Thursday, March 25, 2010

Redesigning Government IT 2010

Greetings from the 2010 ACS Canberra Branch Conference at the historic Canberra Hyatt. This is a one day conference with four streams: Data Management, Service Management, Personal Development and Enterprise Architecture. The conference traditionally concentrates on professional skills, rather than technology. This year the emphasis is on developing the young professional (with university students milling around nervously, obviously in their best clothes and on their best behaviour).

There also seems to be a defence flavour running through much of the conference. Topics this year which stand out to me were: ITIL V3, "The Virtuous IT Professional" Data developments at the ABS and the UNSW@Canberra Robotics Tournament.

The conference is as usual opened with government heavyweights. This year it is the Jon Stanhope, Chief Minister of the ACT, John Sheridan, from AGIMO. Bruce Lakin, the new CEO of the ACS and Matt Yannopoulos, CTO, Department of Defence.

The Chief Minister started by admitted he doesn't have a Facebook page or Twitter, but does have a Blackberry. He then gave examples of how technology has changed our lives. He worried about loutish behaviour online and extremism, but hoped that norms of behaviour will emerge (a refreshing change from politicians calling for Internet censorship). He mentioned the ACT Government was working on using social networking and a cluster of small local companies working at NICTA (something I hadn't heard about before). He explained that the NBN was the most costly Australian investment in decades and comparable to transport infrastructure in the past.

The Chief Minister then highlighted Transact's success at delivering broadband in Canberra, including to all schools (unfortunately ACT may therefore miss out on federal funding because it was a pioneer). He pointed out that the federal government was the largest Australian ICT customer. He made a comment about one IT vendor being woken from lethargy by the Gershon Report (I have no idea which he was referring to). The Chief Minister had to rush off as the Assembly is sitting today. This seemed to negate much of what the Chief Minister said, as if the ACT Government was an effective user of IT, then it would not be necessary for people to assemble in person in the room for the "Assembly".

John Sheridan, from AGIMO, then did the "Vision Thing". He argued for business credibility for IT people. In support of this he talked about AGIMO benchmarking of federal government IT: 2007-08 on business as usual, and now for 2008-09 on progress. The later study has more credible data. IT expenditure is flat, which is a good result in the
global financial crisis. Contractor expenditure reduced by 6% and staff expenditure increased, in accordance with government policy to reduce the use of contractors.

Applications account for 36% of total government IT spend and is the largest single amount. This is something I raised with the new government data centre policy, which could do relatively little to reduce costs, unless the applications run in the centres and changed: . John argued that there is work to do with delivering economies of scale with small servers being wasted serving small agencies.

John claimed that reliability will be addressed with the Agency Capability Assessment (P3M3). With COTS/GOTS bespoke applications will be reduced and government processes standardised. However, this sounded more like wishful thinking than a plan. What was not clear was how to overcome the usual reluctance of separate bodies to work together.

The BAU Budget Reductions are claimed to have saved $1B over 2009-13. Examples were the Microsoft VSA, Telecommunications, Desktops and Data centres. However, these are easy and low hanging fruit, relatively modest initiatives with modest savings. Saving money by using buying power on procurement of Microsoft products, desktop PCs and data centres is relatively easy and obvious, but will deliver relatively small savings. What this does not address the difficult questions of alternatives to Microsoft software, eliminating desktop PCs and replacing the applications running in data centres. These changes could
deliver savings of 75% to 90% on IT costs.

John claimed to have delivered on Green IT with "quick wins". Some of my Green ICT students wrote their agency green IT plans as part of the course.

An IT procurement kit is ready but delayed awaiting sustainability issues to be resolved (this was due December 2009). A workforce plan will be released later this year.

John argued that Web 2 could be used for cross agency collaboration. I don't see that Web 2 is needed (old fashioned Web 1 would do). He also gave the new Australian Government web site as an example. However, it is about six months since I last used Australia.gov.au. In a way the service needs to be disaggregated so the services are diffused through the community, without the community having to come to the government web site.

Finance has turned on access to Twitter and Facebook to staff, indicating that the senior executive are comfortable with the technology. They are also considering Creative Commons licensing for government reports (which will be welcome, if it happens). A good
complement to this would be to provide documents in web based and ebook
format
instead of the inefficient, poor quality PDF documents currently
produced. This is an example of where application changes can achieve efficiencies: changing to a web format would reduce web serving costs by about 90%.

Bruce Lakin, the new CEO of the ACS, thanked the sponsors. Interestingly the major sponsor is the UNSW Canberra Campus, the confusing new branding for the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA). It seems UNSW wants to distance itself from its association with the military (which does not seem a productive strategy to me). Bruce continued one of the emerging themes of the conference by talking about being able to measure what the ACS does and so have evidence of its success. He also continued
the theme of developing younger professionals. ACS has a new mentoring program, which I had not heard of before and which I hope makes use of the online mentoring techniques developed by ACS's education area.

Bruce outlined the new certification process for ACS. This is now internationally recognised by IP3. The new Certified professional (CP) with CT (Certified Technologist) and CS (Certified Specialist) will be recognised in the UK, USA and other countries. This has required alignment with the SFIA, including for the Green ICT course I designed.

The keynote as Matt Yannopoulos, CTO, Department of Defence. Before his presentation I chatted with Matt, who confessed to me he wasn't a blogger, but the Chief of Army was. I suggested he not rush into blogging as there are downsides (I wrote Defence's first policy on the use of the Internet). Matt is leading the development of the Defence ICT architecture. This fits with the "Defence White Paper 2009", "Defence Capability Plan 2009" and "Defence Reform Program 2009". There are ICT plans and military specific ones, such as for network centric warfare. The interesting part in all this is that Matt was taking about the business of the organisation, which is defence, and how IT supports this. The CTO is only responsible for about half the IT in Defence, with the other half being embedded in military systems. The aim is to integrate these more. Matt then mentioned "thin client" in particular as a way to save money and get control of desktops. One of my jobs when at HQADF was to look at thin clients and it is interesting to see this is still an issue, more than a decade later. If Defence can work out the difficult task of integrating thin clients, that could make a good model for the Australian Government generally.

Matt pointed out that Defence is the this largest telco in Australia, behind Telstra and Optus. He confessed Defence has a printer for every three people and many thousands of applications to be rationalised. Defence created a "technology stack" (defence people love such diagrams). Matt made a brave assumption that people were prepared to change the way they work and use technology to help and use enterprise wide systems. He mentioned problems with the defence pay system last year (when at Defence I helped cancel two successive pay system projects).

The plan for the future is that the CTO will provide the communications and processing infrastructure. Applications can then be run over the top. The previous practice was that each defence project would purchase and run its own network and hardware. In my view the divisions between military services and claims for secrecy make it much harder to
integrate defence systems, but it is not impossible.

Matt pointed out that defence has about 90,000 desktop PCs, but also 10,000 trucks. In the future each truck will also have a screen in it and be potentially part of the system.

In terms of integration, Matt gave the example of a desk at the new
Australian Defence Force "Headquarters Joint Operations Command (HQJOC) ", with a desk for one person having five monitors and four telephones on it. He mentioned that most staff have at least two computer son their desk for security reasons. In the logistics area paper is mostly used and the most advanced application in common use is a
spreadsheet (I recall seeing one defence logistics base where forms were faxed from one building to another). He pointed out that military operations depend on logistics.

A term Matt kept using was "composite applications". This seemed to be similar to a "mashup". He argued that in many cases small, quick and simple integration would provide benefits to the user. He said he did not want to buy heavily coupled integrated applications, but services.

The JSF project is paying for a secret level backbone for their own use, but which can also be used across the organisation. Matt used the example of the stove-pipe systems limiting access for military purposes in the middle-east. He also mentioned silos stopping reuse.

Matt said he was looking at the possibility of using cloud based services like Google apps, initially for personnel on deployment to use to communicate with their family (not for military purposes). This could be a good way to introduce military personnel to new ways of working. Obviously cloud systems within the Defence network can be used for security.

The Government announced the defence strategic reform initiative yesterday.

One area the Defence CTO might usefully explore is the use of embedded IT in military systems. In the past electronics were added to military ships, aircraft and vehicles to make them more effective. The military hardware would be designed and then the electronics added. If the electronics development as delayed then the hardware would be less
effective, but still work. However, modern ships, planes and vehicles depend on computer systems and those IT systems represent most of the cost. Several recent defence weapons projects have recently had problems, or completely failed, due to IT problems. This may require a change of approach for Defence procurement projects, where weapons
systems are treated as IT systems with some specialised hardware (I am giving a talk on this in Adelaide next month, tentatively titled "Engaging with Defence on Open Source: Commons for Collins or GPL for Growlers?").

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Saturday, February 06, 2010

Government reports as ebooks

One response to my talk on "Making e-Books for e-Learning on i-Pads" at BarCamp Canberra 2010 was from Senator KateLundy. She tweeted: "With so much govt information online, Tom's talk makes me wonder about the merit of publishing public info in ebook formats too". This seems an idea worth investigating.

I have long advocated providing government reports as a set of web pages, rather than as one big PDF file, as is typically done. However, government people are reluctant to do this.

