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.

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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.

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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/

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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/

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APSC's current online participation guidance becoming an unwanted and unneeded distraction

There's been a great deal of scrutiny of the APSC's revised guidance on social media participation by public servants since it came into effect in early 2012 (coincidentally about the time I left the public service).

Initially dubbed by some parts of the media as the 'Jericho amendments' (sorry Greg!), the 2012 guidance has regularly been criticised by a wide range of commentators including former public servants such as Bernard Keane,  Greg Jericho and myself.

The guidance, Circular 2012/1: Revisions to the Commission's guidance on making public comment and participating online, significantly narrowed the scope of what public servants could personally say publicly online (even while anonymous).

The original APSC Guidance on online participation from 2009 was, in my view, balanced and well-considered. It placed some necessary constraints on how public servants spoke personally in public social media channels about their own agency and the policies they worked on. This original guidance would not have been out-of-place in any workplace.

However the 2012 revision extended this much further, stating that it was not appropriate for public servants to make public comment that was:

"so harsh or extreme in its criticism of the Government, a member of parliament from another political party, or their respective policies, that it raises questions about the APS employee’s capacity to work professionally, efficiently or impartially. Such comment does not have to relate to the employee’s area of work"

In other words - any matter which might be the subject of a policy from any party with representation in parliament, even where the individual public servant was unaware of the policy and regardless of whether the public servant worked in the area.

This covers a large number of policies, from a large number of minor parties - potentially impacting on many areas of a public servant's lives.

For example it could make it difficult and uncomfortable for someone working, say, in the Communication portfolio, to publicly state their concerns about the NDIS, our diplomatic position on Sri Lanka or the treatment of Indigenous people in the Northern Territory - even where they are the parent of a disabled person, have a partner of Sri Lankan descent and their own family comes from the Northern Territory.

'So harsh or extreme' is not well defined by the guidance. It is subject to individual rulings by agency leadership, which could lead to inconsistency, as well as makes the words a potential tool for managers or colleagues to legally bully staff.

There's also no time limit on comments implied in the guidance - so if you've said nasty things online about a local member while at university, before even considering a role in the APS, you have no implicit right of appeal based on when you said it.

Even these types of retrospective comments could still 'raise questions about the APS employee’s capacity to work professionally, efficiently or impartially'.

Effectively, anything you've ever said publicly could be used to expel you from the public service at any future time.

You may note that I left the public service about the time the revised guidance came into effect. Without a doubt this blog would have fallen foul of this guidance retrospectively if I had not.


I saw another impact of the APSC participation guidance a few weeks ago when I spoke at a Records Management conference in Melbourne. In the afternoon there was a broad discussion by delegates of current record keeping legislation at state and federal level.

While state public servants were happy to publicly discuss the issues they saw with their state legislation and how to fix them, several federal public servants refused to comment to the group on Australian Government regarding record keeping law.

One of them confided to me personally that, while he was aware of several major issues with the current law, he was not prepared to air these issues or their potential solutions 'publicly' (amidst a group of his peers and some non-government people at a forum), as APSC guidance on participation meant that if he criticised government policy or laws it could end his career.

Rightly or wrongly he believed this, based on the APSC's Circular 2012/1: Revisions to the Commission's guidance on making public comment and participating online.

I was appalled to see experts silenced and self-censoring in this way. In my view this reduces government effectiveness and productivity by reducing the capability for the public service to improve and develop good policy.


My understanding is that the current APSC leadership remains comfortable with the current phrasing and while many senior public sector leaders and other officers have expressed disagreement with the revised policy to me privately, no-one senior is prepared to 'rock the boat'.

In the words of one public sector senior executive to me, the senior leadership are in 'survival mode' right now and no-one wants to call unwanted attention to themselves which could damage their effectiveness in other areas, or their future career.


Now the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet's policy on reporting inappropriate social media behaviour has cast another spotlight on this APSC guidance.

The media has portrayed the PM&C's policy as 'dob in colleagues' and on social media it has been portrayed as a step towards a police state.

In my view the actual intent of the PM&C guidance is quite benign.

There's nothing inappropriate about asking your staff to report fraudulent or bullying behaviour by their colleagues when they see it, and many agencies and companies have processes to support this behaviour as it improves workplaces, reducing corruption and improving productivity.

The concept of having staff at Prime Minister and Cabinet report back to the agency if they see their colleagues behaving badly on social media, criticising their own agency or policies, is no different to reporting other inappropriate behaviour.

Except when it is combined with the enormous reach of the current APSC guidance.

The combination of APSC guidance and the PM&C policy make it appear the public service is becoming a political auxiliary to the current government - even though APSC guidance pre-dates the current government and the PM&C policy is otherwise benign.


The high level of attention now cast onto this guidance and policy has now achieved the exact reverse of their intended purpose - they have damaged public trust and respect in the public service and Australian Government.

This is not due to inappropriate online behaviour by low-level public sector staff, but to the risk-averse decision of a few senior public sector leaders, who agreed to put the revised APSC guidance in place.

