If you were planning to attend the Recordkeeping Roundtable panel “Freedom of Information?” on Tuesday 22 February, well, it’s now on Wednesday 29 February. See my original post for the rest of the details, which remain unchanged.
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On Tuesday 21 Wednesday 29 February 2012 I’m on the panel for “Freedom of information?”, presented by the Recordkeeping Roundtable.
The promo sayeth:
In a connected world where information sharing is easier and has more impact than ever before, is the current framework of FOI, information security, privacy and archives laws and practices delivering the information society needs in a timely and appropriate way? This panel discussion will be about:
- assessing the effectiveness of current information access and security laws and methods — are they hopelessly broken?
- the culture of secrecy and withholding by government agencies
- how technology and activism offer those with the skills and motivation some alternative and very powerful ways to access and reveal information, and
- what can be done to address the current state of things and move to better ways of making information available when and where it’s needed.
I think I’ll be rabbiting on about the internet and stuff. Information security, digital distribution, authentication of records, WikiLeaks, Anonymous. That sort of thing.
My fellow panelists are former diplomat Dr Philip Dorling, who now leads the journalistic pack in FOI stuff; and Tim Robinson, Manager, Archives and Records Management Services at the University of Sydney. The moderator is Cassie Findlay, Recordkeeping Roundtable co-founder and digital archivist.
It’s at the Australian Technology Park, Redfern, Sydney, and doors open at 5.30pm for a 6.00pm start. It wraps at 7.30pm for dinner. Admission is $5 and you should probably register.
[Update 16 February: Date changed to 29 February, as Dr Dorling must alas attend a funeral on the original date.]
I should have posted this a few days back, but the videos from the Microsoft Politics and Technology Forum 2011 in Canberra have been posted at GovTech, the Microsoft Australia Government Affairs Blog.
For some reason the audio quality on these recordings is rubbish. I’ll let you know if better versions are ever posted.
The keynote was given by leading UK political blogger Iain Dale. The other panellists were Senator Kate Lundy, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister; Joe Hockey MP, Shadow Treasurer; Dr Eric Clemons, Professor of Operations and Information Management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; Microsoft’s Gianpaolo Carraro; and yours truly. The moderator was Mark Pesce.
You can also listen to my interview with Iain Dale, should you be so inclined.
A brief reminder: I’m about to head to Canberra for a couple of days. This morning I’ll be at the University of Canberra for the seminar Privacy and security in a connected world: anonymity, data loss, tracking and the social web, being organised by their new Centre for Internet Safety. And then tomorrow morning I’ll be at Parliament House for the Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum. I do have some free time in the afternoons if you want to catch up.
Further to my post about the forthcoming Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum in Canberra on 1 June, I’ve created a Twitter list through which you can follow all of the presenters at once.
And in the lead-up and especially on the day, you’ll be able to follow everyone’s tweets using the hashtag #poltech.
I’ve attended the previous two Microsoft Politics & Technology Forums in Canberra as their guest, but this year there’s a difference. I’ll be on stage. The date is 1 June 2011. The venue is the Parliament House Theatrette. And it’s free.
The theme is Do we trust the internet? That’s all about openness and transparency in politics.
Technology and politics is more interwoven than ever before.
We’ve seen sensitive government information being revealed on Wikileaks, and mobilisation of communities across the Middle East using social media resulting in regime change in Tunisia, Egypt and unrest in Libya and Bahrain.
The first social media election in the UK saw an incoming Conservative Coalition government, overturning 13 years of Labor rule. David Cameron’s Conservative party trumped other parties in social media campaigning.
The Australian Government has its own Declaration of Open Government, a central recommendation of the Government 2.0 Taskforce. The declaration promotes “greater participation in Australia’s democracy, and is committed to open government based on a culture of engagement, built on better access to and use of government held information, and sustained by the innovative use of technology.”
This and much more will be discussed when UK’s leading political blogger Iain Dale (pictured) will be addressing Microsoft’s 3rd Politics and Technology Forum: Openness and Transparency in Politics. The Forum is supported by Open Forum.
Iain Dale will then participate in a panel discussion of distinguished speakers including Senator Kate Lundy, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister; Joe Hockey MP, Shadow Treasurer; Stilgherrian; and Microsoft’s Gianpaolo Carraro. The event MC is Mark Pesce.
I’m particularly amused by the facts that I’m “distinguished” and that I’m not explained by any job title or description. I am self-explanatory. Or possibly indescribable.
It’ll cost you nothing to register for this free event, but you’ll need to use the SEKRIT ticket code. Which is “dale”.
Previous Microsoft Politics & Technology Forums
The first Forum was in 2008. Thanks to Microsoft’s Nick Hodge, you can view videos of Matt Bai’s keynote address, Panel 1 on Blogging, social networks, political movements and the media with Annabel Crabb, Peter Black and Mark Textor, and Panel 2 on Politics 2.0: information technology and the future of political campaigning with Joe Hockey, Senator Andrew Bartlett, Senator Kate Lundy and Antony Green.
