Consultation

Digital engagement is one aspect or technique within the field of community engagement or public participation in government decision making. As such it sits with in participatory democracy frameworks that have already been developed in this field by organisations like the International Association for Public Participation (www.iap2.org.au); an association that has a thriving presence in Australia.
It has a set of seven core principles starting with “the public should have a say in decisions about actions that affect their lives.” The second is ” public participat includes the promise that the public’s contribution will influence the decision.” As such it behoves us to identify all stakeholders to a decision, some of whom will engage in the digital world and others for whom we need to seek out their involvement. It also requires us to work with the decision makers on the level of decision making power that they are willing to share with the public (in this case through using these digital channels).
IAP2 also has a spectrum of participation (very widely used that provides a basis for deciding on the level of engagement being undertaken in relation to any decision), a toolkit of many techniques and a certified training course, most importantly providing skills and expertise on how to plan for community engagement – whether it is online or face to face.

I think at this early stage, it would be very advantageous for the working group behind this initiative to make contact with Dr Lars Rasmussen from Google in Sydney (lars@google.com) to investigate the Google Wave initiative (especially as it is being offered as Open Source) and can be managed on Government’s infrastructure (both externally and internally).

The thinking about transparency and social collaboration is industry leading and the development effort is managed out of Google’s Australian (Sydney) Labs.

Happy to discuss…

Regards,

Glenn Irvine
glenn.irvine@collaborativeview.com
http://www.collaborativeview.com

I feel this last comment could be expanded on. Interaction (online engagement) between government officials and citizens involves conversation. That may involve something easy like correcting information. It may involve sharing perspectives and knowledge that in turn fosters new insight and innovation. The challenge for public servants is having the authority and discretion to interact in that way. Mistakes might be made but the benefits make the risks worthwhile. I would like the issues paper to facilitate discussion around this area, one that I see is a huge challenge, including going into what may be politically sensitive issues.

I agree with Paul – Web2.0 is about interaction, sharing, and building a real sense of engagement for all. Many to many gives no sense of the power of Web2.0

This approach suggests that the primary beneficiary of Gov2.0 will be government. While, I agree that there are obvious benefits for government, I would suggest that the primary beneficiaries will be citizens.

To deliver citizen centric benefits will require much more than “the transformative power of the technology” – it will require a real and demonstrable commitment to making it happen over the long haul.

Suggested substitute …a culture and capability for online engagement…

Having a willingness to engage is one thing. Having the capacity (through relevant skills and abilities) is another.

Perhaps the sentence should read “How can we build a culture within government which favours the disclosure of public sector information?”

While I applaud the shift from point to point to many to many, the language is likely to confuse many people. A description for Web 2.0 that I’ve found useful is that its about participation and interaction.

I agree – in light of the subject matter of this ‘consultation’ it is vital that we walk the walk as well as talk the talk. For example, will all written submissions be made visible to the online community? To what extent will the material in written submissions outweigh the online chat? As with the online environment will responses to written submissions be available?

An online culture of online engagement with government already exists. Every e-mail to a call centre, import manifest and BAS statement is an online engagement within government. However, each of these interactions is bounded by a set of business rules that determine how that interaction will be handled. Building a set of business rules that accommodate all potential ‘real-time’ engagements is the real challenge.

The real question is what quality assurance must be maintained? ‘Web 1.0′ technology already provides publishing workflow tools to ensure that information published on .gov.au sites can be trusted. Reducing those check points may reduce the authoritative quality of published information.

The rate of adoption will depend largely on the rate at which Web 2.0 business practices mature and can be incorporated into mainstream business processes. The lead time for external e-mail to be adopted as a mainstream business practice was 2-5 years.

There are minefields here.

Consider the Bureau of Meteorology, for example: They receive significant income by selling aviation-related forecasting and observation data to the major airlines — Some 8-figure sum per year.

The major airlines consequently believe that because they’re paying for the data that makes it theirs, so they’d prefer that it wasn’t freely available; And if it was freely available, they’d be disinclined to pay for it, which would mean that the BoM probably wouldn’t accumulate it and publish it anymore.

