Don't expect the new normal to be normal

Around the world governments are struggling to understand and adopt social media and other digital tools into their business operations. 

In Australia many agencies are quite advanced in adopting social and Gov 2.0 tools - with digital firmly integrated into communication programs and, to a lesser extent, into program delivery and policy development.

In fact in some places I'm seeing a degree of complacency, the type that has senior public sector leaders saying "we have Facebook and Twitter and are using them successfully without any major issues or incidents".

This is a good thing. It's great to see agencies using digital channels well to engage with the community and each other.

However it is important to keep in mind that the world hasn't simply gone digital and stopped turning.

Technology continues to evolve at an incredible pace. 

Thirty years ago most of us used desktop computers with text interfaces. Twenty years ago the internet only had a few hundred web domains. Ten years ago there was no Twitter and both Facebook and Youtube were novel, with MySpace the dominant social network. Five years ago tablet computing devices were not in widespread use and mobile computing was still emerging as a thing.

While agencies may have developed the systems and expertise to navigate today's digital world, this map won't necessarily equip them for the digital world in five, ten or twenty years.

This means agencies need to continue to evolve and innovate, experimenting with new technologies and retesting their assumptions about older digital tools and approaches.

The new normal is evolutionary, not static, with technology increasingly reshaping societies into forms that were not predicted or prepared for.

Technology has already shifted the balance of power between large organisations and individuals, revolutionised manufacturing and medicine, made universal surveillance possible and given every person their own television, radio and newspaper channels.

What comes next - with 3D printing, nano-technology, robotics, self-drive vehicles, personal digital augmentations and more - will continue to challenge governments and societies to redefine what is appropriate and legal.

So keep up the good work using Facebook and Twitter to distribute your messages and to engage your audiences in open conversations. 

But keep an eye on the horizon for what may be ahead.

 

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Intrapreneurship and the art of digital transformation - improving how government operates

It's been a tough week to resume blogging about digital government, egovernance and Gov 2.0, with the attention of the media, public, public service and politicians fixed on politics rather than the operations of government.

However the nature of government, and of humans in general, is that politics is always a key element in getting stuff done (or undone as the case may be).

When it comes to improving how government operates and serves the public, in my view the goal or outcome of Gov 2.0 (whatever buzzword is used to describe the topic), the political element must always be considered part of the fabric of the process.

Little gets done without the authorisation and example of management, or at least a blind eye from those at the top allowing gray space in laws and policies for changes to creep through.

The discussion and debate over whether (and how much) innovation can occur in government, whether agencies can transform themselves to meet citizen expectations while reducing costs - as typified by the concept of Digital Transformation - thus must consider the political elements as well as the practical.

Do the political masters of the public service support Digital Transformation and what does 'support' mean in practice? Do the appointed heads and senior executives of government agencies embrace and champion the change, despite potential disruptions to their orderly structures and ongoing policy challenges? Do the middle management understand completely the vision and goals of the process, and can it be aligned with their practical day to day struggles to allocate the right people and resources to meet the goals of their agencies? And are the officers who undertake many of the roles requires to keep the machinery of government operating mentally and physically prepared to change their habits in pursuit of change?

Aligning these factors is a challenge at an agency level, at a whole-of-government level it becomes even more so, but it is a challenge that public servants face after every election, Ministerial shuffle or machinery of government change.

Indeed often the challenge is that there's simply too much and too frequent change in government for officers to become familiarised with the last set of changes before being thrown into new ones, with the leadership - political and operational - finding it hard to bed down new systems before being confronted with new ones,

This blend of stability, structure and chaos into which the announcement of the creation of a Digital Transformation Office has been made, at a time when the nation is discussing questions of national leadership and the public sector is still bedding down the machinery of government changes of 12 months ago, and the Ministerial changes of last month may thus seem a very challenging environment in which to achieve success.

Having come from an entrepreneurial environment, and having successfully intrapreneured in government, participating in and running teams of technologists and business professionals, my view is that the current moment in government is possibly the best time and opportunity for groups seeking to create change that we've seen in a few years.

Innovation flourishes when the status quo is uncertain and malleable, not within environments where structure and objectives are clear cut and certain.

When organisations are clear on their objectives, have optimum structures to achieve them and have leadership focused on the task at hand, innovation is kept to the margins, providing incremental improvements to maintain the status quo.

But when the status is not quo, when change is the norm and the goals are less clear, innovation can be bolder and  more revolutionary. It becomes possible to consider radical options, to allow a greater risk of failure in the pursuit of larger outcomes and success.

For digital transformation to succeed it must be possible to link together disparate systems and thinking from across government, to smash through existing silos and processes when considering new designs for policy creation and delivery and rebuild the mechanisms that underpin the operations of government not just in new forms, but in new ways.

There's no better time to attempt this then when existing silos are fragile and the pressure of falling budgets, personnel and loss of expertise is mounting.

The challenge will be to gain the advocacy and mindshare required to drive through the transformation agenda alongside the competing priorities that agencies now face.

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The future of intelligence is distributed - and so is the future of government

In 2011 an IBM computer, Watson, beat human competitors at Jeopardy! 

This was a new landmark in artificial intelligence - a computer capable of correctly responding to plain English questions, in real time, by figuring out their intent.

At the time Watson was a computer as big as a room, and it was the only one of its kind in the world.

The original Watson still exists, as discussed in this Wired article, The Three Breakthroughs That Have Finally Unleashed AI on the World, however it is no longer alone.

Hundreds of Watsons are now in operation - not as room-sized computers, but operating 'in the cloud', as distributed software across thousands of open-source servers.

People can access the intellect and computing power of these Watsons through any computing device connected to the internet.

Even more significantly, like many artificial intelligences, Watson is a learning machine that gets more knowledgeable and able to find insights the more it learns. Whenever a Watson learns something, making a new connection, that knowledge is shared with every Watson - making it a distributed intelligence, able to learn at rates far faster than even a single supercomputer, or human, is able to learn.

The power of Watson isn't in the revolutionary algorithms that power its learning, it's in the network itself - how separate Watsons can share knowledge and learn from each other.

This is how humans evolved civilisation - by capturing, codifying, storing and sharing knowledge in sounds, images and words to pass it on from one individual to another.

However Watson hints at a more robust future for human intelligence, and for how we govern ourselves.

Humans have proven over the centuries that having more learners with better knowledge sharing means faster progress and better decision-making. Books, universal schooling and the internet have shown how dramatically a society can progress when appropriate knowledge sharing systems are in place.

The key is to focus on the size and complexity of the networks, not the expertise of individual 'nodes' (you might call them humans).

For computers this means that the more Watsons we create, and the more complex the knowledge sharing between them, the faster they will learn.

For governments this means the greater the transparency, and the more informed citizens are participating in knowledge sharing, the better the decisions and outcomes will be.

Now this isn't how government is currently constituted. The notion of representative democracy is that governance is handed to experts and specialists who live and breathe government so the rest of the population doesn't have to.

