In The Techie in Chief, appearing in next week's Newsweek, Anna Quindlen provides a strong case why no-one at senior levels in the public sector can afford to be unfamiliar with modern telecommunications technologies.
One key reason she highlights is that leaders need to lead - they need to be out in front of the pack, rather than trailing behind.
If not, they are vulnerable to faster moving opponents, as well as to loss of respect from their constituents and staff.
Quindlen also points out that without making effective use of modern telecommunications tools government-agency heads can become blind to how their policies really work for ordinary people, and political figures can be insensible to undercurrents amongst their constituents.
So fundamentally senior public officials need to be web-savvy because they are senior figures with decision-making responsibility.
If they do not embrace emerging technologies they will be increasingly unable to understand their environment or make appropriate decisions in order to deliver relevant outcomes for citizens.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Why senior public officials need to be web-savvy |
US releases eGovernment satisfaction results - useful benchmark for Australian sites |
ForeSee Results has just released the findings of the latest quarterly US eGovernment satisfaction survey, looking at citizen satisfaction with over 100 US government websites.
Available as a PDF download, the E-Government Satisfaction Index (PDF 1.2Mb) uses a uniform system to compare satisfaction across US sites and was selected as the US government's standard measure in 1999.
Based on the results of this latest survey, there has been a small increase in average satisfaction to 72.9 percent, the first rise in a year.
The report does a good job of identifying the US government sites with the highest level of citizen satisfaction, which can be used by Australian government as good benchmarking examples.
It identifies the major priorities for improvement across agencies, with search topping the list (88% of agencies identified it as a top priority) followed by functionality at 59% and navigation at 41%.
The benefits of higher satisfaction have also been identified in the report, being that highly satisfied customers (scores of 80 or more) are;
- 84% more likely to use the website as a primary resource
- 83% more likely to recommend the website
- 57% more likely to return to the site
The use of a standard government website satisfaction methodology, as I have previously suggested, makes it much easier for government agencies to compare their performance, identify and learn from successes and address issues. It is also an excellent accountability tool for Ministers and agency heads.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Why can one man in a cave out-communicate the government of the world's superpower? |
There was an interesting admission from the US Army Secretary last week in Inside Defense as reported in the Wired Danger Room Blog,
Senior Army leaders have fallen behind the breakneck development of cheapThe article went on to describe some of the initiatives underway at the US Army to help it prepare for the new world - including adding blogging to their graduate school curriculum and allowing a tiny office of Web-savvy mavericks at West Point to create Army-specific Web 2.0 tools (blogs, forums, social networks) for soldiers.
digital communications including cell phones, digital cameras and Web 2.0
Internet sites such as blogs and Facebook, Army Secretary Pete Geren said at a
trade conference on July 10. That helps explain how "just one man in a cave
that's hooked up to the Internet has been able to out-communicate the greatest
communications society in the history of the world -- the United States," Geren
said.
"It's a challenge not only at home, it's a challenge in recruiting, it's a challenge internationally, because effective communication brings people over to our side and ineffective communication allows the enemy to pull people to their side," Geren continued. He said the Army brass needs to catch up -- fast. But how exactly?
One solution: "Find a blog to be a part of," Geren said.
Young people embrace social media "as a fluent second language," he added. Army leaders have to do the same.
At the same time the US Air Force is using blogs, wikis and personal profile pages to better support its missions, per a Network World article, U.S. Air Force lets Web 2.0 flourish behind walls.
I expect that the Australian armed forces are watching and learning from our US counterparts. The online channel can deliver major benefits to the training and operations of a defense force.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
What's the level of security risk from government's internal IT staff? |
Over the last week a rogue IT employee in the San Francisco Department of Technology Information Services has held the city to ransom - locking down many of the city's services by refusing to disclose an administration password.
The employee, Terry Childs, helped create the city's FiberWAN network , used for controlling the city's emails, law enforcement records, payroll, and personal records. It controls 60 percent of the city's municipal data.
Using his access as administrator, Childs stopped other authorized network users from accessing parts of the network and gave himself access to parts from which he should have been restricted.
To compound this, the city apparently did not keep adequate system backups, and so cannot restore the system from an earlier state.
Fixing the situation is likely to take several weeks and cost in the order of $500,000, including hardware and system changes.
Childs was taken to court by the city, with a US$5 million bail set - that's five times as much as is usual for a murder in California.
Why did Childs lock down San Francisco? Network World reports in IT administrator pleads not guilty to network tampering that,
He became erratic and then hostile with colleagues after a recent security
audit uncovered his activity on the network, according to a source familiar with
the situation.
An article in Wired, San Francisco Admin Charged With Hijacking City's Network, discusses how Childs could have brought down the entire San Francisco city's network if he'd wanted to.
Fortunately for San Francisco, as reported in eFluxMedia, Childs finally turned over the password to San Francisco's Mayor on 24 July - claiming that only the Mayor was trustworthy enough to have the password.
Do you know how much power your department's IT team has?
Obama pledges to appoint a national cyber advisor - does IT need more senior representation in Australia? |
As reported in NextGov, Barack Obama, the Democratic Presidential candidate, has pledged to appoint a direct report focusing on online security.
Today most of the money supply and trading in the finance sector, our telecommunications and entertainment industries, a significant proportion of our retail activity and a number of government initiatives are focused on, or reliant on, the use of robust and secure broadband and online services."As president, I'll make cybersecurity the top priority that it should be in the 21st century," Obama said during a summit on national security at Purdue University. "I'll declare our cyber-infrastructure a strategic asset, and
appoint a national cyber adviser, who will report directly to me. We'll
coordinate efforts across the federal government, implement a truly national
cybersecurity policy and tighten standards to secure information -- from the
networks that power the federal government to the networks that you use in your
personal lives."
Security analysts praise Obama's pledge for a cyber chief
I wonder when a similar approach to Obama's proposal will be adopted in Australia?
Monday, July 28, 2008
The first language of the internet is now Mandarin |
The China Internet Network Information Center has reported that China's online population has now reached 253 million people, a smidgen more than the US's 223 million, coming from a Sydney Morning Herald article, China steals internet crown from US.
Of course the 300 million English speakers in India will help redress this balance as more of them come online, however the future of the internet will not necessarily be written in English.
At the moment the revenue for China's online services is estimated at only around US$5.9 billion, compared the the US$21 billion estimated for the US.
China's online revenues are reportedly growing at 30 percent per year, so at some point this balance as well will be redressed - making this, at present, at least a US$15 billion dollar opportunity.
As yet I have not seen much in the way of Chinese language sites from Australia, however if I had to pick it, I'd rate this as possibly the largest area for growth today for the online sector.
I wonder what types of grants and support the Commonwealth and state governments will be offering Australian innovators to assist them in supporting Chinese language versions of their websites - after all China is becoming our most significant international trading partner, and Chinese speakers are a significant market worldwide.
I also wonder when Australian governments will get more serious about multi-language websites - as the Europeans already do by default.
In areas such as tourism, trade, business and finance, supporting multiple languages online will become very important in supporting our relationships with other nations.
We are coming from a cold start, in a very real sense we live in a single language country, with English being the language of government, commerce and education. Whilst we have a large number of multi-lingual people, our institutions are not set up to be multi-lingual in a real, embedded sense as they have to be in other parts of the world.
Do government departments have the right to refuse to engage citizens via the online channel? |
Let’s assume you work for a government body that is deeply involved in highly contentious issues - issues that are very interesting (and frustrating) to communities both online and offline. Let’s also assume that your organization has very little chance of changing the fundamental policies and procedures that frame these issues in the public’s eyes.The extract above from a article in CanuckFlack titled Is a bad blog better than no blog at all? reflects a decision my agency is grappling with at the moment.
...is it worth the effort to launch a blog or similar long term initiative if your comment fields will get filled with criticism, claims that your social media work is simply parroting or reinforcing your traditional media work, or growing references to critical reports, video clips and commentary that undermines the very point you were trying to make...
Many other government communicators across the globe are facing a similar choice - is it better to join online conversations, or avoid opening a Pandora's box of backlash?
Is this the right question for public servants to be asking?
My view is that we need to revisit the role of government agencies - which I characterise in its most basis form as to carry out the will of the elected government on behalf of citizens and the community.
If a government agency is tasked with implementing contentious legislation or programs then it is the role of that agency to build community understanding and engagement in order to best fulfil the requirements of the government.
This involves understanding and addressing community concerns, communicating and collaborating widely with stakeholders and the community and helping those affected to meet the legislative requirements by providing the tools and support they need.
Citizens need to understand what is expected of them and why, and have avenues to have their views heard and addressed by the agency within the limits of the legislation in place.
This role is not limited to the channels most comfortable to the agency - it needs to reach citizens in the channels most comfortable to them, within the resourcing restrictions placed on the agency.
If we trust the research we find,
- many Australian citizens use the online channel on a daily basis, some engaging with it to a greater extent than any other mass medium, including television - according to Nielsen Online’s 10th Australian Internet and Technology Report (PDF media release).
- Australian citizens would prefer to engage with government online rather than via any other channel, including phone - as found in AGIMO's report Australians' Use of and Satisfaction with e-Government Services – 2007.
So if online is one of the most used medium for Australian citizens, and the avenue of choice for engaging with Australian government, the channel needs appropriate weighting in resourcing and use by agencies.
There are issues remaining to be addressed - the speed of agency change, the scarcity of appropriate expertise and the cost required to implement this engagement.
But these are operational issues, we should have moved beyond the strategic question of whether the online channel is appropriate for government to use.
So my question becomes, not should we open Pandora's box, but rather:
Do we, as government departments, have the right to refuse to engage citizens via the online channel?
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Online government forms don't have to be boring |
I'm one of those quirky people who finds forms intensely interesting.
I've had a great deal of past involvement with market reseach and online transaction sites which has emphasised to me how important effective and usable form design is in order to ensure that forms achieve the goals set.
In my current role I've guided my team into supporting a number of research projects and we're currently reviewing and redeveloping our website and intranet forms capacity - touching on every other area of the business.
So I was very interested to watch Jessica Ender's presentation at the Web Standards Group (WSG) in Canberra last week.
Jessica, who owns Formulate Information Design, a specialist form development consultancy in Canberra, gave a very professional and passionate talk focusing on the four layers of a form and the appropriate process to use when developing a form.
She brought it together with the four Cs of good form design, clear, concise, clever and contextual.
While much of this was not new to me, Jessica's talk placed it into a new context and I'll be revisiting our approach to the redevelopment of our forms based on her insights.
What type of methodology do you use for developing forms?
Are your online forms effective?
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Choosing a minimum resolution for a government site |
In the good old days (around 1995), choosing a display resolution for a website was easy. Everyone had 640x480 monitors, so that's what we designed for.
By 1998 it was a little harder - many, but not all, people had upgraded to 800x600 screens. So if you wanted to target early adopters you could aim high and have all those additional pixels (over 170,000 extra!)
A few years later 1024x768 was building steam - finally overtaking 800x600 around 2004. However there was not a strong enough case to upgrade - 800x600 was still around 40 percent of the market.
This year I'm looking at an upgrade to our website's design, and are currently working through one of the most important questions - do we maintain the site at 800x600, or design it for 1024x768 (almost double the display real estate)?
To help answer this question I've had Google Analytics installed for my agency's website. This gives me a clearer picture of the display resolutions in use by our audience - and was simpler to implement than the method within WebTrends.
When I had it installed I told our web designer that if 800x600 (and smaller) was less than 5 percent of users, then I could make a case to switch to the higher minimum resolution.
Anyone using the lower resolution would have access to the same information, but right scrolling would be required.
After running Analytics for a while the display resolutions have stabilised as follows:
1024 x 768 - 43.76%
1280 x 1024 - 17.81%
1280 x 800 - 12.98%
800 x 600 - 6.01%
1440 x 900 - 5.91%
1680 x 1050 - 3.95%
1152 x 864 - 3.66%
1280 x 768 - 1.51%
1280 x 960 - 1.43%
1920 x 1200 - 0.69%
Others - 2.29%
Now clearly our website users are overwhelmingly using display resolutions larger than 800x600.
However the number of 800x600 users hasn't quite reduced to my magical 5 percent number.
So do I maintain a minimum of 800x600 to support the remaining 6 percent of people, but disadvantage the other 94 percent, or do I push forward to a 1024x768 minimum and potentially disadvantage that 6 percent?
Of course the decision isn't quite that straightforward - a 1024x768 screen doesn't actually offer all that space for a website - there's the browser frame to consider and many people do not maximise their browser screen.
Also it is possible to develop expanding websites that reconfigure for different resolutions - it just takes longer and costs more.
But it is an interesting question to consider - what's the official minimum resolution for your website, and why?
Friday, July 25, 2008
Many different approaches to web marketing |
I've just been directed to Jeremiah Owyang's post, A complete list of the many forms of web marketing for 2008.
It's quite a useful resource to draw on for innovative ways to use the online channel.
It's made me think on the communications approaches my agency has used in the last year - based on the categories and subcategories in Jeremiah's post.
Corporate domain
- Corporate site
- Microsites
- Intranet
- Extranet
Search marketing
- Search engine optimisation
- Search engine marketing
Outbound and syndicated web marketing
- Email marketing
- Syndicated content and RSS
Brand extension
- Web advertising
- Social networking, Forums, Wikis, Collaboration
Community marketing and social media marketing
- Online video
How many of the areas indicated by Jeremiah is your organisation engaged in?
