• Craig Thomler, Gov 20. Advocate and General Manager Delib Australia
• Mary-Anne Williams, Associate Dean Engineering and IT, University of Technology Sydney
• Susan Sly, Chief Information Officer, VicRoads
• Don Easter, IT Supplier Advocate, Australian Government

Photo courtesy CeBIT Australia

For me, [the relationship between e-Government, Gov 2.0 and open government] is very much a continuum, and a continuum with people on very different parts of the maturity curve at any point in time.

The broad-ranging conversation tackles questions such as:

• What are the connections between e-government, Gov 2.0 and open government – is it a continuum?
• What is the role of citizens in creating “Society 2.0”?
• Why is big data important to government?
• What are the big questions for 2014?

A lot of Gov 2.0 is government having conversations with itself… there’s an internal dialogue that’s going on within government that’s possibly the most important part of it because it’s actually government questioning “Are we doing things the best possible way, and can we improve it?

About the Panel

About Susan Sly

Susan Sly has worked in the IT industry for thirteen years with prior experience in HR and management across the oil and gas industry, Defence and state government.

Susan’s role in VicRoads spans strategy, security, operational service delivery, project management, business intelligence, spatial services and sourcing for VicRoads information management and technology capabilities.   VicRoads processes more than 22 million transactions a year for 3.7 million licensed drivers and 4.9 million registered vehicles, manages 22,000 km of road network and supports a range of planning and enforcement activities for road safety purposes.

Susan’s key priorities for the next two years are embedding new practices and team capabilities to reflect emerging industry standards, supporting productivity initiatives across the business, operationalising new technology suites and enhancing the use of the organisation’s information stores.  Particular interests that she will progress include the use of social media to share knowledge & enhance productivity and enhanced industry engagement within the government environment.

About Craig Thomler

Craig is one of Australia’s leading social media and Government 2.0 advocates and practitioners, having spent more than 15 years working in the online industry, including five in Australia’s Commonwealth Public Service.

In 2009 Craig was awarded the inaugural Government 2.0 Individual Innovator Award by the Australian Government’s Government 2.0 Taskforce and in 2010 was named one of ‘The Top 10 Who are Changing the World of Internet and Politics’ by PoliticsOnline and the World eDemocracy Forum in France.

Recognised internationally as a social media and Government 2.0 leader, Craig presents regularly around the world on new media strategy and practice and blogs at eGovAU) (http://egovau.blogspot.com)

About Mary-Anne Williams

Professor Mary-Anne Williams is one of Australia’s leading researchers in Knowledge Representation, and Past President of KR Inc, the peak body for Knowledge Representation. Mary-Anne chaired the Australian Research Council’s 2012 ERA Panel for Mathematics, Information and Computing Sciences and served on the ARC College of Experts. Mary-Anne leads the emerging area of Social Robotics in Australia, is listed on 25 women in robotics you need to know about, and serves as Review Editor for the prestigious Artificial Intelligence Journal. Mary-Anne is a Fellow at Stanford University, a Guest Professor at the University of Science and Technology China, and her work has been adopted by industry, notably Infosys and IBM Research. This year she chaired the Industry Track at the International Semantic Web Conference.

About Don Easter

Don Easter is an accomplished senior executive and company director with extensive experience and networks internationally and in Australia.  Don has led turnaround, growth and considerable change programs in both large and small companies.

His expertise includes sales, product development, operations, risk management and setting and executing strategy.

Don has managed businesses in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the United States of America with appointments that have included Managing Director of Electronic Data Systems (EDS) Australia, Senior Vice President Private Equity for ABN AMRO and General Manager, Credit and Risk for AGC.

In his part-time role as Information Technology (IT) Supplier Advocate, Don brings strategic leadership, access to decision-makers and senior executive weight to help enhance industry-led activities aimed at raising the competitiveness of IT SMEs firms and linking them with business opportunities.

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Episode links and resources

• GovInnovate 2013 

Big qs for 2014 via panel: How do we do it better, how do we get leadership mandate, what can tech do, how can ppl connect #GovInnovateCeBIT

— Cofluence (@Cofluence) November 28, 2013

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• Twitter hashtags: #govinnovatecebit #gov2au #opengov

The electronic government landscape is increasingly pointing towards a diffusion of power, and an increased role and voice for citizens in public decision-making.

Tomasz Janowski from the UNU-IIST Center for Electronic Governance discusses some of the global trends that he is observing: participatory democracy, the increased regulation of new service delivery channels and the need for leadership in ICT services, challenging the notion of what “whole of government” really means in practice.

With positions of CTO, Chief Knowledge Officer, Chief Innovation Officer emerging, we also see the Government CIO as a consolidating role speaking on behalf of government information technology to other functions of government, and also to the public.

Tomasz also shares some of the recent discussions and shared experiences emerging from the W3C e-Government interest group around the use of social media in Government.

