In the UK, from September this year (the start of their school year), all primary and secondary students in state-run schools will be taught how to program computers as a mandatory part of their national curriculum. Announced as part of the UK’s ‘Year of Code’, the introduction of this new mandatory computing curriculum was necessary,Read… Read more »
This morning I attended the breakfast launch of the Open for Business: How Open Data Can Help Achieve the G20 Growth Target report. The report was written by Nicholas Gruen (former chair of the Gov 2.0 Taskforce) and his team from Lateral Economics, with support from Victoria University and commissioned by the Omidyar Network (theRead… Read more »
One of the most major challenges for governments and societies around the world today is the rapidly declining trust in politicians, institutions and governance systems. I’m willing to make the claim that politicians today are no more corrupt, self-serving or beholden to special interests than politicians were fifty, a hundred or even a thousand yearsRead… Read more »
One of the most frustrating and, I think, silliest things I found when working in Australian government agencies was how almost every department, agency and statutory body developed almost all of its own policies, procedures, software and tools. There was often ‘undercover’ sharing – where people in agencies would ask their colleagues in others forRead… Read more »
The UK Government has just released the alpha version of data.parliament.uk – – a site designed to host open data on the UK Parliament and its proceedings. (An Alpha for those who don’t understand the term is a first release of a software product that is usually tested only by the developers). The alpha releaseRead… Read more »
One of the starkest differences between Australia and the US’s Government 2.0 movements is the mandate and level of support provided officially by our most influential elected officials. In the US Government 2.0 has been championed both by the President and by leading politicians on both sides of their political divide. Regardless of ideology thereRead… Read more »
One of the starkest differences between Australia and the US’s Government 2.0 movements is the mandate and level of support provided officially by our most influential elected officials. In the US Government 2.0 has been championed both by the President and by leading politicians on both sides of their political divide. Regardless of ideology thereRead… Read more »
The United Nations is currently running a very interesting global consultation asking people about the six issues that matter most to them. Named myWorld2015 (vote.myworld2015.org), the consultation has attracted over 2.1 million responses from around the world. Of these, there have been 14,896 responses from Australia (viewable through the data page) – and it isRead… Read more »
The Queensland Government recently introduced a new approach to communicate departmental social media policy to staff, a light and humorous video featuring ‘Social Media Man’. It’s the latest in a line of video-based tools used to communicate social media policy to public servants in Australia, following some great work from Victoria. The first, in MarchRead… Read more »
While common practice in many countries overseas, there’s still limited authentic consultation on government budgets undertaken in Australia – and I think we’re poorer for it. Involving the community in setting budget priorities and educating them on how a budget is developed goes a long way towards building understanding and (very importantly) trust in publicRead… Read more »