Last week saw the unveiling of Google Public Sector in Australia, by Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. This comes as part of the Aussie government’s recent steps towards embracing the web as a vehicle to breed  innovation and engage more with their communities, through the Gov 2.0 Taskforce.

It’s not the first time Google has teamed with local governments, take for instance the NSW Government map for instance. But it is interesting to see Google packaging so many of it’s products as a box set of solutions for the Public Sector.

Here’s a clip of Google Public Sector for Australia:

As for the Government 2.0 Taskforce itself it is primarily responsible for advising and assisting the Government to:

• make government information more accessible and usable — to establish a pro-disclosure culture around non-sensitive public sector information;
• make government more consultative, participatory and transparent — to maximise the extent to which government utilises the views, knowledge and resources of the general community;
• build a culture of online innovation within Government — to ensure that government is receptive to the possibilities created by new collaborative technologies and uses them to advance its ambition to continually improve the way it operates;
• promote collaboration across agencies with respect to online and information initiatives — to ensure that efficiencies, innovations, knowledge and enthusiasm are shared on a platform of open standards; and
• identify and/or trial initiatives that may achieve or demonstrate how to accomplish the above objectives.”