Darren Whitelaw is what I call a public sector entrepreneur – which means nothing more nor less than that he’s someone tries to get things done including new things. He’s with the Department of Justice in Victoria and is very active in Government 2.0 in that state. I suggested to him through Patrick McCormick who is similarly a public sector entrepreneur and recently moved to Justice that a guest post on what the Department had been up to would be welcomed. And so here is his post.
A journey of discovery
The Gov2.0 Taskforce’s final report provides a compelling roadmap for the Australian public sector’s future online journey and contributes new insights and ideas to the global Gov 2.0 conversation. As online service delivery becomes commonplace, and citizen expectations for more efficient and effective public services increase, the role of Web 2.0 in government cannot be underestimated.
The challenge for the public sector, much like the private sector, is not only to make use of these emerging technologies, but also to ensure there is the cultural change to support them. Victoria’s Justice Department has been using various Web 2.0 technologies over the past 18 months – to help respond to Black Saturday bushfires, reduce the impact of problem gambling, tackle excessive drinking, show public support for emergency service volunteers, help people assess their level of fire season readiness, and demonstrate transparency around speed cameras. These efforts have delivered tangible benefits but it hasn’t always been a smooth journey.
We’ve learnt that adoption of community collaboration takes time. Creating online communities built on credibility and trust is a big job, one that involves tinkering, listening, revising and trying again. It’s more a slow burn, than an explosion. And if we are going to fail, it’s best to fail small and fast, so we can adapt and try again. It’s an iterative process.
I can think of three things that have been instrumental to this journey:
1) Provide access to information
2) Enable user-generated content
3) Go where people are read more…
When preparing for a talk to HOCI – the Heads of Collecting Agencies – I checked out this piece on “the National Library of Wales’ development of a strategic approach to meeting user needs in a post-Web 2.0 world.” This is what the author says:
Whilst what distinguished success from failure in these instances was often not a paper document outlining what was to be achieved but a combination of organisational support, a willingness to experiment (and to fail) – and most importantly – a clear understanding of what was achievable.
Now there are things that I clearly agree with here – particularly the need for ‘permission to fail’. What about the insistence that the most important thing was to understand what was achievable: well who could object to that? It seems the very acme of commonsense. Now if we take it as a piece of commonsense then perhaps it means that if you set up a social media site, don’t expect that volunteers are going to start solving all your problems. But if that’s the case, then it’s also a pretty empty thing to say. If it’s making a strong claim to insight – which the body language of the paragraph suggests it is, I think it is both wrong and that it contradicts the earlier injunction to be prepared to experiment. If an experiment is anything, it seems to me it is something that one cannot have a “clear understanding” of what it might achieve. read more…
Well we’re all winding down here, though I’m hoping to add a post or two before things wind down further. As you probably know, the Taskforce formally ceases to exist on the 31st December. Most of the infrastructure of the Taskforce is in the process of being closed down. This blog will be staying open for reference and for any further discussion that arises on existing posts beyond the 31st December when the Taskforce ceases to exist. Taskforce members will have the option of publishing new posts if they choose. While the secretariat has disbanded, moderation will still be provided by AGIMO and any Taskforce members like me who receive feeds of comments on most posts and notice anything amiss. AGIMO have told me that they’ll keep you up to date with what is happening with the progress of the Report through government through regular posts.
But one of my treats for this morning was reading Rose Holley’s new piece on “Crowdsourcing and Social Engagement: Potential, Power and Freedom for Libraries and Users”. Actually I’ve not yet read her paper, but have been through the slides which offer a great sampling of the crowdsourcing libraries and other institutions in the galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) sector have been up to. (Actually there are other similar institutions, like botanical gardens of which Australia has at least two of the world’s greatest in Melbourne and Sydney, but where would you stick a ‘BG’ into GLAM?. . . . but I digress).
Anyway, I recommend it to you dear Gentle Readers 2.0 and wanted to put this thought in your head. This Christmas if our own experience and statistics regarding the past are a reasonable source for generalising about the future you will have some spare time on your hands. You may even be a bit bored. So you could go to any of the sites mentioned by Rose in her presentation, and you could pass a little time at the same time as bringing a tad more joy to the world – you could make the world a touch better by the application of your time and intelligence.
All you need do is follow any or all of these links, have a look around and do a bit of volunteer work for your fellow human being.
And thanks to all for helping us on our journey this year. There were times when it looked like I’d have to go cap in hand to the Ministers who had set us our task to tell them we’d failed to get it done satisfactorily in time and to request an extension (In fact there had been informal discussions and the extension was there if we really needed it). But we did it, and judging from the reactions to our draft report, particularly from those around the world, we’ve got a great result.
So Merry Christmas one and all. As for the Happy New Year, I hope for that even more, but as far as this agenda is concerned, it’s over to the government – and you!