The current APSC guidance has now become an unwanted and unneeded distraction to a public service which has largely performed exceptionally well on social channels and had very few cases of inappropriate online behaviour by staff.

I would also not expect Ministers to be too happy at having their agendas sidelined by a few senior public servants, who decided in 2012 to enforce APS social media guidance that was too broad, too available to abuse and too invasive for the public or media to ignore.

The current storm will blow over, it always does, however the damage has already been done.

I hope the APSC recognise their part in this and revisit the scope and wording of Circular 2012/1.

It could, with some support and education, lead to improved engagement by public servants in public debate which, given their depth of experience, professionalism and knowledge, would be a good outcome for Australia's democracy.

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Remember the date - RE blog post on Australian Public Servant banned for wearing Google Glass

Just in case anyone overreacted to my blog post this morning about an Australian public servant being banned from their department's offices for wearing Google Glass, I'd like to remind you of today's date.

April 1.

Note that while the event I detailed isn't real, it's not that far off from reality.

There are at least 8 Google Glass in Australia. There's a number of other personal recording devices already available on the market, such as the pen cameras already under trial use by Victorian Police (and reportedly already the subject of an internal memo banning staff from filming internal meetings).

Will we see wearing Google Glass banned within government offices, and what will happen when (not if) an MP wears a pair into Parliament?

There is a need for agencies to ensure that their policies around privacy and security are sufficiently robust to handle any type of recording device - regardless of form - and to support the legitimate use of technologies such as Google Glass for the benefit of citizens and agencies.

And given the fast spread of these technologies, these reviews need to happen sooner, not later.

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April Fools Prank: Australian public servant wearing Google Goggles banned from departmental offices and warned away from all government buildings

UPDATE: APRIL FOOLS PRANK
I know some people were taken in by this post earlier this week, while others called it out as an April Fools prank. I can confirm it was a prank - but one that's not far away from being realised.

Is your agency ready for the first staff member, or visitor, who walks into your office wearing Google Glass?


APRIL FOOLS PRANK
I've learnt from a source in a major Australian Government department that a public servant who showed up for work yesterday morning wearing Google Glass was unceremoniously escorted out of the building by security.

The public servant was given written correspondence from HR, signed by a senior manager, banning them access to any departmental offices and was warned away from entering any other Australian Government offices wearing Google Glass until their case was fully investigated.

Promotional image of Google Glass from Google

The letter included details that simply by wearing Google Glass the public servant might pose a privacy risk to other staff, and that it also raised security concerns in the workplace as senior management could not know what the person was filming or photographing.

It referenced an article in yesterday's Australian Financial Review (since updated), which highlighted the potential collision between Australia's new privacy laws and the use of personal recording devices such as Google Glass, Proposed privacy laws put blinkers on Google Glass.

Apparently the public servant had borrowed a pair of Google Glass from a friend, who had access to one of the few (around eight) pairs of Google Glasses in Australia through his work.

He had worn them to work to show his colleagues their capabilities and begin a discussion of the ramifications for their department in providing services to the public.

The public servant is now being investigated to determine whether they had ever previously brought 'personal recording devices' to work - apparently ignoring the mobile phones carried by most workers today.

The public servant is currently being threatened with a reassessment of their grade and has been requested to undertake a psychological evaluation to assess whether this is a once-off or a pattern of behaviour, due to the tendency of the individual to bring 'new and unapproved technologies' into the office.

I'll provide more details as I get them, however I have been asked not to identify the agency or individual as it could prejudice the process.


New technologies are a challenge for society and organisations, as they can transform social norms and over-turn bureaucratic apple carts.

However it is important to avoid over-reacting to potential risks and consider the benefits as well.

In this case I think the department has massively over-reacted, possibly because one or a few senior people had read an article in a newspaper (the AFR article referenced above) and leapt to the worst conclusions.

I've seen this happen previously in concerns over social media, where a few individuals, without personal experience of specific channels, have reviewed a (scaremongering) media representation of the risks at face value and responded without due consideration and thought.

In this situation, politely asking the person to refrain from recording and transmitting on premises, except with consent and where there's no potentially confidential documents in the background, could have sufficed. Or even asking them not to wear them on premises until the department could look at their capabilities first.

However it doesn't surprise me to see an agency leap first and then ask for forgiveness later - isn't that what we're often told to do in the workplace?

It is also important to keep in mind that just because the form changes, the policy may not need to. It may be possible to consider cameras, mobile phones, Google Glass, smart watches and even artificial eyes with cameras within the same policy framework - both the risks AND the benefits.

What agencies need to avoid doing is leaping at shadows and, where technology already exists (like the Google Glass), take the necessary steps to review their privacy and security policies to ensure that they cover devices adequately.

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Content Management for Government - watch the webcast

Below is the video from the live webcast on Content Marketing for Government that Content Group managed, hosted by David Pembroke with Gina Cianco of the Australian Government Department of Human Services, Kanchan Dutt and myself as guests.