One argument against web pages is that they are more difficult to make, but as I show my web design students, if you take an accessible approach to design, then this is not hard. If the document designer concentrates on making a document people can read online, where most will be read, rather than concentrating on producing a pretty printed report (which hardly anyone will see), then web format is a viable option.

Another argument is that web pages are not legal documents, which I explain to my electronic document students, is not true either. There is a commonly held, but incorrect, assumption that government reports must be in PDF format to stop them being edited. It is more difficult to edit a PDF file than a web page, but not impossible. In any case this is irrelevant to the protection of government reports.

But I suspect the real issue is that a set of web pages do not seem as real as a "book" and does not have the needed look of authority a government report demands. Collecting the web pages up into an ebook format may give them the needed gravitas. This could done with a three step process:
  1. Here is the printed report, see it looks like a proper printed document,
  2. Here is the ebook, see it looks like the printed report,
  3. Here is the web page, see it looks like a chapter from the ebook.
As government agencies are already using content management systems, it should be feasible to support commonly used ebook formats with minimal effort by authors and publishers. The CMS would simply collect up a set of web pages and package them in an ebook format (a simpler system would do the reverse, saving the e-book and unpacking it on request to separate web pages, which might better meet archiving requirements).

As discussed in my talk on "Making e-Books for e-Learning on i-Pads", the obvious e-book format to use is EPUB. This is based on XHTML and CCS as used by government web sites. It is also being popularised as a format by support on the Apple iPad. EPUB requires some extra XML files, but these supply information which agencies are required to provide anyway and should already have in their systems.

Convincing agencies to use an ebook format should be a lot easier than convincing them to use accessible web pages. Instead of having to explain why a whole lot of decorative junk is not a good idea and that instead information should be clearly and simply, it will be just a matter of saying "yest, that is a wonderful animated app, but unfortunately the ebook format does not support it".

There will be some inefficiencies, as ebooks are designed to be standalone. Therefore the CSS, logos and "about us" text which can be shared between web pages (and automatically inserted as required by a CMS) will have to be duplicated in each ebook. However, this duplication already occurs with PDF versions of reports, where fonts also contribute to the size of the resulting files.

Ebooks should also make archivists happy as they include their own metadata. In fact ebooks are conceptually similar to the archiving techniques used electronic archiving systems, which wrap up all the associated files of an e-document along with an XML encoded set of metadata.

The public could still read an individual chapter of a report as an ordinary web page. The system could also still provide automatically generated PDF, if anyone wants it. But if the web version is offered first in the list of options online, I suspect most people will be happy to download a few dozen kilobytes of the summary of a report, rather than megabytes of the full report in PDF. I might try out the idea with my students this year and see if the practice then diffuses into the Australian government.

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Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Australian Whole of Government Computer Tender

The Department of Finance and Deregulation has issued a Request for Tender for a "Whole of Government Desktop Hardware (Computing Equipment) Panel". This includes desktop and mobile computing equipment, monitors, installation and disposal. All agencies will be required to buy through the panel.

There is an extensive 235 page "Statement of Requirements" available to tenderers. This not only includes the usual desktop PCs and laptops, but also Thin Clients, Ultra Mobile PCs, Netbooks, Ruggedised Notebooks and Mobile Thin Clients.

Tenderers are required to describe environmental aspects of their Tender, but no minimum requirement is specified for EPEAT:
Environmental Assessment: [State whether this Deliverable is registered in the Electronic Product Environment Assessment Tool (EPEAT) or equivalent environmental assessment tool in Australia or overseas and the level attained by the Deliverable (eg Energy Star 4, EPEAT Silver)] [Provide environmental specifications stating the normal range of operation for the device (including but not limited to, temperature, altitude, humidity, dust, noise output, and heat output ...

From: Request for Tender to establish a WHOLE OF GOVERNMENT DESKTOP HARDWARE PANEL, RFT FIN10/AGI001, Department of Finance and Deregulation, 1-Feb-2010
This contrasts with the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA) Request for Tender for Provision of Desktop, LAN, Helpdesk and Midrange Services (RFT 0708-705, 7 August 2008), which required at least an EPEAT silver rating. This was possibly too much to ask of suppliers, but not asking for at least the minimum Bronze rating may be too little.

Green features required include: US ENERGY STAR 4.0, BIOS Support for Green and Plug and Play features and Support for Wake-on-LAN. There is no specific requirement for
recycling or environmentally sensitive disposal of surplus hardware.

Support for Linux is mentioned, along with Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Windows 7.

Table of Contents
SectionDescriptionPage
PART 1GENERAL3
1.1Structure of Statement of Requirements4
1.2Criteria Definitions6
1.3Structure of Requirements Statements6
1.4Integration of Deliverables7
1.5Occupational Health and Safety7
PART 2ABBREVIATIONS, ACRONYMS AND DEFINITIONS8
PART 3DESKTOP PC CATEGORY16
3.1Standard Desktop PC17
3.2Power Desktop PC31
3.3Workstation45
3.4Thin Client59
3.5Accessories69
PART 4MOBILE PC CATEGORY71
4.1Ultra Mobile PC72
4.2Netbook84
4.3Lightweight Notebook96
4.4Standard Notebook109
4.5Lightweight Ruggedised Notebook122
4.6Standard Ruggedised Notebook136
4.7Mobile Thin Client151
4.8Accessories162
PART 5MONITOR CATEGORY163
5.119 Inch Monitor164
5.220 Inch Monitor170
5.322 Inch Monitor176
5.423 Inch Monitor (If Available)182
5.524 Inch Monitor188
5.630 Inch Monitor193
5.736 Inch Monitor198
5.8Accessories203
PART 6ASSOCIATED SERVICES CATEGORY204
6.1Warranty205
6.2Centralised Services213
6.3Transport225
6.4Installation231

From: Part F - Statement of Requirements, Whole of Government Desktop Hardware Panel, Request for Tender FIN10/AGI001, Department of Finance and Deregulation, 1-Feb-2010

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Friday, January 29, 2010

Australian Government Teleworking Policy

The Australian Government Information Management Office has issued a "Whole-of-Government Tele-working Policy for ICT Staff" (17 December 2009). It sets out the responsibilities of the agencies and the employees. All agencies are required to prepare an implementation plan, or decide to opt out by 30 June 2010. Plans must be implemented by 1 January 2011 and agencies have to report progress annually with metrics.

The appears well thought out, for example allowing for staff to work at telecentres. One curious aspect of this policy is why it only applies to ICT staff. The ICT staff are employed under the same conditions as other Australian public servants.

The policy is a 9 page document. Unfortunately this has been provided a PDF file, so here is a translation into HTML:

Tele-working Policy for ICT Staff

Approved by the Secretaries ICT Governance Board on 17 December 2009

Purpose

The Australian Government Tele-working Policy for ICT staff will reform the ICT workforce in the Australian Public Service (APS) and ensure agencies attract and retain skilled Information and Communication Technology (ICT) professionals.

Objectives

The Australian Government Tele-working policy and its implementation by agencies will assist to:

  • promote the design of job roles capable of being performed remotely;
  • remove the technical impediments to tele-working;
  • provide a whole-of-government approach to securing information and infrastructure to support tele-working;
  • build agency capability to manage and support tele-working and tele-workers;
  • create APS employment opportunities in regional locations;
  • attract higher numbers of skilled ICT workers to the APS;
  • increase the complexity of the skill base within the APS; and
  • enhance the opportunities for ICT workers with disabilities, or who are returning to work, to participate in the APS workforce.

Background

The APS is facing an ICT skills shortage in the immediate future, as ICT job roles increase in complexity. Tele-working, in conjunction with other ICT workforce strategies, will contribute to the APS being an employer of choice by increasing flexibility of employment. In addition, reducing reliance on Canberra-based ICT personnel will improve value for money. Furthermore, by increasing the geographic area from which ICT workers can be recruited, tele-working will increase the supply of ICT skills to the APS.

The project arose in response to the Review of the Australian Government’s Use of ICT by Sir Peter Gershon (“the ICT Review”). The ICT Review recommended that the Australian Government “establish a whole-of-government tele-working policy for ICT staff, building on existing AGIMO guidance” (Recommendation 5.4.6). Existing AGIMO guidance includes the Better Practice Checklist regarding ICT support to tele-work.

Scope

The Australian Government will support ICT tele-working for APS ICT employees on a full time, part-time and casual basis. Tele-working will support:

  • Home-based work – for staff who work within commuting distance of their usual place of work;
  • Out-posted work – for staff who work from home but for whom it is not practical to travel to the workplace on a daily basis; and
  • Tele-centre work – for staff who require access to office facilities in a location outside of their agency’s usual location.
The scope of the policy does not include travellers, day extenders, field officers or campus workers.

Operating Principles

The Australian Government is committed to providing a flexible workplace for ICT staff.

All APS agencies must develop a tele-working implementation plan if they do not have an existing plan. The implementation plan must meet the stated objectives outlined in this policy, and must address all items listed under Responsibilities. The implementation plan should be based on any relevant and applicable policy or guidelines already existing in the agency.

Individual agencies will have the flexibility to create an implementation plan to suit their individual agency circumstances. These plans will include consideration of value-for-money and fit-for-purpose criteria.

