Showing posts with label publicsphere. Show all posts
Showing posts with label publicsphere. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Asking 'what should be the limits on how public servants engage in social media' is the wrong question

The Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) has just released a consultation paper asking for feedback regarding how public servants may be able to 'Make Public Comment' specifically focused on social media.

It's great to see the APSC consulting on this area. It is subject to rapid change, both in the nature of the approaches and tools available for public servants to comment online, and in regards the evolution of thinking and expectations within the public service itself.

For example, Gov 2.0 and the current follow-on push for digital transformation has continued to attract new groups of potential employees and partners to the APS. These are groups with their own established (generally active, transparent and outspoken) approaches to online engagement - creating challenges for existing public sector hierarchies in both recruitment and management of these cohorts and acculturalising them to current APS norms.

Equally the blurring of the lines between private and professional continues to grow. With government policy now essentially touching on every aspect of life, existing public servants can feel constrained and muted by current requirements to not comment negatively on any policy area.

This is whether it be a public servant/parent dealing with schooling challenges, a public servant/carer dealing with NDIS challenges, a public servant/driver dealing with road infrastructure challenges, a public servant/patient dealing with health challenges, or a public servant/former immigrant dealing with family unification challenges. In all of these cases, even if their career is in a totally unrelated area of the public service, it is unwise for them to share even privately via their social media channels comments critical of the policies which are impacting their lives in a real and significant manner - just in case their public service friends report them and their public service bosses decide to define their comments as less than appropriate.

At the same time with the increasing normalisation of social media as the primary 'town square' for civil discussions (though not always so 'civil'), younger people, former APS staff (such as myself) and others who might at some point work in or to governments, are more enabled and likely to debate or share contentious political and policy issues via social networks without full consideration of the likely views of older-fashioned agency management and the impact on potential employment or contracts.

Similar to the lament of police and other security services ten years ago, who found it increasingly hard to hire individuals able to conduct important undercover work, due to the widespread adoption of social media (forcing a shift to profile cleansing from profile hiding), it's rare for any young person to not have an active social presence online, potentially touching on a range of politically sensitive topics - if not crossing professional lines with beach and party shots.

Similar to the debate over whether children should be seen and not heard, I've witnessed a number of older senior APS managers express their ongoing views that public servants should neither be seen nor heard in public debate - despite this going further than even the existing guidance for how public servants may engage in public discourse.

Moving on to the current consultation process, there's a few assumptions in the approach which could significant impact the outcomes.

Benefits vs Risks

Firstly the entire consultation, while nominally appearing to aim to be neutral, overwhelmingly concentrates on the negative impacts of public comments by public servants.

The approach largely overlooks the benefits of having an engaged workforce, interested and knowledgeable about a policy area, able to engage effectively in online debates - providing facts, busting myths and communicating compassion and concern for the communities impacted by policy decisions.

Some organisations outside the public sector have realised the value of staff as advocates for an organisation - that every staff member is connected to hundreds of peers, friends and family members who are potential customers or clients. However it seems only rare public sector organisations have recognised the same potential.

Imagine the impact of having 4,000 Health Department staff sharing the latest PBS drug additions, or carefully explaining government policy to communities who haven't been on the same journey to recognise why alternate approaches look fine on the surface, but have significant long-term negative impacts.

Imagine having over 30,000 Human Services staff sharing the latest information on changes to welfare programs, the release of new apps, or helping parents considering separation to understand their potential financial obligations to their children in a divorce.

The upside of having staff engaging socially is immense where staff are provided with the right access to tools, advice and potentially training - more effective than spending millions on 'shouting at' communities via traditional media, or even online communication campaigns.

However taking this positive approach to staff social engagement relies on a critical factor that increasingly appears in short supply in the public service - trust. Senior executives in the public sector have long been shown to be significantly disconnected from their staff - with regular APSC studies showing enormous differences in perceptions as to how well senior managers communicate and with work satisfaction levels.

With rolling pay disputes, increasingly employee concerns around the casualisation of workforces, fewer opportunities for staff to progress and ongoing budget cuts, there's a range of factors already impacting on trust relations within agencies - a largely negatively focused social media policy, designed around preventing bad behaviour rather than enabling and supporting good behaviour, is merely another straw on the back of the increasingly concerned camel.

Policy for the future of the APS

Looking further at the consultation, while it doesn't specifically exclude any group from consulting, the placement and approach strongly favours current APS staff, or the hyper-interested (such as myself).

This means the consultation will largely be biased around current staff and their current expectations, having little consideration of potential staff who increasingly consider their ability to engage freely on social media as a right rather than a privilege restricted by an employer.

This could lead to amended guidance on social media engagement that progressively discourage good people from potentially considering APS roles, particularly in emerging areas related to digital.

Given social media comments are forever, there's an entire group of young, university educated, visionary and innovative people who, under strict APS social comment policies, may never be eligible for APS employment based on their past personal views 'poisoning' their ability to be impartial.

The questions for consideration included within the consultation are quite broad and I've covered each below with my views.

1. Should APS employees be prevented from making public comment on all political issues? Should there be different rules for different groups of APS employees?

Even Ministers only focus on their own portfolio policies and challenges, so it's highly impractical to expect public servants at any level to be sufficiently across all political issues to be able to avoid commentary on topics that affect them personally, but may (to a greater or lessor extent) also touch on significant political issues.

Equally with political policies now touching on most areas of life, even indirectly, there's little that a public servant could say that could not be deemed a public comment on a particular issue, even if via a slightly drawn bow by a hostile outside party.

The impact of this would be similar to the impact of the current APSC policy, to cause many public servants to choose not to engage in public debate at all. Given that public servants are generally well-educated and well-informed and trained to form opinions based on evidence, this presents a significant loss to public debate within Australia and the exclusion of expertise that could otherwise shift and shape national views.

I'm aware of experts who have been effectively silenced in their areas of expertise due to a government engagement for a different set of their skills. This weakens Australia's democracy, rather than protects it.

While it may seem prudent to at minimum limit the scope for public servants to engage publicly at least within their own policy area, the area in which they have greatest experience and expertise, this is also counter-intuitive.

