Government in the age of Web 2.0

Some of their managers were wondering whether they were really 'team players'. Shortly after the Taskforce reported I received an e-mail from someone in the Queensland Police Service – but the e-mail was from his private account – always a tell-tale sign. This is what he said.

I have just spent 4 months putting together a proposal for a 2.0 Police website. Naturally enough there are a huge amount of potential benefits but the challenge is getting them to really understand that.

If the penny does drop they are in an excellent position, as they already publish a huge amount of content that would be of enormous public interest and benefit...if it were structured in the right way.

There are plenty of Police websites around the world with really interesting ideas, but not one of them really fully gets the concept as a whole. Incredibly inspiring because I can see the enormous untapped potential, deeply frustrating because I know how difficult it will be to achieve even a small part of it.

That e-mail came from James Kliemt. He thought that social media would be perfect for the police but wasn't having much success persuading others of this. I like to think our report played some role in helping change attitudes at more senior levels in the service. But for whatever reason James' entrepreneurialism rapidly went from being seen as a problem to being seen as an opportunity. It has since helped the Queensland Police become an exemplar of Government 2.0 in Australia and around the world.

When the floods and the cyclones came, Queensland's Police already had sufficient experience of social media to use them to broadcast critical messages, to scotch incorrect rumours and to disseminate crucial information. There are many, many other people to thank but there's a good chance James' efforts saved some lives.

During the Taskforce's deliberations journalists often asked whether our recommendations would be implemented. Journalists often seek to channel their subjects' inner clairvoyant. I startled some by saying that though I expected our recommendations would be implemented, I'd not be greatly concerned if they weren't. I thought then, as I do now, that what matters most is that the culture of Government 2.0 take hold.

The good news arising from this fact is that one can have a wider impact than the policy chain of command of which one is a part. The downside is that you can gain control of the commanding heights as we did within the Federal Government and even then progress remains slow. That's pretty much what I expected and pretty much what is happening now. Our central recommendations were implemented, but the spirit of our recommendations is taking its time to filter through the culture of the organisations that comprise government.

Let me give you some examples:

One of the crucial building blocks of Government 2.0 is the new more open approach to the information. Hitherto agencies, and their lawyers have taken comfort in the plethora of rights that copyright gives them over content they create. Copyright requires those who would do more than extract brief quotes from a document to ask the copyright owner for permission. Yet copyright is often asserted, absurdly enough, over documents that the government is seeking to disseminate as widely as it can.

And though copyright gives the owner the notional right not to have their words misleadingly reproduced, ask yourself when we last saw a government pursue someone in the media for misleadingly reproducing copyrighted government works.

Asserting copyright in government content is thus mostly dysfunctional. It's incredibly inefficient because there are all sorts of riches there in government produced information and content, and no reason whatever to let people adapt it into public goods as it takes their fancy or swells their bottom line.

But it's also inequitable. The public has already funded its creation through taxes. So the Taskforce recommended the most open 'Creative Commons' licencing as the default. This would entitle citizens to copy, republish, repurpose and indeed to tinker with government funded content. And if there were really a good reason for it, more restrictive licensing could be pursued.

I'm pleased to say that as a result of our report Australia became, to the best of my knowledge, the first government to publish a budget with an open, Creative Commons licence. Yet, although our recommendation for Creative Commons licencing to be the default was accepted, that recommendation seems to be honoured in the breach. I know of no Australian Government website where the default licensing is the one we recommended.