How can we benchmark and judge whether government decision-making is improving, or getting worse?

I've had an interesting day today, with a number of meetings with different businesses to discuss various projects and activities they're undertaking that are affected to a significant extent by government decisions.

In three of those meetings business people, from vastly different businesses, told me about recent decisions by government agencies that had made their work more expensive and difficult - in all cases without any consultation as to the business impacts and from a public sector perspective that appeared to lack any understanding of commercial requirements.

From my perspective, as someone who often champions the public sector as hard working, diligent and committed to good public outcomes, it was disappointing to hear a similar story echoed by three different businesses in different economic sectors, dealing with different agencies in different circumstances, but with one common theme.

A lack of consultation.

In all three cases the businesses were financially out-of-pocket due to poorly considered government decisions adding unnecessary red tape, stress and repetition over systems that had been working relatively well.

In all three cases the imposition of new requirements was made at a public service level by senior bureaucrats without commercial experience who did not seek to consult with potentially affected businesses to assay the impact of the changes they implemented.

I've spoken previously about how in my former role leading Delib Australia we found that, compared to Canada, the US and the UK, red tape in Australia added about 40% to the operating costs of our business - this is excluding business costs such as wages, products, systems and marketing.

I've previously spoken with business people who have found that Australian governments impose poorly considered, even contradictory, requirements on their operations, making their work unnecessarily complex.

However to have three businesses in one day, all 20-year veterans in their industries, detail to me exactly why the decisions by agencies in their sectors were flawed, how they hurt the end consumers of products and services, how they added cost and complexity to businesses and how they actually hurt the government's own ability to access the best talent and services, was a new low for me.

I believe that a key metric in government over time should be that the decisions made at both political and public service levels should lead to improved outcomes for citizens, less overhead via red tape on businesses and more cost-effective sourcing of services for governments.

This of course must take into account the competing values and needs and maintain a safety net underneath individuals to ensure they are able to bounce back as productive members of society after unpredictable calamities or inappropriate conduct by others.

To measure this metric governments need to benchmark what people think of the decisions that affect them now and then be both regularly consulted as to whether actual and proposed changes will improve outcomes rather than stifling innovation, employment and growth.

This starts and ends with consultation - finding out what people think now about a particular regulatory or legislative regime, inviting their views into any discussion as to changes and asking them after a change is implemented to verify that it has had the intended impact.

From my conversations today the impression I had was that government was simply a black box, spitting out red tape and changing its rules and approaches whenever someone internal felt the need. No consultation was being undertaken with the companies or end consumers (citizens) affected, and these decisions were based on blind assumptions made by career public servants - assumptions that could have been rapidly tested and verified or dismissed.

No matter what government does or doesn't do, agencies won't easily, quickly and largely painlessly get the setting right without extensive consultation with the right groups throughout our society.

There's wisdom out there in the community. If governments and public servants don't tap into it and damage the fabric of a community, employment opportunities or add unnecessary cost onto their own procurement processes, there's no-one to blame but them.

Sure agencies can argue it is expensive and time-consuming to consult, but it is far costlier to the overall nation to avoid consultation and make unnecessary and costly mistakes.

The three businesses I spoke to all laughed off the absurdity and stupidity of the agency decisions that had affected them. They didn't expect government to be able to do better and saw it simply a lumbering dinosaur whose feet they had to avoid.

Governments can do much better than this. Pubic services can do much better than this. All it takes is a shift in the culture of internal expertise to recognise that consulting can provide perspectives and a deeper understanding of situations than any career public policy professional ever can.

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How should we restructure 'first responder' emergency services in a world where they're now the second responders?

It's fairly widely acknowledged throughout the emergency community that due to the rise in citizen use of technology, emergency services are now rarely the first on the scene of a disaster.

Most emergencies are first publicly highlighted on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or another social media platforms as people proximate to the situation take photos and share messages, often even before anyone bothers to call an emergency hotline.

Once information about an emergency is shared online it can attract individuals, to assist or gawk, and by the time a 'First Responder' reaches the scene, there may be teams working to rectify the situation, whether officially qualified or not.

For large emergency and disaster scenarios, online systems may also appear with surprising rapidity. Donation-taking sites, rehousing services, advice and support lines and even running video and text commentary can be in place within minutes of a significant disaster.

The effect of this is that emergency services are no longer the first responders to the majority of emergencies, and often arrive at a scene with less information about the situation than citizens have already collected and shared online.

Even where citizens are not the first onsite, they may still become a major channel for sharing information - correct or not - about the emergency, as was observed during the Boston Marathon bombing (refer to the trailer for a new documentary on this below).


So how should emergency services and governments respond to an environment when they are no longer the first responders?

While there's been some discussion of this across the emergency community, there's been precious few changes to the protocols or approaches of emergency services to take advantage of their new status in a positive way.

Other than discouraging citizens from getting involved (as they're not qualified and may take the wrong steps), and a few efforts to bring some citizen social media intelligence into emergency centres, there's been little done to provide new tools and systems for supporting voluntary emergency support activities by the general public.

Some of this, perhaps most of this, is related to slow change within these services. It's hard for lifelong emergency service specialists to acknowledge that their role is changing - some still struggle with some of the modern tools for managing emergencies, let along with groups of citizens pitching in to help.

Some is also undoubtably connected with the risks of having unskilled volunteers onsite at some of the worst disasters. Many people don't understand or appreciate the potential dangers they face, or the complications they can cause to emergency services should a well-intentioned effort to help become another person needing rescue and resources.

However this situation is not likely to go away. Citizens are now firmly established as the first people onscene in most emergencies, and it is impractical to expect that at least some of them won't try to help and illogical to expect that no-one will broadcast unfolding events via digital channels.

It is a good time for emergency services to consider how to direct all that volunteer energy in productive ways. What tasks can citizens do at the site of a situation that will help pave the way for the 'second responder' emergency services when they arrive?

