My main point was that people will expect the Government 2.0 Taskforce to do a lot of things — especially given their massive brief — and yet they’ll be disbanded at the end of the year.

There are going to be expectations that there’ll be something really significant to put on the table by Christmas, and yet it’s all uncertain. The uncertainties in all this are incredible. We’re expecting this group of people to essentially solve all of the problems of government 2.0 and have this grand road map in just a few months. It’s an enormous bullet point list of stuff that they’ve got to achieve. And now that people are starting to look at it, they’re realising we’re only at the very early stages of people starting to agree on what the questions might mean, let alone what the answers might look at. And my gut feeling is people are starting to be a bit hesitant about ‘Hey, are we actually going to get something of value at the end of this, or is it just another of the Rudd government’s talkfests to make it look like we’ve got something happening but there’s no real end result?’ I mean the Australia 2020 Summit, did we ever get anything really concrete out of that?

Duncan Riley essentially agreed. But I found the response from Nicholas Gruen, who chairs the Taskforce, interesting.

Gruen says that unlike most government inquiries — and he’s been on eight — this time the recommendations aren’t the important thing. It’s more about educating everyone — including the public service and politicians.

Click through to the program for the full transcript or, for a limited time at least, to listen to the podcast.

• Australia 2020: Government Response: A year after the event which seemed so important at the time, we finally have the government’s response.
• Developments in internet filtering technologies and other measures for promoting online safety | ACMA: The second of ACMA’s three annual reports on “developments in internet filtering technologies and other safety initiatives to protect consumers, including minors, who access content on the internet”.
• The Full Story: “The Full Story is a media and information release portal where individuals and organisations can post breaking news, publicity, information or their side of the story on issues of local or national importance — free, as it happens, unedited and in full.”
• Internet-Age Writing Syllabus and Course Overview | McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: “Course Description: As print takes its place alongside smoke signals, cuneiform, and hollering, there has emerged a new literary age, one in which writers no longer need to feel encumbered by the paper cuts, reading, and excessive use of words traditionally associated with the writing trade. Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era focuses on the creation of short-form prose that is not intended to be reproduced on pulp fibers.”
• NBN Luddites will be proven wrong | BuddeBlog: Analyst Paul Budde with another thoughtful piece.
• RedR Australia: This organisation provides training for people working in overseas aid and disaster relief, covering everything from logistics to personal protection. Yes, there is a reason this is being bookmarked, but it’s secret.
• Swine flu: Twitter’s power to misinform | Net Effect: Once more, the usual human trait of passing on information which may or may not be true is blamed on Twitter, not on the humans. Fail.

1. Heath Ledger dead: jokes here please. It’s rather depressing to discover that my tasteless little experiment was this year’s highlight. Maybe I should’ve put advertising on this page.
2. So this is human sexuality?
3. How do you treat your staff? Like 37signals, or like this prick?
4. Topic 9 to discuss Australia 2020 Summit’s government topic. This is actually spurious, as most hits are from link-following robots attempting to spam my blog at topic9.com.au (which has been since been abandoned).
5. 67 Australian SAS captured airbase defended by 1000, though most of this traffic is to see the photo. The miltech fanboys are incapable of hosting their own photos, it seems, because most of their troll-filled forums don’t allow people to upload photos. Dark Ages.
6. About Stilgherrian, which would seem to be a popular second page for people to visit once they’ve arrived here for other reasons.
7. Corey Delaney, freedom fighter (for the right to party) — and increasingly I think Mr Corey Worthington Delaney is one of the true heroes of 2008. But not thereafter.
8. Spaceport America, designed by Foster+Partners.
9. Jason Calacanis and the Evil Cult of the Internet Start-up.
10. Achtung! Die grosskapitalistischen Hühner kommen!

As with last year’s list, I’m somewhat disappointed with the results. I’ll therefore choose my own selection of “best” posts, just like I did last year.

And the results for all posts over time, not just those published in 2008?

1. Julie, I want to make you a star (in a Samantha Fox kind of way). Most of this traffic is to see the “revealing” photo of Samantha Fox. This page is also still currently the number one Google search result for “neocon sex kitten”. Thank you, Julie Bishop!
2. Heath Ledger dead: jokes here please.
3. So this is human sexuality?
4. How do you treat your staff? Like 37signals, or like this prick?
5. Topic 9 to discuss Australia 2020 Summit’s government topic.
6. 67 Australian SAS captured airbase defended by 1000.
7. Hello Kitty, you’re dead, and other surprise products, another “let’s hotlink to the photo” spurious result.
8. About Stilgherrian.
9. More Steve Irwin jokes, which was our Number One last year.
10. Corey Delaney, freedom fighter (for the right to party)

[This article was first published in Crikey on 27 November, but I forgot that I hadn't re-posted here.]