Constraints

The implementation of the tele-working policy for ICT staff will be consistent with Commonwealth, State and Territory laws. A list of associated legislation, regulation and procedures is provided in Attachment A.

Eligibility of the role and the employee must be determined against measurable criteria or outcomes. The worker’s job function must fall within agency eligibility requirements. Criteria to determine employee eligibility could include length of tenure, performance and demonstrated skill set proficiency.

A tele-working arrangement does not alter the employment status of the employee; must be mutually agreed; and can be reviewed at the request of the employer or the employee.

Australian Government agencies must maintain a safe and productive working environment for employees who are tele-working.

Actions

Agencies must have a tele-working implementation plan, or have opted-out through the Expenditure Review Committee by 30 June 2010. Implementation of this plan must be completed by 1 January 2011. Agencies will report annually to the Secretaries’ ICT Governance Board (SIGB), through the Department of Finance and Deregulation (Finance) on its implementation plan. Specifically this report will address progress by agencies; barriers to implementation and possible solutions and numbers of ICT staff employed under tele-working arrangements. Agencies may include specific success metrics in their annual report to the SIGB.

Agencies must establish a formal multi-disciplinary governance body that includes ICT, HR and workplace representatives to oversee the implementation of tele-working and take-up rates.

The Australian Government will develop a whole-of-government solution to secure classified information commensurate with the level of classification for the physical and electronic information that will be handled. A lead agency will develop a security solution in consultation with Finance and the Chief Information Officer Committee (CIOC).

A tele-centre allows agencies to support a remote ICT workforce in regional centres. However, the cost of establishing agency specific tele-centres will be prohibitive for many agencies. AGIMO, in consultation with the Cross Jurisdictional Chief Information Officers’ Committee, will report to SIGB on the demand for and feasibility of establishing tele-centres in selected regions by February 2010.

Outcomes

Tele-working will provide the following outcomes for the Australian Government:

  • increasing quality and quantity of ICT applicants and retention of the best employees, particularly those who value flexible working hours and newer workers who have high expectations of technology;
  • providing an alternative for employees with long commutes to save travelling time and expenses;
  • reduced expenditure on overhead items such as recruitment, facilities and utilities;
  • reducing traffic congestion, emissions and stress on infrastructure, thereby improving the environment;
  • creation of infrastructure and processes to support disaster recovery and business continuity during an emergency;
  • opportunities for agencies to share cost processes and infrastructure;
  • reducing the Canberra-centricity of existing ICT activities by harnessing emerging new labour pools, particularly from regional areas; and
  • promoting equity in employment by increasing employment options for people with disabilities or caring responsibilities.

Responsibilities (joint)

Workplace participation

Tele-workers and their managers must use processes and tools that maximise communication opportunities. The use of collaboration tools will sustain social and knowledge networks, and cultural affiliation of tele-workers.

Taxation

Agencies must familiarise themselves with the tax ramifications of implementing tele-working arrangements.

If the arrangements result in benefits being provided to an employee, agencies must consider Pay As You Go withholding obligations (for additional salary and wages) or fringe benefits tax (FBT) obligations (for benefits) that may apply.

Tele-workers should seek taxation advice on claims that may be made with respect to the tele-working arrangement. Tele-workers may make substantiated claims for deduction on additional running expenses of an office or a study at home that is used for income-producing activities.

Education and awareness

Agencies must provide an education and awareness program for tele-workers and their managers on topics specific to a tele-working arrangement. In these programs agencies must address Occupational, Health and Safety (OHS), security, Comcare coverage, remote access, support and manager training on time management of “out-of-sight” workers.

Agencies must ensure tele-workers’ ICT skill sets remain current and relevant to the role they are performing. The long term impact on career opportunities of these workers should be monitored and specific training, together with interaction and collaboration tools considered.

It is both the employee and their manager’s responsibility to ensure development opportunities are identified and scheduled.

Insurance

All Australian Government employees are covered by provisions of Comcare for working hours, regardless of their working location. It is recommended that each agency include the exact details of this coverage in their education and awareness training for tele-working.

All Australian Government assets are covered under the Comcover Insurance Policy at all working locations, including private residences. Where some or all of the ICT equipment is owned by the employee, responsibility for insuring the asset(s) rests with the employee, unless otherwise agreed by their employer.

Communication

Agencies and tele-workers should agree formally on contact arrangements; client interactions and attendance at other physical locations upon request.

Cost-sharing

The responsibility for the costs of tele-working (set up, maintenance, continuity etc) must form part of the contract for tele-workers to be agreed upon by both parties. Agencies should be aware of, and detail the approach to be taken for part time tele-working where the tele-worker is also engaged by another agency (Commonwealth or State) and/or with private enterprise.

Responsibilities (employers)

Application Process

Agencies must define the eligibility requirements for tele-working. Agencies’ implementation plans must clearly state the process for application and termination of tele-working arrangements. Agencies should assess tele-working applications with regard to the following:

  • the duties of the employee
  • the sensitivity or classification of information to be accessed
  • the expected deliverables or outcomes and how they will be measured
  • the duration of the arrangement
  • the benefits to the organisation
  • the costs to the organisation
  • agency operational requirements.

Security

Agencies’ implementation plans must comply with the Protective Security Manual 2007 (PSM). Part H of the PSM specifies the security arrangements for working from home.

Agencies must undertake security assessments for home-based tele-workers.

Agencies will determine the level of classification of information that can be worked on at home or in a tele-centre and this determination must comply with Part H of the PSM.

Agencies must provide and maintain security containers at a level appropriate to classification level and other security measures for tele-workers to manage classified material.

Occupational Health and Safety (OHS)

Agencies must take all reasonably practicable steps to protect the health and safety at work of their employees. An employer’s duty of care under the Occupational Health and Safety (Commonwealth Employment) Act 1991 (Cth) (OHS Act) applies to an employee conducting authorised work at home.1

An agency will determine what is ‘reasonably practicable’ as there is no specific requirement for a physical inspection under the OHS Act or associated regulations.

ICT Infrastructure

Agencies will ensure tele-working staff will use agency approved ICT infrastructure in their home.

Agencies’ ICT plans must include secure and scalable tele-working infrastructure and support mechanisms to support their tele-working implementation plan.

Short-term arrangements (less than 4 weeks)

From time-to-time, ICT staff may have short-term tele-working arrangements put in place. For example:

  • where an injury impairs travel but would otherwise not impact on performance of their duties;
  • a staff member has temporary caring responsibilities and is able to perform some or all of their duties for part of the day; or
  • a disaster or pandemic which prevents workers from attending their normal place of work.
In these circumstances, an agency will determine the most appropriate method of assessing OHS and security arrangements.

Responsibilities (employees)

Access

Home-based staff must provide access to their home to employers, or agents acting on their behalf, for purposes such as security checks, OHS assessments or ICT support, following an agreed period of notice.

Third Parties

Home-based tele-workers are responsible for the safety of visitors to their home and must maintain public liability insurance to the level specified by the agency.

1 Occupational Health and Safety Act 1991 (OHS Act), Section 16(1)

Performance

Employees must maintain full proficiency in their job specific competencies, as well as agency processes.

Agency Guidelines and Instructions

Employees must conform to all agency guidelines and instructions.

Evaluation

The employee should agree to participate in all studies, inquiries, reports and analyses

relating to this policy.

Dependent Care

Tele-working is not to be treated as a substitute for dependent care. Tele-workers will not usually be available during working hours to provide dependent care.

Attachment A

Associated legislation, regulation and procedures2.

  • Agency Collective Agreements (and other individual agency-based requirements)
  • Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth)
  • Disability Services Act 1986 (Cth)
  • Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth)
  • Australian Human Rights Commission Act 1986 (Cth)
  • Information Security Manual (ISM) 2009 Section 6
  • Occupational Health and Safety (Commonwealth Employment Act 1991 (Cth) (OHS Act), Section 16(1)
  • Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)
  • Protective Security Manual (PSM) 2007 Part “H”
  • Public Service Act 1999 (Cth)
  • Safety, Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 1988 (Cth)
  • Superannuation Act 1990 (Cth)
  • Taxation Administration Act1953 (Cth)
  • Workers Compensation Act 1987 (NSW)
  • Work Safety Act 2008 (ACT)

2 State/Commonwealth legislation (liability and insurance) should also be taken into consideration.

Attachment B

Definitions

APS ICT employee
APS ICT professionals that perform analytical, conceptual and practical tasks, which support the efficient and secure provision of information and communication technology (ICT) services to government.
Campus
The buildings & grounds of a complex (industrial park or military establishment).
Day Extender
Employees that may regularly work a standard day(s) at the office and then may log in from a secure home office to complete work that could not be undertaken during the normal day. Such work patterns for the same employer when done on a repeated basis (i.e. not ad hoc) would qualify as tele-working.
Dependent Care
Care for a child, frail older person or someone with a disability or chronic illness.
Regional
Refers to any area outside of Canberra and the ACT.
Tele-centre
A location separate to the employee’s home and remote from the agency’s normal business premises that provides access to an office environment. These facilities may be provided on an agency specific or shared basis.
Tele-work
Paid work conducted away from an organisation’s physical offices, but that requires at least periodic connection to the employer’s computer network.
Tele-worker
An employee or contractor undertaking tele-work.

