Government 2.0 Releases Draft Report
21 December 2009 at 3:27 pm
The central recommendation calls for an Open Government Directive from the Government to treat government information as a national public resource to be as freely and openly available as possible.
It also recommends that government agencies and public servants use Web 2.0 tools like blogs and online forums to engage with citizens, each other and likeminded professionals around the world.
The Government 2.0 Taskforce Chair, Dr Nicholas Gruen says if Government 2.0 is realised, citizens won’t just be consulted by government they’ll actively collaborate with government.”
Gruen says Government 2.0 can draw all those with the enthusiasm, expertise and crucial local knowledge to collaborate in the process of government.
Unless there are strong reasons not to do so, the report calls for public sector information to be released proactively under ‘creative commons’ type licences which invite others to quote, share and transform them without seeking government permission.
The Government 2.0 Taskforce is made up of policy and technical experts and entrepreneurs from government, business, academia, and cultural institutions. Its work falls into two streams. The first relates to increasing the openness of government through making public sector information more widely available to promote transparency, innovation and value adding to government information. The second stream is concerned with encouraging online engagement with the aim of drawing in the information, knowledge, perspectives, resources and even, where possible, the active collaboration of anyone wishing to contribute to public life.
Web 2.0 uses platforms which people can use to connect and collaborate. These include Facebook, blogs, wikis and Twitter. Typically they are open source and free to use. Government 2.0 involves the incorporation of Web 2.0 tools and approaches in government practice to enable new internal tools to increase productivity and efficiency, as well as opening up greater collaboration capabilities with citizen. Examples might include the release of data on terms of authorising a remix and online collaboration by governments in forums like blogs.
The Executive Summary and full Draft Report are available at gov2.net.au/
