BRR: We're speaking with Andrew Schatz. He's a senior lawyer with the Australian Government Solicitor in Adelaide and welcome Andrew.
AS: Hi, how are you going?
BRR: Very good. Andrew, Web 2.0 has certainly become a household concept with the rise of user-generated content, but an off-shoot has emerged in the government space, aptly named Government 2.0. Can you shed some light on this idea?
AS: Yeah, well Government 2.0… is closely related to Web 2.0 but they're not actually the same thing and Government 2.0 is not specifically about social networking or any other Web 2.0 technology either for that matter. It's really about a shift towards open, cooperative and collaborative government that seeks to involve people in the way that they're governed. And, you can see from that, that while Web 2.0 technologies are essential for the effective and efficient implementation of it, they're really just enabling tools and aren't of themselves what Government 2.0 is all about.
BRR: Is this going a bit beyond, I guess, politicians using social media in election campaigns?
AS: Oh certainly. Governments all round the world are adopting Web 2.0 for a variety of uses so, for example here in Australia, the Mosman Municipal Council has been doing some really exciting things in New South Wales with Flickr and Twitter and YouTube and one particular thing that they've done, that I'm particularly impressed by, is a thing called 'Mosman: Memories of your street'. And that's an initiative where the Council built an online space that allowed residents past and present to share photos and memories of their street. And, in doing that, what Mosman's done is they've effectively been able to create a living history of the area with the assistance of the people that know it best. So that's a long way from Parliament House. It's effectively happening right at the grassroots level of local government and it's also happening at the State and Territory level. In the Northern Territory, Tourism NT recently established a Facebook presence and it's also launched an iPhone app called iOutback NT and that's an app that lets you access photos and YouTube videos and interactive maps and information about the Northern Territory to help you plan holidays and so on. So that's entirely unrelated to politics and really goes to the heart of what Australia and the Northern Territory's about. And then at the Commonwealth level you've got Centrelink whose recently announced that it's soon going to launch its own online community to foster customer engagement and help receive feedback about Centrelink services. So it's not just about elections, it's about what goes on between elections. And that's one of the things about Government 2.0 is it's an all year round thing.
BRR: So it's obviously come a long way in a fairly short time. But where do you see the future of Government 2.0 heading?
AS: I was reading a Tweet the other day by a guy called Craig Tomler who is fairly well-known in the Government 2.0 community and he said that we'll know that Government 2.0 has succeeded when it's no longer considered innovation but business as usual. And I agree with that. I think that, looking forward, most governments around the world, or at least most democratic governments, will increasingly move towards the Government 2.0 model to the point where it's no longer considered a new way of governing, but rather 'the' way of governing. And so I think there'll be more citizen-centric services and so on, and we may ultimately reach a point where Australians are able to participate in even the legislative process by not only commenting on bills and suggested changes and so on, before they're tabled in Parliament, but perhaps even participating during question time using Web 2.0 technologies in a similar way to what happens on the ABC's Q&A program.
BRR: Well, look, it sounds like it's pretty exciting but certainly Facebook, for instance, has been in hot water recently for privacy-related issues. Are there similar or particular risks for government using Web 2.0?
AS: Well, there are. There's a range of risks including, as you say, privacy risks. Other risks include things like the risk of liability under defamation laws, risks under consumer protection laws, unsolicited communication laws, spam and so on, intellectual property laws, harassment and anti-discrimination laws, content regulation laws and even things like criminal laws. There's potential for accessorial liability. And that's why it's so important for government agencies to conduct risk assessments before they launch Web 2.0 initiatives and to seek legal advice where it's appropriate to do so because you may be able to reduce the risk of legal liability through a combination of things like carefully drafted terms of use and privacy statements, staff training, active and reactive moderation, and things like that. And like most worthwhile initiatives, one of the things to appreciate is that it may ultimately not be possible to remove some legal risks altogether, and agencies and other organisations really need to consider therefore, in advance, whether the potential benefits of projects outweigh the risks that they represent. And that's something that AGS is really keen to help with. We've already provided Web 2.0-related legal advice to governments at all levels throughout Australia.
BRR: Well, certainly some great insights there but thank you again for your time this afternoon, Andrew.
AS: Thank you.
BRR: That was Andrew Schatz, senior lawyer with the Australian Government Solicitor in Adelaide.