I do believe that public servants should strive to present the positives of current policy positions and effectively communicate set government to the public including, if they so choose, via their own social media accounts - even when respectfully making it clear that their views might differ from the government's, but that their role is to carry out the policies irregardless of personal opinion.

However in areas where policies are under debate, not yet confirmed by government or otherwise not set, public servants should have the right to choose to engage in the public debate and express their views in a respectful manner. Due to their experience in their own policies areas, it would be expected that their views would be well-informed and therefore support the public debate.

In essence I believe that public servants should be exemplars of public engagement in democracy, not simply 'bag carriers' for agencies. Through positive, respectful and evidenced sharing of their views they not only contribute to the content but to the shape and effectiveness of public debates in Australia, fostering effective democratic engagement - thereby supporting Australia's underpinning principles as well as perceptions of the public service and government.

As to the second question, of different rules for different groups, I understand how more senior or personally expert public servants can have a bigger impact on public debates - and this is appropriate, when used sensitively. This is no different from the different regard to voices from across Australia's democracy - different groups will always hold different voices in higher, or lower, regard, based on positional influence, knowledge or celebrity.

Constraining more knowledgeable or senior public servants to keep a debate 'level' makes no practical sense, and while I can see where certain elected or senior appointed officials may have concerns over being 'outshone' or having their decision-processes impacted by senior public servants, or more hierarchically junior celebrity individuals or experts, this is more related to ego than to good policy formulation processes.

Ultimately evidence and outcome effectiveness should drive policy processes - and even when this isn't perfectly the case, agencies should always strive to champion the right approach and leave it to elected officials (who can also be unelected) to make decisions on particular courses. As such allowing public servants to speak in undefined policy areas with respect and evidence is totally appropriate and supports robust and engaged democratic processes (even if this may at times personally annoy Ministers or senior public servants with specific ideological agendas).


2. Should APS employees be prevented explicitly from making critical public comment about services or programs administered by their agencies?

While this question appears reasonable on the surface, it overlooks the sheer scale and extent of some agencies, and the absence of effective internal processes to manage programmatic issues or failures.

Firstly, certain programs and services are frequently moved between agencies due to machinery of government changes or due to agreements between agencies where one may deliver services for another. This means that a public servant having issues with a program one week, and commenting about this publicly, could suddenly find themselves under investigation after a Minister or senior public servant decides to move the service into their agency.

Secondly, the scale of agencies, and the lack of communication of their range of activities, can mean that public servants may be unaware that a particular program or service is actually administered by their agency, particularly if delivered by external contractors or other agencies. Again this could easily catch out public servants who are not omnipotent - an expectation that is unrealistic when even Ministers can often be unaware of all the activities in the nooks and crannies of agencies within their remit.

Finally, agencies must commit to having effective internal dispute resolution processes for staff having issues with specific programs or services administered by their agencies. These are in place in some, but not all cases - leaving some public servants with no internal avenue to resolve disputes and thereby driving some to speak out publicly. Agencies would eliminate a significant amount of the potential for this risk by instituting effective internal dispute resolution processes.

If public servants are using and finding concerns with certain services or programs from their agency it is highly likely that members of the community will be as well, meaning that staff concerns should be treated like a canary in a coal mine - an early indicator of an issue that the agency needs to address and solve.

Essentially APS employees should not be prevented (if that were even possible) from making critical public comment about services or programs administered by their agencies. However they should be held to a high standard of providing evidence, of engaging respectfully and making it clear that these are their personal views only. Few programs will achieve 100% happiness rates amongst the communities affected by them, and recognising and acknowledging alternate views, even from within the organisation delivering them, is a sign of a mature and secure organisation committed to continual improvement and the engagement of staff who will act to improve outcomes, not merely remain silent about poor ones.

3. Should senior public servants have specific limitations about making public comments?

Per my response to the first question - no. However they should be held to a high standard of evidenced and considered responses, and selective engagement.

It is still relatively rare for senior public servants to actively engage in public discourse, particularly via social media channels - and this is a significant loss of role models who could help set a respectful tone for engagement across the community. If senior public servants fear criticism, or fear criticising their Ministers publicly this helps reinforce a status quo where their expertise, knowledge and experience is subordinated to snap decisions, supporting the gradual degradation of trust and respect in government and agencies.

Where senior executives strategically engage in public debates as 'eminent Australians' they both enrich the conversations and model a form of democratic engagement that others across the community are influenced to follow.

That said, this engagement should be respectful and carefully timed, rather than proliferate. They must also ensure that they demonstrate that they can work effectively with Ministers' offices even when disagreeing with policy. This can be a delicate high wire to walk and many current senior public servants may not have the depth of experience with social channels to carry this out effectively. This will change over time.

Currently few senior public servants engage at all via social channels, and I believe this is a significant loss to public discourse in Australia.

4. Should public servants posting in a private capacity be able to say anything as long as it includes a clear disclaimer stating that the opinion they have expressed is purely a statement of their own opinion and not that of their employer and is otherwise lawful?

Looking at this realistically, any public servant, or individual, can set up a pseudonymous account and say anything they want with limited chance of detection or identification (due to the large number of such accounts). Indeed it is likely that a number of public servants already do this in order to be part of the groups they wish to associate with online.

I believe that public servants, by way of their employment, should be held to a higher standard of engagement than general citizens, therefore should be expected to remain fair in their comments and criticisms, obey all laws regarding abusive or otherwise inappropriate behaviour on social media channels (as suggested in the question) and is evidenced where feasible - noting that not all areas of opinion lend themselves to evidence.

Public servants should model the digital engagement behaviour that a democratic society should aspire to, helping to foster productive and insightful debate, dispel misinformation and accurately direct people to where they can receive the help they require.

Currently I believe that APSC gudiance is more directed at an outdated view of 'impartial', which includes 'passionless' and 'unemotional'. Public servants should be free to be excited and passionate about their work and about principles that matter in democracy. This positively enhances their perceived capacity to be effective in service to the public, whereas emotionless engagement only serves to diminish effective debate.


5. Are the requirements of the APSC guidelines expressed clearly? Can they be made simpler and easier to understand?

I have never been a fan of the current APSC guidelines for public comment via social media.

They leave too many gray areas for senior management discretion around what is meant by 'harsh or extreme', 'strong criticism' or 'disrupt the workplace' - which I have seen used negatively against exceptional people by jealous bosses, to the loss of the public sector.