No future for paper invoices? |
These days the majority of postal mail people in Australia receive is either advertising material or bill. In the future, this may be cut even further to only ads.
In the European Union there's a major project underway to create a whole-of-government standard for all EU government invoicing, that can also be propagated across the private sector, creating savings estimated at EUR65.4 billion per year for businesses.
That's a staggering amount of savings simply for removing those paper bills - not to mention the environmental benefits of saving all of that paper, printing and transportation.
If successful it will mean that the EU government will strongly encourage all of its suppliers to move to e-procurement - at some point mandating the change. This will be propagated out to national, regional and local governments in the EU area.
The impacts of this are likely to be global. Any business with a relationship with EU governments will have to move towards the EU invoicing standards to maintain their billing arrangements. In turn this will influence them towards adopting a standard system across electronic billing for their other government and private customers around the world.
It will be interesting to see how far-reaching the effects will be, whether other governments will mandate other e-procurement invoicing standards - raising new barriers for organisations dealing across national boundaries, or will support the EU approach to potentially create global e-invoicing standards.
More information about the initiative is available at the European Commission website in the e-Invoicing working group site.
How management beliefs inhibit egovernment |
I've met others who regard online communities as some kind of crutch for a few lonely people with limited social skills.
This is often characterised as a generational gap, shaped by how people see themselves in context of digital technologies;
- those born before widespread internet use are more likely to be 'digital immigrants'
- those who grew up in a connected world are more likely to be 'digital natives'
For example, a group of senior executives I worked with a number of years ago were avidly interested in technology and thought of themselves as in tune with the modern world.
However when presented with the concept of an online forum for their customers, they were extremely unwilling to take the risk of having negative feedback posted about their company.
They saw this as a major risk - many customers were already complaining about their company via other online forums, which were totally outside their control.
Their initial decision was to either prohibit any comments on their forum that could be construed as negative, or to not have a forum at all.
It took several months to help the group understand that if they did constrain the participants in this way the forum would not be credible.
It took about as long to convince them that if they decided to not have a forum then others would fill the gap and the organisation would have no effective online channel to present their side of the story.
The organisation eventually gave the go-ahead to experiment with a forum - which my organisation managed and moderated. Other than screening for language and tone, no censorship of customer sentiment took place.
There were negative comments made. These were responded to with objective and factual information about the organisation's approach and how the matters raised were or would be addressed.
This approach helped turn several of the most vocal objectors into supporters of the company. It also allowed the organisation to uncover several easy, but important improvements that helped many other customers (who probably would never have bothered complaining, but would have changed suppliers).
The organisation now operates a number of extremely popular and successful forums and blogs and conducts much of its business online.
It has changed its mental model of the online world, and this has helped them better understand and meet their customers' needs.
Many organisations have not made this leap as yet, and some are in the process of doing it.
Where does your department sit?
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Does your agency really hear customers and staff? |
A constant theme I hear from friends, family and peers is that, while government agencies do put a lot of time and effort into listening to their customers, they don't often hear what is said correctly (any do not even appear to put much effort into listening to staff at all).
This issue is not limited to the public sector, but in the private sector there's a simple metric for judging how well an organisation meets its customers' needs - it's called sales.
In the public sector we don't have this simple feedback mechanism - we often judge by backlash, which can have large impacts on governments, agencies and individual careers.
DOCs is seeing some of this at the moment. It's not always useful as an early warning system.
Fortunately, with digital media, we have many new tools we can use to open lines of communication. Forums, collaborative groups, wikis and social media networks all help organisations to listen to their customers, stakeholders and staff.
Use of these tools by a government agency requires an operational shift in organisational policies. This can be difficult but is normally achievable.
But it isn't enough simply to hear - government agencies must also hear what is said.
This involves putting aside organisational filters, perceptions and judgements and actively working to understand the context and goals of those we are listening to. It means initiating and participating in conversations, getting to know the other participants as equals, as communities and as individuals.
Digital tools can help support conversations, but they cannot create them. This requires cultural change, which can be significantly more difficult than simply introducing online social tools.
It also does no good to delegate participation to those with no power in an organisation - the decision-makers must be part of the discussion.
Otherwise, no matter how many listening channels you use, you can end up getting the message as wrong as the lady in the BMW commercial below.
How well does your agency really hear what customers, stakeholders and staff are saying?
By the way - did you notice that I said it was a BMW commercial, when really it was for Mercedes-Benz.
How well were you hearing?
Nextgov introduces security assessment tool for government websites |
Over in the US, Nextgov has released an online tool explicitly for US public sector website administrators can use to check the security of their website versus the stipulations of the 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act.
As hackers do not restrict themselves to national boundaries - or to government legislation - this tool is useful for government webmasters around the world as a simple test of their security levels against the standards applied by professional security analysts.
As stated in the Nextgov release,
Nextgov and the SANS Institute, a nonprofit cybersecurity research organization in Bethesda, Md., have teamed up on a Web-based tool. It's designed to provide federal officials a means to compare how secure FISMA says their systems are to what professional security analysts would say. As Alan Paller, director of research at SANS, points out, an agency can get an A on FISMA compliance, but receive an F from security analysts on how secure its systems are.
How secure are your systems?
ATO showcase - government innovation on display |
Yesterday I attended the ATO showcase - a day-long event demonstrating some of the ATO's vision for the future for enabling technologies across customer service, information management, collaboration and personalisation.
As part of the day, ATO employees demonstrated a series of working prototypes from business intelligence dashboard through facebook-style intranet applications to virtual customer service agents.
It was a fantastic opportunity to look inside another public sector organisation at how they are using tools available today to generate business value and improve outcomes for customers and for the agency for the future.
I hope it will not be the last such event.
The day also included a number of exceptional talks and panels by leaders from the private sector which ranged across the opportunities and challenges involved in digitalising public sector organisations.
Unfortunately I was only able to attend the morning and lunch-time sessions, however brought away three key ideas for further exploration within my own agency.
I had a lot of takeaways from the day, including:
- We're moving into a 'Participation Age' - younger people see and use PC desktops and browsers as a gateway to connecting and networking with other people
- Sometimes we focus too much on the technology, instead the focus should be on citizen benefits; creating value and generating better outcomes
- Significant reform needs to occur in government legislation, policy and agency operations to support participation
- Government needs a clear mandate on how it may collect and use information in order to improve services to individuals
- An aging population will make it necessary to use online tools to deliver services which are otherwise not cost-effective
- Government should not duplicate services that are provided by the market, but should tap into them
- eGovernment requires reassessment - presently it is government's view of how to interact with citizens, not citizens' views on how they wish to interact with government
- The end goal should be more effective service provision - which doesn't necessarily mean more efficient service provision.
- At times government tends to overanalyse - the best way forward is to get started and evolve services over time
Much food for thought.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Should public servants blog about work-related matters? |
Public sector blogging is becoming established in the UK, US and even New Zealand - although there is still very little being written by Australian public servants ('government' isn't even a category in Australian blog indexes such as The Australia Index).
Situations such as Civil Serf in the UK and Washingtonienne in the US raised the awareness and risks of public sector blogging. Both involved very personal 'gossip-style' commentary on the workplaces of the bloggers.
In both cases the official reaction was to shut down the blogs and then establish clear guidelines under which public sector blogging could productively take place - rather than to simply ban the activity altogether.
In Australia there are, as yet, no guidelines for public sector blogging. This may mean that the government hasn't yet seen the need (most likely), or that it wishes to keep its options open as to whether blogging is acceptable in the long-run.
The Guardian published an excellent article on the topic in April, New sphere of influence.
There will be many people who believe, often for good reason, that it is
simply not done for public servants to sound off in public. Would we be
comfortable with the commander in chief of the armed forces being so frank about
government policy?
And yet chief executives of public organisations are no longer expected to
be mere administrators. In the era of the £200,000-a-year council chief
executive, they are also expected to be leaders - arguing the case for policy,
engaging in debate, demonstrating accountability, and providing a degree of
transparency about the organisation's work.
What do you think - should public servants be entitled to blog about their workplaces?
What type of guidelines should be in place?
Supporting innovation within government agencies via intranet and web |
I've set myself a personal challenge this financial year to support innovation within my agency at all levels.
There have always been innovative people throughout organisations. Their challenge has been distribution and access - promoting their ideas to the people that could champion and introduce them.
Being the custodian (not the owner) of our website and intranet gives me access to a channel that can support the distibution and promotion of innovative ideas.
What systems or tools does your organisation have in place via your intranet or website for encouraging and supporting innovation?
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
The myth of mass media - it is only a flash in the pan |
Paul Budde (former journalist and Australia's leading telecommunications researcher) has published a fantastic piece on how mass media - which anyone born since the 1960s takes for granted - is really an anomaly, titled The anomaly of the mass media.
Niche-based media is more reflective of human communications activity in the longer-term.
The piece also discusses how telecommunications developments, led by the internet, are fragmenting media back into niches - not only geographic, but also interest-based.
It is very thought-provoking for any communications professionals seeking to use media outlets to reach their audiences.
The future of government - global mega-trends |
IBM recently released it's 3rd biannual The enterprise of the future report for CEOs, identifying five global mega-trends fundamentally affecting the nature of business and public sector governance. The video is available here.
The five trends can be paraphrased as:
- Change is accelerating
Organisations need to culturally attune to continuous change, supporting visionary champions who are empowered to effect meaningful change and embed innovation and change management at the core of their activities - Customers demand more - collaboration is essential
In a world where citizens have almost instant access to information and services, organisations must become transparent, accountable, collaborative and responsive or lose the trust and respect - and therefore the business - of their customers.
Existing silos and command and control cultures need to develop permeable edges, allowing free interaction between groups and individuals inside and outside the organisation. - The world is your constituency
Leaders must think and act globally, considering global best practice and seeking opportunities to collaborate, innovate and integrate across nations. For government this includes sharing functions across traditional sovereign boundaries to serve constituents better. - Successful organisations are bold and disruptive
Organisations need to have a disruptive mindset - supporting and empowering internal entrepreneurs and new ways of doing business that cut into the heart of organisational cultural traditions that lock organisations into old and wasteful patterns of behaviour. - Social responsibility must be internalised
Environmental and social responsibility need to be integral to the organisation's mission, vision and behaviour - a key factor in all organisational goals and strategies and part of the organisation's culture at all levels of management.
These challenges for organisations are not substantially different from those outlined in 1999 by the OECD in the policy brief Government of the Future (PDF) or in a 2002 article in the OECD Observer, What future for government?
Do you think your organisation has taken the steps it needs to succeed into the future?
Monday, July 21, 2008
Is a busy website really that bad? |
A theme I often hear in Australian web design circles is "make the website less crowded".
It's accepted wisdom that a website should have plenty of white space, clearly separated parts - and as little text as possible - particularly on the homepage.
Similar to Google's 28 word limit, Australian communicators seem to consider the best homepage design as the one with the least on it.
Certainly in the user testing I've done over the years with Australians I've heard the terms 'too busy' and 'too crowded' come up frequently.
Those are, however, perceptual measures. What about actual usage?
I have never specifically tested for the 'busyness limit' (the theoretical limit when text, link or graphical density begins to negatively impact on user task completion) - nor am I aware of any testing that has ever been done on this basis.
I am aware, however, of cultural differences in website design and use.
Look at the difference between US or Australian and Chinese or Japanese websites for example. In China and Japan, as well other Asian countries, the density of graphics, links and text is up to five times as high as in the US or Australia.
These high-density website countries also have high populations for their geographic size - which may form part of the difference in approach. Perhaps the amount of personal space people expect is related to the amount of whitespace they want to see in a website - although some high density European nations do not exhibit quite the same trend.
With the changing demographics in Australia it's important to keep an eye on what our citizens are looking for - our communicators and graphic designers may not always represent thecultural spread of the public.
So is anyone aware of research undertaken to look at the differences in expected information and graphical density of websites across different countries or cultural groups?
It could be an interesting (and useful) thesis project for someone.
Why do some local councils in the UK have better websites than some Commonwealth agencies in Australia? |
The question in my title is of course a little provocative - who is to say whether a website is better or worse?
The answer, in my view, is our users.
For some reason in Australian we have never, to my knowledge, asked our citizens to compare government websites against universal categories such as awareness, ease of task completion, information depth and quality, findability, usability or design aesthetics.
There are few objective standards or comparison processes in use in government - although Global Reviews has a good stab at rating local council sites. Having worked with them before, their methodology is robust and well developed.
Users aside, I do feel safe in saying that the UK is far ahead of Australia in the field of egovernment. While some Australian Commonwealth agencies are still struggling to introduce Web content management systems some UK local councils are now adding advanced Web 2.0 features as below (and it's not the only example, just currently the best one).
Redbridge-i
Redbridge Borough's website is a leading example of user customisable government websites in the UK and is recognised as a world leader.
As a London Borough with roughly 250,000 constituents, Redbridge's site was developed on the basis that the public own the local administration and should have the ability to comment on services and engage on an ongoing basis with the council.
It drew from best practice private sector websites, incorporating features from sites such as Amazon, Google, eBay and Facebook.
Part of the design philosophy was to allow the public to decide what was most important to them. Therefore, except for a fixed space in the upper right, the website's homepage can be reorganised as desired by individual citizens, with sections able to be dragged and dropped to other locations on the page and content hidden or show.
The site can also be customised by postcode to show the services most relevant to individual households.
Another decision was to continuously innovate, develop and release new features and let citizens decide how valuable they are. This taps into actual citizen behaviour, rather than anticipated behaviour and provides a uage-based measure of what the website's users will use than do focus groups and wishlists.
