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The Australian Government has released its response to the Government 2.0 Taskforce Report published earlier this year. The response has agreed to 12 or 13 recommendations made by the Taskforce. This is not big surprise given that the recommendations are, by and large, broad and uncontroversial.
Let’s have a look at a few of the more relevant and interesting recommendations.
1. A declaration of open government by the Australian Government
This is important; how important, and how useful, only time will tell of course.
I particularly like that the Taskforce called for the declaration to include reference to increasing “citizen engagement and collaboration in making policy”. This is Bang the Table’s raison detre, hence my particular interest.
The recommendation also refers to the issue of increasing the accessibility of data. The open data debate is HUGE in the (government 2.0 software) developer community. I’ve seen some nice applications, but to be honest, nothing that has knocked my socks off yet. I think we have a way to go before open data and third party applications radically reshape public policy, our lifestyle, or our democracy.
The final part of this recommendation refers to encouraging public servants to get online and get involved in conversations with their peers and their public. I will believe this when I see it. As a former public servant myself, I have little faith that this will translate into a rush of public commentary by public servants about government policy of the day. I salute those who are currently willing to do so.
2. Coordinate with leadership, guidance and support
Another very safe recommendation. The Gov 2.0 agenda will be lead by Dep. Finance and Deregulation in consultation with the Gov 2.0 Steering Group (which is composed of agency representatives). So this is a commitment to set up an inter-agency committee. Yawn! Part of its remit is to talk to State agencies doing similar things. Yawn!
3. Improve guidance and require agencies to engage online
This, for me, is the “guts” of the response document. Although both the recommendations and the response are very broad. There is, perhaps unexpectedly, very little – read no – detail. The proof, as they say, will be very much in the pudding.
3.1 Develop guidelines to improve the extent and quality of online engagement by agencies
Good idea. There are lots out there and I would hope that this wouldn’t take too long to implement.
3.2.1 Within 12 months identify barriers that inhibit online engagement and strategies to reduce those barriers
The single biggest barrier to entry for any and all agencies is fear about how their Minister will feel about the idea. Clear direction from the top down will set the public sector free. The publication of the declaration of open government along with its endorsement and distribution by individual Ministers to their Secretary’s and on through their department’s will go someway to dismantling this barrier. BUT, and it is a very deliberately capitalised, BUT, so battered are many sections of the public sector by Executive Government over the past decade or so, that I would wager that it will take quite some time for the public servants to embrace this brave new world for fear of having the rug pulled out from under them.
3.2.2 Identify and document specific projects to apply social networking and ‘crowdsourcing’ tools to enhance policy development, operations, and continuous improvement
This should be easy. There are hundreds and hundreds of them. We managed one recently for the Minister for the Arts. There was nothing at all scary about it. A little bit of robust debate as one would hope, but mostly a swag of well informed ideas.
3.2.3 Identify internal projects that can be supported by collaborative software
Again, this should take all of five minutes. There are plenty of Gov 2.0 advocates in the Australian public service who I would imagine would leap at the opportunity to “prove up” collaboration software. Think of the benefits, for example, for agencies with remote staff dotted around the country. People who rarely, if ever get to meet and converse with their co-workers.
3.3 Publish a review of agencies progress in meeting the Taskforce recommendations
Fair enough.
3.4 Public all – within reason – public submissions online in a form that is searchable, reusable and commentable.
This is a big deal. I like it. The only issue I can see (other than the restriction that will inevitably be placed around which inquiries are required to conform to this recommendation) is that the technology to comment on documents is currently in its infancy and pretty clunky. It will be interesting to see if this proscription drives any innovation.
This work by Bang the Table Pty Ltd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia License.