They are too broad, effectively covering every policy from every parliamentary party or independent - leaving public servants in a live minefield where, at any time, additional mines can be placed under their feet.

Overall they are negatively focused - looking at the downside risk of social media engagement without fully embracing the potential benefits of effective involvement by public servants in public discourse.

As an ex-public servant this blog, which touches on various policy areas, programs and initiatives - often in a critical but constructive manner, would never have been started under this APSC policy. Given my readership and the level of positive engagement it's had, I can't see how this would have been a better outcome for the public service.

Equally I've not been prepared to work directly for a government with this level of restrictive social media policy, and have spoken to many other people from the private world who ceased considering a public service career after seeing the draconic provisions in the current guidelines.

Of course the majority of the public service have continued to work productively under the current guidelines, however I saw an 80% reduction in public servant engagement online in the twelve months after its introduction - with many people closing down social accounts, going silent or shifting to pseudonyms to protect themselves.

This has had a negative impact on the online public policy debate in Australia and these personal accounts cannot be replaced by departmental accounts, which do not have the peer-to-peer engagement or influence of individuals online.

Looking at the international perspective, there's now far deeper and more constructive engagement by US, UK and NZ public servants on social channels then by Australians.

Ultimately, under the current APSC guidelines, any Australian public servants who wish to participate in public democracy online must weigh the negative impact if they ever stray, in their management's opinion, over a wide gray line, even only once within thousands of posts.

This makes the risk to the individual simply not worth it - but the cost to Australian democracy of the silencing of these voices is immense.

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Thursday, May 19, 2016

Without risk there can be no innovation. But without innovation there is not no risk

It is fairly well understood - even embraced - in government today that without taking some risk there can be no innovation.

However it's important to keep in mind that the reverse of that statement is not true: without innovation there can be no risk.

Increasingly we're seeing government agencies take at least baby steps into supporting innovation processes and, to a lesser extent, behaviours among their staff - albeit within existing frameworks and constraints that were designed for stability rather than rapid change.

However there' still large and widespread pockets in government where innovation is seen as the enemy of good government. Where change is seen as an imposition on the 'natural order' and an external disruptive force that must be contested (actively or passively), rejected or endured until things return to normal.

What I don't see really grasped in government as yet is that rapid change is the new norm, that in a world where knowledge doubles every seven months and more data is collected each year than in the entire 20th century, that stability is now the riskiest proposition of all.

Yes change can be hard, uncomfortable and exhausting - but is this due to the process or actual change, or the deep-rooted culture, training and beliefs of those public servants who feel challenged, disempowered and exhausted?

We have selected and trained public servants for decades to love consistency and oppose rapid change, so even when they embrace change their subconscious impulses are to reject and resist - no wonder they find change confronting and tiring!

To change the relationship between the public service and innovation - paying lip service will not lead to the deep adaptations necessary to remake agencies as agile, change-ready innovative organisations.

Putting in place rigid (or even semi-elastic) processes and frameworks for innovation will deliver some peripheral benefits, particularly in non-core areas of agencies, but do not rapidly address the root issues agencies face with cultural resistance and inbuilt attitudes and behaviours that make change difficult to introduce, embed and retain.

Many senior public servants now speak about innovation, but their behaviours and attitudes do not match their words, and in many cases 'innovation' is now parroted as the mantra for the year, rather than being embedded in their hearts and minds.

I don't blame them for this, it is standard survival practice in any group for those in status positions to  retain their status by more enthusiastically adopting new fads and trends than those below them. The history of fashion - clothes, cars and toys - demonstrates that being a 'leader' (aka an early and enthusiastic adopter) brings status benefits in any group.

Even counter-cultural trends, think hipsters and contrarians, build status from the fashions of the day, by being the most enthusiastic at adopting the strongest anti-fashion position. In effect they are exalted for being 'an individual', defined as doing the reverse of whatever a fashion entails.

For innovation to become truly embedded in the public sector, for our government agencies to truly become agencies of change, agile and adaptable to a fast-paced world, we require far deeper culture change than the lip service and prototyping we see today.

Future public servants will need to find change a positive force, energizing and exciting - something they choose to engage with every day in order to continually improve how they serve governments and the public.

This cannot be achieved rapidly through a cautious, graduated process of slowly adopting innovative approaches, running a few ideas challenges or creating pockets of innovation (which I have previously called 'ghettos' which are carefully kept at armslength from the majority of agency staff and operations while agencies simultaneously hope they will infect the rest of the agency with their attitudes.

It can't be achieved while the public service retains and preserves the character, attitudes, culture and behaviours it expresses today. To me this also means it cannot be achieved with the majority of today's public sector leadership, who simply don't have the interest or capability to change themselves to embrace innovation and continual change as their core philosophy, in their hearts and minds.

Thus to achieve the real change necessary in the public sector, from 'change' being part of controlled, monitored, bounded projects to being core, business as usual, practice, behaviour and thinking,  there will need to be conflict, controversy, even 'blood in the corridors', where the old guard are largely replaced, rather than 'converted', taking stability mindsets with them.

Many public servants won't find this comfortable. Like most people they see themselves as capable of weathering any change, being adaptable and open to new ideas. Like most people (and I include myself in this), we are limited. We can only bend so far before we break or spring back to the core values we have embraced.

Change, at an individual or organisational level feels hard whenever it contradicts our beliefs, even when it is supported by evidence. The hardness reflect our subconscious fighting back, our mental defenses against a perspective or approach that is contrary to the beliefs we have constructed. We also have blind spots where we cannot see how our behaviour is limited - we see this regularly today in passive sexist and racism, in businesses that fail or are failing but can't see why (like Kodak and Australia Post). These blind spots are how our subconscious keeps us feeling safe, blinkers that hide unpleasant events or options from ourselves, warm safe bubbles got our minds, like offshore asylum seeker centres that allow us to place the pain and plight of unfortunate people out of our sight and thus out of our minds.

We will need public sector leaders who find innovative change less hard, maybe even easy, if we are to truly change agencies to better service a fast changing society. We need staff who have been normalized into an environment where continually change is the norm.

How we get there will involve tough decisions and risk - for without risk we cannot have real innovation.