We elect politicians who are supposed to representative the interests of their electorates, and appoint bureaucrats whose role is to provide specialist knowledge and operate the machinery of government - develop policy, design and deliver programs, enforce laws and support citizens in emergencies.

By its nature this approach to government relies on experts who are placed separately to the population - often even physically removed and concentrated in a city like Canberra, Washington, Ottawa, Brazilia, Naypyidaw or Putrajaya.

This group (elected and appointed public servants alike) tend to become inwards focused - focused on how to make government keep working, not on whether it actually works and delivers for citizens.

Particularly inwardly focused governments tend to become so removed from their citizens that they are overthrown - though they've usually replaced with a not-dissimilar system.

Now we can do much better.

Rather than focusing on electing and appointing individual experts - the 'nodes' in our governance system, governments need to focus on the network that interconnects citizens, government, business, not-for-profits and other entities.

Rather than limiting decision making to a small core of elected officials (supported by appointed and self-nominated 'experts'), we need to design decision-making systems which empower broad groups of citizens to self-inform and involve themselves at appropriate steps of decision-making processes.

This isn't quite direct democracy - where the population weighs in on every issue, but it certainly is a few steps removed from the alienating 'representative democracy' that many countries use today.

What this model of governance allows for is far more agile and iterative policy debates, rapid testing and improvement of programs and managed distributed community support - where anyone in a community can offer to help others within a framework which values, supports and rewards their involvement, rather than looks at it with suspicion and places many barriers in the way.

Of course we need the mechanisms designed to support this model of government, and the notion that they will simply evolve out of our existing system is quite naive.

Our current governance structures are evolutionary - based on the principle that better approaches will beat out ineffective and inefficient ones. Both history and animal evolution have shown that inefficient organisms can survive for extremely long times, and can require radical environmental change (such as mass extinction events) for new forms to be successful.

On top of this the evolution of government is particularly slow as there's far fewer connections between the 200-odd national governments in the world than between the 200+ Watson artificial intelligences in the world.

While every Watson learns what other Watsons learn rapidly, governments have stilted and formal mechanisms for connection that mean that it can take decades - or even longer - for them to recognise successes and failures in others. 

In other words, while we have a diverse group of governments all attempting to solve many of the same basic problems, the network effect isn't working as they are all too inward focused and have focused on developing expertise 'nodes' (individuals) rather than expert networks (connections).

This isn't something that can be fixed by one, or even a group of ten or more governments - thereby leaving humanity in the position of having to repeat the same errors time and time again, approving the same drugs, testing the same welfare systems, trialing the same legal regimes, even when we have examples of their failures and successes we could be learning from.

So therefore the best solution - perhaps the only workable solution for the likely duration of human civilisation on this planet - is to do what some of our forefather did and design new forms of government in a planned way.

Rather than letting governments slowly and haphazardly evolve through trial and error, we should take a leaf out of the book of engineers, and place a concerted effort into designing governance systems that meet human needs.

These systems should involve and nurture strong networks, focusing on the connections rather than the nodes - allowing us to both leverage the full capabilities of society in its own betterment and to rapidly adjust settings when environments and needs change.

We managed to design our way from the primitive and basic computers of the 1950s to distributed artificial intelligences in less than 70 years.

What could we do if we placed the same resources and attention on designing governance systems that suited modern society's needs?

And it all comes down to applying a distributed model to governance - both its design and its operation, rather than focusing on the elevation of individual experts and leaders to rule over us.

It's a big challenge, but for a species that went from horses to spaceships in two generations, it surely isn't an impossible one.

And given that societies thrive or die depending on how they are governed, are we willing to take the the risk and hope that our current governance and political systems simple evolve into more effective forms within a human lifespan?

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Why should governments continue to control voting systems and processes?

Having centralised systems for voting is the standard approach for countries around the world.

In most places it is simply accepted that the government funds the system for election and referendum voting - funding the polling places, ballot boxes, officials and vote counting systems, whether this be directly or at arms length via a body independent of government, but reliant on government funding.

And let's face it, voting is integral to governance. Voting provides legitimacy to a country's government, providing some form of mandate for a ruling party and ensuring that populations are satisfied with a given set of representatives by giving them a role in choosing them.

Looking at it cynically, having governments control voting could be seen as a conflict of interest - the politicians with an interest in re-election both create the electoral laws and fund the system for casting ballots.

Indeed in some parts of the world systematic electoral fraud is a major concern - the government can influence elections outcomes by changing the legal requirements for voting, adjusting electoral boundaries, place onerous condition on forming or operating new parties or on standing for election, limit electoral donations or advertising by opposition parties, or restricting physical access to ballot boxes.

That's before getting to issues with who votes, how many times and how the votes are counted.

In countries where there's substantial trust in governance and the electoral system these issues are generally small-scale, though ever present as we continue to see with voter identification laws introduced in some US states, major parties voting themselves more electoral funding (as Australia's two major parties tried to do in 2013) and individual examples of bad practice by candidates across all democracies.

In places where democracy is fragile and institutions are weak these issues are magnified, and various systems have been developed to keep elections honest - independent observers are often involved (where allowed) to scrutinise an electoral process; citizens and activist groups have photographed and published issues at ballot boxes online via mobile devices, first in ad hoc ways and then via map-based reporting systems such as Ushahidi; entire websites dedicated to exposing electoral fraud and bad practice have popped up around the world.

These systems have often migrated back to established democracies, for example, the mobile phone tool used to scrutinise the 2007 Kenyan elections was reused in the US Presidential race in 2008, demonstrating that in sustaining freedom to vote, eternal vigilance remains important.

However these are simply systems to scrutinise how governments run elections, rather than independent voting processes. They watch and report what happens in electoral systems, but don't seek to replace these systems directly.

Switzerland is perhaps unique in that it has an entrenched system of direct democracy which allows citizens to overrule parliament through a plebiscite vote - but even then the electoral process is funded and managed by the state.

More recently we've seen pseudo-electoral systems emerge - online petition systems like Change.org, which is having a material impact on government decisions. We've also seen systems that allow citizens to put forward laws to parliaments using banking details to validate individual supports (voters) for a given legislative proposal.

Governments broadly keep these systems at arms length, retaining the discretion to ignore these votes where they choose, for whatever reason they see fit - and fair enough, these systems are often flawed electorally, representing specific groups, can be prone to some level of gaming and don't have the same level of scrutiny as a formal government-run electoral process.

However the technology now exists for this to change - and it already is, beginning in Hong Kong.

In June this year two legislative steps by China were seen in Hong Kong to weaken the 'One country, Two system' approach that the city had been operating under since reunification with China.

As a result academics and citizens of Hong Kong started the ‘Occupy Central with Love and Peace’ campaign, which involved the non-violent occupation of the main business district of the city with the goal of achieving universal suffrage for voting in time for the 2017 election of the next Hong Kong Chief Executive.

