Youtube offers free branded channels to government departments globally

Youtube recently announced that government departments using the service can get a free branded channel for their videos, saving a US$50,000 set-up fee.

The offer is apparently still making its way to the Youtube site, however the details of the offer are public and it is available now.

Below I've provided the content of an email sent to me by Geordie Hyland of Youtube regarding how to take up the offer and here is a link to a blog post by Mike Kujawski in his blog Public Sector Marketing 2.0 with details of what departments will get with a branded channel.

Note that departments do need to assess whether taking this up meets their needs - and whether there's any potential lock-in effect that may not be in their strategic interests in the future.

Youtube does have a dominant position in the online video distribution market at present - however it may not suit all departments' needs.

Please contact me by email directly for a Youtube contact if needed.

Hi,

Thanks for your interest in starting a YouTube channel for your government, government department, or government agency. If you like, you can start a YouTube channel right away by creating an account and posting videos. One time at the end of every month, YouTube will transfer any new government channels to "branded" - thus allowing you to upload a branded banner to the top of your channel, and giving you the ability to upload longer videos to the site.

We do not have the capacity to do this more than one time per month, so please be patient if you don't hear back right away - and feel free to start posting videos to your account.

To enter your application for a branded channel, please send an email to government@youtube.com with the following 5 pieces of information:

* The name of your government, government department, or agency.
* Your .gov website URL.
* The account name you've registered on YouTube (i.e., your YouTube username).
* The email address you are using to manage the account.
* Any other information you want to tell us about your plans to launch the channel, and what types of content you plan to post.

Please also be aware the YouTube will not negotiate any individual content licensing agreements with state or local governments - your contract with YouTube is our site-wide terms and conditions, which you agree to upon starting an account on YouTube. To see that policy, please go to: http://www.youtube.com/t/terms

Thanks, and good luck!

-The YouTube Team

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US launches Gov 2.0 consultation on national broadband network

The US is a little behind Australia in considering a National Broadband Network, however it has taken a very different approach in consulting and engaging citizens, opening up the discussion to the US community in a Gov 2.0 manner.

The US Government's Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has launched Broadband.gov as a web 2.0 enabled site to manage the central conversation around a US National Broadband Plan.

It has also introduced an Ideascale portal for individuals to raise, vote on and discuss ideas and potential challenges at national and local levels and shake out the key issues for the community.

The FCC also has a blog, Facebook site, interactive Twitter feed (where the FCC responds to questions), YouTube channel and RSS feeds. It is also holding face-to-face and webinar workshops to discuss what US citizens want in a broadband network. All of these workshops are recorded and made available online.

What I think is most important is how the FCC is using these channels in a consistent and integrated manner to support public discussion and engagement.

Often organisations don't have a strategy (communications plan) behind their online engagement channels and, as a result, they do not function in a synchronised and mutually reinforcing manner - and in some cases can act against each other, reducing the effectiveness of an online conversation and reducing the online credibility of the organisation.

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WTF is social media - one year on

If you excuse the suggestive language, this slideshow provides an excellent birds-eye view of the extent of the social media landscape.

It is worth comparing with the version released a year ago to see some the growth and changes that have driven social media into mainstream society.

View more documents from Marta Kagan.

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How engaged is your department online? And how does it affect your success?

Charlene Li, one of the writers of Groundswell and ex-Forrester analyst, has launched a new initiative which compares the financial success of organisations with their level of online engagement and allows organisations to compare how engaged they are online.

Named Engagementdb, the site provides graphs and case studies on how various organisations have engaged the online world and allow organisations to rank themselves based on a simple 5 minute survey.

There is also a fantastic report which provides compelling evidence of the link between online engagement and commercial success. Named The world's most valuable brands (PDF) and while tilted towards the commercial world, it provides valuable insights into the value online engagement generates in terms of brand visibility, engagement, customer satisfaction and advocacy.

The report provides insights into the different approaches being taken online, looking at the depth of engagement - from wallflower who are just dipping their toes in (such as McDonalds and BP), through to Mavens who have fully integrated online engagement into their strategy (Starbucks and Dell).

The report also provides evidence that if you increase your online engagement you increase your offline success, it's a thought-provoking read.

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Operating web and IT in an abundance mindset

Chris Anderson, the owner of Wired, recently wrote a very thought-provoking article about the need for organisations to consider how to operate within an abundance mindset rather than a scarcity-based one in his article, Tech Is Too Cheap to Meter: It's Time to Manage for Abundance, Not Scarcity.

Chris uses one example of how Wired used to restrict the email and file space provided to every staff member, with the IT team prompting staff regularly to delete files so as not to fill up the server.

One day he asked his ICT team how much file storage space Wired had for staff and was told that they had 500Gb - half the size of the 1 Terabyte hard-drive in the home computer he had recently bought for his kids. As he said,

My children had twice as much storage as my entire staff.