From: Whole-of-Government Tele-working Policy for ICT Staff, AGIMO, 17 December 2009 (converted from the PDF version.

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Monday, November 02, 2009

Government web guide blog

The Australian Government Information Management Office have set up the "Government Web Publishing Guide Review Project Blog". As the name suggests, this is a blog for the project reviewing the government web publishing guidelines. Like many organisations, the Australian Government has struggled to work out how to use blogs. So far the blog is a little cold and impersonal. AGIMO could afford to lighten the tone a little. But at least they have not made the mistake of some politicians who have tried a young hip cool style which sound phoney. AGIMO's previous attempt at consultation on web guidelines was entertaining, but not very useful. AGIMO also asked about the use of PDF.

My notes on website design and e-document management for Australian National University students may be of interest. These use Australian Government examples and have been used for teaching public servants and staff of companies contracted to the government since 2000. This year was the last I will be giving conventional lectures for, having decided that flexible learning would be better.

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Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Towards Government 2.0: An Issues Paper

Last week I attended a round table and a public meeting of the Government 2.0 Task Force. This was a frustrating process and I had difficulty understanding what the task force was trying to do and how they were trying to do it. The Task force has a web site, but this is in the format of a blog, making it difficult to read.

The task force also has an issues paper "Towards Government 2.0: An Issues Paper", which is also on the blog and so difficult to read. However, as this is an important issue, I decided to make an effort to work out what was intended. The task force provided the paper in PDF and several word processing formats. What they did not do, was provided a simply formatted HTML format version. So I have converted one of the word processing versions of the report to HTML and run it through HTML tidy to strip off extraneous formatting.

Towards Government 2.0: An Issues Paper

Issued by the Government 2.0 Taskforce 23 July 2009

Creative Commons: some rights reserved

Towards Government 2.0: an Issues Paper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license, Australian version 2.51. ...

Government 2.0 Issues Paper

How you should use this Issues Paper

We want to hear the arguments, information and stories that you have to tell us. The rest of this document is simply our way of helping you do that. It is not a template that you should feel obliged to follow, though we hope that this paper helps. There may be questions you wish to address that are not here, just as there may be questions we have raised you do not wish to address.

Also, please note, our focus in this Issues Paper is on your making a written submission. You can find details about how to make a submission at Appendix 1. We also offer the option to make online submissions through our Consultation page at http://gov2.net.au/consultation.

As you may be aware, there are other channels by which you can communicate with us. You can comment on our blog at >http://gov2.net.au and members of both the Taskforce and its secretariat are attending various conferences and other activities where Government 2.0 will be discussed. You are welcome to attend.

You can provide the Taskforce with feedback at any time, for instance through our blog, but we cannot promise to consider submissions on this paper which we receive after start of business Monday 24 August 2009.

The Taskforce would like to thank those people, both from Australia and offshore, who contributed to this Issues Paper both by making comments on our blog and by making specific comments on this Issues Paper when it was issued in "Beta" format a few days before finalisation.

Our Job

The Taskforce is charged with finding ways of accelerating the development of Government 2.0 to help government consult, and where possible actively collaborate with the community, to open up government and to maximise access to publicly funded information through the use of Web 2.0 techniques. We will do this with recommendations for government policy and also by funding projects which offer promise in accelerating the coming of Government 2.0.

The Taskforce will be looking at the use of Web 2.0 both within government as well as in the government/public interface.

The Terms of Reference of the Taskforce are at Appendix 2.

Why Government 2.0?

The aim of Government 2.0 is to make government information more accessible and useable, to make government more consultative, participatory and transparent, to build a culture of online innovation, and to promote collaboration across agencies in online and information initiatives.

There are obvious benefits in moving in this direction to support, complement and strengthen existing engagement and consultation practices. Online engagement means citizens should be able to collaborate more readily with government and each other in developing and considering new policy ideas. It can give citizens greater insight into the policy making process and greater appreciation of the complexities of policy decisions. It makes possible an ongoing conversation amongst all who wish to participate in considering the effectiveness of existing government programs, laws and regulations and the scope for improvement. Government can use collaborative technologies to draw on the skills, knowledge and resources of the general community when developing policies or delivering services. Government agencies can receive feedback more rapidly, from more people at less cost. This in turn provides an opportunity for government to improve the way it delivers services to citizens.

How will we achieve Government 2.0?

Governments around the world and certainly our own governments have been relatively good at seizing many of the opportunities provided in the first incarnation of the internet, now often called Web 1.0, that is the use of the internet as a platform to distribute public material and solicit information from stakeholders by way of online "feedback forms". Indeed in 2008 the internet became the most common way citizens last made contact with government3.

However a range of possibilities are emerging on the internet which have been dubbed Web 2.0. The revolutionary potential of Web 2.0 is apparent in websites like Google, Flickr, Facebook and Wikipedia. The central theme of Web 2.0 is moving away from point to point communications and towards many to many communication and collaboration.

There is a buzz of Web 2.0 in the community and amongst enthusiasts who post to blogs and sites like Flickr and join online discussions. Governments across Australia have taken some interest in the applications of Web 2.0 to government. However compared with the speed of adoption of Web 2.0 tools and modes of operating in some quarters, progress in embracing Web 2.0 within government has been modest.

A comment from our Beta consultation:

This comes down to a fundamental view of what Government is for.

If one is of the view that the purpose of Government is to shape society into some kind of ideal, where everyone is on the same page working to some kind of utopian goal, then Web2.0 has very little to offer. In that world view, the Government has already worked out what it"s going to do and the job of the citizen is to either help it get there (usually by means of constructive "submissions", but only when "consulted") or get out of the way and let the Government do its thing.

If one is of the view that the role of the Government is to act as a kind of social lubricant to enable citizens to employ their own ideals in furtherance of their own goals, then that"s where Web2.0 is strong. Enabling that outcome requires the Government to be part of the conversation, so that it can see where obstacles are and apply its resources appropriately to smoothing the way for citizens without creating more problems than it solves. Government can be a remarkably blunt instrument, which needs to be wielded with care.

I suspect that the slowness of Web2.0 adoption comes from the fact that those of us who support this initiative are in the latter mindset, while much of the Government and its accompanying bureaucracy are in the former mindset.

Resolving this schism is, IMHO, one of the paramount challenges of Government 2.0.

Mark Newton

Key Questions

On public sector information

How can we build a culture within government which favours the disclosure of public sector information?

What government information should be more freely available and what might be made of it?

On digital engagement

What are the major obstacles to fostering a culture of online engagement within government and how can they be tackled?

How can government capture the imagination of citizens to encourage participation in policy development and collaboration between citizens and government?

A comment from our Beta consultation:

The primary obstacles that emerge in our research on this are very clear, they include:

i) there is an inherent culture of risk aversion within government;

ii) failing to integrate online engagement fully into the policy cycle means that people see little point in becoming engaged;

iii) within government, engagement happens at too low a level; people want to see senior policy officials and ministers involved before they believe it has value; and

iv) using the wrong kind of engagement tool; it"s not about fashion, it"s about choosing the right tool for the policy stage and audience.

Andy Williamson

Introduction

A number of reviews and processes have pointed to the importance of greater dissemination and reuse of public sector information and greater online engagement with citizens/between governments/between governments and citizens. At the Australian Government level, for example, these include the Cutler Review into Innovation4, and the Gershon Review into ICT use and management5. Some State governments have also been making important strides. Most recently the Victorian Government has released its Report of the Economic Development and Infrastructure Committee on the Inquiry into Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information and Data, Parliamentary Paper No. 198 Session 2006-2009, June 2009.6

Proposed legislative change, including proposals for the establishment of an Office of the Information Commissioner and amendments to Freedom of Information legislation to impose a publication scheme on all agencies underpin an agenda of greater public access to government information.

The proposed Office of the Information Commissioner will incorporate the existing Office of the Privacy Commissioner. Handling privacy well is important to generating the trust and confidence in the community necessary to optimise community engagement in Web 2.0 initiatives.

Many government agencies are currently involved in aspects of information policy development. Many are also exploring the use of new tools and techniques to improve the way they work. The Taskforce seeks to build on this work and to accelerate this process of change to allow more open access to, and use of, the information created and/or funded by government. Equally important, the Taskforce will explore the issue of effective consultation, engagement and collaboration with citizens. This work will inform the framework for an Information Policy that can be applied across the Australian Government.

In this paper we elaborate on issues relating to public sector information. We have covered these at greater length than other issues under reference because there has been greater policy development in this area compared with innovation and online engagement. The relatively smaller space devoted to the latter themes in this Issues Paper does not signal that we view them as being of lesser importance.

OECD Principles for public sector information

In April 2008 the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Council, adopted the Recommendation of the OECD Council for enhanced access and more effective use of public sector information.7 (Australia is a member of the OECD and was a participant in and a signatory to the Recommendation.) It recommends that member countries "in establishing or reviewing their policies regarding access and use of public sector information...take due account of and implement the following principles, which provide a general framework for the wider and more effective use of public sector information and content and the generation of new uses from it."

The Taskforce acknowledges these principles and intends to use them as a starting point for that part of our work relating to public sector information. Our focus then becomes how we realise those principles as fully as possible in the practical operations of government.

