So, the ACT Gov­ern­ment is finally mak­ing moves to open up and par­tic­i­pate with its com­mu­nity and enact­ing some open gov­ern­ment pro­grams. We’ve already had the first Vir­tual Com­mu­nity Cab­i­net, which seemed to go okay (though I remain doubt­ful that Twit­ter is the right venue for this kind of thing). And this week, the Chief Min­is­ter, Katy Gal­lagher launched her blog (though I note the media release fails to have active links — a basic misstep).

Some­thing good that’s already hap­pen­ing is the Time to Talk site, invit­ing com­mu­nity input on ACT Gov­ern­ment activ­i­ties. It’s even invit­ing dis­cus­sion about the pro­posed open gov­ern­ment site that will be developed.

But do we have a cart-​​horse issue here?

The con­cept doc­u­ments are cer­tainly fine as they stand. My con­cern is that a con­cept doc­u­ment for a web­site doesn’t begin to scratch the sur­face of what’s needed. There seems to be a great deal miss­ing from the ACT Government’s open gov­ern­ment activities:

  • open licens­ing of all these mate­ri­als as CC-​​BY as rec­om­mended by the Gov­ern­ment 2.0 Task­force with respect to the pro­duc­tion of pub­lic sec­tor information
  • a more detailed plan about how the ACT Gov­ern­ment intends, at both the polit­i­cal and pub­lic ser­vant level, to engage with its con­stituency directly
  • who will engage, when, under what cir­cum­stances and via what chan­nels?
  • what is the defined min­i­mum thresh­old for responses? Will we see a very offi­cial approach, or will politi­cians, staffers and bureau­crats be encour­aged (as they should) to engage in con­ver­sa­tions with the com­mu­nity as a part of open gov­ern­ment activ­i­ties that sit along the official-​​professional-​​personal spectrum?
  • have bureau­cratic bar­ri­ers to pub­lic ser­vant par­tic­pa­tion been removed and are all pub­lic ser­vants empow­ered to actively engage with the com­mu­nity online?
  • have tech­ni­cal bar­ri­ers to access social tools such as Twit­ter, Face­book, YouTube and oth­ers been removed for ACT pub­lic ser­vants so that their engage­ment with the com­mu­nity is facil­i­tated rather than hindered?
  • are ACT gov­ern­ment staff — politi­cians, staffers and bureau­crats being ade­quately trained in the cul­tural, tech­ni­cal and socio-​​technical changes needed to open up the ACT Gov­ern­ment ade­quately to more par­tic­i­pa­tory meth­ods of working?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited by all this activ­ity. I just want to under­stand bet­ter what the plan is, how it will work and when it will be acted upon.