New to the Public Sector Innovation Toolkit and blog?  Below is an overview of the Toolkit, how it works and how you can participate.

The Innovation Toolkit is managed by the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education. The Toolkit is targeted at public servants who are looking to apply innovative methods to their work. It covers the innovation process, some of the different tools and methods to assist innovation, and a look at some of the barriers to innovation. There is also a blog, which is divided up into different topic areas called ‘themes’.

Each theme has a number of posts within it relating to that topic. The blog covers different aspects of public sector innovation and this is reflected in the themes. You can scroll down the main blog page until you see a post of interest or you can choose a particular topic and click on it. That will bring you to a page with all the posts under that topic.

The posts on the home page only show a limited amount of text, and those under a theme only the title, so click on the title to see the full post. Once you have scrolled through the post, you will reach the comments other people have left on that post. You can also comment on any of the pages within the Toolkit. You can also indicate whether you like a blog post or a page in the Toolkit by clicking on the ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ icon.

Comments

You can reply to any of the comments on the pages or blog posts, or comment on the blog post or Toolkit page. After each comment (on the left hand side) is a ‘reply’ link. To reply to a comment, click on the link. If you’d prefer to reply to the main post or the page, scroll down past all the other replies to the comment box at the bottom of the screen.

In either case, you will need to enter in a name and an email address. If you’d prefer not to enter in a real name and email address, go right ahead. But make sure the email address follows a normal email address format, with a ‘@’ and a ‘.com’ or something similar. We need a way of confusing spambots and this is how we do it. Please refer to our privacy page if you want more details about how we protect your personal information. You will also need to complete a CAPTCHA test.

Once you have entered your comment, click on the ‘submit comment’ button and your comment should be posted up on the site.

Comments are an important tool for letting us know if what we’re providing is useful information. For a lot of the information we post, comments are also be important in letting us know if we’re on the right track and what else is happening on a particular topic.

Hints and tips on comments:

• Less is more – people on the internet prefer to scan information, so it helps if you can make your comments succinct and scanable. Use short sentences and edit your work before posting.
• Don’t get involved in or respond to Flame Wars (hostile discussions between different commenters).
• Remember a variety of users comment on the blog/Toolkit – so be careful with phrases or jargon that may not be easily understood.

A word on moderation

One of the pages you should read on any blog is the moderation page. This should give you information on if and how your comments will be published on any blog you read. Our moderation policy begins by saying:

“We don’t want to hinder any conversations that are taking place on the Innovation Toolkit. The moderation process helps ensure that spam or comments that breach the terms of use are not published. We aim to publish most comments immediately.”

We’ve based the above guidance on a similar AGIMO page – let us know in the comments below if you think there’s anything else we could do to help you get the most out of this blog and the Toolkit.