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What if everything you'd written on a topic over the last decade could be poured into an AI that interacts with you to develop and explore new insights and ideas?
This morning I've started testing our proof of concept 'digital brain', which has read, absorbed and contextualised everything I've written in my eGov.AU blog since 2006, plus more.
Even in early testing it's capable of extending and connecting ideas in ways I'd never considered, generating new insights and highlighting new knowledge paths to explore in near-perfect prose.
This is not simply a curiosity or tool for an individual writer & thinker.
Imagine the value such a 'digital brain' could generate as a digital team member in an organisation.
As a digital team member, our AI is already able to ingest, read, connect and continually remember virtually all the knowledge your organisation has captured in written form (soon audio as well).
It can repurpose your corporate knowledge to produce new insights, suggest new ideas and draft documents (training, sales, marcomms, compliance and more) so your human teams can focus more on creative and editorial contributions.
And we're continuing to explore and extend these capabilities to make an AI digital team member a core part of an organisation's operational stack.
So your organisation can make full use of the hard-won corporate knowledge you've already acquired to generate ongoing sustained value and support your human teams.
Showing posts with label content. Show all posts
Showing posts with label content. Show all posts
Monday, February 28, 2022
The first truly digital officer | Tweet |
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
It's nice to see government agencies share with each other | Tweet |
One of the most frustrating and, I think, silliest things I found when working in Australian government agencies was how almost every department, agency and statutory body developed almost all of its own policies, procedures, software and tools.
There was often 'undercover' sharing - where people in agencies would ask their colleagues in others for copies of their whatever policy, so they could craft one just like it - however there was no central repository where public servants could go and browse standard templated policy documents or access software code developed by other agencies to resolve certain common issues.
At one stage I actively looked at building a research directory for government - either from within an agency, or as a third-party site - where public servants could list the research their agencies had undertaken and the research they needed to access or undertake, so that it could be effectively shared between departments, saving money in re-running research and informing policy decisions.
This attempt didn't get off the ground as senior management strongly felt they had no obligation to share information on the research work conducted with 'THEIR' public dollars with other agencies - even the fact that they'd undertaken it in the first place.
Fortunately most of those senior managers have now retired (literally), and the new crop coming through are realising that, cash and time constrained as they are, that fighting over which agency 'owns' a specific policy, custom software or research that they commissioned gets in the way of productivity, efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
One of the outcomes has been the latest Australian Government whole-of-government website, GovShare.
GovShare had been talked about for nearly five years and has now finally arrived as a central location for agencies to share their work with other agencies to build standardisation and save money across the public service.
As the About page states, GovShare has been designed to support and promote collaboration across the Australian Public Service, and as an online resource it has been provided to APS agencies and their staff to:
This type of sharing helps save money and time in government. It allows agencies to collaborate to design the best possible policies, guidelines and software and then customise it if needed for their specific needs.
While the benefits of the site won't necessarily be clearly visible outside of government circles, the efficiencies it will support will help agencies focus their resources on achieving the goals of government rather than on endlessly recreating the policies already in place elsewhere in government.
The site already contains nearly 2,000 'artefacts' for review, reuse and adaptation, and hopefully over the next few years this will swell as more agencies become active contributors as well as takers from the site.
It will also hopefully expand beyond its ICT roots into other business areas - allowing agencies to share standard communication strategy templates, HR policies, procurement guidebooks and financial guidelines - tools and resources that help public servants understand and abide by the rules the government sets in these areas.
Hopefully the site will expand beyond federal government as well, bringing state and local into the fold. These governments often face the same challenges, often with fewer resources, and GovShare could have a large role to play in reducing costs at all levels of government in Australia.
Ultimately it would be wonderful to see 'packages' of policies and guidelines that a newly created agency or statutory body can simply pick up, adapt and use for their operations.
This would be similar to the 'agency on a USB stick' concept that I've been talking about for several years around a set of software platforms and settings that would allow an agency to put in place a solid set of operational systems in a very short time.
However it is, as yet, early days for GovShare. Its success relies on three things, ongoing support from the department hosting it (Finance), active participation by agencies in 'gifting' their work to a common store for other agencies to access and the political will and nous to not kill the program before it bears fruit.
I hope Govshare will succeed, and think the omens are good. Its journey over the next five years will be interesting to watch.
There was often 'undercover' sharing - where people in agencies would ask their colleagues in others for copies of their whatever policy, so they could craft one just like it - however there was no central repository where public servants could go and browse standard templated policy documents or access software code developed by other agencies to resolve certain common issues.
At one stage I actively looked at building a research directory for government - either from within an agency, or as a third-party site - where public servants could list the research their agencies had undertaken and the research they needed to access or undertake, so that it could be effectively shared between departments, saving money in re-running research and informing policy decisions.
This attempt didn't get off the ground as senior management strongly felt they had no obligation to share information on the research work conducted with 'THEIR' public dollars with other agencies - even the fact that they'd undertaken it in the first place.
Fortunately most of those senior managers have now retired (literally), and the new crop coming through are realising that, cash and time constrained as they are, that fighting over which agency 'owns' a specific policy, custom software or research that they commissioned gets in the way of productivity, efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
One of the outcomes has been the latest Australian Government whole-of-government website, GovShare.
As the About page states, GovShare has been designed to support and promote collaboration across the Australian Public Service, and as an online resource it has been provided to APS agencies and their staff to:
- publish, discover and access a broad range of artefacts used within the APS, such as frameworks, guidelines, policies, standards, architectural models, open source software and a host of other ICT and business artefacts;
- explore APS ICT services and solutions through the Agency Online Services Database and Agency Solutions Database;
- find skilled people across the APS with expertise in particular fields or products; and
- contribute to online discussions using the forum.
This type of sharing helps save money and time in government. It allows agencies to collaborate to design the best possible policies, guidelines and software and then customise it if needed for their specific needs.
While the benefits of the site won't necessarily be clearly visible outside of government circles, the efficiencies it will support will help agencies focus their resources on achieving the goals of government rather than on endlessly recreating the policies already in place elsewhere in government.
The site already contains nearly 2,000 'artefacts' for review, reuse and adaptation, and hopefully over the next few years this will swell as more agencies become active contributors as well as takers from the site.
It will also hopefully expand beyond its ICT roots into other business areas - allowing agencies to share standard communication strategy templates, HR policies, procurement guidebooks and financial guidelines - tools and resources that help public servants understand and abide by the rules the government sets in these areas.
Hopefully the site will expand beyond federal government as well, bringing state and local into the fold. These governments often face the same challenges, often with fewer resources, and GovShare could have a large role to play in reducing costs at all levels of government in Australia.
Ultimately it would be wonderful to see 'packages' of policies and guidelines that a newly created agency or statutory body can simply pick up, adapt and use for their operations.
This would be similar to the 'agency on a USB stick' concept that I've been talking about for several years around a set of software platforms and settings that would allow an agency to put in place a solid set of operational systems in a very short time.
However it is, as yet, early days for GovShare. Its success relies on three things, ongoing support from the department hosting it (Finance), active participation by agencies in 'gifting' their work to a common store for other agencies to access and the political will and nous to not kill the program before it bears fruit.