So the only reason the BoM is producing this data is because it’s being paid for, and those paying for it have enough influence to affect what this Government agency does with the result.

I think that’s a retrograde outcome, and alternative funding sources for the BoM should be sourced so that all of the data they produce can be available to all Australian citizens.

I’m sure there are contrary views which think that a user-pays BoM is perfectly consistent with whatever their favourite ideology happens to be.

These are points worth debating. In the background, though, it’s worth keeping in mind that the price that is set for Government data isn’t necessarily related to the economic value of the data if it’s freely released

An in-depth analysis of the different types of public interaction methods needs to be undertaken. Not every tool is good for every situation. Not every tool by itself will achieve the required effect. Some tools achieve higher engagement with ordinary people (e.g. video), other with highly engaged people (e.g. twitter).

(by the way, there is a type in the videos section: s/of/or/ ).

It is not just about favouring the disclosure of public sector information. It is also about empowering public servants with the ability to interact with the public through online tools. This is not done by telling them what *not* to do, but mostly by providing training and room to experiment safely – by building trust and confidence.

Within a social Democratic State such as Australia there is a need for open government, however this fine collection of words need definition if they are to be made meaningful.

What do they mean in practice, how do you translate these into policy objectives and accountable outcome measures.

For example transparent. What does this mean, should all government polices be put on a web site within 2 working days of there sign off, all data gathered by government be placed on a web site so as determine if contracts are being me, or should cabinet papers be made public ?

In defining accessible does this mean common data standards, free information, publicly available web access, alternative formats etc

While at one level these examples are extreme they do pose the question without definition and benchmarks these will remain good intentions.

Lastly that a culture of openness and commitment to participatory and inclusive democracy should underpin this reform not just a belief in the transformative power of technology.

Q10: provide specific and practical examples of programmatic recordkeeping when interacting in the cloud; for example, many govt departments use Twitter – it may be considered short-term thinking, but seeding or fostering development of an open-source script-based approach to recordkeeping for this particular service will tease out a number of issues, give smaller organisations like councils the ability to implement a robust piece of software scrutinised by experts, as well as build a foundation for future development in this area. It need not be Twitter, but any online engagement that needs to be captured, like blog or forum posts. The key is that it should be able to be deployed sooner rather than later, so that specifics can be considered, discussed and improved through use.

Lets have an open submission process from the beginning. If people want to opt out and use snail and email, that’s fine. But lets give people the option.

Again, lets not confuse FoI and the OIC with the broader agenda of Gov 2.0.

+1 to Public Strategist (Craig – common guidelines are over rated, but I agree templates and guide are go – e.g. the needs of one agency may be different from another)

I made this comment earlier – we actually need to deal with the legal holes around this. Then it becomes a question of using effective moderation processes, depending on the desired outcome – but those will be on a case by case basis.

I don’t see the infrastructure for innovation being addressed in the report scope at this point. Its a major omission.

Q3: basic spatial information via a simple API – an inexpensive (or free), clearly licensed method to allow us to map our information to properties, post codes and other points in Australia

I think this point should be a separate focus area for the Task Force in this report.

…and how do you balance that with innovation?

The biggest barrier I’ve come across around online engagement has been the uncertainty of liability for comments made by people online.

This assumes that the government controls all this information. This point needs to be reframed and expanded a little. e.g. wikileaks.

+1 to both comments.

Again, needs to be positioned as a question. Record Management 2.0 is whole subject in its own right anyway.

Again, over prescriptive and locked in the existing mindset. This needs to be positioned as a question.

The process described here is a little prescriptive. I think it needs to be scoped back so you do don’t define the solution – i.e. wikipedia wouldn’t fit that model.

FoI appears to be a bit of theme in this document? However, I would hate to see this confuse the Gov 2.0 conversation. One of the challenges is simply making routine information that is already published more accessible. E.g train timetables.

I would have liked to see a specific point to review the Gershon Review in the context of Government 2.0. Where does it support Gov 2.0 and where is it a barrier.

