GovCamp NSW Co-Lab

The University of NSW CBD Campus is hosting "NSW is GovCamp NSW Co-Lab" 25 June 2012. This is free one day informal "unconference" where the general public, industry and government people can redesign government processes. Register online.

Topics for each 20 minute mini-session will be nominated by the attendees on the day. At GovCampNSW Co-Lab topics will be influenced by the participants’ collaborative discussion around innovation for public service.

As a guide, topics discussed may include:

• Innovation and agency resilience
• New ways of doing public service delivery
• Collaboration and co-creation
• Policy development and citizen participation
• Policies relating to Gov 2.0 implementation
• The impacts of “mobile” on government
• Online community engagement
• Open data standards, copyright and use
• Location intelligence and geospatial strategies
  

GovHack in Canberra and Sydney Starting 1 June

GovHack is a free event in Canberra and Sydney, 1 to 3 June 2012, were web and application developers design and build open government applications.

1. Register
2. Locations
3. Schedule
4. Data & Competitions
5. Media

GovCamp Canberra 2012

GovCamp Canberra 2012 is a free one day event for the public sector, industry and academic, on innovation in government, 5 June 2012. The event will be opened by Professor John McMillan, Australian Information Commissioner.

1. About GovCamp?
2. Schedule
3. Who should attend?
4. Register Now
   
5. What to expect?
6. How will it work?
7. Some Reading on Innovation

GovCamp is one of a series of events, there is also:

• GovHack, 1 to 3 June 2012: Run in Canberra and Sydney, over 48 hours to create mashups, apps and data visualisations. This will be more technical and hands on than GovCamp, and is intended for public and private sectors and academia.
  
• GovJam, 6-7 June: For public servants on new ways to do service delivery and innovate in government. At multiple locations around Australia and the world.
  

ps: I am helping with the academic panel for GovCamp. For my own take on innovation, see: Building Arcadia: Emulating Cambridge's High Technology Success, Designing for Democratic Dialogue and Internet in Government.

Codesign for Governance

At GovCampNSW, my "Teaching Open to Government" was followed by one on "Codesign for Governance" by Jax Wechsler. Codesign recognizes there is a role for the community in the design process, not just answering questions at focus groups.

An example given was Experienced based design (ebd) at the UK National Heath Service.The also provide documents for a ebd masterclass and Measures checklist.

It stuck me that this was the way computer systems are developed (or should be developed). Given that many new government initiatives will invocable some on-line and computer component, the software design can be combined with the project design.

Teaching Open to Government

For GovCampNSW, I suggested the topic "Teaching Open to Government". The idea is that government is made up of people, if we want them to work in a more open and consultative way, using on-line tools, we will need to teach those people how to do that. Some of the techniques used for teaching creative thinking and innovation could be applied, along with teaching how to converse on-line. Examples:

1. Cancer Council Australia' wiki platform: Publicly accessible web site for building complex medical policies. Only registered experts can edit the documents, but anyone can comment.
2. Wosk Centre for Dialogue: Purpose built facility for having public dialogue and deliberative democracy events.
3. Innovation ACT: A program for university students in Canberra, teaching how to take an idea and turn it into a business.

A blended teaching mode, combining face-to-face sessions with on-line eduction would suit for teaching openness to government. For the mechanics of how to do social networking, there are some tools, such as Backupify. There is a Social Media 101: A beginner’s guide for Finance employees. The NSW Department of Education has a School A to Z on Homework and study. My own course on Electronic Document and Records Management, may be of use.

As a last thought training for senior military officers, such as the ANU Military Studies Program, might provide insights for the public service.

Public Policy Development Online

One system demonstrated at GovCampNSW, was the Cancer Council Australia' wiki platform provides a version of the Wikimedia platform tailored for policy development. This provides for two levels of interaction with the wiki: the general public can post comments, but only registered experts can edit the content. The system includes formal traditional references, as needed for schoolyard work and formal policy documents:

Wiki-based clinical practice guidelines will ultimately improve the standard and consistency of clinical practice according to the best and most recent scientific evidence available. It is a service provided by Cancer Council Australia to inform clinical practice. Unlike written guidelines wiki guidelines are constantly updated as new evidence becomes available and are linked to source abstracts and other evidence-based sites that add to the value of visiting the wiki site.