It's an interesting watch.


I'll buy a drink for anyone who accurately counts the number of 'ums' I say!

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What should agencies do when online services change their terms of use?

Governments around the world now rely on social media services to reach and engage citizens, disseminate information, to monitor what people are saying and source intelligence to help address crises.

Many businesses also rely on digital channels for revenue and engagement reasons.

So what happens when an online service that an organisation uses updates its terms and conditions in a way that gives them rights that are uncomfortable for an agency or business - such as when a service claims ownership over anything published on its service, or takes an unlimited right to people's personal information?

Organisations can choose to stop using such a service, however it can be difficult to do so.

Firstly the practicalities of removing all the legacy data you've saved on the service - be it posts, presentations or documents - can be tricky. Some services may not even allow you to delete, or keep copies in the background.

Secondly organisations will need to find another place - an acceptable place - to put all the content they removed - noting that they may have to move again if a second service changes its terms.

Thirdly there's the issue of abandoning the organisation's community. Both the people who were already using the service and used it to interact with the organisation and the people who joined the service specifically to interact with the organisation. How does the organisation access them if it's not using the service anymore?

If you think this is just a theoretical exercise, sorry - we've seen this type of issue before, when online services have modified their terms and faced a huge backlash from their users.

And I think we're about to see it again with the release of the new LinkedIn and Slideshare terms.

LinkedIn recently changed the Terms of Use for all of its properties (including SlideShare which they own) to state, in part (bold italics are mine):

2.2. License and warranty for your submissions to LinkedIn 
You still own what you own, but you grant us a license to the content and/or information you provide us. As between you and LinkedIn, you own the content and information you provide LinkedIn under this Agreement, and may request its deletion at any time, unless you have shared information or content with others and they have not deleted it, or it was copied or stored by other users.
Additionally, you grant LinkedIn a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual, unlimited, assignable, sublicenseable, fully paid up and royalty-free right to us to copy, prepare derivative works of, improve, distribute, publish, remove, retain, add, process, analyze, use and commercialize, in any way now known or in the future discovered, any information you provide, directly or indirectly to LinkedIn, including, but not limited to, any user generated content, ideas, concepts, techniques and/or data to the services, you submit to LinkedIn, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or to any third parties.

What does this mean in plain English?

The first bit sounds OK "You still own what you own, but you grant us a license to the content and/or information you provide us." That's pretty standard for an online service. They need a license to publish the material online on my behalf, so no problems there.

However when an oganisation says that I am granting them "a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual, unlimited, assignable, sublicenseable, fully paid up and royalty-free right", red flags start to fly.

Anything that is irrevocable, global, perpetual and free is potentially likely to cause issues at some point down the track - but the term by its wording removes any ability to retract that right, such as by deleting a file or discontinuing my account.

The next part is even worse - the right LinkedIn and Slideshare is taking (on an irrevocable, worldwide basis) is to not only display my presentations or information, but to "copy, prepare derivative works of, improve, distribute, publish, remove, retain, add, process, analyze, use and commercialize,  in any way now known or in the future discovered, any information you provide, directly or indirectly to LinkedIn".

In other words, I may own the original work, but LinkedIn can make a derivative work, publish it and then charge people for it and I can't do a thing about it. Suddenly any slides I've put up on Slideshare with useful data becomes a revenue stream for them - and I lost my recourse by publishing it on their service, even if I did so before they changed their terms.

Not only this, but they don't only get the right to take my slides, delete a few and sell the rest, they can also turn them into any any format and monetise them as well. If I told a good story in a slideshow, LinkedIn could publish it as a book, if I published a slide with the design for a cold fusion reactor, LinkedIn could build the reactor and sell it - paying me nothing in return.

Now that's scary - but it even gets worse... "including, but not limited to, any user generated content, ideas, concepts, techniques and/or data to the services"

So if I publish a presentation about my new start up concept to Slideshare, now LinkedIn can take my concept or technique and use it themselves, royalty-free, in any way they see fit.

And they never have to compensate me, or even tell me that they've done it (per "without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or to any third parties.")


Any organisation with intellectual property or data should carefully consider whether they're prepared to continue to use Slideshare or LinkedIn to publish information about their services, products, potential products or data - because simply by publishing it in one of these platforms, LinkedIn takes ownership.

Even worse, as their new terms came into force when they were published, anything you've already published on these platforms is now theirs.

I'm going to be far more careful about how I use Slideshare and LinkedIn in future - and will be advising the organisations I work with to similarly think carefully before they publish anything on these channels.

Any government agency or business who wants to retain control over their own content - including whether it can be copied, restructured and sold by an online service - should now be very careful about publishing in either LinkedIn or Slideshare.

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Can governments support crowdfunding?

This is a topic quite close to my heart at present, as I'm running a Kickstarter crowdfunding project myself - at www.kickstarter.com/projects/socialmediaplanner/social-media-planner (please check it out!)

It's teaching me a great deal about the challenges involved, and I'll be reporting back on this at the end of the process.

