Follow me on Twitter
Friend me on Google+
Profile me on LinkedIn
Follow me on FriendFeed
Posts
All Comments
What governments can teach businesses about social | Tweet |
Infographics: How does Australia compare on government open data released? | Tweet |
Victorian government releases its Digital Innovation Review | Tweet |
Involves the use of digital channels, tools and relevant methodologies to improve the operation of organisations and the delivery of services.The report reviews how Victorian citizens and the Victorian government have adopted digital channels, surveyed Victorian public servants on their online and digital innovation activity and included a series of in-depth best practice case studies of digital innovation by Victorian agencies.
Within government this includes the use of social media and Government 2.0 approaches and channels, as well as broader use of online tools to improve agency management, policy development and service delivery.
Looking back, looking forward - where now for the eGovAU blog | Tweet |
 |
| Monthly page views to the eGovAU blog |
Government tops the list of effective email marketers | Tweet |
 |
| Open rates for industries from Vision 6's Email Marketing Metrics Report |
eDemocracy report from Lowey - US striding ahead | Tweet |
In Public Diplomacy, State now operates what is effectively a global media empire, reaching a larger direct audience than the paid circulation of the ten largest US dailies and employing an army of diplomat-journalists to feed its 600-plus platforms.
In other areas, like Knowledge Management, ediplomacy is finding solutions to problems that have plagued foreign ministries for centuries.One of the key changes that Fergus noted was how the organisation functioned as a start-up, not as a staid old-fashioned bureaucracy. For example,
In interviews with office staff, conversation quickly turns from notional duties to ‘passion projects’ – the new ideas and platforms staff work on in their spare time. And there are plenty in the works. The Inspector General, whose recent report on the office made it sound like a review of a Silicon Valley start-up, noted over 40 underway.
Other employees also seem to have got a message regularly repeated at the Office of eDiplomacy; Experiment. It’s okay to fail. One enterprising official working on US library spaces abroad realised how costly and pointless it was sending physical books across the globe and cut a deal with Amazon to get discounted Kindles delivered instead.
And in Zimbabwe, the greying US Ambassador, Charles A Ray, has embraced Facebook as a way of circumventing the iron grip Robert Mugabe exercises over freedom of the press. He engages in an active and animated discussion with Zimbabweans about how they view the world.In my view this report doesn't only highlight the new world of diplomacy, but also the new world of the public service.
If Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus and MySpace were Aussie states | Tweet |
In traditional organisations, innovation often appears to happens at the wrong end of a gun | Tweet |
When I think back over the most well known innovation successes over the last few years, and I am not specifically referring to the public sector, an aspect that springs out at me is how often these innovations occurred during a major crisis or due to a funding crunch.
In other words, these innovations frequently happened when organisations were placed at the wrong end of a gun.
It appears to me that often these innovations only occurred, or were allowed to see the light of day, because the pressure put on organisations by environmental or internal changes altered the perceived risk of innovating to be less than the perceived risk of not innovating - "the ship is sinking anyway, so we might as well try something different.
This raises several major concerns for me. Firstly that some organisations are incredibly resistant to innovation and can place themselves, or their management, into unviable situations by not beginning to innovate soon enough.
Secondly if the leadership of an organisation can see this conservative at work but wish to see innovation occur they may draw the conclusion that they need to place the organisation in significant distress - cutting budgets or hoping for (stimulating?) an external crisis that threatens its future viability.
This places enormous stress on individuals, with all kinds of negative consequences.
Isn't it better for organisations to proactively institutionalize innovation and change processes? Become capable and willing to change before a crisis occurs? To make innovation a key strategy for organisational adaptation rather than a last resort when system failures are already well underway?
This would involve changing the view of innovation to be an activity that is rewarded as a behaviour and activity, rather than being one that is punished, except at the organisation's "death's door".
A few organisations have successfully integrated innovation into their DNA as a core driver of their success. I hope more do so in the future and, at a larger scale, more societies as well.
Public Sector Innovation Toolkit released | Tweet |
As a living resource I expect to see the toolkit growing and maturing based on the feedback of its users as a world-class tool for public servants.
- provide information about the innovation process, tools and approaches that can support innovation in public sector organisations
- provide updates on developments in APS innovation
- provide links to relevant information and research
- discuss issues relating to public sector innovation
- ask for input
- highlight examples of innovation in the public sector.
Australian Government launches data.gov.au | Tweet |
...The release of public sector information in the form of datasets allows the commercial, research and community sectors to add value to government data in new, innovative and exciting ways.
