Showing posts with label ehealth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ehealth. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 01, 2017

Roundup from GovHack 2017

Starting in a single Canberra venue in 2009, GovHack is now the largest open data hacking competition for government worldwide, with over 3,000 participants, coaches, mentors and organisers across 36 venues around Australia and New Zealand.

Over a 46-hour period participants including coders, creatives, data crunchers and facilitators, redesign and reimagine citizen services and use open data to visualise fresh insights into government decision-making, taking part in a competition with over 80 prizes and a prize pool of over $250,000.

The event is organised and run by volunteers, but GovHack has support from the Australian and New Zealand Governments, all Australian state and territory governments and many local governments across ANZ, as well as a range of corporate sponsors. This was the first year that the Northern Territory became involved with the event.

Many senior public servants drop into the event over the weekend, and have a keen interest in using ideas from GovHack within their agencies.

This year Accenture was the Platinum Sponsor for GovHack, the first time a corporation has taken such a significant interest in the event - a trend I hope continues as these types of event gain steam as a creative way for companies and governments to innovate quickly.

Accenture sponsored two awards, the ‘Into the New’ award for Australia challenged participants to demonstrate innovation and new thinking in all forms. This could be new ways to experience and interact with public data or new approaches to citizen experiences that help citizen and governments journey into the new together. It attracted 138 entrants from around Australia, from a total of 373 projects submitted.

Accenture’s ‘Re:Invention’ award for New Zealand challenged participants to design a citizen experience that builds on something government already does to deliver a more effective and engaging way of interacting. It attracted 12 entrants from Wellington, Auckland and Hamilton, from a total of 66 New Zealand projects submitted.


GovHack by the numbers
While GovHack itself is over for 2017, state award events will be held in August, and an international Red Carpet event for National and International Award winners in October. You can view the closing video from GovHack 2017 here.

All the projects created this year are online in the GovHack Hackerspace, available for inspiration and learning – remaining online to provide hundreds of fresh perspectives on how government can deliver more value to citizens.

you can read more about GovHack 2017 in this LinkedIn post by a mentor, or on Twitter.

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Monday, May 09, 2011

Public Service 2.0 - reflections on Terry Moran's latest speech

The Secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Terry Moran, gave a speech last week to the Graduate School of Government, University of Sydney. Titled Surfing the next wave of reform, his speech discussed the public service's critical role in supporting and enabling government reform and good governance, and what would be expected of the APS into the future.

Without mentioning Government 2.0, Moran's speech touched on many of its elements. He argued that the public service needed to improve how it engaged with citizens - particularly through the use of new tools enabled by technological improvements in IT and communications,

The bedrock of government engagement with citizens is through the institutions of our representative democracy. At its simplest, citizens vote every three years or so to elect Members of Parliament who choose a government to make laws and decisions.

But that alone is far from the extent of the links between citizens and government. Governments will achieve their goals better if they also use other ways to engage with citizens to complement and reinforce our fundamental democratic institutions.

The remarkable advances in information technology and communications over recent decades have changed and expanded citizens’ expectations, but have also given governments much better tools for engaging with citizens.

We need to do much better at this task.

Moran said that the public service had to improve its use of technology in policy and program delivery to service citizen needs,
Second, in implementing and delivering the decisions of Cabinet, we need to do better at designing policies and programs in ways that take full advantage of modern technology and that are designed with flexibility and creativity, to meet citizens’ needs. The NBN will permit a step forward in this area.

And he said that the APS needed to become better at listening to citizens, particularly through the use of modern technology,
Government needs to empower individuals and communities in ways that allow it and public servants to have effective exchanges with citizens.

Perhaps most telling - and most personally exciting to me - Moran said that,
Our processes should allow the community to provide input throughout the policy and service delivery process. Information technology can play a crucial role facilitating communication between citizens and governments.

I understand this as Moran saying that to meet the challenges in the APS's future, the Australian Public Service needs to use appropriate tools and techniques to collaborate with the community throughout the policy and service delivery process, not just consult them at the beginning and deliver to them at the end.

