Government no show on Government 2.0 Taskforce

By Matthew Landauer | Published: August 14, 2009

Update: Since this post first appeared Ann Steward has now posted on the taskforce blog.

A commendable part of the setup of the Government 2.0 Taskforce was a blog which in the nearly two months since its creation has become the primary means of communication between the taskforce and the general public.

Now, let’s take a look at this in more detail. There are fifteen members of the taskforce and how many of those have communicated with the general public on the blog? Looking through all the published blog posts it looks like 8 of the 15 members have blogged. That’s just over half. Not great but not terrible.

But, it gets worse. What if you split the members of the taskforce into those that work for the federal government and those that are “ordinary” citizens? (Note: Seb Chan works for the Powerhouse Museum which is part of the NSW, not federal government)

Then you discover that 7 of the 9 “ordinary” citizens, about 78% have blogged. That’s pretty good. Congratulations to Seb Chan, Nicholas Gruen, Brian Fitzgerald, Lisa Harvey, Pip Marlow, Alan Noble and Martin Stewart-Weeks for contributing and expressing their thoughts and ideas and engaging in conversation with the very people that the taskforce is ultimately designed to help.

But then… Only 1 of 6 federal government employees who are members of the taskforce have blogged. That’s appalling! Congratulations to Mia Garlick, who is the Assistant Secretary for the Digital Economy branch at the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, for being the sole federal government contributor who has managed to blog.

This is all rather sad and pathetic. This looks like Citizen 2.0 and Government 1.0. Wake up federal government people on the taskforce: Ann Steward, Glen Archer, Adrian Cunningham, Peter Harper and Martin Hoffman. Start communicating, now. You owe it to the taskforce, you owe it to the citizens and you owe it to yourself.

What possible explanation could there be for this? Well, the government people must be really busy managing their large departments while the other taskforce members have lots of spare time to write while they lunch on their corporate expense accounts. Clearly not.

Alan Noble, director of engineering Google Australia is clearly a busy man, running Google’s sizeable research and development team in Australia & NZ. Even he found time to write despite being hospitalised only weeks earlier in a serious accident. If Mr Noble found the time to communicate in those circumstances so can the federal government employees on the taskforce.

So, get to it Ann Steward, Glen Archer, Adrian Cunningham, Peter Harper and Martin Hoffman. Time to fire up that web browser and write a blog post or two or three.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 11 Responses

Open and Shut: Queensland parliament rains on open access party

By Matthew Landauer | Published: August 10, 2009

Monday, August 10, 2009

Queensland parliament rains on open access party
Amid all that good Queensland news is this downer that the Clerk of the Parliament there has knocked back a request by Open Australia to allow republication of Hansard online which would enable them to add the search capabilities that have made their Federal effort a real winner. To the extent there are problems here, the attitude should be let’s solve them.

read more at
http://foi-privacy.blogspot.com.au/2009/08/queensland-parliament-rains-on-open.html#.U3G8l62SzmY

Posted in Media, OpenAustralia.org | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

Queensland bars OpenAustralia from republishing its Hansard

By Kat Szuminska | Published: August 7, 2009

In an extraordinary turn of events the Clerk of Queensland’s Parliament has refused OpenAustralia permission to republish the state’s proceedings of parliament. This is the email we received this afternoon

Katherine,

I have taken sometime to consider your request because of the multitude of issues and its long term policy implications.

At the outset, I note that the “Queensland State Parliamentary Hansards” is actually the Record of Proceedings. Unlike other Parliament’s Hansards, it is a record, not only of what is said, but a procedural record of what has been done.

Initially, I was inclined to support your request because:

  • I am an ardent supporter of the use of the Internet as a communication medium as exampled by the Queensland Parliament’s lead in areas such as Epetitions and the Tabled Papers database (a single database containing all documetns tabled in the Parliament and linked to the Record of Proceeding).
  • I am inclined to support anything that would make the record of Proceedingaccessible and searchable.

However, I have decided to decline to give permission.

My reasons include, but are not limited to the following:

  • I am concerned about the demands that may ultimately be placed upon the Queensland Parliamentary Service by OpenAustralia in terms of supply of information. I am especially concerned that once OpenAustralia is supplied the record for the purposes of republication, it would become a “special stakeholder” over and above our other stakeholders, to the extent that we would have to take into account OpenAustralia’s needs when any adjustments have to be made to our own systems. System redesign is complicated enough, without the added complication of such a “special stakeholder”.
  • Despite OpenAustralia stating that it is a “not for profit volunteer run service”, I am not able to be assured from the information provided that there is no-one with some commercial interest (even indirect) or some other private interest in the venture. The information and “special stakeholder” status mentioned above could be a valuable commodity, not currently provided to others.
  • A key issue is whether OpenAustralia should given the status and protection of an “authorised publisher” as an engaged entity for the publication of an authorised parliamentary record as per section 51(4)(g) of the Parliament of Queensland Act 2001 ( http://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/LEGISLTN/CURRENT/P/ParliaQA01.pdf ). I do not believe it would be appropriate for me to give this authority as this sort of arrangement was not contemplated by the Act.
  • Therefore, if permission was granted, it would be on the basis that OpenAustralia is not an authorised publisher under the Act and that OpenAustralia accepts all risks of any legal liability arising from the further publication of the parliamentary record – which would not be absolutely protected by parliamentary privilege.
  • Most significantly, I am concerned about an alternative “non-official” site upon which lays the Queensland Parliaments official Record of Proceedings but which no-one in authority within the Parliamentary Service has control.
  • I applaud the use of open-source software used by OpenAustralia

Neil Laurie
The Clerk of the Parliament

This email comes after three months of correspondence which you can read for yourself.

