Reflection on Tenille Bentley's presentation from Day 1 of Social Media in Government

Tenille Bentley, founder of Socialite Media is now presenting on trends in engagement by people.

She says that the amount spent by state government on online engagement vastly under-rates the proportion of people's media time spent online (around 41%).

Tenille is illustrating the falling reach of newspapers and as their circulations decline, how their ad rates are going up, asking why?

Se says that social media presents an opportunity for government to re-engage with the community and target specific audiences, as a large proportion of the community is adopting social media, whether government likes it or not.

Tenille says that social media management is a skillset in its own right and believes a social media presence requires 100% focus to manage effectively.

She says she understands how overwhelming social media can be, particularly with the range of channels, and recommends keeping an eye on the top four channels - Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube.

Tenille says that each channel reaches a separate audience and is used in a different way.

• Twitter - BBQ conversation, Very Powerful (about 1.2M Australian users - keep an eye on Tweetups)
• LinkedIn - Business Conversation, Speed Networking (2.2M Australian users - business focus)
• Facebook - Smart Casual Conversation, 80/20 rule, Business Page (10.5+ Australian users)
• YouTube - Information, Entertainment

Tenille says it is important to look at how consumer behaviour has changed. For example, 20 years ago few people cared about organic eggs, now people want to know where their eggs come from and how chickens are treated. Consumers have changed - they want to see what goes on behind the scenes, why they should be associated with you, before becoming brand loyalty.

The circle of trust is critical - Talk -> See -> Like -> Trust -> Try -> Talk - Tenille says that just as we engage in small talk to size up people in a meeting before engaging and trusting, consumers (citizens) need to engage with organisations in conversations before they trust them.

She says the first thing organisations need to do is to be seen on social media channels, as people are already talking about you. If you are not seen you are doing damage to your brand and reputation.

Tenille says that next you must be engaging actively - don't simply link your accounts together and send information blindly (like linking media releases to Twitter, Twitter to Facebook, etc). Consumers look at your social media presence and assess whether it is in their language and then whether you are really engaging in conversation.

She says that a social media channel with no conversation is unhealthy, and consumers will see this and judge you accordingly.

Tenille says that once you have built trust through engagement, people will either try (your product or service) or talk about you (online and offline) - this is where ROI comes in, which can be very hard to effectively measure, but can be seen in the actions of the community.

Tenille says that people only go to organisational websites when they want to learn more about an organisation. For an organisation to proactively get information to the community it needs to create connections, engaging with consumers through channels such as social media and she says that if you position yourself as a thought leader in your industry people will start coming to you for advice.

Tenille says that the web has gone past the point of being optional for organisations. If you don't have a website, people won't trust your organisation is credible. The trend is towards social media going the same way - people look for whether organisations are engaging actively with their customers. Very soon an organisation without an active social media presence will not be seen as credible.

Temille says that people spend 7.8 hours per week on social media and fanning two of their favourite brands per week. Neilsen reports that 73% of online Australians prefer to engage with their favourite products, brands and services through social media. She says the 'smoko' has been replaced by the 'socialo'.

She says she often gets asked about the return on investment for social media - she asks them, what is the return on ignoring?

Tenille illustrates her point with a case study on Dominos - who had a negative video appear on YouTube and responded with a media release and traditional media engagement, however sales kept falling. Finally they convinced their CEO to create a video that went on YouTube - moral: don't rely on traditional media to address an issue discussed via social media. Respond in a like way.

Next Tenille is using QPS Media's use of social media during the Queensland floods as an example of how government can use social media, becoming a trusted information source, build engagement and address issues quickly - countering misinformation and also feeding traditional media. She says it also improves situational awareness.

Tenille has also showed examples of Barack Obama's campaign use of social media and how NSW Police has used social media for recruitment and community engagement. She says that focus groups from NSW Police have indicated that people trust information coming direct from the police more than they trust the media. She says that the NSW Police Superintendent has said that social media allows police to highlight the good work they do in the community.

She's now talking about the Best Job in the World campaign by QLD Tourism and how much attention it drove on a relative small budget ($1.2 milion) - receiving over 8.4 million unique visitors, 36,000 video applications, over $400 million in media value and estimated to have reached over 3 billion people.

Tenille is now running through how to use the top four.

She recommends that for Facebook that organisations design a professional landing page and post in a measured way. She says 44% of people unlike a Facebook page because it is updated too frequently. Tenille says they update the Socialite Media Facebook page twice per day, LinkedIn once per day, Twitter 5-15 times, plus conversation management.

For Twitter Tenille says it can be used for sending short messages to a bunch of people publicly, to a specific person publicly or to a specific person privately. As it is short you don't get to ramble.

She says Twitter can be used to monitor your brand and monitor and share industry/topic news, generate leads, promote events, drive traffic to a website.

Tenille says that LinkedIn has a solid corporate profile, with an average user age over 40, income of US$100,000 and professional background. LinkedIn receives 1.2 million comments and posts to groups each week and there's 2 billion people searches each year. Business pages now allow comments, providing greater utility.

She says that many recruitment agencies use LinkedIn as their first port of call for finding staff.

YouTube is good for education and campaign releases and Tenille says it can be integrated into other channels, as a medium where "a picture paints a thousand words". She says ensure that you upload clips, that you post both professional and 'candid' (less professional) videos - which humanise organisations. She recommends linking to clips that support your message.