I have had a similar experience in various organisations I've worked at. Despite falling storage and computing costs, organisations often place heavy restrictions on staff computing power - for what reason I'm not sure.

Cost probably isn't a good reason for this scarcity mindset. If, for example, a 5,000 person organisation only allowed each staff member 200Mb in file and email space, that would mean the organisation had limited itself to 1,000Gb (1 Terabyte) of storage for staff.

Looking quickly at hard-drive prices, a 2 Terabyte commercial quality hard-drive costs about AU$500.

In other words, now you can buy twice as much staff file storage as the example organisation above for only $500 - and the price is going down.

Now consider the staff side of the equation. Files keep getting larger, as do emails. If you assume that each staff member spends 10 minutes each month reorganising their file space to prevent them from going over the organisation's limit, that's a cost of 50,000 minutes or 833 hours each month.

Assuming that each hour of staff time is worth around $50 - including wages, equipment and overheads - that lost time costs the organisation $41,650 in productivity, or $499,800 each year.

To put this in perspective, if the organisation removed the limit on file space and compensated by spending $500 (2 Terabytes) on extra storage it would save $41,650 in staff productivity costs - each month.

That's an ROI of 833% - each month.

Naturally there would be some other costs - servers, redundancy, electricity and the need for effective search technology. However the outcome would remain the same, the organisation is better off investing in more storage than in enforcing a 'scarcity' mindset.

File storage space is only one example.

I've also seen organisations struggling on low bandwidth, slowing down applications and internet services - therefore hindering productivity. With the ability for ISPs to provide adaptable bandwidth there's not really much excuse for this type of approach.

Equally organisations often provide their staff with outdated equipment and applications, which also reduces productivity. In many cases staff now have cheaper and more powerful systems and software at home.

While sometimes software is 'held back' to older versions due to security concerns (or lack of staff to check and approve security), the reality is that most modern software is more secure than older versions of applications.

Restricting software and hardware for security purposes can result in the opposite effect - reducing the organisation's security. If staff are forced to send work home to finish it, or go home to view websites and use online applications, this can raise the risks to the organisation.

Again this type of approach reeks of scarcity and cost-focused thinking, rather than an abundance and productivity-focused approach. It probably costs less for an organisation to employ contract staff to security-assess vital applications than it costs the organisation in lost productivity. Even though upgrading the applications may be expensive the net productivity and security gains for the entire organisation can be significant.

Another example is around the use of web services, which are extremely low cost and easy to test and trial. Organisations need to allow staff to experiment with these tools in appropriate ways, rather than requiring them to always follow tender-based processes to procure expensive custom-built alternatives, or have them coded in house (also at significant opportunity cost).

Finally organisational websites are often managed on a scarcity approach, with limited bandwidth and storage space, or with information cut-down from what is provided in print publications.

Again this applies a scarcity mindset. Domains are cheap, storage is cheap, bandwidth is cheap and an appropriately organised website can have great depth of content at relatively low delivery cost (certainly much lower cost than phone, mail or face-to-face).

So, in conclusion, at least in web and IT matters organisations need to consider an abundance mindset rather than a scarcity one.

They have to consider whether their policies and procedures aid or harm staff productivity and whether the cost of managing and policing some restrictive policies (such as file storage) is worth the productivity hit.

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Build it or they will come

In 2007 a combined SMS and online electoral monitoring system went into action in Nigeria to report electoral fraud. Based on increasing mobile use (as fixed infrastructure is very limited in the country), mobile phones were able to provide voters with a voice when ballots were not conducted fairly. Similar systems are now being used in a range of other countries across the world to broadcast any electoral issues to the world.

Next, due to the effective application of online social media, in 2008 the preferred Democrat nominee for the US Presidency was beaten by a relative newcomer with little national profile. That relative newcomer then went on to successfully win the US Presidential race.

Earlier this year when UK Parliamentarians were caught charging expenses that the public deemed inappropriate they sought to protect their privacy by providing PDF documents, blacking out a significant portion of the documents for privacy and legal reasons. However the UK Guardian newspaper created a website (in less than 5 days) where the public could transcribe pages and cross-match critical information. Within 10 minutes of release over 320 members of the public were busy transcribing a few pages each, and within a few hours more than 2,000 pages had been reviewed. Now over 197,000 pages have been reviewed by over 22,000 UK citizens.

The Guardian was not alone in this effort, other websites such as www.whattheyclaimed.com began similar efforts to improve parliamentary transparency.

Most recently the Iranian election has been internationally scrutinised through the actions of hundreds of thousands of young Iranians using Twitter and similar online services to send messages, photos and videos out of the country. The medium has been used to organise protests, identify electoral fraud and keep the world informed of developments in a country which restricts journalists and the free press.