I hope Govshare will succeed, and think the omens are good. Its journey over the next five years will be interesting to watch.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Content Management for Government - watch the webcast | Tweet |
Below is the video from the live webcast on Content Marketing for Government that Content Group managed, hosted by David Pembroke with Gina Cianco of the Australian Government Department of Human Services, Kanchan Dutt and myself as guests.
It's an interesting watch.
I'll buy a drink for anyone who accurately counts the number of 'ums' I say!
It's an interesting watch.
I'll buy a drink for anyone who accurately counts the number of 'ums' I say!
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Keep an eye out for the live webinar at 12:30 (AEST) on Content Marketing in Government | Tweet |
The webinar features a panel including Gina Ciancio, Senior Social Media Advisor at the Department of Human Services, Kanchan Dutt, Senior Manager Media and Communications at ACT Government, and myself.
It will be broadcast on Canberra Live and available after the event if you don't have time to watch today.
It should be a very interesting look at an area that government still struggles with - how to develop and provide the right content, at the right time, to the right people, through the right channels to influence in the right ways.
There will be a particular focus on Community Engagement and on mobile content.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
TubeRank helps reduce the risks in creating viral government content | Tweet |
Viral content - content which gets shared across the internet and media very quickly (like a virus) - is often a controversial area of communication for organisations. While the approach can result in massive attention and awareness it can also lead to massive risks.
What if the content doesn't go viral, wasting your investment? (Like these nine viral failures)
What if it goes viral, but not in the way you'd prefer, damaging your reputation? (such as Witchery's girl with a jacket or Nestle's pedobear)?
Unintentionally viral content can also raise concerns, such as when Minister Shorten supported the Prime Minister, though it can have benefits, as demonstrated by the Prime Minister's 'misogyny speech'.
The concerns and risks around viral content have sometimes nobbled efforts to bring this approach into government campaigns. In fact the entire hit and miss of viral content makes it appear a high risk strategy for most organisations.
That said, agencies are still successfully employing viral techniques - such as the Dumb Ways to Die video from Victoria Metro (which reportedly has reduced 'dumb behaviour' by 20%) and the memes used in their Facebook pages by FaHCSIA and Queensland Police's What tha Friday Photos.
So are many companies and brands - as AdNew's Viral video chart (which is also powered by VAN) demonstrates at www.adnews.com.au/campaigns/viral-video-chart
So what if the risk of viral content going wrong was reduced? Would more agencies consider creating viral content?
I reckon so and that's what a new service from the Viral Ad Network (VAN), a sister company to Delib (for whom I am the Aussie Managing Director) now offers organisation.
The free TubeRank service is an online tool designed to assist organisations identify characteristics and approaches that help them create their own viral successes - reducing the risk of a viral dud.
TubeRank works by allowing creatives to select triggers (goals) and interests (audiences) for a campaign. TubeRank then provides relevant viral video examples, tips and a downloadable PDF tactics report on how to go about approaching the creation of successful viral content.
While TubeRank doesn't guarantee every viral will succeed, it improves the odds and helps reduce the risk of failure.
I've included the TubeRank tutorial video below and you can try out the service at http://tuberank.joinvan.com
What if the content doesn't go viral, wasting your investment? (Like these nine viral failures)
What if it goes viral, but not in the way you'd prefer, damaging your reputation? (such as Witchery's girl with a jacket or Nestle's pedobear)?
Unintentionally viral content can also raise concerns, such as when Minister Shorten supported the Prime Minister, though it can have benefits, as demonstrated by the Prime Minister's 'misogyny speech'.
The concerns and risks around viral content have sometimes nobbled efforts to bring this approach into government campaigns. In fact the entire hit and miss of viral content makes it appear a high risk strategy for most organisations.
That said, agencies are still successfully employing viral techniques - such as the Dumb Ways to Die video from Victoria Metro (which reportedly has reduced 'dumb behaviour' by 20%) and the memes used in their Facebook pages by FaHCSIA and Queensland Police's What tha Friday Photos.
So are many companies and brands - as AdNew's Viral video chart (which is also powered by VAN) demonstrates at www.adnews.com.au/campaigns/viral-video-chart
So what if the risk of viral content going wrong was reduced? Would more agencies consider creating viral content?
I reckon so and that's what a new service from the Viral Ad Network (VAN), a sister company to Delib (for whom I am the Aussie Managing Director) now offers organisation.
The free TubeRank service is an online tool designed to assist organisations identify characteristics and approaches that help them create their own viral successes - reducing the risk of a viral dud.
TubeRank works by allowing creatives to select triggers (goals) and interests (audiences) for a campaign. TubeRank then provides relevant viral video examples, tips and a downloadable PDF tactics report on how to go about approaching the creation of successful viral content.
While TubeRank doesn't guarantee every viral will succeed, it improves the odds and helps reduce the risk of failure.
I've included the TubeRank tutorial video below and you can try out the service at http://tuberank.joinvan.com
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Standardising content across government (or why does every agency have a different privacy policy?) | Tweet |
Every government website serves a different purpose and a different audience, however there are also standard content every site must have and legislation and standardised policies they must follow.
This includes content such as a privacy policy, legal disclaimer, terms of use, accessibility statement, copyright, social media channels, contact page, information publication (FOI) pages and so on. It also includes the navigational structure and internal ordering of pages and the web addresses to access this content (such as for 'about us' pages).
So is there a case to standardise the templates and/or content of these pages and where to find them in websites across government?
I think so.
From an audience perspective, there is a strong case to do so. Citizens often use multiple government websites and it makes their experience more streamlined and efficient if they can find what they need in a consistent place (such as www.agency.gov.au/privacy), written in a consistent format and, where possible, using identical or near identical language.
It would also save money and time. Rather than having to write and seek legal approval for the full page content (such as for privacy information), only agency-specific parts would need writing or approval. Websites could be established more rapidly using the standard content pages and lawyers could focus on higher value tasks.
To put a number on the current cost of individually creating standard, if you assume it cost, in time and effort, around $500 to develop a privacy policy and that there are around 941 government websites (according to Government's online info offensive a flop), it would have cost up to $470,500 for individual privacy policies for all sites. Multiple this by the number of potentially standardisable pages and the millions begin adding up.
Standardisation could even minimise legal risks. It removes a potential point of failure from agencies who are not resourced or have the expertise to create appropriate policies and expose themselves to greater risks - such as over poorly written legal disclaimers which leave them open to being sued by citizens.
In some cases it may be possible to use the same standard text, with a few optional inclusions or agency-specific variations - such as for privacy policies, disclaimers, accessibility statements, terms of use, and similar standard pages.
In other cases it won't be possible to use the same content (such as for 'about us' pages), however the location and structure of the page can be similar - still providing public benefits.
Let's take privacy policies specifically for a moment.There's incredible diversity of privacy policies across Australian Government websites, although they are all subject to the same legislation (the Privacy Act 1988) and largely cover the same topics (with some variation in detail).
While this is good for lawyers, who get to write or review these policies, it may not be as good for citizens - who need to contend with different policies when they seek to register for updates or services.
Many government privacy policies are reviewed rarely, due to time and resource constraints, which may place agencies at risk where the use of new tools (such as Youtube, Slideshare and Scribd) to embed or manipulate content within agency sites can expose users unknowingly to the privacy conditions of third party sites (see how we handled these in myregion's privacy policy with an extendable third party section).