One particularly successful feature of the site are the forums supporting community consultation. Councillors are active at responding and use the forums to identify comment trends and useful stakeholders to inform council decision-making processes.
The site also has a growing transactional function and has demonstrated cost saving by transferring business from phone and face-to-face channels.
The site was developed in-house over a nine month period by a team of up to 6 people, with up to 500 staff consulted about the development, and released in 2007.
The best way to learn to learn the site is to play with it. It really is easy to use and effective at task completion.
More information about the site is available from the Innovation in local government services awards page.
A very good 5 minute video about the Redbridge-i website is available at Localgov.tv.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Who is watching The Hollowmen? |
For a fantastic (satirical) look into the halls of power in Canberra, the ABC's The Hollowmen is a great watch.
What does this have to do with eGovernment?
Well in Episode 2 it does suggest that 90% of what most of our overseas embassies do could be done remotely via the internet with a few local staff.
Now that's an interesting thought!
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Do people want the same things from council, state and federal government websites? |
The UK recently held its annual seminar on How to build the perfect council website.
This discussed strategic approaches to egovernment at a local level and provided key insights into what local residents needed and expected from their councils and shires.
Carl Haggerty of Devon County Council, one of the presenters, has provided a synopsis of his observations and thoughts from the event in a post titled Thoughts on a “perfect council website”.
Reading his post, I do not see enormous differences between what it appears people want from local councils and what they want from state and Federal agencies;
Presentations from the 2007 seminar are available online and I am hopeful that the 2008 presentations will be as well soon.
- Get rid of those damn press releases (who the heck reads them).
- Stop the political messages (Our Leader).
- Nobody cares for this stuff, they are task focused and don’t have much time.
- We already take their money and if we take even more of there time we will only create more frustrated citizens and visitors.
- Delete most of your content as nobody reads or even maintains the stuff.
- 80% of web management is observing behaviour.
- Do the tasks your customers do and experience the “journey” yourself.
- Personalisation doesn’t work, most people don’t want to do it - interesting considering i was on the panel about web 2.0 techniques with “Steve Johnson” from Redbridge and “Suraj Kiki” founder of Jadu CMS, more on this later)
- Start with your top tasks and get them on your homepage to stop people having to search for them.
- Don’t force “corporate” crap at your customers, they don’t really care
Friday, July 18, 2008
What's next for your agency's search tools? Google testing user rated search |
Some readers may be aware of Digg, a site where the users vote on news stories and those with the most votes get listed on the homepage.
It's an approach based on a news site's users knowing more about what they want to see than the professional news makers - and it has been relatively successful to-date (valued north of US$100 million).
Google has been testing similar features, allowing individuals to rate search results and make comments, then in future searches only see the results they prefer.
This would also be an interesting feature within websites and intranets, providing a human way to validate the search acronyms in use and ensure that the most relevant result - as determined by a person - is displayed at top.
Now this is still in 'bucket' testing at Google - meaning that a small select group of their users get to see the function. However TechCrunch has provided a video on what users see and how the system works.
Take a look below, or read the article Is This The Future Of Search?
Can you see uses in this for your website or intranet?
Should there be paid advertisements on Australian government websites? |
The Investments blog posted a thought-provoking post a few days ago, asking Should Government Websites Be Allowed to Post Google Ads to Offset Deficient Budgets?
This was based on a question put to 'Father of the internet' and Google head evangelist, Vinton Cerf, who was asked at an eGovernment seminar,
"if he thought that there was a way for Google to have special “Google AdSense” for government websites. He smiled one of his famous smiles and indicated he liked the question very much."This post went on to raise the point that certain advertising may be appropriate on government website, related to not-for-profit support organisations and services that help users of government services.
The hosting of these ads would provide a revenue stream for government sites, helping to offset their costs. Ads could be carefully placed with a disclaimer to ensure it was clear to visitors that these were advertisement and manage any legal issues around endorsement.
It is an intriguing concept, and not entirely dissimilar to how CSIRO commercialises intellectual capital or agencies such as ABS have monetised their reports and products.
Now I'm not the first to suggest this be considered for Australian government sites.
Net Traveller author, Tom Worthington, made a slightly different suggestion in a post on January 2007,
Governments may not wish to have paid commercial advertising on their web sites, but perhaps they could have internal government advertising. Each government web page could have a space reserved for advertising. Normally this would be used to promote government initiatives and publicize web sites (in effect the Government's own Google AdWords). The reserved space would also be used to advise the public of emergency information (emergency information is an area where Federal and State Australian governments do poorly online and as a result are placing the lives of citizens at risk).
There is also at least one government site in Australia already featuring paid commercial advertising. Ourbrisbane.com, owned and operated by the Brisbane City Council.
This site features ads for services such as Seek and RSVP as well as other advertisers.
Looking around the world, there are other examples of the acceptance of advertising on government sites.
US experience
In the US while there is an overall policy that government sites should not feature paid advertising, exemptions can be granted, as detailed in Webcontent.gov, the guide to managing US government websites.
I've found evidence that advertising has government sites in the US offering paid advertising for at least four years, as evidenced by this article in Slashdot on 27 July 2004, Advertising Hits Arizona County Government Website,
Maricopa County, home to 3.4 million people in the Phoenix metropolitan area, has seen their GIS website "become an every day tool for realtors, developers, mortgage and title companies, appraisers, inspectors, attorneys and many other professionals associated with the real estate industry." As a result, they are now accepting bids for Web advertisements. As the county is one of the best-run in the nation, this could set quite the precedent.The Maricopa County website is still delivering paid advertising to Phoenix's citizens today.
UK experience
In the UK there is an even more pragmatic approach.
Within the UK Cabinet's guidelines for web site management is included a guide for buying and selling advertising and sponsorship space which states;
Advertising on the web is envisaged as being a revenue stream for government websites. It can reduce the cost of providing government information and services, which saves the taxpayer money or results in better quality services and faster delivery of information and services on-line. It is a perfectly legitimate thing to do as long as the guidelines are adhered to.This guideline was first written in 2002 and remains in force today, six years later, indicating to me that there has not been any major backlash by citizens towards advertising on government sites.
What do you think?
So what do you think of the idea of placing paid advertising on Australian government websites?
Would it be appropriate for your website?
Would a revenue stream help raise the profile of your site in the department?
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Promoting innovation - how can government tap Australia's creativity? |
This post has been inspired by a post in the blog Here Comes Everybody, titled Gin, Television and Social Surplus. I strongly suggest that you also read this and think about the ramifications.
With the globe's total knowledge doubling every two years, being innovative is not longer simply an economic advantage for nations - it's a vital factor in their survival into the future.
Therefore fostering innovation should be (and fortunately is) high on the agenda for Australian governments.
However tapping creativity is not easy to do. Most organisations and institutions tend to have a love/hate relationship with innovation, seeking to foster it, but also seeking to direct and control it - resisting any potential paradigm-shifting changes that might spoil their plans.
There's an AIM breakfast briefing coming up in Canberra on 26 August featuring Mr Terry Moran AO, Secretary, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, to discuss fostering innovation in the public sector.
I want to instead explore one way that Australia's governments can tap into the creativity and innovative capacity of all our citizens for the public good.
To achieve this I have to first diverge slightly, to look at what the innovation potential of Australia might be.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is the largest encyclopedia in the world.
The English version of Wikipedia, as at July 2008, featured more than 2.4 million articles consisting of a total of over 1 billion words. The full Wikipedia is substantially larger - with figures from April 2008 indicating it had over 10 million articles in 253 languages.
These figures, reported in Wikipedia itself, represent over 100 million hours of human thought and creative effort - all contributed freely.
Australian internet usage
As of March 2008, the average Australian watched 13.3 hours of television and used the internet for 13.7 hours per week, according to Nielsen Online’s 10th Australian Internet and Technology Report (PDF media release) - By the way, this is the first time internet usage has exceeded television usage in Neilsen's research.
Based on a population of 21.5 million Australians, the time spent using the internet equals 15,136,600,000 hours per year - or over 15 billion hours (using American billions).
If Australians decided to spend all of this online time recreating Wikipedia, it would take them the equivalent of three days to create the entire 10 million pages - assuming they started with just the basis Wiki software.
Another way of looking at this is that Australians could in a year create over 150 Wikipedias, simply using the time they are now spending communicating, collaborating, creating and interacting online.
As a contrast - the time Australians spend watching television generates no creative value whatsoever. Television watching is a passive activity that does not involve the creation of any content - it will never result in a Wikipedia or any other creative value.
Fortunately television watching is in decline, while internet usage is climbing quickly.
Tapping Australia's creativity
One way for government to tap the innovation potential of Australians would be to provide the tools and motivation for citizens to interact creatively with government online.
This includes approaches such as
- Collective policy development such as the New Zealand wiki Police Act, as I have previously discussed
- Providing social service forums, where people can share information and collaborate on the development of online and physical products to help others
- Making public data available online in raw forms that citizens can 'mash-up' into useful information and services and share
- eDemocracy initiatives - such as virtual town halls for individuals to interact with their representatives, voting and think-tank forums, where hundreds of thousands of citizens - not just a select 1,000 - can interact, engage and formulate ideas and strategies to enhance Australia's future.
Australia's governments have the ability right now to provide the framework and the opportunity for Australians to meaningfully engage in these, and other, ways.
Other governments are already providing some or all of these services, and are reaping the benefits.
Do Australian governments have the will and culture to step into these areas?
Are they willing to take a risk, allow citizens to share control, open themselves to criticism (which is already out there anyway)?
Assuming Australian governments are willing to take this risk, if, as a result of these initiatives, we capture just one hour per week of Australians' current internet usage, that would be equivalent to Australia creating 11 Wikipedias each year.
That's an enormous amount of creativity unleashed in the public interest.
What do you think?
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The relevance of search (and how to improve your rankings) |
Search, search, search - it's been a popular topic for years but most people I talk to still only pay lip service to ensuring that their website is appropriately findable on the web, or that their own website and intranet's search tools work effectively.
With the large number of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) companies around, it can be difficult to distinguish the good from the bad and personally I've avoided using any of them at all.
However I do spend a lot of time thinking about search. It is important for my agency that our customers can find us online. It's even more important that they can find relevant content when they reach our site.
So how important is it to rate well in search engines?
The graphic below (courtesy of RSS Ray), is derived from accidentally leaked AOL search statistics from Google searches in 2006 and provides an insight into the relevant importance of the top ten search terms in a results page.
The first search result in Google accounted for over 42 percent of clicks through to the AOL site, with the 2nd and 3rd results counting for another 20 percent.
After this the share drops rapidly. In total, 89.82 percent of clicks were from the first page of search results.
Source: What a top google search ranking means to your bottom line - the value of search engine optimisation
So clearly being at the top of search results is extremely important if you want to attract attention, and you do not want to be out of the top ten results.
For intranets it's also a productivity tool. If staff can find information faster it means they can complete their task faster. If your agency sees 60,000 searches per month and can save 5 seconds of scanning results for each search, that equates to a saving of 83 hours per month - or 1,000 hours per year. That adds up.
For which terms do you want to be findable?
It's fine to search for your organisation's name (and acronym) and find it is at the top of a search engine's results. That's quite common for government agencies because of how results are weighted. In fact if you are not the top result for your own name you do have a major issue to address.
Common search behaviour is task-based, not category or organisation based.
Most people don't think 'I need to get rental support' and then search for 'Centrelink'.
They look for 'rental support'.
Therefore your organisation needs to place well for all tasks and services for which your customers might search you.
Think of all the services your organisation provides and test them in Google, how well does your organisation rate?
Ways to boost rankings
Once you've established how well you rank the next step is how to improve rankings.
There are a number of simple ways to do this without involving specialist consultants or questionable tactics.
The first step is to ensure that the text on your pages contains the appropriate keywords high in the page, and in titles and subheadings as appropriate. If the page is about rental assistance, then make sure it is titled 'Rental assistance' and mentions this again in the first paragraph.
The second step is to ensure the page HTML code uses appropriate tags for headings and subheadings. Most search engines treat a <> as more important than text that is simply 18pt and bold, and so on down the chain.
Also ensure that appropriate ALT tags exist for images (except for decorations). These also assist search engines understand the subject of the page and its contents.
Next, make sure that links throughout your site are well-formed. Any linking to the rental assistance page should include 'rental assistance' in the link, not simply 'click here' or another meaningless phrase. This also ensures the links are WCAG compliant.
You should also check that appropriate meta data is in place - this is not that important for search engines these days, but is still within your control to influence.
Finally, make sure that you have put a Google sitemap in place. This helps Google know which pages are most and least important in your site and how often they should be 'spidered' or reviewed by the search engine.
It also helps to have other people link to your organisation's site - with appropriately named links - however this is less under your control and link swaps are generally only beneficial when swapping with an organisation with a high level of trust - such as another government department.
What about website and intranet searches?
Much the same philosophy applies to website and intranet search - people are likely to click on the top results, so it is in an organisation's interest to ensure that the link they want people to click to is at the top - it saves time and frustration and can have a direct (positive) impact on productivity.
You also have ways to influence the search order by tweaking the search engine - possibly by setting up 'best bets', 'feature pages', 'like terms' or by adjusting how the tool weights different aspects of the page (meta data, headings, content, links, etc).
These vary so widely between search tools that it's hard to provide a basic approach.
We use feature pages in our website search, for instance for calculator searches, where a featured result appears at the top.