Internationally many people have supported the protesters in Iran by providing ways for them to send their messages out as the government systematically, and unsuccessfully, attempted to block online communications channels. The combined efforts of thousands of people around the world outmaneuvered the Iranian government and ensured that the voices of Iranian citizens continued to be heard.

And finally, in China, which has the most internet users of any country in the world, the government attempted to bolster its 'great firewall' (known internally as the Golden Shield Project) with software required to be installed on every PC. Despite using sophisticated software and a rumoured over 30,000 public officials working full-time to ensure that the Chinese people do not see material online that the government deems inappropriate, the Chinese have been unable to prevent their citizens from accessing the free media of other countries or using the internet to share their thoughts on the Chinese regime - both good and bad.

Resistance to the new measure has been intense. The Chinese government has already had to soften its approach from making the software compulsory to install to simply making it available with every computer.

These examples represent the change going on across the world. Out of Africa, across the Middle East, Europe, the Americas and into Asia, the internet is reshaping the relationship between governments and their citizens.

Governments who have attempted to limit or prevent citizen access to the internet have failed in almost every jurisdiction. In most cases the government dare not take the extreme step of disconnect their citizens completely, as the internet has become critical for private enterprises and the government in conducting their business.

Governments are finding that attempting to control new media use by citizens, or simply to continue to use old patterns of governing, is progressively seeing their control over the public agenda weaken.

Where governments are not building public services online, members of the public are banding together to do so - effectively disintermediating governments.

The lesson for me is that if governments are to lead their people, they need to acknowledge and accept the changes that are occurring, reform their own culture and operations where necessary and get out in front and demonstrate leadership.

Fortunately for Australia, increasingly our governments are recognising and acting on this.

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Australian internet usage 20% greater than TV - Nielsen

I've just come across a media release from Nielsen (PDF) from March this year indicating that internet use by Australian internet users reached 16.1 hours per week in 2008, soaring ahead of TV at 12.9 viewing hours per week (radio sits at 8.8 hours).

This suggests that the average Australian internet user is spending 20% more time online than they do in front of the television - although there is also a high instance of multi-channelling - 61% of Australians watch TV and use the internet at the same time and 50% listen to the radio while surfing the net.

Nielsen's media consumption chart is below.



Also this morning the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that Google is on target to crack $1 billion in revenue in Australia - a larger revenue than the entire Australian commercial radio segment, or magazines and outdoor advertising markets.

With the new financial year approaching it might be a very good time to reweigh communications strategies and budgets to ensure that they are being spent on the medium where Australians are spending most of their leisure time.

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The learning curve for Web 2.0 - resourcing is the key

I'm closely watching (and reading) the new Department of Broadband and the Digital Economy blog. It is seeing a number of thoughtful and constructive comments from organisations and individuals.

The blog is highlighting to me one of the often overlooked key issues for organisations when implementing Web 2.0 tools - resourcing.

With 912 published comments as of Friday morning (7am), and an unknown number of unpublished ones (including several from me), the task of moderating the comments is enormous.

Add to this the complexity of actually responding and you're looking at an enormous resourcing cost for an organisation.

So should organisations steer clear of Web 2.0 due to resourcing issues?

I don't think so. I think it means that we must re-assess government processes and business models to meet the needs of our constituents, clients, customers and community.

If engaging and interacting with our audiences is regarded as important (as it should be), then government, and private organisations, need to appropriately resource and fund the right capacity to service this function, rather than attempting to funnel the public into channels that government feels comfortable with.

Perhaps this means reducing the number of staff working phones (to put them on online), or using outsourced contact centres for the online channel. It may mean totally reshaping jobs, policies and legislation to suit the needs of community.

There's nothing new about this. Where are the typing pools today? We've totally reshaped the workplace in the last 30 years - it will be totally reshaped again in the next 10.

While I see many fighting a rearguard action to defend 'the way we've always worked' - the bottom line to me is that, as public servants, our obligation is to serve the public, under the guidelines of the APSC.

When the public changes, so must the public sector. That's what is known as being 'customer centred'.

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What governments could learn from Mumbai - citizens now control the flow of information

Like many other Australians I have a direct link to the recent attacks in Mumbai.

One of my family's friends was trapped in the Taj Mahal hotel. She managed to avoid being taken hostage - or worse. Her husband was out of the hotel at the time and found shelter elsewhere.

Fortunately both of them remain safe. My thoughts go out to all who lost their lives, were injured or who lost loved ones in the attacks.

During the siege it was difficult to get accurate and timely information about what was occurring from Australia's traditional mainstream media. This was repeated in many other countries around the world. Events unfolded too fast for television crews or print reporters to get onto the scene or file stories. When they did they were not able to access people at the heart of the crisis, their access was controlled by Indian authorities.