However if you believe the reverse, that you can avoid risk by not innovating, you are, in my humble opinion, delusional. Stability within a fast changing society exposes organisations to even greater risks than does change.

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Saturday, October 22, 2011

Traditional media insiders are the least qualified to comment on the future of traditional media

With the release of News Ltd's Future of journalism 'discussion' I've submitted a 'Your view' to the site which may, or may not, be published at some point in the future.

On the basis that traditional media is no longer the gatekeeper for participation in public debate I have posted my submission below.

I see a lot of the debate over traditional media relevancy and business models being very 'fiddling on the edges' stuff, attempting to use technical or legal barriers (such as copyright) to preserve an industrial era view of media which media consumers, now also media producers, are rejecting in droves.

Today any individual or organisation can create and maintain its own media platform capable of reaching 95% of Australians, and over 2 billion people worldwide.

The Internet, by merely existing, allows entrepreneurs and agile organisations to question all previous assumptions about the collection, collation, filtering, distribution and monetization of content. As a global playing field, the importance of geographic boundaries has been further diminished.

Being agile, efficient and effective is no longer sufficient. Organisations must be prepared to destroy and reconstruct themselves under entirely different models to remain competitive and relevant.

The jury is still very much out as to whether traditional newspapers, radio and television media organisations will be able to do this before they see a substantial amount of their profitability dry up.

My submission:

It is no surprise that people who work in traditional media, who have a financial and emotional stake in its future, are supportive of their organisation’s future (provided they are agile, efficient and effective).

I can see expert blacksmiths believing the same with the arrival of mass-produced cars and metalwork.

However what those beholden to traditional media cannot see is the viewpoint from the outside world.

Yes access to information is a requirement for liberal democracies. Yes quality news is a tool used to stabilize societies and promote understanding.

However there is no law of nature that states that profitability must be at the root of quality news coverage and reporting. Nor is there a causal link between professional journalism and professional news reporting – journalists, as humans, are as prone to reflecting their own biases as others and, even when trained to be objective, are at the mercy of sub-editors (where they still exist), editors and the overall political ambitions of for-profit media concerns.

Now I am not saying that government-run media (with no profit objective) is the answer. These systems bring their own control and bias issues, they still need cash and still have oversight from humans who may be influenced by political views.

Nor am I saying that for-profit, or even not-for-profit independent media outlets do not have a future. They do.

However the vast expansion in expressive capability that has been realized through the Internet has offered a second model to news gathering and reporting that will seriously challenge the biases of distribution systems with tacked on news collection and reporting facilities.

There is no reason to assume that industrial news services will continue to be the leading players in the media market – certainly the impact of the web on other industrial era centralised industries has been profound. When the means of production and distribution are diversified, some necessary changes and adaptation is required.

However those who have financial and emotional connection to the old models, while the most prolific commenters on new models, are not the gatekeepers to these new media forms, nor are they objective and impartial observers, able to assess the changes without bias.

I would challenge News Ltd and all other industrial-era news industry players to look outside themselves and their orbits (bloggers who are, in effect, news people) to the broader changes occurring in society.

We need to consider new models – perhaps the disaggregation of news collection and distribution, creating an open market for people to write news, have it submitted to, paid for and distributed by strong distribution channels, or for citizens (who are now all journalists, so we can drop the ‘citizen journalist’ tag) to be paid based on views, likes and reputation when submitting their work to an open news distribution platform.

News is no longer the news, access to distribution is the news and there is a pressing need to experiment with new approaches to opening up news distribution rather than locking it down into professional guild-like channels.

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Tuesday, November 23, 2010

What is Australia's Government 2.0 future? Contribute to the website & book

What do you think Australia's Government 2.0 future will look like?


Today Kate Carruthers and I have launched a new project; one we'd like you to be part of.

Government 2.0 is gaining momentum around the world. Not a fad management approach or minor adjustment to policy and processes, Government 2.0 is underpinned by one of the most fundamental changes in communications technologies since the introduction of the printing press: the internet.

The pressure for change is coming at all levels. More than 90 per cent of Australia's adult population access the internet on a regular basis. More than 50 per cent of all Australians now use social networks to share their ideas, build their knowledge, collaborate on causes and comment on policy debates.

In the words of Clay Shirky, we are living through the greatest outpouring of community creativity in history. Every individual who joins the internet gets a free printing press, television channel and radio station. Individuals have the opportunity to influence governments on a greater scale, with fewer barriers to participation, than ever before.

Many of Australia's governments are already actively introducing Government 2.0 tools and practices into their policy, operational and service delivery processes. While there are many successful examples, most have been the efforts of small teams executing good ideas without an overall vision of what Government 2.0 will mean for Australian governance in the future.

Looking around the world, there are as yet limited sources of strategic thinking or research into how Government 2.0 will shape governance over the next 10, 20 or 50 years.

Therefore Kate and I have launched the Government 2.0 Futures project to provide public sector policy-makers, practitioners and academics with a collection of views on Australia's Government 2.0 future.

Through Gov2au.net we are asking Australian and international Gov 2.0 experts, commentators and practitioners - and the Australian community - to reflect and contribute their views on three questions:

  • What does Government 2.0 mean for Australia’s governance?
  • How will Government 2.0 change the culture and practice of Australia’s public servants and governments?
  • What will Australia’s Government 2.0 future look like?

We hope to release a selection of these contributions under Creative Commons next year as a free ebook. We also hope to release a paper version to sell in bookstores and online. Any profits from the sale of this book will go to support Government 2.0 initiatives from not-for-profit organisations in Australia.

We invite you to be part of Australia's Government 2.0 future by contributing your views, ideas and suggestions via the website.

You may also follow the progress of this project on Twitter at @gov20futuresau.

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Monday, August 24, 2009

Is the Australian government equipped to provide collective public goods online?

Google, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Google Maps, Wordpress.

What do all these online services have in common?

They are all part of the world's virtual infrastructure, providing collective public goods that many people, including many Australians, use on a daily basis - whether for the storage, organisation, distribution or discovery of information.

They are also all privately owned and operated (for profit or not). There are few if any similar virtual collective public goods provided by governments.

