Innovative leadership involves walking in the rain

I've rarely seen a better example of leadership in action than in the juxtaposition of these two photos, kindly shared on LinkedIn by Jean-Michel Wu of McCann Worldwide.

Now let's be clear up front - these are carefully selected images, presenting single moments in time - so they aren't necessarily representative of the style of either leader represented, either the US's political leader, Barack Obama, or business leader (and Republican Presidential nominee) Donald Trump.

However the notion of a leader who shields himself, at the expense of others, as compared to a leader who shields others before themselves, is one that anyone aspiring to leadership or in a leadership role should reflect on.

We've seen many examples of 'leaders' who fail to take responsibility for their own actions, or for the actions of those under their direction. These so-called leaders shield themselves while actively or passively allowing others to take the blame for actions or inaction that they were ultimately responsible for.

Example abound of this practice. In government there's functionaries falling on their swords to protect their Ministers, and senior public servants pushing the blame downhill, to junior staff, or to vendors.

In the private sector there's many examples of this type of behaviour, although it is not as often on public display. However it is sufficiently common that it has become an advertising punchline.

When this type of behaviour is displayed by leaders it erodes trust and respect - in them and in the organisations they lead.

When the behaviour becomes public it can be devastating to an organisation's brand and reputation - but even if it remains hidden within the walls, it can significantly affect an organisation's performance over time.

One of the casualties is likely to be innovation and invention, as employees witnessing 'scapegoating' or 'passing the buck' behaviour by their leaders will be less inclined to take risks in order to avoid getting the blame.

Another casualty is organisational culture, which will tend to become more secretive as staff hide potential mistakes and fearful, as staff worry about being made the next example.

Whereas a leader who shields others, 'running interference' and supporting their staff will foster a very different culture. Staff will be more inclined to innovate as they know they won't be blamed for failure, and their managers will ensure they get credit for their successes.

A shielding approach also gives teams the room to solve problems rather than hide them, paying enormous dividends in the long-run.

Cultures will be more open and inclusive with this second type of leader. Staff more collaborative and sharing, rather than hoarding information to protect their roles.

Of course there must still remain appropriate mechanisms for managing poor performance - but these will be seen as fair and equitable, rather than vindictive or aimed at protecting the upper echelons from their own decisions and actions.

Organisations that encourage, foster and employ leaders who choose to shield their staff, even sometimes at personal expense, will ultimately be more successful - more innovative and more adaptable.

So if your organisation is trying to foster an innovation culture, a good start is for its leaders to walk the talk by walking in the rain.

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If you want to see the impact of poor user interface design, look no further than Canberra's parking meters

User interface design (or UX design) has been a buzz term for several years in government, with agencies spending significant money on ensuring their services and processes are easy for the broadest range of citizens to access and complete.

This is a good thing too - It makes good economic, reputational and even health sense to make it easy and fast for citizens to interact with government, reducing mistakes, stress and negative impressions.

Complex and difficult to user interfaces have higher error rates, resulting in frustrated and sometimes out-of-pocket citizens, extra costs for government and often a loss of trust and respect in the service outcomes and agencies responsible.

Anyone who still doesn't understand the value to both government and citizens need go no further to witness the issues poor interfaces and processes cause than Canberra's parking lots, where the current crop of parking meters are creating all kinds of problems for citizens.

For example the current parking meters in the Wilson-run car park on London Circuit follow a process that is both complex and invasive for customers, greatly increasing the time required to conduct one of the simplest tasks a citizen has to perform, renting a parking spot.

Firstly the machines have an unnecessarily complex interface, with six buttons, several unmarked, one each red and green and the other four all yellow. Little stickers have been manually attached to several of the buttons to explain their functions, although several of the yellow buttons are used for multiple purposes at different stages of purchasing a ticket and different times of day. Most have two name tags, one at top, one at bottom. Some of these tags were faded and hard to read, so would presumably need to be replaced regularly, adding unnecessary effort to the process of maintaining the machines and increasing the risk of errors by parkers.

The many buttons on Wilson parking machines in Canberra

Secondly the process to pay for a parking spot isn't as well explained or as easy as it could be. The machine first asks for a person's payment method (coins or card) and then requires entry of the car's license plate via a touch screen (so why buttons you may also ask).

Now, I don't know about everyone, but many people I know, including myself, haven't memorised our car license plates. It's never used as a form of personal identification and only rarely are people required to use it, usually when organising to service their car (and after the first service, normally a mobile number or name is sufficient for a mechanic). 