Tenille says that organisations need to tell people about their social media channels and, not link them together but ensure there are clear paths between their channels.

She says that organisations should define their social media goal, strategy and 'angle' - including assessing their risks, putting them into scope with what social media represents (not overstating risks that aren't really risks applicable to social media).

Tenille recommends that oganisations listen first and be responsive to audience needs, that social media is used consistently and effectively - quality, not quantity.

She says it takes about 80 hours to develop a full social media strategy, pre-planning and approvals take around 75 hours.

Tenille reckons it requires 26% of people's working week to manage social media.

Tenille says that she focuses on education first, to ensure organisations understand whether social media suits them.

I'm now off to the office for the day - will blog more of the event tomorrow.

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Collective protests highlight a 21st Century crisis for traditional government

What do the the Arab Spring, Anonymous, the Occupy movement, Iranian election protests, Anti-Putin protests, the #VileKyle push and the #Qantasluxury incident all have in common?

Each of them was a demonstration of collective action by groups of people without a clear hierarchy of leadership against traditional hierarchical organisations.

In each case the traditional organisations threatened found it difficult to respond in an effective and proportionate manner, with responses often slow and creating greater hostility to the organisations involved.

The traditional organisations around today draw from the US railway corporations of the 18th and 19th century, which were some of the first commercial organisations to develop a 'modern' management model involving strict hierarchical structures and the division of resources into specific responsibilities to be managed (siloing if you prefer).

These organisations, which any manager today would clearly recognize, were designed to coordinate the information, resources and effort required to deliver enormous infrastructure projects - continent spanning railway networks.

Given the modes of communication and management available at the time, with most information moving at the speed of a horse and most previous organisations limited in size to a few locations, family-based ties and people who could turn their hands to any of a more limited set of skill, the railway corporations were an innovative and effective tool for delivering the outcomes desired. They coordinated the efforts of tens of thousands of workers, hundreds of experts, and led to some of the first large companies that a modern observer would recognize.

Two hundred years on, most organisations still use very similar methods of organising resources - hierarchical constructs with coordinators at the top, managers in the middle, worker bees at the bottom and an assortment of specialists and experts who slot in their skills as required, with appropriate compensation.

Governments were particularly enthusiastic adopters of hierarchical models due to their massive scale and increasing responsibilities. They rapidly organised their machinery to take advantage of divisions of responsibility and labour.

As more and more non-family organisations began arranging themselves into the hierarchical model, governments and corporations began to discover it was easier and more efficient for them, with their strict structures, to engage similar organisations. Corporations created trade 'treaties' or merged their resources into even larger management constructs, governments created legislation that could more effectively regulate trade through dealing with significant corporations and redeveloped its own internal procurement processes to favour hierarchical suppliers.

These steps, together with the fact that hierarchies were a more efficient organisation model for the time, led to our modern society, where the hierarchical model of resource management is dominant, well-understood and still considered the most efficient and effective way of arranging resources. After all, most other models would no longer suit our state and national legal systems or our international trade relationships and ownership structures.

This approach to hierarchy has become a self-fulfilling and propagating approach. The legal and economic environment of today, or at least up to very recently, put strictures on non-hierarchical organisations, limiting their size and complexity. This, in turn, ensured that the main hierarchies, governments and large companies, could compete and cooperate in a congenial environment.

These hierarchies had clear leadership structures - a President, Prime Minister or General Secretary, a Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director or Chairman - and they interacted with each other through clearly defined 'channels' of communication. Level to level, officer to officer. This made it easy for deals to be made between them. CEOs met Prime Ministers, Presidents met General Secretaries and the minions met their counterparts to do deals all the way down.

However with the rise of the Internet the environment has changed. Suddenly information can be distributed rapidly, frictionlessly and with great accuracy. Organisations can coordinate resources and manpower without enormous corporate hierarchies and infrastructure. Small teams can create global products, overturning the business models of large corporations and entire global industries.

Strict hierarchies are no longer clearly the best form of organizational structure, no longer clearly the most efficient or effective approach to marshaling resources or coordinating human activity.

This is posing an enormous global challenge for what are now traditional organisations. When customers are no longer limited to geographic competitors, when small and nimble organisations can adopt novel non-hierarchical structures to better marshal resources from any timezone, the dinosaurs begin to stumble.

However commercial 'entities' (traditional hierarchical structures) are not the only ones affected. Governments are also under enormous stress, with their strict hierarchies struggling to develop the systems and approaches needed to rapidly, proportionately and effectively engage, service or contend with non-hierarchical groups challenging their policies, structures and legitimacy.

With traditional lobbyists and companies it was easy for governments to engage. There were clear hierarchies for both state and non-state players and effective protocols could be put in place for meetings at level, systems for complaints, reviews and agreements. However when faced with a collective movement, fueled by a common feeling of rage, disempowerment, hope or other emotion and coordinated and concentrated effectively through online tools into outpourings of dissatisfaction, authoritarian, communist and democratic governments alike have failed to effectively engage or respond in a proportionate or effective way.

Whether a mayor seeks to meet the local leader of the Occupy their town movement (or just calls them a leaderless rabble) or a Prime Minister seeks to meet the national leader of their civil uprising (or just calls it an unsupported riot led by drug dealers and foreign terrorists), the pattern is the same.

