18.10.2010
Over the past two years, governments worldwide have demonstrated an increasing interest in the use of online tools and platforms to facilitate community engagement and collaboration. By way of the Government 2.0 (Gov 2.0) work program, the Australian Government is committed to incorporating, where appropriate, web 2.0 technologies into routine business practices. The Government 2.0 taskforce, established in 2008, noted the potential of ‘Web 2.0 tools’,—including blogs, ‘wikis’ and social media—to gather ‘the information, knowledge, perspectives, resources and even, where possible, the active collaboration of anyone wishing to contribute to public life’ (Government 2.0 Taskforce website).
Aside from the development of the new ALRC website which addresses this goal—with the addition of forums, blogs, rss and integration with social media tools—the ALRC has experimented with the use of Web 2.0 tools as part of its consultative process.