In Australia many people still treat microblogging tools such as Twitter with scepticism and scorn, or even dismiss it outright as a tool for ‘discussing breakfast’. While the more negative views are beginning to shift, due to the active role Twitter played in the Brisbane floods, Australians still largely consider microblogs as a tool for…
The Australian National Audit Office has just released a report ‘The Protection and Security of Electronic Information Held by Australian Government Agencies‘ based on a review of the approaches to information security by four agencies, the Office of Financial Management, ComSuper, Medicare Australia, and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Amongst other recommendations…
Over the last two years we’ve seen a concerted effort by governments across Australia to increase the level of online engagement, debate and discussion involving public agencies. In 2009 the Government 2.0 Taskforce, commissioned by then Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and chaired by Dr Nicholas Gruen, conducted a six month process of engaging public servants…
Listening to the US’s National Public Radio (NPR) last week, I caught a story about how Chinese citizens are now using micro-blogging services (similar to Twitter) to communicate about missing or stolen children and, in some cases to locate them. According to The Guardian article, Chinese parents turn to microblogging in hunt for missing children,…
The Queensland State Archives recently commissioned a whole of Government Recordkeeping and Web 2.0 online survey to investigate how Queensland’s public authorities were using Web 2.0 and social media2 tools to conduct government business. The survey also asked public authorities about the policies and procedures they had in place to guide the business use of…
Sometimes it surprises me how much some organisations like using email newsletters over other tools like blogs. They spend weeks or even months crafting news items, bundle them together into a single email and then send them out to a subscriber list – sometimes without even using a system to measure the response rate or…
I’ve just updated my list of Australian government blogs, checking the list I had is still valid, looking for others (frankly they’re not that easy to find, you need to promote them and link to them from your sites guys) and checking the post frequency and level of comments. My assessment is that Australian public…
I’ve recently been looking around some at some of the ‘white-label’ social network services. They allow anyone to establish their own branded social network at little or no cost. Most include features such as personal profiles, blogs, forums, newsfeeds, photo and video libraries, live chat, email lists, calendars as well as widget markets (with custom…
At least 33 national leaders around the world are now tweeting through official accounts – that’s 20% of the world community. Under former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd Australia was fourth on a list of the top ten tweeting world leaders, however with the transition to Prime Minister Julia Gillard our position dropped to 14th. A…
The Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) has just launched a blog-based consultation on the Australian Public Service (APS) values. It will be open until 12 November for comments. This is the second stage of the consultation, the first stage used a custom online engagement system. If you’d like to contribute to the consultation – or…
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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