Nudge your public sector colleagues about Government 2.0 - today!

Contrary to some media and public perceptions, most public servants are hard working and dedicated to their jobs.

This makes us busy people - sometimes too busy to keep an eye on what is going on at the peripheries of our professions.

That's why it is important for those of us who understand and follow what is happening in the Government 2.0 scene to occasionally nudge our colleagues. This is so they don't miss out on the opportunity to understand what is going on and figure it into their strategic and tactical planning.

This week - despite being enormously busy - I've found a few minutes to nudge three groups of my colleagues about ground-breaking Australian Gov 2.0 initiatives that will impact on their areas.

This including advising one group about a new research paper that used Australian blogs and forums in its literary review, concluding that these forms of citizen media offered enormous potential to build a more sophisticated and nuanced understanding of community issues than could be derived from quantitative research alone. That's important for good policy.

It involved bringing to the attention of another group the release of the Australian Government budget under Creative Commons licensing, and of the Government's other statements about copyright and FOI. These policies will influence how we release public information into the future. That's important for good organisational strategic planning.

Finally it involved flagging a set of blogs and social media discussions which demonstrated how the public was using new media to talk about government services. This led to some healthy follow-up discussion on whether potentially defamatory and/or negative comments by individuals online should be given 'oxygen' by government or media. Regardless of the substance of posts it highlighted that people were very actively using online media to publicly share their thoughts and opinions about Government in ways that could influence others' views, rightly or wrongly. That's an important tool for Government communicators, policy and service delivery staff to monitor customer sentiment and address misconceptions or service issues.

Which of your colleagues have you nudged about Government 2.0 this week?

Why not nudge some of them today!