Getting on with Government 2.0 - Department of Finance and ...

Even in the short period of its existence, aspects of the taskforce’s modelling of Inquiries 2.0
proved infectious. Other inquires adopted aspects of our process without prompting from us.
Thus the Management Advisory Committee project on Advancing Public Sector Innovation
adopted ‘soft deadlines’ from the outset. 294 Further the Henry Review into Taxation revised the
way it was hosting submissions to improve their searchability. 295
By using the tools and practices of Government 2.0 to start implementing this new method of
running an inquiry, the taskforce not only articulated its vision and suggested some practical
ways to accelerate Government 2.0, but was also able to illustrate what it might look like.
Inquiries 2.0 demonstrated many of the benefits that other jurisdictions have reported, including:
widening the mix of voices and ideas in discussions
getting ideas and questions more quickly into the public domain for public response
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allowing an ongoing discussion to take place in an open and easily accessible online space
which acted as a focal point of taskforce activities
demonstrating an ability to learn by doing which meant that the taskforce was able to see
the impact and potential of many of the ideas being discussed at the same time that it was
recommending them in the report.
7.2 Failures and successes
As noted, the taskforce sought to use Government 2.0 approaches to inform its deliberations
and to carry out its activities.
Some things could have been done better, and in many ways the process was an exploration of
possibilities. Successes and failures began a chain of thinking and action about new ways of doing
things, with not a few moments of regret that ‘obvious’ solutions had not been thought of earlier.
We were fairly criticised for not promoting our message sufficiently in the mainstream media. Our
presence on Facebook was not well executed. We should have got some of our projects underway
sooner. We were also unable to live up to our intention to provide three to four weeks for public
consideration of our draft report. Problems with accessibility are outlined in a separate section.
Despite these shortcomings, in demonstrating the possibilities of an ‘Inquiries 2.0’ approach, the
taskforce has provided a good model for those who wish to take it up for the future. We took
great heart from the generous things said about our draft report by world leaders in the area
such as Andrea Di Maio, 296 Tom Watson, 297 David Weinberger 298 and Andrew McLaughlin. 299
294 The Department of Innovation project to investigate how to advance innovation within and by the public sector
under the auspices of the Management Advisory Committee has adopted a soft deadline for submissions
http://www.innovation.gov.au/Section/Innovation/Pages/AdvancingPublicSectorInnovation.aspx or http://
tinyurl.com/nbx6jm.
295 Australia’s Future Tax System Review (the Henry Review into Taxation) has
improved the capacity of its site to assist people searching submissions.
http://taxreview.treasury.gov.au/content/Content.aspxdoc=html/home.htm or http://tinyurl.com/ylmyrm4.
296 ‘[T]he best piece of work I have seen any government organisation (and most vendors and consultants) do about
this topic.’ http://blogs.gartner.com/andrea_dimaio/2009/12/08/australian-government-2-0-is-the-best-so-far/
or http://tinyurl.com/yefxb72.
297 Former UK Minister for Transformational Government, UK: ‘This is a deeply impressive piece of work, very
comprehensive with clear sign posting. The idea of info-philanthropy is an important point to make. A clear
explanation of the serendipitous nature of knowledge sharing in networks is probably a global first for a
government report.’, email to the Chair.
298 ‘Personally, I think the draft — from its principled overview to its broad areas of application — is a blueprint
for democracies everywhere.’, http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2009/12/08/australian-government-2-0-
taskforce-issues-draft/ or http://tinyurl.com/yeyu98j.
299 Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer, ‘Rowdy applause from the US White House Open Government Initiative. The
draft report is an impressive piece of work, assembling a vast trove of good ideas and sound analysis. We will study
and learn.’ http://gov2.net.au/blog/2009/12/07/draftreport/ or http://tinyurl.com/y8a8ohu.
Engage: <strong>Getting</strong> on with Government 2.0 | report of the government 2.0 taskforce
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