Evidence-based policy! National Broadband Network! Australia 2020 Summit! After 11 years of Howard’s opportunism and fear-mongering, Ruddish mantras sounded like… well, like “Fresh Thinking”.

But one year on, precisely none of the NBN has been built. The Summit produced nothing. The Cyber-Safety Plan is trialling (again) unworkable internet filters while Senator Conroy accuses everyone of being a pervert.

Tenders for the NBN only closed yesterday, and Telstra’s off-grid bid means we’re probably in for months of legal battles. Although the network is intended to cover 98% of households, David Kennedy from Ovum Research reckons it’ll take three years to reach the first 50% — that’s 2012.

Even then, the NBN will only deliver 12Mbit/second. France, Korea, Japan and perhaps others are already moving to 100Mbit/s. France Télécom reckons that over the next five years some 40% of the French population will have four companies competing to deliver fibre all the way to the home (FTTH), not the NBN’s fibre to the node (FTTN).

The OECD estimates that “Average demand of a household for bandwidth is expected to be around 50 Mbit/s downstream and 10-50 Mbit/s upstream for the period 2010-2020,” needed for the parallel consumption of HDTV, radio, videoconferencing, security — and as Crikey reader Brefney Ruhl wrote yesterday, everything connected with cloud computing.

During the Howard years, Australia dropped from the world’s third-best Internet infrastructure after the US and Finland to somewhere completely out of the top 10. Rudd’s building a below-average network, incapable of delivering even a quarter of the needed bandwidth. Or if Telstra gets its way, the bandwidth but to only 90% of the population.

When he starts building it, that is.

The Australia 2020 Summit was hardly aware the internet existed. The “governance” section of the Final Report of the Australia 2020 Summit mentioned it just twice seriously, and then only to say that, hey, it could be used, somehow. The other streams were equally clueless.

Then there’s Senator Conroy’s Rabbit-Proof Firewall. Despite wishful thinking by protect-the-children lobbyists, the government’s own research shows how deeply flawed any ISP-level filtering would be. This week The Greens announced their opposition to filters and Liberal Senator Nick Minchin labelled them “misguided and deeply unpopular”. The legislation won’t pass the Senate and, as one analysis suggests, without legislation it probably can’t be done.

But the government is continuing with more trials. Tuesday night @KevinRuddPM even tweeted “We’re waiting for tech evidence from a live trial but we’ll have more info online soon.” But the evidence already shows that filtering can never work. Asking the question again won’t give a different answer.

Sounds to me like they’re stalling. Or completely, utterly clueless.

Here’s what our finest minds had to say…

The “circus” of question time doesn’t give a positive view of parliament or promote confidence in the system. The community should be able to contribute questions to parliament. This could be achieved by greater use of technology such as the internet.

… and…

Government doesn’t seem to be using the internet. It could be such a powerful forum but is currently under-used in the government context.

Yes, Dear Clever People, it could be, and it is. Glad you noticed.

So what else did they have to say about the most significant factor to affect civilisation in, oh, 300 years?

In the chapter on creativity and the arts we have…

Creativity that has been unleashed through the web and internet was discussed, the focus being on the highly democratic nature of the format and the very good signs of creativity that are available to anyone who has access to computers. One participant suggested that if we were to embrace that we would have a good perception of the centrality of creativity. Another proposed that the digital environment had produced a big change in perception, and that they would not be talking about forms that have only substance and pricing. Yet another commented that the government is very interested in embracing broadband infrastructure.

Discussion moved on to the idea of digitising all museum collections and all Australian print. ‘Digitise and then what happens?’ was asked. The answer included live broadcasts on the net and leveraging what children already do and showing them a pathway to creative careers. The question of what happens with visual arts not on the internet was raised, and the answer included linking net content with popular culture.

… and a money-grabbing idea…

Pay 1 per cent of gross revenue from telecommunication companies, internet service providers and other content providers into a government cultural fund for artistic endeavours.

For our indigenous Australians:

Connect families to the internet and the digital world. All Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children should have safe internet access when they start school, if not earlier.

