I read an excellent article today in the Harvard Business review by Bill Taylor about Why Do Smart People Do Such Dumb Things?. Taylor explores why good ideas go disastrously wrong, why innovation often appears to lead to disaster, concluding that Warren Buffet had the right of it, Leave it to Warren Buffet to offer…
There’s recently been some controversy in Australian government over the use of Yammer, a private and secure enterprise social network, which I discussed in my post, The ongoing struggles to balance IT security and staff empowerment. I asked Simon Spencer, Yammer’s newly appointed Asia-Pacific General Manager, how many government agencies in Australia were using Yammer. I…
It has been a big year for Government 2.0 in Australia, both at the federal and state levels. The Victorian Government in particular has committed to releasing the majority of public sector information under an open copyright license, continued to improve its whole-of-government intranet and released the Government 2.0 Action plan: a comprehensive strategy for…
I attended Gartner’s Government Day on Monday for their ITXPO Symposium (I was on a panel), and it was very interesting to hear the views expressed about social media. Below are some of the quotes I recorded from Gartner analysts and senior IT leaders. They are not all verbatim and have been reordered to flow…
There’s been discussion on Twitter over the last day about whether Australian government should be building online platforms, such as a video aggregation and distribution service, URL shortcut tools (which Victoria have done) or collective infrastructure for hosting and developing all government websites. This has been an area of on-and-off discussion for over a year…
I’ve recently been looking around some at some of the ‘white-label’ social network services. They allow anyone to establish their own branded social network at little or no cost. Most include features such as personal profiles, blogs, forums, newsfeeds, photo and video libraries, live chat, email lists, calendars as well as widget markets (with custom…
Almost exactly a year ago (on 28 October 2009) I posted a set of four videos from the ‘Shift happens’ and ‘Did you know?’ series, mapping the changes in society and growth of the internet through a range of statistics. It is time to update this – with the latest videos on the same topic…
Due to jetlag, work and other activities (such as TEDxCanberra) it has taken me longer than I anticipated to get around to write my impressions and review of the World e.Gov Forum I attended from the 13-15 October in Paris. I attended the event as one of Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of…
I felt that it would be useful to compile the online discussions during media140 #OzPolitics into a single work, a permanent record that could be reread, referenced and reconsidered. So over the long weekend, with assistance from PeopleBrowsr, the support of Julie Posetti and permission from FirstDogOnMoon and Mike Stuchbery to reuse some of their…
I believe that one of the major shortcomings in Australia is the lack of financial support outside the public sector for open government initiatives. The UK has the Hansard Society, the US has the Sunlight Foundation – but what does Australia have? Granted there is the embryonic OpenAustralia Foundation, a registered charity devoted to open…
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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