustrating and, I think, silliest things I found when working in Australian government agencies was how almost every department, agency and statutory body developed almost all of its own policies, procedures, software and tools.

There was often 'undercover' sharing - where people in agencies would ask their colleagues in others for copies of their whatever policy, so they could craft one just like it - however there was no central repository where public servants could go and browse standard templated policy documents or access software code developed by other agencies to resolve certain common issues.

At one stage I actively looked at building a research directory for government - either from within an agency, or as a third-party site - where public servants could list the research their agencies had undertaken and the research they needed to access or undertake, so that it could be effectively shared between departments, saving money in re-running research and informing policy decisions.

This attempt didn't get off the ground as senior management strongly felt they had no obligation to share information on the research work conducted with 'THEIR' public dollars with other agencies - even the fact that they'd undertaken it in the first place.

Fortunately most of those senior managers have now retired (literally), and the new crop coming through are realising that, cash and time constrained as they are, that fighting over which agency 'owns' a specific policy, custom software or research that they commissioned gets in the way of productivity, efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

One of the outcomes has been the latest Australian Government whole-of-government website, GovShare.

GovShare had been talked about for nearly five years and has now finally arrived as a central location for agencies to share their work with other agencies to build standardisation and save money across the public service.

As the About page states, GovShare has been designed to support and promote collaboration across the Australian Public Service, and as an online resource it has been provided to APS agencies and their staff to:

• publish, discover and access a broad range of artefacts used within the APS, such as frameworks, guidelines, policies, standards, architectural models, open source software and a host of other ICT and business artefacts; 
• explore APS ICT services and solutions through the Agency Online Services Database and Agency Solutions Database; 
• find skilled people across the APS with expertise in particular fields or products; and 
• contribute to online discussions using the forum.

This type of sharing helps save money and time in government. It allows agencies to collaborate to design the best possible policies, guidelines and software and then customise it if needed for their specific needs.

While the benefits of the site won't necessarily be clearly visible outside of government circles, the efficiencies it will support will help agencies focus their resources on achieving the goals of government rather than on endlessly recreating the policies already in place elsewhere in government.

The site already contains nearly 2,000 'artefacts' for review, reuse and adaptation, and hopefully over the next few years this will swell as more agencies become active contributors as well as takers from the site.

It will also hopefully expand beyond its ICT roots into other business areas - allowing agencies to share standard communication strategy templates, HR policies, procurement guidebooks and financial guidelines - tools and resources that help public servants understand and abide by the rules the government sets in these areas.

Hopefully the site will expand beyond federal government as well, bringing state and local into the fold. These governments often face the same challenges, often with fewer resources, and GovShare could have a large role to play in reducing costs at all levels of government in Australia.

Ultimately it would be wonderful to see 'packages' of policies and guidelines that a newly created agency or statutory body can simply pick up, adapt and use for their operations.

This would be similar to the 'agency on a USB stick' concept that I've been talking about for several years around a set of software platforms and settings that would allow an agency to put in place a solid set of operational systems in a very short time.

However it is, as yet, early days for GovShare. Its success relies on three things, ongoing support from the department hosting it (Finance), active participation by agencies in 'gifting' their work to a common store for other agencies to access and the political will and nous to not kill the program before it bears fruit.

I hope Govshare will succeed, and think the omens are good. Its journey over the next five years will be interesting to watch.

Read full post...

View summary...

For a truly open parliament, look to the UK

The UK Government has just released the alpha version of data.parliament.uk - - a site designed to host open data on the UK Parliament and its proceedings.

(An Alpha for those who don't understand the term is a first release of a software product that is usually tested only by the developers).

The alpha release of www.data.parliament.uk

The site represents a new frontier for parliaments - making information on the discussions and deliberations of politicians far more actively available in ways that it can be reused to inform the public.

The site is sparse at the moment - only a few datasets on parliamentary questions, on how MPs have voted (something we don't publish in Australia despite it being common data available in North America and Europe) and briefing papers.