These tasks are likely to change by emergency type, however it is possible to provide basic guidance via social channels and via apps as to what steps will help preserve lives and property rather than increase the danger and difficulty of given emergencies.

With the right approach and support tools, emergency services can enlist citizens as a support workforce, able to set a perimeter, collect location-specific data and even, where safe, help address and transport the injured to appropriate services, allowing emergency workers to concentrate on the more difficult wounds and tasks.

Tools such as a 'Tinder' app for medical professionals could help quickly locate appropriately qualified personnel nearby who can lend a hand, prior or after emergency services arrive. The same approach could be used for people with specific skills useful in emergencies - from former and off-duty firefighter to army reservists, specialists in communication or the use of specific tools.

There's likely a range of other approaches that can be used to help direct the energy of the general public into supporting emergency services in effective ways, and its time for emergency services to unbend, recognise that the environment has changed, and think outside the square as to how citizens can be more than dangerous nuisances at an emergency scene.

The real risk now is that emergency services cling to their past 'first responder' status and dismiss the skills and capabilities of the public. This will only increase the danger in future scenarios where well-meaning citizens, denied effective leadership and instruction by emergency professionals, take unnecessary risks when helping emergency victims and scale up the extent of these disasters.

Regardless of whether emergency services choose to recognise that they're no longer the first responders in most disasters, or keep their heads firmly in the sand, we're likely to continue to see citizens be the first responders, and once on-scene helping in the ways they think they can and should.

Whether these citizens are assets or liabilities in any specific emergency comes down to how the professional emergency services support and lead them, but they will come none-the-less.

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What does membership of the Open Government Partnership mean for Australia?

On 24 November Prime Minister Turnbull sent a letter to the global Open Government Partnership (OGP) Secretariat confirming that Australia would progress to full membership of the OGP by July 2016 (continuing the process started by the former Labor Government in May 2013).

Australia will become the 69th member of the OGP, joining countries such as the USA, UK, Canada, The Philippines, Mongolia and India.

The consultation process is now underway, supported through the OGPau website and a consultation wiki at ogpau.wikispaces.com.

I've been supporting the process through facilitating a number of Information Sessions on behalf of PM&C to help build community awareness about the initiative, to address questions and build engagement with the process.

Canberra's session was livestreamed and the raw replay is below.


I am also involved in the establishment of the Australian Open Government Partnership Network, a network of civil societies and individuals that support the goals of the OGP and aim to work productively with the Australian Government to help Australia achieve them as a nation.

If you're outside government and wish to stay informed about the process, or get involved in a network of people interested in the OGP's goals, learn more at aogpn.net

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Can an AI understand your online personality? How about your agency's online persona?

I've been having a play with IBM Watson's Personality Insights Service.

The service uses "linguistic analytics to extract a spectrum of cognitive and social characteristics from the text data that a person generates through blogs, tweets, forum posts, and more."

While this is quite a mouthful, the service provides an interesting external perspective on how individuals and organisations present themselves online.

As a benchmark, this is how Watson sees me from my last dozen blog posts in eGovAU (excluding the guest posts):

You are shrewd, skeptical and tranquil. 

You are philosophical: you are open to and intrigued by new ideas and love to explore them. You are empathetic: you feel what others feel and are compassionate towards them. And you are imaginative: you have a wild imagination. 

Experiences that give a sense of prestige hold some appeal to you. You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done. You consider achieving success to guide a large part of what you do: you seek out opportunities to improve yourself and demonstrate that you are a capable person.

In a nutshell that's not too bad an analysis.

However what happens when we analyse a government agency's social media presence?

In this case I decided to analyse the Digital Transition Office (DTO), by taking all their blog posts from July to November (excluding guest posts) and plugging them into the Watson Personality analyser.

So this is how Watson sees the personality of the DTO:

You are heartfelt and rational.  

You are self-controlled: you have control over your desires, which are not particularly intense. You are empathetic: you feel what others feel and are compassionate towards them. And you are proud: you hold yourself in high regard, satisfied with who you are.  

Experiences that make you feel high efficiency are generally unappealing to you. You are relatively unconcerned with tradition: you care more about making your own path than following what others have done. You consider helping others to guide a large part of what you do: you think it is important to take care of the people around you.

Now that's a pretty good result for an organisation (except maybe the pride bit). 

It seems to me that the personality that the DTO is projecting through their blog is fairly close to the approach and persona that the DTO wishes to portray within government and more broadly in the community.

Now how about another agency...

Here's a review of the Department of Immigration's Migration blog, taking all blog posts from October 2014 onwards (to provide a sample of the same size as the DTO and my blog).

Here's what Watson said about the Department of Immigration's blog's personality:

You are heartfelt, tranquil and skeptical. 

You are calm under pressure: you handle unexpected events calmly and effectively. You are self-assured: you tend to feel calm and self-assured. And you are philosophical: you are open to and intrigued by new ideas and love to explore them. 

Experiences that make you feel high well-being are generally unappealing to you. 

You are relatively unconcerned with taking pleasure in life: you prefer activities with a purpose greater than just personal enjoyment. You consider achieving success to guide a large part of what you do: you seek out opportunities to improve yourself and demonstrate that you are a capable person.

On the money, or off the mark?


Now of course this kind of process is flawed. An AI can only read the words it sees, it doesn't have a broader picture of an individual or organisation and it has been programmed to respond in given ways to given words or phrases.

However it does highlight an important point about communicating online, and in every medium, in the way you wish to be seen.

Does your online persona represent how you wish to be seen? Is it consistent across platforms? Is it appropriate to your organisation's goals?

It's worth using tools like this to check how your organisation is communicating and identify if there's attributes you are portraying which are contrary to how you wish to be seen.

If your online persona isn't aligned closely with your goals it can create issues in how people see you and how they engage with you - leading to greater negativity in interactions and diminishing trust and respect.

So think carefully about every post, tweet and status update - do they represent and reinforce your organisational values, or do they damage your image in the public eye.

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What defines you on social media?

