I've been fortunate enough to have a QLD government department share with me the results of a survey they held following a large scale Yammer trial.
They have also allowed me to share the (anonymised) results more widely (see below).
The survey responses paint an interesting picture as to why and how public servants would choose to use this type of social networking service within an agency. It reinforces for me that this type of service may fill a collaboration and knowledge sharing gap for agencies that some may not even realise they have.
Hopefully the survey results will help other agencies to decide on intranet social media tools in an evidence-based and informed manner, noting that there are already about 13,000 Australian public servants using Yammer - and an unknown number are using similar tools (such as Presently).
On with the survey results...
Use the tabs at the bottom of the embedded sheet (below) to move between questions, or go directly to the spreadsheet at: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ap1exl80wB8OdDV5TlFibHlGYTlldkFxdW5BUWc0RHc&hl=en
By the way, here's a couple of other case studies, one from Australian government, provided as comments to one of my earlier posts by James Dellow of Headshift (who makes the point that if government wishes to be social on the outside it needs to be social on the inside):
And, from Social Media Today, Extensive List of over 40 e2.0 Micro-Blogging Case Studies and Resources from around the world.
Interesting results! Are the numbers correct, however? If so, 60 responses seems like a very small number for even a mid-sized gov agency, and calls into question whether Yammer is only being used by early-adopters...
ReplyDeleteHi James, according to my information this was a limited trial - not everyone in the agency was invited to take part for its duration.
ReplyDeleteIt is quite common to pilot a service amongst a small group and assess the results before a larger scale rollout. Of course early adopters are more willing to participate in such a trial, however that doesn't invalidate the result.
However if you wish to see larger scale studies on micro-blogging implementations, check out the link to Social Media Today.
I've been investigating the use of Yammer within my agency. I'm curious to know if others who've adopted this tool do so without administrative privileges, or if they are paying for this feature. My understanding is that it would cost several dollars per user per month, making it potentially very costly to the agency.
ReplyDeleteHi Pamela,
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that Yammer does deals for large organisations, the price doesn't scale linearly.
You may wish to contact Yammer directly and discuss.
Thanks, Craig. At this stage I'm trying to determine what the most appropriate tool(and easiest to get running quickly) might be. Yammer seems like a good option, though there's still some fear about security with it being externally hosted, so I think we'll only get the go ahead to have discussions, not post documents.
ReplyDeleteMy concern: lots of organisations have run successful trials of Yammer (and other tools). It's easy to get adoption amongst early adopters (by definition!).
ReplyDeleteWhat is scarce on the ground globally, as far as I can see, are good examples of widespread adoption of Yammer, etc.
At the end of the day, experimentation and innovation is only valid if it's exploring new territory. If something's already been widely trialled (and failed), then it's just "reinventing the wheel".
Still, I'll keep my fingers crossed in this case! :-)