So, how would government go about standardisation? Although effectively a single entity, the government functions as a group of agencies who set their own policies and manage their own risks.
With the existence and role of AGIMO, and the WebGuide, there is a central forum for providing model content to reflect the minimum standard agencies must meet. There are mandatory guidelines for agencies, such as for privacy, however limited guidance on how to meet it. A standard privacy policy could be included and promoted as a base for other agencies to work from, or even provided as an inclusion for sites who wanted to have a policy which was centrally maintained and auto-updated.
Alternatively web managers across government could work together, through a service such as GovDex, to create and maintain standard pages using a wiki-based approach. This would allow for a consistently improving standard and garner grassroots buy-in, plus leverage the skills of the most experienced web masters.
There's undoubtably other ways to move towards standardised pages, even simply within an agency, which itself can be a struggle for those with many websites and decentralised web management.
Regardless of the method selected, the case should receive consideration. Does government really need hundreds of versions of what is standard content, or only a few?
Examples of government privacy policies (spot the similarities and differences):
This includes content such as a privacy policy, legal disclaimer, terms of use, accessibility statement, copyright, social media channels, contact page, information publication (FOI) pages and so on. It also includes the navigational structure and internal ordering of pages and the web addresses to access this content (such as for 'about us' pages).
So is there a case to standardise the templates and/or content of these pages and where to find them in websites across government?
I think so.
From an audience perspective, there is a strong case to do so. Citizens often use multiple government websites and it makes their experience more streamlined and efficient if they can find what they need in a consistent place (such as www.agency.gov.au/privacy), written in a consistent format and, where possible, using identical or near identical language.
It would also save money and time. Rather than having to write and seek legal approval for the full page content (such as for privacy information), only agency-specific parts would need writing or approval. Websites could be established more rapidly using the standard content pages and lawyers could focus on higher value tasks.
To put a number on the current cost of individually creating standard, if you assume it cost, in time and effort, around $500 to develop a privacy policy and that there are around 941 government websites (according to Government's online info offensive a flop), it would have cost up to $470,500 for individual privacy policies for all sites. Multiple this by the number of potentially standardisable pages and the millions begin adding up.
Standardisation could even minimise legal risks. It removes a potential point of failure from agencies who are not resourced or have the expertise to create appropriate policies and expose themselves to greater risks - such as over poorly written legal disclaimers which leave them open to being sued by citizens.
In some cases it may be possible to use the same standard text, with a few optional inclusions or agency-specific variations - such as for privacy policies, disclaimers, accessibility statements, terms of use, and similar standard pages.
In other cases it won't be possible to use the same content (such as for 'about us' pages), however the location and structure of the page can be similar - still providing public benefits.
Let's take privacy policies specifically for a moment.There's incredible diversity of privacy policies across Australian Government websites, although they are all subject to the same legislation (the Privacy Act 1988) and largely cover the same topics (with some variation in detail).
While this is good for lawyers, who get to write or review these policies, it may not be as good for citizens - who need to contend with different policies when they seek to register for updates or services.
Many government privacy policies are reviewed rarely, due to time and resource constraints, which may place agencies at risk where the use of new tools (such as Youtube, Slideshare and Scribd) to embed or manipulate content within agency sites can expose users unknowingly to the privacy conditions of third party sites (see how we handled these in myregion's privacy policy with an extendable third party section).
So, how would government go about standardisation? Although effectively a single entity, the government functions as a group of agencies who set their own policies and manage their own risks.
With the existence and role of AGIMO, and the WebGuide, there is a central forum for providing model content to reflect the minimum standard agencies must meet. There are mandatory guidelines for agencies, such as for privacy, however limited guidance on how to meet it. A standard privacy policy could be included and promoted as a base for other agencies to work from, or even provided as an inclusion for sites who wanted to have a policy which was centrally maintained and auto-updated.
Alternatively web managers across government could work together, through a service such as GovDex, to create and maintain standard pages using a wiki-based approach. This would allow for a consistently improving standard and garner grassroots buy-in, plus leverage the skills of the most experienced web masters.
There's undoubtably other ways to move towards standardised pages, even simply within an agency, which itself can be a struggle for those with many websites and decentralised web management.
Regardless of the method selected, the case should receive consideration. Does government really need hundreds of versions of what is standard content, or only a few?
Examples of government privacy policies (spot the similarities and differences):
- http://health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/privacy_security.htm
- http://www.immi.gov.au/functional/privacy.htm
- http://www.ag.gov.au/Pages/Disclaimers/Privacystatement.aspx
- http://www.dpmc.gov.au/privacy.cfm
- http://daff.gov.au/about/privacy
- http://www.deewr.gov.au/Pages/Privacy.aspx
- http://www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/legal/privacy.htm?OpenDocument&nav=footer
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Patient Opinion launches in Australia | Tweet |
One of the UK's social media success stories, Patient Opinion, has now launched an Australian website at www.patientopinion.org.au.
Patient Opinion, which has been live since 2005, allows patients to rate and comment on their experience with health providers. It has been an amazing (if sometimes painful) success in the UK, leading to a number of care improvements across the health system and at individual providers.
Having worked in the area in government in Australia, I recognise the sensitivities that get raised around the idea of rating health providers, or allowing public comment on individual experiences, particularly from hospitals and health professionals.
However decisions are made every day by people based on their views and experiences - which product to buy or shop to visit. They are even made about health services in private conversations that health providers can neither see or address.
Patient Opinion makes patient views and experiences visible in a central and public way, allowing health providers with the ability to access and review - even respond - to comments. The site also provides a level of governance and safety through monitoring stories and comments to ensure they are not defamatory.
The approach allows health providers to view and address operational concerns and provides valuable insights for policy makers into the Australian health system which, after all, is supposed to maximise the outcomes for patients.
While fears of negativity are common amongst organisations and individuals when social media channels open, the Patient Opinion experience in the UK has been that there is a high level of positive feedback provided - people do have faith in many health providers.
A brief video about the site is below, and you can learn more about Patient Opinion in Australia at www.patientopinion.org.au/info/about
Patient Opinion, which has been live since 2005, allows patients to rate and comment on their experience with health providers. It has been an amazing (if sometimes painful) success in the UK, leading to a number of care improvements across the health system and at individual providers.
Having worked in the area in government in Australia, I recognise the sensitivities that get raised around the idea of rating health providers, or allowing public comment on individual experiences, particularly from hospitals and health professionals.
However decisions are made every day by people based on their views and experiences - which product to buy or shop to visit. They are even made about health services in private conversations that health providers can neither see or address.
Patient Opinion makes patient views and experiences visible in a central and public way, allowing health providers with the ability to access and review - even respond - to comments. The site also provides a level of governance and safety through monitoring stories and comments to ensure they are not defamatory.
The approach allows health providers to view and address operational concerns and provides valuable insights for policy makers into the Australian health system which, after all, is supposed to maximise the outcomes for patients.
While fears of negativity are common amongst organisations and individuals when social media channels open, the Patient Opinion experience in the UK has been that there is a high level of positive feedback provided - people do have faith in many health providers.
