Truth is a point of view, but authenticity can’t be faked. Peter Gruber One of the challenges that we have in New Zealand – like so many other places – is how government engages with people. The intentions are good: public servants are genuinely interested in creating policy and implementing processes that work well forRead… Read more »
Understanding online behaviour In March, the results of research into how New Zealanders manage their online identity were published by Professor Miriam Lips, the first Professor of E-Government at Victoria University of Wellington. The research revealed some interesting aspects of online behaviour. To start, you’ll want to check out the report, which is titled “KiwisRead… Read more »
Last weekend, New Zealand joined Australia for GovHack 2015. If you’re not familiar with the idea, this is a 2-day hackathon set up for people – community, industry, academia, civil society and public sector − to get creative with government data. The goal is to build some ‘thing’ using open government data. To be clear: this isRead… Read more »
Over the last few weeks, I’ve noticed increasing references to government agencies as enablers rather than enforcers or regulators. I think that this is a side effect of 2 ideas that are gaining acceptance: the shift in the public sector to focus on trust rather than compliance seeing the public sector as an inter-connected systemRead… Read more »
I spent last week on a review panel looking at the performance of a New Zealand university’s web team. It was an illuminating experience – and a very positive one – but it got me to thinking about the how to operate within a changing digital environment. That’s pretty vague so let me explain aRead… Read more »
Change is scary When the internet started to hit critical mass in the late 1990s / early 2000s, there were dire stories about how libraries would go the way of dinosaurs, with the expectation that books would be deliberately destroyed like a Fahrenheit 451 dystopia or tossed in a landfill somewhere to moulder quietly. MoreRead… Read more »
This topic isn’t really about the New Zealand government like all my other posts but it’s related to my work in the public sector so I thought you might find it interesting as well. So I’m doing something radical that I wanted to share with you: I’m taking my own advice. I know. You’re thinking,Read… Read more »
Good: Big data. The Cloud. Information economy. Internet of Things. Medical advances. Engaged citizens. Crowdfunding. 3D printing. Crowdsourcing. Co-creation. Co-production. Open source. Open government. Smart cars. Bad: Identity theft. Big Brother. Phishing. Spyware. Malware. Spam. Zombie computers. Key logging. Hackers. Pharming. 419s . Social isolation. Marginalization. Privacy breaches. SkyNet. Sorry about that last one –Read… Read more »
In earlier blog posts, I mentioned Govt.nz, which is the New Zealand Government’s flagship website. The new website was launched in July 2014 but things didn’t actually stop there. That requires a little explanation: we launched a minimal viable product or MVP. If you Google that term, you’ll get either a definition that includes return-on-investmentRead… Read more »
The set up Last week I want to a conference called Open Source // Open Society (OS//OS). While conferences are great opportunities to learn new things, I normally wouldn’t blog about one. But this one got me thinking about the ‘open society’ aspect and how it fits with government, especially with the work my team isRead… Read more »