We’ll be appealing this decision, don’t you worry!

Posted in Announcement | 18 Responses

Who do you think OpenAustralia Foundation should bank with?

By Matthew Landauer | Published: July 22, 2009

Who do you think the brand new OpenAustralia Foundation should bank with?

This could either be a traditional bank or a credit union. We trust your combined wisdom.

Stuff we are looking for:

  • Is Australian
  • Offers Internet banking
  • Has an ethical investment policy
  • Is nice to non-profits like us

OpenAustralia Foundation’s registered office is in Glenbrook, NSW. Ideally it would also have an office nearby (in the greater Sydney area) but this is not essential

Please let us know by commenting on this post. Any personal experiences you can tell us about is always helpful, including those to definitely avoid!

We’re planning on making a final decision in the next week or so. We’ll let you know which way we go.

Posted in Development | Tagged , , , | 9 Responses

Announcing the OpenAustralia Foundation

By Matthew Landauer | Published: July 7, 2009

Certificate of Registration of OpenAustralia Foundation LimitedFrom the beginning we’ve always had high hopes of getting a not-for-profit entity off the ground to ensure the continued development of the OpenAustralia website as well as provide a foundation from which we can launch cool, new, useful things for everybody.

As with many things this took a little longer than expected. But finally…

Today is a happy day

Because today we heard from our lawyer (the ever helpful Stephanie Barnes at Deacons) that OpenAustralia Foundation Limited is officially incorporated as a company limited by guarantee.

The next step: applying to the tax office to get endorsement as an income exempt charity and also importantly apply for deductible gift recipient status.

Yes, we’ve had to do a lot of paperwork and yes we will be sharing it with you. This includes the company constitution which clearly lays out the aims and responsibilities of the company.

We’ll give you updates as we go

Posted in Announcement | Tagged , , | 3 Responses

Inaugural OpenAustralia Hackfest Was Terrific

By Henare Degan | Published: June 15, 2009

Last Saturday, the 13th of June, was OpenAustralia’s inaugural hackfest, bringing together developers and users of the OpenAustralia.org website. Fifty people volunteered their time and effort to help open Australia’s democracy and make it easier for Australians to keep tabs on their representatives in Parliament.

The day kicked off just after midday with Matthew giving us a run down of how we can get involved and contribute to OpenAustralia (see below for a reminder). After that, the 40-strong participants worked in groups on projects they were interested in, fixing bugs or just getting their heads around how the OA code works.

Projects

There were a number of projects worked on during the day, here’s some details on just a few of these:

Mobile OpenAustralia

Rob Manson began work on a mobile version of OpenAustralia so you’ll be able to see an optimised version of the site when you’re on the move.

Video

Silvia Pfeiffer started investigating and discussing advanced video on OpenAustralia, using open codecs like Ogg Theora and Vorbis and the upcoming HTML5 video specification. Take a look at Metavid for an idea of what to look forward to in the future.

WordPress Plugin

Sherif made excellent progress developing a WordPress plugin for OpenAustralia, which will allow you to quote speeches from OpenAustralia in your WordPress blog. It is the first new development to use our API and we can expect the code to be released in the next few weeks.

Development Introduction

I (Henare Degan) helped some people get the code up-and-running in their development environment so they can see how it works and hopefully start contributing. There were quite a few questions during the day so if you’re stuck on anything or have any questions, don’t forget to send a mail to the development mailing list. There’s a bunch of people ready to help you, and we’re bound to learn something along the way too!

Statistics

During the day we had:

  • Five total commits, two to the web application and three to the parser
  • Nine issues in total updated in the bug tracker, with four issues resolved
  • A number of new developers added to the bug tracker so there’s now over 10 people that can update tickets

There’s a lot more effort that’s not in these numbers that hopefully will be coming out in the days ahead as people start releasing their results from the day.

Pretty impressive for a first effort I think, as Matthew says, “Give yourself a big pat on the back!”.

Get Involved

Matthew gave a great introduction where he reminded us of how we can all get involved:

Thanks again to the core organisers, Matthew, Kat and Sarah for initiating such an excellent event, thanks to Google, Tim and James for an excellent venue and facilities but thanks most of all to everyone that came and made it the great day it was.

We can’t wait to see you all again at the next OpenAustralia Hackfest.

