Australian Public Servants want the right to comment respectfully on political and policy matters online

I've been monitoring the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) public consultation on the current social media guidelines for Australian public servants (APS).

While they clearly aren't interested in comments from former or potential future public servants, having neglected to publish, or even link to, my comments - which I submitted to the APSC four weeks ago - there's been 109 public comments published from current public servants.

While there may be private responses to the consultation, or other public comments as yet unpublished, I've analysed the comments available and the viewpoint points consistently to one conclusion.

Australian Public Servants overwhelmingly want the right to comment respectfully on policy and political matters via the social media channels of their choice.

It's clear from the responses that social media is increasingly seen as a normal way to communicate - like chatting at a barbeque or on the phone - and public servants increasingly feel the medium should be treated in the same way, with an emphasis on the 'social' rather than the 'media'.

Only nine of the publicly published responses supported the current guidelines for public servants, which state (in part) that:

6.2.7 When employees make public comment in an unofficial capacity, it is not appropriate for them to make comment that is, or could be reasonably perceived to be:

1. being made on behalf of their agency or the Government, rather than an expression of a personal view
2. compromising the employee's capacity to fulfil their duties in an unbiased manner—this applies particularly where comment is made about policies and programs of the employee's agency
3. so harsh or extreme in its criticism of the Government, a Member of Parliament from another political party, or their respective policies, that it raises questions about the employee's capacity to work professionally, efficiently or impartially
4. so strong in its criticism of an agency's administration that it could seriously disrupt the workplace—APS employees are encouraged instead to resolve concerns by informal discussion with a manager or by using internal dispute resolution mechanisms
5. a gratuitous personal attack that might reasonably be perceived to be connected with their employment
6. compromising public confidence in the agency or the APS.

 Whereas 90 of the published responses stated that, to quote from one respondent,

It is important to recognise that, as citizens, public servants should have the right to express an opinion on key political issues providing they do this respectfully and that the issues they are commenting on do not not relate directly to their area of employment.

This view was represented many times, using different words and phrasing...

I can see that there is an argument that there should be more caution about what is said about the area in which you work, but why should I be prohibited from making comment publicly about immigration policy or environment policy if I don't even work in that area?

...if I want to make a comment about the work of my department in my position as a customer of that department, or as a taxpayer who has an interest in the direction of government programs generally, I ought to be able to do so.

Remaining a-political should not preclude someone from criticising an individual's performance in government… Questioning obviously wrong policy is not straying from the APS code of conduct.

People should not be persecuted or railroaded for making public comment in their own personal time on any social media platform regardless of what the posting is about or responding to that is not work/employment related.

If the APS are censored from making any criticism of the government of the day and their policies, it's going to be even harder to encourage good people to want to work with us. 

As an employee of the APS I am 100% committed to upholding the Values and Code of Conduct whilst at work, and in situations that are in connection with my employment. As a citizen I have my own set of values and beliefs and shouldn't be forced to remove myself from public debate on social media platforms just because I am a public servant. 

Having the right to vote, by default, forces you to have a political opinion. While public servants retain the right to vote, they should also be able to voice that opinion.

We should have freedom of speech, so long as we speak respectfully about issues

Public servants should be allowed to say anything on social media during their unpaid time.

If it does not relate directly to the programs administrated by their agency, preventing APS employees from engaging in public discourse as private citizens is excessive and oppressive.

No matter how distasteful, racist, sexist, or whatever an opinion is, a person should have the right to express that opinion, provided it is not obviously linked to an organisation.

Public servants should have the same rights as any other Australian to comment on the government of the day and political matters.

Some were even more blunt,

Every vote counts. So EVERY voice should have the ability to be heard… Why is the government so afraid of the people?

It's unfair and oppressive to expect that because someone works in the public service that they can't be affected by political and social issues and therefore have opinions about the issues which may affect them and the people who are important in their lives. 

Why pretend we agree with everything we're told to do? It's like an atheist praying in Church to make their religious parents happy. As long as expression is respectful, it should be permitted.

When a politician says something stupid (which many of them do) I should be allowed to comment that they said something stupid.

While others questioned whether the government's current policy suggested that public servants were not trustworthy or that Australian democracy was broken,

In 10 years of working in Government I have only ever seen fantastic, impartial and evidence based decision making, and this is despite the fact that as humans, Public Servants naturally hold opinions. To imply that they cannot be trusted to comment responsibly on social media is to imply they cannot be trusted anywhere. Why does the medium change things? I.e. if we're questioning the integrity and trustworthiness of the Public Service; why should it be limited to social media? Either we are trustworthy everywhere, or we are not.

In Australia we have a liberal democracy. Public servants are part of that democracy. As such the boundaries on political and social commentary should be set quite generously for all, public servants included. In our history we have fought totalitarian regimes that have sought to inhibit free speech, my father and grandfather both fought for freedom and democracy. I see the curtailing of free speech that all citizens currently have as a huge infringement on hard-fought and won rights.

People who work for the public service have just as much right to question the Government in a democratic society as the next person. If they don't, then how democratic a society is it?

 Any democracy that cannot deal with criticism, regardless of the source, is no longer a democracy.

Only a few believed the current limitations were fair,

To protect public servants from any erosion of trust now or in the future, I believe they should not be posting anything critical.

I have worked for three federal government agencies in my working life and am proud to have done so; I believe in what these agencies stand for and deliver to the Australian community. I am not about to bite the hand that feeds me. If I find a significant shift in agency policy and practice which would be at odds with my own belief system and make being a-political in a professional role impossible I wouldn't hang on for any length of time I would simply leave.

No matter who your employer is, whilst you are in their employ, I believe you should respect that bond and not do or say anything that would damage that company's reputation.

A minority (14) suggested that public servants should conceal their connection to the public service while posting, to prevent an obvious link to their employer, while a few others pointed out that this wasn't really a protection at all.

My suggestion would be that APS employees should not list their Department or Agency as their employer on social media sites. They should not divulge any information that is not already available on public record and should not publically denegrate their employer. Ooutside these restrictions, I should be able to have the same rights as Australians who work in the private sector.