Attached to this process was an unofficial city referendum which took place from June 20th – June 29th 2014. The poll asked two simple questions: which proposal for universal suffrage would you like to see implemented in Hong Kong and should the legislative council adopts an universal suffrage system if it does not abide with the international definition?

This was held outside (and without the support) of Hong Kong's government by citizens, involving online, mobile and physical voting at 20 'pop-up' polling booths set up across the city, with all Hong Kong residents aged over 18 eligible to vote.

While there were official efforts to prevent the referendum, including a large scale attack on the referendum website, the confiscation of voting boxes by Chinese officials and censorship of mentions of the referendum online by Chinese authorities, these did not prevent large scale voting by citizens.

At the end of the ten day process, 798,000 residents had voted - over 20 per cent of the eligible population. Most had voted via the mobile apps, with the second most popular way being online.

Despite the turnout, the Hong Kong government took the view that civil referendums had no legal standing under Hong Kong law, and therefore the result could be ignored.

This led to the largest public protest in Hong Kong since 2003, with over 500,000 people taking to the streets on July 1st 2014.

A good article detailing the process in detail is at Free Speech Debate, as Vote for Hong Kong – on the streets and online.

This type of unofficial civil referendum, where citizens get together to develop robust electoral systems and use them to state a view to a government, is possible today in much of the world.

The notion that voting systems are the province of governments, that only a central jurisdiction can manage a fair national electoral approach, simply no longer holds true.

So while citizens may choose to allow governments to manage these systems, it is feasible to outsource them - on a case-by-case or a permanent basis, detaching electoral processes from the individuals and groups seeking power.

In the future we may see more populations hold their own civil referendums on government policy or on who governs them.

While governments might decry these as illegitimate, as they are not covered within the laws that parliaments have created, these civil electoral processes may indeed be more legitimate in the long run - as the voting process and system are not designed or modified at the whim of those who hold power.

Indeed it will be interesting to see how the government of an advanced democracy reacts in the face of a civil referendum. Even if they deny the legitimacy of the process, they may find it hard to ignore the democratic backlash.

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Communications professionals have only five years to understand digital, or become unemployable, and other professions are close behind

Back in 2009 I started telling communications professionals that they had ten years to understand digital channels and integrate them into their thinking, or there would no longer be jobs for them in the industry.

I also blogged about this in February 2010.

At the time this was highly confronting to a number of experienced comms people, and I got quite a bit of push-back, particularly from more senior and experienced professionals about how their skills would always be necessary and valued.

I've stuck to this prediction and still refer to it regularly when presenting on the topic, adjusted for the number of years remaining. We're now at five years and counting.

Today I came across a post by Anika Johnson in her LinkedIn blog 'Why digital is no longer optional (or why digital shouldn’t exist at all)' which points out that communications professionals with strong digital skills are now earning more than traditional communications people - and their jobs didn't even exist a few years ago.

She also has a prediction on timelines:

My prediction is that if you work as a communications, media relations or marketing professional and you continue to avoid digital you will probably have trouble finding a job within five years. It’s harsh I know but the horse has already bolted. My world is already digital – yours, whether you like it or not, is too.

Five years left if you're a traditional communications professional, unwilling to build your digital skills.

However the digital transformation society is undergoing isn't restricted to communications, so it isn't only people working in media, PR, strategic, internal and corporate communications, marketing and market research who are affected.

For everyone else out there, the digital steamroller is encroaching on your turf too.

Police and emergency services increasingly use social media to gather intelligence, coordinate and communicate during emergencies.

Human resources (or 'People' as they now like to be known as) personnel conduct the majority of their recruitment and employee checks online and increasingly employee issues involve the use of digital channels.

Teachers source materials and learn via online mechanisms, communicating with busy parents via emails and running portals for gathering assignments.

Policy officers conduct their research and source views online, tracking influencers and activists on social channels.

Service delivery officers increasingly respond to requests and complaints via digital and social channels, and the services they deliver are increasingly digital-first.

Engineers and IT professionals manage and host their projects in the cloud, as do accountants and bankers their books.

Lawyers keep up with common law rulings and law changes via digital repositories and carry tablets instead of trolleys of files, and senior executives increasingly access their board papers and organisational dashboards via handheld digital devices.

Landscapers and builders plan their work via online tools and taxi drivers live on their GPS systems in most large cities - even when they know every street, their internet connected device gives them the fastest route for the day's conditions.

Soldiers are increasingly using digital tools to assist in everything from surveillance (like drones) to logistics support, with the first autonomous robotic sentry devices currently in active testing

There's few professions unaffected by digital and, in most cases, the better the understanding of the digital tools at their disposal the better an individual can perform.

Of course many of these professions has more than five years before someone with no interest or aptitude for digital becomes unemployable, however in most cases it won't be longer than twenty years.

Indeed some of these professions may even disappear or be replaced - who needs taxi drivers when we have autonomous cars?

So if you're in any profession and still resist learning and applying digital approaches and tools to your job requirements, you're probably in the twilight years of your career.

Enjoy these years while they last. There will be plenty of digitally savvy youngsters (and oldsters too) ready to take on your role when you are no longer suitable.

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VicHealth launches Physical Activity Innovation Challenge

VicHealth appears to be one of only a few agencies across Australian state and federal governments that has made a solid attempt at introducing public challenges as an adjunct to traditional policy approaches.

While most governments in Australia still use the same techniques for policy creation that they've used for 80 or more years, after the success of last year's Seed Challenge, VicHealth recently launched a new challenge around physical activity innovation.

With $400,000 in start-up funds available to be awarded to the best ideas, the new challenge invites sports bodies, entrepreneurs and changemakers to develop innovative approaches to get more Victorians physically active.

With information available at VicHealth's website, the Physical Activity Innovation Challenge both brings the public and various sporting and innovation bodies into the policy development process, and helps expose the department to the latest thinking and ideas around prompting people to take up physical activity.

This is the type of thinking that more Australian policy makers need to adopt in recognition that expertise is no longer concentrated within government agencies, and that they need to look further than the 'usual suspects' of lobbyists, activists and pressure groups, for great ideas to feed into policy development processes.

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It's nice to see government agencies share with each other

One of the most frustrating and, I think, silliest things I found when working in Australian government agencies was how almost every department, agency and statutory body developed almost all of its own policies, procedures, software and tools.

There was often 'undercover' sharing - where people in agencies would ask their colleagues in others for copies of their whatever policy, so they could craft one just like it - however there was no central repository where public servants could go and browse standard templated policy documents or access software code developed by other agencies to resolve certain common issues.

At one stage I actively looked at building a research directory for government - either from within an agency, or as a third-party site - where public servants could list the research their agencies had undertaken and the research they needed to access or undertake, so that it could be effectively shared between departments, saving money in re-running research and informing policy decisions.

This attempt didn't get off the ground as senior management strongly felt they had no obligation to share information on the research work conducted with 'THEIR' public dollars with other agencies - even the fact that they'd undertaken it in the first place.

