My heroes are the ’super-text correctors’ members of the public who are working in their own time, almost full time on text correction. Julie Hempenstall is leading the field. Some of the others wish to remain anonymous so I won’t name them.

Early this morning our wonderful volunteers have now corrected 6.23 million lines of text – quite amazing. And remember we have not yet done any serious publicity or promotion for the service, since the ‘official launch’ has not yet happened!!

If you want to read about some other amazing people and initiatives I strongly recommend a book called “Here Comes Everybody” by Clay Shirky. Clay has been writing about the power of individual social engagement in the digital space for some time, but has recently noted that when people get together to achieve a big shared common goal the results are even more stunning. A great example of this (other than the Australian Newspapers) is the UK Guardian Expenses Scandal where the public worked flat out together to find information in digitised expenses records. Read about the lessons that were learnt- government, libraries and archives really need to wake up to opportunties like this.

To help us wake up an unpaid hero of mine Liam Wyatt (VP of Wikimedia Australia) recently was the covenor of a large gathering in Canberra: the GLAM-Wiki event. People from Government, Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums were invited to get together with Wikimedia volunteers to discuss what we could all do for each other and things we thought we needed each other to do to enable more engagement to happen. The outcome was a list of recommendations which I hope the Gov 2.0 Taskforce are considering.

The other unsung ones are here. And don’t forget Warwick Cathro, who has been trying to break down the barriers in (the NLA at) Canberra for so long, particularly with these conferences. He’s a bit like aph.gov.au’s Clerk of the House. Quiet, unassuming and willing to give anyone with a good idea their head, if only he could understand what the hell they’re saying.

It helps that Rose is newish to the NLA = a Pom via NZ. Most of this progressive stuff always seems to require some new eyes moving into an established (do i hear stagnant?) culture. I can’t see how the corrections part of the newspaper digitialization project would have got a chance if she hadn’t have had bit the bullet and opened it up for PLU’s.

What Craig said about (people with a) librarians’ (training) being the leaders in the public space is quite true (like most of what he says). It’s because of the nature of their profession (and the people it attracts). They can’t help but want to open things up. The great pity is that the ones who run uni libraries aren’t as progressive as the public ones, which is why we never get the money allocated for progressive media like what youse is doing.

They’d rather spend (our) money for a third party publisher to aggregate the journals (of their uni’s authors). They spend billions every year, rather than communicating with their global peers and doing the aggregation themselves, and adding all the other I and C stuff which we all know about.
Oh, and by the way, they (the majority) DO insist that all authors upload their papers to the uni (open journal) web site, and then sometimes dump the lot into a National box. Bone idle marketing which reinforces a silo mentality.

I have lots of heroes and heroines around the world who work at building National and Global subject specific groups, and breaking down the silo culture; many take the Flumien approach. It’s great, although it always worries me because it’s a bit like taking a chip out of a monolith. These progressives always get burned out so fast, and no one can compensate them enough.

In the global.edu ‘changing a culture’ space Fred’s the best. But he has the advantage of living in a culture which is a lot more open than the Australian one – you won’t find Lifelong Learning & OER on many agenda’s in Oz. In the .gov.au space, you, Pia and Roxanne@aph’s library are my heroes Nic. Craig and Peter Alexander are a bit alright too.

So, as I continually say to Pia, “don’t burn out.” Its a culture we’re trying to see changed and one can’t often point to the communication which is changing it, because not many people feel encouraged enough to talk above the radar like this. Also, there are are so few open places, especially in Oz, where it could take place. It’s out of our silotic scope.

Librarians (in the broader sense) were some of the earliest adopters and innovators on the internet and from all of my analysis are the most active public servants online, with more blogs, networks and online initiatives than the rest of the Australian public service combined.

Why is this the case? There’s an unusual mix of skills and passion that is required by librarians. As custodians of our nation’s knowledge and with the specific goals of preserving and sharing the best – and worst – of our culture, but with a relatively low political risk environment it’s excellent soil for supporting innovation that finds difficulty rooting in other public sector environments.

It’s no surprise to me that a disproportionate number of the online leaders in the public sector, like Rose and her team, have ties to the library and museum sector, including Bernard at Mosman City Council and Seb at the Powerhouse Museum.

There are many examples of initiatives like Project Guttenberg in the not-for-profit and commercial sector which government could use as inspiration for crowdsourcing and transparency initiatives.

The challenge, for both public and private sector organisations, is getting these initiatives championed, approved, adequately funded and having internal leadership with the stamina and passion to stay the course in the face of many barriers.

An intrinsic disadvantage in the public sector is the limit on adequate mechanisms to reward the individuals and teams who drive innovation to compensate them for their blood, sweat and tears. While the inner glow of satisfaction when serving the public good and government is a motivator, it’s not the kind of driver that sees the level of effort put into so many innovative commercial start-ups.

Possibly a good example to draw from is the SAVE Award, the latest US government initiative – where the best cost saving initiative suggested (online) by a Federal employee will be rewarded with recognition and a meeting with the US President. The agency with the highest participation level will also be awarded – kudos for its management – thereby encouraging US Federal Agencies to support, rather than frown on, participation.

Here’s some examples that government can reflect on:

Netflix prize – crowdsource improvements to systems, offering kudos and prize money to those who achieve significant improvements.

Facebook translation application – crowdsource translations of content into multiple languages, using an automated comparison system to reduce errors, offering kudos for the most active translators.

US Dept of Health and Human Services flu prevention competition – crowdsource advertising material for campaigns – in itself a way to raise public awareness. This may require modification of the Government Advertising Guidelines…

SETI@Home – outsource the computing power required to solve major health and scientific issues through using unused cycles across millions of computers. This approach is used in a number of initiatives, such as genetic sequencing, and even if the government ran this type of project internally – across government-owned computers – it could leverage enormous computing power at low cost.

Those are just top-of-mind ideas arrived at in a few minutes of thought. Many other examples exist that government could consider.

As to the question in the original post – other leaders in other projects who have selflessly volunteered large amounts of their time to build the public goods of Web 2.0 in Australia.

I’d nominate Matthew Landauer, Katherine Szuminska and the other volunteers involved in OpenAustralia who do work in this space for no finance reward whatsoever (and get little official recognition or support for their work).

I’d also nominate Cheryl Hardy of Victoria’s eGovernment Resource Centre, managed by DIIRD, who has gone far beyond her paid job to make the Centre Australia’s best resource for aggregated information on Gov 2.0.

Finally I’d nominate Professor Brian Fitzgerald, Tom Cochrane and the <a href="“>the team supporting Creative Commons Australia. Web 2.0 and Gov 2.0 initiatives require modern copyright regimes to underpin their success.

I’m struck by the way in which the NLA stumbled upon the idea.

They “stumbled” upon it by looking at Project Guttenberg which has been doing the same thing for nearly 10 years.