The hierarchical government fails to effectively engage as they cannot identify a structure they recognize, another hierarchy. They apply tolerance, then security constraint and then force and they then lose or face diminished legitimacy.

In some cases the loss of legitimacy causes their fall and the fall of their government structure. In other cases the organisation continues liming along, but begins to slowly fade, waiting for the next encounter and the next, until it finally fails as a state or manages to adapt itself to cope with the changed conditions.

The question that remains open, in our hierarchy dominated world, is what will this adaptation look like. Governments remain an important tool for coordinating national and international relationships, resources and activities. They reinforce each other, no populated area of the globe can survive in today's hierarchical world with no government, although many different flavours are 'allowed' to exist.

How will government hierarchies adapt to collective activity - cations by leaderless, hierarchy free, adaptive groups with superb intelligence sharing and resource-coordination capabilities? Will they force movements to nominate n'leaders or 'representatives' who speak for their movements and can make binding deals? Or will governments find methods to adapt themselves to engage and, where necessary, fight and win, against 'faceless' foes and frenemies?

The jury is still out on this verdict and the evidence is still being presented. However thus far governments in most parts of the world have failed to develop effective, nonviolent approaches to contend with amorphous, leaderless collective movements.

While the internet exists in its current form, an international system for frictionless information sharing, coordination and amplification, governments will have to continue to work hard to adapt themselves, or change the rules, to contend with continuing leaderless protests and movements.

It will be a fascinating - and bloody - war between traditional hierarchies and amorphous, adaptive 'organisations'. However the policies and approaches used to engage, and the method of resolution of this war, will shape the next stages for human societies for many years to come.

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Are you allowing others to steal your agency's oxygen online?

A favored term amongst political operatives and advisors is 'oxygen,, the share of the public discussion a politician, government or issue manages to obtain.

Sometimes the goal is to have the largest possible share, starving other commentators and viewpoints. Other times the goal is to to minimise the share of oxygen a viewpoint or issue gets, shutting down or sidelining it.

There's two things you need to capture oxygen, or deny it to others - good 'lungs', access to the channels needed to 'breathe' it in or out, and a willingness to use your air wisely - to speak out where necessary, contributing to public discourse actively.

These characteristics function as effectively online as they do in offline media - admittedly in a messier and less constrained way. While the internet does provide infinite amounts of airtime for those who wish to present a viewpoint, whether, how soon and effectively an organisation presents its own viewpoint can have a great deal of influence in shaping the subsequent tone of the conversation.

This is well understood by lobby groups, companies and not-for-profits - who actively establish and build their online 'lungs' and are prepared to speak and help their constituents speak up on issues of importance to their agendas.

Politicians too have been reasonably active at establishing their own lungs and voice online - now essential tools for any political career.

However many government agencies still appear unwilling to take the first step, to claim their own lungs online, establishing channels and accounts that they can use to monitor and, where necessary and relevant, engage the communities that they seek to influence - or that influence them.

Agencies who are unwilling to claim their oxygen online will increasingly find themselves suffocated by other organisations and individuals who do. Where agencies can't influence debates, present the case on behalf of governments or end up at the receiving end of perceptions distributed and amplified online, they stop being effective agents of government and managers of change.

If your agency is still resisting building its online lungs and voice, remind your senior managers that their role is to support the government implement its policies on the behalf of the public, not to stand on the sidelines and be acted upon - suffocated - through lack of access to oxygen.

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Only professional scientists can do science, only professional journalists can do journalism, only professional policy makers can create good policy - not anymore

I attended the Australian Science Communicator's new media forum last night, participating on the panel as a Gov 2.0 Advocate, along with a distinguished group of science communicators and academics.

One view expressed on the panel was that while scientists should communicate basic science to the public, the uninformed masses should not be involved in reviewing or doing science.

This reflects views heard in other professions over the last ten years - that bloggers should not do journalism or critique journalists and that the public should be kept at arms length in government policy development as they don't know enough to provide a valid contribution (explaining why some resist the use of consultations and policy co-design is rarely used across Australian governments).

This viewpoint by intelligent and highly skilled professionals is not, in my view, surprising. Anyone who has dedicated years of their life, slogging through universities degrees, post-graduate studies and climbing the job ladder knows they have earnt the right to do what they do. Anyone who hasn't put in those hard yards is often viewed with suspicion, even disdain.

This is partly a recognition that there's 'secret knowledge' and expertise required to undertake some of this work, however it can also be partially ego-driven - experts often define themselves by their expertise as it feeds their sense of value.

The changes in the last ten years have permitted many who don't have formal learning or specific career experience to learn about and contribute in fields such as science, journalism and policy creation. This can threaten some experts (who are often quite public about the divide between professional and citizen activities)

However for many others it presents opportunities to broaden their reach, tap into wider collective expertise and to build knowledge and understanding. This in turn can lead to greater influence and better outcomes - even greater funding or profits or positive social change. Greater understanding can also reduce the fear of 'otherness' and concerns and suspicions around elitism - which have dogged certain groups, such as scientists, in recent years.

Even more than this, people who are not acknowledged as experts often can provide a different view of challenges and different approaches to solving problems that sometimes experts, who can become locked into a particular professional worldview, or lack relevant broader experience, cannot see. This can lead to breakthroughs or new realizations.

Regardless of whether individuals support or oppose this trend of 'encroachment' of 'amateurs' into formerly elite fields, the trend is real - isn't it better to harness it rather than resist it?

