I participated in today's Public Sphere #2: Government 2.0 event in Parliament House, Canberra, where Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and Special Minister of State and Cabinet Secretary Joe Ludwig announced the launch of the Government 2.0 Taskforce. The Taskforce has a website using open source architecture with a Creative Commons 2.0 licence.(photo courtesy of Stephen Collins)
The Taskforce is a great initiative and has a public competition running until 3 July to design the banner for the website. It appears that the Taskforce will advise the government on the use of Web 2.0 technologies and will also provide funding to assist innovative uses of new technologies for citizen engagement and open access to government information:
The Project Fund is a $2.45 million fund available to the Taskforce to support the development of Web 2.0 tools and applications that either enable engagement between government and the community or support the innovative use of government information.Members of the Taskforce, chaired by Dr Nicholas Gruen, include:
- Ms Ann Steward (Deputy Chair)
- Mr Glenn Archer
- Mr Sebastian Chan
- Mr Adrian Cunningham
- Prof Brian Fitzgerald
- Ms Mia Garlick
- Mr Peter Harper
- Ms Lisa Harvey
- Mr Martin Hoffman
- Ms Pip Marlow
- Mr Alan Noble
- Dr Ian Reinecke
- Mr David Solomon
- Mr Martin Stewart-Weeks
The Project Fund is being provided through a partnership with Microsoft, with Cisco providing some of the 'telepresence' infrastructure for the group. Funding will be provided on a competitive basis:
[T]he Taskforce will run competitions that will invite interested individuals and groups to submit ideas and Web 2.0 designs to the Taskforce for consideration and potential prizes and other benefits such as funding for pilots.It would seem that Gov 2.0 has commenced in Australia.