Due to this many people around the world turned to the online channel for information, finding a wealth of eye-witness reports, videos, photos and maps, with many citizens self-organising to support those in Mumbai and the people who care for them.

Commentators have called it the first crisis where the internet completely dominated other media channels.

Where were governments? They were left waiting for official updates, providing limited information in pre-packaged messages via traditional media, while citizens took control online.

If the communications experience of Mumbai can be learnt from, I believe it teaches governments that they must become more nimble and open to use of public online channels, or lose control, influence and relevance.

Mumbai is a wake-up call - in many ways.

People used many online channels to self-organise and share current information and personal accounts as events unfolded. This included sites such as blogs, Youtube, NowPublic, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google Maps, Google docs (a complete list of dead and wounded) and Twitter.

This frequently involved live updates from people in Mumbai directly experiencing the events, or repeating local news reports that did not get picked up outside India.

There was so much information that, on Twitter alone, CNN Online reported that at peak there were an estimated 80 messages (or tweets) sent to Twitter via SMS every five seconds providing eyewitness accounts and updates.

Traditional mainstream media relied heavily on citizen journalism to understand what was occurring, contacting Indian bloggers, using on-the-scene photos from Flickr and amateur video published on the web. Several traditional media players were able to tap directly into citizen journalism, such as the BBC and CNN.

However most mainstream media played catch-up, particularly in Australia where online commentators quite vocally criticised the slow reactions and poor coverage by local outlets.

It appears that even the terrorists involved in the attacks made use of the internet, using Blackberries to monitor world public opinion during the attacks.

With all this online activity, how were most governments communicating to the community?

Via traditional mainstream media outlets.

This highlights to me the disconnect rapidly emerging between how citizens choose to communicate and how comfortable and skilled governments are in using new media channels.

More and more citizens are seeking timely, relevant, plain english and personalised information. Whereas governments remain focused on traditional methods to assure accuracy and message management.

By the time a government assesses events, writes appropriate messages, gets approvals and distributes their views via traditional media channels (hoping they get a 15 second grab), the public has moved on, relying on personal, on-the-spot accounts.

Traditionally this approach has served government well. It maintains their appearance of authority, dignity and accuracy, preventing disturbing rumours or information from spreading in an uncontrolled way.

However the world has changed. Many eyewitnesses can publish their personal accounts directly without going through 'official' channels.

Using traditional approaches governments can appear slow to respond or even painfully out of date, particularly where events progress rapidly.

Similarly in organising a response and support for people, while governments do an invaluable job behind the scenes (organising counseling and transport), publicly the self-organising online citizen groups are more nimble and responsive.

The perceived slow response from governments can reduce the trust and faith of citizens. Over time this leads more people to seek more responsive channels and, though receiving timely eyewitness accounts, reduces citizen satisfaction with the language and messages of government. Governments become less relevant.

People who relied on traditional media or official reports to stay informed during the Mumbai seige probably find it hard to believe the impact the online channel had on global communications.

Fortunately no-one has to rely on my opinion.

The failure of traditional media has become a topic of much debate, by the media itself, such as in Wall Street Journal's Live Mint and Yahoo News, as well as by well-known bloggers including David Henderson (Emmy award winning former CBS news correspondent) and Laurel Papworth (one of Australia's top experts on social media).

To finish with a quote from Laurel's post (link above),

As someone who doesn't have Cable TV I can - hand on heart - swear that I learnt nothing about #Mumbai from Australian MSM [Mainstream Media].

I relied totally on Twitter. Not because I wanted to, but because TV wouldn't interrupt Kerri Anne Kennerly or children's morning TV with real news.

Twitter filtered to me websites, and tidbits I couldn't get elsewhere. ALL news was broken to me by Twitter and the links they sent.

In amongst retweeting MSM were the REAL stories. Someone hearing the bombing while lying bed. Someone else driving past a hotel as it was attacked. A guy worried about his friend. I realised this: who on earth ever said that social commentary is not News? O.o

For me, MSM doesn't make the news, they simply report OUR stories. Just another filter. After people-in-crisis are interviewed on CNN India (I watched online, thanks to link sent by Twitter) they tell a friend, who puts it on Facebook or Twitter or MySpace. More links to real stories.

Australian Media is dead. It failed to meet my needs (I channel hopped from 9:30am until about 4pm hoping for new News) and by the time the 6 O'clock News came on, MSM was simply retweeting what I had already seen and heard through Twitter links.

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From the TV to the net - politics in evolution

I've been following the blog of the Hon Penny Sharp MLC, Red Leather, as one of the best examples in government of blogging and a strong proponent of the use of the online channel.

In late October she gave a speech to the NSW Parliament regarding the level of online engagement by NSW MLCs.

