OKFestival 2012: Open Data, Open Gov & Open Science in Helsinki

A couple of weeks ago I went to Helsinki, Finland to attend OKFestival 2012. It was a suggestion from someone two months ago that planted the seed to go, and I felt it would be really useful. So I saved my pennies and booked the tickets. It was an incredible trip with some incredible learnings.

Check out my “storify” stories which collate my experiences from the two days from my live Tweeting.

Rosling Hubbard Pollock & WaughHanging out with Hans Rosling, Rufus Pollock and Dr Tim Hubbard πŸ™‚

Basically I’ve been working on open government and open data policy and projects for a while now and I realised I had a good opportunity to connect with practitioners and policy makers around the world. I really wanted to pick the brains of these people and also share what is happening locally to share, and to get some context on how we are going in a global context.

OKFestival name badgeI found many surprising things, not least of all that we are actually comparatively quite well in Australia when you look around the world. Obviously we have a lot to learn and do but we are lucky in many respects, such as we have a relatively open democracy already. For instance, Hansard for Federal and State parliamentary reporting is far from perfect but many countries have abysmal parliamentary openness and transparency. It was quite a shock to realise how little the accountability some jurisdictions operate under. More on that later.

It was also very interesting to hear from over 20 countries on their open data initiatives, to attend technical sessions on publishing data, to hear about the European Commission investment in open data (substantial!), and to talk to people from over 15 countries involved in “apps contests” and other hackfests. There was a lot of interest in our GovHack model so there might be some grounds for collaboration there too.

Statue in Helsinki with birdsI should also note that upon careful consideration, I thought it might be useful to bootstrap an OKFN Au local chapter in order to pull together all the open knowledge communities across Australia. Some network mechanism is needed as we have growing communities that are completely disconnected from one another. We could all benefit from some cross-disciplinary community development that includes cross promotion, discussions, aggregated events and news, tools for collaboration, support mechanisms (financial, insurance, legal, etc) and perhaps some events that bring us all together for mutual benefit.

So, this is my mother-of-all-posts report from the week. I will be blogging on some of the thoughts that have coalesced as a result later, but check out some of my highlights from the week below along with some really useful links. I’m also going to be working with the open government community people at OKFN to do an expanded open data census that looks at specific details of open data initiatives around the world to identify some good practice, policy commonalities and general information for people trying to do open data in government.

Open Government

The Open Government Partnership

Hanging out with Richard Akerman from Canada (@scilib)
Hanging out with Richard Akerman from Canada (@scilib)

The Open Government Partnership was a key theme for the conference, with over 55 countries now signed up in its first year. Signing up is not only a statement of commitment to this area, but countries have a series of targets on openness and transparency to meet. Apparently OGP has been slower to take off in Asia and Oceania, with only a few countries in this region getting involved to date.

Australia is unfortunately not yet signed up, and I hope that is rectified soon so Australia can more legitimately take our place in this space as something of an emerging leader. I had a lot of people interested in what Australia is doing at the conference from jurisdictions all around the world, and yet whenever we got to OGP discussions, there was not official Australian voice or commitment, which was disappointing. I hope this can be rectified soon, especially as the OGP commitments are already in line with so many existing policies in Australia.

Check out the infographic on the first year of progress of the OGP, and the draft strategic plan which is currently open for public comment.

There were several sessions on the OGP talking about standards, implementation challenges, and many representatives from supporting organisations like the World Bank who are investing in open government initiatives around the world.

Declaration of Parliamentary Openness

Afternoon tea with @anked & @kate_Braybrooke
Afternoon tea with @anked & @kat_Braybrooke

The Declaration of Parliamentary Openness was launched quite recently as an outcome of a global meeting of parliamentary monitoring organisations (PMOs). It is quite an interesting document and again, possibly something Australia should consider signing up to.

NSW Member of Parliament the Hon. Penny Sharpe did a great speech on the Declaration of Parliamentary Openness for International Day of Democracy (September 15th) which happened to be whilst I was in Helsinki. Several people there were very excited about the speech and I was quite honoured to be cited in it πŸ™‚ Nice work Penny!

Check out some of the work from open parliaments around the world.

Open Data around the world

Gorgeous model in the basement of the uni
Gorgeous model in the basement of the uni

I managed to have a long sit down with the technical lead on data.gov.uk which was fantastic! It was great to get an idea of the model they use for publishing, the development work they have done, what resources they have an more.

My notes on the data.gov.uk discussion, with permission from their technical lead:

  • Human resources for data.gov.uk –Β 3 Β full time resources only
  • Uses CKAN – very happy with it, especially as they can easily develop additional functionality they need
  • Every department and local authority has at least one data champion that does data publishing as part of their normal job, ~765 publishers
  • Total cost of data.gov.uk only about 460k pound per year. 40k pound hosting and staff = most of the rest
  • Primarily focused on publishing data in the best way possible. Not focused on datavis, but consideringΒ looking at drupal front end with ckan backend
  • Departments are entirely responsibility for publishing their data. The full time staff look after the platform, do development where necessary (have created several plugins specific to their needs and open sourced them), provide technical support to publishers, but onus is on publishers
  • data.gov.uk folk have built functionality to handle the structure of government, creating lists of “Publishers” which are individual agencies (etc), users have a list of what Publishers they have access to publish to. You can have hierarchies of Publishers to reflect interrelationships between Publishers
  • An account API which could be the corporate API. Only publishers get API keys
  • No token required for apps
  • Antonio gave us a demonstration of uploading datasets, uploading had an option to choose whether a dataset is part of a time set
  • All datasets are appended, content is not changed at all, “if you get into data changing you are dead”
  • 5 star rating is helping improve quality of data publishing
  • With a multiple data file time series, the API interrogates the entire set
  • Contact details are available by dataset
  • data.gov.uk do thematic theming, they have over 8000 tags in the system atm, and they created 6 themes: health, environment, education, finance (other things apart from spending), society, defence, transportation, spending data (where they spend money), government
  • Automatic updates for some files via JSON but largely manual. Publishers felt more comfortable with manual publishing than aautomation for perceived control
  • Tend to point to WMS servers for spatial data rather than host directly
  • UK folk suggest a geoserver to host geospatial data and use open data platform to point to data rather than host it directly. A metadata harvester gets data from spatial sets and points to data. Needed to comply with the INSPIRE directive
  • They don’t apply 5 star to mapped data (or other purely linked information) as it doesn’t exactly map to downloadable data star rating
  • You can search on geospatial datasets by postcode or by drawing an area
  • Found that within a minute and 15 seconds (the record) a user could go from not having used the site before to publishing data, very low transition from newbie to publisher which was important
  • All statistics are automated which is due to being within the one dept and they are motivated to automated
  • INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community) Directive was a major driver, as was “digital by default”
  • They generate monthly reports that counts the openness (stars) of data, the amount per Publisher, publishers with broken links, datasets with broken links. Helps publishers keep their data up to date
  • data.gov.uk is building a dashboard to report by the hierarchy of government
  • Public Roles and Salaries linked data tool – http://data.gov.uk/organogram/cabinet-office
  • Blog post about plugins data.gov.uk have built, all freely available on github – http://data.gov.uk/blog/the-code-behind-datagovuk
  • Indemnification from the Crown so public servants not at personal legal risk
  • Started with the knowledge management people, then expanded. Basically all parts of the public service were told that this is what they must do, so they did it
  • data.gov.uk is hosted by the government, Ubuntu servers
  • data.gov.uk – metadata, almost a petabyte of data now
  • US is running three open data platforms, including Socrata, CKAN and another bespoke one
  • No inferred metadata – up to data publishers to provide metadata
  • Real time data – can deal with real time, new functionality being also built
  • The value of cloud service to scale with API requirements

For some technical details and the code behind data.gov.uk, check out http://data.gov.uk/blog/the-code-behind-datagovuk

Thanks Toni for your time!

