The last week has seen a range of major issues for the Australian Government’s new MyTax service. As reported across both traditional and social media, people using MyTax to file their tax returns have experienced shut-outs, had the process freeze when they were almost complete and had it fail to autofill their pre-saved details. MyTax…
While agencies often invest significant money into tools for tracking trends on social media, one of the simplest ways to detect and monitor the rise and fall of key topics and issues online is through Google Trends. Google Trends tracks the frequency of use of specific search words in Google searches. This represents the majority…
I’ve been tracking the number of Australian Federal politicians using Australia’s leading social channels for two years now, seeing the number using at least one of Facebook and Twitter grow from 79% in April 2012 to 90% in November 2013 to a current level of 92%. What’s even more interesting is in the details, which…
An interesting situation has arisen in Italy, with the country’s Agenzia delle Entrate, the Italian revenue service and taxation authority, accused of copying OpenStreetMap without respecting the site’s copyright license. As documented on the Open Street Maps discussion list, Italy’s OpenStreetMap community discovered a little over three months ago that the maps used by the…
On 22nd May 2014 the Public Records Office of Victoria hosted the 16th annual Sir Rupert Hamer Record Management Awards. While Records Management is not often highly regarded by people outside the field, however it plays a vital role for organisations in retaining a history of their activities and interactions and, when their actions and decisions…
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…
Government reports are often dry – really, really, really dry. They are also often wordy, complex, long and, due to these properties, largely incomprehensible to the broader community. Government policy and consultation documents can suffer from similar conditions. They are often quite complex, long and structured in ways that make sense to career bureaucrats but…
Australia now has eight whole-of-jurisdiction open data catalogues at state and federal level, alongside agency-based repositories such as at the ABS and Geosciences Australia. There’s now a recommendation, if not a clear mandate, that agencies release data in some kind of open form – although machine-readable data remains limited and some agencies have attempted to…
Last weekend (31 May – 2 June) was a big weekend for Government 2.0 in Australia, with the first truly national GovHack held across eight locations, including seven of Australia’s eight major states and territories. With over $170,000 in prizes, and around 100 national and local prizes on offer, GovHack 2013 attracted 900 participants, who…
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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