It will be interesting to see how it grows in form, function and data and whether it becomes a truly useful source for citizens.

Read full post...

View summary...

Could it ever happen in Australia? 2nd annual Civic Hackathon in the White House

One of the starkest differences between Australia and the US's Government 2.0 movements is the mandate and level of support provided officially by our most influential elected officials.

In the US Government 2.0 has been championed both by the President and by leading politicians on both sides of their political divide. 

Regardless of ideology there has been a recognition by US political institutions that involving citizens more deeply in governance is a necessity in an age when almost every individual voter has access to the world's knowledge, the ability to organise, publish and influence public views in ways unprecedented in history.

An example of this is taking place today. A civic hackathon at the White House organised by the government to marshall the collective brainpower of the country's smartest people to improve one of the US government's most visible Government 2.0 tools.

The #WHhackathon has been organised to build on the US's We The People epetition site, which allows all US citizens to create and contribute to online petitions that, if they reach 100,000 petitioners, receives an official response from the US government.

The US government released the code to We The People in 2012 as open source, allowing governments around the world to reuse it to create their own epetition sites.

More recently the US government created an API for We The People, allowing other petition sites, organisations and individuals to read data from the platform and present it in new ways, creating new services.

The hackathon in the White House is designed to build on this API, creating value for the government and community while increasing government transparency and empowering citizens to influence the representatives elected to govern them.

Could this happen in Australia?

Could an Australian Prime Minister make a public statement, and unbreakable commitment, to openness in government, to investing in initiatives that help citizens participate in the governance of the country and opening up the black box of decision-making to give citizens real ways to influence outcomes?

Could an Australian Prime Minister take a leadership role in recognising that governments can't and no longer have to do all the heavy lifting in designing the systems for government, developing policy and services or achieving positive outcomes for citizens?

Could they invite in voices beyond the usual lobbyist suspects to contribute actively to the success of the country, to help in cutting costs, innovating and transforming our government to meet the challenges of the 21st century?

Well yes - an Australian Prime Minister could.

However we are yet to see one with this vision, and as a result Australia is being left behind.

Australia doesn't lack the ability, we don't lack the expertise in the public sector and we don't lack the technical smarts.

All we lack is political vision and commitment.

Read full post...

View summary...

How important really is open government to Australians?

The United Nations is currently running a very interesting global consultation asking people about the six issues that matter most to them.

Named myWorld2015 (vote.myworld2015.org), the consultation has attracted over 2.1 million responses from around the world.

Of these, there have been 14,896 responses from Australia (viewable through the data page) - and it is very interesting to see which issues the Australian respondents have put as the most important to them.

The 'usual suspects' are at the top of the list, a good education, access to clean water and sanitation, protecting forests, rivers and oceans and affordable and nutritious food.

Here's where it gets interesting.

The issue that comes fifth for Australians is "an honest and responsive government".

This issue rises to 2nd when looking at male Australian responses, and falls to 6th position when looking at female.

It is the most important issue for Australians aged over 61, ranked third for Australians aged 41-60, 5th for those aged 16-45 and 6th for those aged 15 and under.

Now I should note there's 16 issues to choose from and the only other issue directly relating to government is "political freedoms".

This ranks much lower - 11th for all Australians.

So what can be drawn from this data?

Australians do feel that "honest and responsive government" is a relatively important issue for them - less important than the environment or education, but more important than better healthcare, protection from discrimination or action on climate change.

Wrapped up in this is the notion that governments act in a truthful and upfront way, that they are accountable, transparent and, to some degree at least, open.

So if any Minister or senior public servant questions the value of open government, point them to MyWorld2015 and the views of nearly 15,000 Australians.

It might help them change their mind.

Read full post...

View summary...

My Speech at the Sir Rupert Hamer Record Management Awards

On 22nd May 2014 the Public Records Office of Victoria hosted the 16th annual Sir Rupert Hamer Record Management Awards.

While Records Management is not often highly regarded by people outside the field, however it plays a vital role for organisations in retaining a history of their activities and interactions and, when their actions and decisions have public impact, on the history of a state or nation.

