Category Archives: Ingenuity

Create[d] World

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A few thoughts from the recent Create World conference of clever, creative people.

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Panel on place and creativity – how does digital alter the way we think?

Architect Richard Kirk made the point that perspective drawing as a tool is only a few hundred years old, so we are yet to reap the full benefits of new additions to our creative lexicon, such as virtual worlds. Performance designer Anna Tregloan commented that some people can quite naturally translate a 2D image to imagine it in 3D space, but for others that will always be more difficult, so the theatre tradition of building a little model of the set may endure. Continuing the theme of how we translate human experiences into digital form, and whether we can learn to think in a hybrid way between digital and physical, creative innovator (?!) Hael Kobayashi described the process of making penguins dance for Happy Feet. Humans danced in a warehouse, each one wired for motion capture. A set of screens displayed the merger of their movements with the digital penguins, so the director and key creatives could see, in real-time, penguins dancing on an iceberg.

Keynotes on photography, animation and the active audience

Tom Ang‘s keynote was an entertaining blend of a romp through the history of photography, some behind-the-lens information about particular shots, and some philosophical observations about value and power in photography’s new world:

  • Photoshop has programmed us!
  • Boundaries of what is shareable have shifted.
  • The concept of the ‘still image’ is now a misnomer: they fade, zoom, slide – and fast. And the more abundant they become, the less we attend to each.
  • Because images are so abundant, there are no longer iconic images of world events. (I’m not convinced of this point. The process by which images become iconic has changed, but I reckon crowd wisdom will choose images over time. Note, for example, the twitter #ows discussion of iconic imagery, and the meme of the cop casually pepper-spraying seated protesters.)

Ian Taylor’s story of the success of Animation Research Ltd – and his team’s down-home methods – was awe-inspiring. But my strongest takeaway from his talk was the importance of taking your time to learn – ergo the immense value of free education. Which we no longer have.

As a longtime advocate for participatory approaches to cultural representations, I was very interested in Ernest Edmonds‘ talk on art and the active audience. My favourite parts:

  • Some early research found that babies less than one week old can learn – by controlling the turn of their head on the pillow – to switch a light on and off, and that once mastered, they become bored with it.
  • Our vocabulary for interaction is developing. For example, there are many different kinds of play: danger, competition, camaraderie, subversion, fantasy, sensation, captivation, difficulty, simulation. And so on!
  • Don’t assume that more is better. Performance and communication might be better with lower bandwidth. This is an intriguing point, and I wanted more from him on this. I wonder if he means, for example, that in some cases audio works better than video,   because it gets inside your head but doesn’t restrict your visual attention. Or that pixelated imagery like in Minecraft, works in part because it’s low-res, so the player can more actively/imaginatively inhabit the scene and the characters. In short, I suspect this point relates to the value of leaving space within a representation, for the audience to fill from their personal creative sources.

An audiovisual meditation on gold

Not your average academic conference, Create World includes a range of clever, creative performances. Of the four, this was my favourite – it’s an audiovisual meditation on the mineral gold, and it made my heart hum. (I recommend: go full-screen and use headphones or big speakers.)

The Solar Angel from abre ojos on Vimeo.

Other prezos

The quality of stream-session presentations was consistently good. I attended those on:

  • a multi-disciplinary creative technologies degree (Judit Klein, Auckland Uni of Technology)
  • iPads for music-making (Jamie Gabriel, Macquarie Uni)
  • an iPad app for assessing teachers of music, art and drama (Julia Wren & Alistair Campbell, Edith Cowan Uni)
  • EEG-mapping of artistic consumption and as artistic work (Jason Zagami, Griffith Uni)
  • a weather-data-generated sonic sculpture in Sydney (Kirsty Beilharz, Uni of Technology, Sydney)
  • kinaesthetic potential of educational gaming (Helen Farley & Adrian Stagg, Uni of Southern Queensland)
  • serious games (Tim Marsh, James Cook Uni)
  • digital research methods, including Wikipedia article-writing (Kerry Kilner, Uni of Queensland)
  • Playtime, an animated movie (Thomas Verbeek, Uni of Otago)
  • Ishq, an audiovisual work commissioned by the Art Gallery of New South Wales as part of its exhibition on Islamic art (Kim Cunio and Louise Harvey, Griffith Uni)

I presented – and have shared on the Museum’s Education blog – Gamifying relatedness: an iPad app-in-progress. Hearty thanks to Paris for his guest appearance.

