Digital Government: Transforming Public Services, Regulation, and Citizenship

Last month I attended a talk by Mr Angus Taylor MP, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister for Cities and Digital Transformation on digital transformation at Australian Parliament House, Canberra. Mr Taylor mentioned his monograph "The Promise of Digital Government: Transforming Public Services, Regulation, and Citizenship" (Menzies Research Centre, 1 April 2016). This is modest in size, at 78 pages, but ambitious in aim: to transform not only the way services are delivered, but also how we think about Government. This is from the point of view of a conservative politician, emphasizing contest-ability for the delivery of government services, with maximum private sector involvement. However, while Mr Taylor's political opponents might use different rhetoric to describe their aims, I suspect they would agree with many of the aims and methods.

 

The difficulty with digital government comes at the level of implementation: are governments, whichever their political views, willing to invest in personnel with the skills needed to implement digital government? Are they willing to accept the political cost of implementation, such as where the use of on-line service delivery results in the closure of shop-front services in marginal electorates?

 

To give one example, schools currently run on a pre-digital model. Recent initiatives, such as a reduction in class size, have increased the cost of education, without any discernible improvement in outcomes (and may have actually reduced the quality of education) An alternative would be to "flip" the education system, particularly at the upper end. Students would be provided with on-line resources and highly qualified on-line teachers, to supplement their face-to-face education. Also the student's parents would be provided with information on the children's learning. However, one implication of this would be more students per teacher (as each teacher would cost much more due to their higher qualifications). There would also be a requirement for parents to take an active part in their children's education (with parents being given tasks to compete and tracked as to performance). The political reality that parents just want school as a form of government funded child minding might then become apparent.

Promise of Digital Government

Greetings from the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, where I have been taking part in a forum on digital transformation. The speaker was Mr Angus Taylor MP, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister for Cities and Digital Transformation. Mr Taylor is author of The Promise of Digital Government: Transforming Public Services, Regulation, and Citizenship (Menzies Research Centre, 1 April 2016). It was impressive to hear from a minister who is so across his portfolio that he had written on the subject. One correction to what the Minister said: the essay is available on Amazon (both in paper and Kindle formats). The forum was hosted by Inside Canberra.

Digital Government in Canberra

Greetings from the Australian Computer Society Canberra Branch where Miguel Carrasco is speaking on "Accelerating the digital government transformation".

The Prime Minister and Minister for Communications announced the "Australian Government Digital Transformation Office" (DTO) on 23 January 2015:

 "... so that government services can be delivered digitally from start to finish and better serve the needs of citizens and businesses ... The DTO will operate more like a start-up than a traditional government agency, focussing on end-user needs in developing digital services.".

Miguel Carrasco commented that the Australian Communications Minister is "enamored" with the UK Government approach to digital services. This, I suggest is not new, with the former Australian Government Chief Information Officer (AGCIO), Ann Steward, having spent some time as Director e-Government in the UK Cabinet Office. The DTO has issued a draft Digital Service Standard, based on the UK Government standard.

Miguel described the setting up a DTO as acting as a "beacon for talent", but said they did not have more than six months to produce results. He claimed that the start-up talent needed was not in Canberra. But he did not acknowledge the work of the ACT Government funded Canberra Innovation Network (CBRIN) which is fostering startups in Canberra. I just came from CBRIN, where former Senator, Kate Lundy, chair of the startup company Welcomer, has  launched of a new product which could be used by government agencies, as well as corporations.

In my view, new and existing professionals can be trained to undertake start-up functions. The ANU is doing this with their TechLauncher program (I have a team of students working on an education product).

Also the ACS runs a 12 week on-line course "New Technology Alignment" on how to identify such transformations in organizations (I am tutoring the course and the students are up to week 8 at present).

One aspect of DTO is the question of how it will work with the shared service functions in government.

ps: At the moment I am designing an innovation course specially tailored for Canberra and will be discussing it in "Innovations in teaching innovation" at CSIRO ICT Centre on the ANU campus, 4pm, 27 April 2015.

e-Government for China

Last week I talked to a visiting Chinese delegation on "Framework for e-Government: Security, Green ICT and Data Management". For this I ran my notes through Google Translate to produce:

1. Notes: 安全，绿色ICT和数据管理
2. Slides: 幻灯片

The translation is not perfect, but seems to have been of use. What is remarkable is that the web based "HTML Slidy" slides survived the translation. I found I had to refer to my English notes to work out what I was looking at on screen. But Google Translate also leaves the English version embedded, so that if the cursor is placed over a line of translated text, the original pops up.

Some other web pages survived the translation well, such as my course notes for ICT Sustainability: 信息和通信技术的可持续发展：低碳未来的评估和策略

What E-Participation is

Professor Rachel K. Gibson, Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester, will talk on "What is ‘E-Participation’?", 4pm, 19 April 2011, at the Australian National University in Canberra.