PS. Don’t forget to tag your photos and tweets about the day oah09 so we can all find them

Update 18/06/09: Minor typo

Posted in Announcement, Development | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Responses

First OpenAustralia hackfest is tomorrow!

By Matthew Landauer | Published: June 12, 2009

What an oversight. I’ve not blogged about our first ever OpenAustralia hackfest which is taking place in Sydney tomorrow, kindly hosted at the offices of Google Sydney.

We announced it on the @openaustralia twitter feed, our development mailing list and on a couple of Linux users group mailing list and very quickly filled our capacity of 50 people who have registered to attend.

It promises to be a busy, fun and exciting day!

There will be WIFI. There will be power. There will be projectors, so we can do demos for each other. There will be whiteboards…

Posted in Announcement | Leave a comment

Government is heavy user of openaustralia.org email alerts

By Kat Szuminska | Published: May 12, 2009

A recent remark about government users of our website, and our recent exchanges with the DPS made me wonder, just how many people@gov.au are signed up for our email alerts as part of their daily routine? I asked Matthew to take a look at the stats, so he did, and this is the result.

So about a quarter of people on email alerts, that’s hundreds of people, work for government and that’s just the ones using their work email address. No wonder www.aph.gov.au is asking “what other websites are good examples” in its own user survey? Maybe its time for someone in government to talk to us directly?

  • com includes everyone in .com.au and .com
  • org includes everyone in .org.au and .org
  • gov is everyone in .gov.au (.gov not included)
  • net is everyone in .net.au (.net not included)
  • edu is everyone in .edu.au (.edu not included)

Posted in Development | Leave a comment

A response from the DPS

By Matthew Landauer | Published: May 11, 2009

After our recent post we finally received a response from the Department of Parliamentary Services (DPS):

from: Web, Manager (DPS) <WebManager@aph.gov.au>
to: Matthew Landauer
date: Fri, May 1, 2009 at 5:46 PM
subject: RE: Hansard 23 September 2008 probably error in division

Dear Matthew

Thank you for your email to the APH web manager identifying a possible error in a division in Hansard for 23 September 2008.

Thank you for your patience while we investigated the error identified. Changes to Hansard, once they are past the ‘proof’ stage and are regarded as ‘official’, take some time to investigate and obtain approval to change.

For the future if you, or someone else from Open Australia, send us a correction, the Hansard area or web manager will undertake to respond within a fortnight, regardless of the outcome.

Hansard have investigated the matter you raised. The code for Mark Vaile was used in error, rather than that of Dana Vale (who was missing from the division). We’ve corrected and reloaded the Hansard to the web (both in ParlInfo Search and the daily PDFs on the APH website) to reflect this.

In your email you also mention that you identify spelling mistakes, formatting errors and logical inconsistencies in Hansard from time to time. We would appreciate it if you would continue to send these to the APH web manager email address. The web manager will then forward it to the relevant area. We will investigate, including retrieving and listening to the audio, if necessary, to check what the original speaker actually said. Where the error is within the Hansard (as in this case) we will fix it, though we may need to assess other changes against editorial guidelines. Where we are not able to access the audio to check, the normal procedure is to not change the Hansard, unless the error is clearly in the transcription. We do not have access to all previous audio, though we maintain it longer for chambers (years) than committees (months).

Thanks again for your help.

Kind regards,

Parliamentary Web Manager
Department of Parliamentary Services
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600

This is how I responded:

from: Matthew Landauer
to: Web, Manager (DPS) <WebManager@aph.gov.au>
date: Mon, May 11, 2009 at 6:21 PM
subject: RE: Hansard 23 September 2008 probably error in division

Dear anonymous web person / web manager,

Thanks for your email and the effort you put into checking and
correcting the error with Mark Vaile’s code.

We also appreciate your assurance that someone will respond to any
future Hansard correction within two weeks. However, we are not a
watchdog. It is not our aim to count errors. Rather we need your site
to work and the data to be accurate and we need to be able to
communicate effectively with you.

We specifically asked for a technical contact at the department which
you have so far not provided nor even acknowledged. We’re waiting for
you to respond to that request.

Whether or not you are able to provide details of a technical contact,
we would still like a response from you. If you are not able to
provide that access to a technical contact, we’ll need information
from you on why it isn’t possible. This should include the name and
contact details of the person who is responsible for this particular
decision.

Another anonymous email will just not do for this purpose.

We look forward to your response.

All the best,
Matthew

Matthew Landauer
Founder OpenAustralia
http://www.openaustralia.org

P.S. All correspondence will be forwarded to our blog.

Posted in Development | 2 Responses

OpenAustralia has a new home on Facebook

By Matthew Landauer | Published: May 4, 2009

If you’re a user of Facebook, like what we do and want to help get more people using the site, come and visit our new home on Facebook. Become “a fan” and through the power of connections tell your friends about OpenAustralia, so that more people can become that little bit more engaged, excited and informed about politics.

Let’s see how many people we can get to join in the first week.

Posted in Announcement | Tagged | Leave a comment