A broader question is whether governments in Australia are able to support crowdfunding, whether simply backing a project they wish to see funded or as an approach for investing money in new projects with community backing.

The first scenario is potentially the hardest for agencies under existing procurement frameworks.

Except in NSW and soon Victoria (which have the notion of unsolicited proposals), governments across Australia have quite a rigid process for buying 'stuff' (goods or services).

First they must identify that they need it. Next they must try to figure out if they can afford it. Then they have to go to market to buy it.

Within these constraints there is a fair bit of flexibility - there's many ways to identify the need, fund the 'stuff' and even to buy it.

As part of this process governments even buy 'stuff' which hasn't yet been developed all the time - such as when they ask someone to design new software, build a custom ship, develop a road or provide a structural review.

Crowdfunding generally works this way - people back a project that hasn't yet been completely developed in order to fund final development.

However governments often struggle to 'buy with friends' - to join in a joint purchase process as just one of the participants. They always want custom assurances and contracts, have specific requirements and otherwise make it difficult for themselves to participate in group processes - such as via crowdfunding.

Despite this, several Australian governments have found a way to participate in crowdfunding exercises, with both WA and Tasmanian governments now actively involved in the process.

Arts Tasmania has teamed up with Pozible, Australia's leading crowdfunding service for the Crowbar funding initiative. The initiative offers approved art projects the opportunity to receive up to $2,000 in funds from Arts Tasmania (capped at 50% of the funds raised) if these projects are successfully funded on Pozible.

On top of simply matching cash, Arts Tasmania is also offering one-on-one campaign development support, additional promotional opportunities from Arts Tasmania and having their projects presented in the Arts Tasmania Collection on Pozible.

It's a great opportunity for artists, who only have to find funding for 50% of their project, and for Arts Tasmania, which gets to support more projects (as the public funds part of them), as well as gets a community view on whether a particular project is worth funding.

The initiative also opens the door to new artists with new ideas that don't necessarily fit into other grant programs.

So far Crowbar has only supported one project, the Cranky Ladies of History. This has exceeded it's Pozible target, which is great to see.

I hope to see more projects funded in the same way - though I appreciate there may also be a learning curve for artists, who are not used to pitching their ideas to the public in this way.

ScreenWest in WA has run a similar program for film makers called 3 to 1.

Also involving Pozible, the program offers three dollars in funding for every dollar contributed by the public to crowdfunded film projects, up to an overall cap of $250,000.

This project has seen almost 30 projects try to raise the funds they need to proceed - with mixed success.  Overall it is achieving the same thing for ScreenWest as Crowbar is for Arts Tasmania - helping them to prioritise projects that have significant community interest while allowing them to stretch their grants funding further.


Besides these approaches in Australia, the UK Government has become a significant supporting of the crowd loan scene. The UK government has partnered with a number of crowd loan services including Funding Circle and Crowdcube through its Start Up Loans initiative to provide up to 20% of the funds from the government.

Essentially organisations looking for a start-up or business development loan can use a crowd site to tell their story and provide their numbers. Individuals then loan money in small amounts, setting the interest rate they want to receive.

Once a loan reaches a certain threshold (80-95%), the government will provide the rest of the funds at the average interest rate.

The loan is then managed as any other and paid back over an agreed term.

The benefit of this system is that it reduces risk for government, by ensuring that the community supports a loan before they put money in. It also is very low cost, even profitable, for government, as they get their money back plus interest and can choose to reinvest it each year.

This is, in my view, a very strong model for businesses, and I can personally testify to its effectiveness as Delib used this last year in the UK for additional product development funds.


We're also beginning to see crowdfunding supported by governments in the US as a way for businesses to raise money beyond the equity or debt models.

Washington State recently passed a very interesting bill (through one house at least) allowing businesses to raise up to a million dollars per year via crowdfunding.

Some other US states are also considering legislation.

Australia is a bit further behind, but the Australian Government is starting to make interesting noises in this area.

As reported in the Saturday Paper, Federal government encouraged to free up crowd funding,

Malcolm Turnbull recently wrote on his blog: “Crowd funding has become an increasingly popular way of promoting financing for innovative projects, allowing start-ups and rapidly growing companies to access diversified sources of capital … however, regulatory arrangements in Australia are not particularly tailored to this type of capital raising. The government is determined to see if we can match the regulatory environment that’s present in the US, here in Australia.”

Of course noise is one thing, changing financial regulations and laws is quite another - and can take some time.

However as the Arts Tasmania and ScreenWest examples show, there's opportunities right now for government agencies to consider crowdfunding, if they're prepared to think outside the square.

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In which circumstances should a democratic nation ban access to social networks?

During the UK riots in 2011, the UK Prime Minister suggested shutting down social networks in future riots to prevent information sharing amongst rioters.

Now Turkey has blocked access to Twitter, stating the service was 'biased' and did nothing to stop the 'character assassination' of politicians in the current ruling party accused of bribery.