Seminar - Professor Rachel K. Gibson - Tuesday 19 April at 4pm Professor Rachel K. Gibson, Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester

4pm on Tuesday 19 April in the LJ Hume Centre (First Floor Copland Building)

What is ‘E-Participation’?

This paper uses original survey data from the 2010 UK election to address the question of defining and measuring e-participation. Despite over a decades’ worth of research being conducted into the topic of e-participation, a clear and commonly accepted definition of the activity itself remains elusive. The talk will focus on ways in which e-participation has been studied both conceptually and empirically, drawing on the extensive literature that has examined offline participation. Is e-participation simply an extension of existing forms, differing only in mode? Or does it offer a new and qualitatively different form of political engagement. After developing a typology of e-participation we test it using confirmatory factor analysis. The results indicate that different forms of e-participation can be identified and that they have potentially different implications for mobilisation of citizens.

Government 2.0 at Parliment House

At Parliament House Canberra today, I attended the Gov 2.0 lunch with Alison Michalk on Community management . Also Professor Rachel K. Gibson, Institute for Social Change, University of Manchester, said a few words on research in the UK and Australia on use of Internet in election campaigns.

Alison Michalk on Community management

Alison, Quiip Director and Community Manager, said: "People will come for the information but they will stay for the relationships". People will be initially attracted to on-line forums for formal information, but they will only stay if the connect with interesting people.

Alison argued that the people selected for managing an on-line project are most important, the technology less so. Community managers ensure a productive on-line forum. A "leader" mitigates risk. They enforce the legal rules as well as the less formal customs and positive behaviour. As a "participant" the manager observes. It occurs to me these are the same skills we teach tutors for on-line education discussion forums (and also teach to the students). It is something we should be teaching school students. Craig commented that BangThe Table runs training for its product, but which also teaches some of the skills.

Alison pointed out that there are legal risks with user generated on-line content. One way to reduce the risk is by building loyalty and trust with participants. There are risks to the participants of the forum, as well as the organisation hosting it.

One of the audience asked why there was not a law stopping Defence personnel from posting denigrating comments on Facebook. This seemed an odd question to me, there are laws about what you can say to who, which clearly apply on-line as much as anywhere. Also there are specific rules which apply to Australian Defence Force personnel. More than 15 years ago I wrote a couple of circulars at HQADF to make it clear that such rules applied online and it was only a matter of days before I had a call from the Military Police investigating someone.

Alison recommended the flicker and yahoo answers guidelines. She warned against "sock-puppeting" where there appears to be two people having a discussion, but it is really just the one person. It occurs to me this is a modern version of the "Socratic Dialogue".

Alison recommended post-moderation in general, but there may be some higher risk topics requiring each post to be approved in advance.

There is an "Australian Community Managers" Facebook group run by Alison for those interested.

Professor Rachel K. Gibson on E-Participation in elections

Professor Gibson talked about the research she is doing with ANU on the question of if the Internet has changed election campaigns. The question is if there are "Citizens Initiated Campaigns". She is presenting a seminar on "What is ‘E-Participation’?" at ANU in Canberra, 4pm, 19 April 2011.

Rachel used the example of the "My Barack" campaign website. I was skeptical as if this was really citizen driven, or just the usual party machine applying new tools to an old centrally run campaign agenda.

It occurs to me that the sort of DIY tools in the Barack Obama campaign are online equivalents of traditional local grassroots political party tools. It may be that there will be a brief opening up of such activities until the central party machines work out how to take tight central control.

Rachel commented that green voters were more active on-line in Australia and Liberal Democrats in the UK. She suggested this was because small parties have less money and so have to make more use of low cost tools. However, I suggest that the Greens and Liberal Democrats have a less centralised structure which allows grass roots membership participation.

E-document and Records Management Course Notes

The note for the course "Electronic Document and Records Management" are available. This was first run as COMP7420 an online course the Australian National University, in the Graduate Studies Select Program in February 2011. My intention is to revise the material and expand it from a six to a twelve week full semester course concentrating on e-government social networking for public servants.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to Electronic Data Management
2. Information management
3. Information content publishing
4. Business analysis
5. Electronic Document Formats
6. Citizen-centric services: Social Networking/Web 2.0/Gov 2.0
7. Workload
8. Assessment

Flood Relief Payments Delayed by Manual Processing

The Premier of Queensland, Anna Bligh, has apologised for delays in processing of payments from the Premiers Disaster Relief Appeal. The Premier has ordered that the process be overhauled. Unfortunately, it appears that the processing was being done manually and there are no plans to change this, so it is unlikely the process will be significantly improved.

