Working in Progess

Hi all,

Sorry for my delayed post since my first one. I was spending most of my time on researching and reading all resources related to my project. I've been working on the research report for weeks and I've found a lot of interesting facts about Web 2.0 in government and also some challenges of using social media tools in a farming project.

As a part of Internet users, we can experience the power of social networking sites. According to Nielsen research, 20 per cent of Australia's web users are using social networking tools, and within this group, people averagely spend nearly seven hours a month on posting twitts, updating posts and blog entries - more than in the United States, Britain or Japan. This result shows us social media is a great tool for Public Relations professions. It is the easiest and cheapest way to reach the largest numbers of people. There are more and more PR and marketing companies establish social media campaign for their clients as most of the major organizations nowadays have a twitter account or a blog. Government, as one of the biggest and most important information provider in the society, would create more benefits to the citizens if it started to share information through Web 2.0 tools.


As I mentioned in my last post, Australian government appointed Government 2.0 task-force to produce a report that included some accommodations for a government to create a collaborative platform for the citizens. The report was released in December 2009 (http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/gov20taskforcereport/index.html ) and the federal government made its response to the report by releasing “Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0
" report (http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/gov20taskforcereport/index.html). Australian government showed a positive attitude towards building a open government to Australian public by accepting most of the recommendations. This response was praised by some Gov 2.0 evangelists and claimed Australia “beats” the US in terms of the progress on Gov 2.0.


The general trend on Gov 2.0 is quite positive in Australia, numbers of governmental projects and departments stated to release information by using facebook, twitter, blogs and creative common license. However, when it comes to the “Bridging the Yield Gap” project, some of the benefits may not be applicable. So far, I've found some difficulties of using social media tools in a farming project. Unlike citizens in metropolitan area, farmers in Western Australia do not necessarily have broadband Internet access and their attitudes of using new technology are not as positive as those in metropolitan area due to their age, perceptions on new technology and income. Another issues like privacy and copyright are also issues that needed to take deeper consideration in the planing stage of a social media campaign.

Anyway, I'll continue to work on the task and look for the ways to solve these challenges. Please feel free to give me some comments and suggestion if you are interested in this topic.