  1. Openness. Maximising the availability of public sector information for use and re-use based upon presumption of openness as the default rule to facilitate access and re-use. Developing a regime of access principles or assuming openness in public sector information as a default rule wherever possible no matter what the model of funding is for the development and maintenance of the information. Defining grounds of refusal or limitations, such as for protection of national security interests, personal privacy, preservation of private interests for example where protected by copyright, or the application of national access legislation and rules.

  2. Access and transparent conditions for re-use. Encouraging broad non-discriminatory competitive access and conditions for re-use of public sector information, eliminating exclusive arrangements, and removing unnecessary restrictions on the ways in which it can be accessed, used, re-used, combined or shared, so that in principle all accessible information would be open to re-use by all. Improving access to information over the Internet and in electronic form. Making available and developing automated on-line licensing systems covering re-use in those cases where licensing is applied, taking into account the copyright principle below.

  3. Asset lists. Strengthening awareness of what public sector information is available for access and re-use. This could take the form of information asset lists and inventories, preferably published on-line, as well as clear presentation of conditions to access and re-use at access points to the information.

  4. Quality. Ensuring methodical data collection and curation practices to enhance quality and reliability including through cooperation of various government bodies involved in the creation, collection, processing, storing and distribution of public sector information.

  5. Integrity. Maximising the integrity and availability of information through the use of best practices in information management. Developing and implementing appropriate safeguards to protect information from unauthorised modification or from intentional or unintentional denial of authorised access to information.

  6. New technologies and long-term preservation. Improving interoperable archiving, search and retrieval technologies and related research including research on improving access and availability of public sector information in multiple languages, and ensuring development of the necessary related skills. Addressing technological obsolescence and challenges of long term preservation and access. Finding new ways for the digitisation of existing public sector information and content, the development of born-digital public sector information products and data, and the implementation of cultural digitisation projects (public broadcasters, digital libraries, museums, etc.) where market mechanisms do not foster effective digitisation.

  7. Copyright. Intellectual property rights should be respected. There is a wide range of ways to deal with copyrights on public sector information, ranging from governments or private entities holding copyrights, to public sector information being copyright-free. Exercising copyright in ways that facilitate re-use (including waiving copyright and creating mechanisms that facilitate waiving of copyright where copyright owners are willing and able to do so, and developing mechanisms to deal with orphan works), and where copyright holders are in agreement, developing simple mechanisms to encourage wider access and use (including simple and effective licensing arrangements), and encouraging institutions and government agencies that fund works from outside sources to find ways to make these works widely accessible to the public.

  8. Pricing. When public sector information is not provided free of charge, pricing public sector information transparently and consistently within and, as far as possible, across different public sector organisations so that it facilitates access and re-use and ensures competition. Where possible, costs charged to any user should not exceed marginal costs of maintenance and distribution, and in special cases extra costs for example of digitisation. Basing any higher pricing on clearly expressed policy grounds.

  9. Competition. Ensuring that pricing strategies take into account considerations of unfair competition in situations where both public and business users provide value added services. Pursuing competitive neutrality, equality and timeliness of access where there is potential for cross-subsidisation from other government monopoly activities or reduced charges on government activities. Requiring public bodies to treat their own downstream/value-added activities on the same basis as their competitors for comparable purposes, including pricing. Particular attention should be paid to single sources of information resources. Promoting non-exclusive arrangements for disseminating information so that public sector information is open to all possible users and re-users on non-exclusive terms.

  10. Redress mechanisms: Providing appropriate transparent complaints and appeals processes.

  11. Public private partnerships. Facilitating public-private partnerships where appropriate and feasible in making public sector information available, for example by finding creative ways to finance the costs of digitisation, while increasing access and re-use rights of third parties.

  12. International access and use. Seeking greater consistency in access regimes and administration to facilitate cross-border use and implementing other measures to improve cross-border interoperability, including in situations where there have been restrictions on non-public users. Supporting international co-operation and co-ordination for commercial re-use and non-commercial use. Avoiding fragmentation and promote greater interoperability and facilitate sharing and comparisons of national and international datasets. Striving for interoperability and compatible and widely used common formats.

  13. Best practices. Encouraging the wide sharing of best practices and exchange of information on enhanced implementation, educating users and re-users, building institutional capacity and practical measures for promoting re-use, cost and pricing models, copyright handling, monitoring performance and compliance, and their wider impacts on innovation, entrepreneurship, economic growth and social effects.

Structure of paper

The remainder of this paper discusses OECD principles and additional principles as they relate to online innovation and engagement.

  • Principles for openness and access (OECD principles 1-3, 6, 10)

  • Principles for quality and integrity of information (OECD Principles 4 and 5.)

  • Principles to maximise efficiency in production and distribution of information (OECD principles 7-9, 11-13)8

  • Maximising the potential of Government 2.0

Principles for openness and access

Open access to public sector information9 is generally agreed to be beneficial to our economy and society and to be the preferred approach. By openness and access, we refer to the making available of appropriate categories of public sector information on terms and in formats that permit and enable use and reuse of that information by any member of the public. However, we recognise that there are limits to this principle of open access, namely to respect privacy, confidentiality, security and possibly cost recovery concerns.

For the purposes of this issues paper public sector information is taken to exclude personal information that would not be available for publication or reuse under Australian privacy laws, or other legislation. It might include such information if it were adequately transformed to address any concern, for instance by anonymising it.

Another issue is how widely policies to optimise the openness of public sector information should apply across government. The recent Victorian Parliamentary inquiry proposed that public sector information policy should apply to government departments only, at least for an initial period, although it suggested that it may be appropriate to expand this coverage over time. We would be interested to hear arguments for and against restrictive and more expansive application of policies to optimise the openness of public sector information and, where a broader definition is supported, how this might relate to information that is commercially sensitive.

Question 1:
How widely should policy to optimise the openness of public sector information be applied? Should it be applied beyond government departments and, if so, to which bodies, for instance government business enterprises or statutory authorities?

Openness (OECD principle 1)

The OECD recommends that the presumption of openness should be the default rule, and this has been backed by recent moves in the Australian Government. Proposed changes to the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (FOI Act) aim to make it easier to obtain documents under FOI legislation, in part by emphasising the presumption of openness. FOI Act changes also aim to encourage the release of information through a publication scheme and otherwise outside that Act. Proposed changes to the Archives Act 1983 bring forward the time at which government records come available under that Act from 30 to 20 years. These changes are backed by the proposed creation of an Information Commissioner and Freedom of Information Commissioner.

These legislative changes are a significant move in the direction of accessibility of government information.

One of the major barriers to achieving greater accessibility has been the lack of a pro-disclosure culture within government. Privacy, national security and confidentiality issues will properly prevent the release of some information, but this should not inhibit the release of other non-sensitive government information.

Question 2:
What are the ways in which we build a culture within government which favours the disclosure of public sector information? What specific barriers exist that would restrict or complicate this and how should they be dealt with?

Question 3:
What government information would you like to see made more freely available?

Question 4:
What are the possible privacy, security, confidentiality or other implications that might arise in making public sector information available? What options are there for mitigating any potential risks?

A comment from our Beta consultation

I believe that Question 2 is one of the most important problems we face in adoption of this goal. Broad cultural change is required across government that encourages innovation whilst providing a safety-net for those who try and fail. Leadership from the highest levels and generational change is required to make this a reality. The key is not to expect too much too soon as transparency is a terrifying concept for most government agencies and their officers.

All of the technical, legal and logistical problems will be solvable, but worthless without real cultural change at all levels of government.

David Heacock

Access and transparent conditions for re-use (OECD principle 2)

Government agencies currently make a large amount of information available on their websites, and much more could be made available freely on the internet. However, technological, copyright and licensing issues tend to restrict the way that this information can be made available and used by the public.

Making government information accessible online, particularly in standard formats such as XML, CSV, ODF, RDF or RDFa etc allows those outside government, whether they are citizens, firms or third sector organisations, to combine, present and analyse this information in different ways, creating both public and private benefits.

Question 5:
What is needed to make the large volume of public sector information (a) searchable and (b) useable? And in each case, what do we do about legacy information in agencies? How might the licensing of on-line information be improved to facilitate greater re-use where appropriate?

The Semantic Web

The Semantic Web is a series of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards that provides a framework to describe information about data. This information is called metadata. Providing sets of raw data without accompanying context may limit the ability of people to meaningfully re-use any information provided. For example, what does the data element "60" represent? Is it someone"s age? A speed limit? When was the information collected? By whom? What are the units of measurement?

Providing metadata in a standardised format also facilitates a precise search. For example, "What are the Commonwealth import duties for a lathe purchased from Germany?"

In Australia the Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) Metadata Standard10 (AS 5044) has been endorsed by all Australian Governments as the standard for describing government resources (information and services) to support their discovery in a Web environment. AGLS is based on and extends the international resource discovery metadata standard, the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set. AGLS metadata can be expressed using RDF (Resource Description Framework) syntax and modelling, which is one of the recommendations of the Semantic Web.

There are other relevant metadata standards as well for things like rights management, geospatial data, recordkeeping, digital preservation, etc, all of which can potentially be useful in a semantic web environment, but discovery is the key requirement for which you need standardised metadata for the Semantic Web to work.

