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Will O'Farrell modernise NSW with some help from Government 2.0? #gov2au #gov2nsw

via au.news.yahoo.com

As Barry O'Farrell and the Liberal and Nationals Coalition assume power in New South Wales following the state election over the weekend, it would be nice to think that Government 2.0 might be on his mind. Certainly, he comes with promises to:

"overhaul government online and mobile phone information and set up a 24-hour one-stop-shop to improve state interactions with the public."

There is more here on the Microsoft side of the story, although I would caution against more big bang IT infrastructure. Building Government 2.0 isn't like building railways or roads (although I wouldn't say no to better wifi and wireless internet access on the train).

He needs to be thinking of small pieces, loosely joined and using Government 2.0 to reconstitute how the state innovates and delivers services. Government 2.0 is not about applying a veneer of social media over current infrastructure.

Will this happen? I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens in the next 100 days.

A brief recap of recent Gov 2.0 events

I'm well overdue a detailed recap of the last few weeks of Government 2.0 related event. But time is getting away from me, so I think I'll have to admit defeat and just point you at some photos and coverage elsewhere:

The LGWebNetwork conference

This was a really fantastic conference (check out some the feedback they received). Reem and Diana did a great job and I appreciated their attention to detail, even down to the event publication. I was there as a part of panel on community engagement. The conference site also has a selection of audio recordings from the event, including the opening and closing key notes. You'll find more photos on Flickr.

Public Sphere #3
(Geoff McQueen presenting at Public Sphere #3)

Check out Sen. Kate Lundy's blog for the official wrap up post - however, there is still time to participate on the wiki. There were also a couple of interesting posts here:
I spent most of the day running the live blog, but I also presented in the morning on why the Web 2.0 industry was different and what government could do to support it.

Panel at UNSW
The night before NSW Public Sphere, I was invited to participate on a panel hosted by Martin Stewart-Weeks and with Matthew Crozier as part of a lecture. It was good to step into an academic context for a moment, just to get a different view point on the hype around Government 2.0. However, these masters students engaged intelligently with the issues and ideas, not the buzz words. 

NSW Public Sphere (+ Us Now screening)

I started the day at 7.15am with a screening of the Us Now movie for a few fool hardy souls. As well as providing food for thought for the rest of the day, this also did double duty as part of the Us Now Global Screening Project initiative started by Celina Agaton. The big announcement of the day of course was the launch of the apps4nsw competition (you can read the transcript on Penny Sharpe's blog). I posted my slides from NSW Public Sphere in a previous post, which pretty much called for something just like apps4nsw as a next step. I've suggested to Penny that a great next step for NSW Public Sphere would be to run an co-design event to feed into the apps4nsw competition. Also worth reading is this wrap up post from Grant Young. If you are interested, there are also more photos on Flickr.

BTW If you are interested in the idea of Public Service (Co-)Design, there is a list of some useful links at the end of my CPD paper.

Overall, I think you'll agree things are really starting to move beyond talking to actually doing something useful with the Government 2.0 idea.