After all history has demonstrated the fate of organisations and individuals who resisted social trends. They generally are not with us anymore, or exist in much diminished and niche forms.

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Stop talking about engagement and get on with it

Guest post by Steve Davies

Yesterday I spend a little time getting involved in the ACT Government Twitter Cabinet. The focus was on Canberra beyond 2013. Lots of ideas and views exchanged. Through sheer serendipity one of my views on life struck a note with our Chief Minister, Katy Gallagher. So the next Twitter Cabinet will involve school kids.

The idea has also been picked up and supported by a few other MLA's.

 Make sense strategically = building capability by the way. Which, in my view, is precisely what organisations should being doing internally.

 So why am I sharing this with you?

 What this practical and timely real world example illustrates that we really can just 'get on with engagement' - as opposed to talking about it. Effectively that is what the technology does. Let people get on with engaging. 

And there is no reason why that same approach can't apply just as much within organisations. Regardless of size.

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ACT government Virtual Community Cabinet on again today at 12.30pm - follow the liveblog

The ACT Government has scheduled its next Virtual Community Cabinet (VCC) meeting for 12.30 today.

This is the third VCC held by the ACT government and has the theme "The Canberra you want to live in past 2013".

I'm collecting the public discussion via the liveblog below (and by RSS) - which means you can also watch the discussion here. or watch and participate on Twitter, using the hashtag #actvcc.

Note you will require a Twitter account to participate and your comments are published publicly.

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This week's social media score - Public: 3 Organisations: 0

This has been an insightful week for organisations using, or considering using, social media with three successive events demonstrating how far power has shifted to the public and illustrating how Australians companies are struggling to engage effectively online.

First up was Qantas with its poorly timed "Qantas luxury" promotion. Qantas launched the Twitter competition by inviting the public to tweet their idea of travel luxury using the hashtag #qantasluxury.

However Qantas appears to not have recognized that the tens of thousands of negative comments levied against the organisation since their shutdown represented a deep seated frustration and disillusionment with the company. Even though Qantas had hired four additional staff focused on monitoring social media the week before.

Within minutes of Qantas's tweet announcing the competition the public hijacked the hashtag and turned it against the company, using it to vent their concerns and frustrations at the airline.

This was picked up by traditional media and covered widely, turning a small ($1,500 in prizes) competition into what was called a national PR disaster for Qantas.

Next was Nissan, whose online competition, managed through their Facebook page, went pear-shaped when the winner of the competition turned out to be good friends with one of Nissan's staff running their social media presence.

While the competition was totally above board, with the winner selected objectively by finding the most car graphics on websites, unfortunately the winner's friendship with the Nissan staff member made it appear otherwise.

Nissan themselves were very upfront about it - indicating that while they congratulated the winner they'd have preferred if he hadn't won, but he'd done so fair and square without breaching any competition terms.

In this situation Nissan's approach did a lot to mute the concern, however it demonstrated the issue of friendship networks. If you're a staff member operating social media channels for an organisation it is highly likely you have many friends online. So what do you tell when a new company competition launches? You let your friends know online so they can spread the word and increase the competition's reach. Entirely above board, however risking a backfire if your friends can gain advantage by being first into a competition.

Third, and most significant, has been the social media backlash against the Kyle and Jackie O show following the comments of Kyle Sandilands regarding the deputy editor of news.com.au after her article about the reaction to Kyle and Jackie's TV special (which rated extremely poorly).

The backlash, much of it under the hashtag #vilekyle, has led to around a dozen companies deciding to withdraw their advertising from 2DayFM and sponsorship from the Kyle and Jackie O show - even the Federal government has now withdrawn all advertising from any show hosted by Kyle Sandilands.

Over 15,000 people have signed an online petition calling for advertisers to drop support for Sandilands and a number of people (myself included) have called for Southern Cross Austereo to let Sandilands go. Whether they will or not remains to be seen, however the loss of significant sponsors and advertisers will place significant pressure on the company to reconsider Sandiland's contract and on air presence.

All three examples above this week demonstrate different risks in social media.

Qantas failed to monitor and accurately assess the public view, selecting the wrong social media approach to attempt to rebuild its brand. Nissan made an easy misstep, selecting a competition mechanism that raised the risk of someone close to a staff member winning a prize, however by handling the situation in a proactive and robust way minimized the damage and emerged largely unscathed despite initial public concerns.

The Sandilands incident (which remains ongoing) demonstrates how public outrage can translate into the need for rapid organisational action, both through advertiser withdrawal and the attempts by Sandilands and Austereo to apologies for his behaviour (albeit fairly weak apologies that have not satisfied many online). In this case even though Sandiland's comments were made on radio, not on social media, the backlash occurred online and neither Kyle nor Jackie O, nor their employer Southern Cross Austereo, were prepared to engage with the public online response, whereas many of the sponsors and advertisers did, helping to minimize damage to their own brands.

None of these events impacted the government or public service - and in fact there's never been a significant social media disaster due to online engagement by public servants or agencies in Australia (I don't include media attacks on public servants such as by News Ltd on Greg Jericho) - however they all have lessons for government agencies to learn.

