Getting Web 2.0 right in Government

In the recently released National Innovation Review, Web 2.0 was mentioned as part of a slew of recommendations to encourage Government to invest with renewed effort into innovation initiatives to prepare Australia to better handle the changing global economies. Tom Worthington mentioned the report in his blog a little while ago.

It begins with an over-view of the falling R&D and Higher education investments over the last 12 years to below the OECD average of 5%.

Among the may recommendations to move Australia back into the game, page 25 of the summary document details an advisory committee be set up to help government organisations as they experiment and implement Web 2.0 technologies. It goes on to suggest that 5 significant Web 2.0 experiments should be undertaken over the next two years and be evaluated under the auspices of the Minister for Finance and Deregulation.

A good step forward I think. Several people at the ARK conference I spoke at yesterday said their department would happily do an experiment, and I imagine there will be quite a line of people with their hands up for a place on that committee. I hope the key components of Enterprise 2.0 are addressed as well as the implications of Government participating in the more public side of Web 2.0. Time will tell.