In our intranet we also use spelling correction and synonyms to help people find the right pages, and recently introduced category-based searching. I'll blog more on that after our next intranet satisfaction survey.
Victorian government web usage survey |
Taking into account nearly 250,000 respondents, this is the largest sample I've seen for an egovernment usage survey within Australia.
- Victorian users over-represented
The survey was heavily weighed towards Victorian users, with roughly 80% of respondents living in the state - this may bias the survey, as Victorians may not have the same views towards egovernment as elsewhere in Australia. I'd love to see a breakout of the remaining 20% (around 50,000 respondents) to determine if there were differences by state. - Females slightly over-represented
Women made up 60% of respondents - comparing this to other data I've seen from Hitwise, this makes them slightly over-represented. Hitwise generally reports that usage is, from memory, 53% women and 47% male. - The internet is mainstream
The demographics largely represent the age spread of Australia's population - if you exclude those under 18, who are generally less likely to visit government sites as they do not transact with government in the same way.
I have been noticing for years (in studies conducted by various organisations) that, except for a slight under-representation of older people, internet demographics and Australian population statistics align quite closely.
Usage comments
- Citizens want to have input into state government policies and initiatives
64% of respondents were interested in having input in the decision-making processes of state government. The report did not specify if this indicated online participation, however I would consider that respondents to online surveys would have at top-of-mind using the same medium for their input. - Citizens want governments to respond by email
60% of respondents indicated that they wanted government to respond to their enquiries via email.
This is particularly interesting to me as my agency prefers to channel responses to the phone channel, which is both higher-cost and requires that the caller catch the customer at an appropriate time. We also do not guarantee a fast response time for emails - maintaining the same response time (28 days) as with letters, and much slower than phone. - A large minority were interested in engaging online via live chat
29% of respondents wished to be able to live chat with the government online. This percentage is higher than I have seen previously and is continuing to grow as this approach rolls out in the private sector.
Telstra, eBay and similar sites offer this as one of their primary customer engagement tools and the awareness for this is building. My understanding, from past dealings with Telstra's customer service area, is that on average a customer service representative can deal with four times as many online chats as telephone conversations at the same time - making this an efficient means of engagement.
Over 90% of enquiries can be handled within the chat, with any overly complex engagements transferred to telephone for resolution. - Large minorities of citizens are reading blogs, listening to podcasts and posting to online communities and forums
Roughly a third of citizens were involved in these online mediums, 34% reading blogs, 30% participation in one or more communities/forums, and 29% listening to podcasts.
14% indicated that they wrote blogs - this might sound small, but when you consider the percentage of Australians writing for newspapers (under 1%), the blog authoring community represents an extremely high level of active participation in the active creation and dissemination of content. Another point to consider is that (the printed version of) a newspaper is geographically restricted and articles disappear quickly. Blogs are available to all internet users, persistent (articles remain online for the life of the blog) and findable via universal search tools.
A single blog article has significantly more impact than a single newspaper article, even, potentially, in the case of major dailies.
These are mediums that government should not ignore. - More than half of respondents watch online video
56% of respondents indicated that they watched online video, making this an important vector for government communications.
Implementing a social media platform |
It can seem very daunting to take that first step into social media.
However government agencies do not need to develop their own or purchase a plug-in to their web content management system.
There are also opportunities to procure a 'white label' social media platform - at little or no cost.
These platforms vary enormously in capacity, with the most advanced supporting Facebook like features, and more basic solutions being simply wikis or blogs.
Finding these platforms can be difficult, which is why my hat is off to Sergey Kapustin, who has compiled a list of 70 of these tools entitled White label community platforms.
This features all of the leading products and some niche products which are also very good.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Migrating government websites from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0 |
The Web Industry Professionals Association (WIPA) have published a guide to help webmasters migrating websites from the the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 1.0 to the soon-to-be-released WCAG 2.0.
The HTML version of "Migrating from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0" is at http://wipa.org.au/papers/wcag-migration.htm
As WCAG 1.0 is mandatory for Australian government agency websites, this is one to watch.
43 reasons why government should blog |
In the US government gateway site there's a page listing the active and past official Blogs from the U.S. Government.
Looking through the list of 43 blogs, there's a wide range of topics on which this medium has been used - from AIDs education, through Art, Environmental issues and Foreign policy to Defense.
If your Department is considering whether a blog would be an appropriate tool to communicate your message and hold a broader conversation, this is a great starting reference.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Do government communications discriminate against - or for - the visually impaired? |
I was reading a very interesting blog post the other day regarding the experiences of someone who is colourblind, Confessions of a colourblind man.
It raised a number of accessibility issues with printed material, moving images and websites that the author had experienced during their life.
Despite the requirement for government in Australia to ensure our websites are accessible, I worry both that we do not do enough, and that we do too much, in this area.
I also worry that we do not pay enough attention to our other communications channels - particularly print and television, which do not seem to have the same degree of scrutiny or governance.
Of course cost is a factor, but where should we draw the line between cost and equity?
We have explicit laws to prevent discrimination on the grounds of gender, age or physical impairments. The cost of equality is generally not an acceptable argument in these situations.
But do we still discriminate against people with visual and movement impairment in our communications based on cost?
Or do we go too far (which I have also seen done) - develop our websites and communications for the lowest common denominator (again because of cost), and therefore lose touch with the average Australian?
Many government websites (including my agency's) are designed in 800x600 monitor resolution despite this being used by under 10% of the audience and there being well-established technologies available to reshape a website to make it relevant at different resolutions.
For my agency this decision is definitely about cost. The cost of the content management system and accompanying work required to allow us to support multiple website standards.
My preferred option would be to have;
- one website version for those with impairments (dial-up users/low resolution monitors/screen readers)
- one website version for those without (broadband users/high resolution monitors)
What should egovernment focus on? |
There's a great article up on BuzzMachine titled Google as the new press room.
It makes the point that newspapers are in the content business, not the printing and distribution or website business.
As such they should focus on what they do well (create excellent content) and outsource the non-core activities.
The specific example is to have Google, or someone like AP, provide the technology platform and allow newspapers to focus on providing content.
This philosophy applies for government as well.
In the public sector we seem to invest a great deal of money into creating new websites in order to deliver content to different stakeholder groups - I'm guilty of this approach as well.
However what does government really do well, and what do we do badly?
Firstly I'd go out on a limb and say that we do websites really badly. Most Australian government websites function differently, using different content management platforms, different technology platforms and different workflows.
The quality, structure and depth of content varies widely, as does design and the use of different enabling technologies such as Flash, AJAX and Livecycle, blogs, wikis, forums and RSS.
Realistically, across government, we could have a single web content management platform, with appropriate enabling technologies usable by any agency - including a consistent search tool and reporting system (imagine being able to see how all government websites were performing side by side!)
A central design team could provide web quality assurance - enabling agencies control over their distinctive look, but preserving a common high level of usability and accessibility.
A centralised editorial team could provide oversight for information quality and depth, allowing departments to focus on being content matter experts.
A central transactions and forms/workflows team could oversee the development of agency forms - ensuring they use consistent terminology, provide contextual support and make it as easy as possible for citizens to interact with the government.
This would allow government departments to focus on what they do best - provide specific customer services, be content matter and policy experts.
Sounds like a pipe dream?
I'm seeing the fringes of this starting now. The central DHS Letters and Forms Secretariat, AGOSP with it's single sign-on, Smartforms and geolocational services, AGIMO's existing GovDex wiki and Funnel Back search solutions.
These are all pieces in the overall puzzle.
The challenge moving forward is to overcome departmental silos, satisfy the interest groups and provide a robust centralised framework with sufficient funding and support to bring it all together.
It's a vision with enormous benefits for citizens and for governments. It just requires people in government to share the big vision and drive it forward.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
The value of web 2.0 to government |
I've been reading about a presentation given by Michael Specht at PubCamp Sydney, an event that brought together old and new media people to look at opportunities and threats facing the industry.
He gave a an impromptu presentation on Enterprise 2.0, which contained a number of insights that apply equally to the public sector.
The full presentation and Michael's slide notes are at Enterprise 2.0, employees and profits.
Below is a summary of some of the key takeaways for me, with quotes from Michael's slide notes.
- The active engagement of employees in an organisation delivers enormous financial benefits
A 2007/2008 Watson & Wyatt research report looked at employee engagement on a global basis and showed a strong linkage between engagement and financial performance. In summary organisations in the top 25% of engagement had a 20% total return to shareholders, a 22% market premium and $276K productivity per employee when compared to the bottom 25%.
- Most Australian workers are not fully engaged - this results in productivity losses
A Gallup poll in 2005 of 1,500 employees found that 20% are actively disengaged (disruptive, unproductive or disloyal), with another 62% not committed to their role or employer. Gallup estimated this was costing the Australian economy A$30 billion annually. This research is backed up by recent studies in the US that found only 27% of workers were actively engaged.
- Communication and customer focus are key drivers for staff engagement
A finding of the 2007/2008 Watson & Wyatt research report mentioned above was that communication and customer focus were two of the four key drivers for engagement. The others were compensation/benefits and strategic leadership.
For government agencies this means that staff have a better understanding of customer needs and views and are able to collaborate effectively either within the agency or across all of government.
The combination of these two outcomes - understanding and collaboration - improves policy development, execution and service delivery.
Reduced costs, improved outcomes - that's the value I see in Web 2.0 for government.
What do you think?
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Does wireless internet access improve government productivity? |
The Federal Mobility 2.0 Study, released a couple of days ago in the US, has reported that wireless internet access for Federal public servants improves their productivity.
In fact over 70% of respondents, who all used wireless internet, reported that it improved their productivity.
At the same time only 40% of Federal agencies reported that they allowed wireless internet access.
I'm currently blogging on my personal laptop using wireless and would agree with the productivity benefits.
I primarily use my laptop for work reasons, from conferences, at home and around town. I use it for taking meeting notes, developing wireframes, writing strategy papers, referencing net sites and monitoring activity on our website - amongst other things.
Internet access is a critical requirement for all of these tasks and I can generally access a wireless network wherever I go.
Except for one place - my office.
My agency has no wireless network in place for staff, although there are a couple of test networks in use by the IT team I can see when my laptop is at work.
This presents an interesting issue for me and for others. When at the office I am often in meetings in rooms with no computer, electronic whiteboard or any way to access resources on our internal network or on the web.
This leads to the need to print out any documents needed and bring them to the meeting. I don't know how many people attend how many meetings each day at my agency, but all that paper, printer ink and elecricity adds up quickly.
It would both be a major cost for the agency as well as a major timewaster - printing the documents in the first place, finding the references within the documents, then taking hand notes in the meeting and retyping them into a computer afterwards.
I'd like to see an inhouse wireless network we could use to save all this money and environmental cost.
Would that be secure you ask?
The same report indicated that 83% of IT Executives said that wireless networks can be secure.
Do you have wireless internet access in your agency?
And do you believe it improves productivity?
Friday, July 11, 2008
Probably the first official Australian Commonwealth and State government Blog: blog.training.gov.au |
Nathanael Boehm has provided more details on what may be the first official joint Commonwealth/State/Territory government blog in Australia.
In Government Blog: blog.training.gov.au, he talks about the purpose behind the site and how it was constructed, using opensource technologies to deliver a fast, cheap and secure solution.
This achievement is a great example of how a great deal of value can be delivered within government without the need to invest in high-cost and complicated infrastructure.
Participate in the World Usability Challenge - 1 August 2008 |
This is a very worthwhile event with a simple theme.
As described on its website, what you need to do on 1 August 2008 is:
Will you be participating in the World Usability Challenge?
- Find a usability problem - it could be a poorly designed toaster, a confusing or redundant letter from your bank, or even a problem with your experience boarding, flying and disembarking an aeroplane.
- Design a solution - solve the usability problem, and write your solution down, sketch it up or (if you're feeling particularly keen) make a quick prototype of the improved product/service.
- Share it with a person who can solve the problem by implementing your solution - write to the toaster designer, call your bank manager, or talk to a stewardess. Hand him/her your idea. Encourage them to implement it. Be persuasive! and don't forget to post what you've done on the Google Group or the Facebook group.
Web browser security - what is an agency's duty of care to customers? |
Google recently released a report on web browser security, conducted in June 2008, which found that more than 630 million internet users were not using the most secure version of their chosen web browser.
Mainly this reflected Internet Explorer use - 577 million users were not using the most secure version of the browser - largely represented by those using Internet Explorer 6 (rather than upgrading to IE7, which was released in October 2006).
My agency also still uses Internet Explorer 6 as our default web browser.
Fortunately, as a large organisation. we do not rely on our web browser to provide network security. Our IT professionals employ a series of firewalls and other safeguards to mitigate the risks in using an older and more vulnerable browser.
However the majority of our customers do not have access to this level of IT skills and resources.
Home users either do not use firewalls, or rely on either the basic Windows firewall or one that came with their modem. Sometimes there isn't a robust anti-virus product in use either.
Based on our website statistics, about 27% of visitors still use Internet Explorer 6 and another 3-4% use old versions of other web browsers.
This means that more than 30% of our website users are more vulnerable to security risks than they need to be.
My question is, what is our agency's duty of care towards these people - 0ur customers?
I've identified the following options.
- No duty of care - it's a jungle out there, our job is to deliver government services not take on responsibility for the web browser choice of our customers.
- Warn - we should actively let people know that they should use the most current version of their web browser to protect their own security, but take no action to enforce the use of current browsers.
- Warn and inform - we should both actively warn people and show them visibly when they are not using the most secure version of a web browser, with a path to upgrade if they choose.