A more effective result could be achieved by instructing PS employees to remove any identification as a PS employee on their personal social media accounts and to not permit comments which identify their opinion as being related to their employment. Without any identification to the person's employment, it's difficult to see how someone can perceive an employee as making comment on behalf of their employer.

On the topic of whether public servants should be able to comment on their department and work, opinions were split. 36 respondents clearly indicated they believed that public servants should not comment on their own work and agency, whereas 14 directly stated that they should and a number of others were ambivalent.

The arguments were fairly clear on both sides.

Those opposed to talking about their work and agency said it could compromise their ability to do their job impartially, and potentially release information that shouldn't be public.

Those that supported talking about their work and agency pointed out that they were the best informed about their areas and could provide critical facts and information into the public domain in ways that could enrich and improve the public conversation. They also noted that at times they were also customers of their own departments, and as such should have the same rights as other customers.

...if I want to make a comment about the work of my department in my position as a customer of that department, or as a taxpayer who has an interest in the direction of government programs generally, I ought to be able to do so.

I should be able to comment on policies and topics in the public spotlight that affect me, my family or my field without fear of reprisal from my employer - particularly where the discussion is not at all related to my employer.

It is said that Qantas staff can't publicly criticise their employer, so nor should public servants. But Qantas doesn't confiscate 20% of my income. Qantas doesn't tell me what I can and can't buy, sell, import or smoke. Qantas doesn't tell me who I can and can't marry. Qantas can't send armed men into my house to arrest me. Qantas doesn't decide what my children are taught at school... Public servants have a duty as citizens to participate fully in political debate, including in relation to the programs they administer. 

A few believed the existing policy was clear,

I do believe the social media stance is perfect as it stands.

Yes they are clear. They do not appear to require revising.

But most respondents felt otherwise,

...this area is extremely grey and needs not only definitive clarification, but absolute determination as to what can and can't be said on political issues without fear of reprisals or recriminations.

Overall all respondents agreed on one point - that public servants should be respectful when they engaged.

Hi, I think that we should have the same rights and rules of every Australian Citizen. We should be able to speak our mind, even to the point of a difference of opinion with a Government Minister, providing we do not denegrate our department, our managers or colleagues.

It is now up to the APSC as to what they do with this information and how it affects the next iteration of the APS's social media guidelines.

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Guest post from Henry Sherrell on access to open data for effective policy development

Henry Sherrell is a former Australian Public Servant who now works in policy research at the Australian National University.

As a researcher, open data has become an important input into his work. As such I thought it worth sharing (with his permission) this post from his blog, On The Move, as an example of some of the difficulties researchers still face in accessing data from the Australian Government for important policy work.

It is notable that since Henry published his post, only four days ago, the legislation regarding Henry's policy work is going back to parliament - still with no modelling of its impact on affected communities or any real public understanding of the potential consequences.

I've reproduced Henry's post as a guest post below in full. You can also view Henry's post here in On The Move.

My battle with the Australian Border Force Act: A small, but worrying, example

Posted on November 24, 2016 by Henry

There are hundreds of interesting questions to ask when someone moves from one country to another. For as long as I can remember, Australia has been one of the best places to explore migration. There are two reasons for this: We welcome immigrants and the government and bureaucracy collect and make accessible robust migration data.

They are not household names but people like Graeme Hugo, the late Paul Miller, Deborah Cobb-Clarke and Peter McDonald have shaped global debates on migration. A new generation of scholars are now examining big, important questions about the intersection migration and work as well as any number of other themes, many of which will help us as a society in the future. Yet this tradition depends on access to Australian migration data from a number of sources, including the ABS, the Department of Immigration and various surveys funded by the government.

Until I received the following email from DIBP, I hadn’t realised just how uncertain this type of knowledge will be in the future:

“The data that was provided to Department of Agriculture was done so for a specific purpose in line with the Australian Border Force Act 2015 (ABF Act).  Unfortunately your request does not comply with the ABF Act and we are therefore unable to provide the requested data.”

I didn’t receive this email because I asked for something controversial. The reason this email stopped me in my tracks was I asked for something which was already largely public.

About a month ago I stumbled across the below map in a Senate submission to the Working Holiday Reform legislation.  The Department of Agricultural and ABARES had produced the map to help show where backpackers worked to gain their second visa. This was an important part of a big public debate about the merits or otherwise of the backpacker tax (as I write this legislation has just been voted on in the Senate, amended and defeat for the government).

I’d never seen this information before and I’m interested in exploring it further as there are decent labour market implications stemming from backpackers and the results may shed light on employment and migration trends. As you can see below, the Department helpfully documented the top 10 postcodes where backpackers worked to become eligible for their 2nd visa:

I get teased a little bit about the number of emails I send asking for stuff. But I’ve found you normally don’t get something unless you ask for it. So using the Department of Agriculture’s handy feedback form on their website, I asked for the data showing how many 2nd working holiday visas have been granted for each postcode.

The top 10 postcodes are already public but as the map shows, there is lots of other information about what you might term a ‘long tail’ of postcodes. One reason I wanted this information was to match up major industries in these postcodes and understand what type of work these people were doing. It would also be good to go back a couple of years and compare trends over time, whether employment activity shifts over time. All sorts of things were possible.

One thing I’ve learnt in the past is don’t ask for too much, too soon. In addition, there is always a potential privacy consideration when examining immigration data. For these reasons, I limited my request to the list of postcodes and number of second visa grants in each. That’s it.

This ensured I excluded information about individuals like age and country of birth which may compromise privacy. I also assumed if the number of backpackers in a postcode was less than five, it would be shown as “<5 as="" data.="" for="" immigration="" is="" of="" other="" p="" practice="" standard="" this="" types="">

ABARES let me know they had passed the response to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. After following up with DIBP twice, about a month after my initial request, I received the above email which prompted a series of internal questions roughly in this order:

• You have to be f****** kidding me?
• If the data was provided to the Department of Agricultural with the knowledge it would be at least partially public, why isn’t the same data available but in a different format? i.e. a spreadsheet not a map based
• How does my request not comply with the ABF Act? What’s in the ABF Act which prevents highly aggregated data being shared to better inform our understanding of relevant public debates?