I was honoured to be invited to be the keynote speaker and, despite having my iPad stolen at Melbourne Airport, forcing me to fall back on less well constructed notes, gave a speech about the challenges of records management in the digital age.

Unfortunately as my notes had partially been lost I don't have a full record of my speech, but what I do have is included below.

Ladies, gentlemen and distinguished guests,
 It is a great honour to have the opportunity to speak to you tonight on a topic I have become very passionate about – the importance of public records. I wanted to start by share my earliest workplace experience with record keeping. It was in my first job after university, working for a management consultancy as an analyst on Sydney’s north shore in 1992.
 Computers were just coming into offices and my new employer had paid roughly six thousand dollars on a brand-new Apple 2ci for me, with the very latest in word processing and spreadsheet programs – AppleWorks – which many of you have probably never heard of. My first week was spent climbing on desks to network my new computer to the only other computer in the office, operated by the Office Manager, using Appletalk cables. The Office Manager’s computer was probably the most valuable electronic device in the office. She used it to transcribe all of the work by the consultants into formal reports and documents. Every week she diligently backed up her computer to a tape drive. Each month the last four weeks tapes were driven to a bank a few suburbs away and stored in a safety deposit box.
 The IP in that box was the value of the company. One day, a few months after I arrived, I decided to test our backups to ensure that we could retrieve their contents. The Office Manager and I brought back several tapes from the bank and loaded each in turn into the tape recorder. For each we tried to restore all the files that had been stored – a process that took around half an hour. And in each case to her mounting horror, we found the tape was blank. It turned out that none of the tapes she’d been diligently recording for several years had stored any information, because the consultant who had set up the system had made a mistake in the settings, and no-one had ever tested the tapes before. The real value and importance of public records really didn’t strike home for me until three years ago at a conference in Perth where a representative of the WA State Records Office told us a story of how public records saved a man’s life. The story goes something like this – the man’s parents migrated to Australia in the 1940s, bringing with them the little that remained of their lives in Europe. Their names were changed on arrival and they settled in a rural region where they could continue farming as their family had for centuries. They had a son, who was born at home and baptized at the local church – which burnt down some years later, taking all its records with it. The son was never issued with a birth certificate, and as he never aspired to university or to travel, neither he nor his parents ever applied for a passport or other official papers. His parents never bothered to formally become Australian citizens and when setting up bank accounts, mortgages and businesses in the 1970s he was never required to provide a birth certificate or other official documents. Moving ahead to the 21^st century, the man’s parents had died and he was still living on their farm. He found himself in financial straits and applied to the government for support for the first time in his life. This brought him to the attention of officials for the first time and, when it became clear he had no birth certificate, no passport, no living relatives and no proof that he was Australian, the government set about the process of having him deported to the country from which his parents came. He didn’t speak the language, had no living family there – even the country had disappeared following the fall of the Soviet Union.
 He tried every avenue of appeal, and when they were all exhausted he went to the WA State Records Office to see if they had any evidence that he had been born and lived in Australia for his entire life. The State Records Office went back through their archives and managed to locate the records of the small rural school he had attended as a child, providing physical documentation of his enrolment when aged 5 years old. On the basis of that information, the Australian Government ended the deportation action and granted him citizenship.
