Consultation

+1 vote for this.

Where’s the little I agree/disagree button so I can just vote for the ones I like without having to leave comments ; – )

Suggest contacting the Business Intel Unit (CSDI program) at DHS as they have just undertaken an exercise in gathering the procedural and technical issues in sharing information across 12-15 APS agencies. (Peter Harper has access to the study) as I expect that the issues will be the same. Also, Legal, Media Comms, IT and Security teams teams are not the stewards/owners of the information and services that the public want. They are more likely to be the gatekeepers than the entrepreneurs within Govt. Suggest you seek out pockets where agencies have been able to succeed, despite the bureaucracy, and determine why and how, rather than an investigation on ‘why not’.

There are at least 3 agencies (DHS, Innovation, Health) that are about to embark on implementing an EDRMS. Rather than a passive search and case study, how about partnering with one of them to focus on the introduction of record keeping of Web 2.0 technology. DHS has some outstanding IM/IT/RM experts in this space and would be an excellent partner. Otherwise, I think you are going to be disappointed in your search.

Headshift has experience with both government 2.0 projects and also customising Confluence (GovDex is Confluence-based site). For a selection of case studies, see by sector or by technology. We would be happy to provide a more detailed capabilities statement to the Task Force.

These all sound very important and worthwhile. Most of all I am glad to see that the gov 3.0 is getting support (and it will be the area I will be most interested in).

All ticks from me

Yes, yes, yes !!

This is the nub of the future and the place where we can really value add the APS for the people of Oz.

I think TF needs to consider creating some guidelines for this to ensure that the digital industry is, at least partly, in the drivers seat.

There could be a mix of agency driven and industry driven projects. Perhaps with the latter being about firms or individuals being ‘approved’ by the TF (based on their long standing role in the digital space) and these then being able to pitch and discuss their ideas to the agency.

Of course, I would be looking to be in that activity and I already have a corker of an idea that is both web 1,2, and 3.

Thanks for listening and looking forward to the starting gun.

Two ideas for additional projects:
1. I believe there is still scope to put forward some small proof of concept or pilot projects within the scope of the time frame and funding available. This experience would add immensely to the survey and review projects put forward here. I realise that initiatives like SI Camp will also do this, however I think it is important that this happens in a number of different ways. For example, the Task Force could fund week long innovation sprints inside government departments (at either the fed, state or local government level) for those interested in participating.
2. Overseas experiences appear to suggest that non-government organisations have an important role to play in the development of Government 2.0. I would like to see some thought put towards developing a framework for public/non-profit/private sector collaboration for stimulating Government 2.0 innovation, education, public participation and sustainability (of Gov 2.0 projects).

Headshift would also be happy with this and the Survey of Australian Government Web 2.0 practices (they appear to be linked).

Headshift would be happy to help with this (and also the Strategy to identify key barriers within agencies to Government 2.0). For example, we recently completed a report on Social Networking for the Legal Profession.

I have worked with all three agencies, where do I sign up?

All worthy projects, but perhaps an unbalanced focus on web 2.0 tools themselves, and not enough on promoting an open government culture or addressing the risk averse public sector culture which prevents the sharing of much information in the first place – which is part of your terms of reference.

I’d like to propose a project to shift the risk, and thus shift the culture.

The decision-makers faced with access to information requests daily (FOI officers, privacy officers, front desk staff, line managers, whoever answers the phone that day …) are often over-worked and under-resourced. The easiest answer is to say “no, because of the Privacy Act”. They know their boss will back them up for this risk-averse response, more so than if they actually examined their legal position in more detail, which takes time, is frustrating and complex, and risks getting it wrong.

As I have suggested in my submission on the Issues Paper, one solution is to make that decision-making task less complex; not by weakening access to information laws/rules, but by offering decision support tools to staff.

The Project Fund could be used to commission a prototype ‘map’ of the FOI/privacy/secrecy legislation covering access to information requests for one or more jurisdictions (let’s start with the Commonwealth), with the map generating a series of question-and-answer points on a decision ‘tree’/flowchart, to help quickly guide the user towards an end answer, covering their circumstances, for the question: “Can we disclose this?”

Imagine the shift in attitude if that tool were also made public – the person asking for the information can also quickly see what ‘the law’ says about their request! Now the risk has shifted too – the public servant risks saying ‘no’ when everyone can see the answer should be ‘yes’. That would truly create an open government, pro-(appropriate) disclosure culture.