+1 to Craig and Ron’s comments

I think that’s a narrow interpretation of Government 2.0. Fair enough if that’s the scope for the task force, but define it as such.

This and para 5 appear to conflict? Also, why not consider using some Web 2.0 feedback mechanisms like the uservoice system? http://uservoice.com/
The process of feedback is important in defining how Government 2.0 will be different.

+1
I noticed that. We might take that point further, as nothing in the scope really addresses how the structures and processes of government overall might actually change through Government 2.0. As you say, the focus is really about the interface of how information gets in and out. It also lacks a vision or a description of the problems are we trying to solve.

If you are serious about inclusivity you need to consider the significant numbers of people who don’t have access to the technology. In the UK and in New Zealand central government invested in the existing public library infrastructure to create the People’s Network which provides free access for everyone – both to the technology and the content.

The problem with ‘best’ practice is it also suggests a one-size-fits-all approach, which clearly is inappropriate. It is far better to define concepts of ‘good’ practice that can be adapted, act as a starting point for further innovation and are non-limiting.

The primary obstacles that emerge in our research on this are very clear, the include:

i) there is an inherent culture of risk aversion within government;
ii) failing to integrate online enagement fully into the policy cycle means that people see little point in becoming engaged;
iii) within government, engagement happens at too low a level; people want to see senior policy officials and ministers involved before they believe it has value; and
iv) using the wrong kind of engagement tool; it’s not about fashion, it’s about choosing the right tool for the policy stage and audience.

Might this be expanded to discuss ways to delegate the moderation workload to “trusted” individuals/groups outside government (e.g. a uni department). Where might automated “sin-binning” be a disadvantage (such as a consultation about profanity or pornography what is inappropriate in either a forum or in the media).

Actually, National Archives Australia already developed a tool for long term preservation, “Xena”, now handed over to xena.sourceforge.net, which does bulk transforms of documents to ODF/OOo.

Similarly, the National Library of New Zealand have developed an open-source metadata harvester that can assist discovery – but only if it has been put into the document in the first place.

It’s the metadata and semantic tools… and the ability to filter out the stuff you don’t need.

There’s already the AGLS (based on Dublin Core) and the thesauri of various state/fed governments. However, this is SO poorly implemented in so many places.

The other thing, which the US OMB recognized ages ago with their FEA, is the BRM that breaks down all the stuff governments do. The Australia Government Architecture (http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/australian-government-architecture-reference-models/index.html) is better since the XML schema and populated versions became available, but the BRM side is WOEFULLY underpopulated (less than half a page, so there is no consistent way of tying things together – either by citizens, groups, or even higher levels of government trying to integrate things. I understand the AGIMO folk are working on improvements…. but the techies cannot populate a BRM in any organization – it’s the responsibility of the suits. (see http://balneus.wordpress.com/2007/06/22/aga-proves-government-doesnt-know-what-it-does/ for a longer discussion of this, picked up by Jacques Chester of Club Troppo later).

If higher levels of government cannot find the stuff and integrate it… what hope the citizens? And if governments can do it, it is trivial (apart from culture) to provide it to citizens.

Moreover, is it proper for the government to “allow” debate and dissent, and be the arbiter of “moderation”?

Some forums online are community-moderated. One the one hand that means the forum publisher loses an element of control over the direction the community takes the forum; On the other hand, it means the forum publisher can enjoy relaxed “time and labour costs” of the kind described in para 122 above.

There’s no technical reason why the same forum can’t be moderated in multiple different ways, reflecting different standards and directions of different groups. If the database of comments is “open and accessible” then third parties can make their own decisions about credibility and worth of commentary.

I concur with Craig’s comment above.

I’d also point out that the release of Obama’s birth certificate has been cheer-lead mostly by the deranged pundits on Fox News, and “birthers” online are followers rather than leaders. Because the whole process has been tracked online, all but a tiny-minority of bug-eating crazies know that the entire issue is a big joke perpetuated by large doses of weapons-grade stupidity.