Fortunately most of those senior managers have now retired (literally), and the new crop coming through are realising that, cash and time constrained as they are, that fighting over which agency 'owns' a specific policy, custom software or research that they commissioned gets in the way of productivity, efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

One of the outcomes has been the latest Australian Government whole-of-government website, GovShare.

GovShare had been talked about for nearly five years and has now finally arrived as a central location for agencies to share their work with other agencies to build standardisation and save money across the public service.

As the About page states, GovShare has been designed to support and promote collaboration across the Australian Public Service, and as an online resource it has been provided to APS agencies and their staff to:

• publish, discover and access a broad range of artefacts used within the APS, such as frameworks, guidelines, policies, standards, architectural models, open source software and a host of other ICT and business artefacts; 
• explore APS ICT services and solutions through the Agency Online Services Database and Agency Solutions Database; 
• find skilled people across the APS with expertise in particular fields or products; and 
• contribute to online discussions using the forum.

This type of sharing helps save money and time in government. It allows agencies to collaborate to design the best possible policies, guidelines and software and then customise it if needed for their specific needs.

While the benefits of the site won't necessarily be clearly visible outside of government circles, the efficiencies it will support will help agencies focus their resources on achieving the goals of government rather than on endlessly recreating the policies already in place elsewhere in government.

The site already contains nearly 2,000 'artefacts' for review, reuse and adaptation, and hopefully over the next few years this will swell as more agencies become active contributors as well as takers from the site.

It will also hopefully expand beyond its ICT roots into other business areas - allowing agencies to share standard communication strategy templates, HR policies, procurement guidebooks and financial guidelines - tools and resources that help public servants understand and abide by the rules the government sets in these areas.

Hopefully the site will expand beyond federal government as well, bringing state and local into the fold. These governments often face the same challenges, often with fewer resources, and GovShare could have a large role to play in reducing costs at all levels of government in Australia.

Ultimately it would be wonderful to see 'packages' of policies and guidelines that a newly created agency or statutory body can simply pick up, adapt and use for their operations.

This would be similar to the 'agency on a USB stick' concept that I've been talking about for several years around a set of software platforms and settings that would allow an agency to put in place a solid set of operational systems in a very short time.

However it is, as yet, early days for GovShare. Its success relies on three things, ongoing support from the department hosting it (Finance), active participation by agencies in 'gifting' their work to a common store for other agencies to access and the political will and nous to not kill the program before it bears fruit.

I hope Govshare will succeed, and think the omens are good. Its journey over the next five years will be interesting to watch.

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APSC's current online participation guidance becoming an unwanted and unneeded distraction

There's been a great deal of scrutiny of the APSC's revised guidance on social media participation by public servants since it came into effect in early 2012 (coincidentally about the time I left the public service).

Initially dubbed by some parts of the media as the 'Jericho amendments' (sorry Greg!), the 2012 guidance has regularly been criticised by a wide range of commentators including former public servants such as Bernard Keane,  Greg Jericho and myself.

The guidance, Circular 2012/1: Revisions to the Commission's guidance on making public comment and participating online, significantly narrowed the scope of what public servants could personally say publicly online (even while anonymous).

The original APSC Guidance on online participation from 2009 was, in my view, balanced and well-considered. It placed some necessary constraints on how public servants spoke personally in public social media channels about their own agency and the policies they worked on. This original guidance would not have been out-of-place in any workplace.

However the 2012 revision extended this much further, stating that it was not appropriate for public servants to make public comment that was:

"so harsh or extreme in its criticism of the Government, a member of parliament from another political party, or their respective policies, that it raises questions about the APS employee’s capacity to work professionally, efficiently or impartially. Such comment does not have to relate to the employee’s area of work"

In other words - any matter which might be the subject of a policy from any party with representation in parliament, even where the individual public servant was unaware of the policy and regardless of whether the public servant worked in the area.

This covers a large number of policies, from a large number of minor parties - potentially impacting on many areas of a public servant's lives.

For example it could make it difficult and uncomfortable for someone working, say, in the Communication portfolio, to publicly state their concerns about the NDIS, our diplomatic position on Sri Lanka or the treatment of Indigenous people in the Northern Territory - even where they are the parent of a disabled person, have a partner of Sri Lankan descent and their own family comes from the Northern Territory.

'So harsh or extreme' is not well defined by the guidance. It is subject to individual rulings by agency leadership, which could lead to inconsistency, as well as makes the words a potential tool for managers or colleagues to legally bully staff.

There's also no time limit on comments implied in the guidance - so if you've said nasty things online about a local member while at university, before even considering a role in the APS, you have no implicit right of appeal based on when you said it.

Even these types of retrospective comments could still 'raise questions about the APS employee’s capacity to work professionally, efficiently or impartially'.

Effectively, anything you've ever said publicly could be used to expel you from the public service at any future time.

You may note that I left the public service about the time the revised guidance came into effect. Without a doubt this blog would have fallen foul of this guidance retrospectively if I had not.


I saw another impact of the APSC participation guidance a few weeks ago when I spoke at a Records Management conference in Melbourne. In the afternoon there was a broad discussion by delegates of current record keeping legislation at state and federal level.

While state public servants were happy to publicly discuss the issues they saw with their state legislation and how to fix them, several federal public servants refused to comment to the group on Australian Government regarding record keeping law.

One of them confided to me personally that, while he was aware of several major issues with the current law, he was not prepared to air these issues or their potential solutions 'publicly' (amidst a group of his peers and some non-government people at a forum), as APSC guidance on participation meant that if he criticised government policy or laws it could end his career.

Rightly or wrongly he believed this, based on the APSC's Circular 2012/1: Revisions to the Commission's guidance on making public comment and participating online.

I was appalled to see experts silenced and self-censoring in this way. In my view this reduces government effectiveness and productivity by reducing the capability for the public service to improve and develop good policy.


My understanding is that the current APSC leadership remains comfortable with the current phrasing and while many senior public sector leaders and other officers have expressed disagreement with the revised policy to me privately, no-one senior is prepared to 'rock the boat'.

In the words of one public sector senior executive to me, the senior leadership are in 'survival mode' right now and no-one wants to call unwanted attention to themselves which could damage their effectiveness in other areas, or their future career.


Now the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet's policy on reporting inappropriate social media behaviour has cast another spotlight on this APSC guidance.

The media has portrayed the PM&C's policy as 'dob in colleagues' and on social media it has been portrayed as a step towards a police state.

In my view the actual intent of the PM&C guidance is quite benign.

There's nothing inappropriate about asking your staff to report fraudulent or bullying behaviour by their colleagues when they see it, and many agencies and companies have processes to support this behaviour as it improves workplaces, reducing corruption and improving productivity.

The concept of having staff at Prime Minister and Cabinet report back to the agency if they see their colleagues behaving badly on social media, criticising their own agency or policies, is no different to reporting other inappropriate behaviour.

Except when it is combined with the enormous reach of the current APSC guidance.