- Warn, show and take action - we should first warn and then block anyone not using the most secure browser versions, forcing our customers to upgrade.
Which is the best option?
I tend to disregard the first option - doing nothing is a poor solution when customer security is at risk.
The last option, take action, is a dangerous path to walk. For customers accessing our sites from within corporate environments there is generally no option to upgrade their browser. Forcing an upgrade would simply stop the sites being usable for these people - including our own staff (who use IE6).
We currently apply the second option - telling people they should use the most secure web browser, but stopping short of telling them whether they are using the most secure version. The shortcoming here is that many people do not know how to check if their web browser is the most current version, so may place themselves at risk unknowingly.
The third option - warn and inform
The report from Google recommends the third option - both warning the customer about the risk and telling them whether they are using the most secure version - with a path to upgrade if needed.
This approach is the most satisfying for me. It covers the duty of care I feel our agency has and supports customers who are not technically literate.
Which approach does your organisation take, and why?
Thursday, July 10, 2008
US campaign to allow congressmen to use social media launches |
Following from my post yesterday regarding the US senate debate over the use of social media by congressmen, several congressmen have launched a campaign to remove restrictions on internet use by the US congress.
The campaign is entitled Let Our Congress Tweet and, as you'd expect, makes extensive use of social media to put across its views.
How do you judge if a government intranet is a success? |
I regularly struggle with how to best evaluate the success of my agency's intranet.
In generaly there are six different sets of metrics I use, grouped into 'hard' and 'soft' as follows:
Hard (numerical)
- Statistics - traffic (visits/pageviews),
- Content (age/timeliness/findability),
Soft (subjective)
- Design - usability/accessibility/attraction (task completion, screen reading),
- Development - standards (code validation)
- User satisfaction (what do staff, contributors and managers tell us formally?),
- Word-of-mouth (what do staff, contributors and managers say informally?)
Overall I'm happy with our intranet's performance.
However I don't have a consolidated measure that combines these measures into a single number I can track over time as an Intranet Success Index.
How do you go about rating your intranet's success?
Using social networks to support youth education |
Digizen have conducted a project and produced a report looking at how young people use, and could use social networking services to support their learning experience.
It's a fascinating read with some very practical examples of how to utilise these networks to engage young people and enrich and extend the learning experience.
The report is available both online and as a downloadable document from Digizen at Young People and Social Networking Services.
Is it time for a government mobile broadband guarantee? |
The Australian government has an opportunity to expand its support for national fixed line broadband to include mobile broadband, spearheaded by the release of the Apple iPhone this week.
The phone is a revolutionary device and reports out of the US indicate that people using the phone are using internet data services 50x as frequently as on other phone handsets.
However with the release of telecommunications plans by Optus, Vodaphone and Telstra, there has been considerable backlash within online communities.
The general theme is that the data allocations are too small, and the cost of data much too high.
The view is stated sucinctly by Stephen Collins of Acidlabs in his post, The iPhone as social umbilical cord (and how Australian telcos don’t get it).
Mobile internet has to-date been largely a non-event in Australia. With the rollout of 3G networks, telecommunications providers have focused on providing content via walled gardens from selected media services. Data usage has been low as the cost of data has been high - often 10x the cost of fixed broadband.
The release of the iPhone and similar multi-channel handheld devices changes the game.
Services such as Twitter, Plurk, Friendfeed, instant messaging clients and other 'stream of consciousness' communications technologies are easily accessible via the device.
This turns the publisher -> consumer walled garden of current mobile internet services into a conversation - a multi-user <-> multi-user always-on social and business experience.
Unfortunately the launch plans for the product from all three telecommunications players do not support this type of product use, pricing data out of the reach of an always-on experience.
The Australia government has its Australian Broadband Guarantee program poised to roll-out for 2008-2009 in August. This program is admirable - it helps ensure that Australians have access to fixed wire broadband in ever growing numbers.
However much of the world is now beginning to substitute fixed broadband for more mobile solutions, via mobile phone or dedicated wireless networks.
In many developing countries expensive fixed networks are not being rolled out - instead they are rolling out wireless, which is cheaper and easier to deliver to remove areas.
For Australia to stay in the game, let alone remain an innovator, there is the need to take a longer-term view and support the mobile broadband industry.
How to do this
The first step is to understand the seachange occuring overseas and review what can be done in Australia to reduce the cost of mobile data.
The second step is to take steps - quickly - to reduce those costs, encouraging Australians to use handheld devices for the uses they are being put to overseas.
This will establish the environment for greater innovation in mobile broadband. These innovations will have global potential, helping Australian companies to competitively play on the world stage.
It will also, though increasing usage, deliver greater profits to the telecommunications companies.
Finally it can also be used to address some of the inconsistencies and inequitites in the fixed broadband market.
What's the alternative?
The alternative is for the government to let the market take the lead, locking in expensive mobile broadband solutions and leaving Australia a 'follow-me' country that adopts overseas technologies rather than innovating locally.
This outcome would be extremely detrimental to Australia's long-term future.
The internet is the nervous system of the world, allowing individuals and organisations to come together to create and share ideas, solve problems and build new businesses regardless of their geographic location.
If Australia is not embedded firmly in this nervous system it will become increasingly uncompetitive over time.
What's your view on the steps the government should take?
Do you monitor your Wikipedia entry? |
Where possible I try to edit it as little as possible, allowing the community of Wikipedia to determine what is relevant in the entry - we have our own website for detailed information.
So why bother with Wikipedia?
I see managing our Wikipedia presence as a plank in our agency's overall communications strategy. If someone searches for us online I want to ensure that the same factual message is being communicated from any websites we can influence.
While universities may not regard it as a primary reference source, it is in widespread use by Australian children for research purposes. In fact my children were taught at school how to research online using Wikipedia. Which site will they continue to use in ten years?
Below is a comparison from Alexa on the ranking of Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica and Australia.gov.au based on overall internet traffic. Australia.gov.au doesn't perform this badly if only looking at Australian traffic, but Wikipedia performs just as well.
There's an overall list for Commonwealth government here, the text in red represents government bodies without a Wikipedia entry at all.
Interestingly the list is open to anyone to edit - and it does not have an importance ranking (which defines how much attention is paid to the accuracy of the content).
I've had a quick look around at the Wikipedia entries for other departments and agencies and there's enormous variation in the quality and comprehensiveness of their entries - where they have entries.
How does your department or agency review and maintain its Wikipedia entries?
- AGIMO - Australian Government Information Management Office
- Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
- Attorney-General's
- Australian Bureau of Statistics
- Australia Tax Office
- Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
- Centrelink
- Child Support Agency
- Climate Change
- CSIRO - great entry!
- Defence
- Education, Employment and Workplace Relations
- Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts
- Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
- Finance and Deregulation
- Foreign Affairs and Trade
- Health and Ageing
- Human Services
- Immigration and Citizenship
- Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government
- Innovation, Industry, Science and Research
- Medicare - great entry!
- Prime Minister and Cabinet
- Resources, Energy and Tourism
- Treasury
- Veterans' Affairs
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
US government debating whether congressmen can speak with their constituents via online social networks |
I've posted previously about the initiatives begun by John Culberson and several other congressmen to use new media technologies, such as social networks, to more directly connect with and engage their constituencies in the democratic process.
It appears that sections of the US government are finding it difficult to come to terms with the changing communications landscape.
An article in Technosailor discusses how the Democrats are trying to ban twitter and other social media use by congressmen.
It contains a letter that, in effect, would amount to a gag on congessional participation in many social media services.
The article follows with a second letter which reflects how the US government is considering how to change regulations in order to enable use of these services.
The model that evolves will influence how other governments approach social media. I am watching the process with interest.
What's your view on the use of social media by parliamentarians?
Should they, shouldn't they or should it be delegated to staff?
House of Lords - lords of the blog |
When people think of the UK House of Lords, some might use words such as traditional, hidebound, conservative, outdated or even irrelevant.
However these terms don't apply to the latest initiative from the House - lords of the blog.
Members of the UK's upper house of parliament (equivalent to Australia's Senate), are now writing a regular blog about the business conducted by UK parliament and the role of the House of Lords.
The blog was set up as an experimental project to;
encourage direct dialogue between web users across the world and Members of the
House of Lords. Commissioned by the House of Lords, the pilot project is
conducted by the Hansard Society who are working directly with Members of the
Lords to bring their blogs to the wider online audience.
Avoiding the seven deadly sins of social media, most posts are written by members of the House, with at least ten members contributing at least semi-regularly.
It's the only blog I've visited where almost every author has a 'Lord', 'Baroness' or similar title before their name.
As one of the best written blogs I've encountered, reflective of the education and experience of the writers, it provides a fascinating insight into how the House of Lords operates on a day-to-day basis.
The blog also links to the blogs of a number of other UK parliamentarians.
Observing how actively UK and US politicians and senior civil servants are engaging their constituents via the internet brings home to me how far Australia is behind in the egovernment space.
Tracking customer sentiment in real-time - a revolution for government communicators |
This post is based on my reflections on the Social Web Analytics eBook 2008 that I've been reading, which looks at the use of online social media in monitoring customer sentiment in real-time for organisations.
Having been a marketer for more that 15 years, I have a degree education in Marketing that effectively predates the internet.
What I, and most other communicators my age and older were taught was to periodically survey customers and string the results of those surveys together to track customer sentiment, detect trends and identify opportunities.
Today this approach still guides the allocation of billions of marketing dollars across the world.
Balance sheet approach
I consider this the balance sheet approach to customer tracking.
Each period (year, quarter, month) an organisation surveys the market, plots the results, compares customer sentiment across periods, reviews its strategy and makes appropriate communications expenditure decisions.
Fifteen years ago this was the only approach available to communications, and it had worked well for many years, particularly in slower moving industries.
However as change has increased tempo, some flaws have appeared.
Rapid changes are undetectable
The balance sheet approach only detects changes occurring across multiple survey periods. Any changes within a period are undetectable.
This leaves organisations at risk of missing opportunities arising in shorter time frames. An example is the rapid adoption of digital cameras. Film camera leaders lost enormous market share and shareholder value to industry newcomers who were faster to react to the trend.
Film camera makers were aware of the trend to digital. However their customer sentiment balance sheets did not provide sufficient information for these companies to be convinced of their need to change direction quickly. As a result it has taken years for them to recover.
Poor communications effectiveness tracking
Secondly the approach does not effectively support tracking of marketing and communications effectiveness.
If you survey your customers twice a year, and in that period run six different campaigns, place 40 advertisements and 100 news articles, how can you really determine which campaigns, advertisements or articles were most effective in causing a positive sentiment change?
Without being able to track effectiveness, how is it possible for an organisation to improve it's allocation of resources and communications dollars over time?
Does not scale - more surveys do not improve analysis
If change increases page, the logical step under the balance sheet approach is to hold more frequent surveys.
This reduces the time between data points, helps organisations to catch major shifts in sentiment sooner, and allows them to detect smaller shifts that could become major opportunities.
This approach works to a degree. However it increases the cost of research and customers begin to chafe under the burden of surveys - lying or lowering their view of the organisation.
As a result over time the approach results in diminishing returns - it simply doesn't scale.
Instead new approaches are necessary.
Revolutionary change - real-time monitoring, the cashflow approach
Since widespread adoption of the internet and the introduction of social media tools it has become possible for organisations to track customer sentiment virtually in real time.
Rather than surveying at set intervals it is now possible to continuously monitor customer sentiment, detecting smaller shifts across smaller audience segments.
This allows organisations to respond in shorter-timeframes, exploiting opportunities, influencing shifts and measuring communications effectiveness for each communication.
This is a revolutionary change for communicators and can be difficult for those my age and older to frame within our past experience.
To help with this I call it the cashflow statement approach to customer sentiment.
Whereas balance sheets measure an organisation's position at set points in time and assist strategic level decisions, cashflow statements look at the organisation's daily or hourly position, supporting tactical decisions as well as testing overall strategic approaches.
As described above, I see the two approaches working hand-in hand.
- Regular surveys detect larger sentiment changes over time,
- real-time community monitoring detects smaller, but no less significant, changes and provides an early warning for large, often abrupt, market shifts (discontinuities).
Impacts for government communicators
Framing this for the public sector, public consultancy has for a long time been a key consideration for government policy and decisions.
Online conversations are another channel now available for the government to understand and track citizen sentiment.
It is an avenue whereby the government can engage more broadly - at lower cost - with community groups, individuals and corporations.
Best yet, it's not a one-way mirror, as is market research. It is a conversation that the government can participate in.
I'll explore approaches for how the government can effectively engage in this conversation in other posts.
For now, have a read of the Social Web Analytics eBook 2008 for more information on how to use online channels to monitor the conversations already in progress.
Open innovation - building engagement between governments, companies and citizens |
The McKinsley Quarterly has published a very interesting piece on the future of innovation, The next step in open innovation.
This explores the concept that companies - and government departments - have traditionally been 'closed shops' for innovation. All their innovation has occurred internally with few linkages to the work underway at other organisations.
However this is changing as organisations realise that collaborative innovation, across organisations, reduces waste and stimulates new concepts.
Anyone who has ever sat down and written a report on their own has probably experienced this at a personal level. Bouncing ideas off others triggers new directions and leads to new insights.
With the internet, a global participatory environment, we're beginning to see organisations work more co-operatively with their supply chains, with players in other markets, with the public and even with competitors.