There's no benefit to the user to providing this license plate information - only to Wilsons, who I presume use it to prevent people ticket sharing if they leave a spot early, so they can profiteer by re-renting an already paid-up parking spot (which could be considered unethical profiteering, but is one of the techniques used to maximise profits in car parks).

Enter License Plate to begin (the second screen, so not the beginning!)

There's also no signage in the car park, at the entrance or at the machine, to indicate to someone entering the car park, or waiting in line to buy a ticket, that they need to have this information at their fingertips. A parker new to the car park only finds out they need to have memorised their license plate when they reach this specific screen in the process - and they can't proceed any further without entering it.

The number and placement of machines in the car park can mean up to about a 50m walk back to your car to check, meaning a 100m round trip to retrieve this information. If there's a queue for tickets, common at peak times, this can make the ticket purchase process a 15 minute or longer process - intensely frustrating for busy professionals on their way to a meeting (speaking from personal experience).

Once past this screen the process was a little simpler, if followed precisely. The screen told me which yellow buttons to press (although I had to recognise that 'Select Earlybird' meant press the button which was marked as both 'Card' and 'E/Bird'), it took my coins quickly and efficiently dispensed my ticket.

Unfortunately the process wasn't as seamless for people ahead of me in the line who were using credit cards. Often the machine took three or more goes to recognise the card as valid and, once it had, it took on average 135 seconds to approve each transaction (I timed this). 

For credit card users, if you knew your license plate number (as regulars would learn to do), the entire process took approximately 3.5 to 4 minutes to complete, most of it spent choosing the right yellow buttons and waiting for credit card approval. At this rate each machine could service 15-20 people per hour. Cutting a minute off the credit card approval process would allow the machine to service 25-30 people per hour, This is up to a 100% increase in speed, resulting in less stressed customers, better patronage and more revenue for the car park.

Most of Canberra's public car parks have ACT government parking machines. These are different to Wilson's and have a slightly better interface - although they don't allow coin payments. 

Having used them frequently I'm not as able to look at them with unfamiliar eyes, however they provide better onscreen instructions to step people through the necessary steps, although I've witnessed people struggling to understand the '+' and '-' buttons for increasing or decreasing the parking time, with many people just paying the full amount rather than selecting a time period.

These machines don't require a license number, and don't have unnecessary buttons, so the overall impression is of a simpler process.

However these machines suffer from a similar issue to the Wilson machines for the credit card approval process, which takes a relatively long time for card approvals. While I appreciate this might be due to dialing into the bank each time, it does mean that at peak times there can be a long line of people standing and waiting for their turn, resulting in more stressed customers and potentially reductions in revenue.

I've also witnessed situations where there's insufficient room to queue safely for these machines, with people required to wait in a queue that snakes into the roads within the car park, where they and cars must dodge each other. This presents an increased risk of an accident, where a pedestrian is harmed by a car attempting to find a car spot, potentially increasing the legal risks to the ACT government.

Now these ACT government car parks do allow people to pay for their parking online, removing the queuing and waiting at the car park, when people may be rushed for time. This option is not well explained on the machines in the car parks, which is a shame as it could cut queues as people waiting could simply go online to pay. 

Incidentally I find this a very handy trick at Hoyts to avoid some of the really long queues for movies - despite their ridiculous surcharge on online purchases, when nudge theory suggests they should charge less for online purchases (including from the Candy Bar) to prompt greater take-up and reduce physical queues and staff time.

However I've heard and read many reports of people who have found online payment for car parking a frustrating process as, once parked, parking inspectors often give tickets to people who aren't displaying a parking ticket. This has even received media coverage. 

As a result I've not tried this process and likely won't try it until the ACT government makes it clear (on parking meters and via it's own media channels) that the online option is working correctly.

This issue seems to be purely a training and change management one, with parking inspectors needing some adjustment of their behaviour through training and support to ensure they check the online system before issuing tickets.

Tens of thousands of public servants use Canberra's parking machines regularly, and have likely noticed issues and possibly even expressed frustration with the user interface and process. Many would have adjusted their own behaviours to deal with the foibles of the systems - arriving a few minutes earlier to allow for credit card purchase approval time, memorised their license plate number and learnt the right sequence of button presses to achieve the outcome they need daily.

All of them should consider the user interface and process, reflecting on their own experience. How could it be made simpler and easier, particularly for parkers who don't use the parking every day?