Moran finished with the statement that,
To be successful, the reform agenda will need to embrace the best, frank and honest strategic advice, and it will have been based on the fullest engagement with citizens. I am confident we can meet the challenge.

The proposal put forward by Moran is a vision of a Public Service 2.0, one trained and equipped to embed a citizen-focus into their work, to be strategic (as well as frank and fearless) in their advice to government, to design policies and services that take full advantage of the technology at our disposal, making appropriate use of Government 2.0 tools and techniques to achieve the goals of the duly-elected government.

I believe it is a vision that will serve Australia well.

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Thursday, August 12, 2010

Targeting Gov 2.0 apps development - US government combating child obesity with Apps for Healthy Kids

The mash-up (or Apps) competitions we've seen in Australia thus far have been broad and largely untargeted. Governments have released a bunch of public sector datasets and invited developers to create a bunch of applications related to that data for their jurisdiction, but without a highly specific goal or purpose in mind, other than creating applications that add value to the data.

The US, which leads Australia in this area of Gov 2.0, initially took a similar approach. However it has now moved to a new level - Apps competitions focused on individual campaigns, themes and issues.

One such example is the Apps for Healthy Kids competition which, quoting from its website is,

part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign to end childhood obesity within a generation. Apps for Healthy Kids challenges software developers, game designers, students, and other innovators to develop fun and engaging software tools and games that drive children, especially “tweens” (ages 9-12) – directly or through their parents – to eat better and be more physically active.

The competition, which has received over 90 entries, requires developers to use a specific government dataset of information to develop a game or activity focused on a specific audience and campaign goal.

The prize money, $60,000, is a fraction of what it could cost a government Department to develop this many concepts to production level.

The winning entry will be used by the government for 12 months at no license cost and then reverts to the entrant's control - perhaps to become a saleable product or even be licensed by the government for ongoing use.

Besides the value of the winning application, there is substantial public relations value in holding the competition in the first place. It raises awareness of the issue, engaging people in either creating and voting for entries, or simply supporting the initiative through the 'challenge supporters' mechanism.

This type of targeted crowd sourcing approach has many different potential applications for governments from local through to federal levels. Many different issues and campaigns could provide fertile ground for these types of apps competitions.

Note that despite our current lack of targeted apps competitions, Australia isn't that far behind the US in crowd sourcing. There have been examples of online video competitions, design competitions and other approaches designed to encourage the community to engage with and produce content that can be used for the public good.

Below is the introductory video for Apps for Healthy Kids:

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Thursday, April 01, 2010

Growth of Twitter in Australian governments - 155 accounts

I've conducted a quick review of Australian government Twitter accounts this morning, national, state and local, drawing on lists that others and I have compiled.

With a margin for error (some may have been missed or not be official accounts), I've found that there are about 155 Australian government Twitter accounts registered, 26 Federal, 79 State and 50 Local.

UPDATE: I've added new accounts flagged by commenters, taking the total to 196 Twitter accounts from Australian governments.

Note that I've not screened these accounts for whether they are still live, or how actively they Tweet.

If you want to subscribe to some of these lists please see:

There's also a Victorian government Twitter list.

I've provided a full list of the accounts I looked at online in Google docs as a spreadsheet, open for anyone to view, download and modify at: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ap1exl80wB8OdHNKVmQ5RVlvQWpibDAxNHkzcU1nV2c&hl=en

There's also a full list below.

National
ACT

NSW State
NT State
QLD State
SA State

TAS State
VIC State
WA State
NSW Local
QLD Local
SA Local
VIC Local
WA Local

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Thursday, May 07, 2009

High speed broadband for Australia - the unexplored country

This morning I am presenting at Public Sphere #1 - High bandwidth for Australia in a personal capacity.

The event will discuss what high speed bandwidth can do for Australian society, business and government.

I have previously posted some ideas on this topic and will be talking today about how the killer applications and services for a 100Mbit plus service are likely to not have been invented yet.

For those not attending the event, I have attached my presentation below and will add a transcript in the near future.