Finally: If legalization of marijuana comes out of Obama’s online consultations, perhaps he should have a legalization-of-marijuana policy that stakes out a position on the issue. Personally I couldn’t care less, but if it’s an issue that some folks think is important enough to get organized over, _why shouldn’t_ it be on the agenda? Would it hurt to put out a position paper?

The key point here is that Government often comes into an issue as a novice, with a start-up period of learning about issues that experts have often been following for decades.

That slow-start sometimes detracts from the Government’s credibility within the community of experts, because while they’re getting up to speed they’re perceived as thrashing about and making rookie mistakes over issues which, to the experts, are well-understood and straightforward.

Compounding the problem, sometimes it seems that Governments invariably change policy direction as soon as they begin to master an issue, which sends the fact-finding missions right back to square one to start again.

An excellent example is telecommunications policy, where Governments of both stripes have participated in 25 years of utter, abysmal failure. In an environment where many in the industry understand it enough to make millions, Government has been ham-fisted and open to manipulation by vested interests simply because they haven’t understood enough about the subject to know any better. Both parties’ policies have been obstacles to progress, failing to deliver what the industry has needed, the citizenry have wanted, or what the Government of the day has visualized as its policy objectives. The telecommunications industry has succeeded in spite of Government policy, rather than because of it.

That situation isn’t unique: Farmers, unions, school principals, airlines, soldiers and virtually everyone else have stories to tell along the same lines. The stories all have common elements, where the Government performs some kind of consultation, draws some wildly bizarre conclusions, then attempts to implement actions based on those conclusions.

The Government can’t be an expert in everything, and it shouldn’t try. What it should be doing is creating societal frameworks which enable the people who know what they’re doing to succeed — even if they disagree with each other and follow different directions, and even if some of the people who claim they know what they’re talking about turn out to be wrong.

And step one of that process involves discussion, rather than the cycles of listen/dictate that so often undermine meritorious best efforts.

(disclosure: I work in the telecommunications industry. I’m speaking as an individual, not on behalf of my employer)

One interesting topic that I think is missing here is the use of web2.0 WITHIN government, rather than just the government to public interface.

wondering if we there needs to be some acknowledgement of the three levels of govt here – as this is going to be a major hurdle in adoption of collection practices outlined

also – does there need to be a distinction between the APS and how it engages and the elected representatives?

another point – is there govt information that shouldn’t be made available… does this need stating?

within government sounds ambiguous to me… do you mean by govt- or sharing between govts?

I believe that Question 2 is one of the most important problems we face in adoption of this goal. Broad cultural change is required across government that encourages innovation whilst providing a safety-net for those who try and fail. Leadership from the highest levels and generational change is required to make this a reality. The key is not to expect too much too soon as transparency is a terrifying concept for most government agencies and their officers.

All of the technical, legal and logistical problems will be solvable, but worthless without real cultural change at all levels of government.

I think this paragraph has the balance about right… but perhaps there should some emphasis on the role of web2 serving to enhance existing consultation processes rather then inventing new ones. The transparency and openness stuff will take longer and is more threatening -gathering feedback is already done.

Is ‘point to point’ the same thing as ‘one to many’?

A point worth considering (which is, I know, out of scope):

If a Government-published comment from a citizen could potentially breach the Privacy Act and create cause to involve the Privacy Commissioner, but a similar comment posted on a third-party blog wouldn’t, then perhaps it is the Privacy Act that has the problem rather than the mode of engagement chosen by the Government.

Addition:

Point out that publication in proprietary formats represents a barrier to participation in Government, because citizens cannot access Government publications unless and until they’ve paid license fees to private corporations.

Also point out that maintaining multiple formats creates double-handling costs for the public service, so in the interests of efficiency the preference should be to choose one open format rather than supporting lots of formats in the hope that a citizen can read/modify at least one of them.

Proofreading amendment: Should CVS be CSV ?

A related question: What back-end processes within Government can/should be changed to enable front-end openness?

