Glad to hear here, anytime

The Age

"The government wants to blog" is the headline to Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner's piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, today, something a bit different from other headlines of barbs  exchanged with Barnaby Joyce et al. The Minister tells readers about the thrust of the Gov 2.0 Task Force Report received in December and some of what it advocates for greater government engagement with the community. There are acknowledgements of present failings:

"Dialogue with citizens tends to be one-to-one, not general. We broadcast a lot to passive audiences, but when it comes to more active engagement, we're still in the dark ages."

And the magnitude of the task ahead:

"More freely available information and deeper engagement between government and citizens will improve the quality of government regulation and services. It will also challenge public servants and politicians to move beyond traditional mindsets of secrecy, hierarchy and control. While that's great in theory, it won't be easy in practice."

Open invitation anytime here folks to participate in discussion of - open government etc. A Google search shows the Minister had a brief go at blogging himself two years ago.(Correction - thanks to a reader - Tanner writes a weekly blog, Razor's Edge on the National Times, where the Herald piece probably started.)

Last week IT Wire reported the Victorian Government is on the move in this area, embracing Creative Commons publishing, starting on a government wide information management framework and putting some money on the table for a competition to encourage developers to start using the state's available data sets.