A brief video about the site is below, and you can learn more about Patient Opinion in Australia at www.patientopinion.org.au/info/about
Sunday, April 01, 2012
Australian government agencies achieving the highest click-throughs of all sectors for email marketing campaigns | Tweet |
I've been browsing the latest Email Market Matrics Australia report from Vision6 and it definitely has good news for government agencies.
This series of reports has been running since the second half of 2006 and has, for me, provided a very useful insight into the effectiveness of email marketing in Australia over the last five years.
The reports are based on data from Vision6, so there's a slight bias based on being a single vendor (competitors such as CampaignMonitor don't yet release similar reports, or combine their information into a single industry report). However it is based on 259 million messages distributed via 112,000 separate campaigns by predominantly Australian companies (and they exclude all emails sent by stand alone resellers and corporate networks) - so it is a large sample for reporting purposes.
Vision6's software (similar to its competitors) tracks email campaigns by sends, bounces, email opens and click throughs (to links in email messages).
This provides very useful ROI data for agencies. I have always tried to encourage agencies to use these types of tools to manage their email newsletters so they can properly report on them and detect user sentiment and trends (this also takes the load off the, often overburdened, email systems used by government agencies).
The cost of these products is quite low considering their capabilities - particularly when looking at A/B testing to identify the most effective newsletter format and content (by sending differently formated emails to several small subsets of your email list, comparing open rate/click throughs and then distributing the most effective email format to the full list).
I'm not aware of any agencies who do currently use A/B testing for either email or websites, though this is widely used by business to maximise ROI - however I live in hope.
Back to the Vision6 survey and its results - the latest July-December 2011 survey reports that government agencies and defense have retained their position as achieving the highest open rate of any industry sector in Australia, with 31.66% of emails opened by recipients (an increase of 0.97% from last survey).
This means that if, as a government agency, you send out an email to a 10,000 person list, on average 3,166 of them will be opened. The others will end up deleted, ignored, blocked or bounced (where email addresses are full or closed).
While this doesn't sound great, it's actually a much higher exposure level than achieved through other mediums. It's also a much better rate than for many other industries, such as construction (20.99% open rate) or sales and marketing (14.79% open rate).
It is also important to consider that smaller lists tend to achieve higher open rates - perhaps due to the additional effort in managing the integrity of larger lists.
By send volume, on average across all industries, lists with under 500 subscribers achieve a 33.17% open rate, dropping to 19.76% for lists with more than 10,000 subscribers.
Government also topped the unique clickthrough rates for all sectors, with 8.42% of subscribers clicking through from the email to further information on a website. This compares to the bottom-place IT and Telecommunications sector, which only received a unique clickthrough rate of 2.25%.
The average clickthrough rate for all sectors was 4.22%, although this also declined by list size (from 7.31% for up to 499 subscribers down to 4.07% for lists of 10,000 or more.
Government also did well on bounce rates, with only 4.43% of emails not getting through. Whilest not the lowest rate, which is held by the Call Centre/Customer service sector with 3.29%, government was third highest and much, much better than the 15.27% bounce rate suffered by the Science and Technology sector, or 10.47% by the Manufacturing/Operations sector.
The average bounce rate was 5.45% and, interestingly bounce rates didn't consistently increase with larger lists.
Vision6's report indicated that lists with under 500 subscribers received, on average, a bounce rate of 5.28%. However lists with more than 10,000 subscribers received a marginally lower 5.26%. There was a bump in the middle however, with lists of 5,000-9,999 receiving 6.07% bounces and lists with 500-999 and 1,000-4,999 reaching 5.90% and 5.70% respectively.
The time taken to open email addresses appears to be falling, with 29.46% opened in the first 24 hours and 90.72% in the first 72 hours. Vision 6 reports that this last figure has increased consistently onver the last five years.
So, finally, what about the email clients used by people? This is important as emails can be distorted, or even unreadable, if the email client doesn't correctly display it.
While the majority of government agencies use Outlook or Lotus Notes email, this isn't the case in the broader world.
When looking at the email clients used by people opening received emails (an average of 21.83% of emails sent), Outlook accounted for 43.54% of clients (22.24%, 14.90% and 6.40% for Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010 respectively).
Hotmail accounted for another 16.21% and iPhone Mail accounted for 15.14% of email clients (and iPad Mail for another 3.7%) - demonstrating how strong mobile email has become - followed by Apple Mail at 11.98%.
'Other' received 20.11% - which included a range of services such as Gmail, Lotus Notes and others. I would like to see Vision6 really break this out further - however individual agencies can do this if using this type of email management platform.
There's clearly a strong need for organisations to understand how their subscribers receive and view emails as there can need to be important design differences depending on the client - even between different versions of the same product (such as for Outlook).
In conclusion, government in Australia already appears to be using email marketing well - at least when they are using email management systems such as Vision6, it's harder to judge email lists that don't use a management and reporting tool.
However there always remains room to learn from the figures and further improve the design and cut-through of email newsletters - particularly as mobile email continues to strengthen.
Email is still a very strong channel for reaching people with information, particularly in older demographics where social media engagement is less, and should be a core plank of any government communication strategy.
Remember that an email list is an organisational asset. People who have agreed to receive information from you are far more likely to engage and influence others. Don't squander and destroy this asset through poorly considered email strategies, which may include too frequent, too irregular or too 'boring' email updates.
Use approaches like A/B testing to determine what layout and headlines get the most cut-through, improving your ROI, and keep an eye on what people click on to see what types of information or stories hit the mark.
Email marketing is a science, there's plenty of evidence available on what works and cost-effective quantitative measurement tools for tracking and tweaking your own email newsletters.
Don't waste the opportunity by ignoring the evidence, or destroy the ROI by not measuring, reporting and adjusting.
This series of reports has been running since the second half of 2006 and has, for me, provided a very useful insight into the effectiveness of email marketing in Australia over the last five years.
The reports are based on data from Vision6, so there's a slight bias based on being a single vendor (competitors such as CampaignMonitor don't yet release similar reports, or combine their information into a single industry report). However it is based on 259 million messages distributed via 112,000 separate campaigns by predominantly Australian companies (and they exclude all emails sent by stand alone resellers and corporate networks) - so it is a large sample for reporting purposes.
Vision6's software (similar to its competitors) tracks email campaigns by sends, bounces, email opens and click throughs (to links in email messages).
This provides very useful ROI data for agencies. I have always tried to encourage agencies to use these types of tools to manage their email newsletters so they can properly report on them and detect user sentiment and trends (this also takes the load off the, often overburdened, email systems used by government agencies).
The cost of these products is quite low considering their capabilities - particularly when looking at A/B testing to identify the most effective newsletter format and content (by sending differently formated emails to several small subsets of your email list, comparing open rate/click throughs and then distributing the most effective email format to the full list).
I'm not aware of any agencies who do currently use A/B testing for either email or websites, though this is widely used by business to maximise ROI - however I live in hope.
Back to the Vision6 survey and its results - the latest July-December 2011 survey reports that government agencies and defense have retained their position as achieving the highest open rate of any industry sector in Australia, with 31.66% of emails opened by recipients (an increase of 0.97% from last survey).
This means that if, as a government agency, you send out an email to a 10,000 person list, on average 3,166 of them will be opened. The others will end up deleted, ignored, blocked or bounced (where email addresses are full or closed).
