My daily news roundup this morning included a small story about how the Department of Human Services had sent a legal letter to the owner of the SaveMedicare.org website the other week, threatening expensive legal action if the site didn’t cease using Medicare’s brand and name. The letter, which was the first contact the website…
After 18 months freelancing in digital engagement and innovation consulting, I’ve been revisiting the recruitment market to see what opportunities are becoming available as the digital transformation environment matures across Australia. There’s definitely some very interesting roles around – more and more of them part-time – but also still a great deal of older thinking…
The Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) has just released a consultation paper asking for feedback regarding how public servants may be able to ‘Make Public Comment’ specifically focused on social media. It’s great to see the APSC consulting on this area. It is subject to rapid change, both in the nature of the approaches and tools…
Last week the government released Australia’s draft Open Government National Action Plan, a requirement to join the international Open Government Partnership, for community consultation. Australians have until the 18th November (Edit: extended from 14th based on community feedback) to comment on the plan, at which stage the government intends to move to rapidly endorse it…
On the tail of the 2016’s Census issues dealing with four relatively small distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks, the US East Coast was recently hit by a massive DDOS attack that succeeded in taking offline, or at least slowing down, major sites – from Amazon, Twitter and Spotify to PayPal and Netflix. This major…
Over the last few weeks we’ve seen several prime examples of individuals being judged and convicted by comments they made at some point in the past. Most would now be aware of the leaked tape of Donald Trump and Billy Bush, whose ‘locker room talk’ recorded in 2005 has led to an exodus of support…
Openness in government is supported by low barriers to engagement between citizens, agencies and politicians. For example, making the House of Members’ Register of Interests available publicly is great – but not THAT great if it is only available for viewing in hardcopy in one location in Canberra between the hours of 9-5pm (which used…
Digital disruption is one of the buzz terms of the last few years, underscoring the increasingly rapid changes in society, industries and governments as new ideas and techniques enabled by digital technologies take hold. Photo by Tsahi Levent-Levi While some embrace this disruption (generally those doing the disrupting), for many it remains an unsettling or…
I’m very pleased to see that the Australian Public Service Commission is finally considering the introduction of ‘free range’ teams of public servants, unattached to specific agencies, who can provide specialist skills as and where needed. I proposed this type of team while I was working within government almost ten years ago now, as I…
It’s party time at the Department of Finance as GovCMS continues its growth surge, from 78 sites less than a month ago to 102 sites this week. This means the Drupal-based platform is tracking 70% ahead of its 2016 targets, demonstrating how successful a well-engineered and supported digital platform can be in government if well…
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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