We Believe In Community Conference

Opening keynote

Government 2.0 – building a citizen-centric approach

PRESENTER: SENATOR KATE LUNDY

Senator Kate Lundy will discuss how Government 2.0 technologies and methodologies can help all level of government in building a strong citizen-centric approach in the delivery of government services, as well as for direct engagement in government processes. She will discuss her goals with the Public Spheres project, and share her experiences in this space as someone who has always pushed the envelope of digital engagement and communications for government.

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Introduction to WCAG 2.0

PRESENTER: NEIL KING

The W3C published the WCAG 2.0 specification in December 2008, but what does this mean for local governments and how do they work?

In this session Neil will provide a brief introduction to web accessibility and current legislation, before unravelling the structure of the WCAG 2.0 specification. The talk will focus on what is new in WCAG 2.0 and how it aims to support a variety of technologies.

SLIDES – NEIL KING: http://www.slideshare.net/visionaustralia/introduction-to-wcag-20

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Online Marketing: The New Online Territory Calls for A New Compass

PRESENTER: BOB CRAWSHAW

It is the age of now and pow communications.

New social media applications allow anyone, anywhere to create and distribute content and comment on your content. At no cost in real time. Democratic dialogue increasingly challenges messages from the corporate bunker. It’s brand new territory for PR and marketing teams and so far no one has invented the compass let alone drawn the map.

How can council communicators go online to engage young digital natives while reaching out to municipal tribal elders often fearful of crossing the digital divide.

This session explores how are others rising to the challenge of the online communications and what works, what doesn’t and why.

SLIDES – BOB CRAWSHAW: http://www.slideshare.net/bobcraw/lg-20-august-2009

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Extend your website using inexpensive web-based tools

PRESENTERS: BERNARD DE BROGLIO AND DIANA MOUNTER

If you’re wanting to extend your website beyond it’s standard static pages but don’t have the budget, or perhaps aren’t quite the coding ninja you’d like to be, then this session might be just what you need to inspire you to build, well just about anything!

There is a plethora of web-based tools out there just waiting to be used. Bernard and Diana in their respective roles like to get their hands dirty playing around with third party and open source apps, utilising the best of cloud applications – from Yahoo Pipes, to Wordpress. This session will show you some inspiring examples of how you can build new sites and services to extend your website.

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Local-e: future steps

PRESENTER: REEM ABDELATY

Local-e is about to undergo a fundamental change. By August we will have (hopefully) concluded a tender to find a new content management system to drive Local-e. This will push us headlong into the future, but will also require some significant work on our part.

What do we need to do to prepare, and how will this change impact on a day to day basis? We will discuss this and other issues around this change.

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Plenary session: Open Sourcing Government

PRESENTER: JASON RYAN

Jason will cover some of the implementations of innovative social and technological solutions to government service delivery in New Zealand. He will look at the lessons can be learned from these implementations and what some of the implications are for public servants who are trying to promote change and innovation withing their agencies. Jason’s focus is on people, not technology (although there may be the odd digression down that path…)

SLIDES – JASON RYAN: http://www.psnetwork.org.nz/s5/osg09.html Click on the links in the bottom right hand corner to view notes

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Government 2.0 Taskforce Workshop

FACILITATOR: LISA HARVEY

The Government 2.0 Taskforce is being formed against a backdrop of increased interest by governments worldwide in the potential uses of public sector information and online engagement.

The Taskforce is made up of policy and technical experts and entrepreneurs from government, business, academia, and cultural institutions.

Its work falls into two streams. The first relates to increasing the openness of government through making public sector information more widely available to promote transparency, innovation and value adding to government information.

The second stream is concerned with encouraging online engagement with the aim of drawing in the information, knowledge, perspectives, resources and even, where possible, the active collaboration of anyone wishing to contribute to public life.

The Local Government sector has a lot to say as both a supplier and user of public sector information. We would like to hear what you say about your own experiences of engagement with other levels of government, and also on how your constituency engages with, or expects to engage with you on both access to public sector information and digital engagement.

Your sector has different constraints and work with people at different junctions so your experiences are important to the Gov 2.0 Taskforce.

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Keeping records of your website

PRESENTER: CASSANDRA FINDLAY

There are good reasons for ensuring your Council keeps adequate records of its website. Without the ability to check back to past information published on the web, Council may not be able to defend itself in the event of disputes. If transactional information processed via the web is not captured, business continuity could be compromised. But at the same time not all website information necessarily needs to be saved. In this session, Councils’ responsibilities under the State Records Act 1998 in relation to website records will be explained, and some practical examples of strategies for website recordkeeping will be discussed.

SLIDES – CASSANDRA FINDLAY: http://www.slideshare.net/reemski/keeping-web-records

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Mobile Web

PRESENTER: Oliver Weidlich

The web can be complex enough, but now we have increasing numbers of Australians also using the mobile internet and other mobile based services. Oliver will cover what people are doing with their phones, and why mobile is a useful and easy source of information. We’ll cover the key things to be aware of when creating mobile sites, applications and content, as well as showing examples of what can be done.

SLIDES – OLIVER WEIDLICH: http://www.slideshare.net/oliverweidlich/lg-web-network-mobile-presentation-august-2009

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Community Engagement: Panel discussion

FACILITATOR: MATTHEW CROZIER

PANEL MEMBERS: JAMES DELLOW, ANNE BRANSDON, LOUISE ROSE, JULIE WILLIAMS

Engaging with the community online can be a great way to reach your wider community, and with moving trends almost it’s becoming expected. Whilst new technologies open up a whole new world of communication direct with your community, it often perceived that it can also open you up to risks. Our panel members have tackled the problems internally and externally in their organisations and are here to tell us about the good the bad and the ugly of online community engagement.

As well as state and local government representatives we also have industry representation from James Dellow of Headshift, and the session will be facilitated by Matthew Crozier from Bang the Table.

Participants will have the opportunity to ask the panel members questions and give feedback on their experiences with online community engagement.

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Closing keynote

Exposure: Transparency, Communities and Government Data

PRESENTER: MARK PESCE

The pressure is on – the pressure to open up and deliver timely and rich information to everyone who asks for it, when they ask for it, in the format they need. There’s no real way to satisfy everyone’s needs. The only reasonably alternative is to become completely transparent in data collection and data sharing, relying on energy of the community to crowdsource their way into a solution for their problems. This all sounds simple enough, but the road to a transparent nirvana is studded with potholes. Knowledge is power, and in the old way of doing business, he who controls the information possesses real power. The new way of doing business – becoming ever-more-common in the 21st century – challenges this old way of thinking. Which strategy will win out?

SLIDES – MARK PESCE: http://www.slideshare.net/mpesce/the-new-new

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