While this doesn't sound great, it's actually a much higher exposure level than achieved through other mediums. It's also a much better rate than for many other industries, such as construction (20.99% open rate) or sales and marketing (14.79% open rate).
It is also important to consider that smaller lists tend to achieve higher open rates - perhaps due to the additional effort in managing the integrity of larger lists.
By send volume, on average across all industries, lists with under 500 subscribers achieve a 33.17% open rate, dropping to 19.76% for lists with more than 10,000 subscribers.
Government also topped the unique clickthrough rates for all sectors, with 8.42% of subscribers clicking through from the email to further information on a website. This compares to the bottom-place IT and Telecommunications sector, which only received a unique clickthrough rate of 2.25%.
The average clickthrough rate for all sectors was 4.22%, although this also declined by list size (from 7.31% for up to 499 subscribers down to 4.07% for lists of 10,000 or more.
Government also did well on bounce rates, with only 4.43% of emails not getting through. Whilest not the lowest rate, which is held by the Call Centre/Customer service sector with 3.29%, government was third highest and much, much better than the 15.27% bounce rate suffered by the Science and Technology sector, or 10.47% by the Manufacturing/Operations sector.
The average bounce rate was 5.45% and, interestingly bounce rates didn't consistently increase with larger lists.
Vision6's report indicated that lists with under 500 subscribers received, on average, a bounce rate of 5.28%. However lists with more than 10,000 subscribers received a marginally lower 5.26%. There was a bump in the middle however, with lists of 5,000-9,999 receiving 6.07% bounces and lists with 500-999 and 1,000-4,999 reaching 5.90% and 5.70% respectively.
The time taken to open email addresses appears to be falling, with 29.46% opened in the first 24 hours and 90.72% in the first 72 hours. Vision 6 reports that this last figure has increased consistently onver the last five years.
So, finally, what about the email clients used by people? This is important as emails can be distorted, or even unreadable, if the email client doesn't correctly display it.
While the majority of government agencies use Outlook or Lotus Notes email, this isn't the case in the broader world.
When looking at the email clients used by people opening received emails (an average of 21.83% of emails sent), Outlook accounted for 43.54% of clients (22.24%, 14.90% and 6.40% for Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010 respectively).
Hotmail accounted for another 16.21% and iPhone Mail accounted for 15.14% of email clients (and iPad Mail for another 3.7%) - demonstrating how strong mobile email has become - followed by Apple Mail at 11.98%.
'Other' received 20.11% - which included a range of services such as Gmail, Lotus Notes and others. I would like to see Vision6 really break this out further - however individual agencies can do this if using this type of email management platform.
There's clearly a strong need for organisations to understand how their subscribers receive and view emails as there can need to be important design differences depending on the client - even between different versions of the same product (such as for Outlook).
In conclusion, government in Australia already appears to be using email marketing well - at least when they are using email management systems such as Vision6, it's harder to judge email lists that don't use a management and reporting tool.
However there always remains room to learn from the figures and further improve the design and cut-through of email newsletters - particularly as mobile email continues to strengthen.
Email is still a very strong channel for reaching people with information, particularly in older demographics where social media engagement is less, and should be a core plank of any government communication strategy.
Remember that an email list is an organisational asset. People who have agreed to receive information from you are far more likely to engage and influence others. Don't squander and destroy this asset through poorly considered email strategies, which may include too frequent, too irregular or too 'boring' email updates.
Use approaches like A/B testing to determine what layout and headlines get the most cut-through, improving your ROI, and keep an eye on what people click on to see what types of information or stories hit the mark.
Email marketing is a science, there's plenty of evidence available on what works and cost-effective quantitative measurement tools for tracking and tweaking your own email newsletters.
Don't waste the opportunity by ignoring the evidence, or destroy the ROI by not measuring, reporting and adjusting.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
The perils of legislating channels (and the issue of website filters) | Tweet |
The Australian Parliament House recently released their new website - a major step-up from the previous site.
However in reading an article about it on ZDNet I discovered that the APH had, in the process, decided to block an entire top-level domain (.info) from view by the Parliament and the thousands of people working at Parliament House in order to prevent access to potentially malicious websites.
I haven't been a fan of the internet filtering systems used in government. At varying times I have seen the websites of all the major Australian political parties blocked, preventing access to their media releases, blog posts and announcements - often vital information for public servants writing policy or briefs.
These filters can be quite indiscriminate and are often controlled by commercial parties outside government. That's right, commercial entities, often foreign owned, can be broadly controlling what is allowable for Australian public servants to view online. This could affect government information inputs and potentially influence policy decisions. This is a situation that leaves me vaguely uncomfortable.
Some of the individual categories of content blocked can be equally problematic. For example many filters block access to generally to 'blogs', which may include the Australian Public Service Commission's blog-based consultation of public servants last year, 'video sites', including, for Immigration, their own YouTube channel, social networks (including those used by citizens to discuss specific policies) and, in a range of other cases, 'political' content from citizens and stakeholder groups that could otherwise be influential in the development and implementation of good policy.
One of the biggest issues I have personally found is that you don't know what you don't know. Could a blocked site be vitally important for the decision you need to make? You cannot assess this if you can't look at it.
Some systems allow specific blocking by group of employee - which sounds useful and often is (for example when I worked at ActewAGL I was one of the few allowed to view adult (soft porn) sites, needed in my role of preparing website schedules and analysing the competition for the adult channel TransACT displayed). However when implemented poorly staff may not be able to access the information their managers direct them to use.
In certain cases public servants may be required to use their personal devices to rapidly access critical content blocked by these filters. This is one reason why, for the last four years, I have carried my own Internet-connected device with me while working in government agencies. It makes me more productive in meetings and in preparing business cases when I can access and refer to critical material immediately, rather than not being able to even see if a site may be valuable or not and then waiting for a site to be unblocked so I can access it on a work PC.
It can be time consuming and, in some cases, impossible to request opening sites up. In many cases public servants can ask for specific exceptions, however when you have 48 hours to finish a minute to your Minister in response to public stakeholder or citizen comments on an important piece of proposed legislation, it can be impossible to do the job properly. Identifying which sites you need to see, receiving senior approval, requesting and having IT teams or filtering companies make access available, can take weeks, or even months.
This damages the ability for departments to do their jobs for the government and the public and, quite frankly, delegitimizes those citizens and stakeholders who choose to use forums, blogs, Facebook, YouTube and similar social tools or sites to discuss their views.
Blocking an entire top level domain, as in the APH case, comes with additional risks.
A little known fact is that Australian legislation requires the use of info.au for the Quitnow website, an ongoing major component of the Australian Government's campaign to reduce the instance of smoking.
Quitnow.info.au is advertised on all material for the quit campaign, including on all cigarette packets in Australia.
Now in practice the Department operating this site automatically forwards anyone who types 'Quitnow.info.au' to 'Quitnow.gov.au', so it is not noticeable to citizens. However this is a technical translation (if x go to y) - the domain that citizens see on advertising material still says Quitnow.info.au
If .info.au domains, as well as .info domains, were automatically blocked by the APH (I don't know if this is the case), anyone who tried to go to Quitnow.info.au would arrive at a "you cannot access this site" page and not be forwarded to the Quitnow.gov.au site.