And finally: why couldn’t someone work out a way to comply with the ABF Act and still provide me with data?

From what I can work out, the relevant part of the ABF Act is Part 6 pertaining to secrecy and disclosure provisions. Section 44 outlines ‘Disclosure to certain bodies and persons’ and subsection (1) is about ‘protected information that is not personal information’ disclosed to “an entrusted person”. This is the same process causing serious consternation among health professionals working in detention centres.

I am not “an entrusted person”. According to subsection (3), the Secretary of the Department has authority to designate this. Perhaps I should email and ask? Again from what I can work out, it looks like the person who created the data made a record now classified as protected information. This information is then automatically restricted to people who are classified as entrusted, including other bureaucrats, such as those in the Department of Agriculture.

Yet this begs the question. If the Department of Agriculture can publish a partial piece of a protected record, why can’t the Department of Immigration and Border Protection?

All I know is this stinks. And while this concern does not rank anywhere close to those faced by doctors and nurses who work in detention centres, the slow corrosion of sharing information caused directly by this legislation will have massive costs to how we understand migration in Australia.

Think about the very reason we’re even having a debate about the backpacker tax. Not enough people knew about immigration policy, trends and behaviour. The wonks at Treasury didn’t do any modelling on the labour market implications and the politicians in ERC and Cabinet – including the National Party – had no idea about what this might do to their own constituents. Outside the government, when I did a quick ring around in the days after the 2015 budget, the peak industry groups for horticultural didn’t think the backpacker tax would be a big deal. If I was a farmer, I’d rip up my membership. People should have known from very early on this would have real effects in the labour market as I wrote 10 days after the Budget. The fact no-one stopped or modified the tax before it got out of control shows we are working off a low base in terms of awareness about immigration.

The Australian Border Force Act is only going to make that more difficult. Hiding basic, aggregated data behind this legislation will increase future episodes of poor policy making and limit the ability of Australia to set an example to world for immigration. Our Prime Minister is fond of musing on our successful multicultural society yet alongside this decades of learning that has shaped communities, policy decisions, funding allocations and everything else under the sun.

I have no idea how I’m meant to take part in this process if access to information is restricted to bureaucrats and ‘entrusted persons’, who at the moment don’t seem able to analyse worth a damn, judging from the quality of public debates we are having. I don’t expect a personalised service with open access to immigration data. But I expect the public service to serve the public interest, especially when the matter is straightforward, uncontroversial and has the potential to inform relevant public debate.

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Don't ask for more information than you need (and make it clear why you're asking what you're asking)

I've just become aware of the ACT Government's consultation for a new license plate slogan.

Hosted at Your Say, the government is asking for ideas for a 30-character or less slogan, with the best ideas to be put to a public vote later this year.

I support this type of consultation approach - it provides for broad public input, with a screening step (via a panel of judges) to manage any inappropriate suggestions before a public vote.

The consultation also does a great job of explaining the process timeframe; when the decision will be made and when the license plate will be released.

One of the 'tricks of the trade' for consultations - and and engagements - is to ask the minimum number of questions required to meet the purpose of the process.

While there's often temptation to ask a few additional questions, where data might be interesting but is non-essential to the consultation's purpose, each additional question can reduce the response rate significantly.

These additional non-essential questions can also call into question what the consultation is actually designed to achieve. This can, at worst, lead to suspicion and loss of trust, but at minimum is likely to cut the honesty and number of responses, potentially damaging the ability of the consultation to achieve its purpose.

Sometimes, of course, there can be questions that appear non-essential but are necessary for the consultation to achieve its goals. In this case, the organisation engaging should make it as clear as possible why the questions are being asked, without damaging the engagement process itself.

Unfortunately it seems that the ACT government hasn't fully thought this through in its license plate slogan consultation.

Alongside asking for the slogan and where the respondent lives (important for getting ideas expressly from Canberra residents), the slogan also asks for the name and a contact number/email, as well as age and gender.

While the consultation does a good job of explaining why name and contact information might be useful, so that the finalists and winning respondent can be contacted, it's unclear why either age or gender are required in this process.

Age is a compulsory field while Gender is optional, but realistically neither is important information in the review process, nor is there an explanation as to why the ACT government would need this information.

Now this might seem a trivial thing to the agency involved in the process, after all age and gender aren't hugely personal information and, in the case of gender, is often determinable from name alone.

However by adding these fields - whether compulsory or not - the response form becomes that much more complex, and can discourage some people from responding.

That doesn't mean that this process won't get a good response rate, but it is likely to be less than it would otherwise be.

Of course it's hard to prove this in this case, as we don't have the luxury of an AB test to compare approaches - but from experience, overall responses go down when additional (and unnecessary) questions are asked.

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Australian governments need to stop treating citizens as free consultants

Across April I'm spending a week participating in government-run sessions to contribute to the democratic life of our nation.

I'll spend two days with CSIRO, supporting their startup commercialisation programs, a day with the NSW Department of Transport supporting their deliberations on future transport needs and policies and a day with the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet supporting the open government partnership process.

Plus there's associated travel and preparation time - including several return drives to Sydney from Canberra.

Every bureaucrat and politician involved in these sessions will be paid for their time and have their travel costs covered. 

Every consultant employed by the government to organise, manage, promote and report on these sessions will receive due compensation - paid at their going market rates.

However the participants who give up their time and intellectual property to provide input to government won't receive a cent in payment from the agencies for any of their time commitment. Not even to defray travel or accommodation costs.

Some of the participants might attend representing a university or corporate interests - so while the government won't pay for their time or travel, their employer will. In return their employers will expect some form of benefit in having them attend, whether it be through building or exhibiting expertise, influencing policy directions, senior connections or another form of  potential commercial benefit.

However for other participants, including myself, our involvement is a cost - a personal cost (spending time in another city, far from loved ones), and a professional cost (losing days of productive income time).