Data.gov.au plays a crucial role in realising the Australian Government’s commitment to informing, engaging and participating with the public, as expressed in its Declaration of Open Government and Freedom of Information (FoI) reforms.
Australiam Gov 2.0 Taskforce announces winners for its brainstorming and innovation competitions | Tweet |
Australia's Government 2.0 Taskforce has announced the winners of its structured brainstorming competition, which was held in September - October this year.
The competition involved public submissions and voting via an ideas market system with the final decision on winners being made by the Taskforce.
In the structured brainstorming category there were two winning ideas, both nominated by Brad Peterson,
Finding Australian government on social media | Tweet |
It can be quite hard at times to find out who in Australian government is doing what using social media.
However due to a new service from the Victorian government it is possible to easily see what Victoria's state and local governments are doing online.
Hosted at Victoria Online, the social media section provides,
a comprehensive list of social media pages for local, state and federal government. This includes RSS feeds, podcasting, photo sharing and various other online communication tools.
Is Australian egovernment innovation on life support? | Tweet |
I've been reading a post by James Dellow at his Chieftech blog, Using Twitter as a benchmark for Australian local government use of social media.
He compared the 90 out of 468 (approx. 20%) UK councils using Twitter to the 3 out of 677 (less than 1%) Australian councils using the tool to engage online, asked the question,
If you work in local government in Australia I would love to know more about what’s stopping you from experimenting with social media and social computing.
A method to measure the level of government 2.0 in a government site - egovernment index | Tweet |
Andrew Krzmarzick has posted an interesting article on his Generation Shift blog regarding a method to measure the level of government 2.0 services included in a government site.
Developed by the Brookings Institute, the approach involves scoring agencies against a set of criteria and tracking them over time. The Institute has analysed over 1,500 US state and federal government sites against the criteria, providing a large sample for comparison purposes.
The Brookings Institute has produced a report on the topic, State and Federal Electronic Government in the United States, 2008 (PDF).
It is a very interesting read and might provide a useful benchmarking tool for Australian government agencies to measure their own sites.
Microsoft online campaign encouraging US government IT officials to post best practice videos | Tweet |
Over in the US Microsoft is running a major campaign targeting government which aims to collect best practice videos from senior IT leaders in the public sector.
Based on the premise that shrinking government budgets means that IT has to achieve more with less, the Bright side of Government site aims to,
spotlight the “bright side” of IT in the government sector with videos, by you and from you, that showcase how government IT pros are putting technology to use to help state and local government agencies do more with less.
US satisfaction with egovernment services rising | Tweet |
The US government has recorded the second consecutive increase in satisfaction, to an average 73.5 percent in the latest E-Government Satisfaction Index, part of the broader American Customer Satisfaction Index (private sector website satisfaction is at 80 percent).
As reported in CRM Buyer, 25 percent of sites achieved a rating over 80 percent.
The feature constituents were least satisfied with was navigation (37 percent were satisfied), whilst 96 percent were satisfied with search functionality.
Commentators are expecting the upward trend to continue as a result of the ongoing US financial crisis.
This upward trend will likely continue, Freed [Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results] said, if for no other reason than current budgetary constraints. With the U.S. government now committed to a US$700 billion financial rescue plan, money will be tight in all other categories. "E-government can deliver a huge payback because it is so much more efficient," he observed.
Addressing customer service for the email channel | Tweet |
From my experience in government, both as a customer and as a public servant, I've discovered that when addressing emails from citizens, government agencies often treat email as surface mail rather than as a phone call.
This means that citizens who choose an electronic communications route can often expect response times measured in weeks or months, rather than in minutes or hours.
Personally I find this unacceptable.
In asking why this was the case I have been told that government cannot discriminate based on mode of contact. That we cannot respond faster to customers choosing to use email rather than surface mail - even though a wait of even a few minutes is considered unacceptable for phone calls.
I have also been told by some departments (by phone or via their websites) that they cannot respond by email at all. That to protect my privacy they must send messages via surface mail - that post is more secure, more convenient or more official - even if I am happy to accept the risks and choose to email them.
I saw a similar situation in the private sector five years ago. Companies were unsure whether to treat emails as a postal medium or a a telephonic one.
They did not have a clear understanding of how email worked technically and did not trust its reliability or security (compared to other mediums).
They did not have staff trained or processes in place to handle a high-speed written medium.
Fortunately, at least in the private sector, many organisations are now more mature in their understanding and application of email.