The Taskforce’s final report, Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0, was handed to Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and Special Minister of State Joe Ludwig today. The Ministers have decided to release the report to the public immediately. You can find a copy at:
http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/gov20taskforcereport/index.html
It was very pleasing to see the number of proposals that were submitted for our not-for-profit contest. It shows that there is not only strong demand for public sector information in this important sector of the Australian economy, but also great potential for them to contribute to public policy development and Government service delivery if we can just make it easier for them to access relevant PSI.
There were some really good ideas put forward that showed creativity and had a clear sense of purpose. Some of the better ideas that caught the eye of the Taskforce were: read more…
Well we put the finishing touches to the final report on Friday and it’s been working its way through the proofing and designing stage.
We will be ready to provide the finished report to Ministers Tanner and Ludwig on Tuesday, 22 December 2009.
We have tightened the structure as described below. This makes the argument flow better and reduces repetition. We’ve got quite a bit more content in using about the same number of pages. We propose three pillars – a trinity if you’re feeling at all theological at this time of year which are the foundations of getting to Government 2.0:
1. Leadership,
2. Engagement and
3. Open access to public sector information.
Here’s the final report structure: read more…
Government 2.0 is integral to delivering on several agendas that the Government has running at present. It’s central to delivering on Innovation in Government – and that’s the subject of a review which with I have been involved being conducted within the Department of Innovation under the auspices of the Management Advisory Committee which is a forum of Agency Heads established under the Public Service Act to advise Government managing the Australian Public Service.
As part of our own exercise I asked the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) to have a look at the data it compiled for its State of the Service Report this year. It has only come out in the last few weeks, so there was no time for them to do the analysis and for us to get it into our draft report. In fact we’ve not included this in our final report for reasons I’ll explain. But it’s interesting and deserves to be on the record. read more…
Here’s today’s column in the SMH, which the SMH slightly edited down.
Who is Julie Hempenstall? She lives in Bendigo and she likes reading Australia’s historic newspapers. The National Library has hoisted its collection on the net and had them digitised by computers. I can see what keeps her there. Hard at work drafting this article I just spent the last hour reading about early Sydney – about the Governor’s plan for a school for aboriginal boys and girls to “improve the Energies of this innocent, destitute, and unoffending race.” It wasn’t a raging success.
Anyway, the computer digitisation of that article was full of mistakes. Why? Optical character recognition isn’t perfect even with clean print and certainly not with two hundred year old, stained, yellowed newspapers with antiquated fonts – or fontfs as it was printed in 1788. But people like Julie have pored over the articles and the Library’s clever ‘crowdsourcing’ website allows them to correct mistakes they find.
It’s addictive. I found the obituary of an extraordinary Englishman William Stanley Jevons who was an architect of modern economics. He turned up in Sydney in his teens in 1854 and was a busy fellow. He became assayer to our mint, was newspaper photographer in Australia (strictly a hobby) and the first to document the El Nino effect. Reading all the digitised mistakes I just couldn’t help myself. He didn’t gain an honorary degree from the “Umversity of Odinburgh”. It was the University of Edinburgh. Anyway it’s fixed now.
This bit of crowdsourcing has been a huge success. read more…
One of the projects the taskforce ran was a competition to assess the accessibility of government websites. The project was conducted by Media Access Australia and was run in two stages. The first was a brainstorming site to find those sites that could best do with a makeover. Then MAA listed the top sites on their AWARe.org.au site to tap into the expertise of an established community of people who assess site performance against criteria to provide a comparable score for the level of accessibility of each site.
The brainstorming process highlighted 3 sites:
MAA also added the Government 2.0 Taskforce Blog and the Social Inclusion site to the list.
From MAA’s results, the National Library site fares the best. But this is a strange competition where those with the worst score win. MAA concluded:
“The Government 2.0 Taskforce competition and the AWARe project have been successful in identifying key access issues with five government websites. The National Library website appears to be generally accessible and the Prime Ministers Media Gallery needs some significant improvements.
The three other sites, the Parliament of Australia Live Broadcasting site, the Government 2.0 Taskforce website and the Social Inclusion website, are inaccessible to the point where a new website should be considered rather than addressing the access issues. Given the significance of the Social Inclusion website to people with disabilities, the government should consider creating a replacement for this website immediately. ”
It is now up to the agencies to take on the advice of MAA and improve the accessibility of their sites as set out in the attached report.
It gives us great pleasure to announce that the winners of the MashupAustralia contest have now been announced.
In case you have missed it, here is some background about the contest – from launch and initial response to a final wrap-up.
We’ve also tried to follow the conversation that you have been having elsewhere about the contest. Most recently, we came across this interesting four part discussion on the All Things Spatial blog about some of the contest entries (see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.
All that remains is to know who will go home with the coveted Mashie (see image (yes, the trophy is a potato masher)) and, of course, the prize money. Our esteemed judging panel have deliberated and considered all of the entries against the rules. As we indicated might happen, more than one prize per category has been awarded because there were so many high quality entries.
For Excellence in Mashing, the Mashies go to: read more…
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