Quote Of The Year

Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"

or

H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Monday, June 22, 2009

Ever Wonder What Happened to the Founding CEO of NEHTA?

The following arrived in my inbox today to clear up any uncertainty.

From today’s Slattery’s Watch we have the following:

Government 2.0 Taskforce announced

Lindsay Tanner, Minister for Finance and Deregulation has formed a Government 2.0 Taskforce to be chaired by Dr Nicholas Gruen. Other members of the fifteen member taskforce include: Ann Steward, Alan Noble, Martin Hoffman, Mia Garlick, Ian Reinecke, Prof Brian Fitzgerald, Lisa Harvey and Pip Marlow.

The work of the Taskforce is divided into promoting transparency and encouraging engagement. The Taskforce will be able to fund initiatives and incentives through a Project Fund of $2.45 million to support the development of Web 2.0 tools and applications that either enable engagement between government and the community or support the innovative use of government information.

The Taskforce will also identify policies and frameworks to assist the Information Commissioner and other agencies in - developing and managing a whole of government information publication scheme to encourage greater disclosure of public sector information; extending opportunities for the reuse of government information and encouraging effective online innovation, consultation and engagement by government.

The full newsletter can be viewed here:

http://www.rippledirect.com.au/Virtemail.cfm?H=2482b14xn83

The taskforce has a web site with video introduction here:

http://gov2.net.au/

There is more coverage here:

Govt unleashes web 2.0 taskforce

Suzanne Tindal, ZDNet.com.au

22 June 2009 02:33 PM

Tags: government, web 2.0, tanner, gruen, taskforce, steward, noble

The Federal Government today launched a taskforce to investigate web 2.0's ability to make government more transparent and increase community engagement.

A video introduction to the taskforce (Credit: Federal Govt)

The taskforce will table a report at the end of this year on how government information can become more accessible and usable, how the government can make use of the views, resources and knowledge of the public, and how to promote collaboration across agencies. After the report the taskforce will disband.

Comments on the taskforce abounded this morning in Twitter under the tag #publicsphere from people participating in Senator Kate Lundy's Public Sphere open government event in Canberra. Many tweets were supportive, pointing out sites where web 2.0 has worked which the government could examine, while others were concerned about the taskforce's commitment to open standards and innovation given Microsoft's involvement.

The taskforce will be chaired by Dr Nicholas Gruen, CEO of Lateral Economics. It also features some prominent members including Australian Government CIO Ann Steward as deputy chair, Google Australia engineering director Alan Noble, Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations CIO Glenn Archer, assistant secretary for the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Mia Garlick, Microsoft public sector director Pip Marlow and former NEHTA CEO Dr Ian Reinecke.

Much more here:

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Govt-unleashes-web-2-0-taskforce/0,130061733,339297051,00.htm

All I can say is that it is good Dr Reinecke’s expertise in “promoting transparency and encouraging engagement” is to be fully utilised!

David.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, if Ian Reinecke is in any way typical of the composition of this taskforce, it is most unlikey to be interested in proven solutions that already work.

A more likely focus will be:

1. Hire a lot of old mates (hmmm ... think this one might already be underway)
2. Build a new bureaucratic empire
3. Squander enormous amounts of public funds
4. Hire a bunch of domain experts that have no experience in the real world
4. Attempt to build a new solution from scratch without acknowledging what already works
5. Set up sumptuous offices in several capital cities
6. Spend a lot of time (and money) travelling the world to see how it is done elsewhere
6. Fly staff incessantly between offfices because they live in other cities
7. Define a solution in about ten years' time

Anonymous said...

Nope. I have never ever wondered what happened to him. It was so good to see the back of him. Good riddance is all I can say.

Anonymous said...

I worked closely with Reinecke when he was a Pro Vice Chancellor at University of Queensland and I confess that for a time I was taken in but him. But time and tide have proven him to be a complete waste of oxygen. It is deeply disappointing that publicly funded organisations in this country can tolerate parasites of this order.