Government 2.0: A case study from Australia
Submitted by Audubon Dougherty on January 8, 2009 - 2:15pm.
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I found this presentation by Matthew Hodgson a great overview of the ways "government 2.0" tactics are succeeding at home and abroad. Check out some of his screenshot examples online: FutureMelbourne (a wiki for citizens to design a better Melbourne), Powerhouse Museum (a Sydney museum that allows users improve its online collections through tagging, ranking and sharing information), and Bang the Table (a service facilitating public policy discussion).
Government 2.0 - Trends and adoption strategies - WSG Web Standards Group - Nov 2008View more presentations from Matthew Hodgson.
What role will government play in a Web 2.0 environment? Matthew looks at examples from around Australia and the rest of the world in how governments are starting interact with citizens in online environments. He draws from his recent experience with a government department in planning and scoping a web 2.0-style project to show how easy it is to move into a government 2.0 world.
Alternatives
Have you seen the radical new initiatives starting up around the world? There is the international Metagovernment; and that site lists many national projects
Online participation and enagement
Hi Audubon
You might be interested in our blog at http://www.onlinecommunityconsultation.com which discusses best practice in online participation and discusses some of our experiences in our first year of operation.
We are mainly Australia and New Zealand based at this stage but hope to be operating in North America just as soon as we can find the right partners (we believe that even online engagement needs a local face!).
Thanks for highlighting us - we'd be really interested in other examples that you or your colleagues come across
Cheers!
thanks!
thanks!
A bit closer to home ...
The Mayor's Office in the District of Columbia has one of the more transparent city governments. The trouble is, although vast amounts of real-time data around government operations are already easily accessible online here, it is just to detailed and abstract to be of much use to the average citizen.
To help address this problem, the District recently held a contest, called Applications for Democracy to encourage easier viewing, analysis, and reuse.
In a press release announcing the winners, District Chief Technology Office for the District Vivek Kundra notes:
By making government data easy for everyone to access and use, the District hopes to foster citizen participation in government, drive private-sector technology innovation and growth, and build a new model for government-private sector collaboration that can help all governments address the technology challenges of today and tomorrow.
It's not clear how successful any of the winners have been thus far, or how much support the District has given the projects beyond the initial funding, but it is moving toward building local governments that are more accessible and accountable to the people they serve. It also suggests that beyond just making information more available, government institutions, citizens and journalists all need to work together to give this information context and meaning.
Know anyone who is making use of the District's online data?
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