What’s involved?
We want you to tell us what you think about drugs and technology and government and life and stuff . . .
Hey all
I’m Aram one of the Managers at Inspire (ActNow’s Mothership). My job is to take Inspire’s work to the West Side, but having spent some time in the dark (actually - usually ridiculously over-lit) corridors of Government I just can’t help getting sucked into Inspire’s policy work as well.
So here I am...to lure you all into the exciting world of POLICY.
Why should people do this?
Some of you may have seen some of the research & evaluation folk out & about attempting to lure you into all sorts of surveys, interviews & focus groups well this is all about what we do with the information we collect from these activities. Not only is Inspire obsessed with collecting all sorts of information to help inform our programs, but also like to use this information to bug governments and other organisations with ideas for how technology can be used to engage young people in the issues they care about.
“Why the hell are you telling us this you policy wonk?” I hear you ask...
WELL it’s about time we worked out a better way of helping YOU tell governments and other organisations what you think!
“How the hell are you going to do that?” Oh yee of little faith...
Right now we’re preparing a submission for the Australian Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy consultation and we want you to tell us what we should be telling government about these 2 particular sections:
- How the internet and technology can be used to implement the strategy.
- What other issues need to be thought about when implementing a drug strategy for young people
NB: See Glossary for policy wonk terms below).
YAWN! Yeah...I don’t blame you but...
Put another way we want you to tell us:
- How you think the government, organisations and health services (aka other policy wonks, CEOs in suits and people in white coats with stethoscopes) can use technology to minimise the harms of drugs and alcohol for young people.
- What else is going on in the lives of young people that might make those 'drugs are bad mkay' lessons at school well pretty much useless.
So tell us what you think or just check out what other people are saying about drugs and technology and government and life and stuff below!
I’ll be lurking about over the next couple of weeks reading your stuff and maybe asking for clarification or prompting you with questions.
See you all in nerdsville,
Aram
Other stuff
Glossary of stupid terms policy people use:
- Policy – a statement about why, what and how something should be done.
- Submission – a formal way of turning a policy statement into a long rant.
- Ministerial Council – bunch of governmenty-professionally people put together to solve a problem (or in many cases talk about the talks needed to start talking about the problem).
- Strategy – ridiculously long document on what the talkers talked about and what to do with that talk.
- Consultation – an invitation for lots of people to send in their rants to the talkers.
Contact information
For more information, whether it be on advocacy and policy submissions, the National Drug Strategy and this consultation, or any other questions, post a comment or send me an email (aram@inspire.org.au).
This work is licenced under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence.
© 2008. First published on actnow.com.au
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