I've been prepared to sustain this kind of cost due to my passion for helping government take full advantage of digital ('digital transformation' as per this year's buzz phrase), improving citizen-government engagement to support and strengthen our democracy, and supporting Australian innovators to create the export industries and jobs that our country will need to remain successful throughout this century.

Indeed I've calculated that my personal investment in these goals has cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost income over the last ten years.

Now I've also had paid gigs helping government to improve in some of these areas - both as a bureaucrat and a consultant, which puts me in the position of seeing both sides of the equation.

However, make no mistake - for most Australian citizens participating in democracy can only be considered a hobby.

While the government 'professionals' (bureaucrats & consultants) get paid - the hobbyists (citizens) do not.

It's no wonder that most Australians do not respond to government consultations, attend government policy events or participate in significant democratic exercises.

It's no wonder that Australian governments find that the same organisations and individuals constantly respond to their requests for attendance at events and round-tables. Organisations with commercial interests and individuals with either commercial or close personal stakes in the outcomes.

Most people can't afford the time off work to provide their views and insights, even when they have expertise on a topic, leaving a deep well of Australian knowledge and ideas untapped.

Now some might claim that it would be inappropriate for government to pay citizens for taking an interest in democracy and contributing their time to inform or influence policy - after all, all that work is being done directly for the citizens' benefit.

However the majority of citizens now only contribute because of commercial benefit to their employer or themselves, or because they have the financial freedom (or willingness to sacrifice lifestyle) to get involved. Most Australians don't contribute at all beyond voting. So this view of citizens as 'free consultants' is quite outdated and doesn't reflect the realities of the real cost of participating in democracy.

When the Icelandic government ran a constitutional event, inviting 300 representatives from across the country to participate in the design of their new constitution, they paid the participants the equivalent of a parliamentarian's salary for the day - plus travel and accommodation costs.

In a country like Australian where people off the street are paid $80-100 to spend an hour or two looking at product concepts and give an opinion, it seems ludicrous that governments won't pay a cent to citizens who give up their time to provide insights and expertise on policy decisions that affect millions.

If we want the best policies for Australia, governments need to at minimum be prepared to pay for the best participants to attend - covering travel costs to bring in citizen experts and leaders from all over Australia, rather than limiting the pool to citizens within driving distance.

Preferable we need Australian governments to budget respectful day rates for Australians who are invited and choose to participate, or who apply and are selected to participate in consultation events of significance to policy and program development. 

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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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Contribute now to Australia's Open Government Partnership National Action Plan

Now that Australians are heading out of holiday mode, it's a good time for a reminder about the Australian Government's process to become a member of the global Open Government Partnership (OGP), through developing our first OGP National Action Plan.

If you've not heard of the Open Government Partnership, in a nutshell it's an international group of governments and civil society organisations committed to progressing open and transparent governance in the 69 participating nations through a cooperative and supportive process.

Each nation makes a commitment to improve their national government's openness and transparency through a statement by their government, supported this through a two-yearly National Action Plan (NAP) with priority activities relevant to the nation's development stage. These NAPs must be developed cooperatively between government and civil society through an active consultation process.

Nations are assessed annually on their NAP progress through an independent process, with their achievements and shortfalls highlighted internationally.

Australia was invited to become a founding member of the OGP back in 2011, however deferred this decision until 2013, and then delayed it further after a change in government.

The current Prime Minister re-committed to the process late in 2015 and restarted the process to become an OGP member.

I ran a series of Information Sessions across Australia's east coast about this process, funded by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the presentation used through these sessions is below.

OGP Australia Information Session presentation from Craig Thomler

Currently Australia is consulting on the commitments that should be prioritised in our first National Action Plan, with Australians invited to provide ideas through the wiki (ogpau.wikispaces.com) or via email to ogp@pmc.gov.au

So if you'd like to see improvements in how open and transparent federal government is in Australia, please contribute via the channels above.

This stage of the consultation is open until the end of February, so don't wait too long!

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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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Come along to IAP2's November Canberra session on 'Introducing collaboration into the process of planning online participation'

I will be presenting at November's IAP2 session in Canberra from 6-8pm on 'Introducing collaboration into the process of planning online participation'.

The session will look at how to get internal stakeholders onboard and on the same page for an online participation process, particularly when they have disparate experience and understanding of digital approaches.

Using real world examples, and an interactive session involving Social Media Planner, attendees will get to work through the process of aligning stakeholder expectations and needs while building their understanding and support for an online engagement approach.

Presenter: Craig Thomler, Director, Social Media Planner

Time: Tues 10 November 2015, 6 for 6.15 pm (finishing about 8 pm)

Venue (TBC): Canberra Innovation Network, Level 5, 5 Moore St Civic

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Governments are still very backwards in most of their online engagement - and it's not due to a shortage of tools

I've been reading about a new entrant in the government online consultation market - Balancing Act, a simulation tool for involving the public in government budget consultations.

It joins a range of other tools for this type of 'trade-off' consulting online - including Budget Allocator from Bang The Table and, my favourite, Budget Simulator from Delib (which I used to run in Australia).

These are only a few of the advanced online consultation tools available for government - of which there are many kinds, from surveys and geospatial mapping through to forums and blogs.

Many vendors have years of experience, having run thousands of consultations with hundreds of clients internationally (particularly Delib and Bang The Table).

However most governments are still very backwards and inconsistent in their online engagement - with many consultations still just having an email 'black box' for submissions, or employing expensive market research firms to do work that can be done by specialist public sector online consulting companies for a fraction of the cost.

I've seen agencies charged tens of thousands for basic SurveyMonkey surveys, or mistakenly use forums to capture a few dozen comments for quantitative consultations that would receive far more and higher quality responses and outcomes using specialist budget or survey tools.

I've had agencies so 'no thanks, we'll build rather than buy' when presented with tools that have been used by hundreds of agencies over many years, and have had millions invested in their development and refinement to make them work well - and seen the outcomes where they invested tens or hundreds of thousands (far more than the cost of buying in the capability) and ended up with a consultation system that didn't do what they needed it to do.

Even today most local councils and governments, when they engage online, buy or build a capability just for a specific consultation, then 'throw it away' afterwards - only to reinvest the next time they need to consult.

