Practically everyone in Australia has followed the entitlements issue triggered by media reports of House of Representatives Speaker, and Liberal politician, Bronwyn Bishop’s helicopter trip from Melbourne to Geelong over the last three weeks. While at times other politicians were reluctant to criticise Bishop’s expenses, on the basis that most politicians spend quite a bit of…
I had a great chat on Monday with one of the best online comms people in federal government, which touched on how the role of social media has evolved within agencies and how this matched the overall evolution and maturing of social use by the community in general. I’ve thought through this and roughly mapped…
Freedom of Information (FOI) has always been a tricky area for governments, a delicate balance between accountability and exposure, with successive parliaments around the world tweaking their national and state FOI laws in attempts to prevent disclosures damaging to various governments of the day, while also meeting public and media demands for transparency. We’ve seen…
Last week it was announced that the first driverless car trials would begin in Australia in Adelaide. Supported by the South Australian government and the Australian Road Research Board (ARRB), the two-day trial involves Volvo’s XC90, Bosch’s driverfree technology and Telstra’s network. I’m a big fan of self-drive cars and have followed Google’s US self…
The Canberra GovCamp dialogue was held on Wednesday, one of a series of events across Australia, both part of Public Sector Innovation Month and a lead-in to a full GovCamp in November. Attendees included both current and former public servants, academics and private sector interested parties – all interested in discussing how to foster and…
Canberra is full of large buildings full of public servants, all working together on a daily basis to serve the needs of government and the community. While some can work remotely, from their home or on the road, there’s still significant barriers to teleworking in the public service. Whether it’s the need to install a…
One of the emerging challenges for governments in the online age is managing the discrepancy between the speed of transparency and the speed of accountability. With digitalisation and the internet, the speed at which government information is made public is becoming faster, with it being easier to collect, aggregate and publish information and data in…
PS News has a great report on the growth of data.gov.au – linking to a report on the Department of Finance’s blog which indicates the site added 100 datasets in June. The site has also upgraded to provide more data visualisation capability for users, as well as a responsive template for improved mobile access. Most interesting…
I’ve been attending a number of networking and other business events in the last month across Canberra, and have noticed that amongst all the CEOs, CTOs, Financial Directors and similar, that there’s been no senior public servants in attendance. While there was a good turn-out of public servants at one event I’ve attended, the Life…
The Mandarin reports that six significant federal agencies are currently seeking permanent Chief Information Officers, while both the ACT government and the Federal government’s Digital Transition Office recently resorted to overseas hires to fill senior leadership roles requiring strong digital backgrounds. Does this signify a shortage of senior digital and ICT talent in Australia (or…
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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