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On Friday (29 August) Peter Gershon submitted his review on the status of the $16 billion Australian Government technology budget to the Federal Government for consideration, as reported in a number of places, including this Australian article, Gershon submits govt ICT review.
The Australian article reports that,Sir Peter said his recommendations involve a major program of both administrative reform and cultural change within the Australian Public Service.
I'm eagerly awaiting a look at the recommendations of this review, with my particular interest being in ensuring that the online channel continues to be a lower-cost delivery medium for government information and services, used flexibly to ensure citizens receive the most effective, as well as the most efficient, outcomes.
"With sustained leadership and drive at Ministerial and top official levels, and by providing the enablers of change with the necessary resources, not only in funding terms, but also skills of the right calibre, the Australian Government through implementing these recommendations can drive significant improvements in its use of ICT.
"I am confident that the recommended actions and proposed changes can be successfully implemented over the next two to three years, and will deliver substantial benefits to the Australian Government," Sir Peter said.
As a relative newcomer to the public sector one of my largest challenges has been dealing with how ICT is managed in government in terms of culture, structure and accountability. It is very different to my personal experience working with and managing IT teams in private enterprise.
There are specific laws and standards which are mandatory for government, but do not hold as much force in the private sector - such as around accessibility and security. There are also different drivers when the profit motive is removed.
The largest difference I've noticed has been in the level of application of technology for governance structures that in the private sector are more commonly managed through contracts and professional relationships, making them more adaptable, lower cost and placing business systems under business control.
Judging from the positive outcomes in the UK after Sir Gershon's 2004 Independent Review of Public Sector Efficiency report, I hope that in Australia we move forward with his requirements in order to unlock more of the potential of ICT to be a forward-looking and innovative facilitator in the Australian government's relationships with citizens.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Gershon review submitted to federal government | Tweet |
Friday, August 29, 2008
IE8 public beta now available | Tweet |
It's going to be a busy six months for web teams, addressing WCAG 2.0 (the new W3C Accessibility Guidelines) and the release of Internet Explorer 8.
For those who want to stay ahead of the game (like me), the second IE8 beta is now available for public download here.
As I've now switched almost totally to Firefox for home use (due to it's superior Australian English spell checker, ability to resume a session after a PC crash, better support for plug-ins and superior adherence to web standards) and therefore have limited need for IE7 on my laptop, I'm about to give IE8 a try.
It will be very interesting to see how some leading sites (including those I manage) function.
I expect that there will be a rapid take-up for IE8 by home users, up to 35% of the market in the first three months (I'll allude back to this post three months after launch!)
Any organisation who isn't ready for either the IE8 or WCAG 2.0 shift runs the risk of having their website become less accessible to the market.
That's food for thought when there's a legal obligation to meet accessibility guidelines.
Finding egovernment inspiration in Alabama | Tweet |
If you're looking for inspirational egovernment ideas, the CIO 100 Award from CIO magazine are a great place to start. The annual Awards honor organisations creating business value via technology innovation.
For 2008 the State of Alabama was the only state government to win an award, for its egovernment initiatives, involving the delivery of over 130 egovernment services via the Alabama.gov portal.
Some of these services include live online website help, a 'virtual Alabama' powered by GIS technology, the deployment of video conferencing for distance learning, a range of online processes for ordering and renewing licenses, online payment, and many other online services.
While Alabama is the only state to win, a number of US government departments were alsorecognised with awards, including,
- the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development
- the California Department of Health Care Services
- the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority
- King County, Washington
- the Massachusetts Developmental Disabilities Council, and
- Miami-Dade County Public Schools.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Australia rated 6th in global egovernment study | Tweet |
Brookings University recently released its report Improving Technology Utilization in Electronic Government around the World, 2008 (link to PDF).
This ranks the government websites of 198 nations, reviewing 6-10 sites in each nation.
Australia ranked 6th, behind South Korea, Taiwan, the US, Singapore and Canada, up from 8th position last year.
As a benchmark this is great - it's better than our Olympic ranking (on substantially less funds per website than we spend on medal winning athletes), and substantially better than our global population ranking of around 50th.
However this study compares governments against other governments, rather than with citizen expectations.
While I do use other governments' initiatives to stimulate my thinking, I'm more interested in what our citizens want.
I also regularly refer to AGIMO's fantastic work on the use of government services online, and the 2006 e-Government Strategy, Responsive Government. There was also the (now superceded) Guide to Minimum Web Site Standards.
However none of these provide a citizen-centric view of what government sites need to provide that can be used to provide numerical ratings for each government site.
I'd love to have such a ranking available as I used to have in the private sector - using Global Reviews - to provide guidance as to what our citizens want, and the relative importance of different functionality. This would greatly assist my team and I'm sure other online groups, to prioritise online developments inline with citizen desires.
Has anyone seen a study in Australia or elsewhere on the community's expectations of how citizens should be able to engage government online?
The blind leading the sighted | Tweet |
I've just been reading the State of the eNation report on the Beijing Olympics website, where they invited disabled web users to test the accessibility features of the site.
While they found a number of the worst issues commonly reported by these users had been addressed, the remaining accessibility problems still made it very difficult to use some parts of the site.
In my past roles, and from what I've witnessed across other organisations, in many cases while companies might engage Vision Australia or a similar organisations for 'spot checks' of websites when they had the funds for it, companies have often relied on interpretations of the web accessibility standards by web professionals rather than referring to staff with first-hand experience.
My team is currently building an internal reference group to oversee the accessibility of our website and intranet, drawing on staff with vision, hearing and movement impairments.
I wonder how many other government agencies could - or already are - doing the same.