While travelling to and from the GovHack international awards red carpet event (which was great BTW), I've been reading 'So you've been publicly shamed', the latest book by Jon Ronson (the author of The men who stare at goats), and was reflecting on some of the experiences he talks about.

A common theme throughout the book is how easy it can be for a single comment or photo to define a person on social media and become their personal brand - whether they wish it to or not.

In many instances the defining tweet or image is created in a moment of passion, humour or poor judgement - a moment of weakness or lack of clarity where a poorly worded joke or action becomes misinterpreted and spreads widely across the Internet.

Avoiding online media is no defense against the potential for an individual to be incorrectly defined. Ronson gives an example of an individual whose moment of infamy has affected, to varying extents, over 60 people who share the same name.

Even for individuals who choose not to have their own social accounts, it can only require someone to quote their comment (accurately or not) or sharing an image or video of their actions online to create a storm of concern.

So if an absence from social media is ineffective and all of us who are online are prone to moments where our judgement and anticipation is not perfect, what is the appropriate way to minimise the risk of mislabeling or public shaming?

One of the approaches explored by Ronson involved ensuring that an individual is honestly represented online, not by a single misinterpreted comment, but by the sum of their actions, views and experience.

When there's only a few search results for an individual's name they can easily be defined in Google, and hence online, as being a single thing - be it accurate or not. Even worse, if someone is effectively invisible online they may find themselves defined by someone else who shares their name.

When an individual has a history on the Internet, with an honest record of their thoughts and actions and are continuing to update this through posts, tweets, articles and images, they are far less likely to find themselves defined (or misdefined) by a single perceived mistake.

While a sarcastic comment or badly timed photo may still reach further than normal engagement would, it is far harder for strangers to define an individual as just one thing online.

In my view this principle applies as strongly for organisations as it does for individuals. 

We've seen many social media disasters over the years spurred by a poorly timed or worded comment. Where the organisation or individual 'shuts down' ('removing the oxygen' in PR speak) or changes their behaviour ('damage control') it grant the mistake greater credibility and can lead to far greater attention and negative.

Acknowledging the mistake, taking appropriate remedial steps immediately (such as an apology or correction), and then moving forward with normal engagement levels is often the most effective approach to address a single instance of error or community concern.

Also critical is having a rich and deep history of engagement, a 'resume' demonstrating how that organisation has engaged effectively over a significant period of time. This makes it very difficult for detractors to position an organisation as one (negative) thing, or for individuals stumbling on the error to accidentally assume that it represents the true values and approach of the organisation.

On that basis I believe that the best thing that both individuals and organisations can do to mitigate the risk of misunderstandings and public shaming online is to clearly define themselves, and keep defining themselves through ongoing effective online engagement.

Being absent, silent or putting up the barricades when an error is made creates space for others to define you, in ways that are likely inaccurate and almost always do not represent your own values and actions.

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The evolving role of social medial within government and the community

I had a great chat on Monday with one of the best online comms people in federal government, which touched on how the role of social media has evolved within agencies and how this matched the overall evolution and maturing of social use by the community in general.

I've thought through this and roughly mapped out the phases I've seen for social over the years - note this is a rough draft and others will have very different views of the progression.

Birth - 'I'm here look at me'
At its birth most people and organisations weren't quite sure what social media was for, with many starting out using social to talk about themselves and what they were doing.

Organisations often began engaging with 'look I'm here' messages - staking their claim to coolness through merely having a presence on a social channel, many without a firm strategy detailing why they were on social or how they'd use these platforms to engage with citizens, customers, stakeholders and staff.

This phase was typified by posts detailing that people were getting up, going to bed, having lunch or, from organisations, that their CEO was at such-and-such a place with such-and-such a celebrity.

Childhood - 'I'm learning about...'
As social grew in reach and users in sophistication, people began talking about topics of common interest, sharing news and information in topically based groups. The arrival of hashtags on Twitter to differentiate conversations is an example of one of the key stages on this journey as social media became less about being present and more about sharing meaningful data with relevant people and organisations.

Critical in this stage was the evolution beyond self-interest into sharing, with the reputation of social media users starting to reflect their willingness to share information rather than how they shared their own lives and activities.

Teenager - 'What's up?'
As social took hold in the mainstream, we saw a great deal of confusion - with new and advanced users beginning to collide in terms of the maturity of their use.

One particular trend was for tighter peer groups to form, with more experienced users 'circling the wagons' around their information sharing conversations as new people streamed in screaming 'look at me'.

This phase saw the creation of many expert groups who either excluded or husbanded in new users into their cliche in managed ways.

We also saw the type of information shared on shift to become more personal, with disasters fostering the use of social media for social outcomes - saving lives, directing resources, helping people cope with adverse circumstances as empathy took hold.

Organisations began using social media not just for impersonal information broadcasts but for personalised customer service and for engaging and supporting people in crisis scenarios.

More resources began being directed to social, with organisations encouraged to develop their own voices and live their values, rather than simply share information.

Young adulthood - 'Experimentation'
We're now entering the young adulthood of social media, with a majority of the population both using social and many doing so in innovative and useful ways.

The tools have been around long enough that people are beginning to explore what is possible in more systemic and mature ways.

Organisations now using social in diverse ways - still for information sharing, customer service and crisis management - but also for detecting the 'pulse' of the community, for engaging in the development of products and policies, and for building relationships with non-humans, from NASA spacecraft to coffee machines, in a social aspect to the internet of things.

We're seeing stories told via social channels and new forms of art evolving to encapsulate the global conversation that's now occurring between over a billion people day and night.


What do we have to look forward to?

Hopefully we'll see a long mature adulthood for social media, where individuals and organisations integrate social media fully within their lives, using social channels as we already use telephones as a natural part of the communication fabric of our lives, relationships and interactions.

For organisations and individuals still new to social media, it's worth trying to move quickly through your 'birth' and 'childhood', into the phases where social has the most impact and value.