My solution to ensuring emailing customers get the right level of respect and service in both public and private organisations has remained the same - treat emails as phone calls.
Email is perceived by the community as a nearly instant form of communication, like the telephone or face-to-face.
None of us would let a phone ring for a month before answering it, so why subject customers choosing email to this?
Email is often treated with suspicion by organisations, due to perceived security issues in how it is transmitted from place to place and the concern that it is easy to intercept.
However people have adopted email regardless of perceived risks due to its benefits - high speed and low cost with a fast response time. Today, throughout western countries, people send many times more emails, often of a personal nature, than they make phone calls.
Given that government organisations have a greater obligation to protect citizen information than do our customers themselves, how can this be addressed?
I have a three point plan I have successfully used in organisations (including my current agency) to begin to address these concerns.
1. Formally assess the risks of email alongside telephony and surface mail
Many organisations have a defacto email security policy, one that has grown from personal opinions, interpretations and often from misunderstandings about the medium rather than through an objective and formal risk assessment process.
This is easy to address - get the legal, technical and customer service people together in a room and assess the risks of each form of customer contact.
It is particularly important to assess relative risk, for example:
Consider different scenarios, for example:
Consider organisational capability, for example:
Assess customer expectations, for example:
Out of this it becomes possible to correctly understand the medium's characteristics, the real risks, what customers expect and then determine the mitigations which diminish, remove or defer any critical risks.
2. Change internal policies that do not reflect law
Often side-effect from not having conducted a formal risk assessment, internal email policies may not always reflect the current laws of the land (policy is often stricter).
Once a formal risk assessment has been conducted, you should review and rewrite internal policies on customer communications to reflect the risk assessment outcomes.
These policies should include details on when and how a customer can choose to accept the risks and take ownership of the security of the process.
If you find that there are no written policies, write them down and communicate them widely. They should include the background and 'myth-busters' as well as the code of (email) conduct.
3. Review laws to meet community expectations
Sometimes it's the actual laws themselves which are out-of-step with community sentiment and concerns.
Laws are living things, frequently being amended and adjusted to address new situations and changes in social norms.
Privacy and security laws are no different to other laws in this and require regular review to match citizen expectations - there is no 'right' level of privacy, it is dictated by public opinion.
As such, if your customer sentiment reflects a different view and acceptance of (email) security than do Australia's laws, feed this information back into the policy process.
Change is possible, and it will allow your organisation to provide better customer service as a result.
Australia rated 6th in global egovernment study | Tweet |
Brookings University recently released its report Improving Technology Utilization in Electronic Government around the World, 2008 (link to PDF).
This ranks the government websites of 198 nations, reviewing 6-10 sites in each nation.
Australia ranked 6th, behind South Korea, Taiwan, the US, Singapore and Canada, up from 8th position last year.
As a benchmark this is great - it's better than our Olympic ranking (on substantially less funds per website than we spend on medal winning athletes), and substantially better than our global population ranking of around 50th.
However this study compares governments against other governments, rather than with citizen expectations.
While I do use other governments' initiatives to stimulate my thinking, I'm more interested in what our citizens want.
I also regularly refer to AGIMO's fantastic work on the use of government services online, and the 2006 e-Government Strategy, Responsive Government. There was also the (now superceded) Guide to Minimum Web Site Standards.
However none of these provide a citizen-centric view of what government sites need to provide that can be used to provide numerical ratings for each government site.
I'd love to have such a ranking available as I used to have in the private sector - using Global Reviews - to provide guidance as to what our citizens want, and the relative importance of different functionality. This would greatly assist my team and I'm sure other online groups, to prioritise online developments inline with citizen desires.
Has anyone seen a study in Australia or elsewhere on the community's expectations of how citizens should be able to engage government online?
Benchmarking government websites, intranets and egovernment services | Tweet |
I've found it quite difficult to benchmark my agency's online services against those of other agencies in Australia.
Besides AGIMO's annual report on Australians' use of and Satisfaction with e-Government services and some of their past case studies, there's limited information available across Australian agencies regarding different departments' online experiences.
Over in New Zealand they recently benchmarked local government sites (PDF) and also benchmark government use of ICT and accessibility every few years.
In Europe they benchmark the supply of online public services (PDF) and a document from 2004 provided a very keen insight into why and how to benchmark public services.
In the US there is a quarterly review of government sites for user satisfaction.
So if anyone from another government agency is interested in benchmarking their online services, drop me a line.
This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.
Please attribute in the form: Sourced from eGovAU