There are of course costs associated with marking up data with semantic annotations. These costs increase with the degree of metadata provided for each element. A difficult-to-answer issue what be at what point do the costs of providing extra information exceed the benefits?

Ensuring discoverability - asset lists (OECD principle 3)

How could information be made more accessible?

Question 6:
How does government ensure that people, business, industry and other potential users of government information know about, and can readily find, information they may want to use, for example, the use of a consolidated directory or repository for public sector information?

New technologies and long-term preservation (OECD principle 6)

Publication in proprietary formats can represent a barrier to participation for citizens if the owner of intellectual property in the standard refuses to make it freely available. In addition, a requirement for government to maintain information in multiple formats represents a cost to government.

Some national and sub-national governments have mandated that all information must be accessible and stored in formats that are publicly open standards. Thus such formats like Open Document Formats (ODF) have been preferred to proprietary formats such as DOC.

Question 7:
Should governments mandate that information should be only kept and stored in open and publicly documented standards? Could such a stipulation raise costs or reduce flexibility?

It should be possible to share the benefits and knowledge gained from online and information initiatives across government. However, this largely depends on the interoperability of information and business architectures between government agencies and between them and their users.

Interoperability in turn depends on a range of factors including the adoption of standards and definitions for recording information to enable it to be shared.

Question 8:
What approaches should the Government use to allow information to be easily shared?

In addition, there are many online and information initiatives being trialled across government agencies. A variety of online tools, technologies and platforms are being tested and used. In the Web 2.0 sphere, these include the use by agencies of blogs, YouTube, Flickr and Facebook.

Some additional principles outlined in an exploration of the issues relating to the use of Web 2.0 by Tim O"Reilly11 include the following:

  • Support lightweight programming models that allow for loosely coupled systems

  • Cooperate, Don"t Control

  • Design for hackability and remixability

  • Network Effects by Default

  • The Perpetual Beta

Question 9:
How can the initiatives and ideas of agencies be harnessed for the benefit of agencies across government? How can duplication of effort be avoided?

Data.gov

The US Government has recently established the Data.gov website to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.

Data.gov includes searchable data catalogues providing access to data in three ways: through the "raw" data catalogue, the tool catalogue and the geo-data catalogue. The raw data and the Geo-data catalogues are provided in CSV, XML, KML or SHP formats. The Tools Catalogue includes pre-packaged data sets such as look-up tables.

The stated goal of Data.gov is to improve access to Federal data and expand creative use of those data beyond the walls of government by encouraging innovative ideas (e.g., web applications). Another objective is to make government more transparent by creating an unprecedented level of openness.

Redress mechanisms (OECD principle 10)

To ensure these principles are implemented sensibly we need effective mechanisms for hearing complaints about and redressing government"s inaction in the release of information.

Conversely, making government information available online may increase the risk of unintentional or inappropriate release of information that may damage an individual or business. If that information is then re-used, it may lead to proliferation of the harm.

Formal complaints and appeals processes already apply across the Australian Government. Depending on the specific circumstances, a person has redress, for example, to appeal mechanisms in the FOI Act, the complaints mechanisms in the Ombudsman Act 1976 or Privacy Act 1988, or judicial mechanisms in the Administration Decisions (Judicial Review) Act 1977.

Question 10:
Are these complaints and appeals processes sufficient? Are additional processes needed for government as it engages in the Web 2.0 world?

Principles for quality and integrity of information

Quality and integrity (OECD principles 4 and 5)

All government agencies are engaged in the creation and collection of information and government"s online engagement with citizens is subject to the same information laws, such as the Freedom of Information Act 1982, the Archives Act 1983 and the Privacy Act 1988, as are the records of other interactions with citizens. The fundamental importance of good recordkeeping to ensure transparent and accountable government has been widely recognised, as has the part played by failures in recordkeeping in many inquiries and audit reports.

Question 11:
What should government do to foster a culture of compliance with information and records management policies and best practice?

Question 12:
What recordkeeping challenges are posed by both the re-use of government information, and in the mechanisms of development of government policy and practice through interactive citizen engagement?

There is rich potential in this area for perverse outcomes. Agencies frequently cite concerns about the integrity of their information as a reason for their reluctance to release it. And the perfect can be the enemy of the good. On the one hand mandating the release of information might be one way of ensuring that agencies have an incentive to maintain its quality and integrity. On the other hand the release of some information (with an appropriate disclaimer as to quality) may often, but not necessarily always, be better than not releasing it at all.

Question 13:
How does government manage the costs and risks of publication of inaccurate information?

An important aspect of quality (and integrity) is the provision of information ("metadata") that describes the quality of information, so that users can determine whether it is "fit for purpose" in terms of their proposed use of the information. For example, knowing the source of the information, the checks the information has been subject to, and any other factors that might affect accuracy, can help users know how the information might be used appropriately and equally important, the hazards in using it improperly.

Users may be able to interact with government information providers to better understand the information (and therefore increase the likelihood that the information will be used appropriately) or to express concerns about aspects of the information.

Citizens expect government information to be of high quality and integrity but will also have an expectation of the responsiveness of government to deliver information.

Timeliness

Timeliness is a particularly important matter. From at least the late 1970s the ICT revolution has been driven by firms that have made felicitous tradeoffs between the quality of their offering and getting their product to market. Too early and the market could turn against a product for the number of bugs and other errors which frustrate users. Too late and the market has moved on.

This was the case even before "Web 1.0" as summarised in Steve Jobs" arresting comment "True genius ships". But it is particularly so in the world of Web 2.0 where it is now quite normal to provide users with comprehensive access to beta products and indeed to leave them designated as beta products for many years. Gmail only recently moved out of beta after five years as a mainstream consumer product.

The issue raises its head particularly in the area of data where government agencies delay publication to ensure data integrity anxious either from a natural desire to do their job properly, or to minimise risk, or to meet standards internally mandated within government. In the meantime, as we saw in the case of the Victorian fires, valuable information however imperfect goes unpublished.

Question 14:
What criteria might we adopt in ensuring that agencies make data available in a reasonable time-frame? (And how might we define a "reasonable time-frame"?)

Question 15:
It often takes quite some time to compile and create consistent and reliable data - especially for large data sets. When is it appropriate to release limited and possibly less accurate data and where is it appropriate to wait for higher quality and more extensive data? Where various principles are in some tension with each other, for instance quality and cost or timeliness, how should trade-offs be made?

The National Toilet Map

As part of the National Continence Management Strategy, the Australian Government funded the development of the National Toilet Map website12 . The website shows the location of more than 14,000 public and private public toilet facilities across Australia. Details can also be found along major travel routes and for shorter journeys as well. Useful information is provided about each toilet, such as location, opening hours, availability of baby change rooms, accessibility for people with disabilities and the details of other nearby toilets.

A number of organisations, commercial and not-for-profit, large and small, have requested access to the data in order to provide a range of innovative services. To date, such access has not been granted. The wider availability of this information, through sources other than the National Toilet Map website, appears to promote the objectives of the National Continence Management Strategy and is consistent with the OECD principles enunciated earlier in this Issues Paper.

Principles to maximise efficiency in production and distribution of information

Intellectual property (OECD principle 7)

It is hoped that, through strategic management of copyright and new Web 2.0 licensing tools like Creative Commons13 and similar open licensing mechanisms for database material, we can more easily provide the necessary permission to promote better access to and reuse of public sector information. In the short term this means using current copyright law and practice to do a better job and in the longer term assessing the appropriateness of existing copyright law for a digital environment and any changes that should be made to address problems.

Question 16:
What can we do to better promote and co-ordinate initiatives in this area? How can we draw key departments together?

Question 17:
What sort of public sector information should be released under what form of copyright license? When should government continue to utilise its intellectual property rights?

Apps for Democracy Competition

The 2008 Apps for Democracy14 competition was an initiative of the District of Columbia"s Office of the Chief Information Officer. The competition involved members of the public making an application using data from the 277 datasets made available by the District of Columbia.

There was a total of $US20,000 in prize money on offer, spread over 60 cash prizes ranging from $US100 to $US2000. The competition ran for 30 days and received 47 entries including web, Facebook and iPhone applications. Entries were divided into two categories: entries by professional agencies, and "indie" entries by individuals and groups of individuals.

Entries included a large number of geospatial mash-up applications making use of available datasets. The competition was viewed as an unqualified success by the D.C. government, as it cost $US50,000 to run, but provided a claimed $US2.6 million in value to the city through the created applications.

Pricing and Competition (OECD principles 8-9)

There is currently a mixed approach across government to the pricing of information. In the electronic world, the marginal costs of providing information are lower than in a paper-based environment, which could suggest that different pricing approaches might be appropriate. Furthermore, information is often considered as a "public good", which also might impact on thinking about appropriate pricing policies.

Question 18:
When should agencies charge for access to information? Should agencies charge when they are providing value-added services? What might constitute "value added services" (eg customisation of information)? In what circumstances should agencies be able to recover the costs of obtaining the information or providing access? A common model in the private sector is "freemium" distribution whereby many, often most, users are supplied with some product or service for free whilst others pay for use in large scale commercial enterprise (for instance AVG anti-virus) or for some premium product (for instance Word Web). Are there similar models for public sector information and/or do they merit further consideration?