Sembl praxis: identify sameness, explore difference

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As part of his ‘Mining the museum’ installation at Maryland Historical Society in 1992–93, artist Fred Wilson placed a set of shackles in a display case with fine silverware and titled it Metalwork. Pow. United by the metal of their fabrication, the racially-divided, hierarchical histories of these objects dramatically distances them:

Who served the silver? And who could have made the silver objects in apprenticeship situations? And [...] whose labour could produce the wealth that produced the silver?

A general principle can be distilled from this. Perhaps: In the very moment we identify a similarity between two objects, we recognise their difference. In other words, the process of drawing two things together creates an equal opposite force that draws attention to their natural distance. So the act of seeking resemblance – consistency, or patterns – simultaneously renders visible the inconsistencies, the structures and textures of our social world. And the greater the conceptual distance between the two likened objects, the more interesting the likening – and the greater the understanding to be found.

This simultaneous pulling together and springing apart of the sociophysical world interests me, and I’ve been thinking about it in relation to Sembl, where the challenge of the game is to identify a way in which a given object is related – surprisingly or humorously or otherwise interestingly – to another object.

What constitutes ‘interesting’ is of course difficult to define and depends to a large degree on the particular players playing. But if the natural conceptual distance between the two related objects is great, the relationship is more likely to be interesting – perhaps because it enables you to think about something in a new way. That’s what made Wilson’s juxtaposition of shackles with silver tableware interesting, and powerful.

Composite image of a branding iron and a breastplate given to an Aboriginal man

In the same vein, the Sembl players who linked the above branding iron to the breastplate – because both are tools for labeling bodies – cast new light on the colonial practice of giving metal breastplates to Aboriginal people.

My (big!) point here is: Hipbone games and Sembl alike can create a safe space for people to explore differences. When identified, similarities form bridges across and clarify difference. Attending to relatedness in this way inspires understanding; and opens a channel toward reconciliation.

Collaborative, intergenerational, play-based learning about history

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At THATCamp Canberra, I hosted a session on designing a dedicated digitally-enhanced physical space for collaborative, intergenerational, play-based learning about history (yes, it was ambitious!). I am finally getting down to documenting it.

How I thought it might work

In the lead-up to the camp, I had put a lot of thought into the issues, but I had consciously resisted planning the session in any detail. I genuinely wanted to facilitate rather than lead. I did consider splitting people into small groups for part of the time, but decided against it because the numbers seemed not to warrant it. (Didn’t realise at that point that people would continue to wander in throughout the session so by the end, it was quite a large group.) Ultimately, for better or worse (!) I resisted imposing any real structure on the session and instead surrendered to hosting an engaging discussion of possibilities in terms of both form and content, and inscribing  it with as much clarity as I could on a whiteboard.

What actually happened

You can probably guess that we didn’t go so far as to devise a single, clear plan for a game-space. But we had a great chat, which I will try to represent here. What follows is a transcription / translation / slight elaboration of the whiteboard notes.

Do what can’t be done elsewhere

  • in museum space, draw on the authentic, interesting objects
  • invite peer collaboration (note that teenagers in particular prefer to relate to known others rather than strangers)
  • encourage social interaction with strangers in a safe place

Pedagogy / structure / approach

  • use real-world physics (in digital designs) for improving literacy about how the world works
  • draw on imagination
  • welcome failure
  • involve the bodies of participants, not just the minds, index fingers, eyes
  • provide a loop structure: Context –> Challenge –> Feedback –> (Joy made this point after the sesh)

Elements of the experience

  • include a preparatory / warmup / contextualising activity
  • establish rules for local interaction but leave space for emergent collective behaviour
  • if the activity is individual, then build in a moment of sharing at the end
  • enable people to make / build / create something
  • build in different levels – a progression of experience, with rewards for completing each stage
  • provide a takeaway – go home and log in for… / or a physical memento

Flexibility

  • solo or collaborative
  • multi-layered approach (so it works for short, shallow or prolongued, in-depth engagement)
  • engaging for young children (7 and up), teenagers, parents and grandparents

Technologies

  • wifi
  • motion-sensors
  • ‘glass wall’ for being visible from the outside / online
  • RFID
  • etc

