Stap isi

3 April 2009

What I'd like .gov.au to do

The push for a Gov 2.0 barcamp in Canberra got me thinking. What would I – web monkey number 54-46 – want out of it?

Thinking big picture advocacy, I reckon Jason Ryan covers it neatly in 5 Principles For Govt 2.0 – written 2 years ago!

But for a positive and immediate impact on my day to day work, here’s what I’d like to see from above.

Mandate open access to the internet for all employees of government at all levels
Set guidelines, monitor and enforce. But don’t tie one arm behind our backs. Security, bandwidth and (alleged) time issues are easily trumped by gains in knowledge, inhouse expertise and productivity.

Lead with policy on how government employees and elected representatives interact with constituents and each other online
We have draft protocols for public servants – and guidance from existing codes. But there’s a need to look at these again in the light of blurring personal and professional identities online.

Recognise web teams and those working in this new space
Engagement ain’t gonna come from IT or PR people. Give us our own classification – and more money! And require library professionals to play some of this role.

Provide clear and simple guidance on licensing data for reuse
By this I mean a Creative Commons or government-specific licence. The Queensland Government have a Licensing Framework that probably required considerable research and legal input. I’d like to see NSW local government working together to produce something similar. Especially for map and planning data.

Set up an authentication system at some level
We can have blogs, forums and white-label social networks up online in the twinkling of an eye. But you quickly run into the problem of requiring your constituents to register multiple times for different services. A whole-of-government online ID service might be as popular as a national identity card but … openID? Can’t see that working as-is. But state and federal governments have money, smart people and the ability to engineer or contribute to an acceptable, distributed solution that we can implement at local level. (I’ll get my coat.)

Give us basic spatial information via a simple API
It’s all about maps and location-aware services. I could do a bunch of stuff right now but I can’t resolve a street address to a latitude and longitude without accessing a commercial service. Give us an inexpensive, clearly licensed method to map our information to properties and other geographic points. Ideally each agency’s work makes the network smarter and more useful. Also I would prefer to be going down the OpenStreetMap path – not Google Maps.

But from the bottom up, just let us get on with it.

The Barcamps (and BBQs) should aim to foster strong, active networks of web workers across government.

— b3rn   government, publicsphere, web teams   Apr 3, 03:40 PM   #   Comment [3]