It is important to recognize that being absent or unresponsive online and in social media is no protection against public outrage (as the Sandilands incident shows), and failing to monitor online sentiment is a recipe for PR disaster (as Qantas demonstrated). However if organisations act with good faith, communicate and engage actively (as Nissan and several advertisers from the Sandilands issue did), they can minimize the impact of social media gaffes and build strong online relationships with their customers.

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Should Australia's political parties have open government and Gov 2.0 policies? (NZ Labour does)

The New Zealand Labour Party have released an Open Government policy, proudly claiming it as first in New Zealand.

The policy focuses on transparency of political offices as the core principle, but also commits the party to producing a comprehensive "Open Government Charter‟, based on a set of principles developed by NZ Labour MPs in consultation with members of the public.

NZ Labour's policy includes provisions for Cabinet papers and other documents to be publicly available once decisions are made without people having to request them through the Official Information Act. Their policy also states that a Labour government would initiate a review of the Standing Orders and look at how to ensure better public input into the legislative process, including through the use of new technologies.

In particular NZ Labour's policy states that,

• Online engagement by public servants should be enabled and encouraged. Robust professional engagement with the public benefits government agencies, public servants’ own professional development, and the New Zealand public. 
• Public servants should be able to use social media in their professional role, and the government should provide protection and guidance/advice around how to do so effectively.

And that a Labour government would,

• Explore ways to expand the use that government makes of the Internet in engaging the public to feed into policy discussion and government direction.
• Develop a trial of online voting in local government and general elections.
• Publish the Hansard in a standard, open, parsable, format, so that it can easily be re-used and republished by anybody for any purpose

The full text of the NZ Labour Open Government policy is here.

Interestingly, while there's been Government commitments to open government and Gov 2.0 across Australia, I was unable to locate an explicit Open Government/Gov 2.0 policy on Australian Labor, Liberal, Greens or Nationals websites, although to be fair there are scattered mentions of supporting public engagement in governance and of strengthening FOI laws.

I wonder, should Australian political parties have explicit policies for Open Government and Government 2.0 with commitments to the use of online media and support for online engagement by public servants?

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What if computer problems happened in real life?

I'll let the video speak for itself...

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Allowing your customers to codesign your services

Crowdsourcing often seems to be a high stress area for organisations, who fear what might happen if they allowed their users to design their products and services.

However what is often forgotten is that it's not about handing over the design process, it is about sharing it as a codesign process - combining the brain power of a few internal or contracted specialist designers who don't necessarily use your products or services with the brain power of thousands of non-specialists who use or interact with your products and services, often on a regular basis.

A good example of this process was recently discussed in Inc., where Fiat crowd sourced the design of its 2009 concept car, the Fiat Mio.

The main part of this process was conducted in Spanish (as Fiat is Brazilian based), and while I watched it occur at the time, there was only a limited subset of the conversation in English.

However Fiat ended up involving people from 160 countries - taking on board over 10,000 suggestions.  The website about the making of the car provides more information on how Fiat went about integrating these suggestions.

The concept car won widespread critical acclaim. 


This isn't the only approach possible, and the article in Inc, Letting Your Customers Design Your Products, describes five different types of crowd sourcing:

• Crowdfunding: Sites such as Kickstarter that allow an individual or enterprise to receive funding.
• Distributed knowledge: The aggregation of data and information from a variety of sources.
• Cloud labor: Leveraging a virtual labor pool.
• Collective creativity: Tapping "creative" communities for user-generated art, media or content.
• Open innovation: The use of outside resources to generate new ideas and company processes.

 How many of these could your agency benefit from?

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ACT Virtual Community Cabinet 12:30pm today (#actvcc)

The ACT government has announced that their first Virtual Community Cabinet will be held today from 12:30 - 1:30pm on the topic of Public Transport, using Twitter as the discussion tool.

To follow the discussion keep an eye on #actvcc, the hashtag for the event.

The ACT Cabinet will be in the Cabinet room, following the Twitter stream on a big screen and tweeting responses via their laptops.

Specific questions can be directed to Cabinet members via their Twitter accounts, such as @KatyGMLA (for the Chief Minister).

I have previously expressed my views on this approach - using a medium suited for light touches and news breaking for deep evidence-based discussion. No-one in the Australian Gov 2.0 arena has been consulted on the use of Twitter this event to my knowledge (or indeed on the timing of the VCC - good for ACT Ministers, but not for the 65% of Commonwealth staff and other ACT residents without access to social media at their workplaces).

I hope I am proven wrong and this event goes well.

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Empowering citizens to lead public governance reforms in developing and developed nations

One of the assumptions often applied to government funding for aid and governance reform programs is that the funding must be granted to established corporations, NGOs or not-for-profits that have hierarchies, governance structures, offices and methodologies for achieving outcomes.

It only makes sense - when investing government money into development activities there needs to be ways to mitigate risks and ensure accountability.

Surely a well-established organisation, with structural integrity and processes, must be well-equipped to manage and deliver change outcomes.

A ten-year research study from the Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability (Citizenship DRC), has found that the assumption that an established organisation is better equipped to deliver governance reform is just that - an assumption.

As reported by Nick Benequista in the website of the Institute of Development Studies, the Citizenship DRC's report, Blurring the Boundaries: Citizenship Action Across States and Societies (PDF):

"argues that "the 'good governance' agenda that has persisted in international development since the early 1990s is itself due for a citizen-led upheaval."