Concepts

  • an interactive augmented-reality RPG (role-play game) with historical characters, props; visitors inhabit a character, choose clothes; re-enact a historical scene of their choice (time, place, indoor, outdoor);
  • integrate user-generated media
  • ‘customisable avatar – discovery’ – I can’t recall what this means!
  • interactive video
  • mission-based games versus play-based games – there was a leaning toward the latter as less reductive / prescriptive
  • a whole room full of buttons and levers and motion-sensors that you could explore in a completely freeform way, either alone or in collaboration – this idea was imagined in a (beautifully sun-drenched) post-session chat with Mitchell and Geoff

Models / inspirations

While we spoke, Michael drove a web-connected laptop so we could look at possible models or inspirations for this space:

What now?

It was absolutely fantastic hearing ideas from everyone at the session and afterward. I’ve probably left things out and got things wrong here. I know I haven’t captured all the nuances of the conversation. Corrections and additions are of course most welcome. Leave a comment and I will incorporate it into the post.

Over time I will revisit these ideas. For now, I am letting them simmer in my subconscious.

In the neighbourhood

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Applications are almost due for the Bold Ideas, Better Lives challenge.

I was thinking to submit an idea – something that came out of reading Steven Johnson’s book, Emergence. But I haven’t done enough research or had enough (as in, any!) feedback to know if it’s worthwhile. And I just realised that on top of writing a 1900-word intro to the idea, you’re meant to put in a 3-minute pitch. Then there’s the small issue that I’m not sure I’m keen to champion this idea to the point of implementation. I’d use it. I’d be happy if it worked! And I’d be more than willing to help make it manifest. But the idea of talking it up through the whole process of shortlisting and selection… Well, I’m probably just not that much of a champion. In that regard, anyway.

So instead, I offer the first 700 words of an idea to anyone who happens to read this, and hope for some (constructive) critical feedback, or at least some expressions of interest.

What is your idea? (100 words)

I’d like to strengthen communities by facilitating real-world interactions through an online hyper-local aggregator and hub. Enter The Neighbourhood – a platform for creating a directory, noticeboard and town square for residents, visitors, business-people and local government to exchange information and ideas about local conditions, events, opportunities and ideas. It would feed information about the weather, infrastructural and social issues, jobs, trade, community activities. It would invite and enable people to share goods, ideas, and media – in other words, to funnel relevant parts of our current activities for the benefit of the community around our physical home.

What is the social need or challenge your idea could address? (300 words)

City living can be isolating – especially in very car-oriented cities – and in many neighbourhoods people are almost unknown to each other, having very little contact. We have opportunities to share information, experiences, goods and ideas through workplaces, distributed networks of family and friends, and digital communities. But where we live is important; our local community is potentially a rich source of interaction. If we have a lost pet, or surplus home-grown zucchinis, if we are creating an art installation, or need a new footpath – in all these circumstances, a good outcome can depend on the quality of our local relationships. Our individual and communal wellbeing could be dramatically improved by a digital town square that facilitated real-world relationships. If we know each other better, we would be in a better position to take good care of each other – to look after our neighbours’ house, garden, or pets when we’re away; to look out for the neighbourhood children; to care for, listen to and learn from our old folk.

The Neighbourhood would build constructive real-world relationships – and thereby improve collective wellbeing – through a simple and useful aggregation of relevant information, and hub for activity both online and in physical space. As well as the community benefits, an actively engaged community would be advantageous for businesses and governments. For businesses, it would constitute a highly effective channel for communicating with residents, promoting local products and services, and tailoring them in accordance with feedback. As the dawn of Government 2.0 approaches, access to a hyper-local community network would also be highly beneficial for two-way communications – genuine dialogue – to identify priorities, refine policies and so on.

The Neighbourhood would cultivate goodwill and generate social capital.

What inspired you to come up with your idea in the first place? (300 words)

This idea was inspired by Steven Johnson’s book Emergence. He looks at how swarms or networks operate in micro-organisms, insect colonies, human cities and the internet, and finds that at every scale – and in the absence of a master planner – local interactions suffice to bring about emergence – a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

I was thinking about this notion of emergence in relation to my own neighbourhood. I live on the main street in a suburb of Canberra, where although people do walk past, most traffic is motorised and, particularly on Friday nights, vandalism and ‘criminal damage’ are common. (I know this from experience but also because my street makes a regular appearance in the Neighbourhood Watch newsletter.) I don’t believe people are the problem here. I think our cities and lifestyles are serving us poorly, and we need a solution based on goodwill rather than fear. Surely, the more we interact locally, the better off as a community we’ll be.

