By Angela Dorizas

Cultural change is the greatest challenge for the public service in moving forward with the national Government 2.0 agenda, according to the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO).

Assistant secretary of the online services branch, Peter Alexander, told delegates at the Government 2.0 Conference in Canberra that openness was the not the default position of the public service.

“You’ve got to realise that what we’re moving from is a position where we were closed,” Mr Alexander said.

“We didn’t release data as a default. We didn’t have open licensing as a default.

“Suddenly the game has changed, fairly rapidly.”

Mr Alexander said the best way forward in this changing cultural landscape was to lead by example.

“I think one of the challenges we do have is in building confidence and it is a cultural issue,” Mr Alexander said.

“Of course the technology to write a blog or a wiki is relatively straight forward…but what we have are some cultural challenges and leadership challenges to get our people comfortable with this.”

He said the onus was on the leadership team to familiarise employees with Government 2.0 tools.

“The way to do that is through example,” he added, highlighting blogging as an example.

He said AGIMO had released Govspace as “an Australian Government version” of the WordPress publishing platform.

“We host blogs for agencies, from any level of government, not just federal,” Mr Alexander said.

“We’re talking to state and local governments about helping them. It’s designed to meet a wide range of needs.”

Examples include www.innovation.govspace.gov.au and www.australia.gov.au.

He encouraged governments at all levels to consult AGIMO and discuss their service delivery needs.

“People have been much more confident in discussing policy… but really not so much in service delivery,” he said.

“We really want to take this into the service delivery space.”
 

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