Last weekend the 2020 Summit was held in Canberra where government and leading Australian minds got together to come up with ideas to address future issues that Australia faces. Here’s my biased top 10 ideas:

1. “national financial literacy program in schools”
2. “environmental considerations will be fully integrated into economic decision making in Australia”
3. “robust emissions trading system and a suite of complementary measures will be driving a low carbon revolution with Government taking the lead working in partnership with business and the community”
4. “make government funding of certain public or research projects conditional on providing open public access to reports and data”
5. “require carbon neutrality for all new buildings constructed beyond 2020″
6. “federal government should commission a total soil and hydrological survey of north and north-west Australia by 2010, to inform future production opportunities”
7. “in classrooms across Australia, children should be encouraged to grow something real”
8. “encourage student exchange between schools in urban and regional areas”
9. “delivering “fast fruit” to primary schools”
10. “provision of micro-finance on a nation-wide scale”

Others that I liked:

• “exploit broadband and emerging IT technologies to enable new forms of citizen involvement”
• “an online Citizens’ Cabinet”
• “open access to Government information (complete reform of FOI laws) and strengthen protections of free press in order to facilitate a more open and publicly accountable government”
  – I wonder if they know about http://openaustralia.org - ruby/rails app :)
• “reciprocal relationships of both citizen and government”
• “digitise the collections of major national institutions by 2020″
• “one-stop shop” for the delivery of government and community services..
• “australia’s ecological systems will be improved. The health of our river and groundwater systems will be managed to achieve ecological sustainability, supporting food and fibre production and resilient communities. Australia will also have become a global leader in tropical water system conservation and sustainability.

On this last point citizen collaboration and participation can make this task more achievable. Australia can learn a great deal from projects like http://eol.org. Getting a complete inventory of our Biological and Ecological resources can be better accomplished if we allow channels for ordinary Australians to contribute to our Biodiversity data inventory.