The combination of APSC guidance and the PM&C policy make it appear the public service is becoming a political auxiliary to the current government - even though APSC guidance pre-dates the current government and the PM&C policy is otherwise benign.


The high level of attention now cast onto this guidance and policy has now achieved the exact reverse of their intended purpose - they have damaged public trust and respect in the public service and Australian Government.

This is not due to inappropriate online behaviour by low-level public sector staff, but to the risk-averse decision of a few senior public sector leaders, who agreed to put the revised APSC guidance in place.

The current APSC guidance has now become an unwanted and unneeded distraction to a public service which has largely performed exceptionally well on social channels and had very few cases of inappropriate online behaviour by staff.

I would also not expect Ministers to be too happy at having their agendas sidelined by a few senior public servants, who decided in 2012 to enforce APS social media guidance that was too broad, too available to abuse and too invasive for the public or media to ignore.

The current storm will blow over, it always does, however the damage has already been done.

I hope the APSC recognise their part in this and revisit the scope and wording of Circular 2012/1.

It could, with some support and education, lead to improved engagement by public servants in public debate which, given their depth of experience, professionalism and knowledge, would be a good outcome for Australia's democracy.

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Is there a place for Agile in policy development?

The Agile software development methodology has changed the way many software companies operate.

The approach replaced production-line sequential and hierarchical 'waterfall' methods of developing code and services (based on the automobile production line), with iterative and responsive processes involving self-organising teams, continuous engagement and the division of bigger goals into short-term objectives - systems more attuned to the iterative modular nature of software.

Many of the top software and online services available today simply would not exist without Agile, or would be considerably less developed, from Microsoft Office to Facebook. Agile is also widely used by IT teams in government agencies, at varying degrees of sophistication and rigour.

Agile is said to increase productivity, reduce risk and improve ROI. However, that said, it isn't for the fainthearted, requiring organisational buy-in, discipline, commitment and a willingness to put customers and stakeholders at the centre of the development process, ahead of ideological or expert beliefs.

The question I have is whether Agile methodologies can be adapted to another process, which is still largely based on hierarchical systems, embedded interests and sequential design - government policy development.

The UK is currently committed to a major step towards an Agile-like policy approach, with a reform process to adapt an 'Open Policymaking' approach.

Detailed in http://my.civilservice.gov.uk, Open Policy mirrors a number of the attributes of Agile methodologies.

The approach intends to shift UK policy processes from being driven by top-down authority and fixed policy teams, towards co-design processes deeply involving stakeholders and managed by flexible policy teams drawn, based on skill, not status, from across government and other sectors.

The UK is even introducing the concept of contestable policy making, whereby the government is making funds available for organisations outside of government to develop policies, which would then be considered and potentially adopted by government as legislation, or integrated into agency-developed policy deliberations.

While open policy doesn't entirely reflect Agile methodologies, it draws from it in an attempt to create a new, more iterative and responsive approach to policy development.

With the UK's reforms still underway it is hard to yet assess whether the move to open policy will bear fruit. Trials of similar approaches (with varying levels of political and public sector commitment) elsewhere in the world are also still in early stages, so it is hard to identify successes - or failures - for open policy processes as yet.

However in an environment more complex and fast changing than ever before in history, open policy making attempts are likely to at minimum provide insights and significant lessons to governments who are prepared to innovate - learnings that could lead to improvements or changes to existing policy development processes.

To my thinking the key to this isn't necessarily the outcome - the key is to innovate in policy making, just as governments are seeking to innovate in other areas. If governments don't constantly try new things, measure the extent of change (improvement or otherwise) and share these learnings, then agencies and public sectors will ossify and undoubtably become fossils in a fast changing world.

To read more on open policymaking, see http://openpolicy.demsoc.org

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When senior public officials use online platforms to lead social change, we're witnessing a paradigm shift in government

I don't think this has been widely noticed in government yet, but Australia achieved an interesting Gov 2.0 first this week on the back of the Myers disability scandal.

The backstory: after the Prime Minister announced that DisabilityCare, the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), would be partially funded through an increase of 0.5% in the Medicare levy, the CEO of Myer, Bernie Brookes, was reported to have told a Macquarie Investment seminar that the levy was a bad idea as it was '' something they would have spent with us [Myer]''.

This led to a social media protest using the hashtag #boycottmyer, a number of critical articles in newspapers and roughly a 6% drop in Myer's share price. These reactions led to a 'backdown' by Mr Brooks, who made a (non)apology ''to those who may have been offended or hurt'', but didn't back away from his comments.

However what is really interesting from a government perspective was what happened next.

An epetition was started on Change.org as a reaction to Mr Brook's comments. This epetition asked Mr Brook and Myer to make a "real commitment to people with disabilities", by increasing disability employment to 10% by 2015.

Within 24 hours this epetition amassed over 24,000 signatures (including mine).

It might be hard to see in the image besides this text, but below the epetition is the name of its creator, Graeme Innes.

Graeme Innes happens to include his title as well 'Disability Discrimination Commissioner for Australia'.

That's right, Mr Innes is the federally appointed Disability Discrimination Commissioner and has been since 2005, a senior public servant working in the Human Rights Commission, a statutory body solely funded by the Australian Government.

So let's consider this again. The CEO of one of Australia's largest companies makes a comment at a fairly small event about his views regarding how disability care should and should not be funded.

He learnt, as Mitt Romney did earlier this year, that due to technology and empowered citizens, there's now only one room, and everyone can be in it all the time, as his comments get reported in the media and on social media.

The government's most senior official responsible for the disabilities area responds by officially creating an epetition on a leading online platform for fostering civic participation - an epetition specifically designed to attract and attracting a significant level of public engagement and support.

Can anyone remember how this type of scenario would have played out before the internet or, more recently, before the rise of social media and digitally engaged citizens (as long ago as when Mr Innes took up his present role in 2005)?

Firstly, the CEO's comments would likely not have been recorded and reported. Even if reported in the newspapers there would have been limited, if any, ability for the community to react to his words in a public manner other than letters to the editor the next day.

If reported, the Disability Discrimination Commissioner would have (at most) released a media release calling the comments 'inappropriate'. Or, post-internet, issued the release and added it to the Commission's website, and that would have been the end of it.

There would likely have been no public backlash, no public (un)apology by the CEO and the Disability Discrimination Commissioner would have not made an attempt to bring the weight of public opinion to bear. There simply wasn't a way for the Commissioner to do so - even for Mr Innes in 2005.

So what we've seen this week isn't simply a minor spat fed by an out-of-touch and close to retirement CEO making comments that appear to place his company's profits ahead of a significant social issue.

What we've seen is a senior public servant step out of the shadows to lead and shape community sentiment - engaging and leading the crowd through the use of an online social media platform specifically designed to foster social change.

To my knowledge that has never happened before in Australia.

When governments and their appointed or elected officers begin engaging and empowering the 'crowd' to aid social change we're witnessing a major change, even a paradigm shift, in how governments interact with and engage their citizens.