Published at her site under the title, Politics online, the speech flagged the enormous influence the online channel has on voters today, and the level of attention NSW politicians were giving the channel.

In it she asked the following question of the NSW Members of Parliament (my bold),

Political participation of all citizens is being transformed by new media; 80 per cent of Australians have access to broadband and of those, 75 per cent are regular Internet users. For them this is the most important source of information. Without change the traditional ways of gathering and communicating information, such as newsletters, television advertising, direct mail and traditional mainstream news media, will become less relevant as large portions of the population no longer get their primary information through these mediums. This will have a significant impact on the participation within our democracy. The question I ask tonight is: what are we, the elected representatives in New South Wales, doing to make ourselves part of the transformation of political participation?

She also answered this question, having had an intern research NSW MLC use of the online channel,

Only 39 of the 136 members of the New South Wales Parliament have personal websites. Only 12 of the 39 websites had recently updated information; 18 others had media releases as their only current information; three were a few months old and were out of date, and five were a few years out of date. Only seven members of the Parliament are using Web 2.0 tools, such as blogs, polls and online petitions.

As a comparison (also from Penny's speech),

As a comparison, 655 out of 746 members of the House of Lords have their own website. It is also worth noting that the House of Lords recently launched a combined blog from numerous Lords from various parties. The www.lordsoftheblog.net is worth a look. In the United States, all 100 senators have their own website.

Many people may remember the first televised political debates in Australia - they were only around 30 years ago - and how awkwardly politicians first engaged the medium.

Compare that today with the picture perfect polished performances of our pollies (most of the time).

I believe we will see a similar curve with online usage. The 2008 US Presidential election represents the first electoral watershed - equivalent to the first televised debate.

It will be very interesting to see how future internet politicians use the internet - and how their departments and public officials will be expected to embed the medium into their day to day activities at departmental and agency levels.

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US President releases first weekly youtube address

One of the promises Barack Obama made in the US was to release his weekly address to the nation via Youtube.

This signaled how serious he was about transparent and open government, and flagged the incoming US government recognition of the power of Youtube's large and growing audience - which publishes almost 10,000 hours of content per day (per Michael Welsch's Anthropological Introduction to Youtube).

Obama's first weekly address is now available online and demonstrates how polished his staff have become in the use of Youtube.

I hope we'll see a similar use in Australia of the KevinPM website, even going further to have the Prime Minister respond in a public questiontime to video questions posed by citizens - just as John Howard used his weekly radio talkback - but accessible to a broader audience.

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How can we effectively share our egovernment successes and failures?

I find egovernment an exciting area to work in.

It offers benefits to citizens and businesses in reducing the time and cost of engaging with government

It offers benefits to taxpayers due to the cost savings achievable within the public sector and the ability to improve transparency in government.

It offers benefits to individuals and communities by providing new and effective ways to collaborate with community and advocacy groups, businesses, agencies from other jurisdictions, the community and individual citizens to deliver improved policy and service outcomes.

I find that many Australian public sector organisations are engaged in exciting experiments with digital web and mobile technologies to improve their engagement and service delivery. There are also many innovative individuals working in different areas to advocate the use of modern tools to improve the solutions to age-old issues.

However finding out about these initiatives and the lessons learnt in each case isn't easy.

There are limited forums for communication between public sector organisations and the means by which we share information is often limited by funding, time and bureaucratic overheads.

In the private sector competitors often keep secrets from each other as a may to build competitive advantage. In the public sector secrets are often necessary for customer privacy or state interest, however they can also reduce our ability to provide community benefit where they cross into restrictions on learning from mistakes or successes.

Lack of information sharing also results in duplication of work, very slow learning from mistakes and redundancy - which costs government and therefore taxpayers and service recipients time and money.

I'm working through approaches to improve communication across egovernment practitioners in Australia, drawing from New Zealand's excellent wikis, the online forums used in the UK and US and the European Union's fantastic community site.

Do others have any ideas they can suggest to me to help us share our information across all levels of Australian government in an appropriate way?

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50 ideas on using Twitter for organisations

Following from my post this morning on Telstra's use of Twitter, Chris Brogan wrote an excellent piece last month on how organisations can use Twitter to better engage their customers titled, 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business.

For me (as it was for Chris) the number one reason or idea for using this type of tool is for listening to your constituency. Hearing what real people are saying about your organisation, services and topic area provides an ongoing temperature of public opinion.

Another key reason in my view is for building an organisation's online reputation.
Most communicators understand that their organisation's public reputation shapes how people engage with them, thereby influencing their capacity to send messages out to their customers as well as their capacity to provide effective customer service.

However in my view few Australian organisations (particularly in the public sector) have as yet grasped how important it is to establish a sound online reputation. Assuming that their past reputation will carry over only goes so far, and it can rapidly be damaged through inept online engagement (or no online engagement at all!)

