The New Zealand Privacy Commissioner’s site outlines a number of things you can do to support the activities of the week;

• support/promote an event organised or hosted by another agency or host your own event in your town
• highlight your own privacy work by, for example, putting out guidance information; or
• publish guidance information for those using or working with cloud platforms;
• do a supportive media release;
• invite any speakers you may have visiting at the time who could talk about privacy, to do a public or invitation-based seminar or workshop

With this in mind a colleague in our Auckland office has compiled a comprehensive list of thing should be thinking about as you use Microsoft’s products. In the post he outlines some simple steps you can take to protect your privacy in each of the following categories;

• Your Personal Computer
• Your Web Browser
• Your Wireless Home Network
• Your Personal Internet “Cloud”
• Your Toys and Gadgets

The whole post can be found by clicking on this link.

The second speaker that IMM is announcing is Tom Scott from the BBC.

From the press release;

The BBC is an acknowledged leader in semantic web publishing and the use of metadata to create dynamically linked sites. Tom Scott has executive responsibility for three of the broadcast giant’s sites, which are often held up as exemplary projects within the Linked Data community. These are: the BBC Nature site (bbc.co.uk/nature) incorporating a major Linked Data and video publishing element; the BBC Programme Support site (bbc.co.uk/programmes), a website that publishes a page (URI and metadata) for every programme the BBC broadcasts; and the BBC’s Music site (bbc.co.uk/music), a website that integrates into the BBC broadcast systems and BBC Programmes.

I’ll be sure to link our final agenda here once it is available.

This morning we published a press release confirming that Prof. John McMillan, Australia’s Information Commissioner, will be one of the keynote speakers at the event.

From the press release;

In his session titled “The Open Government Reform Agenda”; Professor McMillan will examine the opportunities and challenges facing agencies as they move into this new era of open government.

In particular, Professor McMillan will provide an overview of how agencies are preparing for two significant features of the open government reforms that commence on 1 May 2011: the Information Publication Scheme (IPS) and Disclosure Logs.

Disclosure logs published by Australian Government agencies and ministers will provide a register of information released in response to access requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI Act), while the IPS requires a broad range of information to be published on agency websites. Professor McMillan will explain how these initiatives will work in tandem to achieve open government and succeed in transforming the freedom of information framework from one that is reactive to individual requests for documents, to one that requires agencies to take a proactive approach to publishing information.

The fourth Australian conference on Metadata Management (hosted by the Institute of Metadata Management), themed “Business Realities and Implications”, will be held at University House, ANU, Canberra on 25th, 26th and 27th May 2011.

About the Institute

The IMM offers both individuals and organisations the opportunity to participate in the development of metadata as a profession and to be at the leading edge of its utilisation as a core component of information management and business intelligence within the digital age.  (Link to http://www.metalounge.org/meta-2011-conference_presentations)

About the Conference

Event Aim:

To provide a forum for the discussion of crucial issues affecting our ability to manage information in the current complex market.

The Audience:

Managers and practitioners in a range of different execution and decision making environments looking for the opportunity to find solutions to real world problems faced daily.

Key Outcomes:  Delegates will leave with practical solutions, key contacts and a head full of ideas.

Previous Conference References:  www.metalounge.org (previously metadata Australia 2010)

The Key Themes

• Business Intelligence & Analytics – Achieving a joint position and understanding of metadata
• Technology Solutions, Data Integration and Hands-on Workshops
• Management, Governance and Stewardship – including Professional & Capability Development
• Overcoming obstacles in the Execution process – challenges and solutions

Who Should Attend

• Senior managers responsible for knowledge, records and information management
• Policy and technical metadata and data practitioners
• Researchers in information and metadata management
• Students from all disciplines related to information and communications management

Key Dates

• Wednesday 25th May  – current practices and experiences
• Thursday 26th May  –  emerging promises and issues
• Friday 27th May – practical sessions on the technology and research

Benefits of Attending and Presenting

• Networking with like minded practioners and thought leaders
• Exposure to emerging ideas and leading research
• Practical learning and evidence of successes for faster, cost effective implementation
• Next generation data and information management trends
• Membership to IMM

Presentations and Case Studies will be considered which include

• the application of metadata within information and knowledge management
• innovative solutions and ideas around metadata management issues
• practical solutions around applying metadata within the organisational context
• utilising metadata to enhance access and usability
• evidence of success and failure with lessons learned in implementation

We would ask that the following information be provided so that we can contextualise these

• Name of Organisation
• Type of Industry
• Particular Solution
• Line of Business Affected
• Location of Client
• Specific Business Challenge
• Overview of Approach
• Benefits of the Application
• Future opportunities and next steps