Steven Johnson has in fact implemented a similar idea in Outside In – a platform for aggregating hyperlocal news, blogs and discussion. From my perspective, however, it is limited in that it’s not focused on the physical world except insofar as it uses location to organise the news feeds, and it’s not intended to facilitate interaction, only to supply information.

I’m actually surprised there isn’t yet a thing such as The Neighbourhood already. Aggregation; social media; cloud computing; we-think; and emergence – all these capacities enhance our potential to improve the way physical neighbourhoods operate. It seems we could all benefit by augmenting our physical communities with a digital overlay – by using our digital networks to enhance and empower our local communities. Such would be the point of The Neighbourhood.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day

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Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

In planning this post, I had a strong urge to write about Ada Lovelace herself. Reading a chapter by Howard Rheingold, I marvelled at the clarity and potency of Ada’s vision for computer programming, in which ‘the mental and material [...] are brought into intimate connexion with each other’. Indeed, we unite this binary every time we use computers either to translate ideas into form, or to expand our consciousness of the world around us. Amazingly, Ada wrote that 100 years before computers existed.

Then I briefly thought to celebrate Evelyn Fox Keller – for figuring out that each cell of slime mould is an agent of its own aggregational destiny – ie, that there are no commanding cells directing all the others to form into a mass, moving entity; for unearthing the dispersed history of thinking about decentralised forms of authority, which has since coalesced into the field of emergence; and for her meta-work on feminist science, which is how I first encountered her.

But the achievements of both women have been well documented. I prefer to write about someone with a smaller digital footprint, even if it means traversing into more foreign technological terrain. So here is a brief tribute to an atmospheric scientist – a climatologist – whose contribution to science is mostly mysterious to me, but whose capacities for independent, steadfast investigation and analysis are unquestionably impressive.

My Mum reckons that my younger sister, Julie, was inspired to embark on a scientific career by our step-uncle, a paleontologist, when he gave her a piece of dinosaur egg from South Australia. She won the Australian National University Medal for her Honours degree in physics, and by age 30 she had a PhD in atmospheric gaseous exchange – you can read it here. I don’t grok its scientific significance, but I know that the research involved camping in a forest in Siberia, and building metal towers to climb in order to collect air samples. That’s quite an effort.

I also know that in her work for the federal Department of Parliamentary Services, she wrote a report, Climate change: The case for action, that dissolves any excuse the Australian government might have had for failing to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It says that the climate is changing; that most of the change is due to human influences; that the changes present serious risks; that those risks can be managed; and that the longer we delay, the more drastic our mitigation measures will need to be. It’s clear! (It’s just a pity that the problem here is not purely scientific – mostly, it’s cultural. People are apparently not yet ready to accept those mitigation measures.)

As well as being scientifically inclined (and successful), she is a rockclimber, adventurer, nature photographer, mother of two, animal lover (she has three Siberian huskies and two cats) and since last month, medical student. So, I celebrate Ada Lovelace Day by celebrating my multi-talented sister, Julie Styles.

Coming out creative

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With some hesitation – even trepidation – I have published some pages about me and some of the things I’ve made. Why the worry? Well, because I’m no extrovert. Plus, I’m in some kind of transition phase, so it’s even harder than it usually is to talk about who I am and what I do. Plus, I’m nervous. Change is a little bit scary. Thrilling but, mmm, scary.

I love drawing, and making things, and pootling about with software for making things that both look nice and mean something. But between a PhD, parenthood and full-time paid work, my energy for making things has wandered off to the sidelines. It is feeling neglected, and no doubt it has shrivelled a bit. I suppose I have prioritised being clever over being creative, for pragmatic reasons (although I read somewhere this week that the perceived value of creativity is on the rise). Actually, I think I have not ever really believed in my creativity. I think I thought I’m too introverted to be arty. I thought I was more your logical, left-brained type. But now I’m wondering why I can’t be that and creative. I want integration!