During this first event, I provided commentary via Twitter and was, um, generally helpful to the discussion from the audience. My most important outburst is during the first panel discussion, though I can be heard but not seen. I have yet to dig the tweets out of Twitter’s archive.
The second Forum was in 2009, with the theme “Campaigning Online”. I did a live blog, and later turned my notes of Joe Trippi’s keynote address into the post Notes on Obama’s election campaign.
I daresay there are videos somewhere, but I couldn’t be arsed looking for them just now.
A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets and in the media and so on and so forth — and this week I’ve done a lot of writing.
Articles
- The information ‘vacuum’ over secretive ISP data retention scheme, for Crikey. The Attorney-General’s Department has been holding discussions with internet service providers and others about the potential for ISPs to retain customer data for use by law enforcement agencies. Secret discussions. Last week a Senate Inquiry initiated by Greens Senator Scott Ludlam dug out some details. The Twitterverse is using the hashtag #ozlog for this issue.
- Information Commissioner’s toe in the Government 2.0 waters, for Crikey. On 1 November the new Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) opened for business. The first Information Commissioner, Professor John McMillan, is showing political nous from day one. (As an aside, I’ve interviewed him for the next edition of the Patch Monday podcast, which will be posted on, erm, Monday.)
- Citizen journalism is dead, long live crowdsourcing, for Crikey. At Wednesday’s Future of Crowdsourcing Summit, some media folks talked about the changes in journalism that are being triggered by this buzzword.
- Timeline of misinformation: Twitter’s plane crash down to human error, for Crikey. On Thursday, media outlets including Reuters and Fox News were actually reporting that Qantas flight QF32 had crashed in Indonesia when, in fact, it ended up landing safely in Singapore.
Podcasts
- Patch Monday episode 63, “The govt’s data retention dreams revealed”. If you’d prefer to listen to the edited highlights of that Senate hearing rather than read about it, this is the go.
Media Appearances
- Parity Bit episode 1. A new IT-related video podcast produced and presented by Owen Kelly. I was chatting with him and the other panellists about #ozlog and other news stories. I didn’t swear once.
Geekery
Not a sausage.
Corporate Largesse
- I got free entry to the Future of Crowdsourcing Summit, of course, and they provided lunch.
- As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been invited to San Francisco by Salesforce.com.
Elsewhere
Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.
[Photo: Enmore village in the spring rain, taken from the Warren View Hotel. Compare this with the similar view from a few weeks ago.]
School anti-bullying programs make life difficult for the US Army. Senator Conroy illustrates the Rudd government’s non-commitment to transparent by not releasing the NBN report. And some weird-arsed stoush erupts between Australia and Encyclopaedia Dramatica.
So, it’s Friday night and The 9pm Edict is late. Do you care? Really? Here it is anyway.
You can listen to this episode below. But if you want them all, subscribe to the podcast feed, or even subscribe automatically in iTunes.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:33 — 8.4MB)
For more information on what I discussed tonight, check out the Encyclopedia Dramatica article on “Aboriginal” and the story of the Australian Human Rights Commission action and ED‘s owner’s response; the Zen Pundit post on the US Army and Free Range Kids; and Senator Stephen Conroy on Lateline.
If you’d like to comment on this episode, please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.
[Credits: The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, Edict fanfare by neonaeon, all from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission.]
My world was dominated by Telstra last week. Apart from my writing and a radio spot about the government’s plans to split the telco, I also spoke on ABC Radio National’s Future Tense on Thursday about the sudden closure of their nowwearetalking blog.
I’d already written about that shutdown here and over at Crikey. However the Radio National conversation was in the more general context of how social media is affecting corporate transparency.
You can listen to the program (at least for now) and read the full transcript over at the ABC’s website. The other guests were Shel Holtz, co-author of Tactical Transparency; Mark Hannah, a New York-based communications consultant; Mike Hickinbotham, Telstra’s Social Media Senior Advisor; and ABC economic correspondent Stephen Long. well worth checking out.
Here’s the full text of my section.
Marcus Westbury, who I’ve written about before, has noticed something special about Australia’s new defence minister.
“John Faulkner [pictured left] hasn’t changed his glasses for so long they’re almost fashionable again,” he tweets. “Do you think if I start referring to John Faulkner as ‘the hispter’ it will catch on? He has the retro ironic glasses for it.”
“It’s gonna be awesome to see those glasses in the back of an F-35 or sticking out of a tank. Cartoonists will love this,” Marcus reckons. And I reckon too.
So, dear Australian political writers and cartoonists, can we please start referring to Senator John Faulkner as “The Hipster”?
Marcus also wonders about the fate of the Rudd government’s transparency program, which Faulkner was driving in his role as Special Minister of State. “It was the most impressive thing about the Rudd government,” says Marcus. “What now?”
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