McKinsley gives examples such as:
- LEGO - invited customers to suggest new models interactively and then financially rewarded the people whose ideas proved marketable.
- The shirt retailer Threadless sells merchandise online—and now in a physical store, in Chicago—that is designed interactively with the company’s customer base.
- Open-source platforms developed through distributed cocreation, such as the “LAMP” stack (for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python), have become standard components of the IT infrastructure at many corporations.
- Peugeot invited customers to submit car designs and built and exhibited the winning entry at a car show and integrated it into a PC game.
- The Missha cosmetics brand in South Korea has reached 40% market share on the basis of cocreated cosmetics products.
- Wikipedia has grown to over 9.25 million entries (2.44 million in english) in over 250 languages in under ten years (the English wikipedia alone has over 1 billion words - 25x the size of the next largest English encyclopedia).
This isn't purely a private sector development - it is also occurring in the public space. I can think of examples such as New Zealand's collaborative police wiki legislation, or the UK government's mashup competition.
Back to the McKinsley article, one of the points raised is that traditional media and organisational sites are growing in usage at a rate of 20-30% per year.
However sites focused on user-created content are growing at 100%.
The public has demonstrated that it is ready and able to engage organisations in productive discussions - co-developing concepts, products and policy - with suitable incentives.
The article's recommendation is that;
Even the most advanced businesses are just taking the first few steps on a long path toward distributed cocreation. Companies should experiment with this new approach to learn both how to use it successfully and more about its long-term significance. Pioneers may have ideas about opportunities to capture value from distributed cocreation, but fresh ones will appear. To benefit from them, companies should be flexible about all aspects of these experiments.
Where does your department stand?
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
The seven deadly sins of social media |
For a good summary of how organisations should not use social media, check out The Seven Deadly Sins Of Social Media from DJ Francis.
This approach applies as strongly in the public sector as it does in the private.
A guide to engaging social media for government communicators |
Last week the Social Web Analytics eBook 2008 was released by Phillip Sheldrake of Racepoint Group.
I've been browsing the book for a few days and have found it a very coherent view of the development of the online channel and the approaches now available to communicators to listen, engage, influence and be influenced by their customers, stakeholders and community.
In particular the book focuses on how to locate and monitor the conversations even now going on about your organisation, to more fully understand community views and trends in real time.
It's written at a level where beginners or those experienced with social media will still get value out of it.
I recommend it to any government communicator seeking to make sense of what is going on in the online world.
Drawing the lines - effectively structuring government online teams |
There are many approaches in government - and the private sector - to managing their online channel. The area is still young and as yet I've not seen best practice structures emerge, as has occurred within other areas of organisation management.
In this post I intend to reflect on the different approaches and my own experiences of how well I have seen these work in practice.
I'll then propose the approach that I believe delivers the best outcomes for an organisation and its customers in today's environment.
I welcome all comments reflecting other peoples' experiences and views.
Axes of online team management
When I consider the approaches towards structuring an online area within an organisation, I start from the perspective of thinking about the different activities, products and mandate involved.
Activities
I believe there are six primary activities involved in managing an online presence,
- Marketing (advertising, online engagement, online participation)
- Content (writing, editing, publishing, training authors)
- Design (standards-based, rich media)
- Reporting (analysis, business reporting, technical reporting)
- Development (coding)
- Infrastructure (network/hardware management)
Products
There are also often product/service or brand divisions in play,
- Intranet - one or many
- Website - one or many
- Extranet - one or many
- Online campaigns
In these cases there is often - but not always - a central IT team looking after back-end activities.
Mandate
Finally there are different levels of mandate for sites within an organisation
- Official sites (endorsed by entire organisation)
- Semi-official sites (endorsed by a group, may be known but not endorsed at senior levels)
- Unofficial sites (managed by teams and commonly kept under the radar)
These may have a level of mandate within the area, or senior managers may turn a blind eye to them so long as they are adding value to the organisation.
Team structuring
Combine these three axes together and what do you get?
Massive variation, blurred lines and confusion - there are literally thousands of ways to organise an online team.
Worse yet, many of these approaches appear to work - they allow an organisation to achieve its underlying objectives through,
- Achieving organisational goals (meeting deadlines, delivering on targets
- Delivering appropriate quality outcomes (products, services, support)
- Managing people (authority structure, accountability and measurement)
- Controlling budgets
- Avoiding litigation and perceptual disasters (spin control)
A change in structure could result in a better ROI - or a worse one - but how is an organisation to know?
Common structures
Below are some of the structural approaches I've seen in action over the years and my take on how well they perform.
All in one - Technology focus
One of the first models for online channel management to evolve lumped all activities together within an IT function. This commonly occurred because the internet was new and still perceived as a technological artifact rather than as a media channel.
The approach has had mixed success. Where the IT team was leading the business, highly in-tune and integrated with other groups and contained excellent communicators, they could evangelise the medium, work collaboratively and get business stakeholders involved.
Where the IT team was seen as a blocker, divorced from the organisation or had communications difficulties, the approach had limited or no success. IT didn't engage the business effectively and at times became protective of 'their' websites and intranets - even fearful at times that business people would ruin them with marketing-speak and flashy graphics - rather than focusing on pure substance.
I last saw this approach in practice only a few years ago, where an organisation's IT team saw the intranet, because it used a content management system, as a technology tool. They controlled all aspects of the content that could go in it, the promotion and support of the intranet. As a result the intranet had no credibility, barely anyone used it and the organisation found other pathways around this 'blockage'.
All in one - Marketing focus
The other extreme is a situation that became popular around 1998 when the internet became 'hip'. Marketing and Communications teams got online and realised that websites were a communications channel. Where IT teams didn't have the skills or culture to support them, the Marketing groups went outside to commission, and even employ, web developers to build corporate, product and advertising sites.
This resulted in a huge explosion of interest. By nature Marketers are more interested in communication than IT groups, due to the goals of the area and the personality types attracted to it. The internet was popularised and brochureware abounded.
It wasn't all beer and roses however. Standards suffered - leaving some users unable to access certain websites. Also code standards and reliability declined - many people became web developers without much formal coding discipline.
Single-split - Marketing and IT
At around the same time (1998), IT teams who had been working hard to collaborate with business areas had their first major successes - Marketing teams were interested in taking over the website, but wanted IT to take care of the backroom technology tasks.
This is one of the most common splits today - IT takes care of infrastructure and development, while business teams look after content and marketing. Design and reporting are split between the two.
This approach has worked very well in situations where the two groups share common organisational goals and collaborate well.
However in situations where the priorities of the groups differ, it has resulted in power struggles and poor outcomes. These are generally framed in terms of budget disputes or in one group imposing its will on the other, either making changes and releasing sites without the knowledge of the other group, or refusing to take certain actions without extremely senior approvals.
I see this issue occurring quite often today. As a result while the approach does suit the political or cultural bent of some organisations, I don't believe it delivers the best outcome for them.
Double-split - Marketing/HR and IT
Another very common approach is similar to the Single split - but involves a third group such as HR managing content on internally facing sites (intranets) while Marketing focuses on externally focused sites.
This situation often arises as staff communication is not seen as being as critical or as rewarding as customer communication. In many organisations intranets are the poor cousins of the websites - despite being extremely effective tools for equipping staff in their external dealings.
These situations add stress to the relationships between teams as commonly IT is expected to handle the back-end for both the externally and internally focused sites. This increases competition over limited budgets and resources. It also can lead to more political infighting.
At the same time, without extremely tight relationships between the content teams, websites and intranets do not support each other. I've very commonly seen a new promotion on an external website, yet the staff were not informed of it via the intranet. This results in inefficiencies across the process, lowers ROIs and can damage an organisation's image.
So in summary - the teams need to work together closely, but simultaneously need to compete over limited IT resources. I see that as a recipe for disaster in most cases.
Multi-split - Product teams/Marketing/HR and IT
An approach common in organisations with many brands or products is to devolve website and intranet responsibility to different product teams. In the public sector this is like having many school sites, or sites for each set of services offered by an agency.
The approach appears to integrate sites more closely with individual areas, thereby improving the overall quality and timeliness of information. However, unfortunately, not all teams have the same abilities or commitment - so the end result can be greater variation in quality and an inconsistent experience with the organisation as a whole.
This approach can be executed effectively if it has strong governance and technical support; however this hasn't proven to be the case in the public sector at least. At the moment many state governments are cutting their number of websites dramatically and moving to centralised management.
Integrated team
The final approach I'm looking at today is one where the online team becomes its own group, not directly beholden to Marketing, HR or ICT.
This approach is only four or five years old and represents an evolutionary step in online management It reflects the growing importance of the online channel to organisations and the specific disciplines and skill sets required for effective channel management.
In many ways it is similar to the evolution of call centres. As telephones became an important customer engagement channels, call centres were spun out of communications teams into their own structures. This seems to have worked pretty well.
Some key planks for success in this approach are that the Online group must remain in a business area and be managed accordingly - technology is the enabler, but not the aim of the channel. Also the group must maintain strong ties to Marketing and HR areas, which become its key customers. Commonly this group would report to the CMO or equivalent in an organisation.
The most successful Online groups vertically integrate web development together with reporting, content and design. Commonly IT remains responsible for infrastructure and often the marketing team shares responsibility on online marketing.
This vertical integration ensures that the group has the internal integrity to be able to address both marketing and standards-based organisational needs, while simultaneously innovating in the online space.
The most effective online developments require content, design and development to work together and this is harder to achieve in split situations, where IT and content resources are under the control of different management structures.
Evolution of structure
In many cases organisations move between different models over time.
A prime example is the agency I currenlt work for, which began with an all-in-one Marketing model where the website was a Communications initiative (and intranet was embedded in another Department's intranet).
After a period of growth the technical management of the site (together with the web development team) was handed over to ICT, who had also taken over the intranet's backend. Different content teams looked after the website and intranet - a double-split model.
The agency then used a project approach to develop and manage a secure portal, turning the situation into a multi-split model - intranet, website and secure portal all managed by different teams, but with the same ICT back-end.
When I arrived at the agency I proposed changing to a single-split model, with an interim step whereby our public website and intranet would be managed by the same team.
Thus far the organisation has implemented the interim step, taking us back to a double-split model and I expect further evolution to occur.
My pick
I am a strong proponent for the Integrated model - a separate online group with its own resources and budgets.
This is reflective of the importance of online for organisations today and the need to be able to innovate within the channel without being tied to the slower pace of applications development or be an afterthought to other communications channels.
Where this isn't achievable due to geographic, political or cultural reasons, a single-split model is the next best alternative.
This approach reduces the number of stakeholders competing for IT resources, allowing the alignment of priorities and budgets and cross-development for different online properties.
It does require more active engagement and co-operation at senior levels, as IT and Marketing groups must play nice and, where possible, share the same goals. Otherwise funding and prioritisation issues will see resources directed away from the channel towards other initiatives, crippling the organisation's ability to deliver online outcomes.
Your pick
I'm intensely interested in others' views on this topic - on their experiences of online channel management, on the different approaches that work, and on the approach they believe is best.
Which approach - if any - do you believe is best for an organisation?
Monday, July 07, 2008
Digital influence - Online is the most influential medium |
Eyeballs is the primary measure of choice of all mass medias - how many people viewed a television program, listened to a radio station, read a newspaper or magazine, or visited a website.
It's a great measure for the advertising industry as it's relatively easy to quantify and track over time and simple to value.
It's also easy for advertisers. They simply pick a demographic, choose the programs that attract the most eyeballs (and divide by two) and lay down the cash.
When it comes to reporting the process is equally simple - the cash invested divided by the number of reported eyeballs (divided by two) equals your cost per contact, and can then be compared again the number of sales or actions taken to provide a view of the advertising's ROI.
This is where the June 2008 Digital Influence report comes in.
Digital influence
After surveying 5,000 people in England, Germany and France, Fleishman-Hillard Research determined that in terms of influence the internet has double the influence of the second most influential mass medium - television. Radio was third and print trailed far behind.
This was calculated using a combination of the time consumers spend on each medium and the importance attached to each in their daily lives (charts below for UK).
Major conclusions
The report reached five major conclusions, which I've paraphrased here:
- Organisations significantly underspend ad dollars on the online channel.
It's time to rethink the media mix, and not simply rely on advertising agencies to pick the channels. Many ad agencies still do not 'get' the net and, in any case, receive higher margins on other channels.
Note that I do not entirely agree with this conclusion - I'd like to see advertising measured in terms of reach rather than dollars. Television can be an expensive medium to use and therefore, even if online is your major medium in terms of reach, your TV ads could cost significantly more. - There are different types of online behaviour - marketers must formulate the right approach for maximum effect.
The report distinguishes 5 different behaviour types, research, communication, commerce, publishing and mobility. People have different goals in mind when engaging in different behaviours and recognition of this should impact on the design and message of advertisements.
Personally I'd add 'relaxation' and 'networking' as behaviour types as well. - Depending on the involvement level of decisions, people use the internet in different ways.
Certain decisions are more heavily influenced by online than others - such as travel, consumer IT purchases and political choices, which all tend to involve significant online influence, whereas charitable donations and utility selection choices don't.
I've not seen a compario - People see the benefits of the internet, but still have strong concerns that need addressing.
Security, privacy and content quality/accuracy are the top concerns of internet users. These need to be addressed as a baseline in all online engagement. - Different countries/cultures use the internet differently, requiring different approaches. If you're marketing across cultures and nations, be aware that it's not one-size-fits-all. Culture does have a large impact on the style of usage of services such as blogs, wikis and mobile internet - backed up by local access costs and differences in behaviour.
