Yearly Archives: 2017

My Outreachy Internship with Open Australia Foundation

Cross-posted from Hisayo Horie’s blog, our wonderful Outreachy intern for the last 3 months. Officially I finished my internship with Open Australia Foundation, and I already miss working with OAF so much. I learned so much about programing and development, as well as community centred technology, challenges, and most importantly where I stand and where […]

Posted in Development, Outreachy, PlanningAlerts.org.au | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

People Have Problems Accessing Information

‘Australia will ensure our information access laws, policies and practices are modern and appropriate for the digital information age.’ That’s the ambitious task that Attorney General’s Department took on with Open Government commitment 3.1 Information management and access laws for the 21st century, in Australia’s first Open Government National Action Plan. Attorney General’s Department saw a […]

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Hung parliament? There is a silver lining…

The latest election in the United Kingdom has resulted in a hung parliament – something we’re familiar with here in Australia. Our 2010 federal election ended in a hung parliament, with six crossbenchers holding the balance of power in an uneasy alliance with the Australian Labor Party. And our last election was so close that […]

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Our plan for PlanningAlerts

Today we’re excited to welcome Hisayo Horie to our team. Over the next 3 months they will be working with us to make updating councillor data for Ask Your Local Councillors a breeze. This will breath new life into this important part of PlanningAlerts and will give thousands and thousands more people the opportunity to […]

Posted in Planning, PlanningAlerts.org.au | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Responses

A great win for Right to Know, FOI and transparency

Ben Fairless is a volunteer administrator of our Freedom of Information (FOI) request site, Right To Know. When the ATO started to refuse valid FOI requests from people on Right To Know he made a personal complaint to the OAIC about his refused request. He has some good news to share! You may have been […]

Posted in Announcement, RightToKnow.org.au | Tagged | 3 Responses

Our first ever Outreachy Internship

Today we’re excited to announce that Hisayo Horie will be working with us for the next 3 months in our Outreachy Internship position. Before we introduce Hisayo, and the project we’ll be working on together, let us tell you a little about how the Outreachy application process has gone since our announcement blog post just […]

Posted in Announcement, Outreachy, PlanningAlerts.org.au | Tagged , , | 1 Response

They Vote For You: “dishonest”?

A common query we get over email or social media is how we choose what bills appear on They Vote For You and why we don’t just include every bill that passes through Parliament. Occasionally, these queries are accompanied by accusations of dishonesty, inaccuracy, bias and more. As much as I’d love to dismiss these […]

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CSO Review of Australia’s First OGP National Action Plan

The Open Government Partnership was launched in 2011 to provide an international platform for domestic reformers committed to making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens. The primary mechanism of the OGP for supporting domestic reformers to secure open government reforms is the development and implementation of National Action Plans by member countries. […]

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Join us for a 3 month, paid, full-time internship and start transforming our democracy

The OpenAustralia Foundation team and contributors redesigning street development notices at the Frontyard Hackfest 2016. Photo by Lisa Cross Are you passionate about open source technology and improving our society? Come work on the OpenAustralia Foundation’s open source projects and learn how to fix bugs in Australia’s democracy with a paid, full-time, and remote Outreachy […]

Posted in Announcement, Outreachy | 9 Responses

OpenAustralia Foundation and Open Government Next Steps

A fortnight ago, I outlined what the OpenAustralia Foundation team has been up to, in helping land Australia’s First Open Government National Action Plan (NAP). In December 2016, Prime Minister and Cabinet’s office announced Australia’s first National Action Plan (the Plan, or NAP) complete with 15 reform commitments. To help make sure we give Australia’s Open […]

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