We recently saw a change in the federal government in Australia, with a corresponding reorganisation of agency priorities and structures. Some departments ceased to exist (such as Department of Regional Australia), others split (DEEWR into two departments, Education and Employment) and still others had parts ‘broken off’ and moved elsewhere (Health and Ageing, which lost…
Something that scares me enormously is the house of cards that many (if not most) governments have built with their IT systems. It can be witnessed every time government agencies get ‘MOGed’ – Machinery of Government changes where parts of agencies are shifted to other agencies to meet the latest political whim. In these cases…
Over the last two days I’ve been down at the Technology in Government conference – an event I thought went very well, with a great group of speakers (including the UK Government’s CIO Liam Maxwell). I gave a presentation this morning, and chaired the afternoon, for the Connected Government stream and have uploaded my presentation…
Today the ‘Opening the vault’ event is being held in Brisbane, discussing open data in the context of the state. Following from the Queensland Government’s commitment to open data (with the appointment of Australia’s first e-Government Assistant Minister), the event was opened by Premier Newman and is being livestreamed on the web – demonstrating the…
I often hear talk from government agencies about their wish to release more of their data openly, but their concern over how they allocate resources to ensure the most useful data is released first. In several conversations I’ve had in different parts of Australia, the agency view was that they only wanted to release useful…
The South Australian government has released its draft ICT policy, SA Connected, for public consultation via the SA Plan consultation site. The five key perspectives in the SA draft ICT policy The position paper, which has already undergone industry consultation, presents five key perspectives for the future of South Australian government IT, Serving People Innovating…
I’ve developed several infographics (below) comparing the open data performance of nations, looking at which have national open data sites, how many sites they have across different government levels and how many datasets have been released through their national sites. It’s not a way to judge ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ – or even to compare the…
The OpenAustralia Foundation will be holding the first Australian Hack(s)fest as part of the countdown to the launch of their new FOI assistance site, designed to make it easier for ordinary Australians to put in FOI requests to Commonwealth agencies. The event, being held in Sydney at Google’s office, will be held on the weekend…
The linked email conversation (in a blog post), Freedom of Information Request for Classification Data, provides an interesting insight into the struggles government agencies are having with FOI and open data and with the difficulties applicants are having accessing data which should be available in reusable formats. In this case information which is publicly available…
Open Data advocate Pia Waugh spoke recently on the topic of freeing government data at Ignite Sydney 9 (an event where speakers get five minutes and 20 slides to say their piece). It provides a strong view as to why governments need to open up data to the community and is definitely worth viewing and…
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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