Fortunately the APH does allow staff to request access to specific sites (apparently at least 60 have been opened up to access) and I don't have specific information on whether the APH blocked .info.au sites alongside .info sites, so this specific problem may not exist. However it does demonstrate the risks of blocking entire top level domain groups.
Personally I don't think legislation should specify domains or specific communication channels, in most cases. Technology changes too fast and governments don't want to be caught spending exorbitant funds in supporting defunct channels after the community moves on.
For example, the tabling of documents in parliament should not specifically require a paper copy to be presented and there should be no legislation that requires that a citizen present their claims or complaints via a particular device - postal, phone, fax or web.
Equally governments should not be constrained by legislation to communicating with citizens via postal mail, email, fax or a specific form of written communication (as some legislation does now).
The information transmission and reception mechanisms should simply need to meet levels of modern usage and veracity.
This would prevent agencies from having to spend large amounts of money on preserving and using old technologies where communities have moved on and reduce the time and cost of updating legislation to meet community needs.
Is there a downside of not specifying channels (such as that Quitnow.info.au domain) in legislation? I don't think so. Specification, where required, can happen at the policy level, making it easier and more cost-effective to review and change when the environment changes.
This would remove any potential embarrassments, such as if a government agency does block staff access from an entire domain group (such as .info.au) and accidentally block access to its own legislated websites.
However in reading an article about it on ZDNet I discovered that the APH had, in the process, decided to block an entire top-level domain (.info) from view by the Parliament and the thousands of people working at Parliament House in order to prevent access to potentially malicious websites.
I haven't been a fan of the internet filtering systems used in government. At varying times I have seen the websites of all the major Australian political parties blocked, preventing access to their media releases, blog posts and announcements - often vital information for public servants writing policy or briefs.
These filters can be quite indiscriminate and are often controlled by commercial parties outside government. That's right, commercial entities, often foreign owned, can be broadly controlling what is allowable for Australian public servants to view online. This could affect government information inputs and potentially influence policy decisions. This is a situation that leaves me vaguely uncomfortable.
Some of the individual categories of content blocked can be equally problematic. For example many filters block access to generally to 'blogs', which may include the Australian Public Service Commission's blog-based consultation of public servants last year, 'video sites', including, for Immigration, their own YouTube channel, social networks (including those used by citizens to discuss specific policies) and, in a range of other cases, 'political' content from citizens and stakeholder groups that could otherwise be influential in the development and implementation of good policy.
One of the biggest issues I have personally found is that you don't know what you don't know. Could a blocked site be vitally important for the decision you need to make? You cannot assess this if you can't look at it.
Some systems allow specific blocking by group of employee - which sounds useful and often is (for example when I worked at ActewAGL I was one of the few allowed to view adult (soft porn) sites, needed in my role of preparing website schedules and analysing the competition for the adult channel TransACT displayed). However when implemented poorly staff may not be able to access the information their managers direct them to use.
In certain cases public servants may be required to use their personal devices to rapidly access critical content blocked by these filters. This is one reason why, for the last four years, I have carried my own Internet-connected device with me while working in government agencies. It makes me more productive in meetings and in preparing business cases when I can access and refer to critical material immediately, rather than not being able to even see if a site may be valuable or not and then waiting for a site to be unblocked so I can access it on a work PC.
It can be time consuming and, in some cases, impossible to request opening sites up. In many cases public servants can ask for specific exceptions, however when you have 48 hours to finish a minute to your Minister in response to public stakeholder or citizen comments on an important piece of proposed legislation, it can be impossible to do the job properly. Identifying which sites you need to see, receiving senior approval, requesting and having IT teams or filtering companies make access available, can take weeks, or even months.
This damages the ability for departments to do their jobs for the government and the public and, quite frankly, delegitimizes those citizens and stakeholders who choose to use forums, blogs, Facebook, YouTube and similar social tools or sites to discuss their views.
Blocking an entire top level domain, as in the APH case, comes with additional risks.
A little known fact is that Australian legislation requires the use of info.au for the Quitnow website, an ongoing major component of the Australian Government's campaign to reduce the instance of smoking.
Quitnow.info.au is advertised on all material for the quit campaign, including on all cigarette packets in Australia.
Now in practice the Department operating this site automatically forwards anyone who types 'Quitnow.info.au' to 'Quitnow.gov.au', so it is not noticeable to citizens. However this is a technical translation (if x go to y) - the domain that citizens see on advertising material still says Quitnow.info.au
If .info.au domains, as well as .info domains, were automatically blocked by the APH (I don't know if this is the case), anyone who tried to go to Quitnow.info.au would arrive at a "you cannot access this site" page and not be forwarded to the Quitnow.gov.au site.
Fortunately the APH does allow staff to request access to specific sites (apparently at least 60 have been opened up to access) and I don't have specific information on whether the APH blocked .info.au sites alongside .info sites, so this specific problem may not exist. However it does demonstrate the risks of blocking entire top level domain groups.
Personally I don't think legislation should specify domains or specific communication channels, in most cases. Technology changes too fast and governments don't want to be caught spending exorbitant funds in supporting defunct channels after the community moves on.
For example, the tabling of documents in parliament should not specifically require a paper copy to be presented and there should be no legislation that requires that a citizen present their claims or complaints via a particular device - postal, phone, fax or web.
Equally governments should not be constrained by legislation to communicating with citizens via postal mail, email, fax or a specific form of written communication (as some legislation does now).
The information transmission and reception mechanisms should simply need to meet levels of modern usage and veracity.
This would prevent agencies from having to spend large amounts of money on preserving and using old technologies where communities have moved on and reduce the time and cost of updating legislation to meet community needs.
Is there a downside of not specifying channels (such as that Quitnow.info.au domain) in legislation? I don't think so. Specification, where required, can happen at the policy level, making it easier and more cost-effective to review and change when the environment changes.
This would remove any potential embarrassments, such as if a government agency does block staff access from an entire domain group (such as .info.au) and accidentally block access to its own legislated websites.
Monday, January 23, 2012
New Inside Story policy: provide your full name for publication or your comment won't be published | Tweet |
I have had a great deal of respect for the Australian Policy Online (APO), produced by the Australian National University and University of Swinburne.
For several years the site has been a fantastic venue for serious discussions of public policy options, and a very useful source for policy resources and research. The site also, without prompting from me, republished several posts from this blog.
However, after commenting on an article in the Inside Story section of APO late last week, I received an email from the editor pointing out a change in their commenting policy.
Now anyone who submits a comment to Inside Story, as part of APO, must provide, and be prepared to have published, their full name. This new policy is detailed following their full articles using the text as below (highlight is mine):
Now while I appreciate the sentiment of an editor who wishes to avoid spurious comments from people using pseudonyms or commenting anonymously, I found myself uncomfortable with the prospect of a website that forces anyone who comments to publicly reveal their real name in full.
I wrote a piece about this very topic a few months ago for Mumbrella, Toughen up - we need online anonymity, which discussed the various pitfalls involved in forcing people to reveal their real identity.
While I am sure it isn't the intent of this policy, one major risk - particularly relevant to a policy discussion site - is that of excluding certain groups from the conversation.
