[Osia-members] GovHack (and Open Government) could be more impactful if they learned from Open Source communities

[Cameron Shorter]

Thanks Jack,

You make some good points.

Would you mind putting it into the comments section next to the article 
so that the greater GovHack community get a chance to see them. (I'm 
expecting/hoping they will be referring back to this article when 
planning the next GovHack).

I'll respond on the website. (You will probably need to expand some of 
your abbreviations and include references so they are relevant to a 
wider audience).

Warm regards, Cameron


On 19/8/17 5:48 pm, Jack Burton wrote:
> On Sat, 2017-08-19 at 07:45 +1000, Cameron Shorter wrote:
>> Hi guys,
>>
>> I attended the recent GovHack event and have written an article about it
>> which has been published. I've suggested that  GovHack and Open
>> Government could be more impactful (rather than just busy) if they drew
>> some lessons from Open Source:
>>
>> http://www.themandarin.com.au/82472-making-govhack-open-government-more-impactful/
> Thanks Cameron for pointing that out to everyone. You raise some very
> good points in the article.
>
> Your first four recommendations in particular should make a substantial
> difference to GovHack itself (#1 to quantity of participants, the next
> three to quality of outcomes), if implemented.
>
> I'm in two minds about your R5 -- personally I see benefit, rather than
> detriment, in diversity of APIs (including protocols & standards for
> data access), as healthy competition tends to foster innovation (and
> whilst the goal is clearly to encourage innovation in the use of open
> data, why not foster innovation in how it's published too?) ... but I
> agree with you 100% on the importance of having clear documentation for
> them.
>
> Whilst more general in scope, your R6 & R7 are well worth pursuing too.
>
> It's interesting to note the overlap in part between your R7 (in
> relation to open government specifically) and some of the comments that
> Carl & I made in our submission to PM&C in January (in relation to
> software in government generally -- see sections 2.1, 4.1 & 5.2 and
> recs 2, 9 & 11).
>
> Clearly it's high time to replace the ageing (and rather toothless)
> AGOSSP -- and I don't see any reason why its replacement could not
> speak to community based initiatives like GovHack, along the lines you
> suggest, in addition to embodying some of the procurement policy &
> process reforms that Carl & I suggested.
>
> Always good to see AU FOSS industry players making sensible
> recommendations on improving government's approach to FOSS, open
> standards & open data -- keep up the good work!
>
> Regards,
>
>

-- 
Cameron Shorter
M +61 419 142 254