While you may not be prepared, as yet, to experiment with innovative ways of using social, at least integrate it into your customer service and community engagement frameworks, even moreso than your outbound communications.

Try to develop a single voice for your social presence as an organisation - not an impersonal institution, emotionless and uncaring, nor necessary a 'human' voice representing a single person perspective, but a 'humanised' voice that represents your vision and goals with the passion and energy your staff bring to meeting them.

Social is now the main channel by which many people communicate with each other and with organisations, how they find out and share information and where they give and receive support. As an organisation you need to be prepared to be engaged and engaging, to be valuable in order to receive value from social channels. To grow up quickly and make mature use of social media.

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No it's a not appropriate to load test on your citizens in production - particularly when it's a critical service

The last week has seen a range of major issues for the Australian Government's new MyTax service.

As reported across both traditional and social media, people using MyTax to file their tax returns have experienced shut-outs, had the process freeze when they were almost complete and had it fail to autofill their pre-saved details.

MyTax is an online version of the eTax software which had been the primary way for people to digitally complete their tax returns for the last fifteen years. eTax improved year on year and had enormous take-up. In all respects it was a major success for the ATO.

This is the first year the Australian Tax Office has deployed the MyTax system and integrated it with MyGov. While the intention was, and is, good - to give Australians a single way to validate themselves with multiple government agencies - the implementation in this case hasn't withstood the real world.

This isn't a unique experience and it isn't limited to government. We've seen it with certain banking services, with retailers (particularly on a certain contrived Australian online shopping day each year), with A-grade games (such as SimCity) and with a range of other online services such as Apple maps.

In fact this issue is relatively rare, in comparison to the private sector, in government, with the last major issue of this type internationally being with healthcare.gov in the US, and the last I recall in Australia being with the MySchools site launch.

This type of issue will happen from time to time. Unforeseen bugs or network issues, denial of service attacks or other environmental issues can bring down even the most robust service, particularly at launch.

In every one of these cases there's a backlash from customers - and in every one of these cases the organisation responsible is judged based on how they manage and recover from the disaster.

In the MyTax case, while the ATO were probably aware of the risks, and may even have learnt some lessons from several of the issues highlighted above, it appears they're still struggling to manage and recover from the situation.

When asked about the siituation the CIO of the ATO, Jane King, wrote, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, that "Capacity planning and testing was completed as part of the rolling out of the new digital design, however due to the complexity of our environment, production is always the real test."

I read this as her saying that while they did conduct testing, they were actually relying on real citizens, at real tax time, to fully evaluate how the MyTax system would perform.

Just as the UTS professor John Leaney, quoted in the SMH article above, says - this type of statement just isn't good enough.

"We're not in the 1950s; we're not even in 1990s, we've learnt a lot and from what we've learnt we apply the techniques for proper capacity modelling," Leaney said. "There should have been much better testing; it's not something you should learn the hard way on a major government system."

The ATO needs to do better at risk planning around situations like this. It needs to test capability properly and not hide behind the 'too many users' defense.

Government agencies need to carefully watch and learn from this experience - and learn the right lessons.

The first lesson is to conduct appropriate capacity testing. Look at the ABS's implementation of eCensus and the level of testing and resilience it put in place the first time eCensus was used in 2006. The ABS gave a great presentation on the topic, which I attended, which highlighted the risk mitigation steps they'd taken - from capacity testing through to multiple redundant systems and real-time monitoring with developers on standby and fallback manual systems in place.

The second lesson is to not release major systems at a time when they are going to come under a huge load. Release a new tax system in February or March, or after tax time in October, giving time to shakeout the production system and address issues before it hits peak load.

The third lesson is to avoid releasing major systems. Instead release smaller, but useful, services and progressively integrate them into a major new service, testing each carefully as they go. This is how Facebook totally replaced its back-end without any disruption to people's use of the service - modularly upgrading aspects of the service until it was completely done.

The final lesson is to plan your recovery before your system fails. Design a failover plan for what happens if the system doesn't work for people, a manual solution if required. The ATO should direct anyone with issues to a hotline where they can complete their tax return over the phone, or via screen sharing, so no-one is left waiting for days or in a position of financial distress due to not receiving a tax return fast.

I feel for the ATO (particularly their ICT team) and don't blame them for the issues they're having with MyTax, however I do hold the agency responsible for how the ATO recovers from this disaster.

They need to stop defending their implementation of MyTax and focus on ways to meet citizen needs - even outside the MyTax system - to ensure that the 'tax returns get through'.

Otherwise this issue could turn into another Apple maps-style disaster, or even worse, as there's no 'competitor' to the ATO that citizens can turn to to complete their tax returns. At least, not yet...

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It's not been quiet on Australia's Government 2.0 front

While I've been very tardy at posting this year, due to busyness, significant life and work changes and a general lassitude brought on from blogging for so many years, the Government 2.0 scene in Australia has continued to progress.

While some of the faces and names have changed, and the public sector talks more about innovation, 'digital government' and 'digital transformation' than about Government 2.0, the overall direction remains the same - increasing use of modern digital tools and techniques to improve the operation and outcomes of government.

In the last six months we've seen a number of major initiatives take shape.

At a federal level the big news is the Digital Transition Office (DTO), modeled on the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) and the US Digital Service (USDS), was formed early this year with seconded staff and officially launched on 1 July with a budget of $254.7 million over four years. The DTO knuckled down to work even before it had a CEO or budget, and some of its activities and thinking is being shared on the DTO blog - with much more to come.

Recently the new CEO of the DTO was announced (replacing seconded SES officers), with the government choosing an overseas candidate who had developed a similar approach before - Paul Shetler, formerly Director of the GDS.

While it's sad there's little in the way of Australian talent ready at this level, it's good the government has taken the step of appointing someone with the experience and nous to take on this difficult public sector role.

Also in Canberra, the Australian Public Service recently launched Public Sector Innovation Month, an event that has grown from strength to strength over the last few years. While I was interstate for the launch (on 6 July), I'm involved with a number of the scheduled events, and will try to provide some insights into the mood and activities throughout July.