Declaration: I would hope to work on such a project (and thus financially benefit), as our firm has much of the specialised privacy content that would be one input into the ‘map’. However I have been suggesting this idea since 2003, before I was a consultant and thus in a position to benefit personally from it.

Like James, I think there needs to be some seed money for a few pilots to prove things can be done.

And, like Anna, I fear that the thinking is skewing to solutions and thus tools, and away from culture and education.

So, I am keen to see work done on the cultural and educational hurdles as I think that these are the most pressing. As such, you have my vote (and bid, to be honest) for those projects above any other.

Headshift would be an ideal candidate for this project, though I’d like to offer acidlabs’ services also. Given the two companies know each other, and the project isn’t small, I reckon we could share the load.

I agree with Dave Williams, don’t look to the gatekeepers, look to the enablers and what it’s going to take to enable these things to happen.

And, rather than a “strategy to identify”, why no just identify? Or is that what was meant?

Again, there is a lot of talent around that can help with these projects, but I’d like to say acidlabs would like very much to be involved.

In the formulation of ‘an appropriate recommended strategy’ it would be good to specifically note what other organisations have done and explicitly point out that regardless of whether its a public or private organisation the examples of “how people have tackled them” and “what to do” work equally as well across both of them.

I remember the old whole of government intranet idea back in the late 90s and the problems since with a whole of government approach interoperability. No one can agree on what standards to use.

Expanding govdex, integration with australia.gov.au and starting to employ open standards for interoperability, like openid for example, instead of making ’special government ones’ would go a long way to making a start.

Everyone listens when DSD policy is talked about. After being a part of government for 15 years it seems that no one tends to listen when it comes to NAA guidelines.

Until modern electronic recordkeeping is an integrated, invisible part of business rather than an afterthought of printing an email and putting it on a paper file, RK won’t matter to anyone.

You’ll likely need to go more widely than NAA for a real solution as David Williams (above) suggests.

I’m concerned that the old premise that ‘the government owns everything’ will be a hard one to shake.

Qld government has already looked at copyright and IP issues. Why are we not simply following their lead for a government standard, or adopting an appropriate Creative Commons License?

Education.au has recently completed a report for DEEWR: Annual Report on Emerging Technologies: Planning for Change. In this report we find that the current copyright regime needs not just a review but a complete rewrite to take into account the realities of the current digital environment. This could be a useful project.

You definitely need to be talking to Jason Ryan of the Communications Manager at the State Services Commission, the New Zealand Government’s lead advisor on the public management system.

Starting with approaching a good information architect would be a good idea. A good IA is about user-centred approaches rather than discovery policy created by committees or websites that only reflect internal government business structures.

A benchmark is needed here, otherwise agencies will report on stats which tend to be meaningless in relation to the logarithmic internet adoption curves.

Looking at Forrester’s Social Technographics is a good place to start for understanding Australian online behaviour and how government agencies are addressing all types of Web 2.0 behavioural roles and not just saying 200,000 people visited the site so it must be good!

I agree with David as well. In general the ITC sections within agencies are only enablers (or un-enablers depending on your point of view). the businesses within the agencies are the ones requesting this technology and appropriate solutions. They are usually also the people working directly with clients who request Web 2.0 services at conferences etc.

We already have a prototype application framework that will allow web 2.0 solutions for information interaction. This is more than just data delivery. There are also already connections with large projects in Europe (Inspire) and the US that are dealing with technological barriers. These are primarily interoperability projects but do have relevance here.

As a shorter term project, how about simply getting consistent availability of RSS feeds across all government Websites, and at all levels (Federal, State, Local) – see MashTheState in the UK for inspiration. Geocoding could come next and other types of simple microformats. In the longer term, perhaps look to someone like NICTA for the really serious semantic Web research and development.

I think there is room for looking at common technical and other data standards, but the user-centred approach needs to decentralised. I’m not sure you can do this in a whole of government approach, unless we are talking about building a data.gov.au site. Also, re: Project / Competition / Prize for early leadership in Semantic Web – just getting the basics right would be a good start and going to where the users are, rather than reinventing the wheel.

+1 to Matt’s points
But doesn’t this still require some mandate to move towards Gov 2.0 first?

