Senator Lundy live online from CeBIT Germany

Senator Kate Lundy will be speaking live online from CeBIT Germany at 9:30pm AEDT.

“Connected Worlds” is the main topic at CeBIT 2010, and Senator Lundy will be speaking about how the Australian Government has set the scene through policies such as the National Broadband Network, the Digital Education Revolution and the FoI reforms to put ICT at the heart of social and economic growth.

She will also discuss the Australian Gov 2.0 Taskforce report (launched December last year) which is a practical blueprint for a more open, transparent, participatory and open government. The Senator will discuss the important of open data, citizen-centric services and the collaboration of government with citizens to co-design the government of the future.

She will also discuss important changes to ICT procurement in the Australian government, and some of the opportunities and challenges facing the industry today. ...

ps: Seems a long time since we sat around a cafe table in Canberra, discussing how to put the nation online.

Senator Lundy on Internet Regulation

Senator Kate Lundy has written extensively, and thoughtfully, on the issue of Internet censorship in Australia. I think she is on the right track. This is an issue where you can't please everyone. I had the task of preparing the ACS position on regulation in 1995. My own position is summed up in a talk gave on ABC Radio: "Filtering Porn on the Internet: Imperfect by Necessity".

By Senator Lundy on Internet filtering:

• My thoughts on the Safer Internet Group statement
• My thoughts on the Filter
• Further thoughts on the filter
• Q and A from my thoughts on the internet filter
  

Senator Lundy describes her Public Sphere initiative

A ten minute video "Senator Lundy describes her Public Sphere initiative" is now available. This was made for my students at ANU studying Information Technology in Electronic Commerce COMP3410. For an assignment the students have to work out what metadata is appropriate to support such public discussions and to archive video used in policy making.

Public Sphere uses a mix of blogs, wikis, instant messaging, video and other tools, in different formats on different systems. This is fine for a pilot, but if this approach is to be used routinely for public policy making, then a system which allows easier set-up, use and archiving all of the material (perhaps for hundreds of years) is needed.

Government 2.0 Taskforce - Road Show starts consulting the public on 17 August in Canberra, followed by other locations around Australia, ending in Darwin on 2nd September 2009. The Taskforce has 15 experts chaired by Nicolas Gluin and was announced at Public Sphere 2 (Video & transcript available).

The open source XENA tool ("XML Electronic Normalising of Archives") which National Archives of Australia use can then be modified to convert discussions and video from public policy events into a long term storage formats.

High Bandwidth for Australia Workshop

Senator Kate Lundy is running a workshop "Bandwidth for Australia" on the opportunities and issues around getting high bandwidth Internet in Australia at the Australia National University in Canberra, 7 May 2009. Online Participation is available via Twitter using #publicsphere as the tag. Participants both in the room and remotely can post questions to @katelundy.

The event is being held in the famous Room N101 at the Australian National Unviersity, School of Computer Science. Being a green campus, while there is plenty of broadband , parking for private cars is limited, so consider taking the bus.

I will be giving a brief preview of my talk on how to use social networking and broadband to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, for the ACS Victorian Branch 2009 Conference. Working out how to get the the conference without using a private car has proved an interesting exercise in use of the web.

Opening Australian Government Online

Senator Kate Lundy has a new web site subtitled "Taking Australia forward with openness". The Senator has been a pioneer of Internet use in the Australian Parliament, but has a result has has an assortment of web sites using different technologies. Noted technology evangelist Pia Waugh has now helped the Senator to consolidate all the material into one place. I have suggested adding links to the archived copies of the old sites so they are available as a research resource. No doubt someone at ANU will do a PHD on the evolution of parliamentary web sites (there is a thesis on web censorship lobbying). The Senator is going to run a series of informal technological events starting with one on "The opportunities and issues around getting high bandwidth Internet in Australia", 7 May 2009, at the Australia National University.