One of the trends with Government 2.0 is for jurisdictions to make more of their information available online in more readily accessible, machine readable and useful forms. We’ve seen the rise of data.gov, data.gov.uk and a host of open data sites for nations and states around the world. The latest addition has been the World…
Now that the UK general election has been called, it will be interesting to see the role social media will play in a Westminster election, compared to the US’s last Presidential election. One of the first examples of how this election will use social media has been demonstrated by the UK’s ruling Labour party, who…
The Digital Policy Council at Digital Daya has released a thought-provoking report on the incidence of social media use by government leadership around the world, characterised through the use of Twitter, entitled Real Leaders Tweet (PDF) Considering the 163 countries recognised by the United Nations, the report indicates that 24 (15%) already have leaders or…
The White House has begun using Twitter as a tool to correct journalistic mistakes and understand the reaction of journalists to news stories, as reported in the article, W.H. messaging in 140 characters. Over the past few months, particularly during and following the change in Federal Liberal leadership, I’ve been finding some of the commentary…
As a follow-up from my post yesterday,South Australia bans anonymous election comments online, South Australia Premier Mike Rann has twittered that the South Australian government has decided to repeal the January 6 amendment to the state’s Electoral Act which made it illegal to publish anonymous comments online during an election campaign. Reported in a post…
I’ve been alerted by CloCkWeRX in a comment in my post, Australian Labor Party launches social media website, that the South Australian government has passed a law banning anonymous online comments about the South Australian election. According to the article South Australian Government gags internet debate in News.com.au, The new law, which came into force…
In a first for a major political party in Australia, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) has embedded blogging, tweeting and video in the heart of its website, relaunching www.alp.org.au as a Politics 2.0 website. Termed ‘Labor Connect’ the redeveloped site aims to foster active policy debates, stating that, We know we won’t always agree about…
In my experience, where possible, Australian public servants avoid controversial topics when consulting with the public. Controversial topics are messy, unpredictable, raise high emotions and draw out divergent viewpoints – making discussions difficult to manage and control. They also often edge into political matters which are outside the scope of the public service, who strive…
Government runs on rules. Policies, processes and procedures designed to address every contingency and plan for every possible risk in order to provide equity, stability and certainty. However, as experience has shown time and time again, we cannot predict the future. While we continually attempt to plan ahead, largely these plans are based on extrapolating…
Community-based budgeting is an approach that involves a government allowing its constituents to nominate how some or all of the government’s budget is spent in either a binding or non-binding manner. It’s not a new approach – in fact it’s been used for thousands of years in different forms around the world. What is reasonably…
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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