This includes people who, if their identity is published, may face physical or financial risk, those in witness protection programs, people who fear online attack if their views are taken the wrong way, those involved with policy making who have suggestions or questions, those under the age of 18 and more.
In many policy areas there are people who need to be cautious about revealing their real names publicly for legitimate reasons - whether the topic be health, law and order, immigration, development, gambling, climate change or something else.
While it is the right of each publication or website to define its own moderation and publication policies, the effect of this policy may be to silence people who have valid and important contributions to make, reducing the richness, robustness and usefulness of discussions.
If the primary concerns of Inside Story's editor and publisher are inappropriate comments, defamation, personal attacks and the like, these can be handled through pre-moderation (which they do already), backed up by a public moderation policy and community guidelines (which I cannot find in their site).
Alternatively Inside Story could require people to register and provide their real name in their account details, then publish comments under a name or pseudonym that the user selects. This would ensure they had real names if needed and allows regular contributors to maintain a consistent identity while still providing them with sufficient room to make valuable comments that otherwise they may not feel comfortable doing.
When Inside Story's editor, Peter Browne, (also credited as the Commentary Editor of Australian Policy Online) emailed me last week to ask if I was happy to have my comment published under my full name I thought about it for a few minutes and then decided that while I didn't mind my name being connected to my comments, it was time to take a stand, the damage to the public conversation could be too great. So I said no.
I won't be commenting further on Inside Story or Australian Policy Online while their current policy is in force, nor will I spend as much time reading the site. They remain welcome to republish my blog posts (which are licensed under Creative Commons, so I can't really stop them even if I had wanted to).
This decision may make me slightly poorer, however I believe Inside Story's decision significantly weakens their effectiveness and inclusiveness. The unintended consequence of forcing people to have their full name published alongside their comments is to make all of Australia poorer by stifling public policy discussion, particularly amongst those whose views most need to be heard.
I hope government agencies do not follow the same course on fulll names. It would severely restrict the value of the online channel to collect input on policy consultations and thereby make good policy harder to develop.
For the record, I've included a copy of my email exchange with Peter Browne, Commentary Editor of Australian Policy Online and Editor of Inside Story:
For several years the site has been a fantastic venue for serious discussions of public policy options, and a very useful source for policy resources and research. The site also, without prompting from me, republished several posts from this blog.
However, after commenting on an article in the Inside Story section of APO late last week, I received an email from the editor pointing out a change in their commenting policy.
Now anyone who submits a comment to Inside Story, as part of APO, must provide, and be prepared to have published, their full name. This new policy is detailed following their full articles using the text as below (highlight is mine):
Send us a comment
I wrote a piece about this very topic a few months ago for Mumbrella, Toughen up - we need online anonymity, which discussed the various pitfalls involved in forcing people to reveal their real identity.
While I am sure it isn't the intent of this policy, one major risk - particularly relevant to a policy discussion site - is that of excluding certain groups from the conversation.
This includes people who, if their identity is published, may face physical or financial risk, those in witness protection programs, people who fear online attack if their views are taken the wrong way, those involved with policy making who have suggestions or questions, those under the age of 18 and more.
In many policy areas there are people who need to be cautious about revealing their real names publicly for legitimate reasons - whether the topic be health, law and order, immigration, development, gambling, climate change or something else.
While it is the right of each publication or website to define its own moderation and publication policies, the effect of this policy may be to silence people who have valid and important contributions to make, reducing the richness, robustness and usefulness of discussions.
If the primary concerns of Inside Story's editor and publisher are inappropriate comments, defamation, personal attacks and the like, these can be handled through pre-moderation (which they do already), backed up by a public moderation policy and community guidelines (which I cannot find in their site).
Alternatively Inside Story could require people to register and provide their real name in their account details, then publish comments under a name or pseudonym that the user selects. This would ensure they had real names if needed and allows regular contributors to maintain a consistent identity while still providing them with sufficient room to make valuable comments that otherwise they may not feel comfortable doing.
When Inside Story's editor, Peter Browne, (also credited as the Commentary Editor of Australian Policy Online) emailed me last week to ask if I was happy to have my comment published under my full name I thought about it for a few minutes and then decided that while I didn't mind my name being connected to my comments, it was time to take a stand, the damage to the public conversation could be too great. So I said no.
I won't be commenting further on Inside Story or Australian Policy Online while their current policy is in force, nor will I spend as much time reading the site. They remain welcome to republish my blog posts (which are licensed under Creative Commons, so I can't really stop them even if I had wanted to).
This decision may make me slightly poorer, however I believe Inside Story's decision significantly weakens their effectiveness and inclusiveness. The unintended consequence of forcing people to have their full name published alongside their comments is to make all of Australia poorer by stifling public policy discussion, particularly amongst those whose views most need to be heard.
I hope government agencies do not follow the same course on fulll names. It would severely restrict the value of the online channel to collect input on policy consultations and thereby make good policy harder to develop.
For the record, I've included a copy of my email exchange with Peter Browne, Commentary Editor of Australian Policy Online and Editor of Inside Story:
From: Peter Browne
Dear Craig,
I’m not sure whether you noticed, but we now ask people commenting on articles to provide their full name for publication. Are you happy for your full name to appear with this comment?
Cheers,
Peter Browne
Editor
From: Craig Thomler
Hi Peter,
I didn't notice this policy change. I have now looked through your 'about' pages and see no mention of this - nor of your moderation policy.
I would normally be happy for my full name to appear on my comment, and all my comments online are made on the basis that people can track down and find out who I am if they wanted to.
However I'm not comfortable with a site that forces people to provide their full name publicly. This requirement prevents many people from commenting - those in witness protection programs, minors (such as 17yr olds), those concerned about stalkers, bullying, identity theft, privacy and so on.
I see your policy as reducing the potential for open public dialogue without providing any safeguards. A backward step that only damages your reputation.
It is also impossible to enforce anyway - people can use fake names and email accounts, thereby making your policy useless.
If your concern is around identity, have people register and use a unique username (which may or may not be their full name) - you still have their full name in the background, however they are not exposed publicly.
If your concern is around inappropriate content, this should be managed through anti-spam and moderation techniques, potentially using the registration process above to allow you to identify and manage persistent offenders (where IP address isn't enough). Your moderation policy should be published so that commenters understand the basis on which they will be assessed. This is simply a matter of respect and setting the context of a discussion - similar approaches are used in face-to-face meetings.
So in this case, I decline the publication of my comment and will not comment further on APO until your policy is adjusted to not require the publication of full names and is made easily accessible in your site along with your moderation guidelines.
I will also be publishing this email in my blog to show the perils of requiring full names and linking to my post for Mumbrella: Toughen up - we need online anonymity (http://mumbrella.com.au/toughen-up-we-need-online-anonymity-58441).
Cheers,
Craig
From: Peter Browne
Dear Craig,
My view is that if writers use their own names then responders should too. The policy is at the bottom of each article, just above the comment field.
Cheers, Peter
From: Craig Thomler
Hi Peter,
Thanks for pointing this out. I had looked for dedicated 'Community guidelines' 'Comments policy' or 'Moderation policy' pages and looked at your summary articles, where I can still register or log-in to comment, but do not see the same message.