For example: We can insist on publication of CSV or XML data from Government repositories, but if the public service says, “All the source data comes in on written application forms, and converting it to CSV or XML is too costly,” then CSV/XML publication won’t happen.

If Government processes are changed so that data is stored and manipulated in open, expressive formats throughout its entire lifecycle, then pointing to a stage in that lifecycle where publication should happen becomes more technically and economically feasible.

This comes down to a fundamental view of what Government is for.

If one is of the view that the purpose of Government is to shape society into some kind of ideal, where everyone is on the same page working to some kind of utopian goal, then Web2.0 has very little to offer. In that world view, the Government has already worked out what it’s going to do and the job of the citizen is to either help it get there (usually by means of constructive “submissions”, but only when “consulted”) or get out of the way and let the Government do its thing.

If one is of the view that the role of the Government is to act as a kind of social lubricant to enable citizens to employ their own ideals in furtherance of their own goals, then that’s where Web2.0 is strong. Enabling that outcome requires the Government to be part of the conversation, so that it can see where obstacles are and apply its resources appropriately to smoothing the way for citizens without creating more problems than it solves. Government can be a remarkably blunt instrument, which needs to be wielded with care.

I suspect that the slowness of Web2.0 adoption comes from the fact that those of us who support this initiative are in the latter mindset, while much of the Government and its accompanying bureaucracy are in the former mindset.

Resolving this schism is, IMHO, one of the paramount challenges of Government 2.0.

I think you’ll find that they call it Gmail.

Different sections of the community may be at odds about policy alternatives. New approaches to moderated online engagement offer the potential for people to learn from each other respectfully and constructively to find common ground for policy frameworks.

Replace “argue” with “deliberate”.

“Interactive consultation” still implies the disempowered “you talk, then we decide” approach. Instead, use the language of IAP2.org in their “spectrum of public participation”: collaboration with citizens.

Add question (or modify Q23): To legitimise online engagement processes, how can a full diversity of publicly deliberated views be included?

It may be worth splitting Q28 into two: there is an important difference between what government does in relation to what people outside government do (in this context including making data available and being part of the wider conversation) and what government does in relation to its own service delivery and its internal activities.

This is a slightly narrow view of Government 2.0 (or, indeed, of government). Yes, there is certainly great scope for improving the conversation about government, but there is equally a huge opportunity for improving what government does as a major service provider in its own right.

I think ANON has raised some very good points above.

The technologies that government agencies are selecting to manage their systems may not match the skillsets of the available or future workforce.

It would also be very useful to look at internet maturity across government agencies to provide a more complete picture of how ready various departments are to step into the Gov 2.0 world. Many government departments may still be struggling to address basic provision of information on websites and manage and resource these sites appropriately, let alone be capable of implementing Gov 2.0 functionality. Measurement is also a key concern. What are the consistent metrics used across government and is there a clear understanding in Senior Management of how to read a website report (as they are expected to read a financial report).

Can government centrally provide standard business management guidelines such that agencies do not have to ‘reinvent the wheel’ when considering their own online engagement guidelines?

Offline consultations are also at risk of agenda hijacking. Again it is important not to single out the online channel for risks that apply across all engagement mediums.

Need to provide guidance around the types of moderation that should be employed in different cases. Pre or post-moderation, automated spam filters, automated language filters, community abuse reporting tools, appropriate participation and moderation guidelines, etc.

And what education and support needs to be made available to senior management, legal and privacy advisors and public servants to support them in engaging online in appropriate manners.

Note that while Government is subject to access obligations, these apply for other mediums as well. Government must also consider citizens who are excluded from offline engagement for various reasons, e.g. remote communities, disability, lack of English, lack of literacy. Many of these issues are currently not adequately addressed by commonly used offline engagement methodologies.

For example – translators at focus groups, discussion papers presented in audio as well as written form, town meetings that cater for people who are mobility challenged.

At the end of the day online and offline mediums both present challenges for certain groups and it is not appropriate to single out online as a channel when discussing citizens who may be disadvantaged by the choice of a particular channel.

Some people may be uncomfortable with other types of interaction with government as well, such as writing letters or attending meetings.