About Dr Tomasz Janowski

Tomasz Janowski is a Senior Research Fellow at the United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology in Macao, where he founded and heads the Center for Electronic Governance. Previously, he was a Research Fellow at the University of Warwick, UK, where he obtained PhD in Computer Science and Assistant Professor at the University of Gdansk, Poland, where he obtained MSc in Applied Mathematics. He also worked for software companies in Poland and the U.S.

Tomasz’s research focuses on Electronic Governance (EGOV) policy and practice including foundations, education, development frameworks, models and design, measurement, etc. He directs EGOV research, transfers research results into practical instruments, and applies such instruments in government policy and practice. Under his leadership, the EGOV center developed a capacity-based EGOV development framework EGOV.*; built instruments to support the use of this framework; applied the framework in Afghanistan (EGOV.AF), Cameroon (EGOV.CM) and Macao SAR (e-Macao); and contributed to EGOV awareness- and capacity-building in Argentina, Bahrain, China, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Ghana, India, Jordan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, Nigeria, Palestine, Philippines, Tunisia, Uganda, Vietnam and other countries.

Tomasz is the co-founder and an international speaker at the  ICEGOV 2012 conference – hear his sneak preview (5 mins) of the conference here.

Feature image courtesy UNU

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Episode links and resources

• United Nations University International Institute for Software Technology and the Center for Electronic Governance
• The Cluetrain Manifesto
• W3C eGov interest group
• W3C eGov LinkedIn group

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With the emergence of new trends like open government and open data, there is a perception by many that eGovernment is yesterday’s news, and has largely been completed.

In a candid conversation, Barbara-Chiara Ubaldi, head of the OECD’s eGovernment unit, explains that there is much work still to be done to bring eGovernment into the daily work of the public sector.

In the real world, policymakers responsible for individual areas still don’t talk to each other, don’t work together – so, we still haven’t reached that level of interoperability, integration and coordination which is indeed essential for the implementation of larger interests like open government, for instance.

Barbara also highlights the ways in which the OECD is starting to connect the dots between national eGovernment policymaking and practical implementation by both the public sector and civil society.

About Barbara-Chiara Ubaldi

Since October 2010, Barbara-Chiara Ubaldi has led the OECD E-Government Project within the Division for Public Sector Reform at the Public Governance and Territorial Development Directorate.

Ms. Ubaldi has been serving the OECD as Policy Analyst since February 2009. In this capacity, she managed a number of thematic reviews on e-government and participated in several Public Governance Reviews, which include Denmark, Greece, Mexico, Italy, Estonia, Egypt, Spain and France. Ms. Ubaldi has been co-ordinating for the past three years the OECD work on e-government indicators and the analysis on the use of new technologies – such as cloud computing and mobile technology – to enhance public sector’s agility and mobility, as well as open government.

Prior to joining the OECD she worked for more than seven years as Programme Officer at the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs in New York where she was responsible for the full scale management of technical cooperation programmes targeting e-government and ICT use in the public sector, and for developing the content of online self-assessment and capacity building tools in the area of e-government and knowledge management.

Ms. Ubaldi is also a speaker at the ICEGOV 2012 conference – hear her sneak preview (5 mins) of the conference here.

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Episode links and resources

• OECD eGovernment Unit
• OECD report on M-Government
• OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation

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The Black Saturday fires devastated Australia and shocked the world. Now, the Country Fire Authority of Victoria has become a leading example of the use of social media for emergency management, winning this year’s Australian eGovernment award.

Martin Anderson, CFA’s Digital Media Manager and Australian Government 2.0 Innovator of the Year for 2012, explains how the experience of the February 2009 fires highlighted the importance of social communication tools in emergency situations, and that even within a command-and-control environment, agencies need to look outside the box, be flexible and improvise.

What I’m trying to do is explore and learn more myself, and also expose the principles of crowdsourcing and the benefits it can bring to the emergency services.

About Martin Anderson

Martin Anderson is the Digital Media Manager for the Country Fire Aurhority of Victoria, with a background in communications and journalism. During that time he has helped position the organisation as a recognised leader in the digital / social media field. His goal is to continue to use his diverse communication skills to help inform and engage people in ways that enhance their personal and working lives and encourage the development of strong, resilient communities both on and offline.

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Episode links and resources

• CFA Facebook – warnings, incident updates, community safety, general news
• CFA Twitter for warnings, incident updates, media releases
• CFA Twitter for general CFA news
• CFA connect website
• CFA YourTube channel
• CFA wins e-Government awards
• Social media in emergency management presentation http://youtu.be/_EPnCdTPwgM
• CFA / DSE warnings / incidents page – http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/warnings-and-incidents/index.htm
• Social media updates on website: http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/warnings-and-incidents/social-media-updates.htm
• FireReady mobile apps – http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/warnings-and-incidents/cfa-on-your-mobile.htm
• Article containing info on One Source, One Message http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/407737/country_fire_authority_preps_bushfires_hp/

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• Tags: #smem #gov2au #em2au