 He was able to access the benefits he was entitled to and to remain living on his farm. This story made me realise how important public records can be. They don’t only capture a record of who we were and why decisions were made. They can also have real impacts on peoples ‘lives. As Record Managers, you’re not just preserving a historic record of what happened, but building a living breathing memory of Australian lives. And I commend you all for this. Record keeping may sometimes be undervalued, but is never unimportant. When I entered government I learnt of the record keeping principles that underpin many of the activities of agencies. Most of my colleagues were diligent record keepers – diligently setting up files for every project and sending folders of printed documents to the warehouses where they were stored. It was harder in my work – which was largely online – there wasn’t always clear guidance on how online communications should be stored as records. At one stage we were instructed to print every page of our websites, and reprint pages every time they changed. Over the three months this was the agency’s policy we printed over 20,000 pages  - and even then I think we missed many of the changes. I also recall the early concern and confusion over social media record keeping in the late 2000s. Should every tweets, posts and update sent or received by an agency be captured and stored, or simply those related to decisions? What tools were available to capture social media messages, and did the government even have the legal right to take copies of updates submitted by other people? I still encounter some concerns and lack of clarity over how to manage digital conversations – and fair enough.
 For the last hundred years record managers have dealt largely in one record format – paper. Governments could easily legislate what was and wasn’t a record. Paper could easily be captured, stored and controlled. They could be easily indexed, sought and found. Paper records could be preserved for hundreds of years - and pending long-term changes to language,  they could be easily read by future generations. However the world of paper records is now disappearing. Ever since the first Australian government websites went live in 1996 we’ve seen a gradual move from physical to digital records. Suddenly many documents no longer ever exist as paper records, except if there’s a conscious choice to print them. Decisions are requested, discussed and resolved via email. Policy documents go through dozens of iterations before anyone thinks to print them. Citizen enquiries arrive via social channels and are resolved in the same way. And suddenly rather than a single format, paper, record managers have had to contend with hundreds of formats, which can appear and disappear over a short time. From WordStar and Wordpress to Tweets and Facebook posts, Pinterest pins and Disquis comments – record keeping has fragmented. Each of these formats can individually be captured, as can their context – the format and conversation thread for which each is a part. However preserving many of them for later access is becoming a challenge.
 Right now it is hard to find working versions of many old word processing programs. In the future it is likely to be hard to find tools that can reproduce government records s in a contextual form from messages on many of today’s social media platforms. Beyond this moving feast of formats, we’ve seen a huge increase and fragmentation in the types of records that governments and the public are generating.
 Alongside the white papers and reports, memos and Ministerial correspondence that governments continue to create, information is increasingly conveyed in shorter, faster and more frequent chunks through emails, tweets and SMS. I can see a future where rebuilding decision-making processes, or responding to Freedom of Information requests, increasingly involves the skills of a jigsaw master. Historians of the future will have an advantage in that so much information is captured and stored, however the ‘bones’ of the past will increasingly need to be pieced together from powdered dust – thousands or millions of small pieces of information. The other main challenge for record keepers into the future is the risk of a digital black hole. Other societies have already found that as information is digitalized more of it is only kept in a transitory way, or is stored in ways difficult to retrieved. When I worked in government, as soon as I left an agency my email address was deleted and all the emails lost – as were my folders and files on the computers I had been assigned. Yes much of this was supposed to be backed up – however it required IT skills and time to restore, a cost impost that agencies could not bear in a wholesale way. Nominally these records were kept, but to be truthful, they could never be easily accessed. This digital black hole is probably the biggest challenge for record management today. While so many records are kept, they are kept in very different ways on different platforms and can be hard to translate into retainable formats while preserving the context and conversations. Records management professionals have to understand how to best preserve each type of record, not simply in paper or even digital files, but in formats that will speak to future generations, providing not only the words but the meaning, the context and the broader environment. They need to do this with an explosion of information and data, while files formats are constantly evolving and within a world of increasing scrutiny. This is an amazingly large challenge, and an important one for the history of the state, Australia and humanity, and fortunately record managers in Victoria have the experience and expertise to take on and be successful at this challenge.