DFAT also recently ran a wildly successful internal idea-sourcing process. Over 40% of DFAT staff participated, with 392 ideas and 16,000 votes submitted. A number of the ideas are being progressed, with a lucky few funded and recognised at a whole-of-DFAT event. I'm hopeful other agencies will take note of this approach and it's well designed process (facilitated by Collabforge) and consider ways to unlock the ideas and experience of their (highly experienced) staff.

Nationally this month saw the return of GovHack, with 31 sites and around 2,000 registered participants across Australia and New Zealand. With 276 completed projects across 400 teams, this has been the biggest and best organised GovHack (according to the anecdotal reports I've received) so far.

I spend GovHack in the Melbourne site, managing and mentoring teams for the Victorian Government's challenge, Taking government services digital. This was the first time GovHack had offered a challenge to hack government without the need to mash-up open data and was an exciting pilot for involving the public in digital service design.

Given that Melbourne, as the largest venue for GovHack in 2015, had more hackers and projects than all of GovHack in 2012, the growth of this event has been staggering, yet well managed.

The last few months have also seen the initiation of Service Victoria, an agency established within Victoria's Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC), to take on the redevelopment of high volume and high cost Victorian government services in a collaborative way with the agencies that 'own' those transactions, as well as the integration of data.vic.gov.au into DPC to provide it with a more central outlook and greater cloud.

The WA government has taken firm steps towards an open data portal, building on some of the great work done by local agencies and volunteers, while the ACT has rationalised and centralised its focus on innovation to improve effectiveness and attempted to hire a Chief Digital Officer (albeit unsuccessfully).

NSW has continue to move slowly towards greater adoption of open data, while Queensland and South Australia are seeing a slight pause as they rethink their ICT strategies and political foci.

The Northern Territory and Tasmania still lag behind other states, though renewed attempts are underway in Hobart to reinvigorate a move towards greater use of digital across government.

Larger local governments, particularly Melbourne and Brisbane, are pushing forward with strong digital agendas, while outside of government the OKFN have moved past their establishment phase and is beginning to support real change, while Code for Australia,a newer group, is beginning to flex its wings and create partnerships with governments to embed innovative Fellows to push along digital initiatives.

Across the board there's still limited political direction and focus on the value digital can have for government, although both Turnbull at federal level and the latest Victorian Government have demonstrated clear commitment and advocacy on digital's power to improve outcomes.

The role of the community in encouraging, supporting, and occasionally chastising, governments to become more digital remains huge, and we're now beginning to see agencies recognise the need for digital leads, separate to existing executives. This is a huge opportunity for anyone who wants to work in a senior level in digital while achieving lasting social and economic good for the nation, states or local communities, and will continue to grow as more agencies identify their lack.

So overall, Australia is still very much in the early stages of the digital transformation of government, with pockets of maturity helping to bring lagging areas up to speed.

There's a long way to go before government is truly digitally enabled - inside and out - but most governments now have their feet firmly planted on the road and recognise the value that striding forward will bring.

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Select your strategic approach carefully in social engagement - Treasury faltering at Census-like approach

Imitation is often referred to as the sincerest form of flattery, however the attempt by the Treasury to mimic the success of Census Australia's lighthearted Twitter approach demonstrates how carefully agencies must consider their social strategies in light of public opinion.

Many will remember when the ABS launched its Census Twitter campaign with an engagement styled to help make census numbers relevant to the average Australian using humour and cleverly written tweets.

The @2011Census account (now @CensusAustralia) attracted enormous public and media attention across Australia and internationally, and there was a significant increase in Census completion rates (though a number of initiatives would have helped contribute to this).

The ABS even went so far as to 'Rickroll' its followers, a sign of a government agency so comfortable with its own communication and audience that it could engage them playfully and without fear.

It was a brilliant strategy (well done Michelle), breaking the mold for government social engagement.

Now The Treasury is attempting a similar strategy on Twitter, however is receiving a very different reaction and engagement from the public.

The Treasury is a relative newcomer to social engagement, having first tweeted in July 2012. Being one of the more formal and less public-facing government agencies it took longer for The Treasury to make a decision that a social presence was safe and needed to support its external engagement activities.

However when it leapt into social, it did so with both feet, using Twitter to announce and engage on tax reform consultations and highlight its very important activities, which rarely receive public attention. 

The agency did suffer some of the usual starting pains of new organisational social users, not using hashtags, avoiding engagement with other users and generally treating Twitter as a broadcast feed resembling a news ticker, however they've grown more interactive of late and look more comfortable on the platform.

This year The Treasury has taken an additional step - taking a leaf out of the ABS's book to engage more proactively around the organisation's most significant annual event, bringing down the Australian Government Budget.

Using factoids, like the Tweet below, the agency is seeking to engage Australians in a more human and interactive way.

It would take 98hrs to print #Budget2015 papers on a standard printer. Don’t do this-check out http://t.co/AZTkfPw6lX Live: Tues 7.30pm AEST

— Australian Treasury (@Treasury_AU) May 9, 2015

Now this is a good thing, and speaks to the growing confidence of the agency on social channels. It's not easy for conservative organisations to 'let go' and allow themselves to engage in less formal and more human ways.

However the specific strategy The Treasury is using runs a large risk of backfiring on the agency.

The ABS could take a very interactive and light approach with the Census to make it relevant to Australians for the very reason that it wasn't especially relevant to many of them.

Few people had strong views about the Census process, either negative or positive. It only occurs once every five years, it has no discernable impact on people's lives the rest of the time and, while completing a census form was inconvenient for some people, it didn't really trigger a strong opposing reaction.

Essentially the ABS approach helped make the Census relevant to people, taking it from a position of irrelevance.

The Treasury is in a very different position with the Australian Government Budget.

The Budget is one of the most significant government activities each year. It is comprehensively covered by the media and is seen as a defining moment for governments, used by the public to judge their performance and their future.