Below are my live tweets on the open data country updates – each person had about 5 minutes to wrap up their country. I’ve put them in alphabetical order and the results were a fascinating snapshot. I wish I’d had more time to talk to each and every contributor:

  • Argentina – created Ministry of Modernisation inc Buenos Aires Data, 3 hackathons, datavis, app comp, digital city event coming
  • Australia – @piawaugh giving Australia report http://twitpic.com/avwd85
  • Australia – What’s going on in#opendata in #australia ? Psi needs to be cc by default. http://instagr.am/p/Ptj4FUodS9/ by Lucy Chambers
  • Australia – Not OGP members, national picture mixed, neat local efforts #okfest http://pic.twitter.com/l9u1JK1l by Tariq Khokar
  • Belgium – some progress, inconsistent across region. Estonia: need to transform data that is published to use as hard atm.
  • Brasil – have also done information asset catalogue to help facilitate future opendata.
  • Brasil – new law created to get important datasets published, also have proactive publishing of source code. Cost seen as blocker
  • Canada – over 12k datasets this year. Next gen platform deployed next year. Toronto building a city that thinks like the web πŸ™‚
  • Canada – lots of municipal level work, national level is participant in OGP with three pillars of opendata openinfo & opendialogue
  • Chile – regulation around #opendata created but not implemented yet.
  • Czech – working on apps&services based on opendata, OKFN local chapter, data catalogue & opendata.cz, 1st gov data blog. No money
  • France – France presentation a reminder that open standards can actually be a blocker to first steps in opening data. #okfest
  • France – talk from NosDeputes.fr, lots of cities putting data up, national now commit to open licence, formats an issue/blocker
  • Germany case study of getting gov to open up some data, but really just getting stated.
  • Ireland – new real time passenger info API coming this year, need national portal, still low priority for many but relatively cheap
  • Ireland – 8-9 public bodies in Dublin regional opendata portal. Interested in biz models, datavis, 40% participants entrepreneurs
  • Israel – black whole of legislation, printing protocols were hid in boxes. Volunteers went in to scan and digitise. Now gov opened
  • Italy – National data portal, people need gov to open data, 3000 datasets liberati πŸ™‚ increase in data quality. Mostly in north
  • Kenya – had one year birthday for Kenya opendata portal, focus on open standards, lots happening. No FOI leg yet, community devel
  • Netherlands – parliamentary data opened, 1st budget open data tmrw, issues: budget cuts hard, slow grow, gov benefit realisation
  • Netherlands – launched open data portal, gov stopped charging for geospatial data, $4m spent to free up satellite images…
  • Nigeria – update data hard to get, oil companies & gov corruption high, have digitised & visualised budget -> public engagement
  • Open Corporates – has info on 44,470,772 companies in the world. Open database of the corporate world. Interesting. Launched API
  • Slovakia – bad news is a lot of new laws but the working group works are slow and projects at risk.
  • Slovakia – launched open data portal, has preliminary support, worried about new gov not supporting but did, slow but building up
  • South Africa – not so much, Kenya is ahead of us Gov have removed new order mining rights info from website & water quality data
  • South Africa – info commissioner an important part to getting more transparency
  • South Africa – 1st hackathon in Aug 2012, secrecy bill attempting to shut down access to data, civil society active, OGP work too
  • Spain – lot of open data portals (~20), diverse, some good, some not. National portal is good but not much data. Big community tho
  • UK – 8661 datasets on new site, good stats, worked with openspending ppl to do reporting & better tools. Increase in public trust
  • Uruguay – Fascinating, gov working on data but dropping ball on other opengov #okfest
  • US – several initiatives out of date and not detailed enough
  • US – lots of stuff proposed, data laws, most of the work is overshadowed by Presidential election, OGP commitments being worked on.

Open Data Census – expand to capture information about individual initiatives?

OKFN have done a great job trying to get a useful comparative analysis of open data in countries around the world. I suggested it might be worthwhile to consider individual initiatives to get some understanding of exactly what is being done around the world, find commonalities and get some ideas around good practice in this space, especially as it is such a new area for so many people.

I put up some draft questions for the next Open Data Census and it’d be great to get feedback.

Outstanding talks I heard

There were many, many, outstanding talks at OKFestival. I’ll just briefly wrap up a few outstanding ones that I really enjoyed πŸ™‚

Dr. Nagy-Rothengass from the European Commission

European Commission presentationDr Nagy-Rothengass gave a fascinating talk about the European Commission commitment to Open Data. They have committed substantial funding for this, around 100 million Euro and their core rationale for supporting open data are as follows:EU slide on case for open data

  1. Untapped business and economic opportunities: data is the new gold; possible direct and indirect gains of 140b Euro across the EU27
  2. Better Governance and citizen empowerment: open data increases transparency, citizen participation and administrative efficiency and accountability.
  3. Addressing societal challenges: data can enhance sustainability of health care systems, essential for tackling environmental challenges.
  4. Accelerating scientific progress: e-science essential for meeting the challenges of the 21st century in scientific discovery and learning.

Hans Rosling

Hans Rosling was a brilliant keynote.

My favourite quotes from the talk:

  • If you want to communicate with people you need to learn from tabloids. They are good at connecting with people.
  • The problem is not that people don’t know anything about the world, the problem is they have a completely incorrect view. evidence & statistics show world population growing to about 10b after which it normalises.
  • The western world has a toxic combination of arrogance and ignorance. Also gender equality doesn’t just happen. It requires work.
  • D3 d3js.org as a great tool for #datavis
  • We can’t rely on the leaders to deal with the money. We need to get involved and see for ourselves.
  • Life has never been so good as today. That the world is bad today doesn’t mean it hasn’t become enormously better.
  • We need to seriously invest in renewable energies & isn’t about polar bears. We are up against something much bigger.
  • You have to demand access to the data. Countries should report & need to release big data so we can do better.
  • OECD *sell* their data! We need to have it liberated so we can understand and learn.
  • Don’t talk about what you should do, just mock up and prototype.

He went a little through his normal developing countries vs developed countries spiel which clearly demonstrates the world is a lot closer statistically than many people believe. He spoke about world population growth and showed that it is one of very few things that statisticians have been consistently correct about (with only a 6ish% deviation from projections over 50 years), and yet there is still a lot of fear and misinformation about population growth. He said based on projections and the massive slowdown of population growth, that the world population would peak at around 10 billion and then that number would largely be sustained, unless there was an enormous disaster.

He showed the importance of not dividing the world up into “developing” and “developed” and that people’s understanding of the world is typically quite out of date, based on figures and perspectives taught in school but not updated throughout adult life. This leads to a community making decisions based on outdated information which leads to bad decisions. It was humbling to see actual statistics and realise that we don’t really have embedded societal mechanisms to update what is taught at school, and how this creates a perception of other countries and cultures that may fall completely out of date within just a few years.

Personally I believe strongly that it is through global collaboration that we can leapfrog issues and many of the attendees from what are traditionally call “developing” nations had great stories to tell of citizen empowerment and leapfrogging “developed” countries.

Hans core messages so far as I understood them included the importance of open data to make good decisions, the importance of recognisiing that our understanding of the world is usually out of date, and the importance of the active engagement of civil society in international and national matters to balance out the imbalance of power.

This last point he demonstrated very effectively by showing a picture of world leaders at the Summit on Financial Markets and the World Economy, with some information about which countries were loaning/giving money to others. It was fascinating. Aid money being given from one country to a “developing” country, which was in turn was loaning $30b to the US (when George Bush was in), who was in turn supporting them to get a seat on a UN council. It goes round and round.

Hans made a strong point that people should demand the data and transparency so they can make more informed decisions as a community and not just leave things up to world leaders.

Click through on the following thumbnails to see larger versions.

Hans Rosling slideHans Rosling slideHans Rosling slideHans Rosling slideHans Rosling slideHans Rosling slideHans Rosling slideHans Rosling slide

Rufus Pollock

Rufus is the Director and co-founder of OKFN, and quite an impressive figure. He is passionate about open data and is credited by Sir Tim Berners-Lee as being behind the “Raw Data Now” agenda. Rufus gave a great opening keynote where he spoke about the importance of open data combined with analysis and action. He said we have now started to see more and more data being opened up but if we don’t combine this with good analysis and then action in response to the analysis, then we will not see the benefits of open data.

His speech was largely a spoken version of his blog post called Managing Expectations II: Open Data, Technology and Government 2.0 – What Should We, And Should We Not Expect so I recommend you check it out πŸ™‚

Diagram from Rufus Pollock on a theory of change
Diagram from Rufus Pollock on a theory of change

My contributions to OKFestival

Just a couple of notes for people I met there on my contributions.

I hosted a panel on open government, I contributed to several forums and I spoke on the closing panel withΒ Philip Thigo (Program Associate at SODNET & Co-Founder of INFONET, Nairobi, Kenya) & Antti Poikola (OKF Finland Incubating Chapter, Helsinki) which gave me a good opportunity to further discuss the role of the public service in open government. This was received really well and I have a load of public service colleagues now from all around the world in this space.

On a panel about open data and culture at OKFest 2012 with Philip Thigo, Program Associate at SODNET & Co-Founder of INFONET, Nairobi, Kenya & Antti Poikola, OKF Finland Incubating Chapter, Helsinki. Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/tuija/8008433837/
On a panel about open data and culture at OKFest 2012 with Philip Thigo, Program Associate at SODNET & Co-Founder of INFONET, Nairobi, Kenya & Antti Poikola, OKF Finland Incubating Chapter, Helsinki. Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/tuija/8008433837/

I spoke a little bit about public engagement on public policy and mentioned the Public Sphere methodology that I developed with Senator Kate Lundy. The most recent consultation was one on Digital Culture which was a major contribution to the impending National Cultural Policy. A lot of people asked about analysis, so I spoke a little about the importance for both data analysis and “network” analysis of a consultation to ensure the outcomes have the appropriate context. See the Analysing the community of a public sphere blog post on Senator Lundy’s site.

I also mentioned my Distributed Democracy idea which a few people liked πŸ™‚

Other links of possible interest:

GovHack and App4Country discussion

I was involved in a wonderful discussion with people from over 17 countries who do “apps” competitions and hackfests. It was great to hear about their initiatives and to share the lessons learnt from GovHack. Many of them expressed a lot of interest in our model which is a little broader than the “Apps4Country” model which has been quite popular in Europe. Most of them had the same problems with sustainability, longevity of outcomes from the hackfests, getting the government actively engaged. It was fascinating.

There are some good notes from the global hackfest/apps events collated here and there is a global mailing list (not very active atm) at http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/appsforx.

