Regardless of how egovernment progresses, Australian citizens are moving forward to create the tools they want online. The latest example is is a site named Open Australia. Built based on the UK site They Work For You and the New Zealand site of the same name – TheyWorkForYou.co.nz, Open Australia feaures a fully searchable record…
This post in Shifted HR reflects an area I have my eye on – Recruitment in the Australian Public Service In Allison’s words: HR areas in APS agencies need to stop focusing on the process of recruitment and use technology to do this. They should be focusing their energy in supporting, educating and training line…
In Australia website usability is important, but accessibility is law. While most government agencies are extremely diligent about meeting accessibility requirements it is also important to look at the accessibility of any online tools they use that affect their customers or clients. For example, my agency uses a third-party email marketing system, Vision6 for electronic…
Google Trends is a great tool for tracking the ebb and flow of ideas, products and personalities in the public eye. I’ve used it, for example, to track customer awareness of an agency name change – which gave my agency a good handle on the speed at which our communications was shifting perceptions. This is…
As the business manager of a government website I’m always interested in how much traffic arrives from other government sites. I can directly engage other agencies, building relationships, sharing content and processes, to the benefit of our mutual customers. I see a real opportunity for departments and agencies to work together to help ensure that…
My agency has historically provided documents within our website and intranet in three formats, HTML (web pages), RTF (Rich Text Format) and PDF. The rationale behind this has been to give customers choice. It has also allowed us to look at relative usage over time to see which formats are most preferred by our customers…
Donna Spencer has written a very thoughtful piece on how many items were ‘too many’ to have in a navigation bar on a website. Entitled, How many items in a navigation bar it’s well worth a read. She argues that the 7+/- ‘rule’ is more of a myth and offers some suggestions on how to…
I’ve had a keen interest in the Attorney General’s Department for a number of years now. That’s not because they may – or may not – be the government department most likely to have James Bond, Triple X or the Men In Black working for them. It’s because they do a lot of important things…
From our latest usability review, my agency’s customers are saying that our website is looking a bit old, tired and dated. They say it is very “about us” focused, covered in agency news items screaming ‘look at me!’, rather than “about them” – the customers! Certainly many of our news messages are important (to customers),…
Reading up on one of my favourite eGov blogs, In the Eye of the Storm, I found this post from February with some great slides and commentary on how far e-government has gone, but how little has changed in the last few years, e-government 3.0. Edited 16/06: This article is further reinforced by this article…
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); })();