Decisions in the budget affect every Australian, often in very personal and direct ways. Some see their lifestyles improve, others see them falter. It is extensively leaked and discussed ahead of its release, and the shockwaves it can send through the Australian economy can profoundly shape how the government and Australia are perceived globally and locally.

In the case of the current budget, much of the public still feel wounded from last year's budget, which saw a number of budget measures not passed and the government have to take steps back in a number of areas.

The government has taken steps to 'defuse' concerns over the current budget, and have done a good job of leaking key measures ahead of its release to assay some of the community's fears regarding its impact on their lives.

However it probably isn't the right environment to replicate the ABS census strategy - the differences in the public's starting views towards Census 2011 and Budget 2015 are enormous.

As such it looks to me as if The Treasury has perhaps become too ambitious in its approach to budget social engagement this year - a view that's being supported by the types of comments the agency is receiving on its account.

For example, The Treasury's latest tweet deals with the amount of M&Ms consumed by their Budget division staff in the weeks leading up to the budget (image below).

While the tweet, coming from the ABS Census account, would likely be well-received, coming from The Treasury it is interpreted in quite a different manner.

While it has decent retweets, the responding comments suggest that the agency doesn't (yet) have the same license to be as light and engaging as the ABS.

The tweet suggests to me the very public social mistake by Qantas a few weeks after it grounded its fleet. The #QantasLuxury campaign turned into an opportunity for the public to vent their anger.

The Treasury is risking a similar backlash to what could be seen as self-indulgent and commercial tweets, such as the one portrayed above. 

Talking about their staff's consumption of a brand of chocolate treats, or otherwise being light-hearted in engagement is not the best strategy at a time when the public is waiting in trepidation at the impact on their lives from the budget.

For the ABS a high engagement, high risk strategy had limited downside, for The Treasury there's far more potential risk and far less reward - although this tweet did get the gong as the most engaging government tweet in Australia for 10 May 2015 from Great Oz Gov Tweets (which I helped establish).

It's a bold strategy for The Treasury, and I hope it pays off, but in future the agency need to more carefully consider the environment they operate in and the profile of their subject matter, not simply their own desire to communicate and connect.

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Back on the blog

I've had a two month break from blogging over summer due to a range of other things going on in my life.

I'll be getting back into the habit of blogging over the next few weeks to catch up on all the awesome - and not so awesome - things happening in the Gov 2.0 / egovernance sphere in Australia and internationally.

With the Prime Minister and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull recently having announced the creation of a Digital Transformation office, albeit an unfunded one, and the Prime Minister even more recently characterising social media as 'electronic graffiti' (a matter already taken up by The Conversation and other media, including on social media itself), there's already plenty of interesting topics to discuss in the public sector digital sector.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now we can do much better.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Don't blame the technology, blame the humans

This week one of the top stories for one of Australia's leading newspapers has been the purported rape of a woman after she met a man using the 'Tinder' matchmaking app.

Rape is a terrible act and unacceptable in every circumstance.

However the newspaper chose to make Tinder the story, not the rape.

Tinder is a mobile application designed to help people meet prospective dates.

It simply alerts users to other Tinder users who fall within a specified age range and gender and are within a certain distance of your location, lettings you know whether you have any mutual friends.

The alerted user then decides whether they like the look of a person from a supplied photo and gives them the option to privately message, and if desired, hook up.

Users must actively choose to turn on Tinder and can reject others without the other user ever knowing.

In other words, Tinder isn't much different to visiting a bar and looking around to see who seems to be your age and your 'type'.

Tinder's popularity stems from its ability to allow users to be discreet when seeking a partner. It gives users control over their dating choices - when they are available, who can be matched to them and whether or not they wish to be approached. In other words it's a little better than hanging around in pubs and nightclubs hoping to meet the perfect partner and avoid undesired come-ons.

In many senses the app is no different to popular online dating websites like HeyCupid and RSVP. it is simply a technological tool adding convenience and control to matchmaking.

Like all other technologies and software Tinder is neither good nor bad, but simply meets a human need.

So when a newspaper uses headline like 'Police warning after Tinder date ends in gang rape' and
'Tinder 'gang-rape victim' withdraws statement' it really gets my back up.

The approach creates an inappropriate connection between a neutral technology and a disgusting human act.

If the lady in question had simply met her alleged attackers in a pub, the newspaper would likely have not reported the story, or reported it very differently - they would not have used a headline 'Police warning after pub date ends in gang rape'.

This type of reporting is part of what holds back the use of digital technologies by government agencies, and it is a damn shame.

When senior managers who don't use social tools only read, hear and see bad news articles which blame or associate specific technologies with human misconduct it can creates an inappropriate association and make digital seems more dangerous to use than it actually is.

I wish I had a dollar for every media story sensationalising the failings of Facebook, Twitter, Google, RSVP, Tinder and other social tools when the real failing is in the human users.

Yes there are risks to all technologies. Cars and other road vehicles kill over 1,000 Australians each year and many other people are hurt when using other technologies, from paper cuts to knife wounds.

However let's try to keep things in proportion. There's few technologies out there specifically designed to harm people and these are usually carefully controlled, like guns and explosives.

The vast majority of technology are neutral, able to be used for good or bad - harming humans through accident or deliberate misuse.

Mitigating these risks is possible. Obsessing over them is unnecessary.

So if you're ever confronted in the workplace by a colleague or manager who quotes a headline like Police warning after Tinder date ends in gang rape' agree with them that the event is tragic and horrible.

But remind them that it was a human act that made it tragic and horrible. It is not necessarily a fault of the technological tool.

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How current events play out in search requests - terrorism & related terms in Google trends

While agencies often invest significant money into tools for tracking trends on social media, one of the simplest ways to detect and monitor the rise and fall of key topics and issues online is through Google Trends.

