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About This Site

The eGovernment Resource Centre provides access to the Victorian Government body of knowledge on eGovernment, government 2.0, government use of social media and information and communications technology (ICT) and government website best practices, with Australian and international examples.

In 1995 the Victorian State Government, in Australia, set an ambitious target to have all suitable government services online by the end of 2001. In 1998, a knowledge management process was put in place to share government online learnings as they evolved. One of the outputs of this knowledge management process was the Government Online Resource Centre - a web based repository made available to the Victorian Public Sector on the Victorian Government Intranet. Due to demand from other government agencies who could not access the Intranet service, this resource was subsequently published on the Internet in December 2000. In March 2002, the then Labor government launched "Putting People at the Centre" - the Victorian Government's eGovernment vision.

The previous Labor Government's eGovernment vision had four pillars:

• Substantially improving support and services to citizens
• Providing better community engagement and more effective democracy
• Using innovation in finding new opportunities
• Creating a framework for ongoing reform within government.

To assist the vision, the site was relaunched as the eGovernment Resource Centre. Today, the Resource Centre actively collects research still supporting each of these pillars by sharing resources with more than 20,000 eGovernment and eDemocracy researchers who visit the site from around the world every month.

The benefits of this service are far reaching including:

• information and learnings have been shared;
• time has been saved in research;
• the "proverbial wheel" has not been reinvented as often as it used to be; and
• governments and organisations are actively seeking out this website to promote their eGovernment and eDemocracy programs.

Debate ensues over the relevance of the term "eGovernment" and its applicability to government today. The early days of eGovernment in the late 1990s and earlier this decade, saw the term represent everything relating to the delivery of electronic government services and information. Today the term covers a much broader spectrum of activity including government / community engagement, and efficient and effective government service provision.

The current Victorian government in its Victoria's Technology Plan for the Future: Information and Communication Technology published November 2011, promotes the delivery of innovative and transparent government services.

Developments in information and communication technologies (ICT) present significant opportunities for the Victorian government to transform the way it delivers government services and engages with the public. Social media platforms and web based applications can play a central role in helping governments deliver more responsive and transparent services and support more flexible access to government information, more personalised services and new ways of communicating with the public. The shift to high capacity broadband and widespread use of mobile computing will also present new opportunities to transform the way the government delivers quality services to the public wherever they are.

The Victorian Government currently plans to investigate and implement innovative applications of ICT to support its activities, including:

• developing new innovative web and mobile applications to improve access to the Victorian Public Sector, including the development of a mobile web and applications roadmap and enhancing the Contacts and Services Directory
• undertaking activities to improve access to public sector information and facilitate innovative use of available data and information by businesses, the education and research sectors and the broader community, including:
  • developing a Public Sector Information Release Framework
  • enhancing data.vic.gov.au
  • supporting data mashing competitions.
• using online consultation platforms alongside traditional consultation methods to broaden engagement with the community on key issues of concern.

Awards

The eGovernment Resource Centre has received a Special Mention at the World eDemocracy Awards 2008. As part of the PoliticsOnline and the World eDemocracy Forum Final Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics in 2008, we participated as honored guests at the World eDemocracy Forum on October 16-17, 2008, in Issy-les-Moulineaux, (Paris, France) where we took part in the e-Democracy awards ceremony and other special programs throughout the two-day forum.

Resources from Victoria include:

• Government 2.0 Action Plan
• Victorian eGovernment case studies,
• Government ICT policies, trends and issues
• Victorian Government ICT Policies
• Victoria Online Thesaurus
• Victoria's eGovernment strategies and reports,
• Victoria's Website Management Framework including website standards and guidelines, and the
• website manuals and toolkits including the Accessibility, AGLS Victoria and Web analytics toolkits,

What's new in eGovernment Newsletter

Each week, the site publishes a news roundup of what's new in eGovernment and government website practice from around the world. You can subscribe to our free newsletter to receive the weekly updates.

In May 2011 we conducted a survey of recipients of the newsletter - the What's New Newsletter Satisfaction Survey Results 2011 are now available.

News Feeds

Please also subscribe to our news feeds to receive regular updates on additions to the site. These include:

• the eGov Broadband Digest - items relating to delivery of government services via broadband initiatives,
• the eGov Daily Digest - all the eGovernment resources as they are published on the site,
• the eGov Engagement Digest - resources about government / citizen / community engagement from around the world,
• the e-Health Digest - items relating to government e-health initiatives,
• the Government Website Digest - resources useful for those managing government websites, and
• the What's New newsletter – a newsfeed version of the weekly newsletter.

eGovernment Toolbar

You can download the eGovRC browser toolbar which provides you with ready access to news feeds, the weekly newsletter, toolkits, website management framework and website standards and guidelines. The toolbar also provides a search facility for the site and access to the State of Victoria's portal – Victoria Online.

The toolbar is available for both the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers.

Follow the eGovRC on Twitter

The eGovernment Resource Centre participates in Twitter to alert followers to new updates on the site. You can follow eGovRC on Twitter.

Management of the Site

This site is managed by the eServices Unit, Information Victoria - a unit within the Department of Business and Innovation.

Further information about the work of the eServices Unit is available by contacting us. An A-Z list of Victorian Government websites is also available on the Victoria Online portal.

 

Last updated: 13 March 2012

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