gatewatching

It’s been less than a fortnight since the federal government’s Department of Broadband, Communication, and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) - perhaps best known at the moment for its attempt to filter the Internet (boo) and its hardline stance against the corporate thugs at Telstra (yay) - launched its Digital Economy consultation blog. Foreshadowed in a number of earlier publications (in particular, a recommendation to trial blogs in the Australian Government Information Management Office’s report on online consultation with citizens, concluding a thought process begun under the previous mob, and Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner’s post on his blog in The Age), the blog was introduced in a guest post by Tanner - and that post alone has generated more than 750 on-site comments to date.

So, as far as community involvement and consultation is concerned, the DBCDE blog can be seen as a success - it constitutes a new venue for the still all-too-rare direct online citizen feedback to a sitting government. That said, a majority of comments on the initial blog posts appeared to deal with those two hot-button issues - Internet filtering and Telstra’s exclusion from the broadband tendering process -, quite regardless of the blog posts’ topics themselves, and that’s a significant problem. If the point of this blog is to engage in a bit of crowdsourcing, harvesting some of the better ideas put forward by commenters on the blog, and in return perhaps also harnessing satisfied participants as virtual marketers for the government’s policies, then so far it’s not yet achieving its purpose.

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Steven Conroy, blogging, broadband, government Australia, blogging, broadband, community, consultation, DBCDE, e-democracy, government, Stephen Conroy, Steven Conroy

Alcopops, petrol tax holidays, who leaked emails from whom… Sometimes its difficult to get serious policy discussion in the MSM (unless, like me, you’re a Fin junkie).

The best way to find out about major policy developments that impact on your areas of concern is through your RSS reader. I thought I’d try to start sharing some of what I get on a semi-regular basis on the blog. We’ve posted about policy matters before, but at the moment there is important stuff coming out pretty well every week that has a direct bearing on citizen journalism and politics online. I thought I might as well stick it all together for readers now and again.

With all the reviews and inquiries going on just now, there will be a mass of reporting coming along shortly which will be informing big policy initiatives. Also, notwithstanding some MSM narratives of the first six months, I’m with Mark Bahnisch and Possum in holding that there is actually a fair bit going on already - you just have to look around in a clear-eyed fashion. There are some fundamental policy shifts slowly being put in place, particularly in the communications area, but for whatever reason it’s not being picked up on by the big outlets. I guess that’s one area where bloggers come into their own.

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ACMA, Steven Conroy, Telstra, blogging, broadband, media literacy, regulation ACMA, blogging, broadband, futures, infrastructure, media literacy, policy, regulation, Steven Conroy, Telstra