I will hopefully be liveblogging the event after my presentation throughout the morning.

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Friday, March 20, 2009

The power of raw government data

In the US President Obama's newly appointed (and first) Federal Government CIO Vivek Kundra has committed to finding new ways to make government data open and accessible.

The Computer World article, First federal CIO wants to 'democratize' U.S. government data, discusses how,

In a conference call with reporters, Kundra said he plans to create a Web site called Data.gov that would "democratize" the federal government's vast information resources, making them accessible in open formats and in feeds for developers.

He also said he hopes to use emerging technologies like cloud computing to cut the need for expensive contractors who often end up "on the payroll indefinitely."
These are not idle words from a political appointee - Kundra, who I have mentioned previously, is well-known amongst egovernment practitioners around the world for his innovative work in pushing the boundaries of egovernment as the District of Columbia's CTO.

Politicians often have reservations about releasing raw data, despite being collected using public funds, due to perceived concerns that the data might be used to politically damage their reputations.

Similarly government departments often restrict the release of raw data due to concerns over how it may be reused or misused.

In Australia we even go to the extent of copyrighting government data. In the US most data, publications and other tools created by their Federal government are copyright free.

However with the US's moves the debate will soon shift to the disadvantages of not allowing free access to most raw government data.

As history has recorded, countries that remove barriers to the free flow of ideas and information develop faster, are economically more successful and their people enjoy higher standards of living.

Fostering innovation directly leads to national success.

So in a world where some countries make data freely available, how do other nations continue to compete?

To draw an analogy from the publishing world, Wikipedia disrupted the business model for Encyclopedia Britannica. By providing free 'crowd-sourced' information of greater depth and about the same accuracy as a highly expensive product, Britannica has been struggling to survive for years.

After trialing a number of different protective business models to sustain its existence, but protect its data, Encyclopedia Britannica has finally adopted one that might work - it has opened its articles up to 'crowd-sourcing', accepting suggestions which are then reviewed and acted on by its professional editors - a step towards openness. Visit the Britannica blog to learn how to suggest changes to the encyclopedia.

In other words, you cannot beat openness with secrecy - the only way to remain successful is to step towards openness yourself.

This really isn't news. Many have talked about the need for greater openness of government data before. I've even mentioned it myself once or twice.

To finish, I thought I'd flag this recent talk given by Tim Berners-Lee (the father of the world wide web) at TED on the need for open data. It has some points worth reflecting on.

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Monday, March 16, 2009

What does the future look like?

Microsoft have developed a Future Visions series to provide some insight into where technology is headed, and how it will help people.

If you are looking to anticipate the needs of your customers, rather than simply play catch-up, the series provides some very thought provoking ideas.

Here is the montage video, exploring different concepts in brief. Below I've placed links to the full videos on each topic.



And in case you think this technology is still a long way off, read this article from the Inquisitor, If You Want the Future, Look to the Hackers. It talks about companies placing working brainjacks into people's heads, and how to create a Minority Report-style interface using your Nintendo Wii.

The others videos in the Microsoft Future Vision series are:

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

588 nominations received in the UK e-Government National Awards 2008

Considering the 30-40 nominations received in Australia's annual egovernment awards, it's staggering to consider than in the UK there were over 588 initiatives to be nominated in 2008.

Judging is underway and finalists in 11 categories will be published on 7 November.

If you're seeking a source of inspiration regarding egovernment initiatives, the e-Government National Awards 2008 finalists will be certainly worth reviewing.

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Monday, September 15, 2008

The growth of e-health in Australia

Futuregov has an excellent article, An Australia quest for e-health discussing progress in the Australian e-health scene.

It is good to see that there is a clear understanding of the need for a national approach - tying states into one consistent system, rather than individually building separate systems in each state at additional cost.

In the geospatial area, WA and QLD have launched state-centric systems, with other states considering their own systems. This has taken place while AGIMO plans a national geospatial system within the AGOSP program. They share the same standards, however I'm not clear on whether they have shared technologies and costs.

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