Benequista's article, How a citizen-led approach can transform aid to governance, points to over 150 cases highlighted on the Citizenship DRC website where bottom-up citizen-led initiatives have been effective in achieving governance change in different countries, circumstances and on different issues.

Perhaps this is an area we need to explore more of in Government 2.0.

How can we rebalance the relationship between governments and citizens through development funding to achieve better outcomes.

Is giving money to established organisations the best approach, or do governments need to listen more directly to citizens and listen less to intermediaries.

With the emerging knowledge and experience in this area around the world it will be interesting to see whether Australian governments are willing - or able - to reframe their approach to development.

To finish with Benequista's words,

The good governance agenda of the 1990s has already overstayed its usefulness. The question now is whether what comes next will finally give citizens the role they have been demanding.

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Coping with the challenges of two-speed government agencies

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about 21st Century society vs 19th Century laws and policing. My post discussed the interview and arrest of Ben Grubb, an Australian Technology Journalist, by Queensland Police in the context of the challenges for legislators and law enforcement in remaining current and relevant in a quickly digitalising world.

A second issue arose on Twitter related to a response by @QPSMedia to a question. The QLD Police Media Unit stated publicly that Grubb had been interviewed but not arrested.

Unfortunately this was untrue at the time. Grubb had been placed under arrest. @QLDMedia corrected their statement as soon as they were made aware of the changed situation (and took a little flak over their correction for "being too informal" - but that's the value of Twitter, short, fast and personable).

My understanding in this case is that the Queensland Police Media Unit had checked and obtained high level clearance for the original 'interview' tweet. As far as they had known the original information was correct at the time of tweeting.

I'm not about to criticise @QPSMedia for providing information they believe is correct at the time and then amend as soon as the error is recognised - that's actually very good practice. Frankly, considering the Queensland Police is a 24-hour organisation with 15,000 staff and over 5.2 million interactions with the public each year, it is unreasonable to assume that every interaction will be perfect.

Even if you could effect a communications accuracy rate of 99.999% (with humans mind you, not machines) this would still leave room for one mistake each week (52 per year).


What this particular situation does highlight for me is a major challenge for government agencies as they begin adopting social media. They are becoming two-speed organisations.

The small teams in agencies that manage online channels and engage via social media are developing the culture, systems and processes to support rapid, open and less formal communication. They have, or are becoming, attuned to how to communicate effectively online and often provide broader advice and support to other teams in using these channels.

However the areas that haven't embedded social media in their toolkit - the much larger 'rumps' of these agencies - are still operating on pre-internet systems and timeframes. Their focus isn't speed, but quality and diligence. They seek to ensure that information is triple checked before it is announced and that policies and communications are carefully deliberated and crafted to be precisely accurate in every particular.

This means that whenever there is a need to respond quickly to public needs in a crisis or event, the social media team is ready and able to rise to the challenge (as @QPSMedia did in the Brisbane floods). However they may still struggle to source relevant, accurate and timely information from the rest of their organisation (as did @QPSMedia in the example I first provided).

This may create communications and engagement breakdowns or slowdowns, leave agency social media teams looking ineffective or evasive and damage their ability to manage online relationships and incidents in effective ways.

These slowdowns may ultimately impact on the overall reputations of agencies, leaving them looking slow or ineffectual.

So how do we manage these two-speed government organisations?

In the long-term we might see agencies capable of operating at internet speeds, with systems and processes that allow them to manage their data flow and quality needs while also meeting the public's desire for fast information.

In the short-term, as our organisations evolve, it is critical to consider bridging tactics to allow agencies to operate at both speeds - deliberative and internet.

These tactics can include preformatting messages wherever possible. For Twitter a former staff member in my team termed these 'Tweetplates', which could be pre-approved by management and then reused without additional approval requirements.

Material or entire websites that aren't time sensitive can be prepared, reviewed and approved ahead of time, then used as needed in crisis (such as a list of hospital locations or standard emergency instructions). They should be reviewed periodically to keep them up-to-date.

It is also possible to use delaying tactics - to a point. Rather than answering a question immediately it is acceptable to acknowledge the question, indicate that you're working on an answer and that you will provide the answer as soon as possible. Of course it remains necessary to actually answer the question when you said you would.

Are there other tactics I've missed? Add them in the comments below.

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Crowdsourcing serious government policy - now not only thinkable, but desirable

Crowdsourcing is often used in government for 'light' topics, such as selecting a logo or sourcing audience-created videos or photos.

However it also offers enormous potential for informing and developing government policy in areas that are considered both sensitive and serious - such as security.

About a year ago the Atlantic Council released its recommendations report from the 2010 Security Jam.

Unlike previous closed-room security discussions, the Security Jam ran on an open basis, bringing 4,000 military, diplomatic and civilian experts from 124 countries together online to thrash out the challenges facing global security.

Held from 4-9 February, the Jam, run by Security and Defense Agenda in partnership with the Atlantic Council and with support from IBM, was supported by both the European Commission and NATO.

The thousands of participant included defense and security specialists and non-specialists in order to broaden the security debate beyond purely military matters.

According to Robert Hunter, former US Ambassador to NATO, "The Security Jam has done something that NATO's Group of Experts has not - to reach out beyond the ‘usual suspects’, to people who have truly original ideas and a range of analysis that goes to the heart of today's and tomorrow's security issues."

Imagine applying the principles of the Security Jam to Australia's Commonwealth and state policy issues.

