The US government recently launched Challenge.gov, a site allowing US agencies to manage and promote challenges, prizes and competitions where the community is asked to help solve a wide range of public governance issues – all in one central location. The challenge concept is a simple one. By tapping into the wisdom of crowds governments…
The NSW Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) has launched RTA Live. This new website provides live updates on road conditions across NSW, including road work, fires, floods, accidents as well as feeds from 67 traffic cameras across Sydney. There’s also a widget embeddable on blogs and websites to provide traffic information. Displaying the data on…
Business.gov.au has introduced a social media section to its website. While this type of approach has become quite widespread overseas, providing a central hub to access all of an agency’s social media engagement tools, business.gov.au is one of the first Australian government websites to provide this type of hub. At the same time business.gov.au has…
The Guardian reported in July that the UK government has released details on the costs of developing, staffing and hosting their major government websites. The data includes web traffic, accessibility and user opinions on the websites. This type of data is very useful when modeling the costs of developing and operating government sites, allowing agencies…
We are now starting to see government departments advertising social media roles – although the titles vary, including ‘New Media Adviser’, ‘Community Manager’ and even ‘Online Media Coordinator’. In Australia it is difficult to recruit people with substantial experience for these roles. I am seeing many filled by media specialists or website managers, who are…
With the election over, Prime Minister Gillard has promised to throw open the curtains and let in the sunlight, a more open government than ever before. With a government consisting of 72 Labor MPs, a Green MP and three Independents, media commentators are saying that more negotiation and consultation will be required than ever before….
The other day I came across a couple of experienced communications professionals who were unaware of Lolcats and several other well-known internet memes. I believe it is quite important to understand the language, trends and traditions of a medium that you wish to use to communicate with and engage your audiences, so in the interests…
Last month I gave a presentation to around 100 people at the Department of Innovation regarding the use of social media in Australian government, alongside Todd Wright of Threesides. With permission Innovation have published the presentations and video over at their Innovation Blog to share the seminar with others across the public service. I’d love…
Bang The Table has released an excellent video piece on their moderation system (titled 24/7 moderation), including a part where Matt Crozier (one of their founders) says that independent moderation can be very important for government organisations in order to avoid risks of claims of censorship when they must remove some comments from a forum,…
I’ve been reading up on the gaming of the Time.com 100 Poll in 2009, where vote rigging saw the founder of 4Chan elevated to the top position and the order of names in the poll manipulated to spell out ‘MARBLECAKE ALSO THE GAME’ (see the video below). While there are often legitimate reasons to create…
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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