The governments response to the inquiry is starting to emerge with a media release entitled Government puts workplace bullies on notice.

The full detail has not been revealed at the time of my publishing this post. However, two matters stand out sat this stage.

• Recognising that bullying does not include reasonable management practices including…

Based on our work over the last few years we have created the infographic below for local government. Like many organisations across…

Last month I presented at the Future of social government conference held in Canberra. It was a…

Background

The Australian Governments’ House of Representatives recently passed the Public Service Amendment Bill 2012. The Bill contains legislative proposals to enable the implementation of the recommendations contained in the report Ahead of the Game: …

This post is by way of a welcome to Boys from the Bush.

What is the connection between Boys from the Bush and Gov 2.0/Open Government you may ask.

Having spent 15 years in the Northern Territory and having had responsibility for matters associated with Indigenous Australians in the public sector I am reasonably well qualified to suggest a few connections. Working with Indigenous Australians in my…

While it is pleasing that the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment is inquiring into workplace bullying it is fair to say that the inquiry is starting out with some serious methodological flaws. Flaws, I suggest, that could compromise the veracity of the inquiry…

Despite being an atheist (or maybe because of that), I think the looming Easter break provides an opportunity to reflect on the deeper aspects of life. Especially on those phenomenon and experiences that either divide or connect us.

With that in mind what I want to do in this post is put the current state of affairs within the Australian Public Service on a human scale. The bureaucratic corporate mindset and outdated notions of corporate management that pervade the public…

The Canberra Times kindly published an article of mine in the Public Sector Informant magazine. The informant itself is not available on line so I've provided it in pdf below.

You sometimes hear people complain about how the press alters the what they say and that the intended meaning gets lost.The editor of the Informant Markus Mannheim was fantastic to deal with and made some tweaks that really added value.…

In this weekends Canberra Times Markus Mannheim wrote a piece entitled Please speak freely, servants...just don't upset anyone.

Markus apologises, not for his original article, but for the aftermath. And I quote,

I'm not sorry for highlighting this latest advice; that's my job. It's…

An interesting bit of work from the Indiana University Office of Interactive Communications.

Many of us grew up in the Push Culture, a period in history where manufacturers and distributors told us what we should think about their product through all types of advertising mediums that were available at the time - television, print, and even the dearly loved telemarketers. Branding was King. That was then. Times have changed, thanks almost exclusively to the internet and…

Here are the Smart Government Australia 2011 conference presentations for you to download.

After having read them I think it is fair to say that they cover a nice spectrum in terms of what is being done and what challenges to be met.

Here is the presentation roll call so far.

Brett…

From the United Nations Public Administration Network (UNPAN) comes a blog called e-Government Assessment http://egovernments.wordpress.com/

Going by the tag cloud, the site seems to be quite big on assessing government website accessibility.

This recent post points to a book providing a Global Web Accessibility Analysis of National Government Portals and Ministry Web…

The presentations from speakers have not yet been put on the Terrapinn's web site. That will happen after today.

What I want to do is share my account of day 1 of the conference with you.

In my opening remarks I spoke about the theme of people power and what meant for our institutions. In my comments I emphasised the need for authenticity. Here are the…

It is fascinating to see the convergence between behavioural economics and government policy making. The difficult question, however, is whether this is philosophy is consistent with Gov 2.0?

The messages seem mixed. On the one hand we have Empowering consumers using behavioural insights and on the other we have …

How often have you thought that Gov 2.0 means government agencies and individual public servants adopting some new practices and ways of looking at the world? It all looks a bit chicken and egg at times, but given the nature of social media technologies the individual has a greater capacity to generate change than in the past. Almost paradoxically this because people can group together to express and exchange ideas and move them into the public sphere.

From Civil…

Simple question. Is the public service keeping up with this? In what ways does your agency need to change to do so?

On 22 My 2011 I put up a post on Ozloop entitled Freedom of professional expression - Freedom of association.

There is a lot of serendipity about at the moment. The UNESCO report Freedom of connection : Freedom of expression released this month being a case in…

Of late I have been increasingly perplexed about the so very 1.0 approach taken over the proposed carbon tax. Overwhelmingly what we have is a very more like a monologue with government largely really on traditional media approaches.

There is nigh on no use of social media to engage the community in a debate over something that impacts every person in this country. Go to the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities web site and what you see…

Do a search for the term "industrial relations 2.0" and you get 491 search results. Call it 490 as one of them was yours truly on Twitter.

With Australian Public Service agency agreement negotiations underway it is timely to be raising a few questions of an industrial relation nature.

One of the things I have observed on both sides of the IR equation (Unions and employers), is that the parties seem to be locked into some very traditional ways of doing things.…