With the comments in Terry Moran's speech last week it is clear that this type of approach is not only becoming thinkable, but desirable.

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Public Service 2.0 - reflections on Terry Moran's latest speech

The Secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Terry Moran, gave a speech last week to the Graduate School of Government, University of Sydney. Titled Surfing the next wave of reform, his speech discussed the public service's critical role in supporting and enabling government reform and good governance, and what would be expected of the APS into the future.

Without mentioning Government 2.0, Moran's speech touched on many of its elements. He argued that the public service needed to improve how it engaged with citizens - particularly through the use of new tools enabled by technological improvements in IT and communications,

The bedrock of government engagement with citizens is through the institutions of our representative democracy. At its simplest, citizens vote every three years or so to elect Members of Parliament who choose a government to make laws and decisions.

But that alone is far from the extent of the links between citizens and government. Governments will achieve their goals better if they also use other ways to engage with citizens to complement and reinforce our fundamental democratic institutions.

The remarkable advances in information technology and communications over recent decades have changed and expanded citizens’ expectations, but have also given governments much better tools for engaging with citizens.

We need to do much better at this task.

Moran said that the public service had to improve its use of technology in policy and program delivery to service citizen needs,

Second, in implementing and delivering the decisions of Cabinet, we need to do better at designing policies and programs in ways that take full advantage of modern technology and that are designed with flexibility and creativity, to meet citizens’ needs. The NBN will permit a step forward in this area.

And he said that the APS needed to become better at listening to citizens, particularly through the use of modern technology,

Government needs to empower individuals and communities in ways that allow it and public servants to have effective exchanges with citizens.

Perhaps most telling - and most personally exciting to me - Moran said that,

Our processes should allow the community to provide input throughout the policy and service delivery process. Information technology can play a crucial role facilitating communication between citizens and governments.

I understand this as Moran saying that to meet the challenges in the APS's future, the Australian Public Service needs to use appropriate tools and techniques to collaborate with the community throughout the policy and service delivery process, not just consult them at the beginning and deliver to them at the end.

Moran finished with the statement that,

To be successful, the reform agenda will need to embrace the best, frank and honest strategic advice, and it will have been based on the fullest engagement with citizens. I am confident we can meet the challenge.

The proposal put forward by Moran is a vision of a Public Service 2.0, one trained and equipped to embed a citizen-focus into their work, to be strategic (as well as frank and fearless) in their advice to government, to design policies and services that take full advantage of the technology at our disposal, making appropriate use of Government 2.0 tools and techniques to achieve the goals of the duly-elected government.

I believe it is a vision that will serve Australia well.

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How much would you pay for government transparency?

After a fanfare opening around two years ago, the US government's proposed budget cuts may force data.gov and seven other Gov 2.0 and data sharing websites to close down or dramatically curtail their activities.

When first launched data.gov was the first national website for providing centralised access to government data in reusable formats.

The website was lauded globally for its role in supporting the US government to become more transparent, and allow citizens to analyse and repurpose public data.

However in March the first rumblings appeared. Apparently the site's visitor levels had plateaued, and Congressional budget cuts threatened the ongoing survival of the website as well as a range of others including USASpending.gov, Apps.gov/now, IT Dashboard and paymentaccuracy.gov (as well as a number of internal government sites including Performance.gov and FedSpace) dedicated to making government policies, processes and information more accessible to citizens.

When I first read about the closures in ReadWriteWeb's article, Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down After Budgets Cut on 31 March, my first thought was that this was a clever April Fools prank designed to wind up open government advocates.

This was followed by the GovFresh post on 1 April, Congress weighs deep cuts to funding for federal open government data platforms and assorted coverage across a range of government IT and news websites.

However over the last week it has become clear that this is a legitimate issue, due to budget cuts the US Congress is proposing.

In response the Sunlight Foundation has launched a campaign to Save the data and a range of influential open government advocates have weighed in, such as Tom Steinberg, the founder of the MySociety charity in the UK who is now working in the UK Cabinet Office to support the UK Government's open data initiatives.

Apparently the collective cost of all the websites is around US$32 million (just over a dollar a year per US citizen) - representing 0.09% of the US budget and only 7.7% of the US government's Freedom of Information Act costs. Some commentators have pointed out that other methods of releasing government data are far more expensive and less inclusive or effective.

With parts of the Government 2.0 program (particularly the IT Dashboard and TechStat process) credited with saving the US Government billions in IT costs, the cuts of US transparency initiatives may cost the US enormously.

The proposed cuts raise several very important questions.

How much are nations - and citizens - prepared to pay for government transparency?
And how much transparency are we prepared to trade off for short-term tax saving?

How should the value of transparency be measured?
By the number of people accessing government data, or by the flow-through impact on harder to measure government cost savings and economic benefits?

How can transparency become embedded in government for the long-term?
Particularly when it may be elements of the political or administrative system who wish to constrain transparency for various legitimate, or otherwise, reasons.


It will be a fascinating, and perhaps deeply troubling, process to see how the US answers these questions - and how Australia answers them as well.

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Gov 2.0 Canberra lunch with Alison Michalk on Community management - 13 April 2011

At the next Gov 2.0 Canberra lunch we're taking a look at a topic rapidly growing in importance for government agencies - managing and moderating online communities.

