For the last two days a volcano in Iceland has been spewing ash and rock high into the atmosphere with little indication that it is going to stop any time soon.

The danger that the ash presents to aircraft (the particles are so fine and sharp they can destroy a jet engine) combined with the prevailing jet stream has meant that essentially then entire European air space has been shutdown. This has left hundreds of thousands of people stranded across Europe and further afield.

 If you haven't heard, the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has been to see the Queen about an election. Having done that, the British Government is now in what's called Caretaker mode.

For the past three weeks I've been taking part in something call Local Gov Chat on twitter. It's a twitter based moderated conversation  on the subject of Local Government  and various tech and cultural issues.

One of the questions that came up this afternoon was an interesting one:

"What is the difference between openness and transparency?"

 Let's see, the last time I posted a blog here, I was giving the Royal Post a deserved kicking for their overly restrictive control of the postcode information relied upon by third party services such as Planning Alerts UK. 

This time round I bring good news from Merry Old England. 

A while back I blogged about the fact that the Royal Mail had shutdown a third-party provider of post code information Ernest Marples. Well as with all things there were knock on effects.
 

The South Australian Government has announced that it's going to be creating an Open Technology Foundation. From it's vision statement:
The OTF is committed to the evaluation and where proven, uptake of open technologies, standards and methods.

The OTF exists to help governments make better, more cost effective and innovative use of open technologies in order to improve service delivery to citizens.

You know I half expected to see this sort of story from here in Australia rather than the UK.

From this story the Royal Mail has moved to prevent a third party service from providing an API with up to date Postcode information sourced directly from the Royal Mail itself. This action has had a domino effect, causing issues with those sites that had come to rely on the third party service.

You know what I love about the whole public discussion thing? It makes things happen, in public even.

A few days ago I blogged my concerns about the contract that those who were successful in tendering for Gov2 Taskforce projects were expected to sign. I still have those concerns, however since then there has been an ongoing discussion between the Gov2 Taskforce, Microsoft and the community about the best way to move forward.

So the Gov2 Taskforce has released the contract that everyone who wishes to participate in any Gov2 Taskforce projects has to sign. Fair enough, no one expected it to be carte blanch.

I'll admit it I have a need to play with new toys. If I see something cool and shiny I will sit down with it, take it apart and then try and put it back together. If I'm lucky I discover something I can use in my work or home life, if not then it's been a bit of fun and I've learnt something new.

I've been doing this pulling apart and putting back together with the Google Wave stuff for a little while now, and seriously I'm very blown away. However I have also been playing with new shiny thing called status.net.