The Premier explained that about 100 people were working on processing applications and directed more people be put on this if needed. However, more people are unlikely to greatly speed up a manual processing system. Also diverting government staff to this task will mean they are not available to assist flood victims. Using automation would allow the process to be done in minutes, rather than days.

To Apply for Premier’s Disaster Relief Funds applicants are required to fill in a seven page form. The Premier's Disaster Relief Appeal emergency assistance form is provided as a 54 Kbyte PDF file which can be downloaded. The instructions say "Please use black or blue pen" and to return the form by Fax, Post or in person.

There is no provision to fill the form in online and return it electronically. As a result there will be delays while the form is delivered to the processing centre and further delays and errors as staff then manually transcribe the details from the form into systems to record and check the details.

The Queensland government should consider providing an online version of the form. This could be completed directly by the applicant using their own computer or smart phone, or by staff in a Community Recovery Centre. Much of the processing could then be carried out automatically.

The form could also be made much simpler and easier to fill out by making use of existing government databases. Rather than ask the applicant for details which are then checked against government records, the needed information could be simply extracted from those systems. This would particularly be of use where applicants copies of documentation have been lost in the disaster.

The Internet and Australia parliamentary democracy

I was a little surprised to find myself mentioned in "The Internet and Australia parliamentary democracy" by K Magarey (Parliamentary Affairs, Oxford University Press, July 1, 1999):

Tom Worthington, an influential IT policy commentator, has reflected that the process of the government’s entry to the on-line environment amounted to a process of ‘reconciling traditional bureaucratic culture to accept the anarchic ways of the
Internet’.15

e-Government for Developing Nations

Greetings from the National Centre for Information Systems Research (NCISR) at the Australian National University in Canberra. I am taking part in a planning meeting for teaching e-Government to public servants. This is in conjunction with the Bangladesh Public Administration Training Centre (BPATC). BPATC is the official trainer for civil servants of the Bangladesh government and also trains senior staff in other public organisations. ANU previously provided a course for Bangladesh with part funding support from AusAID (with a book of the course published "ICT Management Handbook - A Guide for Government officers in Bangladesh".). The intention is to build on this with new and expanded courses. This may include some of my course-ware on Electronic Data Management and Green ICT.

In the past it was assumed that a lack of IT infrastructure was holding back e-Government in developing countries. However, ANU research shows that it is a lack of knowledge of how to use the technology for the business of government. In particular administrators need to understand this is not just about replacing manual clerical systems with computers, but also changing their decision making processes.

Very little technical infrastructure is needed to implement e-Government. Developing nations are skipping over generations of technology and adopting wireless mobile cloud based systems. This technology can be used by government, if appropriate security policies are observed. The expensive and cumbersome infrastructure of desktop computers, servers and bespoke software can be avoided, by agencies using mobile computers and free open source software.

However, the hardware and software is not the main issue, it is training staff to do the business of government differently. In that respect developing nations are not necessarily behind western countries. The solution for both is the same: empower key staff with education.

One issue which is common across the world is how to structure a course for working people. An ANU course is normally over 13 weeks, requiring about 8 hours of time from the student each week (some in class and some personal study). Courses can alternatively be run intensively over a number of weeks. This much study can be daunting, particularity for people who have not undertaken formal study for some years. It is therefore tempting to provide very short non-assessed courses, but these may not deliver the needed rigour and not be able to allow the students to demonstrate that they have learned what was expected.

Other issues are the delivery mode of materials, such as use of Powerpoint and a text book. In my view electronic formats and online delivery have advantages, but access to the technology will have to be considered carefully. One approach would be to supply the student with a netbook computer with built in wireless access for the course. The netbook would cost about a few hundred dollars and the data access abut $10.

World Computer Congress 2010 Proceedings

Nine volumes of proceedings of the World Computer Congress 2010 can be ordered now. The congress itself itself doesn't start until 20 September in Brisbane. The volumes are for nine of the conferences being held by IFIP at the congress (more to follow):

1. History of Computing: Learning from the Past: IFIP WG 9.7 International Conference, HC 2010 by Arthur Tatnall
2. Security Privacy - Silver Linings in the Cloud: 25th IFIP TC 11 International Information Security Conference, SEC 2010 by Kai Rannenberg, Vijay Varadharajan, and Christian Weber
3. Cultural Computing: Second IFIP TC 14 Entertainment Computing Symposium, ECS 2010 by Ryohei Nakatsu, Naoko Tosa, Fazel Naghdy, and Kok Wai Wong
4. Theoretical Computer Science: 6th IFIP WG 2.2 International Conference, TCS 2010 by Christian S. Calude and Vladimiro Sassone
5. E-Government, E-Services and Global Processes: Joint IFIP TC 8 and TC 6 International Conferences, EGES 2010 and GISP 2010 by Marijn Janssen, Winfried Lamersdorf, Jan Pries-Heje, and Michael Rosemann
6. Key Competencies in the Knowledge Society: IFIP TC 3 International Conference, KCKS 2010 by Nicolas Reynolds and Márta Turcsányi-Szabó
7. E-Health: First IMIA/IFIP Joint Symposium, E-Health 2010, Held as Part of WCC 2010, Brisbane, Australia, September 20-23, 2010, Proceedings by Hiroshi Taked
8. Human-Computer Interaction: Second IFIP TC 13 Symposium, HCIS 2010 by Fabio Paternó and Annelise Mark Pejtersen
9. Enterprise Architecture, Integration and Interoperability: IFIP TC 5 International Conference, EAI2N 2010 by Peter Bernus, Guy Doumeingts, and Mark Fox