The notes I made for my presentation about GovHack:

  • Narrative, design *and* hacks
  • Not focused on apps, but rather hacks (apps, mashups & datavis) – often applications emerge but “apps development” creates confusion with mobile vs web vs devel vs datavis
  • GovHack was part of a trilogy of events – GovCamp to set the narrative and vision, GovUX/Jam to apply design thinking to service delivery challenges in the public service, GovHack for open hacking and to make some service delivey design outcomes real
  • Open Government, Science & Digital Humanities – to add Data Journalism
    – Amazing how much of an impact it made, has really fired the imagination of the public and sector.
  • Enormous enthusiasm from the gov involved, 7 departments and agencies from federal and state governments were deeply engaged.
  • People flew from all over Australia to the two locations that we were simultaneously running the hackfest to participate.
  • Mentors from data owners and technologists to support teams along with sessions.
  • Made the documentation and presentation of the hack part of the judging criteria, which compelled teams to nicely capture content about their hacks which meant a good archive of the event.

Motivations:

  • Bring community together
  • Demonstrate value of open data
  • Raise the bar for the narrative in Aus, focus efforts on constructive efforts
  • Open the data, give depts buy in, connect their tech with community and leaders with success
  • Create new ways to do service delivery that can be integrated into gov, fundamentally disrupt gov expectations around “innovation”
  • Volunteer run which gave it extra credibility, buy in, and public engagement
  • A lot of bad expectations of “apps competitions” because of events that have done it badly, in Aus and internationally
  • Open Sourced hacks for people/companies/students/gov to build upon

Lessons learnt:

  • Hackers are motivated so long as you create some importance, and engage in conversation to manage tone and deal constructively with trolls
  • Prize money is helpful, but need to be careful to ensure good community, tone, “spirit of govhack” award
  • Scaling to go national – hackfest for two days, 3 days to vote, awards ceremony, followup 6 months later.
  • More funding would be useful
  • Ensure non tech elements encouraged, some great non “app” outcomes, eg the jewellery hack
  • Engage with the startup and VC sector, open sourcing outcomes means govhack can be yearly incubator for spin offs as well as input to gov. Startups love it as it is the best form of publicity
  • Non geeky hacks are the most reportable – History in ACTION
  • Technologists have a lot to contribute to policy, and there is a lot of work now to bring these groups together. Data visualisation and other uses of data can massively contribute to policy development and better policy outcomes.
  • Ongoing community engagement could be achieved through launching OKFN Au chapter to bring together communities across the gov, data journalists, hacker/geek communities and academia/research.

Interesting thoughts from “apps” conversation:

  • Need to strongly socialise – Finland
  • Apps for Europe, Spain, lessons from @aabella: 1) Civil society not politicians. Pollies have a role but it needs to be civil society driven. 2) Need to target general population not just tech community, get broader community involved.

Some additional links collected from the week of interest

Some random Open Science links sent:

Thanks

For the first time I tried couch surfing on this trip and stayed with a lovely Helsinki resident called Tarmo. A huge thanks to Tarmo for having me for the week, it was great to meet and I have to say, the couchsurfing culture is really friendly and lovely πŸ™‚

Also, a huge thanks to Rufus for encouraging me to come, to Daniel Dietrich for his dedication to the open government space, and all the lovely people I met. I look forward to next year πŸ™‚

Creating Open Government (for a Digital Society)

Recently I spoke on a panel at the NSW Information Commissioner’s “Creating Open Government” forum about my thoughts on blue sky ideas in this space. I decided to work on the assumption of the importance and need for creating open government for a digital society. In the 10 mins I had, I spoke on the pillars of public engagement, citizen centric services and open data, where we need to go in the open government movement, and a few other areas that I believe are vital in creating open government.

Below are some of the thoughts presented (in extended form), some cursory notes, and some promises to write more in the coming months πŸ™‚

I should say up front that I am a person who believes government has an important role to play in society, even in a highly connected, digitally engaged and empowered society. Government, done right, gives us the capacity to support a reasonable quality of life across the entire society, reduce suffering and provide infrastructure and tools to all people so we can, dare I say it, live long and prosper. All people are not equal, there is a lot of diversity in the perspectives, skills, education, motivation and general capability throughout society. But all people deserve the opportunities in their life to persue dignity, happiness and liberty. I believe government, done right, facilitates that.

In my mind government provides a way to scale infrastructure and services to support individuals to thrive, whatever the circumstancecs of their birth, and facilitate a reasonably egalitarian society – as much as can be realistically achieved anyway. I’m very glad to live in a country where we broadly accept the value of public infrastructure and services.

So below are some thoughts on next steps in creating open government, with additional references and reading available πŸ™‚

1) Online Public Engagement

There is generally a lot of movement to engage online by the public sector across all spheres of government in Australia. However, this tends to be the domain of media and comms teams, which means the engagement is often more about messaging and trying to represent/push the official narrative. There are a lot of people working in this space who say they are not senior enough to have a public profile or to engage publicly without approval and yet, we have many people in government customer support roles who engage with the public every day as part of their job.

I contend that we need to start thinking about social media and “public engagement” also as a form of customer support, and not just media and communications. In this way, public servants can engage online within their professional capacities and not have to have every tweet or comment vetted, in the same way that every statement uttered by a customer service officer is not pre-approved. In this way interactions with citizens become of higher value to the citizen, and social media becomes another service delivery mechanism.

For example, consider how many ISPs are on social media, monitoring mentions of them, responding with actual customer support and service that often positively impacts that persons experience (and by extension community perception) of the organisation. Government needs to be out there, where people are, engaged in the public narrative and responsive to the needs of our community. We need our finger on the pulse so we can better respond to new challenges and opportunities facing government and the broader community.

One of the main challenges we face is the perception from many people that there is little be gained through public engagement. If a department or agency embarks upon a public consultation without genuinely being interested in the outcomes, this is blindingly obvious to participants, and is met with disdain. It is vital that government invest in online community development skills and empower individuals throughout the public service to engage online in the context of their professional roles.

This online engagement development skillset can be deployed for specific consultations or initiatives, but it also vital on an ongoing basis to maintain a constructive narrative, tone and community that contributes on an ongoing basis.

Further reading:

2) Citizen Centric Services

Citizens don’t care about the complexities of government, and yet we continue to do service delivery along departmental lines and spheres of government. The public service structure is continually changing to match the priorities of the government of the day, so not only is it confusing, but it is everchanging and we end up spending a lot of effort changing websites, stationery and frontline branding each portfolio shuffle. The service delivery itself (usually) continues seamlessly regardless of shifts in structure, but it is hard for citizens to keep up, and nor should they be expected to.

Citizen centric services is about having a thematic and personalised approach to service and information delivery. Done well, this enables a large number of our population to self service, in the manner and at the time that is convenient to them. It is no small task to achieve as it requires a way to integrate (or perhaps sit in between) systems and data sources throughout all of government, but we have some established case studies in Australia that we can learn from. Rather than trying to get consistent systems across government – which leads to always being only as strong as your weakest link – it is feasible to have integration tools to “front end” government.

By enabling many citizens to effectively self service, this approach also frees up government resources for supporting our most vulnerable and complex cases.

It is worth also noting that a truly citizen centric approach would be both cross departmental *and* cross jurisdictional. We need to start asking and addressing the challenges around how can we collaborate across the three spheres of government to give citizens a seamless experience?

A more eloquent description of this concept is from a speech from my former boss, Minister Kate Lundy, from a speech entitled Citizen-centric services: A necessary principle for achieving genuine open government/

3) Proactive data disclosure – open data and APIs

The public service holds and creates a lot of data in the process of doing our job. By making data appropriately publicly available there are better opportunies for public scrutiny and engagement in democracy and with government in a way that is focused on actual policy outcomes, rather than through the narrow aperture of politics or the media. This also builds trust, leads to a better informed public, and gives the public service an opportunity to leverage the skills, knowledge and efforts of the broader community like never before.

Whether it be a consultation on service planning or a GovHack, an open and contextualised approach to data and indeed the co-production of policy and planning ends up being a mechanism to achieve the most evidence based, “peer reviewed” and concensus driven outcomes for government and the community. It gets citizens directly engaged in actual policy and planning, and although the last word is always ultimately with the relevant Minister, it means that where political goals don’t align with the evidence based policy recommendations, an important discussion can be had and questions asked from an engaged and informed public.

This, to me, is a real and practical form democracy. I feel that party politics actually gets in the way to some degree, as it turns people off engaging in the most important institute in their lives. Like a high stakes team sport, the players are focused on scoring goals against their opponents and forget about what is happening off field.

As a person who is working in the public service, I truly believe that transparency is our best defence in fulfilling our duty to serve the public.

With major changes to legislation in recent years making FOI more seamless and accessible to citizens, departments are struggling to allocate necessary resources to comply in an extremely fiscally conservative environment.

In the meantime, although there is a general concensus on the value (with admittedly sometimes quite different interpretations of value) of opening up more public sector information publicly, the fact is that it is largely seen as a “good” thing to do, a nice to have, and as such has been challenging for departments to justify the not-insignificant resources required to move to a proactive data disclosure status quo.