Sydney Top Level Domain Name

An interesting discussion at GovCampNSW, was over Sydney top level domain name. This is available, but there are numerous issues around its use: can Sydney Australia have exclusive use? What rules government it? How are commercial and community interests balanced? AUDA set up Community Geographic Domain Names for community domain name use. The Sydney top level domain might be used similarly. In my view the NSW government should purchase the domain name, at least as a defensive measure and perhaps turn administration over to local government. Some sub-domains would be valuable, such as hotels.sydney and others would need to be reserved for the obvious user, such as operahouse.sydney.

See also Carving up the web by Paul Wallbank.

NSW Co-social case builder software not usable

At GovCampNSW I tried to use the GovCampNSW Co-social case builder to submit an idea. But this requires I register and that requires filling in a form in a pop-up web window. On my screen the fields to fill in are off the bottom of the screen and I can't scroll down. As a result of the flawed web design I can't submit an idea.

Some tests on the web page:

1. W3C Markup Validation Service: 56 Errors, 3 warnings
2. W3C mobileOK Checker: 42% critical 0, severe 3, medium 0, low 3
3. TAW Automated WCAG 2.0 Analysis level A: 4 Problems in 3 success criteria: Perceivable 2, Operable 0, Understandable 1, Robust 1

Most important Innovation in Government

Some points from the first small group discussion at GovCampNSW:

1. Dialogue with government: citizens deliberative democracy, not adversarial politics and focus groups
2. Breaking Down Silos in Government: Not having parts of government repeat the same things over and over separately.
   
3. Embed Change in Public Service: Whatever Gov 2.0 initiatives are proposed have to be resourced so that they will work in the long term, with public servants trained how to do it (this was my suggestion). One way would be with innovation training, as done with the Innovation ACT program. Some of the techniques used at ANU to train critical thinking to international students could be used to train public servants.
   
4. Outsource the NSW Government: One suggestion was to implement innovations via outsourcing as it was easier to overcome internal organizational inertia that way. But what worried me about this was the logical conclusion was outsourcing the entire government, or at least the important bits.
   

Innovators In Government

A book mentioned at GovCampNSW, is "The Innovator's DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators" by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, Clayton M. Christensen (Harvard Business Press, 2011). "Innovation" is something I know a little about, having mentored a team in "Innovation ACT". The Gov Camp NSW started well, but is quickly degenerating into people from companies telling us that they are not here to give a sales pitch (while mentioning their company) and people who flew in from overseas to tell us how we can do things on-line (I came on the train).

The questions being asked are about creating public value and creating new forms of public institutions. In my view that is the easy part. The hard part is how to integrate changes into the business and politics of government.

There was a federal government Gov2.0 Taskforce which made grand pronouncements, with little apparent progress to show for it. However, if you lok under the surface, the changes caused by reformed federal government information policy and the use of open access licenses is starting to change the way government works. This cannot be done quickly, as it requires government staff and politicians to be retrained and also reliable, secure systems to be put in place to support them. A few mashups stuck on top of creaking old mainframe era systems will not do, not will some opinion collecting web sites pasted on top of a creaking old consultation process.

New South Wales is the ideal place to consider how to do government differently, due to the poor state of its government and political processes. Because much does not work well, there is the opportunity to do things differently.

GovCampNSW

Greetings from the NICTA Building (National ICT Australia) at the Australian Technology Park in Sydney, where GovCampNSW just started. This is a one day "un-conference" . Apart from Twitter (Hashtag: #GovCampNSW), there is a Co-social case builder being used (whatever that is).

The schedule for the day will look something like this:

8.45am		Briefing for volunteer social reporters and event wranglers
9.00am		Coffee and registration
9.30am		Welcome and introductions
9.35am		Presentations (10 mins each)
		Martin Stewart-Weeks
		Dominic Campbell
10.00am		‘Conversation cafe’ round-table discussions: What are the issues you want to talk about in the barcamp sessions? Co-facilitated by James Dellow and Allison Hornery
10.40am		Feedback and agenda setting
11.15am		Barcamp sessions (20 mins each in parallel rooms)
1.00pm		Lunch
1.45pm		Barcamp sessions (20 mins each in parallel rooms)
3.15pm		Closing session
		Presentation: Crisis response – Anthony Baxter (Google)
		Lightning talks: One-minute speed talks by participants
		Observations on the day: Deirdre O’Donnell, NSW Information Commissioner
		Report back: Discussion with panel on GovCamp learnings
4.00pm		CLOSE and adjourn for drinks

……………….

= Short presentation by guest speaker

= Interactive presentations, demonstrations and discussion by attendees