Role of Governance in Preparing for Disaster

Greetings from the Australian National University Canberra, where Riyanti Djalante is presenting on "Promoting resilience to disasters and climate change impacts in coastal cities in Indonesia". Climate change is likely to result in more extreme weather in Indonesia. Rather than wait for disaster to strike and then try to clean up, the UN suggests "resilience", with infrastructure and the social fabric strengthened in advance, so that effects are lessened.

The idea of resilience has some synergies with sustainable development. As an example, a local renewable energy source might be used to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuel and carbon emissions. However, it will also increase resilience, in the face of destruction of the power grid in a disaster.

Resilience was first applied to engineered systems such as buldings. But the term is also now being used for social structures. In terms of government and governance, it would be interesting to see how Government 2.0 (that is the application if advanced web systems to government) could be applied.

There is the risk that Gov 2.0 will increase the effects of disasters, by centralising functions and creating a single point of failure. Previously local government agencies would have local paper or computer records which could be used in a disaster. If the records are moved to "the cloud" and stored remotely in a national system, or in another country, the records may not be available when needed.

Carbon and Computers in Australia

The Australian Computer Society has released "Carbon and Computers in Australia: The Energy Consumption and Carbon Footprint of ICT Usage in Australia in 2010" by Graeme Philipson, of Connection Research. This is a follow up to the first national ICT audit, conducted in Australia by Shadi Haddad (Ethan Group) and released by the ACS in August 2007. The new report comes to a similar conclusion to the previous work (and subsequent work in other countries), with about 2.7% of national carbon emissions due to ICT.

The report makes five recommendations, starting with data centre energy efficiency, the report pointing out that this is more than a third of Australia’s ICT footprint and cooling consumes more power than the actual computer equipment. The second recommendation echoes that which accompanied the previous report: reducing printers, scanners, fax machines and multi-function devices. The report advocates turning off computers, rather than relying on standby power. The last recommendation is perhaps the most important: to use ICT to reduce emissions through better business processes, transport, electricity distribution and building systems

In response to the first report the ACS commissioned me to write a course for ICT professionals on carbon emmissions. (now also available as the book "Green Technology Strategies"). The course commenced in February 2009 and the latest class started last week. The students learn how to measure ICT energy use and assess how to reduce energy used by and with ICT in their own organisations. Students in the past have prepared real reports for their government agencies and international corporations as part of the course. This new report from the ACS will make a valuable contribution to the discipline.

ICT is responsible for nearly 2.7 percent of Australia’s total carbon emissions. More significantly, it is directly responsible for more than 7 per cent of all electricity generated in Australia. These are significant figures, particularly given that Australia is one of the largest carbon emitters per capita in the world.

In 2009 Australia’s ICT users consumed 13.248 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity, which caused 14.365 Megatonnes (Mt) of Scope 2 CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) emissions. This compares to Australia’s total emissions of 539 Mt, and total electricity generated of 203 Mt. By any estimation, ICT’s energy consumption and carbon emissions are significant proportion of Australia’s total. ...

The biggest components of ICT carbon emissions are data centre environment (18.8 per cent), PCs (15.8 per cent), printers and imaging equipment (15.7%) and servers (14.7%). But if video monitors are added to PCs, their total energy consumption exceeds a quarter of the total. Add games consoles, and the figure is nearly one third of the total. Games consoles consume five times more energy than mainframe computers. ...

On average, employees in Australian enterprises are each responsible for 0.75 tonnes A year of carbon emissions. The figure varies significantly by industry. The highest figure (1.26 tonnes) is in the education and training sector, because of the large number of computers being used by non- employees (students). The lowest is construction (0.46 tonnes). ...

ICT’s carbon footprint by state is approximately proportionate to state populations, with a few notable exceptions. Victoria’s share of the total (28.0 per cent) is almost as large as NSW’s (28.9 per cent) despite its lower population.

