Over at YourHealth, the Depart­ment of Health and Ageing’s com­mu­nity con­sul­ta­tion site on Aus­tralian health reform, they’ve taken an extra step in the open­ing up of the pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion model — they’re now encour­ag­ing sub­mis­sions by video.

On top of the pretty open con­sul­ta­tion model they’re already using; sto­ries, reg­u­lar writ­ten sub­mis­sions, polling and the like, the addi­tion of video to the model drops yet another bar­rier to par­tic­i­pa­tion in the activ­ity of gov­ern­ment by Aus­tralians. For this, I think the folks at YourHealth deserve some con­grat­u­la­tions. I know a few of the peo­ple involved, so I’m not at all sur­prised by the progress they’re making.

Aus­tralian gov­ern­ments, like those in other con­stituen­cies, are still learn­ing all this Gov­ern­ment 2.0 stuff. As such, the YourHealth model isn’t per­fect. There’s a few things they could be doing bet­ter or more openly, but I’m cer­tain that any gap between what could be and what is could be reme­died with a lit­tle more con­sid­er­a­tion and big think­ing on the part of depart­men­tal senior management.

Here’s where I think they have room for improvement:

  • why do I have to send YourHealth my video? Why can’t I just post it online some­where like YouTube, Vimeo or any of the hun­dreds of other ser­vices avail­able and tell them where it is? The state­ments on the site about edit­ing sub­mis­sions are a lit­tle telling — there’s poten­tial for cen­sor­ship or blur­ring of the mes­sage in submissions.
  • of course, they’re mod­er­at­ing. That’s rea­son­able. But exactly what are they mod­er­at­ing for? Views they don’t agree with? Harsh crit­i­cism? Some­thing the Min­is­ter or the Sec­re­tary won’t like to hear? The mod­er­a­tion guide­lines don’t make it com­pletely clear and I think they’re more than a lit­tle heavy handed. They feel like they’re jus­ti­fy­ing pre­emp­tive cen­sor­ship of incon­ve­nient viewpoints.
  • where are all the sub­mis­sions? One of the great oppor­tu­ni­ties of this con­sul­ta­tion model is to openly and imme­di­ately share the con­tri­bu­tions from the com­mu­nity. Why isn’t every­thing being pub­lished imme­di­ately so we can all ben­e­fit from it and con­tribute addi­tional value to it? Or is it all being pub­lished? If we don’t know what’s been con­tributed, how can we tell? Whether we agree with any par­tic­u­lar view­point or not is irrel­e­vant, the value is in the shar­ing and openness.

So, to the folk at YourHealth, well done for hav­ing a go. You’re doing well, but you could be doing better.

I hope your senior man­age­ment reads my views and lets you act (there may be oth­ers, read those too). The imme­di­acy and avail­abil­ity of mate­ri­als from con­trib­u­tors, no mat­ter what the view­point expressed, has been one of the most valu­able parts of the con­sul­ta­tion the Gov­ern­ment 2.0 Task­force has under­taken. It’s all there — the good, bad, and ugly — for every­one to see. I’d like to see YourHealth do the same.