Consultation

Jimi, I accept that I may not have hit on the best mechanism to lower the barriers to the public sector conducting community engagement using a Gov2.0 approach, but I’d appreciate your constructive suggestions (or others) on how to solve the problem – how to lower the barriers for Government agencies to Gov2.0 engagement – In NSW, even if I get over the cultural hurdles, I have no funding for conducting consultation (whether of the traditional or online variety), and I haven’t seen free software that is up to the task.

As with comments made by others on some of the other projects – the Taskforce needs to be careful not to propose “rework” – reinventing wheels that are already rolling elsewhere.
Start with Queensland’s adoption of creative commons as the baseline, and check if it needs any refinement to take national.

While I agree with Stephen and Anna that cultural shift is a prerequisite, I think readily accessible and affordable tools are also a threshold issue.
My ‘wish’ is for the Taskforce to research, design and establish a centralised website for policy development and consultation, called “Talk to Government”, which provides free access to a really well designed but basic level of web 2.0 consultation, feedback and collaboration tools for Governments at all levels.
It could start simply, with a forum tool (like Bang the Table) for traditional “here is a proposal, what do you think” style consultation, and be gradually expanded to include a wiki tool for collaborative policy development (like Future Melbourne) and a more open ended ideas gathering and/or feedback site (like ObamaCTO, with voting or NHS hospitals feedback in the UK).
How do we develop the basic site tools? I’m not convinced that the competition approach is the best one for this project. We want these basic tools to be the best they possibly can be, if government departments are to be persuaded to use it. I think an approach harnessing commercial competition would be preferable. At the moment “many flowers are blooming” as companies step up to address the needs of different government agencies for these tools. A competitive tender, where the tenderers can address one or more of the tool types could result in, say, three successful tenderers providing the different tools hosted on the one site. The companies would be required to collaborate to harmonise their user interfaces, but would support their own section of the site. The basic site tools could come with optional pay-for-use add ons, such as project planning, moderation, results collation and analysis.
Use of the centralised site would not be limited to the basic tools available on the site. If a Government agency had sufficient funds and motivation, they could develop or use a more tailored product, and link into the Talk to Government website to increase their reach.
Or if the Governments were willing to fund it, the site could offer 24/7 monitoring and moderation. By centralising moderation at one “Talk to government” location, you would get good economies of scale. By centralising all Government policy consultations at one suitably searchable website, you would maximise audience reach. You would also minimise the barriers presented by users having to learn to interact with too many different styles of technology.
The absolutely critical factor is affordability to government at all levels – with tight budgets, no government agency I know can afford to increase the costs of consultation, regardless of how much it increases the effectiveness or transparency of the process. but the first barrier that has to be overcome is the reluctance of government to innovate.