This should be highlighted as well to prevent the implication of bias (that online is more uncomfortable) and reduce the case for online engagement – there is nothing about online engagement that is necessarily MORE uncomfortable for some people than via other mediums.

‘Best practice’ is a nice term, however it is poorly defined in government and often is used as a way to restrict rather than enable innovation.

If ‘best practice’ cannot be clearly defined the term should not be used.

Pricing should also take into account the economic value of information if released.

There are many cases where there is significant positive economic or social value in making data freely available – such as the sharing of emergency data between government agencies (which currently is often costed at a level that discourages usage and therefore reduces the effectiveness of emergency responses).

Charging for maintenance and distribution costs can cost significantly more in lost economic or social benefit than it achieves in cost recovery.

I agree with Cameron. Copyright is too limited in scope to cover the range of protections around Intellectual Property.

Note also that it is not necessary to waive copyright to facilitate re-use. Perhaps a statement about using more flexible copyright approaches might be less confrontational.

Needs some acknowledgement that ALL government departments are engaged in the collection of some information.

Consider data.gov as a potential example of the ‘asset list’ approach.

‘Online’, not ‘on-line’ is in general usage.

Need to move towards a legislated approach where all government information is freely available to the public, except where specific strong cases apply for it to be restricted. Where these cases exist it should be clearly explained to the public why the information is not disclosed.
We need to make government accountable for why they do not release information, rather than the existing culture where information must generally be specifically requested to be released.
Also where an FOI request has been made, in most cases the information should become public to the entire citizenry, rather than only be specifically released to the FOI requester.

Third point, how can the government encourage and support social innovation within the community?

This goes beyond consultation into application development and mashups – where services are provided as a public good by organisations other than government departments (aka: OpenAustralia)

Third point, how should government information be made available in order to support effective online use and reuse?

‘Buzz’ might be understating the usage. Both Forrester and Nielsen have reported that over 50% of the Australian online population use social networks and a substantial proportion read blogs, participate on forums, post and view photos and view or post videos.

It is a well-established trend, with many people having normalised the use of Web 2.0 systems within their normal behaviour.

Became citizens’ preferred means of interacting with government in 2008, also became the most common last used means of interacting with government in 2008 – based on the AGIMO report, Australians’ use and satisfaction with e-government services—2008.

May be worthwhile noting that this direction does not exclude the ongoing use of existing engagement and consultation practices, but supports their effectiveness.

I see the goals of Government 2.0 to be to support the participative democratic process, improve government policy development and service delivery and thereby improve the social welfare and economic outcomes for citizens.

Making information more accessible and usable (no ‘e’), becoming more consultative and innovative and promoting collaboration are all strategies or tactics used to achieve the goals above.

There are also cost-efficiencies that may apply.

Possible typo?

“…Commissioner are set out *in* Clause 9…”

Q11: Are citizen engagement responses appearing on government websites subject to the Archive, Disability Discrimination and FOI acts? If not, should they be?

RDF and RDFa may also be formats worth considering here – particularly when looking to augment existing website properties.

Having responded to one consultation, a user may be more likely to respond to another consultation. A related consultation should be easily visible at the point of completion or commencement of a user’s response.

“Like this consultation? If you’re interested, we’d also like your feedback on consultation X!”

“Including RSS feeds on the consultation site” may require some additional detail. Is it:

> a feed of all consultation responses?
> a feed of upcoming consultations?
> a feed of responses marked as suitable for publication?
> a feed of recently-closed consultations?

Possible improvements:

- Adopt of standardised means for describing (or at least summarising) upcoming, open, and recently closed consultations

- Ensure that consultations seeking to elicit responses from the ‘general public’ are discoverable and/or aggregated via a [government] website targeting the general public (i.e. not necessarily an agency website).

