Remote Meetings for Running Australia

Previously I suggested Australian governments and organizations interpret existing laws and rules to allow electronic decision making. NSW councils have been told they can hold electronic meetings for the next sixth months, due to the . I suggest that this will be needed for more than six months, and should be made a permanent feature of the way local government, and other organizations, work. The technology exists to allow people to participate remotely, and there is no good reason to not do this.

It will be interesting to see how taking turns speaking is handled at council meetings, which, like state and federal parliament, can have robust debates. Most of the video conferences I have been to were relatively informal with a dozen people, who could speak at any time. A few large ones, with hundreds of people, required clicking the "raise your hand" button, before the host would switch on my microphone.

Videoconferencing usually also comes with other feedback features, such as a up and down thumb buttons, which might be used for a quick indication of support for a proposal at a meeting. Webinars (as distinct from Video Conferences) tend to have more feedback features, such as polls which might be used for formal votes. However, there would need to be a way to limit this to a subset of participants (that is the elected members). Given there are not many who can vote at a council meeting, a simple show of hands should be sufficient (with a virtual hand or by voice for those without a camera).

The NSW COVID-19 Local Government Resources page says "Requirements for members of the public to be permitted to attend meetings can now be satisfied by live-streaming the meeting using an audio-visual link.". Video conferecne systems, such as Zoom can typically have hundreds of participants, and webinars thousands. If a larger number of members of the public are expected (a council could have hundreds of thousands of residents), there is the option of streaming the video. This would also a way to have two levels of participation: those in the video conference who can interact, and those on the streaming service. Some streaming services (such as YouTube and Facebook) allow comments from participants. It should be noted that council meetings, also allow for the public to present their case to a meeting, so these people would need more than just streaming.

ps: In my 1997 final report as President of the Australian Computer Society I proposed all MPs and Senators of the Australian Parliament be provided with secure video conferencing to their offices, and half the sitting days replaced with electronic meetings.

NSW Government COVID-19 Updates Page Could be Sped Up.

The content on the NSW Government COVID-19 Updates page is well set out, but the page could be implemented better technically. It scores only 57/100 on the Google Page Speed Insights tests. could be sped up. Here are the changes Google suggests. Detailed advice is provided on the website for each:

• Reduce the impact of third-party code Third-party code blocked the main thread for 330 ms 
• Serve static assets with an efficient cache policy 9 resources found 
• Minimize main-thread work 2.4 s 
• Avoid chaining critical requests 24 chains found 
• Keep request counts low and transfer sizes small 48 requests • 548 KB

NSW Government Needs Input on Delivery of Government Services Using ICT

The NSW Government is re-developing its Apps4NSW program (for delivery of government services using ICT) and has company GfK collecting community input.  Workshops are planned for the week of 24 August 2015 in Sydney:

"Workshop sessions for the NSW Government Department of Finance, Services and Innovation 

Hi there,

Recently you took part in a survey for the Department of Finance, Services and Innovation (the Department) for the apps4NSW program.

As we mentioned before, the Department is looking to re-develop the Apps4NSW program and is taking a community centred service design approach in doing so.

As part of this process GfK Australia will be conducting a series of 2 hour workshop sessions in August with developers, designers, marketers to name a few. The workshop sessions will also provide you with an opportunity to have your say, and network with others in the industry. 

Participation in the research is, of course, voluntary. GfK Australia has been commissioned by the Department to maintain strict confidentiality of individual responses, and the information sent to the Department will not identify individual respondents without your explicit and prior permission. 

Please feel free to forward this invitation on! We would appreciate you sharing this invitation to anyone else you who might also like to take part in these sessions.

If you would like to take part in this research we will need to ask you a few questions first to make sure we invite you to the right session, in will only take a couple of minutes. Take me to the survey

If you have any questions at all about the research process, please email discuss@gfk.com. 

If you would like to check the bona fide nature of the research, please contact Department at apps4nsw@finance.nsw.gov.au.

Your feedback is very important to us and we would greatly appreciate your time in participating in the research."

" ... Just wanted to let you know that we are holding some more workshop sessions next week. When we spoke last week you mentioned that if we were to do some more sessions the following week that you may be available. The potential sessions are below.

Please feel free to share within your network and if you or anyone can make it, please just email or call me to let me know which session/s you may be available for. ...

Mon 24^th Aug: 12pm-2pm 5:45pm-7:45pm 8pm-10pm

Tue 25^th Aug: 8am-10am 12pm-2pm 5:45pm-7:45pm 8pm-10pm

Wed 26th Aug: 8am-10am 12pm-2pm

Thurs 27th Aug: 5:45pm-7:45pm8pm-10pm

--

Office & Marketing Administrator, GfK

NSW Government ICT Suppliers Liability

In "NSW Govt vendors face uncapped liability" (IT News, Dec 5, 2012), Liz Tay points out that ICT suppliers to the NSW government face unlimited damages if a project goes wrong. But what was not mentioned is that members of the Australian Computer Society who are "Certified Computer Professionals" can have their liability capped under NSW legislation. This gets a mention in the federal "A GUIDE TO LIMITING SUPPLIER LIABILITY IN ICT CONTRACTS WITH AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT AGENCIES".

Teaching Discussion Paper Omits On-line Learning

Adrian Piccoli, NSW Minister for Education released a discussion paper "Asking the tough questions about teacher quality in NSW", 31 July 2012. While proposals for annual reviews and bonuses for high performing teachers tend to get the headlines, this paper discusses less controversial and more effective measures for initial teacher education and ongoing development. Unfortunately it fails to address the most important issue in education today: use of the Internet.

Contents of the Teaching Discussion Paper

1. Minister's introduction
2. Inspired learning
3. Initial teacher education
4. Entry into the profession
5. Develop and maintain professional practice
6. Recognise and share outstanding practice

As well as the paper itself, there are Frequently asked questions and a Media Release and an online discussion forum will commence 24 August 2012. The paper was prepared by Dr Michele Bruniges, Director-General of the Department of Education and Communities, Mr Tom Alegounarias, President of the NSW Board of Studies, and Mr Patrick Lee, the Chief Executive of the NSW Institute of Teachers.

Unfortunately this paper fails to address the digital education revolution now taking place in schools (and universities). The paper does not mention use of the Internet, web, computers, on-line eduction, or blended learning. These are now changing the way education is done, both for the teachers and the students. An obvious first step would be to put in place training in on-line techniques, using on-line techniques in initial teachers training. Then the same techniques can be used to improve professional practice. Last of all, with teachers trained in how to use computers effectively, these can be used for student learning.

The lack of understanding of modern communication methods is in part reflected by the decision of the NSW Minister for Education to delay discussion of the paper for almost a month after its release. Last century, when the distribution of the paper would have taken a month, this would have made sense. However, the paper was available instantaneously on-line and the only effect of this delay is to have the Minister and his department cut themselves off from the public discussion of the issues.

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