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CraigThomler

Canberra, Australia

I'm an entrepreneur by disposition, currently managing the online channel for an Australian Federal government agency and blogging on egovernment in Australia.

My background is in fast moving consumer goods, internet start-ups, computer gaming, property investment and the oil industry.

Currently I am working to gain an understanding of the inner processes of the public sector whilst encouraging the effective and thoughtful use of internet and mobile technologies to improve government efficiency, collaboration and service delivery. My favourite colour is blue.

CraigThomler is at home at http://egovau.blogspot.com.

Recently, CraigThomler...

  • created Minimising Spam in the Connected Republic over 2 years ago.

    Hi guys, I see that you've just had some of your first forum spam through a user named Xinxi. What I suggest is that you implement two steps to minimise this: Disallow unmoderated comments on posts more than 14 days old. Force the first comment made by a new registered user to be moderated. Don't let them continue to comment until their first comment is moderated. These hurdles tend to ward off the bulk of spammers and I've found them very successful for spam minimisation in my blog....

  • commented on Post-Bar Camp reflections on engagement over 3 years ago.

    We have a BarCamp coming up in Canberra at the end of March and I'm sending you some information about it shortly Martin - perhaps you'd be interested in speaking there. Cheers, Craig

  • commented on Post-Bar Camp reflections on engagement over 3 years ago.

    Hi Paul, These types of ideas markets have been used by a number of cities to include citizens in the process of prioritising infrastructure projects. Change.gov also uses one for the submission and voting on policy ideas. There's a couple of excellent products for doing this and I'm currently preparing a case around introducing such a system for my agency to see if I can gather ideas for our online secure service from customers and staff. Depending on how it goes I'll be testing the waters...

  • commented on The City as the Platform over 3 years ago.

    Interesting comments Martin, looking forward to your expanded thoughts.

  • commented on Why isn't Johnny using Video? over 3 years ago.

    Hi Paul, There's a lot of activity via Youtube in using video as a delayed two-way communication tool, through the reply video approach. However it's true that video-based real-time comms has been a laggard - for a long time, even before the internet. Video phones were first released, I believe, in the 1960s, but failed to catch on. After 40-odd years perhaps it is time to accept that video comms may not be as desireable as it first appears. I liken it to the box office flop of Final Fant...

  • commented on Digital Mentors over 3 years ago.

    Dave, Sounds like a great initiative - I'm going to make some people here in Australia available of the pilot.

  • commented on Why isn't Johnny using Video? over 3 years ago.

    Hi Paul, On what basis was the claim that video was not growing made? Youtube or iTunes may have a different view.

  • commented on Competitive Government vs. Democratic Government over 3 years ago.

    To enable competitive jurisdictions, there is the requirement for open borders, low barriers to citizen migrations, good information (on the different options) and low cost transportation. Whilst this is often true today within existing nation states between local and regional/state government areas, there are still substantial barriers to free migration across most national borders, in terms of administration, information and transportation. While nation states do currently compete to some...