There is a decent argument to say that proactively publishing data (and indeed, reports) would help mitigate the rising costs of FOI as departments could point requests to where the information is already online. But realistically, unless the department had in place the systems to automate proactive publishing, then it will remain something done after the fact, not integrated into business as usual, ad hoc and an ongoing expense that is too easily dropped when the budget belt tightens.

I have people say to me all the time “just publish the data, it’s easy”. The funny thing is the vast majority of people have little to no experience actually doing open data in government. It is quite a new area and though the expertise is growing, we are in infancy stages in jurisdictions around the world. Even some jurisdictions with very large numbers of data sets are doing much of that work manually, the data becoming out of date quickly, and quite often the pressure to be seen to do open data overrides the quality and usefulness of the implementation, as we see datasets being broken down into multiple uploads to meet quantitative KPIs.

The truth is, although putting up some datasets here or there is relatively easy – there is a lot of low hanging fruit – to move to a sustainable, effective, automated and systematic approach to open data is much harder, but is the necessary step if we are to see real value from open data, and if we are to see the goals of open data and mitigating FOI cost compliance merge.

Interestingly, another major benefit of the proactive public publishing of government data, is that the process of ensuring a dataset complies with privacy and other obligations is quite similar between making something public and sharing across departments at all. By making more government data openly available, particularly when combined with some analysis and visualisation tools, we will be able to share data across departments in an appropriate way that helps us all have better information to inform policy and planning.

The good news is, in Australia we have the policies (OAIC, AG Principles of IP, Ahead of the Game, Gov 2.0 Taskforce Report, etc), legislative (FOI changes),and political cover (Declaration of Open Government, though more would be useful) to move on this.

I will be doing a follow up blog post about this topic specifically in the coming week after I attend a global open data conference where I intend on researching exactly how other jurisdictions are doing it, their processes, resourcing, automation and procurement requirements. I will also give some insights to what the dataACT team have learnt in implementing Australia’s first actual open data platform, which is an important next step for Australia building on the good work of AGIMO with the data.gov.au pilot.

Additional notes:

  • more effective and efficient government – shared across departments, capacity to have whole of gov business intelligence and strategic planning, capacity to identify trends, opportunities and challenges within public service
  • internal measuring, monitoring, reporting and analysis – government dashboards – both internal and public reporting on projects
  • innovation – public and private innovation through access to data, service APIs – gov can build on public innovation for better service delivery – eg GovHack
  • transparency – need to build trust, what is the value to gov? – eg of minister vs doctor example

4) Agile iterative policy

There is a whole discussion to have about next generation approaches to policy which would be iterative, agile, include actual governance to keep the policy live and responsive to changing circumstances, and the value of live measuring, monitoring and analysis tools around projects and policies to help with more effective implementation on an ongoing basis and to applying the learning from implementation back into the policy.

The basic problem we have in achieving this approach is that, structurally, there is generally no one looking at policy from an end to end perspective. The policy makers are motivated to complete and hand over a policy. The policy implementers are motivated to do what they are handed. We need to bridge this gap between policy makers and doers in government to have a more holistic approach that can apply the lessons learnt from doers into strategic planning and development on an ongoing basis.

I’ll further address this in a followup blog post next month as I’m pulling together some schools of thought on this at the moment.

Check out the APS Policy Visualisation Network which is meeting for the first time next week if this space interests you. It will be fascinating to have people across the APS discussing new and interesting approaches to policy, and hopefully we will see the build up of new skills and approaches in this area.

Notes:

  • iterative and adaptive policy – gone are the days of a static 10 year policy, we need to be feeding recommendations from testing, monitoring, measuring back into improving the policy on an ongoing basis.
  • datavis for policy “load testing”, gleaning new knowledge, better communication of ideas, visualisation networks for contextualisation, etc
  • co-production, co-design
  • evidence based, peer reviewed policy that draws on the diverse strengths throoughout our community and public service

5) Supporting Digital industries

There are many reasons why, as a society we need to have strong digital industries including IT, creative, cultural, games development, media, music, film and much more. Fundamentally these industries and skills underpin our success in all other industries to some extent, but also, we have seen many Australian digital companies have to go overseas to survive, and we need to look at the local market and environment and ask how we can support these companies to thrive in Australia.

I ran two major consultations about this over the past couple of years, and the outcomes and contributions are still very relevant:

  • The ICT and Creative Industries Public Sphere – included an excellent contribution paper from Silicon Beach, a group of Australian tech entrepreneurs who have exceptional insights to the sectors here and overseas.
  • The Digital Culture Public Sphere – included excellent contributions from the games development industry, digital arts, the digital culture (GLAM) sector and much more.

Notes:

  • Open government can contribute to our digital sector through:
    • open data – esp cultural content for which we are custodians and esp the large quantity of data which is out of copyright
    • being great users of and contributers to digital technologies and the Australian sector
    • focused industry development strategies and funding for digital sectors

6) Emerging Technologies

I finished my panel comments by reflecting on some emerging technologies that governments need to be aware of in our planning for the future.

These are just some new technologies that will present new opportunities for government and society:

  • 3D printing and nanotechnology – already we have seen the first 3D printed heart which was successfully transplanted.
  • Augmented Reality
  • Wearable computing and “body hacking”

On the topic of 3D printing, I would like to make a bold statement. You see, at the moment people are already trying to lobby against 3D printing on the basis that it would disrupt current business models. Many on the technology side of the argument try to soften the debate by saying it is early days, you don’t get perfect copies, and myriad other placations. So here it is.

3D printing will disrupt the copyright industry, but it will also disrupt poverty and hunger. As a society, we need to decide which we care aboutΒ more.

There is no softly softly beating around the bush. There are some hard decisions and premises that need to be challenged, otherwise we will maintain the status quo without having even been aware of an alternative.

With advancements in nanotechnology also looming, we could see perfect copies of pretty much anything, constructed atom by atom out of waste for instance.

But there are also many existing technologies that can be better utilised:

  • games development – we have some of the most highly skilled games developers in the world and we can apply these skills to serious issues for highly citizen centric and engaging outcomes.
  • cloud – current buzzword – presents some good opportunities but also a jurisdictional nightmare so tread very carefully. You need to assume anything in the “cloud” can disappear or be read by anyone in the world
  • social media – see point 1

7) Final comment on government, power and society

Finally, just a couple of words about the most important element in creating open governments that can service the needs of an increasingly digital society.

We need to dramatically shift out thinking about technology and what it means to government. An no I don’t mean just getting a social media strategy.

For anything we think, plan, strategise, hypothesise or talk about to become real, we inevitably use a number of technologies.

Most people treat technology like a magic wand that can materialise whatever we dream up, and the nicely workshopped visions of our grand leaders are generally just handballed to the bowels of the organisation, otherwise known as the IT department, to unquestionably implement as best they can.

Technology, and technologists, are seen to be extremely important in the rhetoric, but treated like a cost centre in practise with ever increasing pressure to do more with less, “but could you just support my new iPad please?” IT Managers are forced to make technology procurement decisions based on which side of the ledger the organisation can support today, and the fiscal pressures translate to time pressures which leaves no space for meaningful innovation or collaboration.

We need the leaders of government, especially throughout the public service to be comfortable with and indeed well informed about technology.

We need collaborative technologists in the strategic development process, as we are the best people positioned to identify new opportunities and to help make a strategic vision that has a chance of seeing daylight.

We need to stop using the excuse that innovation or open government “isn’t about technology”, and recognise that as a government, and as a society, need to engage a healthy balance of skills across our entire community to co-design the future of government together. And we need to recognise that if we don’t have technologists in that mix, then all our best intentions and visions will simply not translate into reality.

Monitor, measure, analyse, collaborate, co-design, and be transparent.

The future is here, it simply isn’t widely distributed yet – William Gibson

Notes from after my speech from the event

The NSW AG speech was excellent – he spoke about the primary difference between the NSW Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 and the old approach is that the current approach pushes for proactive disclosure.

He mentioned three significant aspects of GIPA:

  • Accessibility
  • Manner in which is enables participation
  • Public right to know is paramount

There was an important comment from the day that we need to address sustainable power if we are to build a vision for the future.

There was comment on public interest – public consultation, get best inputs, peer review, chose most evidence based approach.

Questions about cloud:

  • Cloud attributes – jurisdiction, privacy, ownership, enforcability of contract, data transportability
  • Functional categorisation – private data? criticality of data/service delivery?
  • PATRIOT Act implications

AGIMO have some good policy advice in this area worth looking at on their Cloud computing page.

I wrote a hopefully useful post on this a while back called Cloud computing: finding the silver lining. I will be following that up with some work I’m doing in gov atm around this topic a little later, looking at the specific attributes of cloud services, how they map to different things gov want to do, and the fact that government jurisdictions around the world are pretty much universally using what I call “jurisdictional cloud” services, which means they are hosted by gov, or by gov owned entities within their legal jurisdiction. The broad calls for government to “just go cloud” suggest a binary approach of ‘to cloud or not to cloud’ which is simply not reality, not a reasonable thing to expect when government has obligations around privacy, security, sovereignty, ensuring SLAs for service delivery to citizens, and much more.

I also did an interview with Vivek Kundra (prior CTO for US Federal Gov) a while back which will be useful to a lot of people.