UK Govt. example of technical implementation of consultation metadata:
http://code.google.com/p/argot-hub/wiki/ArgotConsultation

AGIMO’s current Excellence in e-Government awards may consider adding a data re-use / interoperability criteria or category.

http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/excellence-in-e-government-awards-2008-finalist-case-studies/

Additionally, AGIMO could consider expanding the Web Publishing Guide (or a Better Practice Checklist) to include sections devoted to practical [technical], efficient implementations of web-based data accessibility and data distribution case studies and techniques.

http://www.finance.gov.au/e-government/better-practice-and-collaboration/better-practice-checklists/index.html

http://webpublishing.agimo.gov.au

When releasing requests for tender, agencies should consider weighting respondees’ proposals based on the flexibility of data re-use (if new data is to form a part of the work, and if existing datasets are used to inform the final deliverables), and expose this criteria as part of the initial tender documentation.

Initial thoughts:

> Tenders (CC-BY)
> Government Job Vacancies (CC-BY)
> Directories (CC-BY)
> Law (CC-BY)
> Service Locations (Government Shopfronts, etc.) (CC-BY)
> Publications / Research Papers (CC-BY)

One important issue (already noted above in para 39) is that Creative Commons licences (such as CC-BY etc) are not appropriate for data. Data licensing is a nightmare area which is why Science Commons (a project of Creative Commons) recommends placing data explicitly in the public domain. Where data is mixed with copyrightable material or database rights exist there is immense potential for confusion and a consequent reduction in re-use.

So the first step to answering Question 15 is to define carefully what parts of public sector information are data and which are not and to then consider how best to handle the data and the grey areas. My personal opinion aligns with that of Science Commons; that it is best to place the whole set of data and any associated material clearly in the public domain through an appropriate waiver like ccZero but this is a controversial area.

Looking forward my opinion is that it is more valuable to think about discoverability than asset lists. More and more in the future people will be arriving at these assets via search and ultimately by automated search mechanisms. Lists are an important part of this but markup and search optimization are also key.

I would be inclined to title this “Intellectual Property” rather than copyright. Or even just “Publisher Rights”. IP is much more than copyright, especially when the discussion is about data, to which copyright does not apply. There is also an important role for the consideration of moral rights in works or collections, both in their legally enforceable (libel etc), and community norms (e.g. citation and attribution) forms.

Not sure this is the right place for it, but the document doesn’t mention issues of high-quality procurement and purchasing decision-making.

There are lots of snake-oil salesman in the online services/software industry, some of whom have already provided (inadequate) websites for government entities. It is easy to spin products and experience in a way that pays lip-service to open access issues, without actually having the frame of mind and implementation ability to execute the project successfully and for the public benefit.

This is understandable, as assessing the quality and approach of a provider is difficult for those not familiar with the industry’s best practice. However, when the Gov2.0 requirements and directions emerge, these will place even greater technical demands on service providers than the already suprisingly-demanding task of ‘building a website’.

It is crucial that govt departments have access to a way to be able to objectively assess the capability of a service provider. Some kind of peer review system?

Dear Task Force

I would have liked a survey completed to address the following issues.

I have been concerned with the lack of information on the computer skills available in Australia for Standard Business Reporting (SBR) and other Australian computer projects.

1 Has there been a survey of what computer languages are used in Australia?

2 What percentage of computer code is contracted overseas?

3 How important are computer language skills in our education system?

4 Where are computer languages taught?

5 What are the demographics of these computer skills?

6 What is the current level of immigration directed towards computer skills?

7 What are the requirements to make Australian more “literate” in computer languages?

8 What computer language should form the “basic” building block for educational purposes?

9 Is there a data base of software systems used in Australian Federal, State and Local Governments?

10 Who co-ordinates a response in the event of a denial of service attack on our computer systems?

11 What is the value of computer systems purchased in Australia?

12 What percentage are imported and what percentage are “manufactured” locally?

I appreciate your consideration of these matters.

Regards

ANON

Just a minor point but ‘a newly appointed Information Commissioner’ could be misread as suggesting an Information Commissioner has already been appointed. I would suggest ‘a proposed Information Commissioner’ or something similar.

I think the reference to the ‘Privacy Commissioner’ in this paragraph should in fact be to the Privacy Act 1988.