That is because most electricity in Victoria is generated by brown coal, which leaves a much larger carbon footprint than electricity generated in other states. And the ACT (2.0 per cent) has a much higher ICT carbon footprint than its population would indicate, because of the large amount of ICT in government. ...

From: Executive Summary and Recommendations, "Carbon and Computers in Australia: The Energy Consumption and Carbon Footprint of ICT Usage in Australia in 2010" by Graeme Philipson, of Connection Research, Version 2.0, April 2010 (Released May 2010)

Australia Leading the World in Gov 2.0

Senator Kate Lundy (ACT) will be talking on Lessons from Down Under: How Australia is Leading the World in Gov 2.0 in Washington DC on 25-27 May 2010 at the Gov 2.0 Expo. Other speakers include Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Tim O'Reilly.

Title: Gov 2.0 in Australia: Building the foundations for open government

Abstract: Senator Kate Lundy will outline her recent “Public Spheres” initiative which takes government policy development online for more citizen involvement, transparency & better policy outcomes. She will also discuss the pillars of open government & some important technical principles to underpin Gov 2.0.

This presentation will showcase Senator Lundy’s experiences as a case study, and will lay down the policy and technical principles she has found to be most important for Gov 2.0. She will also briefly cover what is happening in Australia more broadly, the difference between Gov 2.0 for political offices and government administration (departments and agencies), and finally what she sees as the core opportunity this provides us as a society to design the government of tomorrow, together.

ePortfolios Australia Conference 2010 ePortfolios Australia Conference 2010

The ePortfolios Australia Conference 2010 (Melbourne, 3 to 4 November 2010), has issued a call for papers on the use of electronic portfolios in the vocational education and training (VET), higher education (HE) and adult and community education (ACE) sectors. Abstracts for Full papers, Works in Progress reports, Case Studies and Posters are due 4 June 2010

ePortfolios Australia Conference 2010

Submission for proposals

The theme of the ePortfolios Australia Conference 2010 is Widening participation - engaging the learner (see: http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/e-portfolios-australia).

Submission of proposal:

The ePortfolios Australia Conference 2010 Organising Committee invites the submission of proposals for:

• Full papers or Works in progress reports (peer-reviewed); full papers or works in progress reports of research findings and progress;
• Case studies (abstract only); discussions of key directions and findings of action research or current practice and ;
• Posters (abstract only): highly visual media communicating information about an innovation, tool, process or development.

Session duration:

• Paper presentations and Case studies: 25 minutes
• Posters: Posters will be displayed for the duration of the conference. There will be an hour allocated in the programme when poster presenters will be available near their posters to interact with conference participants.

Proposal themes:

Papers, reports, case studies and posters should relate to one or more of the following sub-themes:

• Key government educational initiatives:
  • Quality outcomes and standards;
  • Learner mobility and transitions between educational sectors; and
  • Supporting learners accessing the Compact for Young Australians and Retrenched Workers initiatives;
  • Learner study experiences, retention and course completions.

• Responsive learning and assessment practices:
  • Learning outcomes and reflective skills;
  • Recognition of prior learning (RPL), workplace learning and assessment processes;
  • Assessing graduate attributes and employability skills;
  • Discipline-specific initiatives;
  • Work-integrated learning, fieldwork and practicum experiences.

• Career pathways and lifelong learning:
  • Continuing professional development (CPD) leading to professional standards, reaccreditation and/or workforce development;
  • Gaining employment
  • Supporting non-traditional learners
  • Improved partnerships with industry;
• Implementing e-portfolios - successes and sustainability:
  • E-portfolios in the Web 2.0 environment
  • Technical standards supporting e-portfolios
  • Challenges and opportunities in e-portfolio implementation
  • Accessibility and e-portfolios
  • Sustainability and e-portfolios
  • Communities of practice
  
  

Papers, reports, case studies and posters not falling under these sub-themes may also be submitted for consideration, but should justify how the proposal complements the 'Widening Participation' conference theme.

Guidelines for Proposals:

Full Papers and Work in Progress reports are proposed by submission of an abstract (up to 400 words), and the full text of the paper which must be no more than 4,000 words including, appendices and references. As a general guide, a full paper should include an introduction, literature review and methodology, results, discussion and conclusions. Full papers are subject to double blind peer-review as required by DEEWR. Authors of successful submissions will be able to make minor corrections to the paper before final submission.

Case Studies are proposed by submission of an abstract (up to 400 words). Abstracts are subject to review by the ePortfolios Australia Conference 2010 Organising Committee.

Poster Presentations are proposed through submission of an abstract (up to 400 words). Posters are subject to review by the ePortfolios Australia Conference 2010 Organising Committee. Display versions should be sized between A3 -minimum and AO - maximum. You are not required to submit your 'Display' version; simply bring it with you to the Conference. Presenters are required to be in attendance with their poster during the allocated formal presentation period, to explain, discuss and to answer viewers' questions. While every effort will be made to ensure the safe handling of posters, the conference committee takes no responsibility for loss or damage of posters.

