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

Which Australian Politicians are on Twitter?

By Matthew Landauer | Published: April 30, 2009

It had been something that I’d been meaning to do for a while but hadn’t ever quite managed to find the time to do. A conversation between James Dellow (@chieftech), Senator Kate Lundy (@katelundy), Michael de Percy (@madepercy), Karl Roby (@karlroby) and Pia Waugh (@piawaugh) on Twitter a few days ago started it all going again. Time to do something about it!

Twitter, in case you haven’t seen the numerous over-excited newspaper articles, is by all measures the next “big thing” on the internet and has been undergoing a meteoric rise in popularity in Australia in the last few months.

I signed up for Twitter in November 2007 and started using it for real about a year ago. The first few weeks were definitely “what is this all about?”, “I don’t _get_ this twitter thing”, “People do talk a lot of sh*t…” and so on. Then, it started to make sense. There are a lot of very smart, interesting, engaged people out there who are chatting with each other on Twitter and the medium has brought me a great deal of intriguing little factoids, fascinating insights and, of course, a heap of new good people to talk to.

It’s really good to see that Australian politicians are starting to see the potential of Twitter. Now there are enough politicians using Twitter that bringing them together in a list makes sense.

So, please go to ozpollietweeters.pbworks.com, follow politicians and parties you’re interested in, talk to them, ask them questions and get the conversation going. Also, if you come across a politician who isn’t on the list then please add them. You’ll need to create a login on pbworks.com first, though.

You’ll notice that we’ve tried, as much as possible, to separate out the real people from the people that are impersonating them (the “fakes”). Most of the time, the fakes don’t hide it and are using the oppurtunity to parody their politician of choice. That’s fine and a very healthy part of any democracy. However, where things become tricky is where the fakes aren’t clear about who they are (or aren’t) and use the opportunity to make abusive or offensive comments. It’s not always cut and dry who people say they are on the internet and Twitter is no different in that respect.

Another purpose of bringing this list together is so that on OpenAustralia.org we can add people’s Twitter accounts to their pages.

It would be great if we could verify that each of the Twitter accounts is the real person. One thing we could do is email their official address asking them to DM a special message back, so verifying the connection between the Twitter account and their official email address.

Is this being too pedantic? Is there another simpler way we could do this? Or is this not verifying their identity clearly enough? Or, maybe we need to ask them to use a proposed simple trust mechanism? Please let me know by commenting below.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Responses

DPS, where the bloody hell are you?

By Matthew Landauer | Published: April 20, 2009

A fairly typical email exchange with the Department of Parliamentary Services (DPS), the administrators for the aph.gov.au website, goes something like this:

from: Matthew Landauer
to: webmanager@aph.gov.au
date: Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 11:39 AM
subject: Hansard 23 September 2008 probably error in division

According to the Hansard, Mark Vaile voted in a division on 23 September 2008. See
http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2F2008-09-23%2F0060%22

However, according to his biography he resigned several months earlier on 30 July 2008. See
http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22handbook%2Fallmps%2FSU5%22

There appears to be an inconsistency between these two facts. I would guess that the Hansard is probably mistaken. Is that correct? If so, it would be great if it could be fixed.

Many thanks!

All the best,
Matthew Landauer
Founder
http://www.openaustralia.org/

It’s looking good. I receive this very quick response.

from : Web, Manager (DPS)
to: Matthew Landauer
date: Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 12:47 PM
subject: RE: Hansard 23 September 2008 probably error in division

Thanks for your email Matthew

I will get this discrepancy checked and get back to you as soon as possible.

Kind regards
Margaret

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

I reply a few hours later thanking her.

More than a week passes with no further news. Hmmm… Naively I would expect that they would take this issue fairly seriously. It appears from the official Hansard record that someone has voted who wasn’t even a member of parliament at the time.

Anyway, I send the following email to follow up:

from: Matthew Landauer
to: webmanager@aph.gov.au
date: Sat, Apr 11, 2009 at 1:13 PM

Any news on this?

Any possibility that OpenAustralia.org could be assigned a technical contact for the Hansard? Our software does lots of cross-checking of
the Hansard XML data and regularly finds spelling mistakes, formatting errors, logical inconsistencies and the like which I’m sure you would
like us to alert you to. However, this is currently very difficult as we have no technical contact.

It would also lighten your load as a go-between.

All the best,
Matthew

I’ve asked for an ongoing contact for OpenAustralia at the Department of Parliamentary Services before but those emails were never replied to. I wonder if I’ll hear any more this time.

