On 24 November Prime Minister Turnbull sent a letter to the global Open Government Partnership (OGP) Secretariat confirming that Australia would progress to full membership of the OGP by July 2016 (continuing the process started by the former Labor Government in May 2013). Australia will become the 69th member of the OGP, joining countries such…
A few years ago I heard it said by political advisors that one hand-written letter to a Minister counts for more than 100 emails on the same topic. The perception was that if someone sat down and wrote their thoughts in long-hand it showed more interest and commitment than if they typed and posted them…
The GovHack Red Carpet Awards was awesome (as you can see from the liveblog from Sunday). If you weren’t able to attend or watch the event’s livestream, the video of the awards is now live at the GovHack site, and I’ve embedded it below for your convenience.
VicHealth appears to be one of only a few agencies across Australian state and federal governments that has made a solid attempt at introducing public challenges as an adjunct to traditional policy approaches. While most governments in Australia still use the same techniques for policy creation that they’ve used for 80 or more years, after…
Last Saturday Australia’s first national GovCamp was held as part of the Innovation Month program. Innovation GovCamp 2014 involved events in six locations across Australia. Over 500 people registered to attend. I attended (and helped organise) the event in Canberra, at the Inspire Centre at the University of Canberra. It was a good day –…
In June Baltimore Police Department hit a milestone on Twitter, reaching 50,000 followers. In celebration of this, they released the following video, reflecting the department’s achievement and thanking the community for helping them make Baltimore’s streets safer. It is an awesome video and I totally support and respect organisations celebrating like this. It’s important for…
The Queensland Government recently introduced a new approach to communicate departmental social media policy to staff, a light and humorous video featuring ‘Social Media Man’. It’s the latest in a line of video-based tools used to communicate social media policy to public servants in Australia, following some great work from Victoria. The first, in March…
From 12:30-1:30pm (AEST) today, Content Group is holding the second of its live webinars, this time on Content Marketing in Government. The webinar features a panel including Gina Ciancio, Senior Social Media Advisor at the Department of Human Services, Kanchan Dutt, Senior Manager Media and Communications at ACT Government, and myself. It will be broadcast on Canberra…
I need a little help from folks in Canberra for an upcoming project. I’m crowdfunding a social media planning tool I developed to help people increase their social media expertise and assist teams in planning effective social media strategies. I’ve used the tool with hundreds of people to great effect, however need a little funding…
I’ve been watching a great TEDx talk by Dave Meslin on citizen engagement, which asks the question – if governments want to be open and engaging, why do they make it so hard for citizens to engage? He raises a very good point, and demonstrates it very clearly in the video (below). This is one…
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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