Paper submission process:

Please submit papers and abstracts to studenteportfolio@qut.edu.au by the due date as detailed below.

Due dates:

Abstracts (for Full papers and Works in Progress reports, Case Studies and Posters) - 4 June 2010

Author notification of acceptance - 2 July 2010

Full papers (final version) due - 2 August 2010

Review feedback notification - 6 September 2010

Final submission - 4 October 2010

Paper submission enquiries:

Please forward all enquires about the submission process to: studenteportfolio@qut.edu.au

From: Call for Papers, for ePortfolios Australia Conference 2010

Social media in the Obama Whitehouse

Jonathan Greenblatt, former member of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team, will talk on "Contemporary US Politics of Social Innovation", in Canberra 19 April and Sydney 20 April 2010.

The United States Studies Centre and
DEEWR’s Social Innovation and Social Policy Groups
invite you to a presentation by Jonathan Greenblatt on

Contemporary US Politics of Social Innovation
Jonathan Greenblatt
Former member of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team

Seminar Abstract
President Obama and the White House administration are leveraging social media to accelerate social innovation. The President has also established a new Office for Social Innovation recognising that government alone can’t address the complex social issues that we face. Instead, organisations from the private, public and non-profit sectors need to collaborate to identify and implement potential solutions. The establishment of the new Office shows that the US federal government has a key role to play in promoting and facilitating social innovation.

Jonathan will draw on his experiences as a former White House official member of the Presidential Transition Team to examine how the Obama Administration is developing new models of innovation to change how government works. By leveraging insights from the fields of citizen journalism, social media and venture capital, the White House is changing Washington with its own unique brand of "social innovation."

When: Monday 19 April 2010
Time: 12:30 – 2.00pm
Location: Theatre, Australian War Memorial
RSVP: Places are limited, so please confirm your attendance by Thursday 15 April 2010 with Julie Ward via email: julie.ward@deewr.gov.au or phone: (02) 6240 9383

Biographical Information
Jonathan Greenblatt is the co-founder of Ethos Water, a former vice president of Starbucks Coffee Company, and an acknowledged thought leader on ethical branding, global development and social entrepreneurship. He is the founding president of All for Good and previously served as CEO of GOOD Worldwide. He also has served at the highest levels of government, including as an aide in the Clinton White House and, more recently, as a member of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team. He teaches social entrepreneurship at the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA and advises corporations, foundations and non-governmental organizations on the intersection between business and sustainability.

You can find a more detailed bio at: http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/x18144.xml

Sponsored by the Social Policy Group with a view to building and sharing the evidence base for policy

Evidence driving policy: the DEEWR strategic policy and research seminar series

From: Presentation flyer, by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, and the United States Study Centre (University of Sydney).

Mobile Web at CeBIT Sydney

I will be speaking on "Optimising Sites for Mobile Devices and Search Engines" at the WebForward Conference, 26 May 2010. Suggestions as to what to say and examples to use would be welcome. This is part of CeBIT Australia in Sydney. I may also attend the eGovernment Forum: Delivering open government on 25 May 2010.

Optimising Sites for Mobile Devices and Search Engines

by: Tom Worthington FACS HLM, Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University

Some simple tools and techniques can be used to allow any web site to be usable on a mobile phone and improve its rating with web search engines. These techniques can also help make your web site easier to understand for people using an ordinary web browser and particularly for use by older people.

Covered:

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
• Validation Tests
• W3C mobileOK Checker
• TAW Web Accessibility Test

Background

A set of tools and techniques have been developed to make the content of web pages more accessible. The best known of these are the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, with automated testing in the TAW Accessibility Tool. The use of such techniques is required by Australian anti-discrimination legislation, including by schools, TAFEs and universities in delivering education online. What is not well understood is that while these techniques are mandated for access by people with a disability, they can also be used to help with slow Internet connections, for limited devices such as mobile phones and for people with limited literacy.

There are additional guidelines and tools to help develop content for mobile devices, such as the W3C Mobile Web Best Practices and . Previously this required development of a second version of the content, specifically for mobile devices. However, as smart phones become more affordable, with larger screens and better software, it is possible to author the same content for education and service delivery to both desktop and mobile devices.

Providing accessible content and to mobile devices requires the web designer and the content author to make difficult decisions. Compromises must be made over what can be delivered and in what form. This can help make better content and better learning, by eliminating material which is entertaining, but not educational.

Bio:

Tom Worthington is an IT consultant and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the Australian National University, where he teaches the design of mobile web sites, e-commerce and green ICT. In 1999 he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society for his contribution to the development of public Internet policy.

