Imitation is often referred to as the sincerest form of flattery, however the attempt by the Treasury to mimic the success of Census Australia’s lighthearted Twitter approach demonstrates how carefully agencies must consider their social strategies in light of public opinion. Many will remember when the ABS launched its Census Twitter campaign with an engagement…
The NSW government today launched the NSW Premier’s Innovation Initiative, a program seeking expressions of interest in projects that support NSW government innovation in four focal areas – Congestion, Social Housing Assets, Open Ideas and Open Data. The process will invite organisations and individuals to submit Expressions of Interest setting out proposals the government could…
Republished with permission from the International Budget Partnership blog This post was written by Rosie Williams of InfoAus. Unlocking Budget Data in Australia: the BudgetAus Collaboration Budget transparency in Australia has recently taken a big step forward with the first ever release of federal budget data in machine readable format. Prior to this year, budget…
While common practice in many countries overseas, there’s still limited authentic consultation on government budgets undertaken in Australia – and I think we’re poorer for it. Involving the community in setting budget priorities and educating them on how a budget is developed goes a long way towards building understanding and (very importantly) trust in public…
I’m speaking at the eGovernment Summit today on how Australia is performing in the open government stakes, and what are the benefits of openness to government. As a reference I reviewed the 2012 Open Budget Survey (infographic right), released in January this year, which provides valuable insights into why openness in budgeting is important and which…
Social media followers and fans are not particularly good metric for judging the success or ROI of a social media campaign and I’d advise strongly against measuring success through these numbers alone. However as businesses attach a commercial value to their mailing and email lists, as a corporate asset, I thought it would still be…
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 I think back over the most well known innovation successes over the last few years, and I am not specifically referring to the public sector, an aspect that springs out at me is how often these innovations occurred during a major crisis or due to a funding crunch. In other words, these innovations frequently…
I’ve seen (and spoken with colleagues about) a number of austerity measures taken in government agencies around Australia over the last few months. With various governments across the country looking to cut spending to balance budgets, or at least reduce debt levels, lower 2011-12 budgets require many agencies to look long and hard at what…
One of the more curious things about Government 2.0 is how differently it is interpreted and delivered around the world. For example the map below (clickthrough to more information at Google Maps) illustrates how widespread Participatory Budgeting (PB) is – an approach whereby a government allocates some or all of its budget based on direct…
This archive mirrors the original eGov AU blog — Craig’s professional commentary on AI, digital government and technology in public life, running since 2006.
'; loop.parentNode.insertBefore(w,loop); })();