Yes. what wonderful idea. Black people can have the Internet as well. How clever you must feel for suggesting that. Later someone observed…

It was acknowledged that digital media and the internet allow people to continue to
participate in the arts following formal education.

Gosh. I’m getting quite giddy now. Under “health” we have…

Many services will be able to be provided via the internet. It will help us cut down isolation.

And under “strengthening communities” the outcome of “standardisation of regulation and services” could be assisted by…

Development of a website (with a mail-out version for those without internet access) that provides an illustrative map of Australia that progressively charts climate change impacts.

Ah, you mean like this one?

I get the feeling that no-one had any clue about this Internet thing apart from:

1. There is a thing called the Internet.
2. The Internet is important.
3. You can do stuff on the Internet.

I haven’t quoted every mention, but it doesn’t get any better. If this report represents what Kevin Rudd’s “best and brightest” understand, then Australia is well and truly fucked.

[Hat-tip to Stephen Loosley for drawing my attention to this.]

What emerged were two pieces:

1. For the governance topic: Managing continual, rapid change with a clear framework of values [PDF].
2. For the topic on “the economy”, which is where discussions of broadband policy ended up: Broadband: It’s about symmetry, not speed [PDF].

I’m well aware that they don’t really provide a properly-researched, well-argued case. Nevertheless I hope that in some way they’ll help influence debate. Comments appreciated — perhaps over where the submissions themselves are blogged.

I find the process odd. While I well understand the need to prevent the summit delegates being overwhelmed, there’s a limit of 500 words on each submission — but also a ban on photographs and other images. Sometimes a diagram could explain things much more effectively, but no this time.

My main challenge, though, is going to be coming up with one clear message for my 500 words. There’s so many things which could be said…

[Update 17 February 2010: The website at topic9.com.au has been killed. For the moment, I've linked to the pages at the Internet Archive.]

This morning I finally received a letter (pictured) telling me that I hadn’t been selected for the Australia 2020 Summit. Gosh. I’d already figured that out from not being on the published lists of those who were going.

Apart from the rather late arrival of the news and the traditional passive-voice bureaucratic writing style, there’s two interesting points about this letter.

1. I left the “title” field of the nomination form blank, since I don’t use them. I think titles like “Mr”, “Miss”, “Mrs”, “Ms” etc are an archaic way of labelling people. Nevertheless they felt compelled to use “Mr/s”, even though I had filled in the gender field.
2. The official website said that people who applied via email, like me, would receive an email reply. They can’t even follow their own published procedure.

I really am trying to find good-news stories about the Summit, I really am…

I’ve written before how I’m starting a business called Skank Media, and the new Topic 9 website is the first project out of the starting gate. Certainly since the beginning of this year I’ve been spending more time writing too: 133 posts in January 2008 compared with just 16 a year before. I’ve spent more time in dialogues online too, re-establishing links with my community.

What’s the Old Thing that’s stopped?

I’ve been getting less sleep, certainly. And less exercise. But I’ve also been doing less work for my “old” business, Prussia.Net — and therein lies a problem. Prussia.Net is what generates the income.

Oops.

Yes, cashflows are down. And because I wanted to change Prussia.Net itself, that change process takes more time of its own too. Some client projects are running terribly late. I even lost a wonderful long-term client a few weeks ago because I couldn’t dedicate enough time to their change process.

Big Oops.

So for me, today’s the day I start sorting out that chronological challenge. Here’s how I’ll proceed…

Since Prussia.Net pays the bills (and there’s plenty of bills to be paid) I’ll tackle that business first and sort out the timelines for the rest of this month. Then I’ll see how much time that leaves for Topic 9 in the two weeks until the Australia 2020 Summit. Once I know that magic number of X hours, at BarCampSydney 3 this weekend I’ll talk to people and figure out how I can best spend that time doing something about the Summit. I think that’s the right strategy because presumably I should exercise my geek skills as best I can — and fellow geeks can make good suggestions.

That means I’ll definitely be at BarCampSydney on Sunday. I’ve even written an explanation over at Topic 9.

Whaddyareckon, folks?

[Note: This post was very much me "thinking aloud". I figured that if I had to explain it all to you, then I'd be forced to get it clear in my own head. That's been a valuable technique -- but do you want to see this sort of post?]

[Update 17 February 2010: The website at topic9.com.au has been killed. For the moment, I've linked to the pages at the Internet Archive.]