Tom was an expert witness in the Human Rights Commission for the Sydney Olympics web case and was invited to Beging to adivse on the design od the web site for the 2008 Olympics. He is a past president, Fellow and Honorary Life Member of the Australian Computer Society, a voting member of the Association for Computing Machinery and a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

This stuff from my talk looks relevant. I could have to change the examples from government to business:


Run a business on your phone, or a war

* Technology which was in Australian and US DoD is now in your phone
* Use tools (W3C Mobile OK)

Exercise KANGAROO 95 took place in an area of over 4 million km square, across the Top End of Australia from July to the end of August 1995 and involved over 17,000 Australian Defence Force troops, and visiting units from the USA, Malaysia, Singapore, Papua New Guinea, the UK and Indonesia.

Reports and photographs were transmitted from the exercise area using stand-alone portable satellite communications terminals, capable of 64kbps.

As manager of the Defence home page, I received the reports at Defence headquarters in Canberra and up-loaded, them to a publicly accessible Internet server at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

For the first week of the exercise I was officially on holiday, but maintained the K95 home page remotely using a pocket 2400 pbs modem and lap top PC from Mallacoota, Victoria.

In later exercises, such as Tandem Thrust 97 made more use of the Internet for the operations. However, the level of technology used in these exercises is similar to that now available in a 3G smart phone for about $1,000.

E-mail, the web and instant messaging can be used for business and government from a smart phone with a little forethought. Check your business web pages are mobile compatible. Make sure you put the important business information in a simple, clear, easy to read format. Don't use software and technology you don't really need.

Web 2.0 Thinking Needed

* Early simple web pages are compatible with mobile phones
* Later web design lost mobile compatibility
* New CSS features allow for desktop/mobile compatibility
* Need web 2.0 thinking by organisations

The processing power and network bandwidth of the laptop and desktop computers used for exercise KANGAROO 95 in 1995 is comparable with what is available from 3G smart phones in 2009. However, the use of these devices is being held up by poor web design.

Web pages design in 1995 were text rich, with small images and limited layouts. These designs are compatible with today's smart phones. Later more complex web page designs lost this compatibility, due to their complex designs and increased file sizes.

Also web based services need to be designed as services, not as marketing brochures. CSS features supported in modern web browsers allow for web 2.0 features, but organisations need to accept that their staff and their clients will want to be involved in decision making. Effort therefore need to be put into clear, detailed, information rich web sites.

Mobile Thinking

* What not to do: Big hard to read e-documents. (Consulting with Government online)
* What to do: accessible and mobile friendly (Online Consultation Guidelines)
* Don't intimidate with legalese: Government copyright notice
* Use open access: outdated, use Creative Commons
* Example: Public Sphere #2 – Government 2.0: Policy and Practice

Thinking about interaction with via a mobile device can help you think about how and what to communicate. The limitations in screen size and keyboard access force you to focus on the most important information first.

Some impediments to the use of the technology can be easily removed. As an example, in 2008 the Department of Finance and Deregulation issued a report on "Consulting with Government – online". This was a well reasoned exploration of the issues. However, the report was only issued as large, hard to read online PDF and RTF files.

The Online Consultation Guidelines from the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) are reasonably accessible and mobile friendly. The home page achieves a 80/100 score on the W3C mobileOK Checker. However, discussion of the document is still hampered by a Commonwealth Copyright Notice.

The Commonwealth Copyright notice used for web pages is essentially unchanged from the Department of Defence web copyright notice developed in 1995. The Australian Government should adopt the Australian Creative Commons Licence, or similar, to allow the free discussion of issues. Similarly, companies should check the licences they impose on information distributed. If you want your product details out there being discussed, don't make it hard.

Transport for Sydney

The NSW Government released a discussion paper, "Sydney Towards 2036" (10 March 2010) and has invited online discussion of topics, which correspond to the document's chapters, such as "Alternative transport options". Unfortunately the discussion paper has not been integrated with the discussion forum, making citizens input difficult.

The discussion paper is released as a 2.2 Mbyte PDF file. The discussion forms consist of a set of web pages. The content discussion paper has not been reproduced under, or linked from the corresponding topics. This requires the reader to first download the 30 page PDF document, find the relevant section of interest, then turn back to the web site, find the corresponding web page and then somehow relate one to the other in their comment. As an example "Integrating land use with transport" starts on page 15 of the discussion document.

The ten topics for in the report are:

1. Planning for a growing population
2. Making Sydney climate change ready
3. Integrating land use with transport
4. More jobs in the Sydney region
5. Growing Sydney’s value
6. Strengthening a City of Cities
7. Meeting changing housing needs
8. Balancing land uses on the city fringe
9. Achieving renewal
10. Implementation

The NSW government has an apps4nsw competition, modelled on the successful federal government gov 2.0 mashup competition. Perhaps someone would like to mash up the Sydney planning discussion paper and discussion forum.