Finally, from a national security and self-sufficiency standpoint, none of them is Australian owned or operated. If a foreign jurisdiction decided to close down or block any of these services, Australia would suffer at least a temporary economic loss.

On Friday, at the Public Sphere Q&A session with Gov 2.0 Task Force members, the Taskforce's Chairman Dr Nicholas Gruen stated that,

I think it was the government’s job to build Google, Facebook, Twitter. I’m quite serious about that.

While, for some, this statement might appear unusual - or even absurd - Dr Gruen is stating that one of the core purposes of government is to develop and provide infrastructure for its citizens, public goods that benefit nations and states but are often too expensive, unprofitable or may be a national security risk if left in the hands of private or foreign entities.

Traditionally public infrastructure has focused on physical systems - rail and road networks, hospitals, libraries and schools, sewage, water and electricity networks, telegraph and phone systems, buses and trains. Or on communications and informational systems such as newspapers, television and radio stations.

However it is time to consider whether that definition should be extended to include virtual public infrastructure. This includes the public goods used to store, discover and distribute information and communication online, just as physical public infrastructure has distributed water, words and people.

This thinking is in its infancy. Few governments globally are providing any of the virtual public infrastructure citizens will need through the 21st century - other than having their national broadcasters go online, as have all other broadcasters.

Of course there are digital initiatives such as the National Broadband Network in Australia and similar schemes being discussed in the UK, US and other countries. However these are examples of physical infrastructure required to support digital communications. Consider this similar to building the roads and railways of the past.

The next step is for governments to consider whether and what they need to provide as the virtual infrastructure that sits on top of these networks - the digital equivalent of buses and trains that will be required on our digital transport network.

So should governments have developed these online services (as Dr Gruen suggested)?

Should they be developing other virtual public goods? The online tools and services that commercial entities will never develop?

Or should they leave it up to the market?

To answer these questions I think we need to go a little deeper and consider whether governments are the most appropriate bodies to develop virtual collective public goods.

In most countries governments limit their online participation to information and service provision - consumer to government to consumer and business to government to business.

While there's no shortage of ability, there is little public sector fostering of direct citizen to citizen or business to business connections or even more complex arrangements such as citizens to government to business and vice versa.

This is often because of the tight restrictions many governments apply regarding what material can be stored and expressed via government-operated websites.

The risk of breaching individual privacy, allowing political commentary (as the public sector is apolitical) and breaching copyright is far more restrictive than were regulations on the use of the (previously government-owned) telephony system, or on public discussions in government-owned public spaces (parks, parliaments, sidewalks and government offices).

These restrictions makes it legally risky for a government department to directly support many online citizen-to-citizen engagements, and even places a significant burden on the governance oversight of citizen-to-government-to-citizen discussions.

So, besides reforming government regulations, or having citizens agree to blanket waivers when entering certain government-run spaces, how can government best provide public goods online?

One alternative is outsourcing. Funding private and not-for-profit organisations to deliver these services on behalf of government.

This has precedents in Australia, for example the jobs network and aid agencies receive government support in the form of grants and contracts to provide certain services on behalf of government.

There are also examples of government supporting (partially funding) private competition to public services - including private schools, child care and bus companies.

Perhaps governments will need to adopt one of these two models online, at least in the short-term while complex legislative and cultural changes take place.

Or is there another way government should meet citizens' needs for virtual public goods?

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Friday, August 07, 2009

Have you voted for your priorities for Government 2.0?

The recent Public Sphere: Government 2.0: Policy & Practice, run by Senator Kate Lundy's office captured a number of views on government 2.0 in Australia.

These views are now in the process of being prioritised based on public feedback.

The prioritised views will be submitted to the Government 2.0 Taskforce to use in their work preparing a paper on how to progress Government 2.0 in Australia.

If you've not yet visited the Australia 2 website to define and comment on your top Government 2.0 priorities you've only a few weeks left to register your views.

Visit the Public Sphere priorities at Australia 2.

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Friday, July 31, 2009

Rate Australia's Gov 2.0 priorities from PublicSphere

Priorities from the recent Government 2.0 Public Sphere are now available for public comment via the Australia 2 BETA website before being handed over to the Government 2.0 Taskforce for consideration.

For a recap of the Public Sphere visit Senator Kate Lundy's website.

To comment and vote on the top Government 2.0 priorities visit the Public Sphere section of Australia 2 BETA.

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Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Contribute to the Government 2.0 Public Sphere Camp wiki

As an outcome of the Government 2.0 Public Sphere Camp last Monday, the points raised by speakers have been aggregated into a wiki for public comment prior to being submitted to the Australian Government as a briefing paper for the new Government 2.0 Taskforce.

If you attended Public Sphere and wish to contribute your perspectives, or are interested in reviewing the points made by the speakers and participants, please visit the Public Sphere wiki.

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Sunday, June 21, 2009

Government 2.0 Public Sphere Camp liveblog

Below is the liveblog for the Government 2.0 Public Sphere Camp being run at Parliament House Canberra on Monday 22 June 2009.

This is a jointly published liveblog in co-operation with Des Walsh and Nathanael Boehm.

You can pre-register for email notification when the liveblog begins below.

Please join in with your comments and questions through the day.

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Thursday, June 18, 2009

Government 2.0 initiatives in Australia Part 2 (Public Sphere Camp series)

Following on from my post on Wednesday, below are some of the federal and non-government initiatives in the Government 2.0 space.

Federal

ABS CData
The Australian Bureau of Statistics is responsible for collecting and providing access to a large proportion of data collected by government in Australia.

Before the internet the reports produced by the ABS were available on paper, floppy disk or CD to help business and other government agencies understand and manage the changes occurring in Australia.

With the arrival of the internet the ABS took its data online, providing downloadable data tables as well as reports, initially at a cost but finally free.

Recently the ABS took the next few steps, introducing Creative Commons licensing to permit greater flexibility in the reuse of its data and launching the CData system, which allows individuals and organisations to delve deeper into the ABS's census data, creating and customising their own data tables for viewing online or free download.

The system is a large step towards totally automating machine readable government data and making it freely available for reuse. While only census data is available at present, it would not be an overwhelming challenge to expand the data sets over time, providing employment, economic activity, industry and other subsets.

