As a law-maker, governments are often more attuned to making the laws and being in the position of controlling and defining the terms of engagement with communities. Agencies and departments often consult external stakeholders, but on their own terms – choosing the place, the medium and the scope of discussions. There’s good reasons for this,…
The government for the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) has just launched a consultation asking for the community’s views on what the city should be like in twenty years time. The Canberra 2030 consultation has gone some way to integrate Web 2.0 tools. It allows residents to submit ideas and vote on the ideas of others…
The Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA), in partnership with the CPA Australia, has introduced a fantastic innovation competition for public servants. Named The Pitch, In an IPAA first, the 2013 IPAA National Conference is providing an opportunity to pitch ideas for an original policy initiative or public sector innovation that could make people’s lives better and/or…
In a recent story in ITNews, Accessibility checker surfaces errors, John Hibbert claimed that a new Mental Health website, www.mindhealthconnect.org.au, operated by the National Health Call Centre Network and funded by the Department of Health and Ageing, didn’t meet the Australian Government’s minimum web standards. Based on a review using the ACheck tool for the minimum…
I like the MyUniversity website – it’s clean, useful and mostly simple. However, when using it the other day I found one extremely major flaw. It’s not mobile friendly. I recently reported that 47% of internet connections in Australia were now via mobile devices. This was based on an ABS report from the December quarter…
Here’s an excellent example of where crowdsourcing doesn’t work. The City of Austin decided to crowdsource a new name for its Solid Waste Services Department. It received plenty of ideas and votes, however few were meaningful or useful – though a number are quite funny. However don’t take this as a lesson that crowdsourcing doesn’t…
This archive mirrors the original eGov AU blog — Craig’s professional commentary on AI, digital government and technology in public life, running since 2006.
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