Key learnings
My key learnings out of this study were that:
- Traditional media still work well to create awareness, however online is the most effective in generating an action or change in behaviour
- Internet is still growing in reach and influence, all other mass mediums are shrinking
- Print is becoming more niche focused
- The marketing mix needs to be rethought - not in terms of medium, but in terms of goals. If awareness is the goal, the current mix still delivers effective outcomes. If trust and action are the primary goals, online needs a much higher weighting
To give the report itself the last word...
The Internet today is the most important source of information for millions of consumers and organizational stakeholders, impacting personal and corporate reputations, brand perceptions, product consideration, buying decisions and the management of issues, among other things.
Beyond having a robust Web site that meets the expectations of today’s digitally savvy consumer, all companies need to monitor their presence on the search engines, their Wikipedia entry, and online conversations involving their organization, brand, or issue.
Beyond that, it is becoming increasingly essential for organizations to engage and interact directly with audiences online and through mobile handheld devices.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Does the government conduct enough public consultation? |
In a post in the Complexity and Social Networks Blog at Harvard University, Alexander Schellong discusses the uses of Web 2.0 technologies in government public consultancy.
He makes the really good point that government has done quite well in it's approach to public consultation over the years via town meetings, research and other tools.
This is something often missed by online enthusiasts - including myself.
Online is a new channel, but it's not the only channel.
Government functioned before the internet was created and, while online adds extra tools to the toolkit, in many cases they are simply more advanced tools - evolutionary rather than revolutionary changes.
It is extremely important to look backwards before going forwards.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
UK government drops its pants to encourage online innovation |
Since the release of the report, The power of information (which I'm planning to blog about next week), the UK government has taken enormous steps towards using the internet in more empowering and collaborative ways to improve service offerings, communication and transparency.
I've blogged previously about the principles for online participation developed for UK civil servants, which was another direct outcome of this report.
Now the UK government has released a host of new government data, previously unavailable, for use in the development of mashups by individuals, companies and government agencies.
This is a virtually (excuse the pun) unheard of step for any government - to release data in a way that makes it easy for anyone to combine it, analyse it, represent it in combination with other data and form conclusions.
Taking the concept even further, the UK government is stimulating innovation by running a competition for the best mash-ups created using the data, with 20,000 pounds in the prize pool.
More news about the competition is available from Yahoo.
Full details are at the Power of Information Taskforce's blog.
The data being released is available at the UK's Show us a better way website.
Presentation Zen on Radio National at 9am |
If you, like me, missed Garr Reynold's sold-out presentation in Sydney on Friday, kindly hosted by StepTwo (or if you'd like a second dose) listen to Radio National from 9am this morning.
Garr will be on for 15 minutes speaking about design - from a Presentation Zen perspective.
The piece will be repeated next Wednesday, as well as available through ABC's fabulous podcasts.
Is government on the internet or part of the internet? |
I've been reviewing a very interesting presentation from Paul Ramsay, one of my blog's Canadian readers.
Titled RoboCop, Public Service in the Internet Age, it asks whether government is simply on the internet, or is part of the internet.
It frames this question based on whether government is simply using the intranet to replicate the services it provides via other channels, or using the new medium to go further.
This is a topic I resonate with. For many years I've been telling people that what we see on the internet today is similar to what we first saw in films - stage shows re-enacted on a flat screen.
It took many years for movie makers to learn how to use the medium to go beyond what was possible on a stage, and the types of movies we see today bear little resemblance to our first stumbling efforts in the medium.
The internet is the same. It's not just digital paper, online radio or short videos - it's a mass medium that takes all these elements, twists them 180 degrees and adds on seamless global surfing, collaboration, citizen empowerment and much more.
From what we've managed to do so far at my agency we're simply on the internet - providing electronic versions of print concepts - 'fact sheets', 'newsletters', 'forms', 'media releases' and 'data tables'.
I am hopeful and working hard to ensure that in the next few years we'll break through the perceptual barriers to build understanding across the department of what is really possible with the online channel and how we can support our customers and staff in entirely new ways.
New medium = new rules
New medium = new opportunities
New medium = new challenges
How do you see the internet changing your organisation?
Friday, July 04, 2008
How authentic are government communicators? |
Are government communicators - and their agencies - perceived as authentic?
If you believe the Authentic Enterprise report from the Arthur W. Page society, this is one of the most critical questions for government in the digital age.
The report looks at three converging trends for corporate and government communications in the 21st society,
- The digital network economy
"...providing interlinked, low cost (even free) and easy-to-use ways to communicate, to publish and to broadcast, to work and to organize people with common interests. This is driving a shift in the way people interact with each other and with companies and institutions. It changes how dialogue occurs, how perceptions are shaped and how relationships are forged." - The reality of a global economy
"Free trade agreements, the Internet and the emergence of highly skilled populations in developing regions have created a “flat world.” This is reshaping the footprint – and even the idea – of the corporation. It’s shifting from a hierarchical, monolithic, multinational model to one that is horizontal, networked and globally integrated." - The appearance and empowerment of myriad new stakeholders:
"...there is now a diverse array of communities, interests, nongovernmental organizations and individuals. Many of these new players represent important interests, while others are not legitimate stakeholders, but rather simply adversarial or malicious.
Regardless of motive, all are far more able to collaborate among themselves around shared interests and to reach large audiences.
As it states in the report,
"The quality of the company’s products and services (or lack thereof) is apparent to all customers and potential customers. Its treatment of employees and retirees is visible across the corporation and to potential employees and public interest groups. Its citizenship, environmental behavior, corporate governance standards, executive compensation practices and public policy recommendations are transparent to all."The upshot is that public and private organisations that wish to continue to thrive need to rethink their approach in a holistic way, not simply shifting their externally communications messages, but making authentic and lasting changes in how they conduct business, deliver customer service, treat staff and address environmental and governance issues.
What does this specifically mean for government communicators?
I've already begun exploring this topic in previous posts - we're already seeing greater online scrutiny and more information available on government agencies in channels that agencies have limited influence or control over.
Over time it will become increasingly important for departments or senior public officials to walk their talk every time, as any differences between message and reality will become more obvious and widely known, potentially creating embarrassment and more for governments or the individuals involved.
Where message and action are not consistent PR issues will arise faster, from unexpected angles and potentially do lasting damage to the credibility of government agencies and the government of the day.
That's not an epitaph any government communicator should like to have.
So what can government agencies do?
There's an opportunity right now for government agencies to join the online conversations, establish credibility (being government isn't automatic credibility anymore) and become an opinion leader, rather than an opinion victim.
While government communicators cannot control these discussions, we can at least ensure we're in the loop, able to explain misunderstandings before they spiral out of control and correct agency mistakes before they become damaging.
This does mean making hard decisions - comment approvals cannot take weeks, the audience's language must be used rather than jargon and bureaucratise, honesty and authenticity are paramount, to the extent of admitting (and rectifying) mistakes and, as the biggest kid on the block, government agencies have to play very gently or be perceived as bullies.
The alternative is for government communicators to fall back on the old approach - make no comment, only engage via 'official' channels and hope the storms that arise will blow over.
There are examples already of how poorly this has worked for organisations elsewhere in the world.
How to take action
- Search for mentions of your agency on the internet and discover some of the centres of discussion and debate. Gauge their tone and approach and whether they would welcome official representation, familiarise yourself with the appropriate way to write for the audience.
- Prepare internal policies on online engagement - how should your organisation react to or address negative blog or forum posts?
- Prepare an engagement strategy that provides the flexibility to communicate the facts, with as little spin as possible, then get it approved and get involved in the discussion.
eGov review: Vic Graduated Licensing System |
The Victorian government has impressed me for several years for their commitment to the effective use of the online channel in government initiatives.
Their Graduated Licensing System (GLS) for young drivers has been extremely well-supported online, with one of the most creative approaches to the channel I've seen in government.
I don't know the budget for the development, however they have made good use of cheap open-source applications, using the Joomla content management system (one I use personally) for the website and using Youtube for storage and distribution of the campaign video.
The video created for the GLS was the highlight for me - it is quite watchable, full of humour and very unlike a traditional government advertisement. In fact I first discovered this site through people recommending the video on blogs.
The website is well designed to appeal to the main target market - young drivers - using strong imagery and fewer words that your average government website. The navigation is clear and the text effectively customised for the different audiences, but consistently retaining the same voice and with minimal jargon.
The site is designed to function effectively across Firefox and Internet Explorer and has well formed code and metadata, so realistically a few tweaks would make this complete.
Interestingly enough, the site's government branding is placed at the bottom of the page. Given the audience this may help make the site feel more friendly and less formal.
I found many parts of the website a little disappointing. The body text in the site is quite small and there is no control built into the site to allow adjustments to text size. While this is acceptable for the main audience, one of the secondary audiences - the parents of young drivers - could have difficulty reading the small text, particularly as it is white on black.
There is a search function, which is a positive, particularly as there is no site map. However it is unusually placed in the middle-right side of the site, detached from the top menu and most frequent placement for this type of function.
The search results did not appear to be optimised well either. A search on 'GLS', the initials of the system, presented as the top result the new radio campaign. A page actually explaining the GLS did not appear at all in the first (of 5) pages of results.
The FAQ section could also do with some refinement. Firstly it presents results in question then answer format, but without a list of questions at the top. This means that someone seeking an answer has to read down the page in the hoping of finding it. This is made even harder as the questions are in gray text, on the site's black background, making them easy to miss as they are less visible than the rest of the text.
So in conclusion, it's a good campaign, with an excellent video for the medium and backed by a decent website.
With some refinements to the text sizing (such as a control to change name), search placement and results weighting and to the presentation of the FAQs, it could be a great site.
The government that sets data standards controls the world |
I was reading through the comments on my post on Make government data freely available, and found Gav's (RedIguana) comments particularly thought provoking.
...Government also must create national standards for data, for example in terms of controlled vocabularies, etc, to ensure that data can in fact be aggregated nationally. It is no good if each council classifies roads differently, to actually produce a national aggregated dataset of roads with wildly differing definitions.This comment, explored in more depth in Gav's blog, raises an important consideration for government as a whole.
Who in government is responsible for defining consistently usable data standards?
I don't think this is clear at the moment.
I'm not only talking about big picture data standards - such as national inflation, unemployment and population distribution (for which the ABS does an excellent job).
I'm talking about data standards all the way down through state to local levels, such as Gav's example of road hierarchy classification and areas such as geological data.
Currently it seems that every Federal department, every state and even every local council is collecting information on their local environment and areas of responsibility.
However there is no mechanism for combining and making sense of all this data within a single interface.
Looking into the near future I believe that nations that organise their data at all levels to agreed standards, those I call the Data-Haves, will have a significant competitive advantage against those that keep data siloed and on inconsistent baselines, those I call the Data-Have-Nots.
In the Data-Have nations data at all levels can be shared freely online, making it possible to build information maps, cross-reference trends and discover connections and causal events that would otherwise remain concealed.
These informational benefits will allow Data-Have scientists, business people and governments to test and prove new governance, management and scientific theories - leading to discoveries that improve the welfare of their people and their long-term economic success.
Meanwhile the Data-Have-Not nations, who are not sharing data openly, will be rapidly left behind, socially, economically and politically.
This isn't a new scenario - there's a strong case that the Soviet Union, with its rigid and siloed political and economic systems, was unable to survive in the global marketplace because it could not effectively share information between internal groups. It therefore fell further and further behind in an information sharing world.
This leaves me with one question.
How do we help ensure that Australia becomes a Data-Have nation rather than a Data-Have-Not?
Any suggestions?
Thursday, July 03, 2008
How would you start out sourcing social networking tools? |
I've been looking around at some of the interesting social networking tools that are coming onto the market, such as Webjam, for some that could be rapidly implemented within our firewall.
I apply some fairly rigorous criteria. Any system must:
- Meet W3C, Federal, Department and Agency web standards
- Support at least AA accessibility (and preferably AAA)
- Meet our ICT requirements for interoperability, stability, bandwidth use and technology platform
- Integrate with our identification system
- Be server lite
- Track usage by user
- Support both individual and team blogs
- Allow us to centrally control who can set up a blog
- Be template based
- Support WYSYWG editing
- Integrate with an image management tool
- Support comment moderation (on or off)
- Incorporate email as well as RSS/ATOM notifications
- Allow us to centrally control who can set up a wiki
- Be template based
- Support WYSYWG editing
- Integrate an image management tool
- Incorporate email as well as RSS/ATOM notifications
- Support multiple admin and moderation levels (discussion/forum/global)
- Allow us to centrally control who can set up a forum or discussion group
- Be template based
- Support WYSYWG editing
- Incorporate email as well as RSS/ATOM notifications
- Support both threaded and unthreaded discussions
There's some other criteria as well, but I don't have them immediately in front of me.
Fortunately I've found Jeremiah Owyang's post on a List of “White Label” or “Private Label” (Applications you can Rebrand) Social Networking Platforms
The good news - it lists around 80 'white-label' social networking products available in the market.
The bad news - it's now 12 months old. More than half of the products on the list are likely to have disappeared or changed names, and there's likely to be double that number of new players (again like Webjam).
So I'm now thinking about my best course in finding a product that is stable, reliable, and will be in the market for at least a few years - at a low price point with great functionality.
Any pointers?
It's not about the technology - it's all about the people |
Arthur C Clarke, the renown science fiction writer, formulated three laws of prediction, the third of which stated;
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."We seem to have largely reached this point in society. The majority of people do not understand how an internal combustion engine works, let alone a microchip or mobile phone.
