Posts By Craig Thomler

In which circumstances should a democratic nation ban access to social networks?

During the UK riots in 2011, the UK Prime Minister suggested shutting down social networks in future riots to prevent information sharing amongst rioters. Now Turkey has blocked access to Twitter, stating the service was ‘biased’ and did nothing to stop the ‘character assassination’ of politicians in the current ruling party accused of bribery. LikeRead… Read more »

Government stakeholders and citizens see different priorities for open data release

Socrata has released an interesting benchmark study on open government data, which looks at the state of open data from the perspectives of citizens, developers and government. It is interesting to compare which data government stakeholders consider important to publish, compared to what citizens feel is important. Looking at Very Important from the tables (below)Read… Read more »

Guest post: We should be celebrating our victories

Hi, today I’m featuring a guest post by Gian Wild of AccessibilityOz Gian is Australia’s leading specialist in accessibility and was on the working group that designed the WCAG 2.0 guidelines that agencies must follow. Gian will be speaking at a series of free breakfast seminars at the start of April in Melbourne, Canberra andRead… Read more »

Guest post: We should be celebrating our victories

Hi, today I’m featuring a guest post by Gian Wild of AccessibilityOz Gian is Australia’s leading specialist in accessibility and was on the working group that designed the WCAG 2.0 guidelines that agencies must follow. Gian will be speaking at a series of free breakfast seminars at the start of April in Melbourne, Canberra andRead… Read more »

Learning how to crowd fund – and launch of Social Media Planner Kickstarter

This morning at BarCamp Canberra I gave the presentation below on how to setup a crowdfunding campaign, based on my personal experience setting up a Kickstarter for Social Media Planner. For people interested in crowdfunding I’ve embedded my presentation below. If you’re interested in learning more about Social Media Planner, and potentially backing it, see:Read… Read more »

Launching my Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign at BarCamp Canberra

Tomorrow is BarCamp Canberra, a festival of ideas and experiences, where participants decide what to present and attend on the day. While it is hard to predict what people will talk about, I expect topics will range from technology and design to open data and social change, with a seasoning of personal experiences and interactiveRead… Read more »

Time has run out for Australia to meet its April 2014 Open Government Partnership commitment

Last year the Australian Government (under the Labor party) made a commitment to the international and Australian community that it would take the necessary actions to join the Open Government Partnership (OGP) by April 2014. The OGP is a group of 63 nations committed to making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens.Read… Read more »

Are you prepared for Australia’s new privacy law?

Today Australia’s new Privacy law comes into force, affecting Australian Government agencies, businesses with a turnover of more than $3 million or trading in personal information and all private health service providers. As the first major change in Australian privacy law in 25 years, there’s been numerous changes and updates to reflect the major changesRead… Read more »

Crowdfunding gaining strength as an FOI tool – but will governments seek a seat at the table?

As reported by Peter Timmins in his Open & Shut blog, and as I have commented on Twitter, crowdfunding is beginning to become an interesting tool for fundraising the cash requested by government agencies for fulfilling FOI responses. Where governments are still using charging for FOI searches as a cost-recovery tool (and potentially occasionally asRead… Read more »

Eight ways to craft a top government tweet

Often the issue today is no longer how an agency or council gets a message or response approved for release via social media, but rather how to cut through all the noise. I analysed the top tweets by Australian governments and councils over the last two months, as reported by Great Oz Gov Tweets. OutRead… Read more »