My suggestions for the transport topic were as per my submission on the Sydney CBD Metro.

Also the book Transport for Suburbia: Beyond the Automobile Age (Paul Mees, February 2010) is of interest.

Designing Government 2.0

Tim Turner from the University of NSW at the Australian Defence Force Academy talked on "Web 2.0 and Government-Citizen Interaction", last night at the Australian Computer Society Canberra Branch Meeting. Tim gave a refreshingly cynical overview of Government 2.0. He cautioned about the rhetoric getting ahead of the reality.

As a good academic Tim went back to the origins of the idea of Web 2.0 with Tim Berners-Lee's semantic web. This was an interesting approach, as I thought of "Web 2.0" as a marketing term popularised by O'Reilly Media. Time argued that the glitzy user interface interactive front end had overtaken ideas of a deep web. The emphasis is on communication between people with the computers acting as little more than a telecommunications medium. Tim was sceptical of the value of Facebook and Twitter but positive about Wikis, Blogs and tag clouds. He suggested that within two to three years just about every older teenager to adult in Australia will have a smart phone. He claimed this will allow ubiquitous delivery of information via the web.

Unfortunately I see a lot of government web pages which seem to have been designed to make it hard to use on a phone (I teach mobile web design to public servants at ANU). Tim pointed out the smart phone can be used at the bus stop or in the lift on the way to a meeting (I have actually had an online meeting with someone using an iPhone on an aircraft waiting to disembark).

Tim warned that web 2.0 brings out the extraordinary narcissism of people. Blogs by everyone on everything can diminish the credibility of information. However, the research I have seen shows that this does not happen in reality. The Wikipedia is as high in quality as conventional encyclopaedias if not better.

Tim argues that there is a need for conventional media, such as News Corporation, to assess what is genuine news and what are just media releases. However, I don't believe that the evidence supports this view. An examination of Google News shows that conventional news items tends to be sourced from the same media releases. Bloggers tend to cite the media release as a source, whereas the conventional media pretend they wrote the content.

Tim saw the technology being used by government for publishing, collaborating, and networking. Mash-ups can combine collaboration and networking. He gave the Obama08 campaign as an example of good use of the web for publishing and the former Australian prime minister's use of YouTube as example of doing this badly. He had some concerns about using wikis for the general public to dirctly author government policy (as do I).

Tim saw web 2.0 as a way for government to increase the data sources for insights. He suggested folksonomies for the government getting the public views on issues. He gave th example of buses versus trains for Sydney transport. I am not sure this was a good example, as a citizen I want transport and expect the government experts to work out if buses or trains are better.

Tim suggested the system could be used as a sensor network in a crisis. He used the example of the SMS emergency warnings. A more sophisticated example was to have the citizens to record their view of the bush fire risk at their location and then map the results.

Tim argued that the "perpetual beta" of Web 2.0 is not sustainable. At some point the technology will have to be stabalised and made reliable for government use, as the citizens expect the government to deliver reliably.

Tim claimed that Web 2.0 was politically volatile as it blurs the distinction between the "party line" and individual statements. Also everything said online is permanently recorded. However, I don't see these as different in kind, just degree from previous technologies and not a bad thing.

At question time I asked if there were examples of web 2.0 being used at a smaller scale than federal government. One in the audience gave the examples of "fixmystreet.org" (the Australian version is "itsbuggered") and use of Twitter by the Californian government.

Another comment was the Web 2.0 was disintermediating democracy. Also the issue of data-mining government information and the risk to privacy. Tim pointed out that experts at ABS spend a lot of time worrying about how to provide data while protecting personal privacy.

The issue of the MySchools web site was raised as an example of data of questionable quality being published online. It will be interesting to see the quality of the "MyUniversity" system to be annoucned today.

This was an entertaining and enlightening presentation.

Senator Lundy live online from CeBIT Germany

Senator Kate Lundy will be speaking live online from CeBIT Germany at 9:30pm AEDT.

“Connected Worlds” is the main topic at CeBIT 2010, and Senator Lundy will be speaking about how the Australian Government has set the scene through policies such as the National Broadband Network, the Digital Education Revolution and the FoI reforms to put ICT at the heart of social and economic growth.

She will also discuss the Australian Gov 2.0 Taskforce report (launched December last year) which is a practical blueprint for a more open, transparent, participatory and open government. The Senator will discuss the important of open data, citizen-centric services and the collaboration of government with citizens to co-design the government of the future.

She will also discuss important changes to ICT procurement in the Australian government, and some of the opportunities and challenges facing the industry today. ...

ps: Seems a long time since we sat around a cafe table in Canberra, discussing how to put the nation online.