Posts tagged with 'Service Delivery'

Adobe Co-founders to Receive the National Medal of Innovation and Technology at the Whitehouse in October

  • Posted on September 18, 2009 at 11:02 am

Adobe’s co-founders to receive the National Medal of Technology and Innovation at the White House in October: http://bit.ly/w6I3Y

Government 2.0 Taskforce Roadshow – Encouragingly Refreshing

  • Posted on August 18, 2009 at 3:18 pm

I attended the first Government 2.0 Tasforce Roadshow held yesterday in Canberra at the Australian Bureau of Statistics in Belconnen. Whilst the agenda was published on the Taskforce web site I really did not know what to expect on the day. Given the format the event took it would have been more useful to both the Taskforce and the participants, to have been forewarned of the open consultative format. This would have allowed the participants to prepare topics for discussion more thoroughly and would most likely have resulted in more useful input. The Taskforce had run a similar smaller event earlier in the day with Commonwealth Officers in attendance.

Nicholas Gruen opened the event with a brief overview of the format and introduced the panel members for the day, which were Nicholas Gruen, Ann Steward (CIO AGIMO) and Glenn Archer (CIO DEEWR). The attendees were then asked to suggest topics for discussion over the next 2 hours.

The topics chosen were:

  1. Information Management
  2. Copyright
  3. Information Quality
  4. Culture Change

There was a lot of discussion regarding Web 2.0 and how it could be used to implement Government 2.0 and most of the discussion was of some value.

The discussion regarding ‘Information Quality’ was very interesting and I raised the point that if service delivery methods were delivered electronically then data integrity would be greatly increased and the likelihood of information being incorrect or out of date was greatly reduced.  Glenn Archer fully supported this view and raised a case in point which demonstrated this. Centrelink’s online service delivery solution which allows Centrelink customers to manage and maintain their own details is a huge success and proves an increase in both data integrity and validity. Imagine how much more that could be increased if Centrelink went a step further and delivered all of their services online, in particular unemployment benefit applications. Department of Human Services Illinois – case study

The discussion regarding ‘Culture Change’ was another one which completely surprised me with its content. It was acknowledged by the panel that there were issues within the Senior Executive Service (SES) with risk averse and innovation resistant attitudes making it difficult to implement change, it was noted that this attitude needed to be changed and a more Government 2.0 attitude adopted among the SES.  I asked how they were planning to drive this change and whether the change would be driven from the top down or some other method.

The responses from all three of the panel members were very positive and Ann Steward advised that the change in the SES would be driven from both directions, from the top down and the bottom up.  It was also mentioned that the Politicians wanted this change and therefore it would happen.

I personally find this an enlightening and fresh approach and feel that the taskforce have a long but rewarding job ahead of them.

For now, what can we do out here in grass roots land to help? Those who are attending the remaining Roadshows should read through the Taskforce issues paper, think about the questions they are asking in there, think about useful topics for discussion and go to the Roadshows prepared.

Federal Government Announces IT Innovation Council

  • Posted on July 21, 2009 at 3:17 pm

Today the Hon Kim Carr Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, annouced the 24 members of the new IT Innovation Council.

-quote from media release-

“IT will be the principal means to deliver the economic and productivity growth needed to drive innovation across the entire economy,“ Senator Carr said.

“IT is critical to Australia’s directly employing more than 400,000 Australians.

“Council members have been drawn from across the IT spectrum and include representatives of industry, suppliers, users, education, research, government and unions.

“The breadth and depth of experience on offer in the council will ensure that it delivers on its objective to champion innovation through the use of IT.”

The Government’s National Broadband Network will be vital to delivering this smart technology.

Council Chair, Mr John Grant, Managing Director of Data#3 Pty Ltd said the Council would develop a strategic agenda.

“The Council will have a wide agenda to consider innovation within the IT industry itself plus the application of technology to create innovation across the broader economy. It will apply the Government’s published innovation framework as it works closely with all stakeholders to execute this agenda,” Mr Grant said.

“The IT sector has its own well earned reputation for having an innovative and entrepreneurial culture. Harnessing that talent for the greater benefit of Australian industry will be one of the Council’s greatest opportunities.”

-end quote-

I think this is absolutely brilliant and look forward in particular to the last statement being utilised.  To date federal government have gone with a “what we know is safe” approach and have been afraid of innovation.  I applaud this step in the right direction and harbour great hopes that innovation and change in IT in goverment become a reality.

On a side note the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research might start with a revamp of their existing web site to make it accessible.  It is not accessible in its current form it generates 179 warnings on the homepage alone when an accessibility tool is used on it.

ATO Major FAIL on Accessibility

  • Posted on July 9, 2009 at 5:18 pm

Yes it’s that time of year again, income tax return time and the ATO have once again provided an eTax application.  Today on twitter I discovered that a glaring issue which has been a fault of eTax since it’s inception, and has not been addressed yet again, is that it only runs on the Windows platforms.  What about the thousands of Australians who are running the MAC OS or the thousands who are running a Linux OS, they are being discriminated against based on their OS of choice.

Even in my house this isn’t good enough, I am using a Dell running Vista, yay! I can lodge my tax return using the very convenient eTax application, but my 16 year old daughter who has a part-time job at Boost Juice cannot because she is using a MacBook Pro.

Something needs to be done about this, and it needs to be done right now and made available to the public in the next couple of months.  The lodgement date should be extended for people who are effected by this accessibility issue.

This really is something that should also be under HREOCs jurisdiction as it is a basic Human Right to run whatever operating system you choose to run.

User Experience and Paper Based Legislation

  • Posted on April 2, 2009 at 6:11 pm

I have worked within and with Federal and State Government agencies over the last five years. I have witnessed the frustration and road blocks these agencies face when attempting to improve user experience, enhance customer engagement and increase service delivery completion.  One of the issues is most of the legislation in place is currently written around traditional paper based forms and processes.  Another issue is that these paper based processes feed into large expensive mainframe legacy systems.  Which are past their use by date and expensive to make changes to, and even more expensive to replace.

These systems don’t need to be replaced nor the legislation rewritten in order to make significant changes to the user experience and customer engagement processes.  An inexpensive and fast win solution to this problem is use what is known as middleware to build a new application layer which provides a dynamic wizard like interface to the citizen, and automatically feeds data as needed into the existing legacy systems.

One of the traps people fall in to when designing a web interface for a paper based form is they think of the web application in a linear fashion, thinking of it like a wizard is a better idea.  Make the application dynamic, don’t force information that is not applicable to the user on them, skip things which are not relevant to the individual you are engaging with.  Combine multiple forms to fit a situation rather than forcing a user to fill in multiple forms and repeat information like their name and address details etc.  Take advantage of information you already have regarding the user and prepopulate all the information you have if they are an existing user.  Mr Smith who has just lost his job and is single with no kids doesn’t want to see all the form fields for spouse and child information, he only needs to see what is relevant to him.

Middleware doesn’t have to be expensive, Adobe ColdFusion is a good example of very inexpensive middleware which has Flex integration, PDF integration and a host of out of the box gateways and connectors.

Engaging citizens in this way enormously increases the completion of processes which represents a potential huge saving in both time and money, guarantees an increase in data and information integrity, and greatly enhances customer service delivery.

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