I loved the five verbs of Open Gov by Allison Hornery: Start, Share, Solve, Sync, Shout. Her speech was great!

Also, Martin Stewart-Weeks talked about three principles of open government:

  1. partly in cathedrals and partly in bazaars
  2. new relationships between institutions and communities, and
  3. knowledge has become the network. Great presentation and interesting how open source ideas are so prolific in this space.

Internet, government and society: reframing #ozlog & #openinternet

Having followed the data logging issue peripherally, and the filtering issue quite closely for a number of years, I am seeing the same old tug of war between geeks and spooks, and am increasingly frustrated at how hard it is to make headway in these battles.

On one hand, the tech/geek community are the most motivated to fight these fights, because it is close to our hearts. We understand the tech, we can make strong technical arguments but the moment we mention “data” or “http”, people tune out and it becomes a niche argument, easily sidelined. It is almost ironic that is it on these issues the Federal government have been the most effective on (mainstream) messaging.

The fact is, these issues affect all Australians. When explained in non tech terms, I find all my non-geek friends get quite furious, and yet the debates simply haven’t made it into the mainstream, apart from a few glib catch phrases here or there which usually err on the side of “well if it helps keep children safe…”.

I think what is needed is a huge reframing of the issue. It isn’t just about the filter, or data logging, or any of the myriad technical policies and legislation proposals that are being fought out by the technical and security elite.

This is about the big picture. The role of the Internet in the lives of Australians, the role of government in a digital age, and what we – as people, as a society – want and what we will compromise on.

I would like to see this reframing through our media, our messaging, our advocacy, and our outreach to non-tech communities (ie – MOST of the community). I challenge you all to stop trying to tell your friends about “the perils of data logging on our freedoms”, and start engaging friends and colleagues on how they use the Internet, what they expect, whether they think privacy is important online in the same way as they expect privacy with their snail mail, and what they want to see in the Internet of the future.

I had a short chat to my flatmate about #ozlog, staying well away from the tech, and here is what she had to say:

What annoys me is how the powers that be are making decisions that can or will affect our lives considerably without any public consultation. The general public should be educated on the implications of these kinds of laws and have a say. To me, this is effectively tampering with the mail, which has all the same arguments. If we start just cutting corners to “catch the bad guys” then we start losing our rights and compromising without consideration, potentially to no effect on crime. It’s a slippery slope.

Pamela Martin – flatmate and non-geek, she still has a VCR

It’d be great to see a series on TV about the Internet and society, something that gets normal people to talk about how they use the Internet, what they expect from the Internet, from government, and to work through some of the considerations and implications of tampering with how the Internet works. Some experts on security, networking, online behaviours and sociology would also be interesting, and let’s take this debate to the mainstream. The tech, security and politically elite too often disregard the thought that “normal” people will get it or care, but this is in fact, possibly the most important public debate we need to have right now.

I’ve written a little more on these ideas at:

Would love to hear your thoughts.

It is worth noting that during the big filter discussions in 2009/10 I was working for Senator Kate Lundy. Most of our correspondence up till that date were, to be frank, pro filter letters that argued that people wanted less porn to protect the children. IE – the arguments were generally idealogically based and little to do with the actual proposed policy, but supporting letters just the same. The SenatorΒ blogged about her thoughtsΒ on the issue which caused (over a few posts) several thousand comments, largely considered and technical comments against the policy which were really helpful both in building a case and in demonstrating that this is a contentious issue. I was and remain very proud to have worked for a politician with such integrity.

At the same time I saw a lot of people fighting against the filter using nastiness, personal attacks, conspiracy theories and threats. I would like to implore to all those who want to fight the good fight: take a little time to consider what you do, the impact of your actions and words, and whether in fact, what you do contributes to the outcome you are seeking. It is too easy to say “well it’s gonna happen anyway” and get all fatalistic, but I assure you, constructive, diligent and overall well constructed advocacy and democratic engagement does win the day. At the end of the day, they work for us, we just sometimes need to remind them, and the broader “us” of the fact.

UPDATE: This post was initially inspired by a well written SMH article which reported that the data logging issue had been put deftly back on the table (after it being shelved for being too contentious) with questionable claims:

Her apparent change of mind may be a result of conversations with the Australian Federal Police, who have long pushed for mandatory online data retention. Neil Gaughan heads the AFP’s High Tech Crime Centre and is a vocal advocate for the policy.

”Without data retention laws I can guarantee you that the AFP won’t be able to investigate groups such as Anonymous over data breaches because we won’t be able to enforce the law,” he told a cyber security conference recently.

Now, I’m not involved in Anonymous but I’m going to make an educated guess that there is probably a reasonably high rate of tech literate people who understand and use encryption and other tools for privacy and anonymity. Data logging is ineffective with these in place so the argument is misleading at best.

I was pleased and heartened to see the SMH article get a lot of attention and good comments.

This is only the beginning.

Fake geeks prey on us poor lonely “true geeks” – 4 realz yo

Note: apparently it hasn’t been completely obvious to a few people so just saying up front, this is a mock blog πŸ™‚

Don’t you hate it when you go to a geeky event, and you see a guy dressed up as Mal or Ironman or Wolverine (swoon) and it turns out they are just a booth babe, or worse, a sales guy. It’s like, the biggest let down! OMG! They are obviously purposefully poaching on us poor lonely and desperate geeks and frankly we’ve had enough! If you aren’t a true geek, then pretending to be one is worse than poaching, it is maliciously playing with the hearts and minds of the people who run your networks, and read your email, and could, with very little effort, utterly destroy your life and reputation online.

Do you feel me?

Even worse, I hate when you meet a cute guy who does turn out to own a computer, but also turns out to be a total Windows fanboi. Raving on and on about his 1337 VB skills, or how everyone that picks on Windows 8 totally sucks because no one has even seen it yet but it is totally “awesum”. He despises “freetards” because they are all so unrealistic about the industry and “it’s not like Linux has even made it on the desktop anyway, so who cares?”. Yeah, Windows fanbois are totally fake and should stop pretending.

Then you get the Apple banbois. The ones who wear berets because they think it is fashionable, maintain a pretentious sense of (secretly self) loathing about geeks and pretend to be passionate about design and typefaces because it helps them get laid given the demographic of the vast majority of Mac users. An Apple fanboi will lament about how Steve Jobs was Gandhi, Einstein and Jesus in one man, and wear turtlenecks because they think it makes them just like Steve. Apple fanbois are fakers who should stop pretending and learn how to be a true geek!

Then you get the device geeks. You know the ones, who always have the latest gadget regardless of the brand, who like to show off their immensely huge collection of apps, and who think installing an upgrade to Angry Birds somehow makes them technically competent. I got news for you chum, you are a fake geek! Stop it!

You know when you meet guys who talk about being a sysadmin ninja, or a gun at games development? FAKE! I have studied martial arts for 21 years and you sir, are no ninja. You couldn’t hit a wet towel and you couldn’t fire a gun to save yourself. Your limp wrist and shoulder muscles would buckle from the kick back so just stop. We won’t be tormented like this!

Finally you might get lucky enough to meet a guy who can program in a real language, can run his own infrastructure, is into gaming and loves to throw around Star Wars and Evil Dead III quotes. But then he expects you to stay in the kitchen, or give up work entirely to look after the kids by yourself, or he wants you to not beat him in Tekken or Call of Duty ‘cos his friends might laugh at him being “beaten by a girl” and frankly he doesn’t want the competition at home. Geek guys who turn out to be misogynists are the most annoying kind of fake geeks, because they have forgotten that true geekiness has nothing to do with gender, and they encourage geek girls to reject either their geekiness or their girliness. You guys need to be put down, you are the worst kind of fake geeks. No rly.

So, I guess it’s too much for a geek girl to find a real geek guy, one who looks like Wolverine or Mal, who can talk my language, use the same tech, play the same games, treat me like a human being and not disagree with my particular flavour of geekiness in any way shape or form.

Or perhaps we should all just chill out and let Bartlet be Bartlet.

No one has a monopoly on geekiness, and there are many flavours of geeks out there. It is actually really awesome that being geeky is becoming popular because we need more people to get on the path of tech literacy, whatever their incentive. Otherwise when the machines come our army will be very small πŸ˜‰

For another fantastic and better written blog post about this is John Scalzi’s “Who Gets To Be a Geek? Anyone Who Wants toΒ Be“. Read it, now! πŸ™‚

Note: This mockblog post is inspired by a good article by Daniel Griffiths (‘Fake Geek Girls’: How Geek Gatekeeping Is Bad For Business) which responds to the growing number of articles berating “fake geek girls”.

It’s incredible to me how idiotic some people can be, how short sighted they are in their own quest for self importance. Personally I love the fact that being geeky has become trendy, has become something people aspire to. As a geek I want to encourage our society to embrace and be empowered by technology, not shut down a person because they “aren’t a true geek”. What does that even mean anyway? So I hope you enjoyed my trollish response to the quite pretentious “Booth babes need not apply” article by Joe Peacock. Hey Joe, the article didn’t start too bad, but by the end it just got stupid. But well done for bringing an important discussion to the fore.

Speech from Nethui on Open Government and Gov 2.0

Kia ora everyone, and thank you for having me over here from Australia.

