Often in government there’s only two social media networks discussed and considered for community engagement and communications, Facebook and Twitter. MySpace is a distant memory, LinkedIn is used just for resumes and services like FourSquare, Plurk, Ning and others are not well-known. Also not that well known is Google Plus, and perhaps rightly so –…
A couple of years ago Hitwise, an internet measurement company that uses ISP logs to measure traffic to websites, reported that social media sites had become a larger source of traffic for Australian government websites than online news sites. This was a seismic change in user behaviour. Suddenly people were more likely to reach a…
With the rise in the efficiency dividend and increasingly tight budgets across government, I keep wondering whether there are places where government can make real savings and raise productivity other than simply by cutting costs. The crunch is often that one must invest money to save money – a position common in business but often…
Last week AGIMO released new advice on publishing public sector information, typing together the 2010 Declaration of Open Government, the Office of the Information Commissioner’s Principles on open public sector information and introducing a five-step process for publishing and managing Australian Government public sector information. The advice also provides information on how to publish, considering accessibility,…
This post was inspired by a comment by John Sheridan on Twitter, @craigthomler what I’d like for #gov2au #NY? egs of use of #PSI for service delivery innovation, value creation etc, not just curiosity It’s a good New Years wish and highlights two questions that I have been pondering for a long time. 1. Why aren’t people making more use…
In Australia about 10% of households don’t have a landline phone any more. In some other countries the figure is higher – and it is growing as people abandon the ‘fixed to one location’ phone for personal mobile phones. When calling a government agency – even a ‘free call’ line – there’s often additional charges for mobile phones,…
When websites first starting to become popular it became common for Marketing and Communications teams in organisations to receive requests from various areas saying “we need a website”. Now that social media is firmly embedded in Australia, I’m seeing and hearing about the same type of requests – particularly for Facebook. So, drawn from a…
While not normally a fan of Christmas, I was feeling festive today, so have translated several traditional Christmas songs into their Gov 2.0 equivalents. If you have a Gov 2.0 song in your heart, fell free to share it in the comments below! Jingle bells Dashing through the net In a collaborative open sleigh O’er…
With some of the concerns and processes I’ve witnessed in government it would be easy to draw the conclusion that hundreds or even thousands of public servants are using social media daily in ways that damage the reputations of their departments and the government. Fortunately, a couple of articles I saw yesterday have given me…
Rose Holley is one of my heroes. As a Digital Librarian at the National Library of Australia she has led one of the most effective, long-lived and under-rated Government 2.0 initiatives in Australia for the last four years. As one of those responsible for the digitalization of Australia’s newspaper archives (so far over 50 million…
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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