There’s been a lot of attention paid to AI ethics over the last few years due to concerns that use of artificial intelligence may further entrench and amplify the impact of subconscious and conscious biases. This is very warranted. Much of the data humans have collected over the last few hundred years is heavily impacted…
Like most people with a broad digital footprint I’ve been hacked multiple times, usually in fairly minor ways. Around ten years ago I had my PayPal account hacked through malware in the Amazon site, costing me $300. PayPal staff insisted this was a legitimate payment for goods (which I hadn’t ordered) being delivered to my…
One of the emerging challenges for governments in the online age is managing the discrepancy between the speed of transparency and the speed of accountability. With digitalisation and the internet, the speed at which government information is made public is becoming faster, with it being easier to collect, aggregate and publish information and data in…
Recently the World Health Organisation announced that cancer had overtaken heart disease as the number one killer of Australians, as well as being the number one killer of people globally. The WHO had another message as well. That cancer was a largely preventable disease. Humans have lots of medical data about cancer. With millions of…
We recently saw a change in the federal government in Australia, with a corresponding reorganisation of agency priorities and structures. Some departments ceased to exist (such as Department of Regional Australia), others split (DEEWR into two departments, Education and Employment) and still others had parts ‘broken off’ and moved elsewhere (Health and Ageing, which lost…
I’ve been completing a survey for the Spatial Industries Business Association (SIBA) related to the Queensland Government’s open data initiative, where one of the questions asked Can you list or describe any learnings that would be useful in Queensland? I’ve provided a number of my thoughts on this topic, having closely observed open data initiatives by government…
One of the interesting aspects about open data is how creatively it can be used to generate new insights, identify patterns and make information easier to absorb. Yesterday I encountered two separate visualisations, designed on opposite sides of the world, which illustrated this creativity in very different ways. First was the animated visualisation of 250…
I’ve long lamented the speed at which academia was embracing the internet, social channels and 2.0 approaches – with limited courses available on modern online techniques for under and post graduates, old fashioned-approaches to research and publication. There’s been hints of brilliance overseas – with US universities placing courses online and UK universities embracing social…
I was reading a tweet yesterday from Australia’s CTO, John Sheridan, and it raised an interesting question for me. #opendata a new goldmine? RT @theeconomist: Making official data public could spur lots of innovation econ.st/111Wy4x #gov2au — John Sheridan (@sherro58) May 19, 2013 Is government open data really a new goldmine for innovation? The Economist’s…
Yesterday morning I attended the first OPC IT WebEx event for the year, where we heard from three great speakers on intranet development, accessibility and the changing face of the media in Australia. One particular statement that stuck in my mind was from David Pembroke, CEO of Content Group, who said that it was important…
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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