Keynote Speaker Announced: Andy Williamson, Hansard Society

Andy Williamson of the Hansard Society

Dr Andy Williamson is Director of the Hansard Society’s eDemocracy Programme.  He will be a keynote speaker at our upcoming event on April 22 focused on Open Technology. 

A researcher, consultant and commentator on digital media and social policy, Andy’s work focuses on engagement and inclusion, online political communication and digital policy at a national and local level.

Andy was Deputy Chair of the New Zealand Government’s Digital Strategy Advisory Group, he has advised the Australian Federal Government and various government departments, parliaments, international agencies and civil society organisations.

The Hansard Society recently suggested 5 top priorities for the Director of Digital Engagement.  We hope that Andy will discuss the 3rd and 4th, in particular, in more detail on April 22nd:

Give civil servants access to the social media tools that the public use and make sure that they know how to use them properly and effectively. As part of this, it will be necessary to train and mentor civil servants in how to engage effectively and genuinely with the public.

Innovate. Innovate. Innovate. We like the PoI suggestion of adopting the ‘backstage’ model and support this but we’re also keen to see a culture of innovation develop where creative, fast-to-market tools are created, deployed and shared. We want to see this go further, not just a percentage of the budget to seed innovation but a percentage to seed engagement too. We’re not advocating greater spend because we also see the value in a parallel systematic review of online spend to ensure it is being targeting correctly.

Open up the policy dialogue, within government and beyond to citizens. This leans heavily on the two priorities above but is important in itself. We want the policy dialogue to be open, transparent, accessible and timely.

Integrate government data into civic life, make information – data – available now, online and for free. Unless there is a good reason to restrict access the default position is that data is shared. We don’t just want a whole new series of PDF downloads and websites, this data needs to be provided in a range of formats, including being made available through simple to use APIs so that others can work with it dynamically.

Promote digital inclusion. Online government doesn’t work without online citizens so it’s important not to lose sight of the ‘customer’.