In the last week four separate Gov 2.0/social media conferences have crossed my desk. All claimed to provide a line-up of star speakers with important insights into these topics. Clearly all events vary in quality, but when looking at relatively new areas, like social media and Government 2.0 how do you select those that will…
I will be liveblogging as much as possible of BarCamp Canberra 2010, however note that I am also speaking and the other two rooms may not have wifi – so I will post my notes later. This year BarCamp is standing room only, with around 90 attendees at the start of the day, and more…
Following the lead of the Gov 2.0 Taskforce’s MashupAustralia and NSW’s Apps4nsw competition (which runs until 24 March), Victoria’s Minister for Information and Communications Technology, John Lenders, has announced the ‘Apps my state’ competition. In his media release, Minister Lenders said that, “App My State is a competition to encourage software developers and members of…
AGIMO’s Excellence in e-Government Awards are on again for 2010, with nominations opening on 1 February (and closing 1 March). This year the categories have been revised. There are now five project specific Awards plus a team or individual Award for outstanding achievement in an Information Technology area within the Australian Federal Public Service. Details…
I regard creating a sustainable online community as very hard to do. It is almost always easier to join an existing community – although this presents its own challenges. However at times it will be necessary for government agencies to consider creating their own communities online. This may be as reference groups for specific initiatives…
These days when I personally need to set up a new website, I either hop onto WordPress or download one of the free open-source content management systems, purchase space on a decent US server and follow the installation instructions. I use a design template found online, customising it with some style tweaks where required, then…
I found out last week that Google had recently integrated YouTube with Google’s speech-text technology, allowing videos displayed on YouTube to have their captions and transcripts automatically generated. In addition, these captions and transcripts can then be translated, via Google’s text translation system, and displayed on the video in any supported language. The transcript can…
MashUpAustralia had 81 entries into Australia’s first competitive event for mashing up data from Australian governments. Now that entries have closed, the public have until 4PM AEDT on 20 November to vote for a people’s choice – that means you! So if you’ve not yet had a look at the entries and voted, this is…
GovHack wrapped up tonight with drinks at CSIRO’s Discovery centre. Although many of the Govhackers had already departed for their drives and flights back to Sydney, Melbourne and other parts of Australia, around 30 people remained for the award ceremony. At the awards, Tom Coates spoke about how only 20 years ago Tim Berners-Lee had…
Jack Pickard has written an excellent post regarding How should the UK public sector adopt WCAG 2.0? which touches on many of the themes required for adoption in Australia. If you were thinking about shifting your Australian government site to a WCAG 2.0 level of accessibility, this is welcome contribution to the discussion. Sometimes I…
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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