The Blog Stump

Do you have an idea for using government information that you’d love to have but you can’t get now? Would you like to win $5,000 for your favorite nonprofit? Well, all you have to do is come up with a
great idea for the nonprofit sector to use government information to make the world a better place. The contest details are below.
Who’s behind this? The Gov 2.0 Task Force, appointed by the Australian Government.
What’s Gov 2.0? It’s about governments being more open with information and using social media to communicate with the public, so they are more accountable.
So how does this contest work? The Taskforce will select the best idea(s) for using public sector information in a nonprofit/charity setting and award a cash donation of $5,000 to the charity/not-for-profit organisation of the winner’s choice.
What happens after that? The winner(s) (or their nominated not-for-profit organisation) will get help from Connecting Up Australia to scope their idea as a project proposal to the Taskforce.
What does that mean? It means that your idea may get funding from the Gov 2.0 Project Fund to be put into action.
How long have we got? You’ve got until Friday 30 October, so hurry. But don’t panic, you just need to generate the idea at this stage, but you’ll need to provide some broad details to allow the Task Force to make a decision.
What sort of government information are you talking about? Have a look here for some ideas of what’s already out there. But we’re really looking for great ideas about government information that the nonprofit sector could use to make a difference. We’ve also included a light-hearted example to kick-start your brain-storming but the only limit is your imagination.
What other smart ideas for Gov 2.0 have others thought of, just to get us started?  Check out some of these ideas  for a bit of inspiration
OK, we have an idea – how do we enter? Go to the Idea Scale site, sign up, and then submit your idea.
While you’re there, you can vote on other people’s ideas as well.
Don’t forget, the contest closes Friday 30 October, so get your skates on!

Well, Senator Conroy has finally unveiled his “Digital Economy Future Direction Paper” and (surprise, surprise) not a single mention of the nonprofit sector in 103 pages.

He calls this a ‘roadmap for Australia’s Digital Economy Future’ but for the nonprofit and charity sector it’s simply a dry gulch. In over 100 pages the nonprofit sector, employer of over 600,000 Australians, gets not a single mention. We can only assume that Senator Conroy and the Government don’t regard Australia’s 700,000 nonprofits, of whom 35,000 are employers, as worthy of any consideration.

We see digital capacity programs for government, for business, for education and seemingly every other interest group and no doubt all very worthy. We see $43b to build a national broadband network. But we don’t see a single cent for a sector that accounts for over 3% of Australia’s GDP. Before the last election Senator Conroy told the nonprofit sector he supported their technology aspirations. Instead we have seen this Government systematically disengage itself from the sector from the moment it came to power and that’s simply not good enough.

These are the organisations that care for children, support the unemployed, look after the aged, protect the environment, run thousands of sports clubs and offer services in all the other areas that hold our society together. When volunteer hours are included, they contribute more to Australia’s GDP than the mining industry. Yet the Government obviously sees them as totally unworthy of participating in the digital revolution.

Not that they’ve bothered to tell anyone about it but last year’s Senate Committee Inquiry into the Disclosure regimes for charities and not-for-profit organisations has finally received a response from the Government on its recommendations. Well, if you can call a skew-whiff, photocopied table a response. But hold the fanfare. About the only things the Government have made any definitive statements on are the idea of cleaning up the description of the size of orgs in the sector (oh, still my beating heart) and kyboshing any notion of a Minister for the Third Sector (damn, I was sure Julia would want another portfolio).

Everything else has been referred or deferred to the Henry taxation review, the Productivity Commission inquiry into the sector, and the Council of Australian Government’s Business Regulation and Competition Working Group (COAG BRCWG - now there’s a set of acronyms to roll off the tongue), which has apparently included regulatory reform of the third sector as part of its 2009 work plan.

And we are assured there will be extensive consultations during the deliberations of these august bodies. One can only hope their budgets extend beyond visiting the mainland east coast exclusively as occurred with the Senate Inquiry. Surely they will, won’t they?

In the meantime it appears its business as usual for the foreseeable future.

The Australian Government put its toe into the water of online transparency last week with an interesting development called Gov 2.0 . According to its website, “The Taskforce will advise Government on structural barriers that prevent, and policies to promote, greater information disclosure, digital innovation and online engagement including the division of responsibilities for, and overall coordination of, these issues within government.”

It’s even going to have a few bob to chuck around via its Project Fund .

Great to see some familar faces on the Task Force , including 3 of the speakers at Connecting Up o9: Lisa Harvey, Martin Stewart-Weeks, and Alan Noble, although obviously the bulk are public servants charged with actually implementing the ambitious agenda set for them.

And therein lies the rub. All of us have seen Federal and State Governments turn FOI policies into Freedom FROM Information when the going gets tough. Let’s hope Gov 2.0 doesn’t fall at the first firewall. We will watch with interest, as I’m sure our US collegaues will be watching Data.gov , a similar inititative emerging from the Obama administration.

At a time when we are already seeing people laid off around the country, it has struck me as bizarre that this also includes those in nonprofits and charities. If ever there was a time to be stimulating this sector, it is now. Having no sooner thought that than I came across a recent article from the Brookings Institute, ‘Don’t Forget the Human Infrastructure’, which urges President-elect Obama to include the sector in any economic stimulus package. Sure, it’s American in its focus but the essential arguments are sound and I hope Kevin and Wayne get the message.

I rooly and truly promise not to be cynical about this exercise and my organisation will be putting in a submission. But I do wonder why they simply didn’t dust off the Charities Commission enquiry of a few years ago. You know the one, where we decided only Poms and Kiwis would do something as logical as that, and we limped back to the Stone Age.

Mind you this one is more about what charities and nonprofits should be disclosing to the public, just like those nice men from Firepower, Visy, Westfield etc are required to do.

Seriously, on 18 June 2008, the Senate referred the Disclosure regimes for Charities and not-for-profit organisations to the Senate Standing Committee on Economics for report by the last sitting day of November 2008. The inquiry will examine:
(a) the relevance and appropriateness of current disclosure regimes for charities and all other not-for-profit organisations;
(b) models of regulation and legal forms that would improve governance and management of charities and not-for-profit organisations and cater for emerging social enterprises; and
(c) other measures that can be taken by government and the not-for-profit sector to assist the sector to improve governance, standards, accountability and transparency in its use of public and government funds.
The closing date for submissions is Friday 29 August 2008.
Notes to assist in preparing submissions are available from the website or telephone the Secretariat on 02 6277 3540, fax: 02 6277 5719, or e-mail at the above address.

I’ll have more to say on thus subject as the process unfolds. In the meantime I look forward to the Senate Inquiry into how the Government can better fund and support the charity and nonprofit infrastructure that is expected to carry everything that’s in the too hard or too expensive basket for governments.

Final note: I once posited a model of government funding to the nonprofit sector that equated it with the domestic violence cycle. It went something like this:
Phase 1 - Honeymoon - We love you and you’ll always have what you need. (Smile for the media)
Phase 2- What do you mean you’ve spent all that money already?
Phase 3 - How dare you tell people we treat you badly. Whack!
Phase 4- Come back, we need you and we promise we’ll never do it again.
Phase 5 - Reconciliation - We love you and we’ll do our best for you in difficult circumstances. (Smile for the media unit photographer)
And so on.

But with a climate change for the future for working families I’ve got nothing to be cynical about now.