Google Trends tracks the frequency of use of specific search words in Google searches. This represents the majority of online and mobile searches in countries like Australia (93%) and the US (68%)

As a free service, Google Trends has been used over the years to monitor trends in seasonal diseases, such as influenza and dengue fever, to track the relative level of attention paid to politicians, the number of mentions of sports during grand final seasons, and to understand the impact of advertising on product sales.

I used the service back in 2006-2007 to help track a government agency's rebranding program, and have used it subsequently, both with and outside government, to track the level of interest in particular issues and topics.

So today I decided to see what Google Trends can tell us about the level of interest or concern in terrorism, specifically related to ISIS and concerns about muslim extremists.

I chose five main words to track - 'Terrorist', 'ISIS', 'Islam', 'Muslim' and 'Burqa' - which told an interesting story.

Until May 2010 the burqa does not appear to be a particular concern for Australians, with few searches of the term.

However since then it has become more topical, with some interest throughout 2011, then a sudden surge in September 2014 when the 'ban the burqa' movement began to receive significant political support and media coverage.

In contrast, terrorist was a term of interests to Australians in 2004 and particularly in the second half of 2005, with surging interest in July and November of that year. Following this, it settled down into a largely quiescent state, with only a small surge in November 2008 interrupting the mostly flat line.

This changed in August 2014, with a huge rise in searches for the term across Australia resulting in the highest level of searches for the term in the history of Google Trends in September this year.

The same trend can be seen for mentions of ISIS, which were flat until May 2014 and have rapidly escalated since. Early mentions of the term presumably relate to other uses of the term (such as the Egyptian god), with the sudden rise in searches only attributable to the rise of the Islamic State.

Searches for Islam and Muslim have also been rising this year after a long largely flat period. While these terms are the subject of many legitimate searches related to the culture and religion, the recent rise in searches does tend to suggest and correlate with the rise in searches for terror-related terms, indicating that people have linked the terms in some way, at least out of curiosity.

It's possible to compare and contrast these trends with global trends in Google Trends, per the chart below.



This chart provides evidence of growing global interest in terms such as Islam, Muslim and, particularly, ISIS. However it shows little international concern over the burqa or regarding terrorism.

This can be seen in detail when looking at individual countries.

For example while similar trends of increased interest in searching the term ISIS are visible for the US, UK, Canada, Sweden, Japan, Thailand and many others, only a relative few see the burqa as a rising source of concern and many also are not experiencing heightened searches for terms such as islam or muslim.

This may be coincidental, or may reflect political statements and media reports on these topics - a more detailed review of coverage would be needed to confirm direct links.

However given that researchers have found that Google Trends can provide an accurate view of community concerns regarding infectious diseases and product trends, I believe there's sound reasons to suppose a correlation between what leaders say and what people search for.

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Infographic: Australian government agencies and councils have now sent 2 million tweets and have 3.9 million followers

I've been tracking the active Twitter accounts of Australian government agencies and councils for over four years now.

In February 2013 I reported that the number of tweets by government agencies and councils had reached one million in January of that year, and eleven months laters in November 2013 I reported that the number of tweets had exceeded 1.5 million.

At the time I predicted that it would take a shorter time to reach two million tweets from 1.5 million than the eleven months it took to reach 1.5 million from one million. I then predicted that the two million tweets level would be reached around 2014.

I was half right. It was faster to reach two million tweets - taking only ten months - however by my count it wasn't reached until this month, September 2014.

Given I'm sure I've missed a few active accounts, and I excluded deleted and decommissioned ones, I'm comfortable with a two month margin of error.

Many of the numbers numbers have more than doubled since January 2013. Agencies are tweeting three times as frequently and the total number of followers has increased 2.22 times.

To celebrate the occasion, I've created an infographic of the key numbers (below), as I did at the one million milestone (compare it with the one million tweet infographic, which is here).

You can view my raw figures and analysis in my Google spreadsheet and I'll provide more information and analysis in coming weeks.

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What happened at the National Library's Digiculture event: Social Media and the Public Sector

On Tuesday 16 September I participated in the panel for the National Library's Digiculture event: Social Media and the Public Sector, along with Facebook's Mia Garlick and the Department of Finance's John Sheridan.

It was well attended and well-discussed on Twitter (under #digiculture), with the biggest laughs of the afternoon coming from the surprising (blooper) revelation that John's army career had lasted 22,000 years.

Speakers preparing to talk at #digiculture @nlagovau pic.twitter.com/iqZrZh4D55
— Caroline Faucher (@WriteCaroWrite) September 16, 2014

He certainly looks good for his age.

One attendee, Kenji Walker, used his sketching skills to create a visual record of the panel, which I've embedded below - thanks for this Kenji!

@nlagovau #digiculture talk: Social Media & the Public Sector sketchnote with @miakgarlick @AusGovCTO @craigthomler pic.twitter.com/EOXe9e5KqO
— Kenji Walter (@KenjiWalter) September 16, 2014

Finally The Mandarin published an article on the event, Social media in public sector: beat the journos, don’t say anything stupid 

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92% of Australia's federal politicians now use Facebook and/or Twitter

I've been tracking the number of Australian Federal politicians using Australia's leading social channels for two years now, seeing the number using at least one of Facebook and Twitter grow from 79% in April 2012 to 90% in November 2013 to a current level of 92%.

What's even more interesting is in the details, which you'll find in my thoughts below.

 To access the raw data and statistics, go to my latest Google Doc at: docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ap1exl80wB8OdFhaQ1gzdzg3d1VWcFJpSl91bkQwbWc&usp=sharing

While the overall use of social media is at 92.48%, or 209 out of 226 federal politicians (150 Members of the House of Representatives and 76 Senators), the situation is very different between the houses.

The House of Representatives has a far greater level of social media use at 95.33% compared to the Senate at 86.84%. The gap has remained consistent with my last review in November 2013, where it was 92.67% compared to 85.14%. Senators, on average, are slightly older than Representatives (51.55yrs versus 50.19yrs), which is likely a factor, as is the consideration that Senators don't campaign in the same way as Representatives due to the difference in how they are elected and who they represent (states/territories, not electorates).