And that's in an environment where agencies know that they'll be consulting stakeholders or the community tens of times throughout a year.

So why do government agencies not take a pragmatic and sensible approach to consultation, invest in sound capability and use it repeatedly across all appropriate engagements, providing a consistent and managed experience at a very low amortised cost?

After years of running consultations and leading Delib Australia, I've come to the following conclusion.

I believe that fundamentally agencies and councils don't think of consultation as a critical step in policy and service design.

Instead consultation is usually either a 'sop' to their Minister, or to affected groups in the community, to provide necessary cover for whatever decisions they choose to make.

In my experience, while policy specialists and senior public servants are always interested in reviewing the synopsis of what consultation respondents say, they often suffer from the 'expert issue', where they already know the right solution, and simply don't believe that the public would have anything useful to add.

This bias is often reinforced during consultations. Due to the ways in which agencies consult it's common for many responses to be brief and poorly considered, or reflect ideas an agency has already investigated and rejected, or tried.

When experts, interest groups, companies and lobbyists respond to consultations, their responses are given a little more attention - partly because they are written formally in language that public servants respond to, and partially because they may be groups that can derail a government's goals.

However even these responses are often largely disregarded as the bias or slant of a particular group seeking advantage. Or they may be =taken as gospel - a mandated approach that already has the support of the group purported to be represented (even where this may not be evidentially the case).

Of course there are exceptions to the cases above and I've been fortunate enough to work with a number of agencies, councils and individuals who truly value and respect community input and understand how it can effectively inform and improve policy and service outcomes.

However until governments think more like start-ups, recognising the immense value that consultations have in uncovering policy issues and new ideas as a critical part of a design process, I expect we'll continue to see the poor use of online consultation tools even though many of the tools available today are superbly well-developed and tested.

Agencies and councils don't need to wait for or design better tools - they need to improve their thinking, or consultation will continue to be a weakness and a risk for them and their political masters.

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Have Australian governments & councils considered the impact of disruptive tech like driverless cars?

Last week it was announced that the first driverless car trials would begin in Australia in Adelaide. Supported by the South Australian government and the Australian Road Research Board (ARRB), the two-day trial involves Volvo's XC90, Bosch's driverfree technology and Telstra's network.

I'm a big fan of self-drive cars and have followed Google's US self driving car trials, as well as the European work by Volvo and other car makers for a number of years.

Besides the prospects of better traffic management, fewer accidents and less road deaths with consistent, tireless, undistractable computers controlling cars, self-drive cars offer the promise of more productive and leisure time for humans currently spending hours each week behind the wheel of their cars.

In a self-driving car future there's less need for private cars and massive car parks, more predictable road maintenance and potentially better population health outcomes as people don't face the stress of tail-gaters, road rage and other deplorable on-road driver behaviours.

However behind the glow of potential benefits that has governments and companies working towards a human-free driving future, there's some significant and highly disruptive impacts on industries and governments that the public sector and politicians need to consider.

Firstly, as self-drive cars take over there will no longer be any need for taxis or other paid drivers. Uber and similar companies are building logistics systems for moving humans that would allow people to simply summon a self-drive vehicle when they need it, and have it drive them to their destination.

Uber is already creating significant disruption in the taxi industry by providing an easy-to-use alternative to legacy taxi systems, with violent protests in France and governments in the US, Australia and other countries fining Uber drivers or prohibiting the service to protect the taxi industry and their existing taxi plate revenues.

Step forward a few years to when self-drive cars are widespread and taxis will simply not be able to compete for most travel needs, with paid drivers (if still allowed on the road) being a high-end service used by those who wish to show-off their wealth.

Similarly bus and truck drivers - particularly for long hauls - will find their jobs vanishing as computers, who need no sleep, replace them, making logistics systems more efficient and controllable.

Emergency services may also experience some shift in focus and reduction in staff, with paramedics focused on patients, not driving ambulances, firefighters able to plan and police able to work on cases as their cars transport them to where they are needed.

Severely disabled people will benefit, with the ability to summon a vehicle to take them to where they need to go, rather than waiting on human carers - which may also reduce the number of nurses required.

These industry dislocations will affect the number and type of jobs in an economy, necessitating rethinking of a government's priorities and approach. It may also have significant impacts on state public transit services as buses no longer require expensive drivers, potentially allowing more transport options on the road.

However there's even more profound consequences for governments who fund their activities partially through revenues raised from drivers and their mistakes.

Self-drive cars will not speed, drive dangerously or part illegally (without human intervention), meaning that speeding fines will disappear, along with parking inspectors and the fines they collect.

Drivers' license fees will vanish, together with many private car registration fees as more households shift to rely on Uber-style logistics services, which simply have a vehicle come to your door when you need it. Government parking fees may also fall dramatically, with cars redirected to low and no-cost parking locations outside city centres when not required.

With self-drive cars it's also likely that electricity will take more of a role in replacing petrol, meaning governments will raise less in fuel excise, reducing their ability to fund road maintenance and improvements.

Fortunately, with more consistent and predictable behaviour by self-drive cars, and the ability to divert vehicles to spread traffic load it's likely that road costs will diminish somewhat - however whether this offsets the reduction in revenue from car licenses and fuel is yet to be explored.

Self-drive cars are coming - they make sense to individuals, corporations and governments in many ways. Now we need some serious thinking by governments on how to manage the disruption that will be caused and how lost revenue will be replaced.

This isn't the only disruptive technology facing governments, but it is one of the biggest, with the potential for creating economy and society-wide change.

We need to begin consider the impacts of the change now, before it occurs, in order to manage it in the least impactful way for both governments and communities.

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WA government launches open data consultation

The Western Australian Department of Premier and Cabinet has launched a consultation regarding their proposed whole of government Open Data policy - citing the relative underutilisation of data and the prospect of unlocking opportunities for greater insights and services.

It's good to see WA take this step. While they've had data available openly, primarily through WA LandGate, there was no clear overall policy or direction taken by the government and relative immaturity in how agency data was published for reuse.

The consultation is designed to create a policy which supports a standard approach to open data across WA government and both educate and encourage agencies to understand the value of data and how to release it effectively and appropriately for reuse.