Then take that thinking and reflect on the user interfaces and processes they create and administer within government. How could they be made simpler and easier for citizens and for public servants, while reducing the error rate and cost to government?

What is the impact of any poor design within their own systems - both to citizens and government? And what value could be delivered, and behaviours adjusted positively, by improving the user interface design?

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It's all about recovery - tech disruption and government

My post yesterday on Has Gov 2.0 in Australia got too boring too fast? (thanks @sandihlogan for the title correction) attracted some good debate on Twitter and in comments, including from @chieftech who said:

@sherro58 @grmsn @craigthomler rather that asking if #gov2au has got boring, ask if gov in AU has been disrupted by tech. I'd say a little
— chieftech (@chieftech) January 30, 2014

Disruption, or the 'throwing into confusion', is a common occurrence in times of major social or technological change.

The discovery of agriculture disrupted man's nomadic lifestyle around 22,000 years ago - dramatically changing the shape of human society, how we lived, worshipped and organised ourselves.

When humans learnt to smelt iron, roughly 3,500 years ago society was again disrupted, with more advanced civilisations able to outfight and outproduce their bronze-dependent neighbours, causing larger cities and states to form and leading to greater productivity and more time for creative thought.

Gunpowder and then handguns changed society again in fundamental ways, ushering in the end of castle fortresses, making warfare far more bloody and deadly. Incidentally Genghis Khan, known for his horse archers, may have used gunpowder bombs fired from Chinese catapults in his wars.

Further disruptions occurred with the printing press, oil drilling, tanks, computers, television, nuclear weapons, satellites, and the internet - amongst thousands of other technologies. Each time societies had to adapt how they operated, governments rose and fell, the balance of power between states shifted.

In other words disruption is normal. Society is constantly adapting to new technologies, rejecting some, embracing some and tolerating the others.

Governments have never been immune to this disruption. They also have had to constantly adapt their approach as technologies changed. We've seen time and time again how more technologically advanced civilisations have colonised, absorbed or destroyed less technologically advanced ones - and, on a few occasions, have seen civilisations falter when they advanced their technology too far too fast and it became out-of-step with social values, or caused unintentional harmful side-effects.

So has the Australian government been disrupted by technology - yes, many times even in our short 113 years as a nation.

Is there anything special about how technology is disrupting government right now? Anything that makes it different to how major technologies disrupted our government in the past?

Well yes and no. Certainly the speed of technological change has increased, which means that government has less time to understand the impacts and consequences of new technologies before deciding how and when to adopt them.

Also 'now' is the time when we are alive. Watching change occur is very different to reading about how changed occurred in the past. It's always more visceral to live through change then to observe it remotely through another person's eyes.

But also no - disruption is disruption. While the type of disruption may change or the speed increase, the potential range of responses remains limited.

In my view societies and governments only have four options when facing disruptive change - embrace, accept, absorb or oppose.

They can embrace the change, adopting it enthusiastically and quickly, throwing out old ways for the new.

They can accept it, adopting it in a more piecemeal 'as needed' way, without any resistance or dissent.

They can ignore the changes, passively rejecting them by clinging to 'traditional' ways, but gradually absorbing them over time into their traditions and making subtle adjustments to maintain the semblance of the status quo.

Or they can actively oppose the changes, actively seeking to suppress them through laws and actions - successfully or otherwise.

This leads to what I feel is a far more interesting question. How will our governments cope with, or recover, from the present round of disruptive change?

Answering this question will also answer the question of which nations will dominate the 21st Century. Governments that embrace new media and Gov 2.0, adapting themselves into the new forms necessary to thrive within empowered societies, will have a strategic advantage over governments who lag or refuse to use them.

We're already seeing this in the adopting of broadband around the world. Nations with faster broadband will have a significant economic edge over their slower and less connected neighbours. Similarly governments that are more connected and able to tap more brains for ideas, more citizens to undertake small civic acts, will be far more economically and socially acceptable than nations that restrict use of these channels to small elite, or stifle discussion through laws and censorship.

Of course there are risks with embracing disruptive changes - moving too far too fast can uncover new issues that societies don't yet have the experience to solve. However in many cases the governments that uncover these issues first may also resolve them first, sometimes putting them even further ahead of other nations.

So the really interesting question for me is how are Australia's governments doing at coping with the disruptiveness of Government 2.0, the impact of social media on public debate, of open data on accountability and economics, of citizen activism on state leadership?

Which of our governments are embracing these changes, which are accepting them and which are resisting, or actively legislating against them?