+1 to David’s idea
There are also a number of RM’s experts within Australia and overseas who are talking about this very subject – I think the theory is being addressed and we should build on that (i.e. just buy the book), not reinvent.

If we can imagine our new web 2.0 world a few years from now where multiple agencies are delivering (and consuming) web 2.0 services. We need them to be doing this using a subset of underlying capabilities (authentication, taxonomy, service catalogue, technical standards, etc…) which are common across all our web 2.0 systems. Note that I’m not suggesting that all capabiltiies are common – just those which it makes sense to share. Some of these are ‘barriers’ today and should be uncovered by the project to “identify key barriers”, but could we have one of the projects identify what should be shared capabilities in this web 2.0 world?
As others have commenetd the challenge is to have these capabilities delivered and managed as shared capabilities in a federal government world – but we need to set the bar and see how high we (the APS) are willing to jump.

There has been couple of landmark studies in academia looking at patterns of use of the social tools among Australian students to find out the potential of web 2,0 tools and how important is it for academics to venture into this area. I would be a good idea to consult the three big studies in education (Fitzgerald et al, Kennedy et al, JISC). It would be important as part of this exercise to find current web 2,0 practices of APS employees. The patterns of use will help to explain the reasons for resistance and barriers to web 2.0 use.

This assumes that the NAA HAS relevant advice on Web 2.0 record keeping strategies.

The history of online innovation tells us that the big leaps weren’t created by big corporations or governments. Innovation comes from individuals and collections of individuals. Mass collaboration is the thing which makes it possible.

While all these projects seem worth enough, nothing here will enable innovation. This is just routine public sector tire-kicking. Plus, its not innovative tire-kicking: the UK, US and NZ have already bought the car and are driving it out of the showroom.

If we want government to embrace gov 2.0, then we actually need to show those who make decisions what the benefits are.

Where is data.gov.au?

Thanks for your input here guys.

It would also be good to include in this project (or establish a separate project for) the development of an objective cross-agency model for establishing the (internal and external) value of information and data holdings, as this is a key driver for enterprise information management and information investment strategies that could lead to greater uptake of Enterprise 2.0 activities.

I think Tania Lang of Peak Usability in Queensland could be a good person to have involved in this project, as she has built her business around accessibility and discoverability of information in the government sector. Probably better know at this stage in State Government, but good value. We have used Tania a number of times in projects to assess these factors.

It would be good to expand the scope of this survey to include state and local governments. In my experience, some of the real groundbreaking activity in opening up government information to the public is actually happening in local governments. But it is not well propagated.

I have to agree with those that have already mentioned talking to the people that are trying to do this stuff – the business areas that have been stifled at every step trying to get something innovative done in this space. I am sure we could all identify at least one project in our respective agencies that this has happened to.

I think a better way to approach this project – as Matthew and James have already stated would be to ask departments what information the public requests the most – rather then what departments might think is valuable to make publicly available.

While I agree with Stephen and Anna that cultural shift is a prerequisite, I think readily accessible and affordable tools are also a threshold issue.
My ‘wish’ is for the Taskforce to research, design and establish a centralised website for policy development and consultation, called “Talk to Government”, which provides free access to a really well designed but basic level of web 2.0 consultation, feedback and collaboration tools for Governments at all levels.
It could start simply, with a forum tool (like Bang the Table) for traditional “here is a proposal, what do you think” style consultation, and be gradually expanded to include a wiki tool for collaborative policy development (like Future Melbourne) and a more open ended ideas gathering and/or feedback site (like ObamaCTO, with voting or NHS hospitals feedback in the UK).
How do we develop the basic site tools? I’m not convinced that the competition approach is the best one for this project. We want these basic tools to be the best they possibly can be, if government departments are to be persuaded to use it. I think an approach harnessing commercial competition would be preferable. At the moment “many flowers are blooming” as companies step up to address the needs of different government agencies for these tools. A competitive tender, where the tenderers can address one or more of the tool types could result in, say, three successful tenderers providing the different tools hosted on the one site. The companies would be required to collaborate to harmonise their user interfaces, but would support their own section of the site. The basic site tools could come with optional pay-for-use add ons, such as project planning, moderation, results collation and analysis.
Use of the centralised site would not be limited to the basic tools available on the site. If a Government agency had sufficient funds and motivation, they could develop or use a more tailored product, and link into the Talk to Government website to increase their reach.
Or if the Governments were willing to fund it, the site could offer 24/7 monitoring and moderation. By centralising moderation at one “Talk to government” location, you would get good economies of scale. By centralising all Government policy consultations at one suitably searchable website, you would maximise audience reach. You would also minimise the barriers presented by users having to learn to interact with too many different styles of technology.
The absolutely critical factor is affordability to government at all levels – with tight budgets, no government agency I know can afford to increase the costs of consultation, regardless of how much it increases the effectiveness or transparency of the process. but the first barrier that has to be overcome is the reluctance of government to innovate.