Laurel Papworth explains this well in her article, Twitter: Reputation Management in Social Networks.

She uses the diagram (illustrated below) to explain the stages in development from creating an online profile (not simply a 'corporate' website!!) to building reputation and trust-based relationships.



Incidentally, the power of Twitter to allow customers to self-organise rapidly is demonstrated in one of the most recent posts in Laurel's blog, Twitter Agency - crowd sourced consultancy.

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One (government) portal to rule them all...

Uganda has become the latest nation to announce that it is following a centralised government portal strategy, launching a statewide web portal managed by their Ministry of ICT.

This reflects the approach taken in many other nations, including Australia (www.australia.gov.au and www.business.gov.au) to provide a central face to government online, to a greater or lessor degree.

Given the enthusiasm for this approach in the virtual world, are we likely to see a similar approach to government shopfronts, phone and paper-based transactions reflected at federal level over time?

We've certainly seen some state-based jurisdictions move to single shopfronts - at least in smaller jurisdictions.

However if this isn't the strategy in these channels, what is the rationale for providing different messages in different mediums?

Doesn't it weaken the argument for citizens to not need to know which agency they are dealing with?

• A single central port of call online
  
• Department/Agency-based offices and paper correspondence
  
• Service-based phone numbers
  

What's your view?

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Website media sections are old news

Humans love news.

While the channels we use to find out the news continue to change, most of us still need our daily news fix - details on what is happening in our organisation, our country and our world.

When I first became involved with the online space in 1995, an 'about us', 'communications', 'PR', 'In the news' or 'Media' section was already a common feature for many websites. Placing media releases online made sense as a method of distributing and archiving an organisation's news.

Today it is accepted practice that organisations include their media releases on their website. In fact, not much has really changed. Journalists go to an organisation's website media section to review media releases, or subscribe to a 'push' service such as an email list or RSS feed to get alerted whenever something newsworthy is released.

Some organisations have added press kits, official photos and executive bios. A few include transcripts of speeches or video. However for the most part there's been little innovation compared to the rate of change for other aspects of websites.

This lack of innovation was brought home to me in an article by Maish Nichani of Pebbleroad, Designing the Online Newsroom.

The article questions the traditional role of a website media section, today's audience is much broader than journalists and the needs of the audience have changed.

It makes the point that a website media section is no longer simply a feeder for media - it is an online newsroom in its own right;

The newsroom section in corporate and government websites is not just about press releases anymore and nor is it just for the press. The demand by a broad spectrum of customers to be updated on what’s happening at every front of the organization combined with the organization's need to promote and educate customers about new directions has expanded the role of the newsroom.

Maish suggests that organisations rethink the purpose of their website media section to address and engage a broader audience, and provides some examples of the types of content and features leading organisations are adding, such as,

• In-depth features
• Latest news stories
• Interviews or customer stories
• Speeches
• Podcasts
• Blogs
• Videos

The article provides some excellent examples of organisations across the public and private sector who have developed online newsrooms, such as the United Nations, Nokia and Cisco.

It also provides a roadmap of how to rethink a media section and turn it into a more useful online newsroom.

I've passed on Maish's article to our media team to help support them in how they think about our online media section and are beginning to think myself about how we can use our media section more effectively to speak to our broader stakeholder and customer audience.

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Lessons to be learnt from the Grocery choice website

The last few days have seen a number of media reports criticising the new Federal government Grocery choice website.

Amidst the noise there are several key takeaways for public sector website managers.

Note that I'm not involved with the Grocery choice website or program. I'm commenting from the perspective of a public sector web manager who needs to meet the same level of scrutiny for the sites I manage.


What is Grocery choice?
The purpose of the grocery choice website, in its own words, is to provide practical grocery price information to help consumers find the cheapest overall supermarket chain in their area. It does this by publishing prices for typical grocery baskets across supermarket retailers in different areas of Australia, updated monthly.

The website was launched on 5 August this year, at the same time as the ACCC Grocery Inquiry report was released.


The main criticisms of Grocery choice
Putting aside politics, criticism has fallen into several areas;

• Accessibility - whether Grocery choice is usable by vision-impaired people, as reported in the Brisbane Times, Grocery price watch website under fire,
  
• Usefulness - whether the information is sufficiently timely to be useful for consumers, as reported in the Daily Telegragh, PM's Grocery web of deceit,
  
• Channel choice - whether the online channel can reach the appropriate audience, as in the ABC's report, GroceryChoice criticism: Seniors 'don't use' internet.

What should government website managers take away from this?

• Accessibility is crucial - failure to meet the government minimum standards can place your organisation at risk.
  
  
• Usefulness is a function of both information and presentation - web managers need to consider how to best present and explain information and services within the capabilities of the online channel to convey maximum meaning and understanding.
  
