Victorian Premier John Brumby launches Youtube Channel

Victorian Premier John Brumby has launched a Youtube Channel where Victorian citizens can ask questions of the Premier. Questions voted in the top 5 will be answered by the Premier on the channel.

This is a great initiative but the response from the traditional media has been lukewarm.

NBN on the right track

While we wait patiently in Palmerston via Gungahlin for faster and more reliable broadband connections, today's announcement is good news:

The Rudd government has named six broadband-deprived areas as the first recipients of its $250 million cash injection to kickstart the $43 billion national broadband network in rural areas.

Following the announcement of the roll-out in Tasmania, it is good to see that 'Emerald and Longreach in Queensland, Geraldton in Western Australia, Darwin in the Northern Territory, Broken Hill in NSW, Victor Harbor in South Australia and South West Gippsland in Victoria' are being fast-tracked for the NBN.

It is important that the least served areas receive the access first. It is easy to complain about poor broadband services, harder to imagine life without any.

One of the issues for the Commonwealth is that the approach to deploying the NBN infrastructure is quite novel in Australia. As has been seen in Tasmania, the decentralised approach has been let down by a lack of engagement with citizens and stakeholders.

It is unfortunate that the highly centralised approach to communications policy in Australia is such a political issue. Broadband is crucial infrastructure and its lack will affect Australia's international competitiveness whether we like it or not. I am convinced that only non-users or those who already have fast and reliable Net connections would disagree on the importance of broadband for our national prosperity.

But one aspect which is still overlooked is the correlation between citizen involvement in the process and the corresponding take-up of services. While many may be disinterested (or even uninterested) in the process, there are plenty of individuals and groups who are keen to be informed of or involved in the roll out. Such community champions are being underutilised by government.

To be sure, things are changing quickly and recent moves such as the Gov 2.0 Taskforce and Public Sphere are helping to change 'way things are done here'.

It will be interesting to see how NBN Co will function - moving the deployment one step away from politics could be a good thing - but the company must engage with stakeholders. This is a real challenge for those who will lead the charge. The $43 billion price tag will always keep the NBN in the top level of political issues. But leadership may just be the key.

Public Sphere Model: Local issues must be next

Senator Kate Lundy's innovative approach to citizen engagement using social networking tools and new media is proving very successful in enabling citizens to have a voice in policy development. So far, the model has focused on giving citizens a voice in Government 2.0.

The obvious next step is to see the model used to engage with citizens on local issues. I have been arguing for some time that we need a balance between centralisation and decentralisation.

To borrow Roger Clarke's concept (from Public Sphere #1), centralisation leads to systemic failure, whereas decentralisation leads to sporadic failure. It would seem a balance between the two is appropriate for a connected world.

The trouble I see at this point is that Australia's approach is highly centralised, and we are lacking in capabilities (infrastructure and culture) to engage in a decentralised environment.

That is not to say that centralisation is all bad. The idea of 'centrality' (as opposed to 'centralisation'), particularly leadership from federal politicians (such as Senator Lundy), is crucial to enabling local communities to take advantage of the benefits of new media (leading to decentralisation).

As I argued in my presentation at Public Sphere #2 (see video below), we need to develop decentralised research and learning facilities at the local level to overcome the problems of our deep-seated tradition of central control.

Feedback from some of the 'tweeters' at Public Sphere #2 suggested that my idea of 'centres' for social innovation went against my approach of avoiding 'centralisation' (and I agree).

After discussions today with an emerging community of online collaborators at the University of Canberra, I mentioned this feedback and we came up with the label 'Social Innovation Exchanges'. Stay tuned for some online initiatives in this regard soon.

So where to next? I think the Public Sphere model of short presentations - video recorded, live blogged, tweeted and then followed up with blog comments and a briefing paper (with wikis to be added soon) - would work well for citizen engagement on local issues.

For example, activities such as the recent consultation on the future of the Scullin shops would have been a great issue to experiment with the Public Sphere model on a local problem.

Starting off with a fairly innocuous issue is important to get the model right for local communities, as it would enable interested parties to present their views - even if they could not attend a particular public meeting - about the issue for public review without being too controversial.

There are many opportunities and challenges ahead in the digital future. What we do now in the quasi-digital present will be an important step in the evolution of new media models for citizen engagement.

I have conceptualised where we are at now using the 'forming, storming, norming, performing' process (outlined in much of the project management literature) in the presentation below.

Keep your ears to the ground about current developments at the University of Canberra. We have a proud and strong community which lends itself to an actively engaged and online 'Community 2.0'. But more on this in a future post!

Public Sphere: Government 2.0 - Michael De Percy from Kate Lundy on Vimeo.