Openly accessible machine-readable data is one of the most commonly cited government 2.0 characteristic as it supports government openness while stimulating innovation. The ABS's efforts are a giant step in supporting Australia in achieving these goals.

ABS BetaWorks
One of the hardest steps for any organisation to take is to expose some of its inner decision-making processes to external scrutiny. However that is what the ABS has done with BetaWorks.

ABS BetaWorks is a collaborative design site the ABS is now using to support the ongoing development of the ABS website. The site contains a selection of the projects the ABS is considering, or has underway, and encourages visitors to participate by providing their thoughts, suggestions and ideas for how the ABS could improve various website features.

While not fully collaborative - as you cannot hold conversations through the site in anything approaching real time - the comment approach helps the ABS build a better picture of how people use their site and would like to see features developed. This in turn helps the ABS better serve it's customers.


Non-government
Government 2.0 initiaitives are not limited to being created by governments. In many instances independent individuals and organisations are also creating online services that support the government 2.0 approach.

OpenAustralia
A particularly good example is the OpenAustralia site which replicates the Hansard record for Federal government in a much easier to read, search and comment format. This allows people to subscribe to receive email notices when a particular MP speaks or to make comments on specific debates for others to reflect on.

The site also includes the register of members' interests - which previously was only available on paper from a specific office in Canberra. Not many people had the inclination to travel to Canberra to view this list - or even knew how to access it - so placing it online has enormous utility for citizens who wish to know a little more about their parliamentary members.

The site, similar to the UK site it was based on, lowers the barriers for citizens to scrutinise parliamentary debates and increases their ability to learn about specific MPs, effectively raising the transparency in our democracy.

It also has been supportive in identifying inaccuracies in the official Hansard record, as noted in News.com.au's article Open Australia highlights parliamentary errors.

Open Forum
Open Forum is a platform for presenting information and discussions around political topics.

It supports a blog mechanism, used by many politicians, which provides a way for them to provide their thoughts and insights without the filter of the media. It also provides an online forum, or bulletin board, feature which allows community discussion on specific topics, such as on human rights.

By providing an independent venue for discussion outside of government control, Open Forum is an important site for enabling online democratic conversations across Australia.

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Friday, June 12, 2009

US reports on open government brainstorm - do Australians share these views?

The US government has been running an online consultation on the topic of open government via the OpenGov suggestions market.

A summary analysis report on the first stage of the brainstorm has now been released, outlining the main suggestions and topics US citizens found critical for open government.

Some of the highlighted recommendations included,

  • each agency should appoint a senior representative to lead transparency initiatives;

  • government should adopt common data standards;

  • all open meetings should be webcasting;

  • online government services should be made reusable by the private sector - if citizens own the services they should be able to build on top of them;

  • Post all FOIA request responses on the web so everyone, not just the requester, has access and impose penalties on agencies not following FOIA, or creating excessive delays (such as in India where public servants can be fined);

  • Digitize all government research reports and make them available free;

  • Use well-designed feedback systems instead of central control to improve web design;

  • Make government websites mobile platform-ready;

  • Government should communicate a governmentwide strategy for using social media tools to create a more effective and transparent government;

  • Allow government employees to engage in social networking.

I wonder if Australians would have similar views if the Australian government ran a similar consultation.

Here is the complete summary analysis report (PDF)


Also of great interest is the reason the US government used online consultation rather than having internal policy experts develop an open government policy,
Traditionally, proposed policy is crafted by government representatives—who though knowledgeable, do not always have access to the best possible expertise and information—and subsequently posted to invite public comment. The challenge lies in the fact that this process is designed to engender incremental rather than transformational change. Creating a transparent, participatory and collaborative government, however, is a foundational shift, and success requires that we are able to access the best and most creative ideas for accomplishing this goal, wherever they reside.

The vision for this exercise, therefore, is to invert the policymaking process by enabling informed public dialogue to inform policymaking at the front end. The collaborative three-phase process employed opens up tremendous possibilities for real-time innovation. People are invited to:
  1. Brainstorm—share ideas on how to make government more open, participatory and collaborative, discuss and vote on the ideas of others;
  2. Discuss—dig deeper on the ideas and challenges identified during the Brainstorm phase; and
  3. Draft—collaboratively craft constructive recommendations for an Open Government Directive.

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Wednesday, June 10, 2009

What is Government 2.0 (Public Sphere Camp Series)

The term 'Web 2.0' entered popular language in 2004. It was an attempt to define the shift that was occurring online from the internet being a communications tool to a collaborative user-driven social medium.

While some Web 2.0 capable tools, such as blogs, wikis and forums, had existed for many years prior to the creation of the term, before 2004 the internet was more often seen as being a place for corporate-driven content - websites developed and controlled by organisations to communicate and sell to customers.

However most internet commentators were seeing a shift away from this corporate model as early as 2001. As the internet grew and evolved as a medium the barriers to individual participation and content creation fell.

By 2004 the trend was clear, the internet was becoming less like the other mass mediums, television, radio and print - which were dominated by a few large organisations that controlled the production and distribution of content - and more of a democratic platform that enabled individuals to create, communicate and collaborate at a near equal footing with media giants.

The change saw new organisations emerge.

Wikipedia became the world's most popular encyclopedia, driven entirely by user content.

YouTube became the world's most viewed video channel, with an audience larger than any television station, driven entirely by user content.

Facebook and Myspace grew to have as many members as some of the largest countries in the world, driven by user content.

By placing virtually free creation and distribution tools in the hands of the public, the internet had largely (but not completely) democratised content and removed much of the power held by the former communications gatekeepers.

Government 2.0
Government 2.0 grew out of Web 2.0 in an attempt to define a new approach to governing which provides governments and their citizens more direct and immediate ways to communicate, engage and collaborate enabled by Web 2.0 principles and tools.

Government 2.0 defines an approach to governing rather than a collection of technologies.

For example, Wikipedia defines the term as,

Government 2.0 is neologism for attempts to apply the social networking and integration advantages of Web 2.0 to the practice of government. Government 2.0 is an attempt to provide more effective processes for government service delivery to individuals and businesses. Integration of tools such as wikis, development of government-specific social networking sites and the use of blogs, RSS feeds and Google Maps are all helping governments provide information to people in a manner that is more immediately useful to the people concerned.