The answer to this question will tell Australians which states will be the most successful in the next twenty years and whether Australia as a nation will remain one of the wealthiest, safest and most successful in the world, or be overtaken by more nimble peers.

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21st Century society vs 19th Century laws and policing

Laws have always struggled to keep up with society, however rarely in such a vivid and public way as in Wednesday's arrest of Sydney Morning Herald journalist, Ben Grubb, and the confiscation of his iPad.

The incident, well reported in the SMH, occurred when Queensland Police responded to a complaint regarding a photo hacked from one security expert's private Facebook page and displayed in a presentation at the AusCERT conference in Brisbane as an example of a major security hole in Facebook's system.

Grubb was attending the conference and received a briefing about the security hole. Seeing the public interest in telling the community that their supposedly private Facebook photos could be easily accessed, Grubb reported the matter in an article featuring the image, which I can no longer find on the SMH site.

The following day police questioned Grubb about the matter and then demanded he hand over his iPad on the basis that police wanted to 'search' it for evidence of a crime. When he was unwilling to do so, he was arrested and his iPad confiscated for a complete image of its content to be taken and analysed by police (let's not even explore the potential conflict with Australia's Shield laws, which incidentally also cover bloggers and tweeters).

The basis of police concern was that the image retrieved by the security expert and used in the SMH article was 'tainted material', stolen from a Facebook account and then passed on to others.

What is more worrying is that the Queensland police, in a press conference, then equated receiving an email containing a stolen image as 'like taking stolen TVs'. To quote:

Detective Superintendent Hay used an analogy to describe why Grubb was targeted.

"Someone breaks into your house and they steal a TV and they give that TV to you and you know that TV is stolen," he said.

"The reality is the online environment is now an extension of our real community and if we go into that environment we have responsibilities to behave in a certain way."

Let's think about this for a moment.

Firstly, when someone 'steals' an image - or music, movies, books or other online content - it isn't stealing if the content remains at the point of origin for the original owner to continue using. It may be a copyright infringement or privacy breach, but unlike stealing a television, where the owner of the television is left without it, there is no theft, simply replication.

On that basis any laws around theft simply don't apply online. You can copy my idea, my words, my images. However unless if you somehow delete the originals, you are not stealing them, you are breaching my copyright.

Secondly, when an email is sent to our email address it gets delivered regardless of the legality of its contents. We have no say in whether we receive legal or illegal messages and images. Sure there's spam blockers and the like, however these automated tools can't tell if content is legal or not, only if it violates certain rules, such as containing certain four letter words or phrases.

However, according to the QLD Police, if someone sends you an email containing a 'stolen' image, you are breaking the law. This is even though there is no way possible for you to refrain from receiving the email in the first place. You don't even have to open the email. If it has been stored on your device, based on the QLD Police's interpretation of Commonwealth law, you are a potential criminal.

This has enormous ramifications for society. Anyone can frame someone else by sending them an email. As it is relatively easy to set up a disposal email account, you can do so anonymously. This could be used against business rivals, political opponents, or even against the police themselves simply by sending them an anonymous email and then making an anonymous complaint.

Equally, if the person receiving the email is a potential criminal, then what about all the organisations whose mail servers were used to transmit the message?

When an email is sent from one person to another it can pass through a number of different systems on its journey. At each stop, a mail server copies and saves the email, checks the route then sends the email on.

In most cases these mail servers delete these emails again for storage reasons, however at a point in time each of them has received the email, making the organisations and individuals who own them liable, again, under the QLD Police's interpretation of the law.

Given the number of emails sent each day in Australia it's clear from the QLD Police's legal interpretation that most ISPs must be operated by criminals, receiving, storing and transmitting illegal content all day and night.

Applying this type of 19th Century policing and legal approach clearly isn't going to work in the 21st Century.

When everyone can publish and illegal content can be received without your consent or knowledge, laws need to change, as does police training and practice.

Without these changes government bodies will become more removed from the society they are meant to serve, unable to function effectively and efficiently in today's world.

By the way, the security analyst who originally 'stole' the Facebook images hasn't been questioned, arrested or charged. And Ben Grubb still hasn't received his iPad back.

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Learning from the social media policy mistakes of the Commonwealth Bank

Last week the Commonwealth Bank received a panning for its new social media policy.

Going beyond guidance for staff in their use of social media, the policy made it a requirements that Commonwealth Bank staff tell their managers about any negative comments about the bank they see online. The policy also required that staff do everything in their power to have these negative comments removed from the internet, under risk of disciplinary action or even dismissal.

