Opening up parliament and getting government IT right
Last week I received two invitations to present.
The first was an invitation to present to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. They are preparing a report on Open Government and would like me to make a short presentation and then answer questions for a couple of hours. This is a ways out but obviously I'm treating it with a significant amount of seriousness - so if you have thoughts or comments on things you think I should share, please feel free to ping me or comment below.
(Speaking of parliament... as an aside, I want again to let developers there know that through some engagement I've been having with the parliamentary IT staff they've informed me they will be releasing a number of data sets in January including the Hansard.)
Second is, next week, I'll be at the United Nations as part of the Expert Group Meeting on the 2012 e-Government Survey: Towards a More Citizen-Centric Approach. My main goal here is to stop getting governments to compare themselves to one another on how "successful" they are in delivering services and information online. With a few notable exceptions, most government websites are at best functional at worst, unnavigable. Consequently, comparing themselves to one another allows them to feel like all is okay, when really they are collectively trapped in a world of design mediocrity.
Yes, they aren't pretty words, but someone has to say them.
So any thoughts on this subject are welcome as well.
More soon on the hackathon and the census.
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