Expect to see much more of this type of engagement as Government 2.0 and social media become business as usual across Australia, and around the world.

In the immortal words of Bob Dylan, the times they are a'changin.

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What competing Australian broadband policies really tell us about how Australian politics and government are changing

Yesterday the Liberal-National Coalition released its broadband policy for Australia, in front of a high-tech set at Sky News, in contrast to the Labor Government's NBN plan and current rollout.

I'm not going to go into the politics of this announcement, nor the potential economic and social impacts of the differences between the policies in the short and long-term for Australia.

Instead I'd like to focus on what, for me, is the real story. Technology has, for the first time, become a leading consideration in Australian federal politics.

Looking over the last fifty years, topics such as industrial relations, jobs, families, resources, taxes and the environment have all been prominent areas for political debate. 

All have had their time in the sun as major electoral issues, while technology issues have largely remained off the main political radar, a minor concern dealt with by individual representatives or Ministers but not capturing the attention of Prime Ministers or entire governments.

Even the internet filtering proposal put forward by the Labor party in 2007 was released quietly only a week before the election, extensively tweaked and adjusted (with at least seven versions over three years) and finally abandoned with some face-saving - yes it became more public than previous technology-related topics and an election issue, but only a minor one, largely dealt with by the responsible Minister rather than a Prime Minister and entire government.

With the NBN and Coalition broadband policy we have seen a very different approach, with technology becoming a major and central electoral issue for the first time. The NBN is a leading topic for the Prime Minister and all of her Ministers, while the Coalition has taken the step to publicly release their rival policy a long way before the election, demonstrating the importance they place on countering the government's position.

This is unprecedented for what could be considered a technology issue and reflects the growing importance placed on internet access and use by Australian communities, businesses and government itself.

So what does this mean for the future?

The importance placed on broadband, whatever the outcome of the next election, means that politicians and their advisors are having to learn more to talk on technology topics, to discuss areas like broadband, ehealth, elearning, video conferencing and digital content.

Politicians who saw the internet as simply additional channels for communicating messages to electorates are now required to come face-to-face with how their electorates are using these channel and wish to use them in engaging with governments.

This flows to politicians having to learn more about the opportunities for governments to use digital channels to become more efficient, cutting costs, improving communication and engagement and becoming more open, transparent and collaborative.

In fact it is unlikely we'll see many new politicians enter parliament who don't have some awareness, appreciation and understanding of the value and importance of technology to Australia.

For a long time people working in and around the technology industry have deplored the low attention played to technology in politics and, besides a few leading lights, the lack of understanding of the potential ability for digital technology to drive Australia's economy and improve our governance.

I think this time is now coming to an end. 

With politicians more aware and engaged with technology issues, due to their higher awareness in the public eye, the implications are that all political parties at all levels of government will need to pay more attention to the impact of technology on society and on government.

They'll need to begin to think more deeply and holistically about how to leverage technology to improve their communities and their government agencies.

The notion of Government 2.0, or whatever political parties choose to call it, will become a more important part of their policy platform and there will be more focus - and funding - for how agencies go about using digital channels to improve government policy development and operations.

We're at the end of the beginning for Government 2.0, and at the beginning of an appreciation and understanding that Government 2.0 is simply Government.

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Solving the problems of cities via crowdsourcing - LLGA Cities pilot the future program

As cities are become more complex, so are their strategic challenges and the need to find innovative solutions to best serve their citizens.

With governments tightening their budgets at the same time, the challenges of modern cities are beginning to slip beyond the ability of city councils, or even national governments, to solve alone.

As a result many are now looking beyond their bureaucrats for support and solutions, using crowd sourcing to drive innovation and broaden their policy and service options.

A key example of this is the LLGA's Cities Pilot the Future program, now entering its fourth year.

The premise is simple. Cities publish details of a strategic challenge they need help solving and the public, social enterprises, research centres, not-for-profit and for-profit organisations are invited to contribute their solutions. Jurors shortlist and select winning solutions, which are then implemented.

Over the past three years 42 global cities from Europe, North, Central and South America, Africa and Asia have taken part in the annual programs - in fact the only populated continent not to have taken part in the program is Australia.

The last three programs received in more than 1,197 entries, leading to over 30 pilot programs, affecting 285 million citizens across 38 cities.

The 2013 program, which opened last week for entries, features an enormous range of different strategic challenges from 21 cities including:

• Aalborg, Denmark: Traffic congestion early-warning system
• Barcelona, Spain: Regenerate neighbourhoods using vacant space
• Boston, USA: Rethinking road castings
• Christchurch, NZ: Transformational lighting system
• Eindhoven, The Netherlands: Data exchange on public facilities and activities
• Fukuka, Japan: Smart international conference destination
• Lagos, Nigeria: Networked standalone content hotspots
• Lavasa, India: Social uplift and empowerment
• London, UK: Energy and greenhouse gas measurement
• Mexico City, Mexico: Digital tools for better, healthier ageing
• Oulu, Finland: Encourage visitor engagement through technology
• Paris, France: Making outside seating more resilient
• Rio De Janeiro, Brazil: Accessible healthcare in intelligent cities
• Rosario, Argentina: Network of green homes
• San Francisco, USA: Storm response coordination tool
• Sant Cugat, Spain: Smart Cityscape - maximising existing resources
• Sheffield, UK: Capturing and distributing industrial heat
• Tacoma, USA: Sustainable return on investment tool
• Terrassa, Spain: Connecting people to progress
• York, UK: Reducing health inequality in York

I think the list above, together with the diverse range of strategic issues cities identified in past years, demonstrates the potential range of challenges that crowdsourcing can be used to help cities solve.

Given the global range of participating cities in the LLGA program, my question is - where are the Aussies? 

Is it that our governments have single-handedly solved every strategic challenge in our cities?
(I don't believe this is true)

Or is it that Australian governments are dropping behind the rest of the world in adopting innovative approaches to solving challenges - afraid of involving citizens more broadly in finding solutions?
(I hope this isn't true!)

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Accessibility - a great video from FaHCSIA to educate staff & management

Last week FaHCSIA released a great video on accessibility that they're using to educate staff and management on its importance, who it affects and the basics of what to do.

I think it is an awesome resource for all organisations (not just government) to help them understand their legal obligation and how to meet it.

We need more resources like this for government, tools that use video, pictures and sound to help educate and influence, not simply more PDF manuals like this.

I've embedded the video below and it is also available directly from its YouTube link or as a MP3 from FAHCSIA's resources section.

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Launch of the ACT chapter of the Change Management Institute

Every innovation and productivity improvement, machinery of government change and Gov 2.0 initiative embedded in the business-as-usual operations of an agency is a change, therefore I am pleased that Tim Little, after years running a successful Change Management Group in the ACT, has been able to take the major step of founding the ACT Chapter of the Change Management Institute.

I believe that change management, using a structured, considered and tested process for introducing and bedding down change, is a vital component in all organisational change - and this doesn't simply mean a media release or communications strategy.