Like the UK, Turkey is a secular democracy, with a constitution that guarantees freedom of expression, in fact Turkey's constitution goes much further than Australia's constitution, where freedom of expression only covers certain political expression.

Turkey is also a member of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an international organisation of nations committed to fostering increasing accountability in government through openness and transparency. Though it should be noted that Turkey has fallen behind in their OGP openness commitments.

Australia committed to OGP membership under our last government, however has not completed the tasks necessary to join as yet.

The question this raises for me is when is it appropriate for nations - particularly secular democracies - to block access to social networks and thereby limit the ability for citizens to share information and organise?

The normal practice for nations seems to be to say that if the information shared is illegal, inaccurate or might lead people to commit crimes, there is a place for the courts or parliament to restrict expression across, or access to, any form of media.

This is the position taken both in the UK and in Turkey and has been expressed by democratically elected politicians in other states as well.

However what happens when the law makers decide to legislate to make content that is potentially true, but embarrassing to the government, illegal. Or what happens when a head of state, by degree, bans content that could damage a political party or individual politician?

While there is a case to say that content that is illegal should be unavailable online, and this is a practice Australia already follows with a secret blacklist of banned content and websites (which currently has no review process and no public scrutiny of what gets added to it), it becomes problematic for a democracy when the legislators make laws to block content that is simply 'uncomfortable' to them or their major backers.

This uncomfortable content only becomes illegal because it might affect the interests of individuals or groups linked to the ruling party if the population knew about it - which is also an argument as to why citizens should be told, so they can factor it into their future voting decisions.

There's little evidence that blocking social networks does much to prevent the spread of information - certainly the blocks in Tunisia and Egypt did not change the outcome for the former governments of those countries and looks to be doing little to put allegations of inappropriate behaviour by Turkish politicians back in the bottle.

At times blocks could have the reverse effect, inflaming situations by calling attention to both the content in question and throwing a harsh light on the politicians calling for and implementing blocks. An issue that could otherwise be managed, could easily become unmanageable once a government begins demonstrating it is not as open as it claims to be.

In fact this is precisely what appears to be happening in Turkey, with Twitter use actually increasing following the ban and increasing international attention on the claims being made.

So when is it appropriate for democratic governments to temporarily or permanently ban entire online services?

I would recommend that this is only appropriate when the service is designed and used solely for illegal purposes, such as a social network purely for sharing illegal pornography or buying illegal drugs.

However most services are simply designed to allow people to share content and make no distinction between the type of content they carry. These services should never be blocked by a government, as the damage in preventing legal discussions and content sharing far outweighs the cost of a level of illegal activities and enforcement services can at least track and address illegal activities, which would otherwise disappear underground into places harder for police to uncover.

Discomfort to politicians or prominent people should never be a reason to take any service offline, although there might be legal recourse to address the conduct of individuals using the service - which Australia's defamation laws already covers.

At the end of the day, nations committed to freedom of expression, whether explicitly stated in their constitutions or not, need to reconcile themselves to the increased volume of conversation via social channels and find a balanced path which punishes anti-social behaviour while supporting free expression.

It is clear this is still an area in flux and I trust and hope that politicians around the world recognise that shutting down debate is no longer the best or most appropriate solution to a situation, and could cause them greater harm than good with their constituents.

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Government stakeholders and citizens see different priorities for open data release

Socrata has released an interesting benchmark study on open government data, which looks at the state of open data from the perspectives of citizens, developers and government.

It is interesting to compare which data government stakeholders consider important to publish, compared to what citizens feel is important.

Looking at Very Important from the tables (below) it is pretty clear that government puts a higher priority on data about themselves - for example the location of government services. This tends to be easier data to release as governments know where their shopfronts are and want citizens to find them.

However from a citizen perspective there's a priority on data that supports communities and increases transparency - public safety, financial data and accountability ranking 1st to 3rd for 'Very Important' (compared to government stakeholders who rated them 3rd, 8th and 7th). Government service locations is still relatively important but only 5th on the list for 'Very Important' and even lower at 8th when 'Moderately Important' is considered as well).

Census data is perceived as far more valuable by government stakeholders (6th) than the community (13th), possibly because governments consider the business value and individual citizens only rarely directly need access to broad demographics (such as when buying a house).

Education data is also in an interesting position. It is 4th for citizens but only 10th for government stakeholders on 'Very Important' - however when 'Moderately Important' is added, it shoots up to 2nd for citizens and for government to 8th place.

This could be reflected in how there's been quite a bit of political opposition to myschool.gov.au, but plenty of community buy-in. Someone's getting the sentiment wrong here, and I don't think it is parents.


It would be very interesting to see governments hold this type of study in Australia - looking at government stakeholders, citizens, businesses and civic hackers (maybe media as well), to understand the differences in expectations and how different data is valued.

Unfortunately we may be a little immature culturally to ask this as yet, open data has not had a significant impact on most people's lives and hasn't consistently been championed at a political level or put 'on the agenda' in more than a niche way.

