It’s been a big year for the Government 2.0 in Queensland Community of Practice (or gov2qld as we prefer to call it!).
And we’re not done yet!
It’s so exciting to see our community involved in three big events in Brisbane over the next two weeks. Whatever your particular interest area under the “Government 2.0″ banner, there is something for you.
The trend in recent years towards online consultation with communities is clearly beneficial to the overall process of engaging communities for a number of reasons.
(The latter point is, of course, not to say that traditional methods of engagement don’t have huge value. My IAP2 qualifications and experience have taught me of the unique value of many other community participation techniques and I too get frustrated with the current swathe of smegs who preach that online consultation is the only way to engage).
But assuming we are talking solely about reaching new stakeholders through online consultation, what’s the best way of promoting such consultation activities with them? Read More
I mentioned Steve Bailey‘s excellent book Managing the Crowd: Rethinking Records Management for the Web 2.0 World at last nights gov2qld community of practice event.
It was published in 2008 and so is a little dated now, but the concepts and challenges faced by the records management community in the light of the meteoric rise in use of social media tools by government agencies – both internally and externally – is as relevant today as it was when first published. Read More
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Exciting times for the gov2qld community as we have just welcomed our 400th member to the group and are actively working with practitioners and advocates in other states around Australia to roll out similar Communities of Practice in other locations. More details soon!
The next gov2qld networking event will be held at the headquarters of Queensland Police (full details below). Read More
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The next gov2qld networking event will be held at the Gardens Point Campus of QUT (full details below).
This month we will focus our ‘Government 2.0 Intensive Care’ session on a subject that many of you are talking about if not actively working on at the moment, the use of Internal Social Media within agencies and departments.
We will look in particular at efforts to incorporate tools like Yammer into the culture of organisations with some success stories but also some challenges encountered. This will be another panel discussion with lots of opportunities to ask questions and discuss your own experiences.
Professor Beth Noveck
UPDATE: Unfortunately Beth Noveck has had to cancel this visit due to health reasons. We wish her a speedy recovery and look forward to seeing her here in Brisbane in the near future.
Exciting to see that Professor Beth Noveck is visiting Brisbane on Monday 25th July and will be speaking at a free event organised and hosted by QUT.
Professor Brian Fitzgerald will be joining her in the session where both professors will talk on Government 2.0 – Theory and Practice.
Professor Noveck has been at the forefront of this work in the USA and internationally. Her book Wiki Government provides conceptual depth to the ideas while her leading role in the Peer to Patent Project and most recently The Open Government Initiative (within the US government) have established her as an expert practitioner in the area. Professor Fitzgerald, a member of the Federal Government’s Gov 2.0 Taskforce in 2009, and his research team at QUT have lead international thinking on new models for licensing of public sector information since their discovery in 2004 that Creative Commons licences could be applied to public sector information. His two volume edited collection on Access to Public Sector Information: Law Technology and Policy is a key resource in this area.
Highly recommended to all of the @gov2qld community. More details and RSVP information here.
June’s gov2qld networking event will be held at the Police Headquarters in Roma Street (Details below).
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After a great panel discussion on the legal aspects of Government 2.0 last month, this month we will focus our ‘Government 2.0 Intensive Care‘ session on another hotly requested topic, that of a ‘Single Web Experience for Government’. Once again we will have a facilitated panel discussion with plenty of opportunity to ask questions. Read More
This month, the ‘Government 2.0 in Queensland‘ (@gov2qld) community of practice welcomed its 300th member. Not a bad achievement since we only began this little venture six months or so ago. An idea spawned from a conversation between Amelia (@Emotivate) and I (@DavidJEade) lamenting the lack of community for people in our State keen to share ideas, experiences and tools relating to this emerging trend.
I’ve heard the same question a couple of times this week in a couple of different contexts, so I thought I’d offer some thoughts here.
“How do we effectively manage large volumes of responses to consultations with limited resources, especially when these volumes are likely to increase as a result of more accessible online engagements”?
It’s a great question. The growth of the internet as a means for spreading our ‘engagement net’ ever wider brings with it the potential for a much greater degree of community participation.
Unfortunately, this is a double edged sword.
Greater engagement leads (theoretically) to better outcomes (be they policy, planning or community outcomes). However, increased consultation responses has traditionally led to more work for already over stretched engagement staff.
So how do we manage large volumes of responses to consultations with limited resources? Read More
On Hackfest Brisbane and Open Data Competitions
Lord Mayor Graham Quirk at the launch of hack::brisbane
Last weekend saw the official launch of the hack::brisbane competition by the Lord Mayor of Brisbane, Graham Quirk during the one day Hackfest Brisbane mini competition.
Both competitions are based on usage of the 50 recently released data sets from Brisbane City Council under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC BY 3.0) open license.
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