The launch event for the new ACT chapter is coming up on 26 April at 5:30pm for a 6:00pm start.

It will be held at Airservices Australia in the Kingsford Smith Room at 26 Constitution Avenue Canberra and is being sponsored by SMS Management and Technology and Airservices Australia.

Speakers at the event will include Caroline Perkins, CMI President and developer of the Organisational Change Management Maturity Model, and will speak about this latest research and development.

Local CMI-accredited OCM practitioner and ACT CMI committee member, Rohan Lane will also provide an informal report on ‘the state of the Territory’ talking about his experience of Organisational Change Management in the ACT.

Some of the benefits of joining the Chapter include:

• Networking with other change practitioners
• Access to latest research, trends, tools and information
• Speakers presenting on a variety of change management topics
• Sharing, connecting and collaborating with others
• Expanding your contacts within the industry
• Professional development through workshops, mentoring and masterminds
• Building your credibility within the industry through being part of a professional body.

So come along and be part of the ACT Chapter. If you are not a member of the Change Management Institute yet you can join by credit card at the event or online at www.change-management-institute.com

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Stop waiting for the messiah and do it yourself

While there's many organisations now actively beginning to experiment with social media channels and tools, just as many - if not more - are still cautious about even putting a toe in the water.

"It's not right for us", they say, "our audience isn't online" or "doesn't want to engage with us" or "we don't understand the risks" or "we're not ready yet" or "we're waiting for a critical need".

I'd like to say to all of these organisations - stop waiting for the messiah and do it yourself.

As has been shown through research, humans often make decisions first and justify their actions later - which means that most of these so-called reasons for not engaging online are justifications, not evidence.

How do you know whether a new tool will work for you if you don't experiment and pilot? How will you build the expertise you may need when there is a critical need for you to use these channels?

We've seen this behaviour in industries like retail, where a major retailer, Harvey Norman, is now pulling back from use of the internet because it didn't meet their projections on revenue. How did they work out those projections without experimenting online? Why did they not meet the projections and how will pulling back increase their success?

Given the internet has been a valid sales channel for fifteen or more years and some of the largest retailers in the world, such as Amazon, have built themselves online, how could any organisation in retail claim that online isn't viable, or delay entering the market - at least in an experimental way - for over ten years?

If you're not yet engaging actively online via social media just stop waiting for the messiah - that person or reason that makes it 'compelling' for you.

The compelling reasons are that 95% of Australians are online, that other businesses are building their expertise online, that online is the second biggest media today in Australia.

Online no-one cares that you're not there - but they are talking about you - truth and otherwise.

You wouldn't wait until an emergency occurred before building your emergency management systems. You wouldn't wait until you were in court before preparing your defence.

Organisations have case studies to learn from, examples of good practice and a range of resources and tools available to experiment with online, which allow you to learn the ropes without leaving you hanging.

If you're not building your experience now then how do you expect to build it in the future? Do you think your business will be able to afford the talent needed to leapfrog a ten-year or more advantage from your competitors, rivals and detractors?

Is delay really worth the risk?

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Join the global Service Delivery JAM in Canberra (hosted by the Department of Innovation)

The Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education is holding the Canberra component of the Global Service Jam from 24-26 February 2012 as part of their efforts to support and foster innovative thinking across the Australian Public Service.

This is part of a 90 plus city global event where people who are interested in service and using a design-based approach to problem solving and creativity will meet all over the globe. In a spirit of experimentation, co-operation and friendly competition, teams will have 48 hours to develop brand new services inspired by a shared theme. On Sunday at 3pm, they publish them to the world.

Due to a change in venue to the newest purpose-built design thinking centre in Canberra (INSPIRE), the Department of Innovation has more space for jammers and has put out an invitation to public servants (and their friends) to join the jam.

Throughout the weekend jammers will work in teams, supported by innovation and design experts and mentors, to develop services that address key challenges and issues facing the public service and Australian community.

If you wish to help solve real issues, meet interesting and engaged peers from across Government and learn new techniques for problem solving that you can apply back in your own agency, please consider going along.

Even better, attendence is free!

For more information contact Mikaela or Wayne on psi@innovation.gov.au or by phone on (02) 6213 6613 or (02) 6213 6232.

And if you can't attend, you can follow the event on Twitter using the hashtags #GSJ12 and #servicedesign or via APS Innovation's @psinnovate account (note that you don't need a Twitter account to follow) 

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Is it time for government to take Google Plus seriously?

Often in government there's only two social media networks discussed and considered for community engagement and communications, Facebook and Twitter.

MySpace is a distant memory, LinkedIn is used just for resumes and services like FourSquare, Plurk, Ning and others are not well-known.

Also not that well known is Google Plus, and perhaps rightly so - it is very new and still quite small in social media terms, only around 62 million users, although it is predicted to grow to over 293 million by the end of 2012, or so Google believes.

However with the recent integration of Google Plus into Google search, it may be time for governments to consider establishing Google Plus channels alongside Facebook and Twitter, due to the impact on search results.

With Google's search tool holding close to 90% of Australia's search market, it is a more dominant 'publisher' than News Limited - and remains the number one website in Australia. Search engines are also the primary source of traffic for Australian government websites, with an average of over 40% of visitors reaching government sites from a search engine (according to Hitwise) - and therefore around 36% coming direct from Google.

So what has Google done? According to Gizmodo, they've integrated Google Plus into their search product in three ways,

First, it now provides "Personal Results" which include media—photos, blog posts, etc—that have been privately shared with you as well as your own stuff. Any images you've set to share using Picasa will also be displayed. Second, Google Search will now auto-complete queries to people in your circles and will display people who might also be interested in what you're searching for in the search results. Finally, it simplifies the process of finding other Google+ profiles for people or specific interest groups based on your query. So if you search for, say, NASA, it will display Google+ profile pages for NASA and space-related Google+ interest groups in addition to the normal results.

Whether you believe this is a good move, a legal move, or not, it does provide opportunities for organisations to leverage Google Plus to improve their overall presence in Google search by operating a Google Plus account.

It's certainly something to keep an eye on, if not actively consider. 

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A time to reflect and review

A change in seasons, change in circumstances and change in structures is always a good time to reflect on situations and review the current state.

I've been doing a lot of reflecting and reviewing following my honeymoon and, looking around at some of the other long-time Government 2.0 supporters in Australia, it appear others have as well.

There's been some excellent signs that social media use is starting to be recognized as a mainstream phenomenon in Australia - from the APSC's normalisation of social media in the Code of Conduct, the establishment of more Gov 2.0/Social Media in Government groups in states, the initiatives at all levels of government (when Census and the police use social media you know things are changing!), the growth of Govspace and data sites, growing skill levels in a number of agencies and the expanding bubble of government social media events from conference organizers (guys, time to refine your forums).