I’d like to talk a little about Gov 2.0. For all the techs that groan, I agree it is a stupid term, but nonetheless is has come to represent something quite profound.

eGovernment of days past was a first step towards governments going online. They looked at how government could put the same forms and pamphlets online that were handed out in government shopfronts and how citizens could submit those forms back again. Agencies and departments – by and large – did their own projects and it certainly did take us a huge step towards enabling citizens to access and interact with government.

However the different between eGovernment and the Gov 2.0 movement is significant.

Basically, Gov 2.0 is about three things:

  1. Genuine Public Engagement – Recognising that governments can’t work in isolation anymore if we are to be relevant to the communities we serve, and in order to be capable of responding to new opportunities and challenges in a timely and effective fashion. This also means more access to and transparency around the machinery of government and democracy. Of course, being apolitical, I would love to see this engagement primarily at the public service level where we have the most incentive to get evidence based policy outcomes. Public engagement isn’t about just getting your media team on social media. It is about recognising that the old premise that the media is the only platform to communicate with the public is now false. Traditional media comms are about controlling the message, engaging with journos in the most effective way for them, broadcasting the message as much as possible in as positive way as possible. Online community development skills are about recognising we have no real control over the message. Collaboration, understanding the topic area, understanding where and how the community discussions are taking place, empathy, respect and a genuine passion for community feedback and input are all part of online communty development.
  2. Citizen-Centric Service and Information Design – a cross agency and even cross jurisdictional approach that doesn’t expect an individual to understand the complexities of government, but rather can get a personalised service based on how much or little personal information they want to give. In this way, however the bureacracy of government is carved up today should not affect a consistent and reliable experience of citizens.
  3. Government as a Platform for Public and Private Innovation – by recognising that governments can’t and indeed shouldn’t try to do everything all the time and that our primary role is to serve the needs of our citizens, governments should recognise where we can facilitate others to innovate. Where we can facilitate others to create new social and economic value. A great example of this is the enormous amout of publicly funded data and software that is made by government through our business as usual functions, and how free and public access to government owned data and software can stimulate entire industries and research sectors. The economic value of a series of geospatial datasets released by the US Government some years ago was estimated to be 20 times the value of what the government themselves could commercialise.

The policy basis for Gov 2.0 and open government in Australia is found in the following documents:

Other relevant documents and initiatives include:

NB – I’ll add more here next week πŸ™‚ Just wanted to get this post up sooner rather than later.

Let me give you a brief examples of each pillar from Australia:

  1. Genuine Public Engagement: The Public Sphere consultation methodology – enhancing traditional government consultations through online community development and consultation methods. Community development for better consultation design and to get thought leaders onside, peer review, content and commmunity analysis (link gives example).
  2. Citizen-Centric Service and Information Designaustralia.gov.au – currently very beta but is in the process of being developed into a single interface for citizens to self select the services and information they need from across all federal government, with a consistent login and single place to manage their information and interactions with government.
  3. Government as a Platform for Public and Private Innovation:
    • dataACT – An interface approach for all ACT government data, making it accessible, machine and human readable, mashable, downloadable, contextual, reused and able to be visualised on the site by non-experts. Interfacing directly with government data sets wherever they are so people are still seeing the most up to date information live. Privacy, commercial and security implications to consider and take into account but it means access is not held ransom to legacy systems or slow procurement refresh cycles.
    • GovCamp and GovHack Australia is an example of how open data facilitates private innovation. Held a month ago in Australia we had seven government departments across Federal and State all contribute funding and data sets for developers to create new mashups, applications and data visualisations. Several of these are getting funded to further develop and be integrated into government service delivery and the competition focused on science, digital humanities and open government. The categorisation gave developers a focus and we ended up with over 40 full functional software prototypes.
Also a more in depth list of examples of Gov 2.0 from Australia was presented by Minister Lundy at the Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington DC a couple of years ago. Obviously there are more recent examples too, but this is a good list πŸ™‚

Basically Gov 2.0 is to eGovernment what social media is to email. A whole new world of collaboration, consolidation and crowdsourcing.

What does it take to achieve open government?

  • Great people! – identify, upskill or hire
  • Political leadership – Declarations of open government in Aus, NZ, US, UK, Permission to make mistakes also vital.
  • Policy – directives and support for all of government to comply, to engage online, risk mitigation strategies
  • Technical – procurement policy, standards, copyright, interoperability, APIs, low barrier to entry, geospatial is KEY!
  • Cultural – shifting to collaborative, open, engaging, genuine interest in what the public can bring (THIS IS NEW)
  • Structural – a way to get compliance and open gov across all gov
  • Precedent – examples, to celebrate, to learn from, to encourage and to mitigate risk

Let’s look at what is happening around the world in this space:

Note: I have covered this in greater detail in part two of my blog post on Gov 2.0: Where to begin, so please check that out πŸ™‚

  • UK – Power of Information Taskforce, open data, engaged with developer community, trying to shift frontline service delivery, COINs, the Guardian
  • US – traditionally have had open data, some great initiatives a few years ago, IT Dashboard example (open source!), the Open Government Partnership, Vivek Kundra and being prepared to hold industry to account. See the interview I did with Vivek.
  • Canada – Chris Moore, the CIO of Edmonton – a great example of an innovative approach to public service – flattening the hierarchy for a skills and time based approach to projects
  • NZ – Vikram will be discussing

See some interviews I did with Chris Moore and Andrew Stott on Minister Lundy’s blog below her also rather excellent talk.

Culture shift

Of course, Gov 2.0 is riding on the back of a signficant and incredible movement sweeping across the planet, and this is no more evident that the conversations at Nethui amongst visionaries and thought leaders like yourselves. Here in this room we have people from such diverse backgrounds, industries, the public sector, researchers and many more. And it is in coming together that we are able to leverage the power of a cross-discipline co-design approach to new opportunities and challenges.

It is the power of collaboration that we find true innovation.

Technology has shifted the way we think.

Big statement I know but technology has empowered individuals in a way never seen before. Within a decade or two, we have seen widespread and rapidly growing access to all the traditional dimensions of power that the very foundations of society have been based upon. Think about it, we now have massive distribution of publishing, communications, monitoring (Foucault would love the Internet), force (the one keeping spooks up at night) and finally, the emerging possibility of massive distribution of property with 3D printing and nanotechnology.

Power used to be who had the biggest swords or guns. But technology gives us all the power to be disruptive. It is liberating!

So with these major shifts in society, it brings up the interesting question of what is the point of a government? For some it is about creating and enforcing laws, for some it is about market regulation. Perhaps government is about the common good?

For me, governments are a way to get an economy of scale for common good and common problems in a society. It goes a long way towards a good baseline quality of life for all people in a society, no matter what situation they are born into. I know this comes from an Australian perspective, but I think we largely share that cultural assumption of the role of government.

Regulation, trade, health, roads, education, all of this comes (or should come) from the basis of a good quality of life for citizens so the community can thrive socially, economically & democratically.

The point is that life is changing dramatically and being clear on what asusmptions from the past still hold for the future is an important part of creating resilience in the future.

Basically, the future of government and indeed society, is to be found in collaboration. In leveraging all the skills, passion and experience in our societies and transparently building the future together.

Thank you.

I’ll update this post with more stuff when I’ve slept πŸ™‚ Otherwise, if you want any further links leave me a comment.

Public engagement: more customer service than comms

I’ve been involved in online communities for many years. I’ve seen and been in projects that span every possible traditional barrier to collaboration (location, culture, language, politics, religion, gender, etc, etc). This experience combined with my time in government has given me some useful insights about the key elements that make for a constructive online community.

What I came to learn was the art and craft of community development and management. This skill is common in the technology world, particularly in large successful open source projects where projects either evolve to have good social infrastructure or they fail. There are of course a few exceptions to the rule where bad behaviour is part of the culture of a project, but by and large, a project that is socially inclusive and that empowers individuals to contribute meaningfully will do better than one that is not.

It turns out these skills are not as widespread as I expected. This is problematic as we are now seeing a horde of β€œsocial media experts” who often give shallow and unsustainable advice to government and companies alike, advice that is not rooted in the principles of community engagement.

The fact is that social media tools are part of a broader story. A story that sees β€œtraditional” communications turned upside down. The skills to best navigate this space and have a meaningful outcome are not based in the outdated premise that a media office is the single source of communications due to the media being the primary mechanism to get information out to the general public. There will continue to be, I believe, a part for the media to play (we could all use professional analysis and unbiased news coverage, please). However, as governments in particular, we will have a far more meaningful and mutually beneficial relationship with citizens where we genuinely and directly engage with them on matters of policy, service delivery, democratic participation and ways that government can facilitate public and private innovation.

You might be lucky and have some media people who have adapted well to the new world order, but any social media strategy limited to the media office will have limitations in delivery that starts to chafe after a while.

It is when you get your customer service and policy people engaged online that you will start to see genuine engagement, genuine community building and the possibility to leverage crowdsourcing. It is when you start to get people skilled in community engagement involved to work alongside your media people and in collaboration with the broader organisation that you will be able to best identify sustainable and constructive ways your organisation can apply social media, or indeed, whatever comes next.

