LobbyLens Government Lobbyist Analysis Tool

LobbyLens shows the relationships between lobbyists, companies and government portfolios as tag clouds and diagrams by analysis of contract data. The system shows Lobbists as a tag cloud. What agencies buy from who is shown as a diagram, for example for the Defence Material Organisation, (where I used to work). It is an enhanced version of "LobbyClue", which was judged the Best in Show at the Australian Government 2.0 GovHack.

The LobbyLens team do not appear to have taken up my suggestions about making it lightweight, less dependent on Flash and suitable for portable devices. When I load one of the Flash diagrams the fan in my netbook starts up, indicating it is having to do a lot of work. Also the home page is in Flash which is not a good idea.

Government Lobbyist Analysis Tool

LobbyClue was judged the Best in Show at the Australian Government 2.0 GovHack. It shows the relationships between lobbyists, companies and government portfolios as tag clouds and diagrams by analysis of contract data. The results are remarkable and may well scare some of the lobbyists.

As an example, here is part of the tag cloud generated for lobbyists:

INTECH STRATEGIES PTY. LTD. J K ELIX & J A LAMBERT PTY LTD ENHANCE CORPORATE PTY. LTD. AUSTRALIAN PROJECT DEVELOPMENTS PTY LTD THREE PLUS PTY LTD INTERCAPITAL GROUP MACGREGOR PUBLIC RELATIONS PTY LIMITED KMK Consulting Pty Ltd BELMAN CONSULTING Pty Ltd MCCORMACK FAMILY TRUST SPECTRUM PLANNING SERVICES PTY LIMITED MANIDIS ROBERTS CONSULTANTS THE CLIFTON GROUP Bredhauer Consulting Services Pty Ltd NEATCORP PTY LIMITED DAN CASS MARKSTONE GROUP PTY LTD MICHAEL HITCHENS CONSULTING ...

Clicking on a lobbyist displays a diagram showing all the companies the lobbyist works for. One problem is that the diagrams use Flash, which is a bit slow on my netbook. A HTML5 version suitable for iPhones and Blackberries could prove very popular in Parliament House. A simple indented list of text should do in place of the fancy graphics. This could also be made compatible with web accessibility guidelines.

Mash-up Government Data to Save the World

Greetings from GovHack at the ANU in Canberra.This is an Australian Government supported event being held at the ANU. The Australian Government is providing access to government data sets and seeing what the community can do with the data.

I met the GovHack team at the Purple Pickle Cafe at the ANU this morning. I am actually in Sydney for a Climate Change talk by Professor Lambeck, of the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences. The disturbing result from the extensive research presented by Professor Lambeck is that new models predict a larger rise in sea level than those used by the IPCC.

The situation with sea level rise due to climate change is much worse than previous thought. More and more prompt action will be required to address sea level rise than is being planned in current political processes. None of the proposals currently being prepared by government for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen December (UNFCCC CoP 15) are sufficient to avert a global disaster.

One technology we have to mitigate and adapt is the Internet. Because the Internet is already widely available and is being rapidly expanded, it can be deployed far faster than other technologies, such as new power generating stations, carbon sequestration or sea walls. One resource to be used is existing government data which the Internet can make available for climate change.

One area the Australian Government could provide data to combat climate change is with its $100M Smart Grid Project. The government could require the successful bidders to make the data available in real time to authorised users and in near real time freely to the general public.

Some other proposals I put to the APEC Climate Change Symposium in Canberra this week:

1. Green Technology Strategies education: Broaden the content and add multimedia, mobile phone and village classroom options to the Green Technologies strategy course to make it available in APEC countries at the local level.
2. Innovation Climate Change: Expand the InnovationACT project to the APEC region. In a one year trial Australian and Korea will have teams of students working online on climate change innovations. Prizes will be awarded for the best project. Teams
3. Green Certification: Expand the COA Green ICT certification scheme to APEC, providing web tools to ICT green certify organizations.
4. Protect cultural records from climate change: Climate change represents a significant risk to cultural records in the Asia Pacific region. Many cultural institutions are located near the sea and will be at threat from inundation. The ANU course Systems Approach to the Management of Government Information would be expanded to provide training and resources for government and non-government cultural institutions to catalogue and digitally preserve their materials. Background: Report on a Workshop on the Use of Technology for Museums of the Pacific Islands Region 2005 and Semantic Web for Museums
   Final Report.
   

ANU Volunteers needed to help with GovHack

GovHack is a free event at the ANU 30 to 31 October on creating mashups and applications with government data and services. Volunteers are need to help look after the 130 people expected to attend. ANU staff and students who know their way around campus would be particularly useful. Contact: Laurent Lefort.