Now that Australia has finally sent a letter of intent to join the Open Government Partnership, I’ve been reading examples of how other jurisdictions went about developing their National Action Plans (a requirement of OGP membership) to foster and support government openness. It is clear that one of the key attributes of the most meaningful…
A classic ploy by media and PR professionals to kill an unwanted issue has been to ‘deny it oxygen’ – refusing to comment or engage on the topic publicly, via news media or other channels. The approach has traditionally worked very effectively for both public sector and commercial communicators. Devoid of any official information, or even denials,…
A month ago (20 May) I sent an email to Malcolm Turnbull, Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband, in my capacity as a Government 2.0 commentator, asking a range of questions about how a Coalition Government, if elected later this year, would approach Government 2.0 and federal agency use of social media in official engagement…
I’ve been watching a great TEDx talk by Dave Meslin on citizen engagement, which asks the question – if governments want to be open and engaging, why do they make it so hard for citizens to engage? He raises a very good point, and demonstrates it very clearly in the video (below). This is one…
A report from the South Australian Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) has been brought to my attention as providing brief but useful information about how to address ‘squeaky wheels’ who may contact councils and agencies via various channels, including via social media. The report, which uses the IAP2 model for engagement, is available at the following link: http://www.lgmasa.org.au/Resources/Documents/ELP_Squeaky_Wheel_Report_Final1.pdf…
I’ve had several discussions lately with people managing official government social media channels about the most difficult moderation challenge they face – their families and friends. It is very common practice for people launching a new social media channel for their agency to tell their friends and relatives about it, both to share something they…
Recently Twitter announced (as reported in Mediabistro) that 100% of elected US Senators and 90% of Representatives were using Twitter, and mapped the country to show electorate coverage by state. I track the use of Twitter by Australian federal politicians through my Australians Politicians on Twitter Google spreadsheet (about 66% use the service), and decided to…
While a sideshow to the fire disaster sweeping Australia, there’s been reports in traditional media and conversations online over the last day regarding the decision by the Australian Government Housing Minister, Brendan O’Connor, to apologise for and delete a tweet that claimed that a tweet from Australia’s Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, was a political stunt as…
A few weeks ago Ann Steward, the Australian Government Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Deputy Secretary leading AGIMO (the Australian Government Information Management Office) announced she was retiring from the public service after seven years in her current role. Her announcement was widely covered in the media, and there’s been a number of public and,…
Guy Cranswick of IBRS has brought my attention to a media release about a new report from Fifth Quadrant, a leading Australian customer experience strategy and research consultancy, on social media and smartphone app customer service enquiries. The report looked at how many Australian consumers had used these channels for customer service enquiries and why they’d…
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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