You can read the CBA policy online, courtesy of the Business Spectator. Pay particular attention to Point 4 "Material posted by others" and point 6 "Breach".

These parts of the policy particularly raised the ire of the Financial Services Union (FSU), one of the bank's largest staff unions, and led to a media storm throughout last week.

"The FSU believes the policy is so broad that it goes beyond conduct which the bank could legitimately claim involved damage to its reputation or interest and/or was such as to give rise to a concern about an employee's implied contractual obligation of good faith and loyalty," the union says.

Reference: SmartCompany - Commonwealth Bank social media policy raises questions over control of employee actions online

Now I applaud the Commonwealth on taking a step all organisations should, having a clear policy and guidance for staff to help them understand how to 'not stuff up' when using social media, how to avoid conflicts of interest and prevent the media portray a staff member's views as reflecting official bank policy.

I also applaud the bank's efforts to listen to social media and address customer issues expressed online. Realistically organisations should respond to customer comments in social media channels in a similar manner to which they'd respond to customer comments in person, by phone, email, fax or other channels. It is even better if they employ monitoring tools to proactively identify and address comments that aren't made specifically to the organisation.

However it is both impractical and highly inappropriate for organisations to ask their staff to monitor and police the actions of their friends or total strangers under penalty of disciplinary action - whether in online social media channels, or offline (at pubs and BBQs).

I'm not sure what steps the Commonwealth Bank took to formally or informally consult staff when developing their social media policy.

I'm not sure whether the Commonwealth Bank referenced best practice examples of social media policies from other organisations, such as the Online Database of Social Media Governance.

I am also not sure whether the Commonwealth bank is mature enough as an organisation to treat its staff as adults, to trust the people they employ and to effectively encourage them to be the Commonwealth's biggest advocates and supporters online.

However I am sure that when an organisation attempts to place unworkable and inappropriate staff policies in place they will fail. Internally and publicly.

Organisations that introduce inappropriate staff policies will reduce their public reputation, reduce their attractiveness to top people and set staff relations back years.


When I attended the Garner Symposium late last year (to speak on a panel with Andrea Dimaio and Ann Steward), I also went to a session on Banks and Social Media to see how they were doing in coming to terms with new mediums for communication and engagement.

The impression I walked away with was that Australian banks, in general, were several years behind the Australian Public Service in their acceptance, adoption and support for social media use by staff.

Sure they used social media tactices for advertising campaigns, however these were at arms length. Social media was not seen as a set of tools that could support and re-energise internal cultures, underpin collaboration and innovation or transform 19th century institutions into 21st century financial powerhouses. In many cases the attitude was "block and penalise" rather than "train and manage".


I hope that, given their relative maturity, government agencies will learn from the mistakes of the CBA in this case and avoid endorsing social media policies that are unworkable, onerous or inappropriate.

Given the experience of the Commonwealth Department of Finance and Deregulation, the Victorian Government, the Victorian Department of Health, the South Australian Government and, also last week, the Queensland Government , I think the public sector is currently in safe hands.


Stung by the public and staff backlash, the Commonwealth Bank has rapidly agreed to work with the FSU to make its policy workable. I'm sure we'll hear more as this progresses.


Articles
A non-exhaustive list of articles discussing the Commonwealth Bank's social media policy

• Bank scorched by stupid Facebook policy - The Register
• Commonwealth Bank social media policy raises questions over control of employee actions online - SmartCompany
• CBA in hot water over social media policy - StartupSmart
• Commonwealth's snitch policy alarming - HeraldSun
• CBA slammed over draconian social media policy - Finextra
• Social media policy goes bad at Commonwealth Bank - HRZone
• Bank’s Social Media Policy Says Snitch & Spy on Your Friends or You’re Fired - The Financial Brand
• Workers union scores CBA social networking policy for employees - International Business Times
• CBA backpedals on social media policy - Business Spectator
• Facebook could get Commonwealth Bank staff fired - News.com.au

FSU posts
Posts by the Financial Services Union about the CBA social media policy

• CBA’s Social Media Policy Impedes Employee’s Rights
• The social media conundrum

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Are social media professionals unfairly constrained by organisations?

When organisations hire accountants they are allowed to use specialist financial software to do their jobs.

When organisations hire customer service representatives they are given training and scripts and are then allowed to speak to customers on the phone - monitored for performance reasons but free to communicate in appropriate ways without approval of every word.

