Fel­low open gov­ern­ment advo­cate, Craig Thom­ler, has asked a very impor­tant ques­tion in his lat­est post:

I won­der, should Aus­tralian polit­i­cal par­ties have explicit poli­cies for Open Gov­ern­ment and Gov­ern­ment 2.0 with com­mit­ments to the use of online media and sup­port for online engage­ment by pub­lic servants?

It’s a ques­tion I have also asked.

In the light of NZ Labour’s recent pol­icy dec­la­ra­tion, which is fairly com­pre­hen­sive, touch­ing on tech­ni­cal and cul­tural mat­ters, it’s high time major Aus­tralian par­ties did the same.

In my view, Labor in this coun­try has largely dropped the ball from a pol­icy per­spec­tive since Lind­say Tan­ner was given the task of announc­ing the open gov­ern­ment dec­la­ra­tion.

Sure, many agen­cies at sev­eral lev­els of gov­ern­ment have been able to pro­ceed and make real progress on their open gov­ern­ment efforts, but there’s lit­tle or no over­ar­ch­ing plat­form from the party per­spec­tive. The Lib­eral party is utterly MIA on this mat­ter. The Greens seem to be the only party with a cur­rent, declared posi­tion on the matter.

I’d very much wel­come the fed­eral par­ties mak­ing a pol­icy dec­la­ra­tion that rep­re­sented an up-​​to-​​date posi­tion includ­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion, cul­ture and tech­nol­ogy per­spec­tives. The ACT Government’s moves in this direc­tion since Katy Gal­lagher became Chief Min­is­ter are a good start, but need improve­ment and more vis­i­ble action.