Posts By Craig Thomler

Gov 2.0 and public sector innovation needs both business and technology heads

At the Gov 2.0 lunchtime event last week (video coming soon), Darren, Manager, Media and Community Information, from the ACT’s Emergency Services Agency talked about how closely he’d worked with Richard, his technical lead, to create their social media presence and new website. He proudly told us the website had cost only $43 to build,Read… Read more »

Moderating friends and relatives – when official duties and personal life collide

I’ve had several discussions lately with people managing official government social media channels about the most difficult moderation challenge they face – their families and friends. It is very common practice for people launching a new social media channel for their agency to tell their friends and relatives about it, both to share something theyRead… Read more »

Gov 2.0 and public sector innovation needs both business and technology heads

At the Gov 2.0 lunchtime event last week (video coming soon), Darren, Manager, Media and Community Information, from the ACT’s Emergency Services Agency talked about how closely he’d worked with Richard, his technical lead, to create their social media presence and new website. He proudly told us the website had cost only $43 to build,Read… Read more »

TubeRank helps reduce the risks in creating viral government content

Viral content – content which gets shared across the internet and media very quickly (like a virus) – is often a controversial area of communication for organisations. While the approach can result in massive attention and awareness it can also lead to massive risks. What if the content doesn’t go viral, wasting your investment? (LikeRead… Read more »

How to build a smart and innovative government agency – abandon 19th century organisational principles

NetFlix has released its ‘manifesto’ detailing how they operate and why, a document that Facebook’s COO has described as “the most important document to ever come out of Silicon Valley” and that has attracted well over three million views on Slideshare. It is the best document I’ve ever seen on building a smart and innovativeRead… Read more »

LinkedIn hits two million – Infographic places Australia in that mix

In January this year LinkedIn reached 200 million active users globally, demonstrating that professional social networking is beginning to be recognised as being valuable alongside personal social networking. I’ve just been sent their ‘early adopter’ infographic, which unlike the infographic on LinkedIn’s blog (which gives great demographic breakdowns by profession), provides a view on theRead… Read more »

Your help needed: Crowdfunding the Tim Berners-Lee tour

Whether or not you attended one of the events given in Australia by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in his TBLDownunder tour, it’s likely his visit will have an impact on how Australian governments and their agencies think about openness, digital channels and online engagement. During his visit Sir Tim, the inventor of the world wide web,Read… Read more »

A counterpoint & follow-up to my post on: Should government agencies & councils be entitled to ban people from their social media channels?

Yesterday I blogged about Should government agencies & councils be entitled to ban people from their social media channels? The example I used related to a Twitter conversation I’d had with Peter Hinton, who had been blocked from Parramatta City Council’s Twitter account. As a Parramatta council resident and rate-payer he was concerned at hisRead… Read more »

Should government agencies & councils be entitled to ban people from their social media channels?

I’ve been advised of an interesting situation with a resident of the Parramatta Council area, who has been blocked by council from their Twitter account. He’s upset and has written to the Council, claiming that it is unconstitutional for a council to block its own rate-playing constituents from viewing their social media accounts, referring toRead… Read more »

Mainstream media takes first steps in adopting open data hacker culture

On Monday 4 February The Age hosted the Data Newsroom event, where teams had an opportunity to dig into three previously publicly unreleased datasets, Political party funding data, which lists what companies donate money to which political parties. A database that includes the archives of all Age articles along with key words and relationships betweenRead… Read more »