To read and comment on the consultation, visit www.dpc.wa.gov.au/Consultation/Pages/WAWholeofGovernmentOpenDataPolicy-Draft.aspx

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Giving the community an opportunity to understand and reshape the Australian Government budget for 2014-15

While common practice in many countries overseas, there's still limited authentic consultation on government budgets undertaken in Australia - and I think we're poorer for it.

Involving the community in setting budget priorities and educating them on how a budget is developed goes a long way towards building understanding and (very importantly) trust in public institutions and politicians.

Even if these processes are only used for informational or even political ends, such as Strong Choices in Queensland, they at least give the public visibility into the challenges that governments contend with.

Of course budget processes are far more valuable when they give people authentic opportunities to influence government decisions, but one step at a time.

With so little public consultation undertaken around the Australian Government's budget for 2014-15, I've worked with Fairfax Media this year to give the Australian public an opportunity to understand how it is constructed and provide their views.

Via my company Delib Australia, we've modelled budget revenues and expenditures in Budget Simulator and made this available via the Sydney Morning Herald's site.

The Australian Budget Simulator is open until the end of next week, at which point we'll be tallying up the feedback and presenting it to the Australian Government for review.

It's not likely to change any decisions, but at least it will help inform the discussion.

To share your views via the Australian Budget Simulator, visit: www.smh.com.au/business/federal-budget-2014/budgetsimulator/

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A good community engagement professional understands their tools - and picks the right ones to meet their goals

I had an interesting conversation via Twitter with @hughstephens of Dialogue Consulting on Friday regarding how and when different consultation and engagement tools should be used by government.

His view was that online surveys should not be the default consultation method for government,

Possibly going to be controversial by saying that online surveys should NOT be governments' default consultation method #gov2au
— Hugh Stephens (@hughstephens) February 21, 2014

I found this a rather unusual thing to say - though I did agree with his follow-up tweet that,

@vivmcw exactly! Just a pity that many take "innovative"/"online" to mean 'SurveyMonkey'
— Hugh Stephens (@hughstephens) February 21, 2014

There was an interesting discussion between Hugh and myself after this point, which you can follow via my Storify or directly on Twitter.

However I can boil my position down to one point: focus first on the goals of your consultation or engagement, then select the tools based on which will best suit your needs.

This approach works whatever your goals and whether you're consulting online, offline or both.

It causes me no end of concern when senior management, communication or community engagement professionals start from a position of which tool they prefer to use and then justify it within the goals they seek to achieve.

This can lead to distortion of the goals, poor outcomes and, potentially, significant pain for agencies, councils and governments or councillors when there's substantial pushback on the decisions arrived at via this process.

I'm also concerned when I hear engagement professionals state personal biases for or against specific types of tools. This can also bias an engagement process.

Someone who doesn't like, is unfamiliar with, or out-of-date on the capabilities of certain types of consultation and engagement tools may not be able to provide the best advice as to which tools and approaches will best meet an organisation's engagement goals.

I've been talking about this issue for around eight years now within and with government, exposing public sector professionals to a range of online approaches now available to them for engagement purposes to deepen and broaden their toolkit.

Only by understanding the capabilities, strengths and weaknesses of a good cross-section of the tools available today can communication and engagement professionals provide good advice to their senior management and elected officials regarding how to achieve their goals.

So for everyone involved in community engagement from the public sector - don't focus on the tools you like or dislike, focus on your goals.

Use your breadth of experience with different engagement and consultation approaches, together with evidence of past successes and failures, to select the right tools to meet your goals, whatever they happen to be!

PS: I'll shortly be crowdfunding a product designed to help community engagement and communications professionals to understand and select the right online tools for their goals. It is based on the training tool I developed and have been using successfully around the world for the last eight years.

Keep an eye out for more information in my blog and at socialmediaplanner.com.au

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Why Australian councils and other governments need to be very careful using SurveyMonkey & other US-owned online engagement tools

I've had an interesting and robust conversation online in the last day regarding how Australian councils and governments are using overseas services like SurveyMonkey to collect information from citizens and residents.

It's no secret that SurveyMonkey in particular is widely used, with other tools like SurveyGizmo and Wufoo also used by many Australian councils and governments to collect personal information from citizens in consultations.

I think these are great tools - well-made and cost-effective. In the past, I have also encouraged and supported their use.

However every council and agency using them needs to be very careful in doing so.

Many of these tools are owned by US companies, which makes them subject to the Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The Patriot Act, passed in 2001, was designed to fight terrorism in the US and strengthened FISA, originally passed in 1978 , to make it legal for certain US agencies to request data from US companies pertaining to non-US citizens, while prohibiting the company from revealing that the data has been taken.

What this means in practice is that any data collected by an Australian government or council in a US owned services such as SurveyMonkey may be provided to the US government, without informing or requiring the permission of the Australian jurisdiction or the individuals whose personal data is taken.

Whether or not the US government exercises its rights under the Patriot Act and FISA, any Australian government using US-owned online services (regardless of where in the world they are hosted), cannot legally make the guarantees they are required to make under the Australian Privacy Act to control how any personal information they collect on citizens and residents is distributed or used and to only use the data for the purpose for which it was collected.

This poses a major challenge to Australian councils and agencies as they are open to being found in breach of the revised Privacy Act, which now includes million dollar fines for governments that do not comply with it.

I recommend reading the new Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), as provided by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, to get an overview of the impact of the privacy changes, in particular APP 1 (which requires actual privacy documentation from entities), APP 2 and APP 8.

APP 2 outlines the requirement to support anonymous and pseudonymous responses to consultations - meaning that any service or approach (including RSVPs to a physical event) that requires a user's real name may no longer be legally able to be the only channel for consultation responses.

APP 8 is particularly worth reading for how organisations that collect personal data are allowed to share it across jurisdictions. I'll let people read it for themselves and source their own legal interpretation, as it places a large legal question mark over the use of US-owned services due to the Patriot Act and FISA.

Any council using US-owned online engagement tools must decide whether convenience and saving a few dollars is worth the risk - knowing that they are breaking Australian law.

