Thursday, December 17, 2015

What does membership of the Open Government Partnership mean for Australia?

On 24 November Prime Minister Turnbull sent a letter to the global Open Government Partnership (OGP) Secretariat confirming that Australia would progress to full membership of the OGP by July 2016 (continuing the process started by the former Labor Government in May 2013).

Australia will become the 69th member of the OGP, joining countries such as the USA, UK, Canada, The Philippines, Mongolia and India.

The consultation process is now underway, supported through the OGPau website and a consultation wiki at ogpau.wikispaces.com.

I've been supporting the process through facilitating a number of Information Sessions on behalf of PM&C to help build community awareness about the initiative, to address questions and build engagement with the process.

Canberra's session was livestreamed and the raw replay is below.


I am also involved in the establishment of the Australian Open Government Partnership Network, a network of civil societies and individuals that support the goals of the OGP and aim to work productively with the Australian Government to help Australia achieve them as a nation.

If you're outside government and wish to stay informed about the process, or get involved in a network of people interested in the OGP's goals, learn more at aogpn.net

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Friday, December 04, 2015

Australian Tax Office (finally) considering going digital by default, but walk and talk don't match

The Australian Tax Office (ATO) is currently asking Australians what they think of the idea of the ATO going digital by default.

As they rightly point out in the Consultation paper, the current ability of the ATO to do this is restricted by legislation, which often defines the channels by which certain transactions can occur or services be provided, not simply the desired outcomes and outputs.

This kind of policy blindness to digital is to be expected in legislation developed before the 1990s, or even the 2000s, and can take substantial time to unwind and correct. It's less acceptable (though sometimes still present) in more recent legislation - reflecting a failure to learn and understand the impact of digital on the modern world.

For the ATO these policy issues have meant a constant challenge to work within their legislative framework to still deliver the best possible services to clients, thereby prompting accurate and timely payment of taxes and funding the government's operations.

To complicate matters further, the ATO has been shedding highly experienced staff in a series of budget cuts that, in my view, have severely degraded their ability to operate effectively.

I am glad to see this consultation occurring, however feel that the way in which they are doing it leaves much to be desired and, in my view, weakens my trust in the ATO's ability to go digital by default in a manner that maximises tax compliance through making it easier and simpler for people to meet their obligations.

The form provided for feedback has some unusual restrictions on the number of characters used in responding to the consultation paper, making it difficult for those of us who care to fully flesh out our answers with evidence and perspectives.

When submitting the form there's no acknowledgement of the submission - a standard in most online engagement processes today in order to 'complete the loop' and have people feel listened to and acknowledged. I did (after 40 minutes) receive an email with my submission, which is good, but is hardly the immediate feedback people should expect.

On top of this, the consultation itself seems to focus on a 'stick' approach to gaining compliance as the ATO goes digital by default.

There's no discussion of how the ATO will ensure that digital services are better and easier to use than their offline equivalents in order to create a natural pull effect as people walk downhill to the easier way of completing their tax obligations.

There's discussion of penalties for people who are slow to shift to digital services, but no discussion of rewards for those who move quickly and decisively. A stick without carrot approach rooted in old-style punishment-based thinking.

I think the ATO would be far better placed looking at ways to gameify tax paying, creating rewards for good behaviour and making the system habit-forming rather than a chore.

There's opportunities for the ATO to work across the tax ecosystem, into GST registration, company formation and key life events which lead to tax implications - graduations and retirements, new jobs and redundancies - simplifying the end-to-end system to make it a smoother and seamless process for addressing tax issues, directly or via other connections.

There's enormous opportunities for the ATO to API the tax approach, allowing third-party apps and services to be developed on top of tax paying, as the Canadian tax office already has done. In this scenario the ATO is the support service and engine, but not the interface, meaning they can run a better service with fewer staff and lower costs.

However the biggest opportunity is to move to a codesign approach for tax services, where taxpayers design the services and the ATO implements and manages them. In this scenario it wouldn't be the traditional senior public servants and Ministers approving the services and tweaking them to meet what they believe people want and need, instead it would be the actual taxpayers designing the services they wish to interact with and then approving the systems the ATO develops.

Definitely digital by default is a path the ATO must walk, but whether it walks it well and successfully should really be the key question and goal.

A consultation is a good first step, but the ATO needs to demonstrate that it isn't just walking the path, but is doing so with eyes and minds open, with a goal of the best outcomes for tax collection, via creating services that people don't hate to use.

The way the ATO designed the consultation itself is the first example of the ATO's commitment and approach to developing an appropriate digital by default approach - and thus far it leaves me concerned.

