There’s a lot of evidence available now that the emotional tone of the messaging that people are exposed to on social media goes on to affect their mood, posting behaviour, and aspects of their health and actions. A study by Facebook and Cornell University in 2012 (published in 2014) that involved modifying the emotional valance of…
The Australian government has been touting the importance of innovation for several years now, with the Coalition’s innovation agenda recently conceded to be a political failure due to its lack of resonance with the Australian public. However underneath the politics, government agencies across Australia and New Zealand have been vigorously expanding their innovation capability, as the The…
While it rarely becomes top of mind for voters, there are times where political parties attempt to take on some of the responsibilities of governments, either because they don’t trust government agencies to perform these duties, or they perceive some form of electoral or financial value in doing so. A recent case in point is…
The recent revelations in the media about the collection of personal information from up to 87 million Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica and its use to influence political outcomes (successful or not), should be sending chills down the spines of everyone involved in information security, privacy and governance. That people’s data can be appropriated and…
Starting in a single Canberra venue in 2009, GovHack is now the largest open data hacking competition for government worldwide, with over 3,000 participants, coaches, mentors and organisers across 36 venues around Australia and New Zealand. Over a 46-hour period participants including coders, creatives, data crunchers and facilitators, redesign and reimagine citizen services and use…
As the world’s largest hackathon, GovHack is on at over 25 locations across Australia and New Zealand again this year from Friday 6pm this week until Sunday afternoon (28-30 July). With over 3,000 participants and 437 completed projects in 2016, GovHack is an opportunity to develop prototypes of new services, visualisations and mashups with government…
This is a brilliant (long) read about what happened when an automated system went rogue – and a cautionary tale about the risks of #automation when #ai replaces and deskills humans operating heavy machinery, like planes – The untold story of QF72 – What happens when ‘psycho’ automation leaves pilots powerless. As organisations and our…
As governments, companies, not-for-profits and societies continue to uncover the continuing impacts that digital technologies have unlocked, it’s time for me to move to the next phase of my own career journey. Humanity has only tested the edges of what digital can do for us, and our institutions and corporations are still learning and normalising…
There’s been enormous coverage of the new Centrelink debt letters process, whereby the Department of Human Services has automated the process of matching data from the ATO and Centrelink to try to find overpayments (but not underpayments) in welfare benefits to Australia. The automation has involved removing human quality assurance steps, which has led to…
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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