http://blog.openaustralia.org Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:33:51 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Last Saturday, the 13th of June, was OpenAustralia's inaugural hackfest, bringing together developers and users of the OpenAustralia.org website. Fifty people volunteered their time and effort to help open Australia's democracy and make it easier for Australians to keep tabs on their representatives in Parliament. The day kicked off just after ... http://blog.openaustralia.org/2009/06/15/inaugural-openaustralia-hackfest-was-terrific/ What an oversight. I've not blogged about our first ever OpenAustralia hackfest which is taking place in Sydney tomorrow, kindly hosted at the offices of Google Sydney. We announced it on the @openaustralia twitter feed, our development mailing list and on a couple of Linux users group mailing list and very ... http://blog.openaustralia.org/2009/06/12/first-openaustralia-hackfest-is-tomorrow/ A recent remark about government users of our website, and our recent exchanges with the DPS made me wonder, just how many people@gov.au are signed up for our email alerts as part of their daily routine? I asked Matthew to take a look at the stats, so he did, and ... http://blog.openaustralia.org/2009/05/12/government-is-heavy-user-of-openaustraliaorg-email-alerts/ After our recent post we finally received a response from the Department of Parliamentary Services (DPS): from: Web, Manager (DPS) <WebManager@aph.gov.au> to: Matthew Landauer date: Fri, May 1, 2009 at 5:46 PM subject: RE: Hansard 23 September 2008 probably error in division Dear Matthew Thank you for your email to the APH web manager identifying a ... http://blog.openaustralia.org/2009/05/11/a-response-from-the-dps/ If you're a user of Facebook, like what we do and want to help get more people using the site, come and visit our new home on Facebook. Become "a fan" and through the power of connections tell your friends about OpenAustralia, so that more people can become that little ... http://blog.openaustralia.org/2009/05/04/openaustralia-has-a-new-home-on-facebook/ It had been something that I'd been meaning to do for a while but hadn't ever quite managed to find the time to do. A conversation between James Dellow (@chieftech), Senator Kate Lundy (@katelundy), Michael de Percy (@madepercy), Karl Roby (@karlroby) and Pia Waugh (@piawaugh) on Twitter a few days ... http://blog.openaustralia.org/2009/04/30/which-australian-politicians-are-on-twitter/ A fairly typical email exchange with the Department of Parliamentary Services (DPS), the administrators for the aph.gov.au website, goes something like this: from: Matthew Landauer to: webmanager@aph.gov.au date: Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 11:39 AM subject: Hansard 23 September 2008 probably error in division According to the Hansard, Mark Vaile voted in a division on ... http://blog.openaustralia.org/2009/04/20/dps-where-the-bloody-hell-are-you/ Today is a big milestone. We are the first website to make the Register of Senators' Interests available online. This important public document until now has only been available to the small number of people who were able to visit the office in Canberra where the documents are held. In ... http://blog.openaustralia.org/2009/01/05/the-register-of-senators-interests-is-now-online/