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Thursday, December 03, 2015

New data report signals a major shift in data thinking in the senior Australian public service

While successive Australian governments have touted 'evidence-based policy', a significant ongoing challenge within Australia's public service has been generating or accessing the right data at the right time - particularly across agencies - for actually testing policy assumptions and following a more agile policy development process.

I've personally witnessed the challenges within agencies of being able to locate useful and usable data for program design and delivery assessment, and the mechanics for sharing data between agencies, requiring formal agreements and long discovery and lead-times.

One of the more signficant side-effects of the open data revolution has been to highlight to agencies how little they know about the data they already collect and hold, who owns it (agency or external parties) and how hard it can be to share productively between agencies, let alone with the public.

A significant initiative this year was the commissioning of an internal data report by the Secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet, named the Public Sector Data Management report.

This report was designed to help the Australian Public Service (APS) understand its internal data landscape and recommend steps that could be taken to improve how data is generated, managed, discovered, shared and therefore used in policy and program development and evaluation.

Put simply, if the APS can get its approach on data right, suddenly it would become far clearly to both internal and external stakeholders how effective various government programs were, and clarify policy gaps and opportunities.

This internal report, now released publicly under Creative Commons licensing, offers a glimpse into how effectively data has been used in the APS, and recommends a strong series of measures to strengthen data collection, sharing and use.

If anything speaks to the commitment within the APS to use and share data more effectively, this report does. It's worth not only a read, but a close study.

The Public Sector Data Management report is now available online via the data.gov.au blog at blog.data.gov.au/news-media/blog/public-sector-data-management.



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Monday, November 30, 2015

Register now for an OGP Australia information session

The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet have just announced a series of information sessions regarding the Open Government Partnership and the process by which the Australian government is seeking to involve the community and civil organisations in the development of our first National Action Plan by the end of June 2016.

For information on these sessions, which will occur in the week of 14-18 December in Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, visit the OGP Australia blog at: ogpau.govspace.gov.au/register-to-attend-an-ogp-australia-information-session/

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Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Using open data for insights into Australian-registered charities

Rosie Williams of OpenAus recently released her latest open data project, Open Charities, to provide insight into the financials of Australian charities.

The service integrates the available open data from 53,000 registered Australian charities in a way never done before, allowing fast and simple analysis of charities by location, electorate and issue.

To fund this work on an ongoing basis Rosie has also introduced a subscriber-only feature at $50 per year which provides access to information on all of the government grants and tenders won by each charity - connecting together several different open datasets.

This information is useful not only for people considering donating to different Australian charities, but also for charities seeking to research their sector and those thinking about creating new charities.

It's important to note that all of the value unlocked by Open Charities and similar open sites would not be available if not for the hard work by volunteers such as Rosie.

There's still too few of these volunteers, meaning that there's potentially immense value left untapped across the tens of thousands of open datasets now released by Australian Government.

This means there's still enormous opportunities to identify and realise value for startups and social enterprises seeking new ways to repurpose data into useful knowledge.

If you've ever had an interest in finding solutions to social and economic problems, why not take a look at Rosie's work and think about the value you could add.

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Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Presentation on digital citizenship, user experience & the emerging role of libraries

The other week I was in Wellington, New Zealand for the international Linked up, Loud and Literate: Libraries enabling digital citizenship conference.

Below is my presentation from the day, including the story of a recent customer experience with an Australian government agency.

For other presentations from the day visit nsla.org.au/digital-citizenship-2015.


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Monday, November 23, 2015

Australian Government's decision to join the Open Government Partnership should help us come together to forge better outcomes

Last week the Australian Government announced that it was taking steps to join the global Open Government Partnership (OGP).

What's the OGP? it's a voluntary, multi-stakeholder international initiative supported by 69 national governments that was created out of the open government / Government 2.0 movement to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.

This is a decision that has taken some time to make. While Australia was invited to join as a founding member of the OGP (with eight other nations) in August 2011, the then Labor government didn't make announce an intent to join until 2013.

After this, a change in government saw the decision revisited and ultimately put on hold, as the new Coalition government reduced the policy emphasis on government openness and transparency.

However, with the recent fresh wind blowing through government with a change in Prime Minister, openness and transparency has returned to the national Coalition policy agenda.

One outcome was the announcement of 17 November by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet that Australia was taking the necessary steps to become a full member of the OGP.

More information on this decision and what it involves in practice, both for government and for civil society, is available on the new ogpau.govspace.gov.au website.

While overall there's been positive feedback from the 'insider' community that have been interested in this decision, there's also been some criticism of the process as it has been laid out.

