With the rise in the efficiency dividend and increasingly tight budgets across government, I keep wondering whether there are places where government can make real savings and raise productivity other than simply by cutting costs. The crunch is often that one must invest money to save money – a position common in business but often…
This post was inspired by a comment by John Sheridan on Twitter, @craigthomler what I’d like for #gov2au #NY? egs of use of #PSI for service delivery innovation, value creation etc, not just curiosity It’s a good New Years wish and highlights two questions that I have been pondering for a long time. 1. Why aren’t people making more use…
In Australia about 10% of households don’t have a landline phone any more. In some other countries the figure is higher – and it is growing as people abandon the ‘fixed to one location’ phone for personal mobile phones. When calling a government agency – even a ‘free call’ line – there’s often additional charges for mobile phones,…
With some of the concerns and processes I’ve witnessed in government it would be easy to draw the conclusion that hundreds or even thousands of public servants are using social media daily in ways that damage the reputations of their departments and the government. Fortunately, a couple of articles I saw yesterday have given me…
Last week the Department of Human Services changed its policy regarding staff who participated in volunteer activities – unpaid work undertaken on their own time. The Department decided that, in order to protect against potential conflicts of interest, public servants had to report their volunteer activities to their Manager and seek approval to do it….
A favored term amongst political operatives and advisors is ‘oxygen,, the share of the public discussion a politician, government or issue manages to obtain. Sometimes the goal is to have the largest possible share, starving other commentators and viewpoints. Other times the goal is to to minimise the share of oxygen a viewpoint or issue…
This has been an insightful week for organisations using, or considering using, social media with three successive events demonstrating how far power has shifted to the public and illustrating how Australians companies are struggling to engage effectively online. First up was Qantas with its poorly timed “Qantas luxury” promotion. Qantas launched the Twitter competition by…
Over the last year I’ve observed a couple of good and bad trends in governments around Australia. The first – the good trend – is towards the recognition that social media is a valid and significant channel for government communication and engagement. This has led to the creation of a new type of role, the…
With the release of News Ltd’s Future of journalism ‘discussion’ I’ve submitted a ‘Your view’ to the site which may, or may not, be published at some point in the future. On the basis that traditional media is no longer the gatekeeper for participation in public debate I have posted my submission below. I see…
As this article in Fast Company illustrates, social media is now normal, an integrated set of tools for ongoing human interaction. We’ve known for several years that Australians are enormous users of social media, with Nielsen research indicating that the average Australian Internet user (and 95% of us are users based on Sensis figures) spends…
This archive mirrors the original eGov AU blog — Craig’s professional commentary on AI, digital government and technology in public life, running since 2006.
'; loop.parentNode.insertBefore(w,loop); })();