  
• Select channels based on desired outcomes - web managers need to be able to convey an understanding of the online channel's capabilities and advise other managers when it is the most important channel, a supporting channel or should not be used.

Unpacking the takeaways

Accessibility
Accessibility is a legal requirement for government agencies. Compromising website accessibility, whether due to tight deadlines or changes in design or requirements, can expose a government agency to legal action and should be considered as a risk in any web project.

On that basis accessibility is a very important area for government website managers to understand and manage. Government agencies are required to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.o) developed by the W3C in 1999 in meeting the Disability Discrimination Act 1992.

This is detailed in AGIMO's Web Publishing Guide within the Accessibility section.

The minimum standard for a government website is an 'A' rating, with 'AA' rating recommended (personally we're gradually shifting our agency websites to 'AAA' level). There are some great tools available to analyse sites to ensure they meet the standard, such as the VisionAustralia web accessibility toolbar and, as I've discussed previously, a list of tools from AIM.

Web managers should also note that the W3C's update to their guidelines, WCAG 2.0, is nearly here. There are already a useful reference on how to meet the WCAG 2.0 guidelines available from WIPA.

The criticism of Grocery choice is clearcut - if the site doesn't meet the 'A' minimum level then it does fail to meet Australian government standards and this needs to be addressed as a priority.

If it remains unaddressed then legal action is possible, similar to the accessibility court case around the Sydney Olympics website, well described and documented by Tom Worthington.


Usefulness
Does the website serve a useful purpose? Does it provide relevant, timely and usable information and/or services for citizens and customers.

This is something all web managers should be considering when building or developing websites.

In meeting the goals of a government agency web managers need to consider the needs of multiple groups of stakeholders and audiences. We also need to consider the capabilities of the channel itself - online is not the best channel for every engagement.

In Grocery choice's case the debate has centred on whether the information in the site - which is published monthly - is useful to citizens.

This is a debate with two sides, Choice magazine, as quoted in the Livenews article, Grocery Watch is a great tool: Choice, has expressed that they believe the website is of use, whereas other commentators has said that monthly basket data is not as useful as visiting the local supermarkets.

The information is collected as part of a set program, over which I would expect the website manager has little control.

However I think the site manager has done an excellent job of presenting this information in a useful way, and explaining the collection process such that website visitors can make their own determinations of the usefulness of the data.

The presentation and organisation of information is often the area over which website managers have the greatest influence in helping make a website more useful for citizens.

The value of information or services can be greatly enhanced - or greatly diminished - through presentation and all website managers need to have a firm grasp of how to best use the online channel to maximise this value, even when they have no control over the information itself.


Channel choice
The specific debate in ABC's article (mentioned earlier) is related to claims that seniors cannot benefit from the Grocery choice information as they make limited use of the online channel.

Online has always been a controversial channel as not everyone chooses or is able to use the internet. For example it has higher barriers to entry than other mass media - you need to purchase a computer and pay for an ongoing ISP account. Television, radio and print media have a lower upfront investment and shallower learning curve.

Despite this, internet has been adopted in Australia much faster than radio, television or print media. Industry reports are fairly clear that both television and print readership are declining. The advertising industry are also very clear that 18-35 year olds are very difficult to reach via other media, as has been discussed in ABC's The Gruen Transfer.

So therefore online is an important and growing channel - but is not a universal channel.

My experience has been that ]in management there are internet 'bulls' and internet 'bears'. The first group seeks to use the internet wherever possible, is more supportive of the channel and more inclined to fund online initiatives. The second group is still cautious of the internet, is more dismissive of whether it is used and how it is used and is inclined to use traditional channels.

Effective website managers need to steer a middle course, advocating use of the channel where appropriate, and advocating the use of other channels where not. They also need to ensure that other managers understand the capabilities of the online channel so that good channel choice decisions can be made.

The primary goals of organisations generally involve reaching, communicating and engaging with customers and stakeholders - providing what is needful and supporting the conversations necessary to make improvements over time in an effective and cost-efficient manner.

On this basis the channels selected are less important than the outcomes achieved.

I personally remain mindful of this, and believe other web managers should also.


Did you have other take-aways?
I'd appreciate comments from other web managers regarding the takeaways they've had regarding the Grocery choice media coverage.

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Networking Australian government websites

As the business manager of a government website I'm always interested in how much traffic arrives from other government sites.

I can directly engage other agencies, building relationships, sharing content and processes, to the benefit of our mutual customers.

I see a real opportunity for departments and agencies to work together to help ensure that citizens are directed to the right website and can progress seamlessly across departments to complete different tasks with government.

This isn't only at Federal level. Similar transparently should exist at all levels, allowing, for instance, someone registering a company, to then seamlessly obtain all the permits they require to do business in their state.