At the same time there's still some resistance, poor understanding and mixed leadership on the use of digital channels to improve government performance. Apart from a few long-term skeptics this is now mostly due to competing priorities, resourcing and low familiarity with how social media can be used within government guidelines with appropriate risk mitigation strategies in place. Though I must admit that I have not seen an agency choosing to not use social media develop a mitigation strategy around the risks they are taking by not engaging online.

Many agencies still block their staff from monitoring forums and blogs, Facebook pages and YouTube channels where their key stakeholders are actively engaging. This cuts them off from an essential source of policy and service delivery intelligence - although the incresing prevalence of personal devices means people can remain connected and effective. Ironically the rise of smartphones, tablets and micro-laptops has also called into question those who still claim that workplace access to social media should be technically blocked to reduce time-wasting. Sorry guys, the world has moved on. If you believe your staff would waste time on social media use management techniques, not technical blocks, to manage these potential performance issues.

While there has been increasing willingness to use digital channels for consultations, collaboration and co-creation, the expertise base across Australia is still lacking. There's little in the way of effective formal education for would-be 'Social Media Advisors' or best practice techniques for online engagement. We've seen individual best practice examples, but limited codification of the underlying techniques and processes, the practitioners' toolkit if you will, necessary to systemise success.

While there's still much to be learnt, debated, trialed and implemented as business as usual in the government social media space, there's also now more hands available within public services with the interest, passion and skills to push things along. Government 2.0 has edged closer and closer to business as usual and is likely to get there at some point in the next year.

That has made me deeply consider my own involvement in the space.

Note I don't have any intention of stepping back from advocating and supporting Government 2.0 approaches. In my view these approaches are the basis for how a 21st century government needs to operate to be effective, woven deeply into most core activities for all agencies.

However for a long time i have felt that the value I've added to the space has been much greater through my 'non-curricular' activities than through my actual jobs in the public service. I feel I add more public value through sharing knowledge, providing mentoring and advice, training others and supporting people across government to understand and consider Government 2.0 techniques, help them design, debate and implement appropriate frameworks in their agencies and provide advice and support in implementing and normalizing activities, than in my day job.

On that basis I have realised that I am at the stage where I can add more lasting public value working from outside government agencies than from within one at a time.

As a result I have decided that in 2012 I will be leaving the Australian Public Service - but not leaving public service. I will be exploring options to add more and greater value from 'over the wall' back in the commercial sector, where I have spent over three-quarters of my career.

I have met many good people in the public service, as well as a few of the other kind, and I'd like to thank all of you for what you have taught me during the five years I have spent 'inside'.

I hope that I have also managed to share some of my own experience and knowledge with you.

I haven't actually resigned from the APS yet, there's some loose ends to tie up in the new year. Also I intend to keep writing this blog - I believe there is still a need for something like it in Australia - and will remain active in the Gov 2.0 community, hopefully more consistently active than I have been able to be.

So this isn't goodbye, it is simply a new kind of hello.

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Reporting news is no path to sustainable journalism, controlling the message is no path to successful governance

Below is a copy of a comment I have posted to the ABC The Drum in response to an Alan Kohler article, Big media inquiry, little industry change.

I thought I'd repeat it here as it covers some of the changing landscape that government communicators are facing. I recommend reading Kohler's article (or at least his initial premise) first.

Note that the implications, of a society that can report news as it happens, where it happens, significantly alter government's ability to control news distribution. Essentially governments can no longer rely on controlling the creation or distribution of news, about themselves, about their programs and initiatives, about public events or about disasters. We need to evolve new models for influence and curation, to become the 'central point of truth' if not the single point.

Anyway, my comment is below (with a few tweaks for poor iPad keyboarding):

Alan, I value your views (and not because you are paid to give them), however in this area you've based your argument on a false first premise - that news reporting has intrinsic value.

The basics of news reporting, collecting facts, arranging them into a story and distributing this story publicly, existed long before any form of professional and paid news 'caste'. The process, like story telling, is a skill that many people have.

With the means of news collection and public distribution now so close to costing zero as to make no difference - a phone with a camera, a keyboard and an Internet connection, news is essentially free. More than 2 billion people (add another billion when including mobile devices) have the tools to collect and report news, as it happens, wherever it happens - with global distribution.

As people now spend a majority of their lives within a metre of their connective devices, there is no longer the need to pay journalists to ride or drive around cities and countries to collect news, transport it back to a central location to transcribe and then distribute it through chains of distributors.

The value paid professional journalists can add to news is in expert analysis. This requires three additional skills to news reporting that are rarer and more expensive to procure - curation, expertise (in analysis and distilation of themes) and communication skills.

These skills have, and will continue to have value.

Unfortunately they are skills that most paid journalists, who are often trained in communication, PR or journalistic skills, lack. They do not have the indepth subject knowledge or ability to quickly determine facts from factoids - though they often have the communication skills (they sure write pretty!)

For journalist to survive as a guild, rather than as an activity, unlike reading and writing (scribes) or adding up (computers - which was a human job title until the 1950s), it must change the basis of the people it attracts and promotes through the profession.

Journalists must either sink into the depths of entertainment (those who write pretty, but offer no insights into world events) or rise into the world of expertise (with an ability to offer solid insights and analysis of events, using their expertise and curation skills).

Simply reporting news by chasing eye-witnesses, copying social media comments and photos or representing corporate and government media releases, is no path to sustainable earnings in journalism.

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How should public servants report online volunteer work?

Last week the Department of Human Services changed its policy regarding staff who participated in volunteer activities - unpaid work undertaken on their own time.

The Department decided that, in order to protect against potential conflicts of interest, public servants had to report their volunteer activities to their Manager and seek approval to do it. Approval would last a year, after which time the employee would have to go back to their manager and ask again.

The story was covered lightly in a few news sources, including the Sydney Morning Herald in the article, Public servants told to seek approval to volunteer.

Putting aside the discussion over whether a public sector employer should exercise this level of oversight and control over the personal lives of their staff (a conversation for a different forum to my blog), I am concerned about how well this policy might work in the face of online volunteerism.

I haven't read the policy myself, however I wonder about the treatment of online volunteer activities, such as moderating an online forum or Facebook page for a volunteer group, building a website to support people in an emergency, curating Twitter conversations, managing an online chatline, curating pages in a wiki, correcting text in digitalized newspapers, adding records to genealogical databases, tagging photos for a museum, checking wavelengths to detect exoplanets, or establishing donation tools and encouraging friends to donate their own time and money.

These activities might be ongoing, or taken at extremely short notice - such as during an emergency. Often there may not be time to brief managers and seek approval. People would face the choice of either not volunteering (a net loss to the community) or volunteering their time and services and defying the policy.

I can personally think of five different volunteer activities I have undertaken online - just since returning from my honeymoon last month. Over a full year I might be involved in 30 or more separate online volunteer activities.

Real-world activities, such as manning a soup kitchen, painting a community centre or caring for old people may be easy to observe, quantify and classify as unpaid volunteer activity, however I am very unsure about how any agency policy might effectively cover the growing range of unpaid online volunteer activities in which people are now able to engage.

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