The Future As Seen By Me In 2010

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Well looky here, things one has scanned in eh. (ignore the photo, that's some guy that made some accounting software, not sure what became of him ;) MIKE RIVERSDALE is fuming. The expensive headphones he bought in Sydney three weeks ago have just died. His first reaction is not to randomly spill expletives into his coffee, but to use his iPhone to vent his frustration to his Twitter con- tacts, under the moniker Miramar Mike. "I will also put, 'What should I do?' It's a conversation. I'm reaching out to the people following me." The council predicts hand-held digital devices such as smartphones will rule the world in 2040. They already rule the life of Mr Riversdale, whose company WaveAdept helps businesses adapt - their computing sys- tems to allow staff to work from anywhere - and with anyone. In order of fre- equency, he uses his iPhone to tweet (1136 followers; 8363 tweets since joining), e-mail, make phone calls and use online services, such as checki
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NZ Government 2.0 ... Where Is It? [Updated]

By /
We're approaching the one year anniversary of Welington's eGovernment Barcamp and I'd like to know two things:
  1. Will there be another?
  2. Wat has the "government" done?
On the first I have heard rumblings but I suspect it needs a committed bunch of people to demand that it happens - get over to the mailing list and make your voice heard.

As to the second, I read with great heart that the conversation is starting to happen. Laurence Millar's* posting, What does Web 2.0 mean for government?, is a great start and raises a fundamental hurdle that government agencies need to address, set the data free!

I am a little perturbed by the comments left as it seems that there is a desire to "talk" more ... NO!!! Talk some but DO more. This is not rocket science, there are companies larger than the NZ Government doing it, there are organisations with more at stake that the NZ Government doing it ... so why aren't they doing it?

My opinion?
  • Outside the walls of most NZ government agencies is seen as "them"
  • Some of "them" own newspapers, TV stations and radio talkback malarkey
  • If we fvck up "they" will crucify our Minister
  • If (s)he gets bad press we will get shouted at
  • We'd better be 100% perfect before we do anything
  • 100% perfection takes time (ie, eternity)
*sigh*

As Laurence ends his post:
So we need to increase the urgency with which we apply Web 2.0 to government - open up our content, expose our data so that it is easier to consume, rather than applying resources to redesign information dissemination. By creating objects that others can assemble we are likely to be significantly more successful at ensuring New Zealanders have access to the government information when, where and how they prefer.

Urgency does not come from "more talk" which is merely procrastination at best and paralysis by analysis at worse.

Get agile (formally or informally) and start to release small and often.
Take a look at the "event" information you are currently publishing and mak sure it's also avaiable via iCal. Look at the contact information you're setting out and use hCard - how about using the New Zealand specific hCard generator as supplied by the SSC?

In fact, look at all your information on your agencies website and see what micro formats you can use right now!

[updated] added NZ specific hCard generator

* Laurence Millar is the New Zealand Government CIO

Comments

  1. Anonymous4 August 2008 at 15:30

    Maybe you should post a link to this blog post from blog.e.govt.nz so that Laurence sees it?

    This blog post of theirs is similar: http://blog.e.govt.nz/index.php/2008/04/14/what-would-transformed-government-look-like/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mike Riversdale4 August 2008 at 15:46

    Cheers Matthew - I left a comment but it's not popped up yet - I'm no doubt being vetted and checked :-)

    Yep, saw that posting and left the "I don't want to come into the Governments kitchen ..." comment .. I think that was me, yeah, definitely me

    ReplyDelete
  3. Andrew4 August 2008 at 23:04

    I disagree about your list, but not about the lack of action:

    My opinion?

    * No one is getting promoted for going out on a limb about this.
    * Run silent Run Deep, during an election cycle (hey, doesn't the election cycle last for 3 years?)
    * If we fvck up "they" will crucify our Minister (also my boss will lose his bonus)
    * No press is good press unless it is PR pap.
    * We'd better CYA before we do anything
    * Why rock the boat?

    *sigh*

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous5 August 2008 at 15:59

    I want to point you to work that is being done in this area.

    iCal feeds
    http://research.elabs.govt.nz/practical-icalendar-feeds/

    Atom feeds (and microformats)
    http://research.elabs.govt.nz/nz-govt-feed-standard/

    The portal http://newzealand.govt.nz/ will soon aggregate microformats.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Mike Riversdale5 August 2008 at 19:25

    Thanks Matthew, I was unaware of that site.,

    I look forward to the research becoming mainstream as a lot of the technologies the SSC are looking into

    ReplyDelete

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