When organisations hire accountants they are allowed to use specialist financial software to do their jobs. When organisations hire customer service representatives they are given training and scripts and are then allowed to speak to customers on the phone – monitored for performance reasons but free to communicate in appropriate ways without approval of every…
Business.gov.au has introduced a social media section to its website. While this type of approach has become quite widespread overseas, providing a central hub to access all of an agency’s social media engagement tools, business.gov.au is one of the first Australian government websites to provide this type of hub. At the same time business.gov.au has…
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…
The other day I came across a couple of experienced communications professionals who were unaware of Lolcats and several other well-known internet memes. I believe it is quite important to understand the language, trends and traditions of a medium that you wish to use to communicate with and engage your audiences, so in the interests…
Last month I gave a presentation to around 100 people at the Department of Innovation regarding the use of social media in Australian government, alongside Todd Wright of Threesides. With permission Innovation have published the presentations and video over at their Innovation Blog to share the seminar with others across the public service. I’d love…
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…
Victoria has maintained its lead over other Australian states in the adoption of Government 2.0 through today’s release of the Government 2.0 Action Plan – Victoria. The Plan outlines four priority areas for Gov 2.0: Driving adoption in the VPS > Leadership Engaging communities and citizens > Participation Opening up government > Transparency Building capability…
The mash-up (or Apps) competitions we’ve seen in Australia thus far have been broad and largely untargeted. Governments have released a bunch of public sector datasets and invited developers to create a bunch of applications related to that data for their jurisdiction, but without a highly specific goal or purpose in mind, other than creating…
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…
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…
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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