When organisations hire graphic designers, project managers, multimedia producers and programmers they are given access to appropriate software and computer systems.

So why is it that, when hiring social media professionals, organisations don't give them access to their 'tools of the trade'?



In many organisations it is not possible to access social media channels - such as Facebook or Twitter - due to old-style internal IT access policies. Tools to monitor social media channels are also often blocked, making it difficult to track what customers and clients are saying about an organisation, identify opportunities or head-off potential issues.

In many cases organisations scrutinise all social media interactions at senior levels (down to 140 character tweets). These approval processes can add significant time and effort to online responses, making it difficult to interact at the pace required for social media. Imagine if telephone conversations or live conference presentations were treated the same way.

Also often those employed to implement social media systems and manage these channels are not provided with training and support - certainly not to the level of a phone customer service representative - despite being in the position of interacting with the public every day.

Even when organisations are serious about adopting social media, their policies, processes and procedures may not be designed to allow social media to work for them. This can lead to mixed messages (as when customers are invited to fan an organisation's Facebook page - which staff are not allowed to access during work hours). This can even lead to social media engagement becoming a liability, where its use is so constrained that it casts the organisation in a worse light.

These issues are occurring in private as well as public sectors organisations - perhaps some corporations have not realised that restricting access to social media can seriously damage your business.

Progress is also very uneven and often driven by senior personalities. Organisations and agencies with clear Gov 2.0 Action Plans are driving ahead, whereas others are still considering whether twitter is a legitimate business communications channel - either from a lack of knowledge, lack of leadership or lack of interest.

How can social media professionals ensure that our organisations give us access to the tools we need to support the goals of our organisations?

How do we break down the barriers to using social media when we cannot demonstrate successes due to these same barriers?

How do we convince senior management that social media professionals are skilled and trustworthy employees who should be treated with the same respect as other trained professionals?

And how do social media professionals juggle the need to be educators, innovators, strategists, change managers, implementers, communications specialists and leaders at the same time?

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What would you do if you had unlimited funds to spend on your department's online presence?

Everyone who runs a website dreams of what they would do if they had more funds to spend on improving their online presence.

I've been doing some thinking around this lately as a thought exercise around building priority lists for what needs to be done to strengthen my department's online presence.

I always come back to strengthening base infrastructure first. Ensuring that our own staff have the best tools for their tasks, including high-powered computers, the right software, effective and fully implemented content management and reporting systems, appropriate connections between data and publishing to enable a consistent approach to openness and transparency and, very importantly, that all the staff concerned have the training and support to use all of these systems effectively and to their full potential.

Next for me is strengthening governance and management, doing what is necessary to ensure my department has all of the appropriate governance and standards in place to operate a current, flexible and responsive online presence - including outreach activities to third party websites. blogs, forums and social networks.

Third I look at capability building. Putting in place the systems and functionality that extends the basic infrastructure to allow the department to manage emerging needs.

Interspersed amongst the priorities above are the staffing required to deliver what is needed and redevelopment of websites and tools as required to ensure our online presence meets the needs of our audiences, stakeholders and the government.


Given that funding is not unlimited for most online managers, the next step is to consider what can be done within budget constrains. It's important to also look at which pieces can be funded from other budgets (such as staff training) or whether additional funds can be requested to meet legislative or campaign requirements or as part of modernisation initiatives.

While it's not possible to do everything you want, there is often quite a bit you can actually achieve if you're prepared to spend the time educating decision-makers, liaising with other business areas and building the business cases needed to source funds.

So if you were given a blank cheque, what would you prioritise?

And given that you are unlikely to have one, what will you choose to actually achieve?

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UK launches data.gov.uk (and how Australia could top it)

Just in case you missed this the other week, on 21 January the UK launched the data.gov.uk website with 2,500 government datasets available for access and reuse by the public.

This leapfrogged the US's data.gov, which now has around 1,000 datasets available.

The UK site also extends the government open data space in several other directions, with a wiki and forum supporting discussion and collaboration between people reusing datasets in the site and a Ideas tool for submitting ideas on what data should be released and how it should be combined to provide new and useful insights.

The site also includes a gallery of applications developed to make use of government data, making it a central place to locate these applications.

I believe this is the new world leader for open data websites from government - though I look forward to the day when Australia tops it (in data.gov.au).

How could we top it with data.gov.au?

