The Blog Stump

Josh Goodwin, from our DonorTec technology donation program in Australia www.donortec.com.au, recently asked our nonprofit organisation donation recipients to send in photos that captured what their organisation is about and he made it into a competition called ‘A Jpeg’s worth a thousand words’, for which entries are still pouring in. You can see some of them that Josh inserted into MS Movie Maker on YouTube at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Baa6mKletKg&feature=youtube_gdata .

I just thought you might like to share in the experience.

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!

Andrew Denton brought us that ironic song in 1992 to satirise one of the more depressing aspects of our occasional cringe factor as a nation. Having returned from there on my most recent trip, there are many reasons to feel envious of our cousins across the ditch but I’ll mention a nonprofit sector one here. While we as a nation have mucked around for years playing ‘will we-won’t we’ on some sort of industry regulator/support mechanism, the Kiwis have just got on and done it with their Charities Commission - Komihana Kaupapa Atawhai . Yes, it lacks perfection, like most things in life, and its progress has been slower than many had hoped. However, now they’ve broken the back of the major registration phase they are looking to do some very progressive things with that data and look at how they can support the sector more effectively. I know our Productivity Commission people have been over for a chat. Let’s hope they were listening well. After all, gee, if we can’t beat New Zealand ….

There’s some potentially great work emanating from the Gov 2.0 Task Force .

According to its website:

“The Taskforce is made up of policy and technical experts and entrepreneurs from government, business, academia, and cultural institutions. Its work falls into two streams. The first relates to increasing the openness of government through making public sector information more widely available to promote transparency, innovation and value adding to government information. The second stream is concerned with encouraging online engagement with the aim of drawing in the information, knowledge, perspectives, resources and even, where possible, the active collaboration of anyone wishing to contribute to public life.Importantly, the Taskforce will not just provide advice. It will be able to fund initiatives and incentives which may achieve or demonstrate how to accomplish government 2.0 objectives.”

Disclosure statement: My organisation, Connecting Up Australia, may bid for projects within the fund initiatives and one of the Task Force members, Lisa Harvey, is a member of our Board.