[LINK] ABC News: Government communications: online but out of touch

[Frank O'Connor]

Mmmm ...

Don't think much about equating Jobs with democratic legacy though. Can't even think how she made that connection. He had a good design sense, was obsessed with 'seamless user experience', as a non-geek wanted computers and devices 'for the rest of us' (i.e. Minus geeky and other complexity), and worked hard to create a seamless Apple ecology ... Which also worked to the benefit of Apple ..big time.

But he had nothing to do with the Internet, the World Wide Web, with e-forms development, with back-end server and database technologies, or the democratization of anything. eGovernment was completely outside his purvey.

Like others I have problems with holding eTax up as a front runner ... A better example would probably be the much more open, Web based, and less clunky Statistics Bureau form I used a few weeks back.

Other than that she's basically right about the public service demotivates, but she forgot the Empire Building and Maintenance motivator that's magnified by the in-bureaucracy annual budget fights ... Which to my mind is one of the biggest stultifiers of change and improvement in the public service. Factor in that failing projects seem to attract more money than successful ones (usually in the vain hope of rescuing something acceptable from unmitigated disaster) ... and the fact that anything in the way of IT success happens from time to time is a major miracle.

                                Regards,

Sent from my iPad
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On 09/10/2011, at 7:23 AM, Antony Barry <tony at tony-barry.emu.id.au> wrote:

> 
> 
> Government communications: online but out of touch
> Fri 07 Oct 11, 17:06pm AEST
> Annie O'Rourke
> 
> In Australia the democratic promise of Jobs's legacy remains unfulfilled. While millions of people are mourning the loss of Steve Jobs, no doubt having heard about it via their smartphone through Twitter, Facebook or news feed, most people in Government Communications are still acting as if the e-revolution never happened over 10 years ago. Sadly, e-communications is one of the areas letting down the Government the most. How do I know? Because during the first term of the Rudd government, having seen the extraordinary potential of e-communications in the United States, I was given the job of creating the prime minister's e-communications unit. It was about bringing the highest office in our democracy into the 21st century. The problem was that Canberra in general became a centre of...
> 
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