The Gov 2.0 Australia group defines Government 2.0 as
Government 2.0 is not about social networking or technology based approaches to anything. It is a fundamental shift in the implementation of government - toward an open, collaborative, cooperative arrangement where there is (wherever possible) open consultation, open data, shared knowledge, mutual acknowledgment of expertise, mutual respect for shared values and an understanding of how to agree to disagree. Technology and social tools are merely an enabler in this process.

What does Government 2.0 mean for governments around the world?
Some governments have seen Government 2.0 as a threat - providing the community with greater power to question the wisdom of the governing parties and public service, or forcing greater accountability and transparency on practices which communities may see as corrupt or dishonest. They act out of the fear of being personally exposed or having weaknesses in political processes uncovered.

A second group has approached Government 2.0 with caution, unclear of the potential consequences and afraid of taking risk. They see some of the benefits of adopting new approaches, however baulk at the gate due to the difficulty in quantifying the unknowns involved.

Finally, some governments have embraced the opportunity to use Government 2.0 to engage citizens and strengthen the democratic process, increasing the pool of ideas and effort available to create and manage government services.

These governments recognise that Government 2.0 approaches can increase the effective power of government to deliver positive community outcomes at low costs and are prepared to take risks in order to realise these opportunities.

Whichever approach a government takes, it is clear that communities around the world are increasingly adopting Web 2.0 approaches in their daily lives.

Where governments are not showing leadership the public is using the internet to discuss and debate the actions of governments and individual politicians and, in some cases, use these approaches to organise opposition to government controls.

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Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Open government - what does it mean? (Public Sphere Camp series)

In the last two weeks before the Government 2.0 Public Sphere Camp in Canberra on 22 June, I'll be posting a series of articles on government 2.0.

This will cover areas such as,

  • what does 'open government' mean in the context of the internet,
  • how is government 2.0 being introduced around the world,
  • what is occurring in the open government and government 2.0 space in Australia,
  • what benefits will government 2.0 generate for Australia,
  • what are the costs and risks of government 2.0,
  • what are the leading hurdles to government 2.0 in Australia.
I'd like to link to those posting on a similar topic - drop me a comment below.


Today I thought I'd start by discussing what 'open government' means in the context of the internet - at least to me.

Wikipedia defines open government as,
the political doctrine which holds that the business of government and state administration should be opened at all levels to effective public scrutiny and oversight. In its broadest construction it opposes reason of state and national security considerations, which have tended to legitimize extensive state secrecy.
Open government operates on the philosophy that a nation's government exists to serve the best interests of its people.

It takes the approach that the best way to ensure that the governing party and public service are acting in the public's interest is to make the machinery of government open to continual public scrutiny and accountability.

This can include making processes, procedures, decisions and data freely available in the public domain on a timely basis. It can also include actively consulting and collaborating with stakeholders and the public on directions and decisions.

Most people I have spoken to in government are pro-open government. They recognise that they work for the public and have the responsibility to ensure that the decisions made by government are to the benefit of citizens and that citizens understand the basis of these decisions.

However governments have other responsibilities to their public which can limit or conflict with the intentions of open governance.

These include preserving the privacy of individuals, maintaining effective law, order and national security and placing the interests of citizens ahead of the interests of citizens in other jurisdictions. Many decisions taken by government are also designed to serve the majority - or a specific minority - of society, weighing up relative benefits and costs. It's simply not possible to make all of the people happy all of the time.

This is generally where open government changes from an ideal to a spectrum, ranging from tightly managed societies where information and freedoms are rigidly and centrally controlled through to free and open societies without any central management where social or individual rights may not be enforceable, let alone enforced.

The challenge for governments is to find the level of openness that best meets the needs and desires of the society it serves - based on what is technically possible and resourced at the time.

The arrival of the internet has significantly changed the scope of what is possible for open government. While it may not have shifted the needs or desire of the public for privacy and the rule of law, the internet has greatly enabled citizens and government to share data and information and collaborate and consult stakeholders and citizens in a cost-effective manner - sometimes known as government 2.0.

Data
Data is often where open government starts. For many years Australia and other western nations have had Freedom of Information laws designed to help individuals gain access to data the government has collected - without breaching individual privacy or national security.

Without going into a discussion on how well these laws have operated, the aim was to meet open government goals to make government data and information more freely available to the public.

Data is an accountability tool for the public. It can be used to scrutinise government decisions, to understand why one group in society appears favoured over another or to understand - and question - how government is collecting and spending money from the public purse.

Until the arrival of the internet it was extremely costly to make government data available. On top of other reasons, this made it difficult for the public and the media to sometimes understand or scrutinise government decisions.

The internet has changed the landscape for data. An organisation with web-enabled systems can not only distribute its reports more cost-effectively, but can make the underlying data available for the public and stakeholders to reuse to discover new insights and add new value to old figures.

A prime example can be seen in the evolution of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) over the last twenty years. In the 1980s the ABS used to sell its statistical reports in paper and multimedia form. Although the data was collected using funds from the public purse, the cost of distributing the information made it uneconomical to make it freely available to anyone who wanted it.

During the 1990s the ABS moved to a dual online-offline model, where reports were available online in summary and then full form at little or no cost, while print publications continued to be charged. All the ABS data was secured under a copyright which required that organisations seek ABS approval for reuse.

In the last few years the ABS has moved to uncovering more of the data under the report information, allowing individuals and organisations to use the CData Online service to extract data subsets from the Census for their own use. This data is available free and is released under a Creative Commons license, which permits free redistribution and remixing of the data, simply attributing the ABS.

Of course the ABS is only one of 30 or more Australian government departments which actively collects information about their portfolio interests, customers or citizens. Not all of these departments are at the same cultural maturity level as the ABS, or have invested in the systems required to expose their public data in the same manner.

This leads to significant unevenness in the capability of government to be open. It also raises questions around a central commitment towards openness where these efforts are not funded or prioritised.

The United States Federal government has tackled this issue at a central level. President Obama famously released a memo on government transparency which made open government a priority for the executive leadership of every federal agency.

The US has also launched a central portal for publicly available data, Data.gov, which is progressively aggregating data released by federal agencies - and illustrates which agencies are not pulling their weight.