Read full post...

View summary...

The latest video communicating social media policy to public servants - Social Media Man

The Queensland Government recently introduced a new approach to communicate departmental social media policy to staff, a light and humorous video featuring 'Social Media Man'.

It's the latest in a line of video-based tools used to communicate social media policy to public servants in Australia, following some great work from Victoria.

The first, in March 2011, was the Victorian Department of Justice's Social Media Policy.

This video (embedded below) took a solid and dependable approach, providing a top-level view of the Department's (then new) Social Media Policy.

This video became the 'go-to' standard for government agencies across the country and was seen globally as an effective example of how agencies could leverage social channels and particularly video to better communicate with their own staff.

The video has been adapted and reused by a number of agencies and councils around the country, including the federal Department of Human Services.

(My company, Delib Australia, has the code for the video and has repurposed and redeveloped it for councils. We'd be happy to do this for you too.)

After several years of hiatus, the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) took the bar higher earlier this year with the release in April of their Social Media Policy video.



Using a cartoon-drawing style, this video supported the release of the DPC's social media policy, which is also available on their website at dpc.vic.gov.au/index.php/resources/communication/social-media

The latest entrant in the mix, hot on the heels of Victoria's DPC, is the Queensland Government's 'Social Media Man'.

A mild-manner public servant otherwise known as 'Garry', Social Media Man gives staff at DNRM, DTESB, DAFF & DEWS an overview of their obligations under their social media policy.

The video is available at Youtube: youtube.com/watch?v=HaYlcZur5_E&feature=player_embedded

Note this may not be publicly visible for long, given that Queensland government has chosen to prevent embedding or sharing by other sites (as evidenced by broken links from Business Insider and Mumbrella).

This is a real shame as it is, in my view, a great approach - balancing humour with a clear message.

UPDATE 1 Sept 2014: the video is now embeddable, so you can view it below.



It is my view that public sector social media policies should be public. This helps send a clear message to the community that they can trust the public service to act appropriately and not politically on social channels, building trust and respect.

There's also the consideration that governments, such as Queensland, have adopted Creative Commons as a standard licensing approach - so appropriate sharing of this type of material should not be prevented.

In lieu of being able to embed the video, here's stills of Social Media Man in action.

It will be interesting to see which governments in Australia can take this further - potentially even stepping beyond the use of videos to promote social media policy to promote other OH&S and security policies within agencies. There's a lot of scope for video that's not yet been realised.

Finally I think it is worth noting that the Queensland public service, per this video, is told to not criticise their own policy areas or department, but can engage more broadly in political expression regarding other government policies - that's currently denied Australian Public Servants by the Australian Public Service Commission's guidelines on social media use.

In my view Queensland has got their social media guidance right.

Read full post...

View summary...

Giving the community an opportunity to understand and reshape the Australian Government budget for 2014-15

While common practice in many countries overseas, there's still limited authentic consultation on government budgets undertaken in Australia - and I think we're poorer for it.

Involving the community in setting budget priorities and educating them on how a budget is developed goes a long way towards building understanding and (very importantly) trust in public institutions and politicians.

Even if these processes are only used for informational or even political ends, such as Strong Choices in Queensland, they at least give the public visibility into the challenges that governments contend with.

Of course budget processes are far more valuable when they give people authentic opportunities to influence government decisions, but one step at a time.

With so little public consultation undertaken around the Australian Government's budget for 2014-15, I've worked with Fairfax Media this year to give the Australian public an opportunity to understand how it is constructed and provide their views.

Via my company Delib Australia, we've modelled budget revenues and expenditures in Budget Simulator and made this available via the Sydney Morning Herald's site.

The Australian Budget Simulator is open until the end of next week, at which point we'll be tallying up the feedback and presenting it to the Australian Government for review.

It's not likely to change any decisions, but at least it will help inform the discussion.

To share your views via the Australian Budget Simulator, visit: www.smh.com.au/business/federal-budget-2014/budgetsimulator/

Read full post...

View summary...

Keep an eye out for Australia's open budget

We've now suffered through most of the fun and games of budget leaking season this year, with the 2014-15 Australian Government budget now in its final 'straight'.

There were a variety of balloons floated, claims and counterclaims touted, promises apparently broken (or not, depending on who you listen to) and all the usual suspects wheeling out to give us their authoritarian views on how budget changes would break or make Australia.

This year it has even been capped off by images of the Finance Minister and Treasurer enjoying a relaxing cigar as their departmental teams work frantically behind the scenes to get the final planks of the budget in place.

In other words, it's been largely business as usual for the Australian Government budget process - following the same pattern that's been followed for thirty or more years.

There have, of course, been some changes.

