As you may have noticed, I'm writing more about open government these days, simply because there's more to write about - and that's great. Here's some clueful stuff from the other side of the globe. It's by Kate Lundy, a member of the Australian Senate, who really seems to get this openness thing:

For the Australian government, an opportunity to construct what I see as the three pillars of Open Government is presented. Each of these pillars assumes the basic principle of citizen engagement at every possible opportunity to both empower people, and to ensure the results are actually appropriate and useful.

The three pillars of open government.

* Citizen-centric services
* Open and transparent government
* Innovation facilitation

The second pillar is open and transparent government. This pillar builds on the principles that citizens have a right to the information they need to inform themselves about public and political affairs, and to participate in the democratic processes in an informed way. This second pillar is to ensure genuine means of engagement between citizens and the government in policy and decision-making. This is always harder than it sounds but it is essential to garner the wisdom of the crowd. It is vital that government engage with the broader community not just for a conversation, but in genuine partnership between political leaders and the people so we can as a society respond most effectively to the specific social and economic challenges communities confront. This localisation of policy solutions is essential to ensure relevance of government solutions to real situations, and essential to ensure a reasonable response time to new issues and emergencies. Open and transparent government will grow citizen trust and ultimately participation in policy development and government directions.