A comment from our Beta consultation:

Pricing should also take into account the economic value of information if released.

There are many cases where there is significant positive economic or social value in making data freely available - such as the sharing of emergency data between government agencies (which currently is often costed at a level that discourages usage and therefore reduces the effectiveness of emergency responses).

Charging for maintenance and distribution costs can cost significantly more in lost economic or social benefit than it achieves in cost recovery.

Craig Thomler

Public private partnerships (OECD principle 11)

Public-private partnerships might provide a way to make public sector information more readily available, for example by financing the costs of digitisation.

Question 19:
How can government take advantage of public private partnerships to increase access to public sector information without unduly constraining opportunities for third parties to use and reuse the information?

International access and use (OECD principle 12)

Many government agencies are involved in cooperative international programs and liaison. There are advantages to government in guiding interoperability and compatibility in dataset formats so as to ensure the most efficient and effective use of information.

Question 20:
What international activities relevant to this Taskforce should the Taskforce be considering and what needs to be done to improve cross-border use and interoperability of information?

Best practice (OECD principle 13)

Question 21:
How can best practice be facilitated, identified, rewarded, and further propagated?

Maximising the potential of Government 2.0

Fostering more consultative and collaborative online engagement in Government

There are obvious benefits to government in using collaborative technologies to draw on the skills, knowledge and resources of the general community when developing policies or delivering services. In many situations, much of the expertise, experience and deep knowledge that governments need to make good decisions about increasingly complex or "wicked" problems exists outside government. New possibilities are emerging to link highly distributed networks of knowledge and expertise quickly and securely to focus on shared opportunities or problems to be solved.

In harnessing the opportunities arising from Web 2.0 technologies there is a potential for individuals to hesitate or avoid contributing where they sense that the technology isn"t "safe". For example, people may fear that information about them will fall out of their control or they may avoid situations where they have to fully identify themselves before engaging with collaborative technologies. In this regard, embedding good privacy practices into collaborative technologies will play an important role in garnering the trust and confidence of individuals who wish to participate.

But beyond that, online engagement creates at least the potential to "democratise" public administration and policy development by offering a much richer mix of spaces in which people can talk, listen, debate, argue and contribute their ideas and aspirations to the public conversation.

Moderated online engagement offers the potential for people to learn from each other and to constructively find common ground.

Question 22:
Have you engaged with the Australian government via a Web 2.0 channel? Which one/s? If so, why and what was your experience? If not, why not? What can be improved?

Go to where the people are

A major finding of the UK Power of Information reports is that Government consultation efforts can be greatly enhanced by consulting with existing interest groups in their online communities, such as netmums.com. A similar approach involves employing social networks and existing forums and blogs to target a different audience than would normally respond to a traditional government consultation. In Australia a recent example of this was the use of the Open Forum blog by Father Frank Brennan15, the Chair of the Human Rights Consultative Committee to engage netizens on questions relating to the consultation.

Different combinations of public interaction methods suit different requirements and different audiences.

Increasingly agencies are combining traditional modes of consultation with Web 2.0 features and applications to enhance the visibility, promotion and interactivity of Government online consultation efforts. These include:

  • promoting a consultation on social networks such as Facebook

  • blogs

  • using videos either hosted on the consultation site or on a third-party site such as YouTube

  • including RSS feeds on the consultation site

A comment from our Beta consultation:

Having responded to one consultation, a user may be more likely to respond to another consultation. A related consultation should be easily visible at the point of completion or commencement of a user"s response.

"Like this consultation? If you"re interested, we"d also like your feedback on consultation X!" ...

Gordon Grace

Inclusion

The benefits of online engagement will be realised best if as wide a range of citizens as possible are involved. However, some people may be uncomfortable with this type of interaction with government.

Question 23: How can government capture the imagination of citizens to encourage participation in policy development and collaboration between citizens and government?

Question 24: What sort of privacy issues might dissuade individuals from engaging with government via collaborative technologies? What sort of steps can we take to ensure that personal information is used appropriately? What options are there for mitigating any potential privacy risks?

Government is subject to additional obligations which seek to ensure that all levels of our community are able to access its services, whether online or offline. For online engagement, government must consider those citizens who are excluded for various reasons, e.g. lack of access to technology, disability, health barriers, lack of computer-literacy, lack of English, lack of literacy, etc. Many of these issues are currently not adequately addressed by commercially available and popular online platforms.

Governments have generally mandated minimum accessibility standards which can create obstacles to using some of the leading Web 2.0 platforms where they do not conform with those standards.

Question 25:
How can government make it easier for people to engage on policy and other issues and make sure the opportunities are as open and accessible as possible?

Question 26:
What trade-offs must be considered between government using commercially available and popular online platforms and ensuring inclusive participation with all members of society and how should those tradeoffs be made?

Privacy

It is significant that the Government is in the process of introducing legislation that proposes to incorporate the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, together with a Freedom of Information Commissioner, in a proposed Office of the Information Commissioner. These initiatives illustrate the complex relationship and tension between protecting the privacy of individuals and opening access to public sector information.

A great deal of public sector information (PSI) is not on its face "personal information" as defined in the Privacy Act 1988 (Privacy Act). On the other hand there can still be privacy issues or risks associated with open access to PSI. Information from which only name and address has been removed, may still fall under the definition of "personal information," as an individual"s identity may still be reasonably ascertainable from the information.

Re-identification of personal information is usually context-sensitive. An organisation"s capacity to re-identify data may depend critically on its particular resources, or changing priorities. Factors which may impact on the capacity for data to be re-identified include available data, new technologies, resources, and social or political imperatives for access to new or different types of data. Combining unrelated datasets, now or in the future, may create the environment for more intrusive profiling, data-linking or data-matching of individuals" personal information.

There are also privacy risks and issues relating to digital engagement, particularly around moderation, consent to publish and anonymity. For example, in respect to post-moderation, there is the risk that a participant may identify and provide information about another individual, which is published without that individual"s knowledge or consent. This may constitute a breach of privacy by the relevant agency and provide grounds for a complaint to the Privacy Commissioner by the individual whose personal information has been disclosed. This risk is not different in kind to existing risks, but the immediacy and ubiquity of the internet increases its likelihood considerably.

Online engagement challenges for Government

Australian Government efforts in online engagement have been crafted to comply with the Australian Public Service values, set out in section 10 of the Public Service Act 1999. These require that public servants to act in an apolitical, impartial and professional way.

The Australian Public Service Commission also recently released interim protocols for online media participation by public servants16. There are a number of other legislative restrictions on what information can be disclosed by public servants. This has an impact on how free government agencies and public servants are to experiment with online consultation, since agency websites must be impartial and apolitical. This may affect the extent to which they can enter into meaningful discussion with the public.

Question 27:
How can public servants comply with the APS values17 and other protocols whilst still participating in online engagement? Should existing rules including legislation be changed and/or adapted to facilitate greater online engagement?

Moderation

Government collaborative websites such as blogs generally require moderation. This involves time and labour cost. Third-party moderation tools and services are available. The process of moderation should be transparent, with the principles and parameters of the editorial control specified. This is good practice in all online jurisdictions.

Online consultations seeking input from the public can be at risk of agenda hijacking and the derailment of discussion although other forms of engagement are not immune from such possibilities. Thus for instance when the Obama Administration held online consultations on what the new Administration"s new priorities should be, the legalisation of marijuana was voted the most important priority. More recently one of the most prominent priorities has been the release of Barack Obama"s birth certificate.

While it is appropriate that views about which people feel strongly are aired, it is also important for there to be an ability to "agree to disagree" and get on with the process of using the strengths of online engagement to improve policy development without being diverted by the attention given to symbolic issues or to lowest common denominators in policy.

Question 28:
How does government provide sufficient room for personal debate and passionate dissent but still ensure appropriate levels of moderation in online forums? Should moderation be "outsourced" and if so in what circumstances and how? How might volunteers from the commenting community be selected to moderate?

A comment from our Beta consultation:

... If legalization of marijuana comes out of Obama"s online consultations, perhaps he should have a legalization-of-marijuana policy that stakes out a position on the issue. Personally I couldn"t care less, but if it"s an issue that some folks think is important enough to get organized over, why shouldn"t it be on the agenda? Would it hurt to put out a position paper?

Mark Newton

Fostering a culture of online innovation within government

New collaborative technologies are emerging all the time. These new technologies can improve the efficiencies of Government internally and can also alter and (hopefully) improve external-facing relations, particularly government-citizen engagement.

Innovation challenges for Government

Governments face responsibilities that are not always shared by the private sector or members of the broader community. Their conduct is expected to be above reproach. They are expected to be a trustworthy source of information and/or advice and they face a number of self-imposed obligations to ensure access and equity.

Recognising this, there are a number of potential challenges to Government making effective use of these new collaborative technologies:

  • access to many of these platforms may be blocked or considerably constrained for public service officials

  • the potential of these tools may conflict, in real or imagined ways, with the rules, policies and practices that apply to the public service

  • the greater immediacy, transparency, accountability and informality they introduce into our communications may be directly contrary to the prevailing government practice

  • public servants may be concerned about being "overwhelmed" by the potential volume of activity that might arise from the new collaborative technologies, particularly when there is an expectation that governments will respond to all issues raised by citizens

  • awareness of the new technologies and the opportunities that they offer may delay their adoption.