I still believe that Senators are missing a trick here - due to their different responsibilities in most cases they represent much larger electorates and thus social media can be of value for listening to and engaging with people they can't as easily drive out to see face-to-face.

This rationale also carries over to Representatives with geographically large electorates, such as in the NT, WA, SA and Qld.

I am particularly glad to see that the Nationals, who focus on rural and regional seats and were previously the party whose elected politicians were least likely to engage online, has picked up their act in this area, and 19 of their 20 elected members now uses social media, a greater proportion that either Labor or Liberals (and I count Qld LNP Nationals as Nationals federally).

Social media remains very important for smaller parties to get their message out, with the Greens maintaining their 100% use of social media and every other minor party (KAP, PUP, DLP, Family First) and independent politician using social to some extent.

I see the same trends we've seen in previous years from politicians, and the population in general, still hold true.

Similar to my past reviews, female politicians are more likely to use social channels than male politicians, though by a smaller margin (4% rather than 7%) than previously.


Equally, the older a politician is, the less likely they are to engage on social media, with a clear divide by decade.


This reflects the same phenomenon as we see in the community - with politicians aged 60+ far less likely to use online channels for engagement, and those aged under 45 likely to use it as one of their primary ways to communicate and collect information.

This tends to suggest that the maturity of political decisionmaking regarding the internet is likely to continue to improve as older politicians retire and younger digital natives take their place.

For your reviewing pleasure, below is an infographic with some of the key statistics, please have a play with the interactive elements - they provide an interesting view of how actively different groups of politicians engage via Twitter and Facebook.

Australian Federal politicians - Twitter and facebook use - AUG 14 | Create Infographics

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Young people in Australia are highly engaged in politics - but engagement has moved online. Have governments?

A few years ago I heard it said by political advisors that one hand-written letter to a Minister counts for more than 100 emails on the same topic.

The perception was that if someone sat down and wrote their thoughts in long-hand it showed more interest and commitment than if they typed and posted them online in a blog, social network or website.

I believe this has changed slightly, with emails now accorded almost equal status with postal mail (largely by treating them in the same manner as postal mail, which isn't always appropriate).

However the value placed on blog posts or social media commentary by both politicians and departments still remains far lower than the value that individuals using these channels place on their communication via these channels.

This discrepancy becomes particularly concerning when looking at the level of political activity amongst younger and older people in Australia.

Based on the 'traditional' forms of political engagement - joining political parties, participating in street protests, writing letters and otherwise using physical means to communicate political views - young people are generally considered unengaged, even disconnected, from politics.

This appeared to be supported by a recent study by the University of Canberra commissioned by the Museum of Australian Democracy. (reported on by the ABC and Hijacked)

This study found that, based on these traditional forms of engagement, young people were far less engaged than older people. In fact people aged under 35 were only about half as engaged as those over 70 years old, and were the least engaged of any age group.

Source: ABC Lateline

However, the study went much further, looking at modern forms of political engagement - blogging, tweeting, memes, apps and other digital techniques - as well.

When combining traditional and modern forms of engagement the situation was very, very different.

Suddenly young people were just as engaged as the oldest Australians and more engaged than many of the age groups inbetween.

On this basis, including both marching in the streets and creating online petitions, young people are quite engaged in politics in Australia, with a large amount of their engagement occurring online rather than offline.

This can be hard for older Australians to grasp - they often don't understand the internet as younger people do, having been brought up on newspapers, radio and television.

Not coincidentally, a disproportionate number of our politicians, top bureaucrats, corporate leadership and leading journalists fall into these older groups - therefore they are often not equipped to even see, let alone understand, the ways in which younger people are engaging politically.

This divide isn't necessarily a problem, but it could become one. When insisting that young people follow the same political approaches as their elders, older people are devaluing newer forms of political expression and underestimating its reach and force.

Where politicians, departmental Secretaries and CEOs gauge the public's mood by signals such as how many people show up to protest, they may overlook the new signals, when hundreds of thousands, or millions, of people organise and protest online, until it is too late for them to change course.

There have already been examples of how politicians, media and CEOs have misread the public mood as they still rely on traditional, rather than modern political signals.

Until our 'elders' begin to recognise that times have changed and continue to change, they will continue to be blindsided as innovation continues in political protests.

For example, there was the creation of the Stop Tony Meow plug-in for Chrome, which replaces images of Tony Abbott in the web browser with pictures of kittens. The plug-in has been downloaded over 11,000 times and attracted significant media coverage as an anti-Coalition political statement.

There's also been the recent Dolebludger app available for Android mobile devices, which allows someone to send job application emails in a matter of seconds to 40 Coalition MPs, meeting the proposed monthly job application requirement. This was designed specifically as a political protest against a policy seen by the creator (and many public commentators) as absurd.

On top of this we have the endless string of memes created using free online tools which take photos of politicians and adds text to make a political point. These are then shared widely on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other platforms.

And, more disturbingly, we've recently seen hackers take down a stock exchange and call on the nation's president to take action on a given matter under threat of having confidential financial data released publicly. Where did this last form of political protest occur? In Syria - a country not known as a bastion of democracy.

Similarly striking into illegal behaviour, we've recently seen the use of a phony bomb threat tweet to disrupt the flight of a Sony Executive as part of a protest against Sony's corporate behaviour.

Online political expression is evolving quickly, with new approaches emerging frequently and proliferating widely, if they work, or dying away when they don't.

The old view that people would get out on the street and protest if they were really unhappy is no longer supported by the evidence - and the notion that online activism is simply 'slacktivism' and doesn't represent significant numbers or strong views is equally no longer supportable.

Governments - both politically and administratively - need to build their understanding of modern approaches to political engagement and learn how to use and defuse them (as appropriate) to serve their own ends.

Otherwise there are real and growing risks that a government or public agency will be severely damaged or brought down through online political avenues - channels that they weren't effectively monitoring, didn't hold in high regard and catastrophically undervalued.

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