However what I find from the website I manage is that only a very small proportion of traffic comes from other departments and agencies.

This can be read in a few different ways

• Citizens do not do all their government business in one sitting, therefore do not need to move between departments, or
• Government departments are highly siloed and do not support easy transitions between agencies - or even tell citizens when they need to do this.

Hitwise, using the data they collect on 3 million Australian website users, has produced a visual chart of the connections between the most trafficked Federal agencies. This is a very interesting glimpse of where the government is today.

Chart reproduced with the permission of Hitwise. View the full version.

With the current push towards the Australian Government Online Services Point (AGOSP) it will be interesting to see how this develops over time - whether Australia.gov.au can emerge as a central portal for government; and whether this is what citizens actually want.

What connections does your website have to other sites - and how do you use these to increase awareness of use of your site?

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To eTransact, or not to eTransact - is that the question?

I've been looking through AGIMO's 2007 report on Australians' Use of and Satisfaction with e-Government Services within the context of the channel research my Agency has been undertaking.

AGIMO's report make it clear that the online channel has become THE channel of choice for Australians to engage with Government.

To quote the report's executive summary,

The internet is now the preferred way to contact government.

• Two in five (41%) people would now prefer to contact government by internet. This is a substantial increase from 2004–05, when less than a third (31%) nominated the internet as their preference.
• At the same time, there has been an ongoing decline in preference for in-person contact; this has fallen from 33% in 2004–05 to 20% in 2007.

This has been driven by citizens' desire to engage Government at the time and place of their choosing. To avoid queues and phone wait times. To be in control of the relationship.

Naturally Government in Australia has sat up and taken notice. Massive funding is pouring into the online channel and Agencies are busy planning the closure of many of their outlets and call centres.

NOT


Many Agency maintain a phone-first philosophy.

This is driven by 'common knowledge' that their customers do not use the internet, that they are happy contacting Government strictly between 8.30am and 4.45pm (excluding international customers) and that only via phone can customers receive the level of personal service they crave (except for those customers who refuse to call Government agencies).

While I have expressed the view above in an emotive way, it does reflect the thinking of many senior people across the Public Service.

And they aren't totally wrong.

AGIMO's report measures both actual use and intentions. As they say about the road to hell, you can find yourself in very hot water if you plan for intentions while ignoring day-to-day reality.

Certainly online is a growing channel - growing faster than the wheels of Government can turn.

Certainly also people find phone and face-to-face engagement frustrating. Both require them to be in a certain place at a certain time.

And within my own agency - which is also 'phone first', I track more minutes of website use per month than our total inbound customer calls (and more visits than phone calls).

However Government in Australia is not yet ready to change the balance from calls or face-to-face to online transactions.

People say they are willing to transact online and, in many cases, the Australian Government has those services there, online, waiting for people to use.

When they begin using them in great numbers and the phone volumes drop off Agency Heads will revisit their channel strategy.

However until agencies see that occurring their philosophies will remain in place, notwithstanding the efforts on those, such as myself, who see the online channel as being the best way to effectively deliver consistent customer service to citizens in a cost effective manner.

Of course this is based on a few assumptions;

• that the right services are provided online and they are usable and accessible,
• that Agencies will resource and promote their online channels so people realise they have the choice to not call, and
• that senior management in the Public Service - most of whom are baby-boomers, will adapt their reality to match customer behaviour, rather than attempting to follow the approach that has served them so well for thirty years.

I'm certainly interested in seeing what will happen.

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What is eGovernment?

I've pondered for a long time over the meaning and common understanding of the term eGovernment.

I've seen many definitions - often hinging on the delivery of services by government to citizens or the facilitation of communications between and within government agencies.

I find these very narrow and 'government-centric' views of eGovernment. They are about the government doing to citizens, rather than enabling citizens to do with government.

In other words, they are focused on a command and control approach rather than collaborative outcomes through participatory engagement.

So I've formed my own definition of the term as below.

eGovernment involves the use of digital channels and tools to:

• facilitate and support citizen participation in the process of governance
• enable and extend meaningful dialogue to improve understanding between citizens and the government bodies that serve them
• streamline and improve governance processes in order to improve citizen engagement
• deliver appropriate cost-effective services and information to citizens

Explanation of terms
I use the term digital channels and tools to refer to any connected digital-based devices - computers, mobile wireless devices (such as mobile phones and PDAs) and so on. All of these devices can be used to enable anytime/anyplace connections between citizens and between citizens and government.

Where I use the term citizen I include all people, organisations and institutions that exist and/or operate within a particular legal jurisdiction.

While I do include the delivery of services to citizens in the definition, I see it as an outcome of the preceding processes of engagement. The engagement is critical for establishing which services are appropriate for citizens and can be cost-effectively provided via digital channels.


All comments and other views of the definition of eGovernment are most welcome.

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