Of course this shouldn't stop councils or agencies from using online engagement services. Provided an online engagement service meets the requirements of the Privacy Act it is fine for an Australian government to use them.

This covers data collection services from companies domiciled in nations which do not have an equivalent to the Patriot Act and FISA - such as the UK, New Zealand and Canada, amongst others.

It also doesn't exclude the use of US-owned services such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter where citizens have directly chosen to sign-up to the service based on its terms of service. The presumption is that citizens will do due diligence and make their own risk assessment regarding whether they are happy to comply with US laws. Where governments have a presence, they are not the direct intermediary for citizens using the service and therefore only need to be mindful of the privacy ramifications of information published on the council or agency's own account pages.

It may also be possible to mitigate legal risks around tools like SurveyMonkey through excluding all personal questions in surveys - although this could be more difficult to defend in some cases as the IP address and other metadata automatically collected by these services may be sufficient to built a connection and identify a respondent.

Or government agency or council could require all respondents to agree explicitly before engaging that they understand that the Australian jurisdiction collecting their data cannot guarantee the safety of that information due to US law - although this could seriously damage the level of actual engagement and trust.


Fortunately, however, when agencies and councils look into the use of online engagement tools they don't need to only look at US or other overseas providers.

There are local providers of online engagement tools, including the company I now lead, Delib Australia.

Local providers are required to meet all Australian laws and, for the most part, host their services locally (as Delib does), removing jurisdictional risk and potentially making them faster to use (as data doesn't have to travel over congested international networks).

That can raise prices a little - hosting in Australia is more expensive than hosting in the US and local providers can't access the same economies of scale or venture funding as US companies.

However it doesn't raise the price that much, when considering the benefits of local support (in Aussie timezones) and greater responsiveness to local government needs.

Speaking with my Delib hat on, as I know Delib's prices best, councils and not-for-profits across Australia can access Delib's combined Citizen Space and Dialogue App services for under $500 per month.

State and federal agencies, who need greater flexibility and control, won't pay much more for Delib's robust, well-tested, online survey and discussion tools, which were co-designed with governments for government use, and comply with Australian privacy, security and accessibility requirements.

Other local providers offer a variety of other online engagement tools and should also be considered.

So when an Australian council or government agency wants to engage online its staff should think very carefully about whether they select a US-based service, or a local provider - considering whether they are willing to trade a little in cost for a great deal in legal risk, loss of control and less support.

They also consider whether they wish to support Australian or US businesses, Australian jobs or US venture capitalists.

The choice shouldn't be too hard, even on a tiny engagement budget.

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What's the digital communication capability of Australian governments?

On the back of the UK Government's second whole-of-government communications plan, the UK Government has been undertaking a Digital Communication Capability review asking (in simple terms), how is digital communication and engagement done, and how could it be improved?

The Review has involved consultation with Communications Directors, digital engagement specialists and senior executives across the UK Government and was led by a team of three independent reviewers with a deep knowledge of digital communications.

The review is still in the closing stages (final due in November), however has been an extremely transparent process, with all comments available online and the draft report already released for final feedback (similar to the process the Australian Gov 2.0 Taskforce used in 2009, but has been rarely used since in Australian government).

Many of the top-line findings would resonate with Australian public sector digital communications professionals, with the headline finding being:

Pockets of good practice notwithstanding, the headline finding is that digital communication in government is developing in silos and not in the mainstream. The consequence is that it is being outpaced by the best of the commercial and NGO worlds. Too much is broadcast and does not seek to engage. And, crucially, it is still treated by many in departmental leadership positions as a specialist area where the risks usually outweigh the benefits.

Underneath this, the review found that there wasn't a natural home for digital within departments - with placement in existing areas such as media relations leading to a biased approach which didn't serve all agency needs.

It also found that;

• departments were not realising economies of scale, with different agencies separately purchasing the same or different social media management and analytics tools, 
• communication focused far too much on informing rather than conversations, 
• objectives were based on easily measurable quantitive scores (such as followers or tweets) rather than on changing outcomes,
• there was an over-reliance on 'build it and they will come' approaches, 
• there was a shortage of skills - exacerbated by a lack of confidence and judgement, 
• there were limitations on access to social media due to IT security considerations - which may be valid but were poorly explained and understood, and
• there was a lack of trust and overriding pre-occupation with risk.

Unfortunately there's been none of this type of work done in a systemic way in Australia - despite it being possible to take an approach (such as the UK one) and repeat it across every state, territory and the federal government to provide a comparable model (then do a cut-down version for local governments).

This is similar to where I started with the Digital Innovation Review I conducted in Victoria (no other states or territories have been interested in a similar review as yet though).

I'd like to help. Any takers in government?

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Online challenges arrive in Australian government

With psychedelic splendour, the ACT government has become the first Australian jurisdiction to launch a serious whole-of-government online challenges site.

Through the Digital Canberra Challenge website, the ACT is now asking "Canberra's brightest minds" to help improve government services.

The first round contains two challenges, to improve the process of event approvals and to make it easier to book a government service (such as a driving test).

The process is a little vague, however the two finalists for the round (one per challenge) can receive up to $5,000 of expenses reimbursed (on presentation of valid invoices) and the winner of the competition (over a number of rounds) will receive $12,500 - with the runner up receiving $7,500.

To participate individuals must be Canberra-based, teams must have at least one ACT resident and organisations must be both ACT-based and have less than 20 people.

It's a good attempt, though in my view the complexity of the criteria to enter, the way prizes are awarded and the actual psychedelic website itself risk overwhelming the actual goal, to involve residents in improving the delivery of government services.

That said, the goal is fantastic and all kudos to the ACT Government for making a start in this area. I hope that after the process they consider making this approach a standard one for involving residents, reflecting the success of challenge.gov in the US.

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Watch ABC 7:30 ACT tonight for a piece on Social Media and the APS

There should be an interesting piece on ABC 7:30 tonight in the ACT looking at the relationship between the Australian Public Service and the use of social media by public servants.

I was interviewed from Brisbane for the piece and know of several other ex public servants who were also interviewed or consulted.

