I was chatting with Paul Davis on Twitter recently about the The State Decoded, an open source US-developed platform for accessibly and openly exposing state legislation online (see the platform in use at Marylandcode.org). He suggested that the tool was effectively a US version of Austlii, which is a repository for Australian federal and state…
Everyone has a comfort zone. Whether it is a favourite book/movie/restaurant that you return to again and again, that old pair of shoes you’ll never throw out because you’ve worn them in, or the route you take to work each day, we all like to follow familiar patterns, and avoid potentially unsettling, discomfortable, change. So…
GovHack is on again this year and it’s gone national, with eight locations across Australia. With over $160,000 in prizes, the organisers anticipate over 400 participants in 150 teams – and due to venue sizes, entry is limited. If you’re interested in mashing up open government data for prize money, or simply interested in watching…
Information is beautiful, as others have said, and the City of Sydney, working with Carbon Arts, is now seeking proposals for a temporary public artwork that engages with open data on Sydney’s progress towards Sustainable Sydney 2030. Not part of GovHack, this initiative is part of ‘Sensing Sydney‘ a program to communicate sustainability through the arts,…
I don’t think this has been widely noticed in government yet, but Australia achieved an interesting Gov 2.0 first this week on the back of the Myers disability scandal. The backstory: after the Prime Minister announced that DisabilityCare, the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), would be partially funded through an increase of 0.5% in the…
Some will remember the knots that RailCorp tied itself into in 2009 when attempting to sue three developers for packaging Sydney rail timetables into mobile apps. How things have changed. Recently the NSW government applauded one of those developers for his mobile app, which has reportedly been downloaded a million times. However the agency which…
The 6th annual global Intranet Innovation Awards is now open for entries, with submissions closing on Friday 31 May 2013. It is hard to compare best practice in intranet design and features, which makes the Intranet Innovation Awards, run by Step Two Designs, an important way for government agencies to gain an insight into the…
Back in July 2008 I wrote a blog post asking whether government websites should feature paid advertising. No, four and a half years later, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology has taken the step of adding paid advertisements to its highly popular website (one of the top 20 sites in Australia) in a trial detailed in…
The free Gov 2.0 lunchtime event in Canberra was well attended yesterday, with many new people in the crowd demonstrating how the Government 2.0 and open data communities continue to grow and change. For those unable to attend, we videoed the event, however as this is still being processed I suggest visiting Nathaniel Boehm’s Pure…
I’ve managed to organise with The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI), for two of their leading codesign practitioners to provide a presentation on codesign (a highly collaborative approach to community engagement) in Canberra from 6pm on Monday 29 April 2013. TACSI, which was seed funded by the South Australian Government, has led a number…
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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