Below are some vital skills I would recommend you identify, hire or upskill in your organisation. Outsourcing can be useful but ideally, to do this stuff well, you need the skills within your organisation. Your own people who know the domain space and can engage withΒ imprimaturΒ on behalf of your organisation.

I’ll continue to build this post up as I have time, and would love your feedback πŸ™‚

Herding Cats

In my time in online communities I came to understand the subtleties in what we in the geek world refer to as β€œherding cats”. That is, working with a large number of individuals who have each their own itch to scratch, skills, interests and indeed, vices. Individuals who have a lot to contribute and are motivated for myriad reasons to get involved.

I learnt how to get the best out of people by creating a compelling narrative, having a meaningful goal, uniting people over what we have in common rather than squabbling over what is different.

Herding cats is about genuinely wanting people to get involved, recognising you can’t β€œcontrol” the conversation or outcomes, but you can encourage a constructive dialogue. Herding cats ends up being about leadership, building respect, being an active part of a live conversation, setting and encouraging a constructive tone, managing community expectations and being a constant presence that people can turn to and rely upon. Cat herding is about building community.

Finally, herding cats is about managing trolls in a constructive way. Sometimes trolls are just passionate people who have been burnt and feel frustrated. They can sometimes become your greatest contributors because they often care about the topic. If you always engage with trolls in a helpful and constructive way, you won’t miss the opportunities to connect with those who genuinely have something meaningful to contribute.

Community and Topic Research

You need to know the communities of interest. The thought leaders, where they are having their discussions, what one-to-many points (technical, social, events) can you tap into to encourage participation and to get your finger on the pulse of what the community really thinks. Community research is about knowing a little about the history and context of the communities involved, about the right (and wrong) language, about if and how they have engaged before and getting the information you need to build a community of interest.

Topic research means your community engagement person needs to know enough about the domain area to be able to engage intelligently with communities of interest. Your organisation is effectively represented by these people so you need them to be smart, informed, genuine, socially and emotionally intelligent, β€œcustomer service” oriented and able to say when they don’t know, but be able to follow it up.

Collaboration & Co-design

This skillset is about intuitively trying to include others in a process. Trying to connect the dots on communities, perspectives, skills and interests to draw people from industry, academia and any other relevant groups into the co-design of your project. By getting knowledgable, clever and connected people in the tent, you achieve both a better plan and a community of (possible influential) people who will hopefully want to see your initiative succeed. Co-design isn’t just about creating something and asking people’s opinion, but engaging them in the process of developing the idea in the first place.

A little thanks goes a long way. By publicly recognising the efforts of contributors you also encourage them to continue to contribute but whatever you are engaging on needs to be meaningful, and have tangible outcomes people can see and get behind.

Real outcomes of your online engagement are key in managing public expectations.

Monitoring, Analysis & Feedback Mechanisms

It is vital that you have internally the skills to monitor what is happening online, analyse both the content generated and the context around the content created (the community, individuals, location, related news, basically all the metadata that helps you understand what the data means).

By constantly monitoring and analysing, you should be able to identify iterative improvements to your online engagement strategy, your project, policy or β€œproduct”. Most people focus on one of these three (usually the latest toy with pretty but meaningless graphs spruiked by some slick salesperson), but it is by turning the data into knowledge and finally into actions or iterative improvements that you will be able to respond in a timely and appropriate manner to new opportunities and challenges.

UPDATE – quick shout out to the rather usefulΒ Online Engagement Guidance and Web 2.0 Toolkit for Australian Government Agencies. This was a funded outcome from the Gov 2.0 Taskforce.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-05-13

  • Aww, thx! πŸ™‚ #
  • .@John_Hanna Hmmm, not really that I know of. Was international list. Most people in the industry are great, men & women alike. A few tools #
  • .@williamparry don't hate, then the terrorists win πŸ˜‰ #
  • . @John_Hanna The argument devolves too quickly into one about free speech. I want to understand why anyone would think this way & address. #
  • Wow, amazing that some ppl actually speak & think this way. A minority but a loud minority. http://t.co/nkBxqqKe #womenhaters #
  • "i find out who I am when I'm climbing the mountains of mars" http://t.co/kEWY8Xze /cc @kelisha @swearyanthony #
  • Check out these guys, they do "literal trailers" for movies.and games. Much lols. #ac3 For @swearyanthony http://t.co/KcT6ND2C #
  • "If it bleeds we can kill it". So much lols. http://t.co/KG7vEY06 #
  • Ohcrap, thx @Wittylama RT Klout http://t.co/lHJGzhPi #
  • OK, I'm really at the end of my tether, anyone in the Canberra area able to loan me a fast laptop for a week or two? Just need web browsers. #
  • Some #govhack media, thanks for the coverage πŸ™‚ @jamie_kirk http://t.co/CqCOKYK6 & a kinda-shout-out from @stilgherrian http://t.co/nKnAQ85U #
  • HAH! Your mum must be proud πŸ˜‰ RT @FakePaulKeating: @piawaugh pfft. Lightweight. http://t.co/uaGZLifw "Facepalm central" #
  • MWAH hahaha! Thanks @akshatj_96 & @purserj for Klouchebag lulz. My score is 27, or 'mostly alright', hah! http://t.co/9WPFx619 #
  • Wow, just joined @Klout. Fascinating! Wish it included Soundcloud πŸ˜‰ "According to @klout, my Klout score is 45." http://t.co/qtrphA1x #
  • An awesome song to start work to. Enjoy http://t.co/3TK8YN8s #music #
  • "Where to ebooks go when you do?" Great article, tackles the major challenge of digital culture wrapped up in DRM http://t.co/fyu0i3pV #
  • It's funny how we feel most safe in motion, but only when still are we able to really see what's around us. Kung Fu thought for the day. #fb #
  • Dammit! RT @ACTwonkdrinks: Not enough interest for a Budget Edition of #actwonkdrinks Why kind of wonks are you lot? #fail #
  • Have had to limit the size of Sydney #GovHack due to venue, so get in quick before we hit capacity! http://t.co/YS5Zwh26 28 seats left atm #
  • Right, thanks all, looks like CC-BY is on individual #budget papers, but not on copyright page http://t.co/lqwgNZn0 Be good to fix that πŸ™‚ #
  • What happened to the CC-BY for the Budget papers? http://t.co/9ZHNJThm That's quite unfortunate, seems a backwards step. #
  • Went to write democracy and typo'd demoncracy. I think there's something in that for all of us. #
  • Kudos to the Adobe http://t.co/EZzCyBnH tool. It''s a bit slow but works really nicely πŸ™‚ #
  • I lie, it works in IE6 and IE9, but not well in IE8 and not at all in IE7. Wonderful. #
  • Internet Explorer, the bane of web developers everywhere. How could it work in IE6, 7 & 9, but not 8. FFS. #backtodrawingboard #
  • cool, done πŸ™‚ #
  • Nice, now over 100 ppl registered for #govhack Hoping for 300 so go register (Sydney or Canberra). Will be awesome πŸ™‚ http://t.co/aXgjAzLL #
  • . @gavintapp Shiny, but seriously, promoting a "developers" laptop and then saying "key tools and utilities (emacs, Vim, Chromium etc)" πŸ˜‰ #
  • Funny. I get so much spam on Google+. Facebook and Twitter are wonderful by comparison. #
  • Wow, the @SensisAPI zombie app challenge is teh awesome! http://t.co/LjdrcZT8 #gov2au #
  • Putting together a #GovHack team to compete 1-3 June? Check out some previous mashups/hacks on http://t.co/ab5WZIGh http://t.co/p04DDIz4 #
  • Interesting RT @wtfsheep: @parisba I thought this was an awesome open data mashup: http://t.co/YWFaporR #CHI2012 #govhack #
  • So, going to see Smashing Pumpkins and Tea Party in July, all I need is Tool, Kyuss, Stabbing Westward, NIN, Lamb and I'd be in heaven πŸ™‚ #
  • I know, crazy hey, but I tweeted a new song of theirs earlier today which was surprisingly good. So am excited πŸ™‚ #
  • WOW! I am now also going to Smashing Pumpkins with @alexmyoug, looks like July will be #relivemyyouth month! πŸ™‚ SOOOOO EXCITED! #music #
  • Just received the Tea Party tickets in the post!!! Hey @alexmyoung, I can't wait! #
  • Fascinating RT @OZloop: APS – The perfect storm. Cutbacks, culture and abuse http://t.co/ZKJitFQS #gov2au #opengov #innovationweek #govcamp #
  • . @1159 Heh πŸ™‚ Saw Tool in '97, still one of my favourite gigs ever. They covered Hurt too, double perfect! πŸ™‚ #
  • "See my shadow changing, stretching up and over me. Soften this old armour, hoping I can clear the way". Tool is helping me work today πŸ™‚ #
  • I love Linux. Some useful ffmpeg for converting and manipulating video/audio without having to open video editing suite http://t.co/uBGQ8dUn #
  • Have you registered for #GovHack yet? Over $30k in prize funding for awesome apps, mashups & datavis, so come get some! http://t.co/aXgjAzLL #
  • Wow. New Smashing Pumpkins, and surprisingly awesome. http://t.co/gHWBu29J #music #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-05-06