There's also an interesting opinion piece on the topic today in ITNews by Steve Davies which is worth a read, The Government's push towards a silent state.

There are a number of people I know of concerned over the consequences now emerging of the 2012 changes to the APSC guidance on social media use by public servants, particularly combined with the line that appears to be being taken by the current Australian Government.

The longer-term implications are still unclear, however it is apparent that significant tension remains between the rights and responsibilities of public servants when it comes to their requirement to be perceived to carry out their work duties in an apolitical way versus their ability to participate in the community as an Australian citizen, with all the political freedoms this entails.

As governments move towards greater community engagement, but place increasing strictures on how public servants can participate in these engagements, where an opinion or concern may be interpreted politically, we're likely to see more cases of public servants being forced to choose between their career and their personal rights and more opportunities for unscrupulous managers to interpret vague public sector policies in ways which can be interpreted as harassment and bullying.

I see this as a rising cost to the public sector, as well as leading to greater reluctance on the part of public servants to participate in public discussions in meaningful ways, both on their own behalf and on behalf of the governments they serve.

Fortunately this trend isn't being repeated in other countries - from the UK to New Zealand public servants are being welcomed into community discussions both as individual contributors and on behalf of agencies - so in a few years the impact of the different approaches should be starkly apparent.

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Can government policy, reports and consultation documents be communicated through animated infographics?

Government reports are often dry - really, really, really dry.

They are also often wordy, complex, long and, due to these properties, largely incomprehensible to the broader community.

Government policy and consultation documents can suffer from similar conditions. They are often quite complex, long and structured in ways that make sense to career bureaucrats but not necessarily to the general public.

Many agencies also dislike this and make all kinds of efforts to provide summaries, to simplify language, use images and charts and use other techniques to spice up these often long and complex government documents.

However at their core, they generally remain documents, words on paper that would be familiar to the scholars of Middle-Ages Europe, to the Ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians and to the many dynasties of the Chinese over the last six thousand years - although they may now be distributed by electronic as well as physical means.

Surely modern society can devise better ways to communicate complex information than relying on an approach that is now around six thousand years old.

And we have - by drawing from techniques that are much older and more resilient in human cultures. Pictures, dance and song.

Now I don't expect governments to communicate their reports, policies and consultation materials entirely through the use of the performing arts. Not all our politicians or public servants are as accomplished singers as, say Chris Emerson, who can be viewed below communicating about government budget reporting and the Charter of Budget Honesty in song with his band Emmo and the Wipeouts on an episode of The Hamster Decides.



However with multimedia and the use of infographics it is now possible to communicate government information in far more engaging and understandable ways than ever before.

This is being done by some agencies already. The Department of Planning and Community Development in Melbourne made a series of animated infographics to communicate material from their consultation, PlanMelbourne (which I've been privileged to work on through Delib Australia).



The use is not yet widespread, with most government reports, consultation documents, policies and other material still released as words on paper - however what if it was.

What if governments mandated that agencies were required to follow a visual first approach for all materials they released to the public, only using words on paper as a secondary technique?

Could agencies rise to the challenge, communicating their material far more succinctly in visual form - a five minute video rather than a 200 page single-spaced, small-type report?

Not possible? Material too complex and long? Too many statistics to cover?

Maybe the examples below might shift a few opinions.

The first example is from the creator of PHD Comics, Jorge Cham. As an internationally renown animator Jorge asked students to describe their thesis in two minutes.

Jorge chose the best descriptions and turned them into animated infographics, such as the one below from Adam Crymble on Big Data and Old History.



Second is an example from Peter Liddicoat, a materials scientist at the University of Sydney and the winner of the Chemistry category in the 'Dance your PHD' competition.

Peter's PHD was on the topic 'Evolution of nanostructural architecture in 700 series aluminium alloys during strengthening by age-hardening and severe plastic deformation' - a wonderfully complex and obscure topic that doesn't seem to naturally lend itself to dance, but somehow works.



What I think these example demonstrate is that there are alternatives ways for government to communicate complex material. They no longer must rely on words on paper.

Certainly bureaucrats can argue that word on paper are easy for them to produce, that they satisfy a substantial proportion of the community and they have a long track record - that 6,000 years of history I mentioned earlier.

They can also argue that there's no silver bullet for communication, no technique that will satisfy 100% of the audience, and that is perfectly true.

However while governments may consider words on paper the default position, the lowest common denominator way of making information available to the public, I think they are often used as an excuse to be lazy and unengaging.

Paper make the lives of public servants and politicians easier. Paper documents are relatively cheap and fast to write, review, approve and distribute - none of which is a benefit to the intended audience and community or improves the outcomes of a consultation.

Mark Twain once said, “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

For governments words on paper are their long letters - the approach easiest for them, rather than for the recipient, their community or audience.

Agencies can now do better - using images, animations and video to communicate relegating words on paper to a back-up role.

I challenge them to try.

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Opening up information and creating connections triggers ideas and innovation

I wanted to bring attention to a fantastic post in Wired today, which looks at how the explosion in writing is changing how humans think and learn, and how the connections being made by greater openness and improved communication are triggering ideas and innovation.

The post, Why even the worst bloggers are making us smarter, is worth sharing across your organisations and particularly with senior management as it provides an evidence-based view on why open is better than closed and provides insights into several of the transformations happening in modern society.

As the post points out, the internet has led to the greatest explosion in human expression (largely through writing) in human history - and people aren't simply writing for themselves, they are writing for an audience, no matter how small.

When writing becomes public, thinking becomes public and connections take over. Connections lead to innovation and innovation leads to improvements.

This encapsulates precisely why we need more public engagement from public servants, more explanations of policy decision-making approaches and more opportunities for wider audiences to consider, debate, refute and improve on the ideas developed in policy black boxes.

A broader and ongoing discussion is messier, but leads to more innovation and improvement. It can bust myths and debunk ideologically driven views which run contrary to evidence.

If governments are serious about improving themselves and supporting communities to improve lifestyles and dignity, they need to demonstrate this through greater openness and engagement, not more rules.

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