As with comments made by others on some of the other projects – the Taskforce needs to be careful not to propose “rework” – reinventing wheels that are already rolling elsewhere.
Start with Queensland’s adoption of creative commons as the baseline, and check if it needs any refinement to take national.

How about this…

Corporations in the most have proven themselves unreliable of keeping people employed, as evidenced by the GFC.

How about the government promote a people powered marketplace whereby unemployed people band together via a custom online social network listing their skills and experience, AND submit business ideas/plans if they had any. An oversight panel of proven entrepreneurs could be assembled to judge the quality of the ideas and all submitted ideas only go to them.

People who are still employed are encouraged to donate micro-investments to their fellow people, providing an investment pool to fund ideas. The best ideas, and the ones that employ the most people, are the ones that get funded. Employees for the new ventures are sourced from the unemployed people listed on the social network with matching skills.

This way people bring themselves out of unemployment and new enterprise is created.

It is good to have a powerful search engine within the web 2.0 Government. Suppose I type in the keyword Emissions Trading, then an article with following contents will be displayed (for example, information from wikipedia and Australian Federal Government):

1 Overview
2 History
3 Cap and trade versus baseline and credit
4 The economics of international emissions trading
4.1 Example
4.2 Applying the economic theory
4.3 Prices versus quantities, and the safety valve
4.4 Incomplete country cooperation and border adjustments
5 Trading systems
5.1 Kyoto Protocol
5.2 Australia
5.2.1 Garnaut Draft Report
5.3 European Union
5.4 New Zealand
5.5 United States
5.5.1 Renewable energy certificates
6 The carbon market
6.1 Market trend
6.2 Business reaction
7 Measuring, reporting, verification (MRV) and enforcement
8 Criticism
9 See also
10 References
11 External links
12 Latest articles in Australian Federal Government

Hope that it will save the time for the civilians to comment.

Henry Kar Ming Henry

In addition to barriers, this strategy should identify key business drivers and enablers, and find ways to support business projects that demonstrate the business value of Web 2.0.

I thoroughly support this initiative. It’s really important that the survey is conducted in a way that captures the views of those who aren’t initerested or involved. I”d like to put my hand up for Global Access Partners to offer our services on this project.

Identifying key barriers could probably be incorporated into the earlier mentioned survey project, particularly if the survey included an option to be interviewed (in person or on telephone).

It certainly seems clear that there is a need for departments and agencies to share knowledge and collaborate better, however I am not convinced that a better intranet and overhauled GovDex alone would fix this.

+1 to David Williams’ idea also

I’m against this idea, it ingrains the misperception that using web2.0 effectively is somehow seperate to the core business of government; a box that needs to be ticked. Gov 2.0 needs to be intergrated in to the bigger public sector efficiency agenda.

Any project to do with making public sector information more freely available should have a smart privacy component. I’ll dob in my colleagues at IIS as potentially being very helpful on this one.

Support! – being able to find something using t he search bar on a .gov.au site would be fabulous.

Support & support Matthew’s suggestion.

Sugget finding the agencies most in need of help & pairing them with providers to compete as teams in the competition.

This is an extremely important area for research. I would suggest a couple of extra PSI areas to look at as well as the Powerhouse Museum project:

*A cost benefit analysis of opening up access to ASIC data currently only available through a fee-based ‘detailed company search’. ASIC is currently revenue-positive, costing $274 million & collecting $545 million in fees & charges.
*Research into the public value of ABS data & usage patterns of that data over time
*Analysis of options for opening up access to the HILDA data (the inaccessibility of the HILDA datasets is a common complaint amongst Australian policy researchers)
* An Australian equivalent of this UK study (PDF) on the economic benefits of dropping cost-recovery charging (the study found that data should be charged at the marginal cost of distribution, which online (but not offline) is near zero).