Here's some ideas:

• Build in a data analysis and visualisation module that allows people without technical expertise to combine, model and view datasets, no matter their origin (like IBM's Manyeyes).
• Then allow people to embed these visualisations into their own sites.
  
• Support community submission of data that can then be shared and used by government alongside government datasets to improve insights and understanding - including allowing the appropriate Creative Commons copyright to be embedded into these datasets as part of the submission process.
• Comments on datasets - allow every set of data to support a discussion to allow people to ask questions to clarify what the dataset contains and discuss how it could be presented in a more usable way.
  
• Allow tagging of datasets and applications - so that over time there's a bottom-up folksonomy that people can use to find related data or search on, rather than relying on government metadata (which may not match the community's mental models).
• Support data correction through the site - if someone detects an error in a dataset there should be a clear path to notify the submitter of the data and have it corrected.
• Vote on applications, allowing the community to provide feedback on how useful and valuable they found them. The voting mechanism should be able to be embedded with applications in other sites, rather than rely on people returning to data.gov.au to vote.
  
• GEOmapping engine, to map locations such that they can be placed on maps, rather than having to have people build their own tools to transform the data.
  
• Collaborative data modelling projects - where the community is invited to work together to model data, assisting the government and community.
  
• Data competitions with cash prizes. Similar to the NetFlicks Prize, provide the tools for government agencies - and even commercial entities - to create competitions to solve tricky data problems through crowdsourcing.
  
• Create user profiles and including information on how many applications / data visualisations and other activities they have undertaken in relation to the data site. People respond to competitive challenge and recognition - like in the Australian National Library's Manyhands project.
• Create webinars and run physical events to raise awareness of the site and to show Australians (developers, corporates, not-for-profits, interested parties) how easy it is to reuse government data.
• Hold annual awards for the best applications, including peoples' choice awards based on user votes and awards for schools and students to encourage an interest in and innovative uses of data.

If you have other ideas on how Data.gov.au could be better than the UK and US efforts, please add them in the comments below.

To finish up - here's a good presentation from Sir Tim Berners Lee (who has led the work on data.gov.uk) on why we need to make government data available in raw reusable form, to the public.

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Overcoming public sector hurdles to Gov 2.0

Having now spent around three years listening to colleagues across federal, state and local government, I hear remarkable consistent themes raised as barriers to successful Gov 2.0 implementations.

The number one theme I have heard raised is the lack of Gov 2.0 commitment and experience across senior public service management. This reflects similar views in the private sector – people are generally most comfortable with the technologies they grew up with and senior management in both public and private sectors is commonly still of the 'TV generation'.

This barrier seems to be lowering as senior management gains personal experience with internet technologies and begin to see the benefits. It's a long road, but it appears to me that we're on the way.

The second set of barriers I hear about related to Gov 2.0 is more concerning to me. It relates to the governance framework and policies inside which public servants have to operate.

Like the private sector it appears government systems are struggling in some areas to keep up with the rate of change in the community and in technology. If our systems can't support Gov 2.0 initiatives then it is unlikely that our senior management will.

Some of the examples I've been given - together with some of my approaches to address them are below,

• Procurement policies
  Government procurement processes designed for acquiring the best value software and hardware products don't always translate as well to the sourcing of online systems.
  
  Many online vendors do not have presences in Australia and would not be aware of, or simply not bother responding to, Australian tender processes. This risks potentially excluding the best value products from consideration, leaving Departments to choose from local integrators with their own products or reselling an otherwise cheap solution.
  
  Solution:
  To address this, Departments need to consider ways to make it easier for online services to participate in procurement processes, via panels, industry reviews and other approaches that identify a set of potential providers who can be appropriately considered within a tender process – within the government's guidelines of course.
  
  

• Credit card use online
  Some Departments restrict the use of credit cards online - a common payment avenue for many online services. This could lead online teams into grey areas of the system, using work-arounds such as paying a third party a premium for using their credit card to pay the service online or by providing credit card details by phone – which are then directly inputted into the online form by the service provider. These workarounds can be onerous for monthly subscriptions.
  
  These workarounds may increase the financial risk that the regulations are seeking to mitigate – and may also add extra costs to the public purse.
  
  Solution:
  My recommendation would be to encourage Departments to allow online credit card use under appropriate circumstances – either to a delegated amount per transaction, or via an approved list of suppliers (reviewed annually). This would help minimise the risk of online transactions while not encouraging inappropriate actions.
  
  
  
• Reg 10
  Secondly, formal regulations such as FMA Regulation 10 (PDF) - known as Reg 10 - can add significant red tape to the use of both free and paid online services.
  
