I haven't written much lately (work keeps getting in the way, shocking I know). However I thought I would put down some thoughts on the Gov2.0 Task Force that the government announced at the last Publicsphere event. Particularly how it relates to Local Government.

Yesterday I presented on OOOG at the 2nd Public Sphere event and I had some really good discussions about how it could be fine tuned and how the proposed OOOG Survey could operate.

Based on those discussions I'm looking at the following very tentative format for an OOOG Rating.

A Survey In Two Halves

Last night I posted my immediate thoughts about the Public Sphere event. However in my exhausted state I managed to miss the big announcement of the day - the launch of the governments Gov2.0 Taskforce.

Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and new Minister of State (read Minister without portfolio) Ludwig announced the creation of a 15 member Taskforce with the following Terms of Reference:

The Government 2.0 Taskforce (‘Taskforce’) will advise and assist the Government to:

I promised I would blog about my Public Sphere experience tonight and I'll do my best. However brain is a tad fried so be gentle.

Woke up this morning at 5 o'clock. Had organised a lift down and back with James Dellow (also known as chieftech on twitter). He turned up about quarter to six and we headed off into the fog. Turns out that I haven't lost the knack for falling asleep during long car trips.

Senator Kate Lundy has released the Final Briefing Paper from the first Public Sphere event held last month. At 15 pages it's a good summary of what was discussed at the event, both in person and online via the pre-recorded presentations and twitter discussions that occured during the event.

Which of course brings us to the next event.

I'm going to take a break from coding to try something new.

I blogged about the OOOG Rating system I'd come up with earlier and I thought I would take it for a test drive against a real live project. For this first OOOG Rating exercise I thought I would pick on one of the brighter shining stars in the Australian Gov2.0 Night Sky, Open Australia.

I did a presentation last night on the work I've been doing with Plone and Local Government and I was asked about a term I used - OOOG.

OOOG stands for Open source, Open standards, Open Government.

It's a personal standard that I use when judging the suitability of a project or solution for use with Gov2.0/LocGov2.0 work.

When I look at a project or solution I measure how it stacks up against the following criteria:

Open Source:

Now that New South Wales has won the right to host the headquarters for the governments new National Broadband Network, I have a radical idea.

Instead of putting it in Sydney, hows about we put it in Wollongong?

I know, why would you put the headquarters of the nations most important communications company in a town with barely 200000 people in it. Let's have a look a few of the reasons why shall we?

This is the exact reason why many people don't trust web2.0 and by extension, Gov2.0 and LocGov2.0.

http://www.raena.net/social-marketing-bullshit-bingo/

This brilliant little piece has been put together to demonstrate that the old buzzword bingo game is alive and well, it just has a new, hipper set of clothes.

Finally got some time to put down my thoughts about the Public Sphere event put on today by Senator Kate Lundy.

As someone who was attending and presenting from afar (well video presentation), it was an interesting experience. Thanks to the ANU, the Public Sphere event was streamed live, which meant that I was able to keep up with the conversation that was happening via twitter and interact both with other speakers and those watching my own talk. Very cool.