Long Time No Talk

I got an e-mail advice on 25 May that read

The third installment in the government's online consultation trial has just launched (with much less publicity) Please check it out at www.openforum.com.au/NHROC I would be happy to talk to you about it. Really want to let as many people as possible know it's happening so they can participate.

I sort of missed it though as I had temporarily retired battered and bruised from the public policy debate space.

I was intrigued by how this was called the "third installment" - I guess the DE blog was the second as someone else had run one as well. But I have serious doubts about the validity of this one, as the choice was made to use space on www.openforum.co.au which counts as its major sponsor a group called Global Access Partners. GAP gives the illusion of being a straight-forward private think tank, but their modus operandi was pretty is very non-transparent.

More recently the Australian Government has launched a consultation on Government 2.0 using the tools. I'm starting to think they are trying too hard to find ways of doing it differently rather than simply being organic in the development of use. After all the move to publishing decision from the Government Gazette to websites has been gradual.

The big focus on Public Sector Information has nothing really to do with any of the digital economy issues - the traps in this space seem mostly to be caught in odd thoughts about Government not competing with the private sector. That is, by being in the info biz they cut off someone else's opportunity to make a buck.

The relative logic of that proposition kicks off a strand of discussion in economics I don't want to pursue.

PS Tried another post to Crikey about filtering. Let's see if they will publish me again.