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…
I’m beginning to get annoyed with the attitudes I’m seeing both in the mainstream press and at many conferences discussing social media. The discussion is still about how important social media is becoming, how if you don’t get on now you’ll be left behind and about the antics of celebrity and sports tweeters. To me…
When I stepped into the public sector just over three years ago, in terms of workplace collaboration it was like stepping back twenty years. I found that staff directories were merely lists of names, titles and phone numbers – without listing people’s expertise, qualifications, experience, current projects and interests. The only way to get to…
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…
Dr Crispin Butteriss of Bang the Table gave the presentation below at the IAP2 Conference in Perth October 2009. It provides an excellent view of how governments can use forums to engage communities, including unveiling what types of feedback you can expect. Thanks to Matthew Crozier who brought my attention to this over at Ozloop….
Mark Scott, the Managing Director of ABC, has written a very interesting piece in Unleashed about the future of ‘old media’ empires entitled, Media after Empire. While it’s not specifically about Government, I thought it had some very interesting comments about ’empires’ which resonate with some of the challenges that the public sector faces in…
It can be quite hard at times to find out who in Australian government is doing what using social media. However due to a new service from the Victorian government it is possible to easily see what Victoria’s state and local governments are doing online. Hosted at Victoria Online, the social media section provides, a…
Often it’s assumed that teenagers are the main users of social networking tools from Facebook to Twitter. However the research conducted over the last few years indicates that the real situation is a little different. Based on the most recent Pew Internet research (of US internet users 18+) the median age of popular social networks…
Web Strategist Jeremiah Owyang recently wrote about some of the latest social media ‘reversals’ experienced by companies, and has previously published a chronology of, companies that were blind-sided by the internet, they didn’t understand the impacts of the power shift to the participants, or how fast information would spread, or were just plain ignorant. Damage…
I’m liveblogging at least the morning session of CEBIT’s Gov 2.0 conference in Canberra. Please add your comments and questions and I’ll seek to pass them on to the speakers and blog the responses. For those of you on Twitter, the hashtag to follow is #gov2. Gov 2.0 Conference – Morning
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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