Posts By Craig Thomler

Government as a Social Machine

I am blogging today from the Government as a Social Machine forum hosted by ANZSOG and featuring Professor Dame Wendy Hall from the University of Southhampton in the UK. The discussion this morning involves a diverse range of stakeholders from both public and private sector organisations discussing the challenges organisations and citizens face in adaptingRead… Read more »

Suggestions for governments stepping into open data

I’ve been completing a survey for the Spatial Industries Business Association (SIBA) related to the Queensland Government’s open data initiative, where one of the questions asked Can you list or describe any learnings that would be useful in Queensland? I’ve provided a number of my thoughts on this topic, having closely observed open data initiativesRead… Read more »

A look into the mind of John Miri

Yesterday I had the opportunity to catch up with John Miri, the former Deputy to the State CTO for Texas, following his presentation at Sitecore’s Digital Citizen Engagement event in Canberra. John is also presenting in Melbourne today, and in Perth next week. The first thing that struck me about John is how different heRead… Read more »

GitHub launches portal illustrating examples of government-citizen collaboration on open data, open source and open government

In an exciting and useful development, GitHub, the world’s best known portal for collaborative software development, has launched a portal illustrating how governments and citizens have worked together to deliver better outcomes. Now live at government.github.com the portal provides some great examples of GitHub projects that have saved government money and time and delivered betterRead… Read more »

Has government found its feet in social media?

Earlier today I gave a presentation to the IABC’s Canberra chapter on the use of social media within the Australian Government. The slide deck I used is below, and fairly well carries my point – that government has indeed found its feet in social media, however there’s still uneven ground waiting to trip it upRead… Read more »

The road to public sector IT hell may not be paved with intentions at all

Something that scares me enormously is the house of cards that many (if not most) governments have built with their IT systems. It can be witnessed every time government agencies get ‘MOGed’ – Machinery of Government changes where parts of agencies are shifted to other agencies to meet the latest political whim. In these casesRead… Read more »

Online challenges arrive in Australian government

With psychedelic splendour, the ACT government has become the first Australian jurisdiction to launch a serious whole-of-government online challenges site. Through the Digital Canberra Challenge website, the ACT is now asking “Canberra’s brightest minds” to help improve government services. The first round contains two challenges, to improve the process of event approvals and to makeRead… Read more »

Online challenges arrive in Australian government

With psychedelic splendour, the ACT government has become the first Australian jurisdiction to launch a serious whole-of-government online challenges site. Through the Digital Canberra Challenge website, the ACT is now asking “Canberra’s brightest minds” to help improve government services. The first round contains two challenges, to improve the process of event approvals and to makeRead… Read more »