It is clearly important for people inside and outside government to appreciate that government stakeholders may have very different views to others in the community on what open data is a priority to release and governments take appropriate steps to engage and consult with other groups in the community on an ongoing basis to understand the differences.

And a tip for politicians seeking to get elected or a Ministerial slot - there's clear support in this survey from citizens for politicians who advocate for open government and walk the walk. In fact three out of four citizens said they'd be more likely to vote for a politician who was an open government champion.

Citizens also see open data as worth investing public money in. I'm sure our Treasurer will consider this in his upcoming budget statement - which will be released under Creative Commons and as reusable data of course!

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Keep an eye out for the live webinar at 12:30 (AEST) on Content Marketing in Government

From 12:30-1:30pm (AEST) today, Content Group is holding the second of its live webinars, this time on Content Marketing in Government.

The webinar features a panel including Gina Ciancio, Senior Social Media Advisor at the Department of Human Services, Kanchan Dutt, Senior Manager Media and Communications at ACT Government, and myself.

It will be broadcast on Canberra Live and available after the event if you don't have time to watch today.

It should be a very interesting look at an area that government still struggles with - how to develop and provide the right content, at the right time, to the right people, through the right channels to influence in the right ways.

There will be a particular focus on Community Engagement and on mobile content.

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Guest post: We should be celebrating our victories

Hi, today I'm featuring a guest post by Gian Wild of AccessibilityOz

Gian is Australia's leading specialist in accessibility and was on the working group that designed the WCAG 2.0 guidelines that agencies must follow.

Gian will be speaking at a series of free breakfast seminars at the start of April in Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney with Texthelp Ltd on products available to improve the accessibility compliance of your site. This include BrowseAloud (an assistive technology) and OzPlayer (an accessible video player).

For more information visit www.accessibilityoz.com.au/2014/03/accessibility-breakfasts-melbourne-canberra-and-brisbane/

Or register here

We should be celebrating our victories

Recently AGIMO released their Progress Report into the Web Accessibility National Transition Strategy. I have sat back and watched as a number of commentators have focused on the negative; that Government web sites are still not fully accessible. A rumour has been doing the rounds that accessibility compliance is just too hard and that AGIMO is backing away from the National Transition Strategy and that web sites won’t need to meet the Level AA deadline of December 2014.

A recent study on assessing and promoting e-accessibility has been released which compared the accessibility of the EU27 countries, Australia, Canada, Norway and the US. In terms of the overall test scores, as seen in the graph below, Australia ranks second of all 31 countries, just behind the UK.

Bar graph of overall percentage test scores for each country, long description at the end of the article (click to enlarge image)

Countries were given a score of zero, one or two, depending on their accessibility compliance pertaining to a particular test. Zero means the accessibility requirement was not met, 1 point means the requirement was partially met and two points means the requirement was fully met. Australia has the third lowest percentage of zero scores (no accessibility), behind the UK and Canada.

Bar graph showing the percentage of each test score (0, 1 or 2) for each country, long description at the end of the article (click to enlarge image)

When we look at Australian statistics, we see an impressive increase in the accessibility of Government sites. The 2010 NTS Baseline Report indicated 4.7% of Government web sites met WCAG2 at a particular level. At the end of 2012, 26% of Government web sites met Level A of WCAG2; that’s a 450% increase! And another 46% of sites are aiming to meet the Level AA requirement at the end of December 2014. In addition to this, 73% of all agencies have re-evaluated their web publishing processes, with an additional 21% intending to do so in the near future. Over half (58%) of agencies have changed their CMSes, with an additional 27% intending to do so in the near future. In procurement - the one area of accessibility where agencies have little control - over 97% of agencies are intending to or have already reviewed procurement strategies. More than 80% use an automated accessibility testing tool regularly.

Australia is certainly not alone in having Government requirements around accessibility, but, as this recent study suggests, we are leading the world in terms of accessibility compliance. We should be celebrating our victories; yes, there is a long way to go, but look at what we’ve done!


Overall scores for each country long description:

The highest ranking country is the UK with approximately 72% of the maximum score, followed by Australia with approximately 67% of the maximum score. The average score for the EU27 countries is approximately 52%. The lowest scoring country is Greece with 30%


Distribution of test scores for each country long description:

The country with the lowest percentage of 'zero' test scores is Canada, with an approximate percentage of 25% 'zero' scores, approximately 24% of 'one' scores and 51% of 'two' scores. The country with the second lowest percentage of 'zero' test scores if the UK with approximately 28% 'zero' scores, 1% 'one' scores and 71% 'two' scores. The country with the third lowest percentage of 'zero' test scores is Australia with approximately 29% 'zero' scores, 11% 'one' scores' and 60% 'two' scores. The country with the highest percentage of 'zero' test scores was Greece, with approximately 68% 'zero' test scores, 3% 'one' test scores and 28% 'two' test scores.

For more blog posts from Gian visit www.accessibilityoz.com.au/accessibility-blog/

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Learning how to crowd fund - and launch of Social Media Planner Kickstarter

This morning at BarCamp Canberra I gave the presentation below on how to setup a crowdfunding campaign, based on my personal experience setting up a Kickstarter for Social Media Planner.