Submission guidelines

• Proposals should be submitted via our website at http://www.metalounge.org/Home.htm by 19th March, 2011
• Include a one paragraph description for use in the conference program guide
• Include a one paragraph describing the presenter’s background, credentials and experience
• Presentations will be limited to 30 minutes
• Presenters will be required to sign a Speaker’s Deed of Consent and Release to make slides and handouts available on CD and/or the conference website

Speaker reimbursement

• The conference is being run on a cost recovery basis to keep costs as low as possible for delegates
• Presenters will be required to register for the conference but the registration fee will be waived
• There may be some possibility to reimburse travel and accommodation costs for presenters outside of the ACT (within Australia only).  For further information on this please contact info@metalounge.org

Sponsorships

• Limited sponsorship opportunities are available for this event.  Further details are available here or contact us at info@metalounge.org

Critical Timeline

• Deadline for proposals:  19th March, 2011
• Notification of acceptance:  2nd April, 2011
• Deadline for final abstracts and bios:  29th April, 2011
• Deadline for final presentation slides and related documents:   13th May, 2011
• Conference:  Wednesday 25th – Friday 27th May, 2011

With the help of Intergen here in Wellington, and with support from a small team of other folks in New Zealand we have released an add-in for users of Microsoft Word 2008 SP2 and above that will allow them to save content that they produce directly to the MediaWiki file format.

We initially did this to support educators locally who wanted to be able to publish their work to the WikiEducator project, but it is obviously equally applicable to anybody else wanting to save from Word on a PC to a Wiki.

The add-in is written to take advantage of the converter interfaces that were added to Microsoft Office 2007 in Service Pack 2. The source code, which provides a reference for others interested in adding custom ‘Save As’ functionality to Microsoft Office, is available under the OSI approved Apache 2.0 license and can be downloaded here.

For end users, the installer for the add-in can be downloaded from here.

My colleague Andrew Gordon has written a little more about the project over at Port25.

gov·ern·ance

1. government; exercise of authority; control.
2. a method or system of government or management.

man·age·ment

1. the act or manner of managing; handling, direction, or control.
2. skill in managing; executive ability: great management and tact.
3. the person or persons controlling and directing the affairs of a business, institution, etc.: The store is under new management.
4. executives collectively, considered as a class ( distinguished from labor).

From WikiPedia;

Governance. … is the activity of governing. It relates to decisions that define expectations, grant power, or verify performance. It consists either of a separate process or of a specific part of management or leadership processes.

Management. …in all business areas and organizational activities are the acts of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources, and natural resources.

I’m struck by their choice of a title, especially considering the lessons I have learned over the last couple of weeks about the amount of confusion there is out there around the various pieces of work that are going on.

Reading the title and knowing the business that Gartner are in, I’m left feeling a little confused about what they’re trying to achieve.

• Open Government != gov20
• gov20 != Open Government
• Open Data != gov20
• Open Data != Open Government
• gov20 != open data
• Open Government != Open Data
• eGovernment != Open Data
• gov20 != eGovernment
• blah blah blah…
• etc.

At the same time there is no debate that they all feed off each other.

For me the OpenGovt2010 event in Wellington on Monday was fascinating in this respect, many of the folks leading each of these independent (but dependant) conversations in New Zealand in one room finding their common ground and discovering places where work and opportunities overlapped.

It is worth asking friends and family what they think gov20 means to them, and how they think some of the ideas that gov20 puts forwards can help both democracy and individuals. My none scientific research in this area over the last couple of weeks has resulted in a lot of blank looks.

When I look around for examples of government using gov20 services to broad effect there only appears to be a limited set of examples, but a wide array of experimentation.

It is worthwhile highlighting a couple of examples that I thought were interesting.

The first one is simple, I clipped it from my Facebook stream a few days ago. It is a statement put out by whoever manages Obama’s Facebook page. (click to enlarge)

For me the comments say it all. A little over an hour after the article was posted an engaged citizenry, participating in our gov20 utopia had two things to say. “first”, as in I managed to post before anybody else and “you suck” as in, well, whatever complex policy contribution that was intended to provide.

My second example is a post that Stephen Collin’s contributed to the ABC website earlier this week. Those that follow Stephen’s work know that he has spent a long time thinking about gov20 and all that it implies, he has written a lot on the topic, has been very active in making it a reality and is seen as an authority on the topic by many. As you would expect his article is well reasoned and reflects views that many of us who have been working in this area over the last few years would jump to agree with.

As with my first example, the comments on the ABC article tell a story and are worth a careful read. At first glance some of them left me feeling a little defensive, but there is always value is getting past that and instead looking for lessons that we can take away from the responses to the article.