It’s pretty sparse to begin with, and I’m not quite sure exactly what I’ll be doing there — so suggestions are more than welcome. Some thoughts so far are:

• Gathering links to everyone else’s writing about this topic area for the Summit.
• Articles on people or ideas on how government could work in the future.
• Interviews with the delegates before they hit Canberra.
• Act as a central point of contact for whatever media coverage we can generate out of the summit, whether I go or not.

I certainly need to spice up the design a bit. I’ve kept the Tarski theme as used on this website and Skank Media for consistency, but it needs a tad more differentiation. soon, my precious ones, soon…

Any other ideas?

[Update 17 February 2010: The website at topic9.com.au has been killed. For the moment, I've linked to the pages at the Internet Archive.]

There’s still the possibility of getting media accreditation, or perhaps connecting to the themes of the event in some other way. Here’s a brain-dump of my thoughts on this sunny Sunday morning… comments appreciated!

I haven’t had time to go through the list of participants in detail, except to be pleased that human rights lawyer Julian Burnside made it and to note, as The Road to Surfdom did, that some selections are… annoying:

I was trying to be positive about the 2020 envisioning thing, I really was.

Until I read that Miranda Devine is a member of the mob considering ‘Future of Australian Governance’.

Miranda Devine!!!!!

I guess she got a guernsey in the name of ‘balance’, once Phillip Adams was invited.

Both, I’m sure, will bring brilliantly innovative ideas to the wankfest that nobody ever thunk before in the history of 20 cents a word punditocracy.

Sorry Kevin but this ridiculous waste of time and money is the stupidest idea since Friday sittings of parliament in which nothing was allowed to happen.

For me, it’s not that Miranda Devine is a “right-wing commentator” and I’m perceived to be “of the left”. Far from it.

Anyone who still uses that ancient left-wing vs right-wing dichotomy — yes, “ancient”, it was invented during the French Revolution — is hopelessly out of date and should automatically be excluded from Australia 2020 or from reporting on it. Yes, I’m talking about you, Larissa Dubecki of The Age:

Old warriors from the left and right of the culture wars are most liberally represented in the governance stream, where conservatives Greg Craven, Miranda Devine and Gerard Henderson have been chosen to line up against Robert Manne, Phillip Adams, David Marr, and GetUp! activist Brett Solomon.

Is it not possible to report on anything “political” without nailing it to that outmoded framework?

Even the 2-dimensional Political Compass is 40 years old. It’s time for something a little more relevant to a multi-faceted society, people, and political reportage which is just a little more sophisticated!

But I digress…

I’m all for diversity of viewpoint. Sometimes I agree with Ms Devine, most of the time I don’t — but that’s fine, we can discuss that.

I’m annoyed with Ms Devine’s selection because her columns don’t seem to offer much new, and Australia 2020 is about new ideas — or at least that’s how it’s been marketed. I also question Ms Devine’s ability to research and marshal accurate facts into a coherent logical argument — as opposed to disgorging a jumble of pre-conceived and largely unconnected ideas and factoids that appeal to her readership.

And I’m annoyed that selecting “old warriors from the left and right of the culture wars” is still looking backwards. It’s a clear sign that the relationship between government and media really does need a thorough renewal if you can’t get any meaningful dialog about the nation’s future without rounding up these tired old cliché-ridden warhorses yet again.

My secret hope is that Chairman Rudd has decided that once all of them — Henderson to Manne, Devine to Adams — are sealed within the marble walls of Parliament House, Canberra, that the vents will be opened and the Zyklon B will issue forth…

Whether the selection of 100 people for Topic 9 is good, bad or indifferent is now moot. We now have a weekend when the focus is on Australia’s future. After Howard’s Decade of Coma, talking about the future at all seems so refreshing.

It’s not that far into the future, only 12 years — the year when someone in kindergarten today will enter adulthood. But it’s a start. And maybe, as I’ve said before and before that, if we don’t decide it’s all fucked up before it’s even started, we can get some value out of it.

So, back to what I could do…

I daresay I could get media accreditation. Crikey would doubtless lend me their name, if not any budget. (I’ll ask tomorrow.) But who knows how many media places are available? The proceedings may be streamed live, like parliamentary committees are, which could mean covering the event from my own desk in Sydney — though it’s always much better to be “on the ground” doing separate interviews and commentary.

I’ve thought of experimenting with Kevin Kelly’s 1000 True Fans idea: putting up a proposal, calling for donations, heading to Canberra with the support of my fans and then generating the media output that those fans want. Could that work?

Or should I just cave in, and start calling it a wankfest like those radio shock jocks?