Now that the UK general election has been called, it will be interesting to see the role social media will play in a Westminster election, compared to the US’s last Presidential election. One of the first examples of how this election will use social media has been demonstrated by the UK’s ruling Labour party, who…
Cheryl from the Victorian eGovernment Resource Centre recently brought to my attention the launch of the BrandKarma website. The website aggregates information about top brands and allows the public to indicate whether they love, hate or want to watch them. It also allows comments and, in the best social networking style, the creation of personal…
We’re beginning to see the early shape of 21st Century statecraft, through how the UK and US have begun adopting social media approaches in their international relations. Both nations have recognised the need to engage their own citizens, and the citizens of other nations, in ongoing conversations – tapping broad bases of expertise and improving…
The Digital Policy Council at Digital Daya has released a thought-provoking report on the incidence of social media use by government leadership around the world, characterised through the use of Twitter, entitled Real Leaders Tweet (PDF) Considering the 163 countries recognised by the United Nations, the report indicates that 24 (15%) already have leaders or…
I’m a big fan for the use of gameplay to encourage people to explore concepts, test ideas, build skills and model behaviours while generating awareness – however it is a tool that I have not seen exploited anywhere near to the extent it could be in government or most commercial organisations in Australia (and yes…
If you’ve ever been required to collect ideas from the public – or wanted to – have you considered the use of a ‘ideas market’ or similar system for collecting. allowing comments on, prioritising and reporting back on the use of ideas. Dell and Starbucks both use these systems extensively to seek public ideas to…
In a first for a major political party in Australia, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) has embedded blogging, tweeting and video in the heart of its website, relaunching www.alp.org.au as a Politics 2.0 website. Termed ‘Labor Connect’ the redeveloped site aims to foster active policy debates, stating that, We know we won’t always agree about…
Just in case you missed this the other week, on 21 January the UK launched the data.gov.uk website with 2,500 government datasets available for access and reuse by the public. This leapfrogged the US’s data.gov, which now has around 1,000 datasets available. The UK site also extends the government open data space in several other…
The organisers of the US-based ‘Apps for Democracy’ competition have released a guide for other governments and organisations on how to run their own similar contests. The Guide to Creating Your Own Apps for Democracy contains many useful tips based on how to setup a content and what worked and didn’t work in the contests…
On Tuesday afternoon the Gov 2.0 Taskforce released its final report, Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0. As stated in their blog post, the Taskforce handed the report to the responsible Ministers who immediately authorised its public release – a sign of great confidence in the report! The report generally followed the recommendations and included…
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); })();