Certainly we've done an excellent job of educating people about the principles and concepts - most people can explain that an engine burns petrol, or that a microchip is made up of electrical circuits, but could they repair or build one?
To live in modern society there's no deeper understanding required - simply turn the key or push the button and the technological 'thing' just works.
On this basis the people who create and repair technology become the modern wizards and sorcerers, who use indecipherable words, strange rituals and bad smelling components to perform their secret rites.
Why is this relevant to egovernment? Because politicians and public servants are humans too - subject to the same emotions, biases and psychological impulses.
Often in government - as in the private sector - technology is seen as a thing apart, managed by strange people who cluster in back rooms, speaking in tongues. These people, commonly referred to as IT, are regarded by others with a mixture of reverence, awe and fear.
Due to this whenever technology is used to facilitate an activity or task, often the focus, and the budget, is committed to buying or building the computers, software and systems necessary for delivery - and the other aspects, the communication, training and usability, is neglected.
I have watched this happen in organisations on a regular basis for many years. All the funds go into buying the facilitating tools, with little left over for the people.
In my view this is a fundamental misunderstanding of technology and is a large part of the reason why so many IT-focused projects fail to deliver the benefits predicted - or fail to deliver at all.
I've always believed the people are more important than the tools. Get the people parts right and even if the technology isn't 100% you will get a good outcome.
This is particularly significant in egovernment where systems are built to help engage people, inform them, communicate with them and interact with them.
To d this successfully organisations need to build the systems to work for the people, rather than build the systems and then try to change peoples' behaviour to match.
This is simply another way of saying go where the people are, which is a recommendation as applicable to marketers and communicators as it is for IT teams.
These principles apply even more strongly for online social media - which is all about facilitating interactions between people, the technological interface is merely the barrier in-between.
This could be why so many organisations have resisted social media - because they don't see the community interactions as the most important aspect of these projects - they focus on the technology they should use, to the expense of the technology which their staff would use.
So why are so many organisation so bad at this?
Because they think it's about the technology and not the people.
And in my opinion they could not be more wrong.
What do you think?
Less words, more pictures = better government |
One of the biggest issues I've seen in government websites is excessive use of words.
Government agencies often treat each website page as a stand-alone fact sheet. This means they err on the side on completeness, leading to wordiness.
Most of us have seen the research. People don't read wordy, jargon-filled pages - they skim.
People prefer web pages with fewer words, with the option of drilling down to more depth if they need it.
The web is good at this. It's called linking.
All of us have good reasons for our websites being wordy,
- The communications team doesn't understand how to write for the web
- The legal team made us put in those extra (really big) words
- The concept is very complex and people may not understand without details
- My SES made me do it!
It's time to face the music
Why are government websites wordy?
Because website content managers let them become wordy.
As website content managers we are the custodians of what appears on the pages of our websites.
When people want to write long and involved content, it's our responsibility to advise and support them in making the text accessible, readable and effective for the online channel.
We should advise them when other approaches would work better than words - images, animations, audio or video.
They don't need to learn how to write for the web - we do.
10 reasons government agencies should not advertise online |
1) Our traditional ad agency tells us so - and as radio, print and television advertising is more profitable for them, they must be right!
2) It's easier to simply build a bells and whistles website, promote it via traditional means for a month and then ignore it. Our audience will find it, really.
3) Our audience doesn't use the internet - unlike the other 90% of the population
4) The internet is unsafe because you don't know what people will say - you can trust print/radio/television journalists to only say what we want them to say
5) If we don't advertise online, people won't say bad things about us online
6) We can more accurately measure the success of our campaigns online and they don't always work - it's better not to know we're wasting money
7) Because our senior executives haven't gotten the hang of email yet, and we know that our executives (who approve our ad design and spend) think and act exactly in the same way as our customers, even though they earn more, are degree-qualified, much older and live in Canberra
8) Because if people don't like our campaign that much, they might say so and our feelings would be hurt
9) Because Australians don't really use the internet as much as the figures say they do, they just leave it turned on in the next room while they are busy watching ads on TV
10) Because radio, print and television have always worked for us in the past, and always will
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
The challenge of social media for governments - accepting diverse views |
When making major decisions government departments commonly consult broadly to capture the various views of different segments the community.
However when engaging in live or online public discussions, the same departments are often highly concerned about the risk of people expressing strong contrary views.
It's one of the contradictions I've found in government - a desire for consultation, but within a controlled and safe framework defined by the department.
But what happens when government takes a risk and doesn't restrict itself to a framework of its own design?
An interesting experiment in this area is currently occurring in the US presidential election involving the online social tools provided for supporters by Barack Obama's campaign.
Over the last six days a group of his supporters have been upset at Obama's change in stance on spying, to the extent where they created a social networking group within his campaign site to protest.
This group, using the same online social tools as were used to take Obama from 'also ran' to Presidential candidate, is now the largest within the my.barackobama.com site, with more than 8,900 members at last count and growing at up to 100% per day. It is continuing to use his website social networking tools to organise support and his email service to organise and promote the group.
As part of this group's growth, they have also established a Wiki using the free Wetpaint service (a nice little tool I've used myself) as well as across Facebook and other popular social networking sites.
This has led to media coverage across press, radio and television in the US, as reported within this article in The Nation, Surveillance Protest Group Tops Obama Website.
Obama and his staff have not taken any actions to restrict the growth of the group, although it is in their power to shut it down - at least within the campaign site.
Only a few years ago it would have been unheard of for a campaign to allow it's supporters to take this level of control over an agenda.
One view being heard is that by encouraging his supporters to use online social media to self-organise Obama has created a monster that is as likely to turn on him as support him.
With confidence from their success in the Democratic nomination, many of his supporters are now skilled web 2.0 users as well as activists - willing and able to use the plethora of free online social media tools to organise large protests against key positions faster than ever before.
Another view is that with the internet genie out of the bottle, the best approach is to allow and support these groups to organise and have their say. This view acknowledges that Obama no longer controls the dialogue, but is simply one of the players - albeit a major leading one.
Personally I'm very impressed that Obama and his campaign have taken this second view. His supporters have been allowed to freely organise the protest group using his own social network without any restrictions.
While Obama has acknowledged the view of the group, he has not taken any steps to reverse his position at this time, however I expect that he will commit more time to explaining to his supporters why he had taken this position.
I feel extremely encouraged at the willingness of someone standing for a high office to allow open debate without gags. It's an approach I'd love to see more of in Australia - parliamentarians and public sector agencies being more open to unstructured consultation and more willing to acknowledge and engage in citizen discussions, wherever and however they take place.
Who owns government websites? |
I have a very strong view on who owns a government agency's website - it's operated by the agency on behalf of the public.
The teams who look after the code, functionality, design and content are custodians and gatekeepers who ensure that the website;
- works (is online 24/7)
- meets all required standards
- uses appropriate current tools and approaches to maximise its effectiveness
- is attractive and interesting, and, most importantly,
- meets the needs of the agency's audiences
Over the years I've heard many individuals make statements such as (actual quotes);
- Public sector Senior IT manager: It's my code
- Private sector Marketing VP: The website is a communications tool, I own it
Ownership is also important for peoples' careers - often people judge their own success by what they 'own' (or control) professionally - staff, resources and businesses.
Irregardless of which area or executive manages or funds a website, who writes the content or cuts the code, if it doesn't meet the needs of the organisation's customers - does it have any value at all?
As professionals, don't we have an obligation to consider the big picture?
Social media in government - the five stages of acceptance |
My experience in both the public and private sectors has been that organisations often face enormous resistance against the introduction of social media channels for staff.
Given how new social media tools are, this, in my view, reflects similar resistance to other new innovations, such as the introduction of:
- phones on every desk (staff could waste time and money making personal / long distance calls),
- desktop computers (may not deliver any real benefits to the organisation and would be hard to manage - why would an organisation needs more than one computer?),
- email (staff could distribute confidential and/or inappropriate material), and
- universal internet access (staff could waste time and access inappropriate material).
In thinking about the adoption patterns for all of these technologies, I see behaviour reflecting the model of the five stages of grief.
Based on this I've come up with the five stages of acceptance for social media detailed below.
Let me know how well these fit the experience of your organisation.
Stage 1: Ignorance
"We need a collaboration tool - let's build one"
Organisations begin with no knowledge of online social media - particularly at senior levels. When they need new communication, engagement and/or collaboration tools they design and develop them, or buy from a major IT vendor.
Stage 2: Denial
"That would never work here", "We're already investing in a solution that will be better"
When the organisation discovers online social media tools, either the value of the tools is denied, or decision makers (particularly in IT) do not believe that a free public system could be as good as their quadrillion-dollar homemade or off-the-shelf solution.
Potential security issues, system incompatibilities, staff misuse of resources and time wasting are commonly raised as reasons why external social media tools won't deliver what an organisation needs.
Stage 3: Bargaining
"We should own this tool because it relates to our area", "We'll need budget for it"
Once the organisation accepts the value in social media tools, bargaining for ownership begins;
- IT calculates that social media tools are technology-based, delivered via IT infrastructure,
- HR points out that social media connects people and builds positive workplaces,
- The Communications group tells everyone that social media is about communication,
- Strategy, finance and/or efficiency teams strategise that social media is a channel management and efficiency tool.
Stage 4: Depression
"We need a strict usage policy", "No you can't use it that way, someone might...."
By this stage no-one who really wanted to use social media is happy with the organisation's solution for how the tools will be introduced and managed.
Complex usage policies are developed that restrict effective usage in the name of risk mitigation and the tools begin to be used in a basic and haphazard way that meets the rules.
Stage 5: Acceptance
"It's there - use it however you like"
One the social media tools have been in place for sometime and there have been no major issues or breaches, groups in the organisation loosen their grip on how the tools may be used and their true value begins emerging.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
In action: Training.gov.au Project Blog |
This is a fantastic example of how blogs and other Web 2.0 tools can be used to support government initiatives and help reduce project costs.
First I should note that I know Nathanael Boehm, one of the members of the project team. He's an early adopter of web technologies, with a great deal of experience in social media and user design areas.
What is Training.gov.au?
In the words of the project blog:
Training.gov.au is the name of the new system that the Australian, State and
Territory Governments are developing to ensure people can get the information
they need to make informed decisions about training.
What are they using?
To manage the development of training.gov.au the project team are using an open-source blogging product to provide an online communications and collaboration space for the various stakeholders involved.
The Training.gov.au Project Blog is very clean, simple to use and flexible. It currently contains some information on the project objectives, governance and deliverables and has been set up to also manage the project timetable and provide a central communications platform for the project.
It's very easy - and cheap - to set up this type of system and it has surprised me how little these types of tools have been used by government in Australia to support the management of complex projects with multiple stakeholders.
I'm going to keep a close eye on the development of the project blog - and on the project itself - and, with the agreeance of the project team, may provide a post-mortem of how well the blog worked to facilitate project governance, communication and cost management.
How do you rate your agency online? |
How do you rate your agency in the online world?
I currently use a lot of different tools to build a picture of how our agency is doing, but I have not yet unified these into a simple set of metrics that tells me how we're doing.
Tools I use to rate my agency online include:
Site metrics
- Webtrends for site performance and detailed analysis (unique visitors, visits, page views, time on page)
- Hitwise for benchmarking and demographics (Ranking vs National Government sites/all sites, site demographics, Mosaic, search trends, upstream/downstream sites)
- Google analytics for reality checks (traffic trends, search trends, browser/resolution)
Search metrics
- FunnelBack site search engine reports (site searches, unsuccessful searches within the site, best bets)
- Hitwise (top terms, unsuccessful searches, other destinations)
- Google trends (search trends, top terms, site comparison, hot terms)
Customer metrics
- Technorati for blog posts (mentions, tone)
- Summarize for Twitter mentions (mentions, tone)
- Wikipedia entry status (accuracy and interest)
- Alexa (views)
- Manual forum checks (checking of mentions and tone across a selection of forums)
Media metrics
- Google alerts for media mentions including blogs
- Hitwise media alerts for commercial media mentions
Here comes the (egovernment) New Zealanders! |
New Zealand is a beautiful place to visit and I have fond memories of my last trip there.
It also happens to be one of the most happening places in eGovernment, at least in this part of the world.
In fact I feel a little disappointed in Australia's progress at the national level compared to the achievements of our nearest neighbour.
For instance, in New Zealand public officials are regularly blogging to share information across the government sector, such as in the Thorndon bubble and Eye of the Fish.
The Network of Public Sector Communicators in NZ also has the Network of Public Sector Communicators Blog to support and aid the discussion.
The NZ State Department runs not one but two official blogs, In Development and Research e-Labs, demonstrating central commitment to the online medium.
The Department also conduct their review of government Web Standards using a wiki, as well as their Guide to Online Participation (Australia doesn't have one of these yet for public sector employees).
In Australia these types of collaborative developments could be easily facilitated via the existing Govdex service (though in my view Mediawiki - as used in NZ - is a lighter, faster and more flexible solution).
New Zealand also uses the online channel for government initiatives, such as their Police Act wiki, when the public was able to provide input into the review of the NZ Police Act through a wiki. This was passed as an act of NZ Parliament as the Wiki Policing Act 2008.
Worst of all, New Zealand beat Australia in the Fullcodepress competition last year in front of a global audience.
I wonder if they have any jobs going?
For more of our neighbour's online initiatives, see this list of eGovernment initiatives in progress in New Zealand.