Review of Public Consultation to better incorporate web 2.0 tools for efficiency.

Getting into Gov2.0 shouldn’t neccessarily be an added expense. Most departments and agencies are already spending considerable resources on old worls public consultation procedures which are increasingly innefficient. All public consultations should be encouraged to do a cost benefit analysis of incorporating web 2.0 into their existing budgets and plans. The Productivity Commission and Law Reform Commissions are ideally positioned to benefit and save money.

As per James Dellow’s comment above, some small proof of concept projects are also extremely important in demonstrating the value of PSI – there’s always a danger that we further open up access to PSI but only those who were used to getting hold of it when it was closed are in the habit of transforming that data in publicly relevant ways. For example my organisation is currently looking at doing a data visualisation project on the 2010 budget with the people behind http://taxcheck.com.au – I think small projects like this are great at demonstrating the value of PSI to a wider constituency.

Idea for pilot project: ‘open-sourcing policy research’

Part 1. A crowdsourced inventory of publicly available government data at the national level
Part 2. Rating of each data source against the principles of open access
Part 3. Use case studies to explore the options for combining open-access publishing of government information with an open & transparent research process (including at least some crowdsourcing) to demostrate the potential of gov2.0 to shorten the feedback loop between policy implementation and evaluation.

Dear Miriam,

the Cambridge Report (2008) was a brilliant theoretical work but did not take into account that their proposed solution might conflict with the legislative framework in Europe, maybe even in the UK. Eventually Australia has adopted a similar legal framework.

PRICING and FUNDING are two sides of a coin. As long as public data holders face a standstill or even decrease of public funding, it is waste of time to propose to a certain category of public dataholders (!) the marginal cost model. – The adoption of the US-model failed in Europe since most European Governments fund public services in a different way. – Different funding model, different pricing (at least of re-users).

Furthermore, marginal costs or even free data show a wide range of price elasticity: under certain conditions (which we are better aware before 10 years of research) the demand of the PSI re-user may soar (A) and in other cases free public data heavily damaged the local publishing industry (B).

I met only one excellent British professor who understood the complexity of these PRICING issues. By the way his book is the only one I can recommend in that regard.

For details please refer to my comprehensive feedback sent to your Taskforce on August 26. After 12 years research on PSI re-use, FOI and eGovernment related issues I am still in the infancy to formulate the adaequate questions for proper research. Its not the time for a quick fix. – But you could draw upon the bad lessons from Europe – in terms of methodology, market research, target marketing, benchmarks and forecasts which never became reality as some consultants believed to take place.

Don’t just focus in IP, but on a Policy-Framework that covers Permissions and Privacy – supported by Web 2.0 technologies. A better project would be to define the general Policy expression language, and the Profile of terms applicable to Govt information and services.

There is no project here about the “citizen” !
Web 2.0 is about better outreach to the consumer. (Most of these projects are all inward focussed…)
A new project on gathering and analysing citizen input to Govt data/info/services would enable better “eDemocracy”….

Government should investigate how Web 2.0 recordkeeping is managed and controlled as an inherent part of the solutions provided. Staff and public should not have to think about the need to capture and manage records in this environment, it should just happen. This ensures transparency and accountability.

My company, iCognition, has recently worked with several Government agencies where a progressive approach is being taken – all documents, data, forums, topics and discussion threads are being captured as records automatically behind the scenes. This leaves staff free to undertake the activities required and not be concerned about whether or when records are being captured.

Arguments that this type of information is of ephemeral value and should be managed outside the record system are not valid. All information created and stored by a Government organisation belongs to the organisation and needs to be managed as records. Not only does this ensure accountability and transparency, if it’s not done this way organisations can expect significant cost in management and discovery, as well as embarrassment when auditors need to spend substantial effort examining and/or searching multiple information repositories.

iCognition has been working closely with a number of government agencies on this issue and would be pleased to chat further about the approach being taken.

We use GovDex to support several Committees including a Community Committee which is geographically remote and dispersed. We would certainly support a review of Govdex to improve its interoperability with systems such as TRIM (we can’t post documents on Govdex direct from TRIM) and also its collaborative tools for our Govdex communities