Now, I’ve quit my full-time job. Now, I am determined to give my professional endeavours more of a creative curve. I have lots of ideas – and I’m looking forward to exploring them. It feels good.

Going to the govhack fest

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With some trepidation due to my lack of geek credentials, I have registered to attend Govhack. Keen to find out how I can contribute.

I’ve also added a project idea to the wiki, based on this idea. As a conceptual taster for how useful it might be to have a browseable overview of government activities (which you can control / explore and then use to find a pathway to web-based material that interests you) I made this Wordle tagcloud using the latest Administrative Arrangements Orders:

Tagcloud of Australian Government activitiesEven a static bundle of words gives you a sense of the range of activities the government is involved in.

Whether or not this idea takes off, I’m excited about being involved in this event. Hope to meet you there!

Seeing how to get things done

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This week I’ve invested some time in thinking about time and how to spend it well. I was prompted by someone dear to me, who is currently challenged by a peculiar combination of:

  1. a disruptive schedule – teaching 9 classes a week in 8 venues
  2. a natural aversion to administrative work
  3. a hankering to play music and sculpt stone

His disruptive schedule (1) creates a general condition of restlessness, which amplifies the effect of his natural aversion (2), causing certain kinds of work to pile up even more than they otherwise might. Both of those factors then work to increase his hankering (3) because the general restlessness and the agitation – of knowing there is a pile of work looming ever larger – join forces to thwart the creative impulse. Which in turn exacerbates the restlessness and agitation. It’s a vicious circle of joyless dissatisfaction.

Doodle – cycle of restlessnes, work piling up, creativity stifling

To solve the angry jellyfish dilemma, we have devised a simple, twofold plan:

  • Find a good tool for listing, prioritising and tracking all the Things That Need Doing – currently trying out the (Mac) tool Things.
  • Create a timetable for the working week, so it’s clear what time is available when; schedule in some regular (but short!) periods of time for finding admin joy; and identify where creative exploration and expression might fit.

Below is the first-draft timetable, made in InDesign. I couldn’t find a template to start from, so for anyone else who might use it, here is the timetable template – 450kb zip file of an InDesign template. (And if someone out there can tell me how to get a full choice of colours in the fill for the table cell style, rather than be limited to a range of about 5 CMYK colours, I’d be grateful! Flip, maybe I should have made it in Graffle.)

The timetable seems to be helping already, to reveal the time that is there for the things that need doing; so he can see how to get them done. So, hooray. Maybe I should have called this post ‘How a timetable can soothe an angry jellyfish’.

timetable

Cultural lessons from the crowd in the cloud

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In the last couple of weeks I’ve encountered some great insight into and evidence of the potential effect of large public networks on the work of making cultural assets accessible. It has come from two separate sources – Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody, but also the first ever public conversation between Wikimedia and the GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives and museums).

I haven’t finished the book yet, so my focus here is on what the GLAM sector might take away from the conference (although no doubt the book is infiltrating my thinking.) The following points are not neatly sewn-up instructional lessons, and of course, people will disagree, but I believe the following are important considerations for those of us working to make cultural assets accessible online.

1. A completely different process of authorisation

I heard a lot of talk about how Wikipedia lacks authority and I heard a lot of what seemed like fear that its perceived dodginess would infect cultural institutions and jeopardise their authority. Well, for me, an almost opposite view is far more compelling.

Cultural institutions hold in their collections assets that have authority because they are original sources. No question; nothing will jeopardise that. And academic research accrues authority through the process of peer review, or by being written by someone who has accrued authority in the course of their professional career.

Wikipedia has an entirely different relationship with authority. Its articles are by definition, necessarily and absolutely not original research. And yes, Wikipedia editing is amateur. But the amazing thing is that Wikipedia articles can achieve a form of authority by virtue of the fact that the community of editors (which includes anyone who wants to be in it) finds a neutral, consensus position, and the article settles into relatively stable content. That stability is a genuine, honourable form of authority. It is not invested through credentials but emerges – and continues to emerge – out of open dialogue. And because Wikipedia gives voice to the community rather than to an individual or institution, in my view, Wikipedian authority is of great value.

I’m not suggesting that Wikipedia is the only source we need. On the contrary, it is vital to check the original sources, to seek out other sources (including primary sources!), to read critically and to adopt your own position. But Wikipedia is an excellent starting point. How many of us would deny that we regularly use it?! And the fact that verifiability it cites and refers readers to reliable sources positions it very well as a potential partner for cultural institutions.