Stony silence.

from: Matthew Landauer
to: webmanager@aph.gov.au
date: Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 12:37 PM

Hello, is anybody there??

So, it’s been two weeks and I’ve heard nothing more.

In the greater scheme of things it’s no big deal that a couple of emails from openaustralia.org are left unanswered. Hell, we’ve been known to not reply to all the emails we get.

The unfortunate things is this email exchange is fairly typical of all our dealings with the DPS over the last year. We’ll report a problem. If it’s something really glaring (like today’s Hansard is missing!) it will get fixed in half a day or so and I’ll receive a response to my email. If it’s something more subtle but just as important, I’ll sometimes get a response saying they’ll look into it but then I’ll never hear anything again.

Does it get relegated to the “too hard” basket?

There should be two-way communication between DPS and OpenAustralia. The DPS is providing a service to the general public by publishing the Hansard. We’re finding faults with this vital document of national importance and we don’t expect our reports of errors to be ignored.

We’re also providing a public service (entirely run by volunteers) and we have a responsibility to make it as good as it can be.

We’re providing all the results of our work (our software, our data) for free for anyone to use. We have software that we’ve written in the course of building OpenAustralia that finds many problems in the Hansard completely automatically. This software we’ve made freely available to everyone (including the DPS). However, they are apparently not interested in hearing from us.

DPS, where the bloody hell are you? We can help you. Ask us how.

Posted in Development | 5 Responses

Radio National – Future Tense: e-Australia

By Matthew Landauer | Published: February 5, 2009

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/e-australia/3181162

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

eGov AU: OpenAustralia becomes first to provide the Australian Federal register of Senators’ Interests online

By Matthew Landauer | Published: January 29, 2009

http://egovau.blogspot.com.au/2009/01/openaustralia-becomes-first-to-provide.html

Posted in Media, OpenAustralia.org | Comments closed

The Register of Senators’ Interests is now online

By Matthew Landauer | Published: January 5, 2009

Today is a big milestone. We are the first website to make the Register of Senators’ Interests available online. This important public document until now has only been available to the small number of people who were able to visit the office in Canberra where the documents are held. In the Register each Senator declares information of financial interests, stocks and shares held, gifts received over a certain value, and memberships of Clubs and Associations.

The register is available on each Senator’s page. For example, have a look at the Register for Senator Judith Adams.

As soon as we can we will also make the Register of Members’ Interests available online, the equivalent document for the Representatives. Our main obstacle right now is getting our paper copy of the register scanned. If you have access to a bulk scanner and can help please contact us.

Posted in Announcement, OpenAustralia.org | 4 Responses

The Register of Senators' Interests is now online

By Matthew Landauer | Published: January 5, 2009

Today is a big milestone. We are the first website to make the Register of Senators’ Interests available online. This important public document until now has only been available to the small number of people who were able to visit the office in Canberra where the documents are held. In the Register each Senator declares information of financial interests, stocks and shares held, gifts received over a certain value, and memberships of Clubs and Associations.

The register is available on each Senator’s page. For example, have a look at the Register for Senator Judith Adams.

As soon as we can we will also make the Register of Members’ Interests available online, the equivalent document for the Representatives. Our main obstacle right now is getting our paper copy of the register scanned. If you have access to a bulk scanner and can help please contact us.

Posted in Announcement | 4 Responses

Sydney Morning Herald: Interests of MPs to go online – it’s about time

By Matthew Landauer | Published: December 20, 2008

http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/interests-of-mps-to-go-online–its-about-time/2008/12/19/1229189883754.html

Posted in Media, OpenAustralia.org | Comments closed

Australian – Wires & Lights: Interview – OpenAustralia.org

By Matthew Landauer | Published: December 15, 2008
Posted in Media | Tagged , | Comments closed

Happy talk

By Matthew Landauer | Published: December 12, 2008

Last week I gave a talk at the Open Source Developers’ Conference in Sydney. It was great. The room was full, people were excited, asked great questions and even applauded. To round it all of, at the end of the conference I was voted best speaker of the conference. What a wonderful surprise.

I met many great people at the conference who told me how happy they were to see what OpenAustralia is doing and want to get involved. So, expect many new things to come. Stay tuned.

There were not any recordings made of any of the talks but do have a look at the slides.

Katherine Szuminska and I will also be talking at the “Free as in Freedom” miniconf as part of the Linux Conference Australia (LCA) which is happening between 19-24 January in Hobart. Please come along!

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