The use by government of collaborative platforms is a relatively new phenomenon and may require a rethink of applicable rules, policies and practices. It also requires the development of social and online norms in government-citizen relations. As one commentator noted in discussion about one blogging effort by the Australian Government:

"It"s probably worth remembering: as untried as government consultation blogs are at the federal level in Australia, so too are citizens unused to being able to engage with their government in this way. They may be new at it, but so are we - and both sides still have a lot to learn about the other."

Cultural barriers may constrain the adoption of collaborative tools and the newness of the approach may generate trepidation and dissuade uptake within the public sector.

Question 29:
What are the barriers to fostering a culture of online innovation within government? Which of those barriers should be maintained in any Government 2.0 initiatives? Which of those barriers should be removed? How should this be achieved? What different norms can or should apply to Government 2.0 efforts?

Question 30:
To what extent can government assist the uptake of Government 2.0 by centrally providing standard business management guidance and tools to avoid agencies having to "reinvent the wheel" when considering their own online engagement guidelines?

Question 31:
How can government engage with individuals and stakeholders to support the development of innovative policies, programs, practices and service delivery? Are there good examples of where this is happening?

For profit firms often use the rich data they harvest from their existing information assets and their ongoing presence on the web to guide their own innovation, measuring consumer reactions to many small scale experiments and optimising operations, for instance the design of a website, in response to this feedback.

Question 32:
To what extent can we promote such an approach in the public sector and are there any examples of emerging practice?

Risk management

It is a cliche that public sector managers - and possibly the Ministers to whom they report -- are risk averse. But often they are not so much risk averse as innovation averse. That is, there is a high "burden of proof" against doing something differently even where it involves relatively low risks.

Sometimes this is because it is simply more comfortable to do things the way they"ve always been done. In other circumstances, some argue that specific professions can be set in their ways. There may be some wisdom in this given the complexity of existing systems and the possibility of unanticipated consequences, particularly where these consequences may be political. These decisions are often heavily influenced by experts.

Question 33:
How can such expertise be governed so as not to unduly stifle innovation?

In comparison to many large commercial enterprises, public sector agencies in the main adopt quite restrictive practices in allowing staff access to Web 2.0 tools, social networking sites and even webmail. Most agencies simply ban access to these sites. One of the reasons often used to justify this position is the need to protect internal IT systems from exposure to threats from the internet. Highly prescriptive and centrally mandated security policies are often rigorously applied. Given the low risk culture of the public sector, it is difficult to see how agencies wishing to enter into the Web 2.0 world will be able to argue that the benefits to citizens, and to the operations of the agency, are of sufficient value to offset an exposure which cannot easily be assessed. Clearly the risks to agencies will vary depending on the nature of their business. It is unlikely that technology alone will solve this challenge.

Question 34:
To what degree is the opportunity for Government agencies to participate in the Web 2.0 world inhibited, or severely compromised, by issues such as security? How might this problem be overcome, in general and by individual agencies, within current legal and policy parameters and how might these parameters be changed to assist in overcoming these problems?

Contractual and procurement issues

The use by government agencies of social networks and Web 2.0 applications and services may raise contractual and procurement issues for governments such as unacceptable indemnity clauses.

The United States Government, through the General Services Administration, negotiated whole of government agreements with Flickr, YouTube and other Web 2.0 providers with waivers of objectionable provisions. Similar agreements with Web 2.0 providers may be needed in Australia.

Proposed Information Commissioner

The Australian Government has proposed legislative reforms with the principal objects of promoting a pro-disclosure culture across the Government and building a stronger foundation for more openness in government. These reforms involve changes to the Freedom of Information Act 1982 and Archives Act 1983 and the establishment of an Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC).18

The functions of the Information Commissioner are set out in Clause 9 of the exposure draft and require the Information Commissioner to report to the Minister on a broad range of policies and practices relating to the administration and management of government information.

This Taskforce, in its Terms of Reference19, has been given the task of identifying policies and frameworks to assist the Information Commissioner (and other agencies) in encouraging the dissemination of government information.

The information commissioner functions set out in the proposed Exposure Draft will obviously encompass issues that touch on questions raised in this Issues Paper. One of these is which aspects of Government information could fall within the purview of the proposed OIC.

These include, but are not limited to, the information management standards, policies and guidelines that are the responsibility of the National Archives, the IT system issues that are the responsibility of the Australian Government Information Management Office and the administration of copyright that is the responsibility of the Attorney-General"s Department.

These areas all have some impact on recommendations the Taskforce might make.

Question 35:
What role could the proposed OIC play in encouraging the development of Government 2.0? Are there practical recommendations the Taskforce might make about how the OIC might best fulfil its functions in relation to optimising the dissemination of Government information?

Appendix 1

Making a Submission: Terms of Engagement

We welcome your written submissions. There is no set format required and submissions need not be formal documents.

Submissions in electronic format are preferred and can be emailed to us at submissions@gov2.net.au.

If that isn"t possible, you can mail them to:

Government 2.0 Taskforce Secretariat
Department of Finance and Deregulation
John Gorton Building
King Edward Terrace
Parkes ACT 2600
AUSTRALIA

We also offer the option to make online submissions through our Consultation page at http://gov2.net.au/consultation.

As a general principle all written submissions will be placed on the Government 2.0 website, as will discussion papers and other material developed as the Taskforce progresses.

Confidential submissions will be accepted from individuals where individuals can argue credibly that publication might compromise their ability to express their view freely. Pseudonymous submissions will also be accepted. Should you make a pseudonymous submission, it may not receive full consideration unless you remain contactable by e-mail should we wish to seek clarification or elaboration.

Please note that any request made under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 for access to any material marked confidential will be determined in accordance with that Act.

Submissions must be received by start of business Monday 24 August 2009.

If you do not want to make a written submission but would still like to give us some feedback, you can communicate with us on our blog at http://gov2.net.au.

Appendix 2

Terms of reference

The Government 2.0 Taskforce ("Taskforce") will advise and assist the government to:

  • make government information more accessible and usable - to establish a pro-disclosure culture around non-sensitive public sector information;

  • make government more consultative, participatory and transparent - to maximise the extent to which government utilises the views, knowledge and resources of the general community;

  • build a culture of online innovation within government - to ensure that government is receptive to the possibilities created by new collaborative technologies and uses them to advance its ambition to continually improve the way it operates;

  • promote collaboration across agencies with respect to online and information initiatives - to ensure that efficiencies, innovations, knowledge and enthusiasm are shared on a platform of open standards; and

  • identify and/or trial initiatives that may achieve or demonstrate how to accomplish the above objectives.

The Taskforce will advise government on structural barriers that prevent, and policies to promote, greater information disclosure, digital innovation and online engagement including the division of responsibilities for, and overall coordination of, these issues within government.

The Taskforce will work with the public, private, cultural and not for profit sectors to fund and develop seed projects that demonstrate the potential of proactive information disclosure and digital engagement for government. More information can be found on the Taskforce"s Project Fund page.

In particular the Taskforce will also identify policies and frameworks to assist the Information Commissioner and other agencies in:

  • developing and managing a whole of government information publication scheme to encourage greater disclosure of public sector information;

  • extending opportunities for the reuse of government information, and considering the terms of that use, to maximise the beneficial flow of that information and facilitate productive applications of government information to the greatest possible extent;

  • encouraging effective online innovation, consultation and engagement by government, including by drawing on the lessons of the government"s online consultation trials and any initiatives undertaken by the Taskforce.

The Taskforce will meet regularly, consulting in an open and transparent manner and use online solutions for its engagement wherever possible.

The Taskforce will provide a final report on its activities to the Minister for Finance and Deregulation and the Cabinet Secretary by the end of 2009. The Taskforce will disband on completion of its final report.

3 Department of Finance and Deregulation 2008, Interacting with Government: Australians' use and satisfaction with e-government services 2008, Department of Finance and Deregulation, Canberra, p. 24: http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/interacting-with-government/03-use-of-govt-services.html#section3_1 or http://tinyurl.com/mkdbxn

8 Note: not all OECD principles are expanded on below as some are much more central to our concerns than others. However the Taskforce still welcomes comment on any or all of the principles.

9 The OECD Council defines public sector information in its Recommendation for enhanced access and more effective use of public sector information as ""information, including information products and services, generated, created, collected, processed, preserved, maintained, disseminated, or funded by or for the Government or public institutionâ€, taking into account the legal requirements and restrictions referred to in the last paragraph of the preamble of this Recommendation."
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/0/27/40826024.pdf [293k]

13 From Wikipedia: "Creative Commons seeks to support the building of a richer public domain by providing an alternative to the automatic "all rights reserved" copyright, dubbed "some rights reserved" i.e. "reasonable, flexible copyright". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_commons

18 An exposure draft of the Information Commissioner Bill 2009 was released by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet earlier in the year. http://www.pmc.gov.au/consultation/foi_reform/index.cfm or http://tinyurl.com/d7ywkt

19 The Terms of Reference of the Taskforce are at Appendix 2

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