  • Have had lots of great feedback to my new remix, Purgatory. Check it out at http://t.co/iZZCcBxj πŸ™‚ #music #
  • Yes, wishing I had my bike πŸ™‚ RT @mpesce: Stunning Sydney sunshine. Almost makes you want to weep with joy. #
  • Photobooth snaps from Zoz & Faraj's wedding πŸ™‚ With Sue & Sousan then Rabia. Congrats Zoz! #fb http://t.co/o2tcKCbs http://t.co/pxtvfrXg #
  • . @jaraparilla Troll is trollish πŸ˜‰ #govhack #
  • . @purserj Yeah, I understand that, but this comp will also fund some projects to go to completion πŸ™‚ Details to come soon. It's pretty cool #
  • Hey @nerdgerl could you please spread the word about #govhack to the Girl Geek lists? πŸ™‚ http://t.co/p04DDIz4 $30k in prizes up for grabs πŸ˜‰ #
  • . @jaraparilla Wow, with such well thought out ideas, I can imagine we'll see great things out of you on the weekend πŸ˜› #govhack #
  • . @stilgherrian PS – it is getting gov to collaborate with citizens. A first step, not the end point. So you coming crankypants πŸ˜› #govhack #
  • Zaap indeed πŸ™‚ Coming? /cc @rachmatview @SensisAPI @link_digital #
  • . @mindsocket Yes! Do it! πŸ™‚ Would be a great contribution and data vis competitor πŸ˜€ /cc @eevblog @Heryerdeonline #govhack #3dprinting #
  • I hear you @stilgherrian, but so long as there is good thoughtful policy behind the open data sets, that shouldn't be a problem #govhack #
  • . @blakkat some info on data sets on data page at http://t.co/GsshWqRK with more being announced in coming weeks πŸ™‚ /cc @stevathon #
  • Listening to a talk by Radian6 put on by Salesforce about their tools for monitoring online chatter. Very interesting. #gov2au #
  • Motorbike peeps, who's up for a run to Tidbindilla next weekend? 0900 Sat 13th for a nice ride out, coffee and return. Weather permitting πŸ™‚ #
  • RT to #gov2au Details for #GovHack June 1-3 http://t.co/p04DDIz4 >$30k in prizes. #GovCamp June 5 http://t.co/RZZ6mZPH great speakers! πŸ˜€ #
  • Check out details for #GovHack June 1-3 http://t.co/p04DDIz4 over $30k in prizes & #GovCamp June 5 http://t.co/RZZ6mZPH great speakers! πŸ˜€ #
  • Gar, felt a bit better yesterday and much worse today. Will take a few hours to sleep and then try to get back into work. #cold #
  • Latest song, really like this one πŸ™‚ Am playing around with some vocal effects, would love feedback. Music by @mideion http://t.co/4TSLFZ5O #
  • Sigh, #GoT has *so* much tasty eye candy. Jon Snow, Jaqen, Gendry, Jorah. And in the past Eddard, Drogo. Now to find one IRL πŸ˜‰ #
  • Aww <blush> it's a team effort πŸ™‚ MT @RewiredStateAU Very special thanks to @piawaugh, often the person at the end of the phone for #GovHack #
  • I <3 @anchorsystems, they are teh awesome! Best customer support EVA! #
  • Interesting RT @AusGOAL: Open government platforms with usability problems – FierceGovernmentIT: http://t.co/bd75PGB3 #
  • Kinda puts everything in perspective. http://t.co/Xum5Cc4H #
  • Awesome, thx πŸ™‚ @edhusicMP: Over 11,000 ppl have voted in poll about #FairIT4Oz – had your say? Scroll to end of story: http://t.co/OJpwZGjd #
  • Awesome RT @Rog42: #BlackDogRide you can see my write up of NSW ride here http://t.co/Q5Cc7sE7 in short Cold, then wet, then windy πŸ™‚ #
  • Am playing with Dept Innovation's "Innovation diagnostic tool" http://t.co/T0LIH92R Is interesting πŸ™‚ Useful in lead up to #innovationweek #
  • "i love my new ipad but, will it blend?" http://t.co/z0O78D9i for @JeromeGotangco to choose a new blender πŸ™‚ #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-04-29

  • Turns out the Tea Party have a bunch of txt for pre-sale, so I'm in ! Am going with teh awesome @alexmyoung πŸ™‚ http://t.co/NRp9JbIE YAY! #
  • Gar, no @blackdogride for me, had to pull out due to stupid circumstances. Was *really* looking fwd to it! Will make up for it next weekend! #
  • YES! Will be logging on tomorrow to snag txts to Tea Party, who's with me?!? (Sydney Show) http://t.co/29Faqag9 #
  • Getting ready for @blackdogride Canberra! Very excited πŸ™‚ It's a beautiful day for some motorbike riding! #needcaffeine #
  • Just to ruin your afternoon productivity http://t.co/oxqi3ZYP "Dance magic dance!" #
  • Reading Lawrence Review of Australian #geospatial capability & gov response. Interesting stuff! Vital for #gov2au http://t.co/v0WNJLF3 #
  • Was there anything to it? RT @GeordieGuy: Meeting derailed while security guy goes on a five minute incomprehensible rant. ????? #
  • Walking past a closing restaurant which has the Labyrinth soundtrack on. So awesome. #
  • Hilarious. "President of the United Sates (sic) Barack Obama & Campbell High Students". No one else? OurCity mag πŸ™‚ http://t.co/uTK7hkr2 #
  • Have officially shifted from NSW @blackdogride to ACT. Sorry to NSW friends, but excited about ACT ride! πŸ™‚ http://t.co/dn2XpFo1 #
  • .@cgiffard maybe… next weekend, not this one? Who else would be up for a movie night to watch The Raid? πŸ™‚ #
  • Tasking some time out from an intense day! Some Shank 2 to chill πŸ™‚ Such a fun but simple game! #
  • Have been flat out all day today, between contract work and #govhack #govcamp preparation. Both launching Monday! πŸ™‚ #gov2au Very excited! #
  • Thanks all, mystery solved πŸ™‚ @timClicks: @nzfi @piawaugh feijoa, yum! see http://t.co/Rk0siHD1 #
  • It kills me to say but I may have to switch to ACT @blackdogride. Too many deadlines pressing in :/ @hollingsworth @moldor @MrsMoldor @Rog42 #
  • Does anyone know what this is? Fruit (?) tree where I live http://t.co/Xiz9W0qT #
  • Really looking toward to @blackdogride this weekend, just me, the open road, and a few hundred other bikes πŸ™‚ #shortholidayforagoodcause #
  • I know lots of you will know this, but handy way to get RSS from Twitter http://t.co/ZseB9Scw Just switch my username with yours πŸ™‚ #
  • Hey guys, sry I've been flat out. @moldor could you dm me phone number to coord meet spots. I've a long way to come beforehand πŸ™‚ /cc @Rog42 #
  • YES! RT πŸ™‚ @kelisha: @piawaugh damn, now I'm going to have to watch it!! LOL #
  • Yes! RT @peenydeeny: @piawaugh the start of Wayne's World , with Bohemian Rhapsody is one of the best happytime moments in cinema πŸ™‚ #
  • Totally! πŸ™‚ RT @timl: There is so much awesome & references I'd not noticed before! Like this part, 2nd Mission Impossible reference so far! #
  • MWAH HAHAHA! Watching Wayne's World for the first time in years, had totally forgotten the Terminator cameo. "Have you seen this boy?" LOL! #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-04-22

  • Heh, interesting RT @greenat16: Does God exist? 77.2% of the voters got it wrong http://t.co/LanNnhPO #
  • So who else is stuck at Melbourne atm? πŸ™‚ 3 hours and counting, rearranging flights now. Fog fog fog. #
  • Interesting RT @mashable: Will This Open-Source Animated Film Change the Movie Industry Forever? http://t.co/x83abWdx #
  • "Got a letter from a messenger, I read it when it came". Ah Tea Party, such a great start to the morning. #webdevel #
  • Filling faster now. Hai πŸ™‚ RT @Simbera: FWIW, I am at #wladd it's due to start and the place is less than half full #
  • . @woolfe Hah! I didn't say pure evil. I don't deal on extremes (or good/evil for that matter) πŸ˜› @wombat1974 @mikestuchbery #
  • . @wombat1974 the problem is where greed is systematic, eg,stockmarket. Individual greed rarely so destructive. /cc @mikestuchbery @woolfe #
  • . @wombat1974 Hah, terminators eh? Where "babysitting" is quite literal? I think enlightened self interest is good πŸ˜‰ @mikestuchbery @woolfe #
  • Haaaa hahaha RT @peterbayley: @_Pandy @PETA @piawaugh #EFFOFF Smart Arse πŸ˜‰ #
  • . @kattekrab is truly one of my favourite ppl πŸ™‚ Also, am working on migrating a Dreamweaver site to WordPress. My brain hurts. #
  • I for 1 welcome our new overlords MT @mikestuchbery: In short the sooner Earth is quarantined by biomechanical alien peacekeepers the better #
  • .@VirginMobileAus Thanks heaps. I can't dial the 1300555100 number and was gobsmacked by the (obv auto) email response. Will DM now. #
  • Really, REALLY cranky right now. #mobilecompaniesFAIL #