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…
Commentators have said that major political parties have “failed to harness the full potential of social media in the 2010 Election” or broken the “cardinal rule of social media” due to only engaging in one way (outbound) communication. This is despite recent global examples of the effectiveness of online engagement in shifting votes, such as…
This weekend Canberra is hosting a Start-up Camp, a three day event where entrepreneurs form teams and develop new online business concepts. This type of event could be an opportunity for government to tap into smart and skilled people, gathering and testing new ideas. In this camp there are six projects underway, as listed below:…
This post is in reflection to a post by Nicholas Gruen over at Club Troppo entitled, What Coalition Politicians ‘get’ Government 2.0? For me the post triggered a broader question – does Gov 2.0 require government leadership or participation? I think examples from both Australia and overseas demonstrate that the mass enablement of societies via…
BuzzNumbers, an Australian social media monitoring service, has launched the free BuzzElection service monitoring election mentions online. BuzzElection includes a tool tracking the online discussion of election issues by the level of interest, state by state analysis and an analysis of the most influential tweeters in the election debate. This type of tool allows the…
Google has launched the Student Voice initiative, whereby 15-17 year old Australian students will be able to vote online in a mock election reflecting the current Federal election. The goal is to help these students learn more about elections and also provide a perspective on how Australia’s future voters (who will be eligible to vote…
In one of his final acts before retirement, Minister Lindsay Tanner has released the Open Government Declaration – one of the recommendations of the Gov 2.0 Taskforce’s Final Report. Released at the AGIMO blog, the Declaration states that the Australian Government is: committed to open government based on a culture of engagement, built on better…
To kick-off this week, I thought it might be useful to link to an excellent video from the US’s Sunlight Foundation providing a glimpse into why there’s growing interest in making public information collected and managed by governments public. It doubles as an introduction to the Public = Online campaign, which is being used in…
Four years ago Government 2.0 was a barely known concept in Australia and social media was regarded by many in Canberra as a youth fad. President Obama made social media ‘cool’ for politicians by using it as a key plank in his run for office. Since his election he has spearheaded a Gov 2.0 agenda…
I was reading an article at Mashable today about What Facebook gets right and it got me thinking. Facebook, despite its many failings, does some things very well. Things that if governments also did well would help them be successful in the 21st Century. Consider if Facebook was a country, with 500 million citizens –…
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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