Publishing Public Sector Information: new advice released
AGIMO has released new advice on publishing public sector information (PSI) on the Web Guide. The new advice, prepared in consultation with the Government 2.0 Steering Group, provides agencies with a practical guide to making information available online for public access and reuse (subject to privacy, security and other relevant concerns). Read more
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Updated Web Guide released
I’m pleased to announce the release of a revamped and updated Web Guide. The purpose of the Web Guide is to help agencies manage their online presence and understand their relevant legal and policy obligations in this space. The site replaces the previous Web Publishing Guide, which was launched in May 2007. Read more
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Metadata – Part II
There were a few questions from the previous post on the metadata we’re planning on using for the Web Guide, so we thought we’d break it down a little and go into the various decisions we made along the way. Read more
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The caretaker period: new AGIMO advice and temporary changes to the running of the AGIMO blog
The Governor-General has accepted the Prime Minister’s recommendation to dissolve Parliament and to set an election for 21 August 2010 for the House of Representatives and half the Senate. As a result, the Government is now in what is known as the ’caretaker period’. During the caretaker period the Australian Public Service (APS) follows what are known as the Caretaker Conventions.
During the caretaker period agencies can still continue with many of their pre-existing “business-as-usual” processes, including communicating online as part of these processes. However, an important part of the Caretaker Conventions is that Commonwealth resources, including online resources such as this blog and other social media tools operated by agencies, cannot be used to communicate material which advantages any party in an election campaign. These measures are not specifically intended to curb free speech or discourage political discussion among the community; rather they are to protect the apolitical nature of the APS. Read more
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Web guide – June project update
We’ve been fairly busy in the past month. You’ve seen some of the work we’ve been discussing on the blog regarding information architecture, metadata and content, as well as our current thinking on blogging itself.
But behind the scenes, we’ve been working on yet other areas. Read more
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Crowd-sourced labels, names and IA via external folksonomies
We wanted to investigate the possibilities of attaching tags or folksonomies to our content. Our original Content Management System (CMS) didn’t have the ability to support internal tagging, so we decided to investigate options for externally-sourced tags. During some of our early tinkering, we explored what would be required to support a variety of ways to get tagging of content.
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Call for usability test participants
We’re now at a stage in the redevelopment of the Web Guide where a rough, prototype-quality, first cut of the new site is ready to be put before users. We’ll be putting the site structure, information architecture and usability of the prototype through its paces, and we’re hoping you could help us out (and help out your fellow Web Publishing Guide users at the same time). Read more
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Data about data – metadata
In the last post, I spoke about the way we are developing the information architecture to ensure that content is easily discoverable, relevant and able to be sliced and diced a number of ways.
But these aren’t the only issues regarding content on the site. In reviewing the focus group information and brainstorming ourselves, we came up with content questions such as:
- I need to drive this policy forward internally. What’s the basis of the compliance rating?
- Is this content still relevant?
- Who do I go to for help on this topic?
- That IA structure we came up with: how are we going to implement it when we don’t have a sophisticated Content Management System (CMS)?
Coming to our aid is, of course, metadata.
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Deliver me the content I need and nothing else or Information Architecture (IA)
One of the issues raised at the focus group we held a while back was that our users want information which is relevant to them. They want to find and make use of it quickly, without barriers. Our stats show us users tend to come with a purpose and want to fulfil it quickly:
“This guide is aiming at a whole bunch of people and one way you could address that is to say ok from a management point of view these are the important chunks, if you’re designing, these are the things that you should be looking at more seriously and if you’re the bunch of people who might be writing these pages then these are the sorts of things you should be across..” – Focus group response
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Behind the blog: Web 2.0 record-keeping and blog comments
We always intended this blog to have a dual purpose. First and foremost, it’s an online engagement tool used to keep in touch with people interested in the redevelopment of the Web Publishing Guide. But, importantly, the blog is also meant to provide lessons and examples about blogging for Australian Government agencies interested in setting up their own blog.
With this second purpose in mind, in this post I’ll look at record-keeping issues involved in managing comments submitted to our blog. Record-keeping may not be the most exciting topic, but it plays a crucial part in making sure that government agencies are accountable to the Australian people. Records provide evidence of agency activity and help create transparency as agencies go about serving the public.
However, as recent US Government policy acknowledged (PDF), and as the Government 2.0 Taskforce said in their final report, there are some issues that agencies need to consider when capturing records generated from third-party Web 2.0 sites and services.
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