The communications channels used to inform people about the budget have shifted slightly (though not as much as they could), and the community has become far more visible in its budget consultations through the widespread adoption of online social channels - though politicians and traditional media have remain largely one-way broadcasters, rather than embracing the opportunity to engage.

Some government agencies have also adapted their strategies for informing the public - using social media to broadcast their budget statements and to engage online in so far as to correct misunderstandings and address myths and beliefs which are not supported by budget papers.

In the last few years Australia even stepped to the world leading position of releasing much of the budget papers under creative commons licensing (now the standard copyright for the Australian Government) - with this stimulating the creation of new ways to view the budget, such as The OpenBudget and BudgetAus.

These services are still relatively new and have suffered from the inaccessibility of the PDF documents used to publish the reusable budget data - meaning the creators of these tools had to scrape PDFs for data, manually type or check every figure, to get a realistic budget view.


However this year, in another world first, the Australian Government budget is set to be largely released in spreadsheet formats.

A team of public servants in Finance and Treasury is aggregating all the budget numbers from a range of agencies and releasing it in an aggregated way that is easy for others to reuse.

This is a huge step forward and opens the gate to a range of community and media visualisations of the budget at a far lower commitment of effort than was possible in previous years.

So keep an eye out in the coming days for some of the budget projects that are created using this open data.

I'll try to list them in this blog in the days following the budget's release.

Read full post...

View summary...

The thin Gov 2.0 silver lining in the Commission of Audit report

Amongst the "crazy brave to politically suicidal" recommendations in the National Commission of Audit report, there are three recommendations for Government 2.0 and eGovernment initiatives that should bring a glow to the heart of digital enthusiasts and pragmatists.

Recommendation 61: Data says that the Australian Government should improve its data management and analytics capability, also improving the timely access to data as well as its general availability for reuse.

The recommendation makes a strong mention of open data and its ability to drive transparency and accountability within government, as well as business opportunities and social improvements.

It does, however, stop short of a strong position on opening up data. While it does recommend requiring agencies to maximise their own use of data, having the ABS and Chief Statistician develop a 'data strategy' for government and ask that agencies extend and accelerate "the publication of anonymised administrative data", it doesn't reach as far as US and UK position on ensuring data is appropriately repackaged for reuse when released, or that data beyond "administrative" is also released.

One thing the Commission of Audit did not mention in this recommendation was Australian membership of the Open Government Partnership - which the government says is currently "under re-evaluation". This is a no-brainer if the government is serious about transparency and accountability (which I know many currently doubt), and having the Australian Government confirm it was joining the OGP would support a commitment to implement this recommendation, if the government so intended.


Recommendation 62: e-Government states that the Australian Government should adopt a digital-by-default approach to citizen and business engagement, going beyond the current policy ambition (for services having 50,0000 or more transactions per year) and turning the approach to digital on its head, from opt-in, to opt-out. 

This could change the entire cultural outlook of government, leading agencies to design services for digital first and having other channels as secondary, rather than the current flawed model of taking existing paper processes and converting them to digital without transforming the services to be digitally native.

The current approach has largely led to digital services that are difficult to access, use and often seem illogical to role - prompting increased calls to service centres to understand processes, rather than reducing calls by providing online services easier to use than paper forms.

The recommended approach instead mirrors the current UK strategy of transforming services to be easier to use online than via other channels, thereby supporting a 'pull' effect whereby people choose digital because it is easier and faster to provide the outcomes required.

In fact this attention is required if the 'opt-out' strategy is to work. If the government simply forced people to use digital channels to engage by government without totally redesigning both customer-facing and back-end systems for a digital-by-default world, it would create significant pain and additional cost for citizens, businesses and public servants on an ongoing basis as systems failed to provide the experience that modern consumers expect from digital channels.

This recommendation also suggested the creation of a Chief Digital Officer for government, to be positioned in the Department of Communication, who would lead the approach, with the oversight of a Senior Minister as a Digital Champion (presumably the Communications Minister). This again largely mirrors the UK approach, although makes no mention of how the Officer would be resourced and supported to be effective in the role.