2. A horde of willing and able enthusiasts

The arresting image below resides in the German Federal Archive but now – along with almost 100,000 others – it also resides in the Wikimedia Commons.

A photograph from the German National Archives via Wikimedia, June 1942 – Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive), Bild 183-N0619-506

Jewish women with yellow star, Paris, June 1942 – from the German Federal Archive via Wikimedia – Deutsches Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F000136-0009

It’s there because Mathias Schindler negotiated a deal with the Bundesarchiv, by which the archive would release 100,000 images into the public domain, and in return, Wikipedians would help by describing the photographs and matching person data (authority files – the A-word again!) in three places – German Wikipedia, National Archive and National Library.

As an employee of a federal archive, I am acutely conscious of the scale of the work involved in description and digitisation – core tasks usually prerequisite to making cultural assets accessible. Anything with the potential to distribute this load must be worth exploring. That way, more culture can be shared more widely which is, of course, the point.

The experience of the National Library of Australia in soliciting bulk text enhancement – via its wonderful Australian Newspapers project – provides further evidence that the public can be relied upon to do a mammoth amount of good work in enhancing OCR’d microfilm.

3. More accessible doesn’t seem to mean less profitable

And importantly, evidence is amassing at the Powerhouse Museum that increasing the accessible reach of your photographs, through the Flickr Commons, has a massive impact on how many people see and tag your images, but very little effect on image sales.

So…

In short, unlike Angelina, I came away from GLAM-wiki feeling fairly enthusiastic – like Gerard – about the possibilities for partnership.

A Government 2.0 idea – first, make all the functions visible

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Senator Kate Lundy’s Public Sphere forum this week was exciting, not least because amongst all the compelling presentations, the Government 2.0 Taskforce was announced. Its role is not only to help the government navigate into the future of greater transparency and collaboration, but also to fund projects to the same end. So what might the taskforce fund? Well, here’s an idea, and a fairly fundamental, simple one at that.

Last night I watched Us Now, a film that makes a great case for how a distributed, collaborative approach can trump a top-down approach in ventures ranging from commercial money-lending to selecting players for a football team to allocating government funds. (An aside: I was struck by how accepting the model railway guys were of the crowd-sourced decision, even though it denied them any council funding. As one of them said – I’m paraphrasing – he had had his eyes opened up to all the other worthy projects, and he was satisfied that the process had been fair. Key point: transparent, collaborative decision-making is satisfying, even when you don’t get what you want.)

Because there seem to be so many areas of government policy and service that might be improved by some citizen collaboration, I started to wonder where those possibilities end. What are the limits to Government 2.0? Of course, the best way to answer that question would be to ask the people. What do you want a say in? And how?

For me, there are many potential points of intervention. My first thoughts are rather trivial – we could ban sticky labels on fruit! And rid the country of those horrid robo-loos that have taken over where public toilets used to be. But I’d also appreciate a say in more serious and complex things like immigration policy, climate change targets, and so on. No doubt there would be many other issues that I’d like to vote on, if I was offered the choice. The tricky part is knowing all the options – being aware of all the ways in which governments shape our environments, cultures and experiences.

The thing is, in order for people to answer the question ‘What do you want a say in?’ – in order for us to collectively determine the scope and limits of citizen governance – we need to be able to peruse the full set of government functions – at federal, state and local levels.

What we need is a visualisation – a view that shows us government functions as a whole and enables us to explore the component parts. Then, we could add an architecture of participation – put it to users as to what issues should be put to the people.

Actually, such a tool could be multi-purpose. Imagine if, having found a function of interest, you could see which level of government performs that function, and which agency, and how to get in touch with that agency. For me, a browsable visualisation of Australian governments has greater potential value as a directory than any ‘enhanced’ australia.gov.au search service.

How the architecture of this model of citizen governance might work is of course open, but the way forward for the visualisation part of this project seems obvious. A starting point, at least in relation to the federal government, would certainly be information from the National Archives, which has a key role in keeping governments accountable – by keeping their records – and which therefore takes a lead role in keeping government information organised. For example, it:

So, how about it? Do you share my sense that making the functions visible is a critical first step toward Government 2.0?