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

Legitimate security reasons limit access to some Web 2.0 tools, such as webmail, because it
typically uses ‘encrypted tunnels’ which may necessitate expensive additional investment to
secure against malware.
Some security reasons cited for not giving access are less convincing. For instance it is frequently
argued that social networking tools raise the risk of people voluntarily disclosing confidential
information. Yet employees have many opportunities to leak confidential information should
they be so minded. It is unclear why these mediums should involve any qualitative change in the
risk levels associated with phone or email exchange.
Management sometimes considers that Web 2.0 tools facilitate time wasting. However
controlling time wasting is a management problem rather than a good reason to limit the
productive use of these tools.
As a practical matter the lack of access to the tools makes online engagement impossible. As
one public servant commented, having been referred to the taskforce’s blog:
Just tried to hit the link you included. This site has been categorised as ‘Political/Activist
Groups/Blogs/Personal Pages’. 139
Further, demand for such tools is also a function of their supply, because people learn how to
use them and their potential usefulness by using them.
To achieve Government 2.0 agencies need to:
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take much greater advantage of tools and practices to capture the expertise and experience
of citizens, service users and front-line public service workers to enrich the knowledge from
which public policy and service delivery decisions are made
use Web 2.0 tools as a major contribution to the task of refreshing and renewing the public
service as a critical institution in Australia’s governance
recognise that the more open and connected techniques of communication and knowledge
sharing should also fuel innovation in the search for new responses to the difficult policy
challenges of a complex, networked world
use these tools internally to engage with their own staff and with staff across the public
service.
Further, wherever possible public agencies should build these tools as they become available
rather than ‘reinventing the wheel’ internally. Tapping into existing tools enables agencies to
tap into billions of hours of experience in building, fixing and adapting these tools to improve
their performance — including improving the experience users have of them. And as is the way
on Web 2.0, some agencies will adapt the tools and so make their own contributions to the
commons of Web 2.0 platforms for government for the benefit of other agencies with like needs
in Australia and other countries.
Box 4: A government agency’s early experience with Web 2.0
It’s worth sharing our early experiences with Web 2.0. In 2002 we had visionary staff who wanted to
build a Web 2.0 space called My Museum as a component of a much larger website redevelopment
and content management system project. Users would become members, select images of objects in
our database, add captions, and upload their own images and captions. In short, users would curate
and share their own online museum exhibitions.
139 http://apsozloop.ning.com/xn/detail/3812050:Comment:1530 or http://tinyurl.com/ydt7n6l.
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Engage: <strong>Getting</strong> on with Government 2.0 | report of the government 2.0 taskforce