Quiip Director and Community Manager, Alison Michalk, will provide her insights into online community management, user-generated-content moderation and risk mitigation within the Web 2.0 space.

The presentation will draw on Alison’s experience with a range of private & public sector clients; demonstrating the various roles within community management along with strategies to enhance peer-to-peer dialogue and foster campaign support.

Alison Michalk is a respected practitioner in the online community management field. Based in Sydney, Alison has been working with online communities for over eight years. Her specific areas of interest include community governance and engagement, user behaviour and user-generated content moderation. Her experience building and managing online communities extends from start-ups through to large corporations, where she has managed a team of 30 moderators on Australia’s largest parenting website, Essential Baby (Fairfax Digital).

Alison has been featured in the ReadWriteWeb Guide to Community Management and Communities of Purpose white paper, and is a respected blogger on community management issues. Alison Michalk and Vanessa Paech (Lonely Planet/BBC Community Strategist) co-convene the Australian Community Management Roundtables, founded in 2008.

In mid-2010 Alison launched Quiip, an Australian-based community management and moderation business where she works with private and public sector clients including the Department of FaHCSIA’s youth initiative ‘The Line’.

When is the Gov 2.0 Canberra lunch?
13 April from 11.45 to 2pm.

Where is it being held?
The Gov 2.0 Canberra lunch in April is back at the Members' and Guests Dining room at (new) Parliament House hosted by Minister Gary Gray, Australia's Special Minister of State. Please note the special instructions in the event page.

How to register: Go to the Eventbrite page and request a ticket.

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Attorney-General's Department supports research into social media use during disasters

As reported in Mumbrella, the Attorney-General's Department is supporting research by the University of Western Sydney into how the public seeks and shares information via social media during natural disasters.

To complete the survey go here.

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The age of microblogging has arrived - in China

Listening to the US's National Public Radio (NPR) last week, I caught a story about how Chinese citizens are now using micro-blogging services (similar to Twitter) to communicate about missing or stolen children and, in some cases to locate them.

According to The Guardian article, Chinese parents turn to microblogging in hunt for missing children, China has over 80 million micro-blog users (though very few Twitter users due to blocking).

By posting messages and pictures of missing children, and by putting photos of child beggars online, there's been at least half a dozen cases where children have been located and reunited with their parents.

In particular a Chinese professor created a microblog called "Street Photos to Rescue Child Beggars" in t.sina.com.cn. The microblog, which was only registered on 25 January this year, has already gained more than 200,000 followers, many being Chinese police officers. Thousands of photos of child beggars have been posted to the micro-blog by Chinese citizens (the criteria is that photos must show the face of the child and the location and time the photo was taken).

Of course the success of the micro-blog medium in China needs to be weighed with continuing government efforts to restrict debate on certain topics - as recently illustrated in this article in The Age, China micro-blogging sites censor 'Egypt'

Must read posts:

• Chinese professor creates microblog to end child-abduction and forced child beggars - Ministry of Tofu (warning - contains pictures of child beggars, some deliberately injured to improve their begging ability)
• How microblog is helping abducted children in China - Yoland Ma

News stories:

• Chinese microblog helps parents find abducted children - The National
• Microblogs spur action on child abduction - CMP
• Special Fund to Be Set up for Child Beggars - CRI

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What is Australia's Government 2.0 future? Contribute to the website & book

What do you think Australia's Government 2.0 future will look like?


Today Kate Carruthers and I have launched a new project; one we'd like you to be part of.

Government 2.0 is gaining momentum around the world. Not a fad management approach or minor adjustment to policy and processes, Government 2.0 is underpinned by one of the most fundamental changes in communications technologies since the introduction of the printing press: the internet.

The pressure for change is coming at all levels. More than 90 per cent of Australia's adult population access the internet on a regular basis. More than 50 per cent of all Australians now use social networks to share their ideas, build their knowledge, collaborate on causes and comment on policy debates.

In the words of Clay Shirky, we are living through the greatest outpouring of community creativity in history. Every individual who joins the internet gets a free printing press, television channel and radio station. Individuals have the opportunity to influence governments on a greater scale, with fewer barriers to participation, than ever before.

Many of Australia's governments are already actively introducing Government 2.0 tools and practices into their policy, operational and service delivery processes. While there are many successful examples, most have been the efforts of small teams executing good ideas without an overall vision of what Government 2.0 will mean for Australian governance in the future.

Looking around the world, there are as yet limited sources of strategic thinking or research into how Government 2.0 will shape governance over the next 10, 20 or 50 years.

Therefore Kate and I have launched the Government 2.0 Futures project to provide public sector policy-makers, practitioners and academics with a collection of views on Australia's Government 2.0 future.

Through Gov2au.net we are asking Australian and international Gov 2.0 experts, commentators and practitioners - and the Australian community - to reflect and contribute their views on three questions:

• What does Government 2.0 mean for Australia’s governance?
• How will Government 2.0 change the culture and practice of Australia’s public servants and governments?
• What will Australia’s Government 2.0 future look like?

We hope to release a selection of these contributions under Creative Commons next year as a free ebook. We also hope to release a paper version to sell in bookstores and online. Any profits from the sale of this book will go to support Government 2.0 initiatives from not-for-profit organisations in Australia.

We invite you to be part of Australia's Government 2.0 future by contributing your views, ideas and suggestions via the website.

You may also follow the progress of this project on Twitter at @gov20futuresau.

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