Stap isi

24 January 2010

Local-data.gov.au

On Friday, the U.K. launched their whole-of-government data store at data.gov.uk. (See Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt, Our manifesto for government data.)

Many countries, states, cities and even councils now offer public access to their data. This Guardian photo gallery showcases the range of international initiatives.

Ingrid Koehler of the U.K.‘s Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) – whose Communities of Practice is a rich and valuable resource for council officers – attended the launch and blogged about it.

She says – “they’re coming for us next.”

[F]or local government this means that we’re facing some clear choices. We can command this agenda … or we can let it happen to us.

Last year the Government 2.0 Taskforce used IdeaScale to collate requests for datasets held by all levels of government. 62 suggestions were posted. Of these, only about 6 or 7 have a local government context.

We can do better. I’ve set up an IdeaScale to continue to solicit suggestions for Australian local government datasets.

The motivation here is to give developers and decision makers within local government an indication of what information is most wanted. There may also be datasets that we didn’t think were of use (perhaps they only tell part of a story) or were not aware that we held.

What local government datasets would you like to see made available?

Image credit: Sails – shealo (Flickr) CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

— b3rn      Jan 24, 05:49 PM   #   Comment

19 January 2010

Creating the taste

I’m reading The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes. It provides an elegant analogy for where we are with the web and concepts like sharing, open source and open data.

Discussing Charles Babbage’s prototype computer – “one of the legends of Victorian science, and a parable about the failure of government research funding” – the author posts this note (emphasis mine):

Unlike Harrison’s chronometer, Herschel’s telescope or Davy’s voltaic battery, Babbage’s ‘computer’ had no immediate application that officialdom could see or even imagine, though Babbage claimed correctly that it would transform the calculations for logarithms, astronomical tables, engineering construction models, map-making and marine data. Coleridge once said that radically new poetry ‘must create the taste whereby it is appreciated.’

Sharing technologies are similarly misunderstood by officialdom. Ask your colleagues what they think of Twitter.

The only way to demonstrate value is to implement. That’s why Fix My Street gets a guernsey at every gov 2.0 conference. And why it’s incumbent on agencies and public servants to publish the results of their experiences with online engagement.

To create the taste.

At the risk of over-extending the analogy, the early ‘scientists’ were also mad for self-organised meet-ups, and ‘educating’ the public on the importance of their work.

Sound familiar?

— b3rn   engagement, the persuader   Jan 19, 09:17 PM   #   Comment

3 January 2010

Baboons! Baby-snatchers! Bashi-bazouks!

The raw number of comments on a blog or forum isn’t necessarily an indicator of its success or failure. But it’s one of those metrics that carry a lot of weight. Compared to pageviews, they often look disappointing! What’s good?

The Sydney Morning Herald is a high volume site. Last week, according to Hitwise, it was the 17th most visited in Australia.

Matt Crozier of Bang The Table blogged about the number of comments it had received on its most discussed stories in 2009:

1. Roads are for cars, not Lycra louts – 478 comments
2. Internet censorship plan gets the green light – 459 comments
3. Your call is important to us – 435 comments
4. Cyclists do not have the same rights as motorists on roads – 412 comments
5. Hated without cause: faith’s high price – 363 comments
6. A plague of atheists has descended, and Catholics are the target – 331 comments
7. Science cooks the books, driving sensible people to screaming point – 316 comments
8. Sharia in Australia: sanity or shocking? – 308 comments
9. God is good, but just be sure not to take Him too literally – 293 comments
10. Cyber attacks smite atheist websites – 287 comments

Crozier compares the ratio of comments to visits with Bang The Table’s busiest consultations – “way less visitors than the newspapers and way more comments” – and suggests that people are more likely to participate if the decision makers are present. Score one for community engagement.

“If we think someone who has influence is listening to what we have to say then many more people will participate by commenting or voting.”

The SMH also attracts a very broad audience – with an accompanying shallowness when it comes to local or niche issues.

This story about a Sydney council attracted 76 comments – a significant number. But how would you rate the usefulness of the comments if they were part of your council’s planning or consultation process?

Compare with this discussion taking place amongst a much smaller group. There’s a good number of comments, perhaps more than would be posted on a council web space, and with a high ratio of quality to quantity.

Seems to me that:

1. no matter the raw number, we should value constructive comments highly because they are clearly difficult to elicit (whether online or in person); and
2. in some circumstances there will be more value in working with one or more existing communities than building our own sites.

— b3rn   comments, web metrics   Jan 3, 12:01 PM   #   Comment

1 January 2010

The hardest working public servant in gov 2.0

With all the buzz at a conceptual (social media, gov 2.0) and brand (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter) level, we sometimes overlook the most important bit. It’s also the most humble.

Hail up the link. Or, hyperlink if you’re feeling 1990s.

The world wide web is predicated on each discrete chunk of data or information having a unique address.

Don’t believe me?

I can reference Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau’s seminal paper WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project published November 12, 1990. But most importantly I can link to it.

The world wide web is designed to be a platform for sharing. We can point to things, and we can point to information about things.

So – URIs, URLs, web addresses. Everybody gets it. Sort of.

Continued...

— b3rn   design, urls, web teams   Jan 1, 06:08 PM   #   Comment

15 December 2009

Getafix

The argument in favour of communicating with your constituents beyond your website has been made and won over the last two years. But how to accelerate your organisation’s acceptance of web-based tools for community and collaboration?

We all know the hurdles:

• locked-down PCs and aggressive internet filters and firewalls;
• inadequate resourcing (time, in particular);
• policies that restrict who can speak on behalf of council (outdated now that everyone is a media outlet);
• recordkeeping and privacy requirements that (similarly) date from an era pre-internet; and
• fear – of failure, and success!

How to get over (or around)?

Continued...

— b3rn   guidelines, the persuader, web teams   Dec 15, 11:45 PM   #   Comment

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