Some examples of how we could interpret the comments on both of these examples (although there isn’t much to work on in #1);

• We might decide that those guys simply don’t get it, they’re not thinking big enough and they lack understanding of the challenges and the opportunities involved. Anybody working with the gov20 ideas knows the value, we can articulate it and we have nothing to worry about. The neophytes making comments on that article are living in the stone age, they need to wake up and smell the coffee.
• We might decide that our key marketing messages for the gov20 need more work. Obviously if the strategy is right it must be the case that we’re simply not articulating it in a form that outsiders can grasp and adopt.
• We might decide that it is worth revisiting some of those early assumptions about organizational change, the role of social media and the need for open data. I’m not suggesting that any of the assumptions are necessarily wrong, but it is possible that we have an incorrect weighting on those topics when balanced against the needs of the wider community.
• We might decide that we have a significant amount of testing to do with “users” (citizens) before we go too much further, it is always possible that a relatively small group of people (call them gov20 enthusiasts) have persuaded themselves that they understand the challenge, fully grasp the role that technology will play in our open and transparent governmental future, and have most if not all of the answers worked out.
• …. and so on.

In many ways I see a reflection of a lesson we learned during some of the early eGovernment projects. We built a number of services in the UK that technologists were very excited about, consumer research that we did after those services had been live for a while told us that most of the electorate just didn’t care. The UK then undertook a combined program of research to help inform the government about what was expected from their online services, and marketing that helped citizens and businesses understand what was being delivered.

As I see it, we have a lot of work to do before citizens start to see some of the ideas put forwards in gov20 discussions as ones that are of substantial benefit to them.

For this post I didn’t bother trying to highlight where I felt citizen and consumer uptake sat on the technology adoption curve. Despite the success of a handful of services, in many ways I think we’re only just getting started.

This is a little harder to take a single view on, I see dramatically different levels of adoption in different geographies. So, as this is an unscientific study I’ll take the liberty of generalizing.

As with the other segments I think there are a number of distinctly different tracks that we should think about;

1. Politicians using social media to work with their constituents.
2. Politicians and government officials who see the power of open data as a component of their policy making work.
3. Departments and/or government officials who have embraced the idea open data as an important part of their ongoing projects.

My overall view is that it is early days on all three fronts, and some earlier than others.

There are a growing number of examples of politicians and senior officials using social media to engage directly with constituents, over the last couple years we have seen the technologies increasingly used as part of election campaigns, as well as a tool to carry on conversations after an election. Much of this activity has been between a political party (or a US president) and the electorate though, I still only see a handful of elected officials using these tools to perpetuate an ongoing and direct conversation.

Some of these innovators (I mentioned Senator Kate Lundy from Australia or Clare Curran, MP from New Zealand as examples yesterday) will set the stage for what comes next. Their success, or otherwise, with social media will help a broader bench of politicians calculate the risk of following in their footsteps.

I can only find a small handful of examples of my second point for this post, politicians who see the benefit of open data in their policy making activity. I have mentioned one of my favourite examples before on this blog. It comes from Bill English (NZ Deputy Prime Minister) when he talks about something he calls “inside out government”.

As an example, in a speech last year to The Institute of Public Administration in New Zealand, he said; (my highlighting).

A second concept for the future is “inside out government”.

Government holds a wealth of information.  Some of it – quite rightly – is sensitive and access should be strictly controlled – tax records for example.

But in other areas, I see no reason why we can’t turn government inside out, so to speak, and make the same data and information available to those outside of government.

Government can tap wider resources in the community to analyse and use government data to help solve problems and produce insights. A ministerial committee is exploring this concept.

Inside out government also requires government to be open to good ideas from business.

We want to see ideas generated in the private sector and NGO sector genuinely considered and appraised – not simply ruled out on the basis that these sectors might not understand all aspects of government.

To make this approach truly valuable it is important that we are able to analyse not only local data but also compare that data with other international sources. It would be powerful to be able to compare the costs of building a mile of road, managing a hospital bed, operating a prison cell etc. across jurisdictions and then to use the knowledge gained from that to optimize local policy in an informed way. Making this a reality will involve both an evolution in the way that policy makers think, and some solid work by the technology and standards communities to find common ways to evaluate published data.

Finally, while I know they must be out there, I’m struggling to find solid examples (from ANZ) of departments that have embraced the idea of open data as an essential component of their day to day projects. With the current public appetite for open data and the applications that we see spring up every time a new data set is published I am sure it is only a matter of time before we see the topic become an integral part of every departmental project planning process.

Overall, looking at governments use of gov20 technology I still see much of the activity as sitting in the “Innovator” segment of the curve. Lots of work to be done, and lots of opportunity waiting to be tapped.