Given the resourcing committed to the Government Digital Service in the UK, it would be disappointing and counterproductive to see any Chief Digital Officer receive proportionately less resourcing to take on this type of role to transform the Australian Government.

There is also a big question mark over whether the Department of Communication would have the right levers and influence to lead a whole-of-government transformation of this type. Over the last six years we've witnessed a number of occasions where agencies with a policy bent were given service delivery obligations and failed to carry them out due to a mindset and skills mismatch. There's several good reports from the National Audit Office highlighting this issue and providing recommendations on a better way to structure these processes.


Recommendation 63: Cloud computing says that the Australian Government should take a cloud-first approach for "for all low risk, generic information and communication technology services".

This is a good step, however may require some rationalisation of ASD and AG requirements around cloud-computing to manage the administrative requirement for two Minister sign-off of most cloud-computing requests (a practice a number of agencies still appear ignorant of or are ignoring).

The second part of the recommendation, to establish a cloud-provider panel, is also a good step. The DCAAS panel is already in place, however there is room to grow.

However there does need to be some balance in that 'cloud' is merely a method of hosting software and storing data - many types of digital services can be delivered in a 'cloud' manner, or utilising some other form of (in-house, dedicated, virtual) hosting approach. Cloud gives no indication as to the type of service, so any cloud panel could end up as a hotch-potch of different services that can also be accessed through other panels and providers when delivered in different ways.

This could lead to confusion or the cloud panel becoming the 'every digital service' panel - which may not be as manageable or useful to agencies.


While I have no real issues with any of these recommendations, the fact they are included in the National Commission of Audit gives me some concern.

Given the Audit recommendations are already creating a strong backlash, despite no indication from the government on which will be accepted, I believe there is a risk that the eGovernment and Gov 2.0 recommendations, despite being steps forward, may get tarred with a negative brush simply by being included in the document.

I hope that the government can successfully navigate the communication jungle to implement them appropriately, and I expect we'll see whether this is the case over the next few weeks.

If it is not, this would become a lost opportunity for digital government in Australia, and we might not see further political leadership in the area for several years, despite the hard efforts of a number of public servants.

Read full post...

View summary...

Time to enter the Step Two Intranet Innovation Awards for 2014

Step Two has just launched the 2014 Intranet Innovation Awards, the premier global awards for intranet teams.

Drawing on the best intranet work from around the world, the Intranet Innovation Awards are an opportunity for organisations to showcase their best intranet work.

Winning teams can also leverage an award into more support within their own organisations.

For more information, and to enter, visit steptwo.com.au/iia/enter

Entry is open until 6 June 2014.

Read full post...

View summary...

Do you have a new case study for the Public Sector Innovation Showcase?

The Australian Government is seeking new case studies for the Public Sector Innovation Showcase.

Discussed in the blog post, Revitalising and revising the innovation showcase,

"The Public Sector Innovation Showcase will enable government agencies and departments to share and celebrate case studies of innovation, and to consider how they might apply such innovative practices within their own operations to achieve better outcomes."

If you have a great case study for the showcase, check out the submission guidelines.

Read full post...

View summary...

GovHack registration opens - with ten locations across Australia for 2014

GovHack 2014 has just opened for registration with 10 locations across Australia, being:

• Brisbane GovHack
• Canberra GovHack
• GovHack FNQ (Cairns)
• Gold Coast GovHack
• GovHack Tasmania
• Melbourne GovHack
• Perth GovHack
• Sydney GovHack
• Unleashed Adelaide
• Unleashed Mount Gambier 

While competition details are not yet available, the official 2014 datasets will be put online over the next two months.

There will be a data event a month before GovHack where data custodians can present about the official datasets and allowing Govhack registrants to ask questions about the quality, formatting and other information about the data.

There will also be a red carpet event a month after GovHack to celebrate the winners.

To register visit govhack.org/register-2014

For more information visit: govhack.org/2014/04/11/3-months-till-govhack-2014/

Read full post...

View summary...