For people interested in crowdfunding I've embedded my presentation below.

If you're interested in learning more about Social Media Planner, and potentially backing it, see: kickstarter.com/projects/socialmediaplanner/social-media-planner

Crowdfunding: How to set up a campaign (from my personal experience) from Craig Thomler

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Launching my Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign at BarCamp Canberra

Tomorrow is BarCamp Canberra, a festival of ideas and experiences, where participants decide what to present and attend on the day.

While it is hard to predict what people will talk about, I expect topics will range from technology and design to open data and social change, with a seasoning of personal experiences and interactive workshops.

For my own contribution to BarCamp this year, I decided to talk about crowdfunding - but not just from the position of someone who has looked into it and spoken to people who have done it before.

What I have done is created my own crowdfunding initiative, around a card-based tool I designed and have been using in social media training and consulting for about eight years.

As a result my talk at BarCamp will share my experience in setting up this campaign, from concept through to launch.

In fact I will be pushing the button to launch the crowdfunding campaign at the end of my presentation, seeking to raise the funds required to commercialise my tool, Social Media Planner.

That will give attendees a chance to follow my crowdfunding experience through to success, or learning experience. There's also a few early bird specials which people at BarCamp will get access to before anyone else.

So if you're interested in learning more about the process of setting up a crowdfunding campaign, any of the other topics likely to be discussed at BarCamp Canberra, or simply want to hang out with interesting and thoughtful people, come along tomorrow.

BarCamp Canberra is being held at Gungahlin Library from 9am on Saturday 15 March.

It is being sponsored by Inspiring Australia, a joint initiative of the Commonwealth and ACT governments.

Register at: https://barcampcanberra2014.eventbrite.com.au

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Time has run out for Australia to meet its April 2014 Open Government Partnership commitment

Last year the Australian Government (under the Labor party) made a commitment to the international and Australian community that it would take the necessary actions to join the Open Government Partnership (OGP) by April 2014.

The OGP is a group of 63 nations committed to making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens. It was co-founded by nations such as the US, UK and India and is currently co-chaired by our nearest neighbour, Indonesia, which is hosting the OGP's Asia-Pacific Regional Conference this year.

As one of the fourth wave to join the OGP, along with nations such as New Zealand, Australia was hardly an early adopter of this agenda. Our efforts to join started three years after the organisation was founded and at a time when many OGP members were already working on their second set of open government commitments.

Joining the OGP may not be like joining the UN's Security Council or another highly influential international body. Its aims are very specific.

However Australia is an obvious nation to be a member, as a liberal democracy with strong FOI provisions and well recognised for our past work in the Government 2.0 field, it would seem a natural fit.

Despite this, and many attempts by various journalists and civic organisations to discover how Australia's OGP membership efforts were progressing, there's been almost total silence from the Australian Government on the topic over the last six months.

There's even now an FOI request underway to discover what steps the Australian Government has been taking in regards the OGP.

The requirements for OGP membership include developing an action plan containing concrete and measurable commitments undertaken by the participating government to drive innovative reforms in the areas of transparency, accountability, and citizen engagement.

This plan must be designed through a multi-stakeholder, open, and participatory process.

These types of processes take months, not weeks. In fact nations have taken up to a year to develop their OGP action plans.

In fact there's a great post online about the 12-month process the UK ran to develop its 2013-15 plan, Story of the UK National Action Plan 2013-15.

Australia has not yet begun the process of consulting and, given the membership intake is in April 2014, I don't see there is sufficient time for even an abbreviated process.

Even if the Australian Government began public consultation this week, the UK recommends allowing at least three months for this process - plus additional time for refining the feedback, detailed consultations with the civic sector and for actually writing and approving the plan.

The only nation thus far to withdrawn from its commitment to join the OGP has been Russia, which decided it was not able or willing to meet the requirements of membership.

Will Australia join Russia, becoming the second nation to withdraw?

Or will it simply delay membership - one year, two years or more?

Perhaps we'll find out with a government announcement in the next month regarding its OGP commitment.

Or perhaps all we can expect is ongoing silence.

Either way, it is disappointing to see the Australian Government fail to live up to the high standards of openness and transparency that our politicians espouse as a core requirement for our national democracy.

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Are you prepared for Australia's new privacy law?

Today Australia's new Privacy law comes into force, affecting Australian Government agencies, businesses with a turnover of more than $3 million or trading in personal information and all private health service providers.

As the first major change in Australian privacy law in 25 years, there's been numerous changes and updates to reflect the major changes in society over this period.

Since the last Privacy Act was introduced in the late 1980s we've seen the digitalisation of most records, the introduction of the world wide web, the rise of Web 2.0, the spread of mobile devices and the greatest increase in public expression by Australians in history.

