Tech Stream

Open Australia

4 September 2009

Listen and download: MP3

Australia’s House of Representatives in Parliament House, Canberra. Photo from Flickr by Hengest.

A new website, run by volunteers, has been setup in Australia to help ordinary people find out what their elected representatives in federal parliament are up to. But it aims to do this in an easy way, by being able to do things like search by keywords, setup email alerts for particular subjects, or just grab the data wholesale and use it yourself.

openaustralia.org was launched in 2008 and I spoke about the project with Matthew Landaeur, one of the founders of OpenAustralia and also their lead developer.  Follow the MP3 link at the top of this story to hear the interview.

There’s also another great text interview with Matthew at Web Directions South and I attended a recent Public Sphere event which looked at ICT & Creative Industry development.  A wrap up of that event, including all the virtual participation, is on the website of Australian Senator Kate Lundy.