Consultation
Data sharing alone isn't open government. Another consideration is how government communicates with and involves citizens and stakeholders in decision-making.

In the past Town Hall events, dinners and events on the campaign trail, letters to Parliamentarians and departments, focus groups and lobby groups were the prime ways in which citizens could access and influence government decision-making processes.

These come with a high cost and low reliability. Generally only a few people get to speak at public events and these are often the loudest and most opinionated - or are backed by significant interests. Letters are a dying medium, with it far more likely that people will dash off a quick email then go to the trouble of laborously writing, signing and posting a physical letter.

With the internet it has become possible to get a greater sampling of peoples' views in a very short time.

While not all people are online, or use the medium with the same expertise, it does provide an avenue to rapidly assertain the views of a large (80% plus) segment of the population, whilst older consultation techniques can be used for the remaining population.

The internet also allows for greater qualitative assessment of different views as it doesn't simply offer the ability to communicate, but also to aggregate similar views, for individuals to complete polls, rate ideas and effectively vote on decisions in ways that are little different to how we conduct our most critical democratic act of voting.

We already use online consultation in Australia, with the federal government placing many national consultations on the business consultation site. State governments have their own mechanisms in place. These are still first generation tools, simply providing access to documents and supporting email or written responses.

The UK has gone a step further with its Petitions site, where it allows citizens to create and run petitions for submission to government. This supports citizen-to-citizen interaction as well as citizen-to-government.

The US has gone even further, using suggestion markets to both collect suggestions and to rate their relative importance. This would be similar to taking all of the UK petitions and allowing the public to not only add their names but also provide a prioritised list of which petitions are more important to them.

The US government first used this approach to gain an understanding of the public's views of the priorities for the incoming President in a Citizen's briefing book via Change.gov. It has subsequently used the same approach for a variety of topics and to collect questions for the President to answer, including for discussing the topic of open government itself.

Despite fears around misuse, the actual level of inappropriate use for all of these sites has been extremely low - lower than the number of hecklers at an average physical event. More of a challenge has been coping with the huge response rates - tens of thousands of ideas voted on by millions of Americans.


Open government in summary
So to wrap up today's post, the principle of open government reflects the commitment of a governing party and the public service to be accountable and inclusive of the public in their decision-making processes.

The practice of open government involves balancing the needs and wants of the public for openness with their desire for privacy and security, shaped by the technology of the day and the level of resourcing committed to openness.

The challenge today is how to bring Australian government consistently into the internet age, meeting citizen's desire for openness and transparency within the resources available to departments.

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Monday, June 01, 2009

Open Government Public Sphere Camp on 22 June at Parliament House - call for speakers and attendees

EDITED: Monday 9 June, 2009: The Open Government Public Sphere Camp has been renamed 'Government 2.0 Public Sphere Camp'. This more effectively communicates the content and purpose of the event. Other details have not changed.

The second of Senator Kate Lundy's Public Sphere series has been combined with the Canberra BarCamp unorganisers' Gov 2.0 concept to create a jointly-run Open Government Public Sphere Camp.

To quote from Senator Lundy's site,

Open government is a rising topic of debate across the world. Trends in technology, media and public opinion have made it both more possible and more necessary for governments to reconsider what and how information is made freely available to the public.

This Public Sphere event will gather views on how creating an even more participatory form of government in Australia will improve the effectiveness of public administration, enable communities to better help themselves, promote renewed engagement in the democratic process and enhance our capacity to respond to emerging complex social, geopolitical and environmental challenges. We expect the topic and resulting event to bring together government practitioners and decision-makers, and interested parties outside of government.

If you have an interest or are formally participating in open government initiatives, there are opportunities to both attend and speak at this event.

There will be two distinct sessions during the day, the morning will concentrate on government policy, engagement and leadership, as well as issues that limit the capacity for Open Government.

The second session in the afternoon will focus on open government systems, standards, data and best practices.

To learn more or sign-up for the event visit Public Sphere #2 - Open Government: Policy and Practice.

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Thursday, May 07, 2009

High speed broadband for Australia - the unexplored country

This morning I am presenting at Public Sphere #1 - High bandwidth for Australia in a personal capacity.

The event will discuss what high speed bandwidth can do for Australian society, business and government.

I have previously posted some ideas on this topic and will be talking today about how the killer applications and services for a 100Mbit plus service are likely to not have been invented yet.

For those not attending the event, I have attached my presentation below and will add a transcript in the near future.

I will hopefully be liveblogging the event after my presentation throughout the morning.

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Thursday, April 30, 2009

Senator Kate Lundy launches a public discussion on high speed broadband

Illustrating one of the ways in which parliamentarians are now actively engaging the public online, Senator Kate Lundy has posted in her blog about a series of online 'Public Spheres' she will be hosting to,

facilitate regular topics of interest to both the general public and to the government.
Discussed in her post, Public Sphere #1 - High Bandwidth for Australia, this type of online initiative provides a significant opportunity for broad participation from the Australian public on high interest topics.

This approach to public engagement is critical for the future of democratic governance in Australia. My thoughts on the topic are well stated in the following quote from a post by Matt Crozier of Bang The Table, Opportunity and Need,
The ways in which government have traditionally engaged, by hosing [sic] events that require attendance, by asking for submissions or by market research cannot engage most of these people [CT: The broader community] because there are barriers to participation. It is difficult to participate in a meeting if you are not confident and articulate or if someone who is more so is hogging the floor. Many people don't feel comfortable writing submissions, either that or they can't be bothered. Market researchers get hung up on by busy people so their sample (no matter how demographically representative) is always self selecting and biased towards more activist groups in the community.

The great thing about online engagement (as a compliment [sic] to these other techniques) is that it breaks down these barriers. People can get involved easily and at a time and place of their own choosing. My faith in the rest of the community has grown as we have watched them engage on all sorts of issues. We have councils talking about their management plans getting 400 people visiting, looking at the plan and occasionally commenting when previously there were meetings to which nobody turned up. We have raging debates about heritage issues, transport and anything involving pets. The minorities are there too, sometimes noisy, still trying to dominate the debate and very welcome but more and more people are joining in, visiting and having a say. Why? Because it's easy and they are interested. Its all very gratifying and will lead inexorably to greater community ownership of decisions and better more enduring results.

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