  Reg 10 approval is formally required for any service for which a contract or agreement is formed and the service cost or potential contingent liability stretches into future financial years - even if the chance of a liability arising is remote.
  
  This means that the use of a service such as a free online mapping product requires Reg 10 approval in case someone in a future financial year sues the Department due to use of the product.
  
  Getting Reg 10 approval generally adds extra steps to the process of delivering Gov 2.0 outcomes – and for a full community engagement site may require five or more Reg 10 approvals (one per 3rd party tool used).
  
  While it is not generally prohibitive to get Reg 10s approved, they commonly require signing by people outside the sections involved with online initiatives, which can slow things down – or even block them where senior management doesn't understand the risks.
  
  Also, a new Reg 10 may be required for each separate use of an online service. This could add further administrative burdens and create situations in Departments where some uses of a service are approved but identical uses in other areas are not, based on the views of specific managers.
  
  Solution:
  There may be ways to streamline Reg 10 approvals for frequently used online services by maintaining a central Departmental record which is simply amended with any additional risks regarding additional uses of online services. Where there are no additional risks for a new use, the Reg 10 would require limited scrutiny as the Department had already accepted the risks.

• Access to and use of social media
  Many Departments technically prohibit access to social media in the workplace on the basis of it being a misuse of Commonwealth resources (though personal phone calls are not similarly restricted through PABX systems).
  
  While a few authorised staff may be allowed access to social media tools (such as Twitter, Facebook or YouTube) to monitor and, in a few cases respond, to online comments about the Department - or to manage the Department's own online accounts - most staff are not allowed to see the Department's online presence.
  
  This can leave staff blind when a customer or stakeholder calls to discuss a Department's social media presence. It can also cut them off from various government and professional social media communities and prevent them from asking their peers for work-related help in a cost-effective and productivity-enhancing manner.
  
  Finally it prevents the Department from developing widespread internal skills in the use of social media and may discourage potential employees, who expect to be able to tap into online professional knowledge to remain current and employable in their professions.
  
  Solution:
  I'd suggest that Departments consider shifting their response from technically prohibiting access to social media to providing clear guidance to their staff on appropriate use of social media and using existing management and technical monitoring systems to audit adherence. This would enable staff to 'get on with their jobs', while leaving inappropriate behaviour detectable and actionable in the same way Departments manage telephone communications.
  
  

• Government Campaign Advertising Guidelines
  People from several Departments have told me that under the interpretation of the Government Campaign Advertising Guidelines (http://www.finance.gov.au/advertising/index.html) used by their Departments they are not able to use social media techniques in campaigns.
  
  This is related to 'control of message' – which is interpreted by their Departments as meaning that messages cannot be collaboratively developed with community involvement or redistributed by the community through online friend-sharing systems (which place these messages outside of government control). One of the main risks outlined to me was that government messages may reach people they were not targeted to – and offend them unnecessarily.
  
  This interpretation reflects the newness and speed of online systems. For example, if the government distributes messages in print brochures there are no safeguards to prevent the brochures being passed on to friends. This also applies to TV and radio material – which is often redistributed by the community through services such as youTube. For example, the famous ten-pin bowling Grim Reaper ad about AIDS from NSW was released in 1987, but is still viewable on youTube 22 years later – even though YouTube didn't exist until 15 years after the ad screened.
  
  Solution:
  In this case I recommend Departments speak directly to the Campaign Advertising team at Finance for clarification and some examples of how government campaigns can stay within the Campaign Advertising Guidelines but still make use of social media tools. They can potentially look at how other Departments are using social media tools for examples of how to manage risks around messages and stay within the Guidelines
  

Are there any other barriers or hurdles to Gov 2.0 initiatives that you've encountered?

Share them - even anonymously. You never know, someone else may have a solution!

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The daily hurdles government faces in attempting to engage online

Tim Davies from the UK has written an excellent post highlighting all the 'small hurdles' that government agencies face when attempting to engage online.

Entitled OpenGov: One big challenge? Or a thousand small hurdles, despite coming from the UK, the list reflects many of the hurdles faced in Australian government that need to be overcome for Departments to seriously use online engagement alongside other forms of communication and customer interaction.

A number of the hurdles are related to policies and behaviours which would not be tolerated by senior management were they applied to telephones, written correspondence or public appearances.

I am very curiously watching to see how long it takes government to move to remove these hurdles for the online channel as well.

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