Online social media is becoming an important tool for governments to engage citizens during emergencies to rapidly disseminate information. in fact it is even beginning to be credited with saving lives during health crises. According to Nextgov, Federal health agencies relied heavily on social media to inform the public about the recent outbreak of salmonella…
Wellington city in New Zealand is preparing for its next ten year plan (2009-2019) and has launched a website, Wellington long-term plan, to facilitate citizen involvement in the planning process. The site features an ideas market-based discussion area allowing citizens to suggest ideas, then vote on different suggestions to provide their vision and priorities for…
There’s been a lot of ‘bitsa’ initiatives in Australia around the online channel as both the private and public sector come to terms with the new online options to support communication, collaboration, consultation and engagement. However it’s been rare to see effective integrated use of online channels in a co-ordinated fashion to support ongoing initiatives….
Capitalising on the huge Australian audience on Facebook (over 4 million people) and MySpace, the Victorian government has bolstered its online response to the Victorian bushfires by developing a widget that provides news and updates while encouraging donations. The widget is available from the Premier’s website and is also in Vic Premier’s own Facebook profile….
The micro-blogging platform Twitter was the breakthrough social media tool for journalists in 2008. It became a pipeline for breaking news for both professional reporters and citizen journalists, with the massacre in Mumbai, the Hudson River plane crash and Obama’s inauguration highlighting its effectiveness as a source of live, user-generated online content. The statement above, from a recent article published in MediaShift,…
While I’ve not yet seen an official statement confirming whether Australian government will support the second version of the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0), there has been a report released by UsabilityOne reviewing 12 Federal Government websites against the guidelines. The Accessibility Industry Report found a number of issues across the sites that…
The UK government’s HM Revenue & Customs service (roughly equivalent to the ATO) has launched an online consultation site seeking public input into its proposed charter. Named Have your say the site asks citizens to answer questions around the proposed charter and provide their views of what it contains and should contain. It’s a fairly…
The second BarCamp Canberra has been confirmed for 28 March, to be held at the ANU. In case you’re not familiar with the concept (quoting from the official site), A BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with…
James Robertson of Step Two Designs has published an interesting scenario regarding how a mid-sized government agency can meet global needs (corporate communications, top-level strategy, culture), while also meeting varying local needs. He’s opened the floor for ideas on how to most effectively support the needs of both management and staff. Judging by the comments…
The US has had a watershed year for government and political use of the internet. The Obama campaign has triggered a series of initiatives both at public sector and political levels by demonstrating that millions of people are willing and able to engage and mobilise online. Now the US is beginning to talk about the…
This archive mirrors the original eGov AU blog — Craig’s professional commentary on AI, digital government and technology in public life, running since 2006.
'; loop.parentNode.insertBefore(w,loop); })();