Given this is the first time the Australian government has developed an OGP plan, I'm not that concerned about the process being perfect.The fact that it has started is the crucial point.

I expect the process will improve into future planning cycles as all participants - government, civil societies and the community - gain an appreciation of the most effective ways to work together in this type of endeavour.

We can learn from the experience of other countries, which is well summed up in this OGP report, however the Australian experience will be unique and hopefully all participants will approach this current process with good faith and a willingness to 'learn on the job'.

The most important outcome of this first OGP process isn't the first National Action Plan for Australia, it's the relationships and understandings forged between government and non-government open government players that will positively contribute to an evolving relationship.

While backbiting and criticising may get a good media run, it seldom builds strong workable relationships, if not framed within a context of identifying and implementing improvements.

OGP membership is an opportunity to build the transparency culture in Australia, bridge gaps and build a strong civil community. Let's maximise its value both for citizens and government.

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Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Guest post: Moving things forward – addressing the information gaps

This is a guest post written by Rosie Williams, a leading Australian Open Data Developer and Citizen Journalist, who created and manages infoAus.net and writes for NoFibs.com.au. It's republished from OpenAus with her permission.

The Power to Persuade blog fosters new ways to collaborate across sectors for better social policy. Power to Persuade recently published a post of mine on open data in which I argued for the role of transparency in addressing social policy questions.
I recounted a recent attempt to discover the number of homeless shelters across Australia, only to be met with a quote for over $1,000 in consideration of it not being previously published and due to difficulties in extracting the information from the system. The most interesting thing bar the cost of the service is that the reason I was forced to seek this data directly from the AIHW in the first place was exactly because I had not found it in any of the reports published by government or community sector.
As a financial and political transparency activist I have been looking into how decisions regarding the funding of housing/homeless services flow through the policy process in order to understand why such a substantial unmet need for specialist homeless services is tolerated. Australian Institute of Health & Welfare figures show that nearly 60% of people making a request for accommodation on any given day are turned away. I want to understand what process leads to this outcome.
I have also heard privately from service providers, the very organisations required to report their own data to government that they do not have access to key metrics.
Open data is a fairly new concept for Australia.Open data is data that is made available free for re-use for commercial or non-commercial purposes. The government is yet to fulfil it’s obligations to the Open Government Partnership although there are rumours this is finally about to change. The OGP requires the Australian government to submit a National Action Plan detailing extensive consultation in the areas of fiscal transparency, access to information, income and asset disclosure, and citizen engagement, all areas which affect our power to make society answerable to our needs and the needs of the vulnerable.
The government has been opening data for the last few years but there are few instances of that data being re-used. My own projects in financial and political transparency are an exception. The Commonwealth government is now implementing new grants reporting requirements to provide consistency in reporting grant recipients and locations for every relevant agency. This data set is not yet complete or available in one spot but what is available is searchable at OpenAus.
It is only when data is put to use for a specific purpose that it becomes obvious where data sets are missing or data quality needs work. One of the biggest challenges to open data is where the need for data crosses jurisdictional boundaries as it does with many questions of social policy. Issues such as domestic violence or homelessness require data not just from federal services but also state agencies. With every state potentially doing it’s own thing with regard to data collection and publication, trying to find or use data covering multiple agencies or jurisdictions is a major hurdle in any attempt to make use of open data in Australia for improved transparency, policy or practice.
To address these issues, there needs to be engagement between jurisdictions and also between sectors. Government agencies responsible for gathering and publishing data need to engage with both end users of that data and contributors to that data in order to improve quality and foster awareness of the existence and uses for that data.
To provide a pathway forward I have set up a Slack community open to practitioners in social and data science, researchers and government. The goals of this community are as follows:
Community Goals
  • provide venue to engage end users of data, organisations contributing data to government and data custodians to better address social issues
  • lobby for improved data and transparency
  • provide answers on specific data questions eg where can I find information on x?
  • run events /produce materials in support of these goals
Community Participants
This community is for practitioners, researchers, policy makers and anyone who can provide assistance to these groups in terms of answering questions about where data can be found and what can be done with it.
My various networks cross the boundaries of journalism, technology, data science and politics. Providing a bridge between these groups paves the way for people with diverse skills and information to come together to help professional communities realise their aims. If you would like access to this community please email me from your work account for an invitation.
Slack is a platform that allows for chat between teams and private messaging and integrates with a host of other services. It is easy to join and use, taking the place of both email and forums for purposes of discussion and planning.
How to Participate
Email Rosie at admin @ openaus.net.au from your work email to enable me to send you the invitation.

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