The notion of privacy has also changed. I've always considered privacy as a transaction rather than an absolute - people trade aspects of their privacy in return for services, benefits or convenience. This has become far more widespread as an approach as organisations increasingly use personal information to shape peoples' experience of products and services, particularly online.

Generationally we've seen very different views of privacy take hold. Younger people are far more willing to share information that their elders consider 'private' and have new concerns around information that their elders share without a thought.

The new Privacy law (Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Act 2012) contains a number of stronger provisions on organisations to protect and communicate how they protect the privacy of individuals, as well as more ability for individuals to ask organisations what they know about them.

It also does a great deal to revalue personal privacy. Whereas Telstra was recently fined about $10,000 for accidentally releasing private information on about 12,000 people - valuing their privacy at 0.83c each, under the new law the penalties may be much higher - up to around $1.7 million.

If you're unfamiliar with the new privacy law, you're probably in the majority.

There's been little promotion of the change and limited information available for the public or organisations to test their current privacy approach.

There is a media release on the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner's (OAIC) site and the OAIC has done what it can - without a significant budget - to get the word out to those affected by the changes.

Unfortunately the changes haven't been promoted by any Ministers or the Prime Minister - the law was changed under the last government and the ownership may not be there.

However regardless of the promotion or not of the new law, it is now in effect. Every Australian has new rights and many organisations have new obligations they must meet in collecting, holding, sharing and protecting the private information of Australians.

To learn more about the new Australian Privacy law, visit the OAIC's guidance on the reforms at the following pages:

• Privacy law reform
• Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) in full
• APP guidlines
• The new privacy law: Privacy Amendment (Enhancing Privacy Protection) Act 2012

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Crowdfunding gaining strength as an FOI tool - but will governments seek a seat at the table?

As reported by Peter Timmins in his Open & Shut blog, and as I have commented on Twitter, crowdfunding is beginning to become an interesting tool for fundraising the cash requested by government agencies for fulfilling FOI responses.

Where governments are still using charging for FOI searches as a cost-recovery tool (and potentially occasionally as a barrier to releasing information), crowdfunding offers the advantage of spreading the cost across a range of people and organisations in a structured way.

Peter points to an article in FreedomInfo, Crowdfunding FOI Requests Gains in Use, Seems to Work, which highlights how this tactic is being used in four jurisdictions.

Where these crowdfunding approaches are public, which is the usual case, they also draw greater attention to these FOI requests, potentially marshalling a range of interested parties around the release request.

While it is still very early days for this approach, it does raise the prospect of a new wave of organising around areas where government is perceived to be secretive or evasive - where interested individuals, activists and even business interests can raise public and even media attention for a range of topics that otherwise would remain under the radar.

There's a few permutations of this approach likely to emerge involving 'crowd' but without always being about 'funding'. For example we've already seen crowdsourcing of insights from FOI responses (including by The Guardian in the UK and Fairfax in Australia) and have also seen FOI requests around a given topic being coordinated by grassroots groups seeking a full understanding of complex situations.

There's also the potential to establish collaborative funding models - where there's X dollars placed in a pool to fully or partially fund different FOI requests each month or year, and contributors to the fund can vote on which FOI requests these funds are applied to.

I also expect to see crowdfunding mechanisms built into more FOI platforms, such as Right to Know in Australia, and increasing use of 'crowd' approaches to FOI across by individuals, activists and media outlets.


The most interesting question is whether governments will seek to have some influence in these processes by implementing their own central platforms for crowdfunding FOI requests, or will continue to pursue a 'hands-off' fragmented process to FOI as the majority do today.

Given the success of the US and UK governments' ePetition platforms, and the steps into collaborative law making in Scandinavian countries, I would tip these jurisdictions as the most likely to take a step into providing an FOI request and crowdfunding platform.

This would also allow governments to realise cost benefits through standardising and streamlining FOI request and review processes within and across agencies as well as aggregating similar FOI requests and providing centralised access to already released information, thereby saving agency time and money in attempting to discover this or telling people manually that information is already in the public domain.

Establishing their own FOI management and crowdfunding system may also allow the governments concerned to allocate a monthly budget offsetting legitimate FOI costs, which could be accessed by individual FOI requests through approaches such as collaborative budgeting or an 80/20 approach (if 80% is funded, the government contributes the other 20%), as has been used in the UK successfully for other crowdfunding.

If governments decide not to enter this space, larger civic groups will, leading to a situation over time where governments will increasingly find increased public scrutiny over what is released, to whom and for how much - as well as what is refused release or where charges appear high.

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Eight ways to craft a top government tweet

Often the issue today is no longer how an agency or council gets a message or response approved for release via social media, but rather how to cut through all the noise.

I analysed the top tweets by Australian governments and councils over the last two months, as reported by Great Oz Gov Tweets.

Out of this I identified eight ways in which agencies and councils could stand out from the crowd.

I blogged about it over at Delib Australia's blog and wanted to draw my eGovAU audience's attention to it as well as I think there's some very helpful ideas in the mix.

To read my post visit: http://delib.com.au/2014/02/eight-ways-create-top-government-tweet/

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