I now have looked at a full article and can see the text. It remains unclear on what basis you moderate.
Here's an example of what I mean by a moderation policy: http://myregion.gov.au/moderation-policy
I appreciate you believe that writers and commenters should have the same rights - although writers are often contributing for different reasons and have different agendas for expressing their views, some are even paid to do so, directly or indirectly (aka not necessarily by you).
It will certainly be interesting to see how you decide to represent the writer when you receive an article from someone in a witness protection program or a whistleblower, and how you will treat comments.
Cheers,
Craig
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
Are you allowing others to steal your agency's oxygen online? | Tweet |
A favored term amongst political operatives and advisors is 'oxygen,, the share of the public discussion a politician, government or issue manages to obtain.
Sometimes the goal is to have the largest possible share, starving other commentators and viewpoints. Other times the goal is to to minimise the share of oxygen a viewpoint or issue gets, shutting down or sidelining it.
There's two things you need to capture oxygen, or deny it to others - good 'lungs', access to the channels needed to 'breathe' it in or out, and a willingness to use your air wisely - to speak out where necessary, contributing to public discourse actively.
These characteristics function as effectively online as they do in offline media - admittedly in a messier and less constrained way. While the internet does provide infinite amounts of airtime for those who wish to present a viewpoint, whether, how soon and effectively an organisation presents its own viewpoint can have a great deal of influence in shaping the subsequent tone of the conversation.
This is well understood by lobby groups, companies and not-for-profits - who actively establish and build their online 'lungs' and are prepared to speak and help their constituents speak up on issues of importance to their agendas.
Politicians too have been reasonably active at establishing their own lungs and voice online - now essential tools for any political career.
However many government agencies still appear unwilling to take the first step, to claim their own lungs online, establishing channels and accounts that they can use to monitor and, where necessary and relevant, engage the communities that they seek to influence - or that influence them.
Agencies who are unwilling to claim their oxygen online will increasingly find themselves suffocated by other organisations and individuals who do. Where agencies can't influence debates, present the case on behalf of governments or end up at the receiving end of perceptions distributed and amplified online, they stop being effective agents of government and managers of change.
If your agency is still resisting building its online lungs and voice, remind your senior managers that their role is to support the government implement its policies on the behalf of the public, not to stand on the sidelines and be acted upon - suffocated - through lack of access to oxygen.
Sometimes the goal is to have the largest possible share, starving other commentators and viewpoints. Other times the goal is to to minimise the share of oxygen a viewpoint or issue gets, shutting down or sidelining it.
There's two things you need to capture oxygen, or deny it to others - good 'lungs', access to the channels needed to 'breathe' it in or out, and a willingness to use your air wisely - to speak out where necessary, contributing to public discourse actively.
These characteristics function as effectively online as they do in offline media - admittedly in a messier and less constrained way. While the internet does provide infinite amounts of airtime for those who wish to present a viewpoint, whether, how soon and effectively an organisation presents its own viewpoint can have a great deal of influence in shaping the subsequent tone of the conversation.
This is well understood by lobby groups, companies and not-for-profits - who actively establish and build their online 'lungs' and are prepared to speak and help their constituents speak up on issues of importance to their agendas.
Politicians too have been reasonably active at establishing their own lungs and voice online - now essential tools for any political career.
However many government agencies still appear unwilling to take the first step, to claim their own lungs online, establishing channels and accounts that they can use to monitor and, where necessary and relevant, engage the communities that they seek to influence - or that influence them.
Agencies who are unwilling to claim their oxygen online will increasingly find themselves suffocated by other organisations and individuals who do. Where agencies can't influence debates, present the case on behalf of governments or end up at the receiving end of perceptions distributed and amplified online, they stop being effective agents of government and managers of change.
If your agency is still resisting building its online lungs and voice, remind your senior managers that their role is to support the government implement its policies on the behalf of the public, not to stand on the sidelines and be acted upon - suffocated - through lack of access to oxygen.
Friday, November 25, 2011
This week's social media score - Public: 3 Organisations: 0 | Tweet |
This has been an insightful week for organisations using, or considering using, social media with three successive events demonstrating how far power has shifted to the public and illustrating how Australians companies are struggling to engage effectively online.
First up was Qantas with its poorly timed "Qantas luxury" promotion. Qantas launched the Twitter competition by inviting the public to tweet their idea of travel luxury using the hashtag #qantasluxury.
However Qantas appears to not have recognized that the tens of thousands of negative comments levied against the organisation since their shutdown represented a deep seated frustration and disillusionment with the company. Even though Qantas had hired four additional staff focused on monitoring social media the week before.
Within minutes of Qantas's tweet announcing the competition the public hijacked the hashtag and turned it against the company, using it to vent their concerns and frustrations at the airline.
This was picked up by traditional media and covered widely, turning a small ($1,500 in prizes) competition into what was called a national PR disaster for Qantas.
Next was Nissan, whose online competition, managed through their Facebook page, went pear-shaped when the winner of the competition turned out to be good friends with one of Nissan's staff running their social media presence.
While the competition was totally above board, with the winner selected objectively by finding the most car graphics on websites, unfortunately the winner's friendship with the Nissan staff member made it appear otherwise.
Nissan themselves were very upfront about it - indicating that while they congratulated the winner they'd have preferred if he hadn't won, but he'd done so fair and square without breaching any competition terms.
In this situation Nissan's approach did a lot to mute the concern, however it demonstrated the issue of friendship networks. If you're a staff member operating social media channels for an organisation it is highly likely you have many friends online. So what do you tell when a new company competition launches? You let your friends know online so they can spread the word and increase the competition's reach. Entirely above board, however risking a backfire if your friends can gain advantage by being first into a competition.
Third, and most significant, has been the social media backlash against the Kyle and Jackie O show following the comments of Kyle Sandilands regarding the deputy editor of news.com.au after her article about the reaction to Kyle and Jackie's TV special (which rated extremely poorly).
The backlash, much of it under the hashtag #vilekyle, has led to around a dozen companies deciding to withdraw their advertising from 2DayFM and sponsorship from the Kyle and Jackie O show - even the Federal government has now withdrawn all advertising from any show hosted by Kyle Sandilands.
Over 15,000 people have signed an online petition calling for advertisers to drop support for Sandilands and a number of people (myself included) have called for Southern Cross Austereo to let Sandilands go. Whether they will or not remains to be seen, however the loss of significant sponsors and advertisers will place significant pressure on the company to reconsider Sandiland's contract and on air presence.
All three examples above this week demonstrate different risks in social media.
Qantas failed to monitor and accurately assess the public view, selecting the wrong social media approach to attempt to rebuild its brand. Nissan made an easy misstep, selecting a competition mechanism that raised the risk of someone close to a staff member winning a prize, however by handling the situation in a proactive and robust way minimized the damage and emerged largely unscathed despite initial public concerns.
The Sandilands incident (which remains ongoing) demonstrates how public outrage can translate into the need for rapid organisational action, both through advertiser withdrawal and the attempts by Sandilands and Austereo to apologies for his behaviour (albeit fairly weak apologies that have not satisfied many online). In this case even though Sandiland's comments were made on radio, not on social media, the backlash occurred online and neither Kyle nor Jackie O, nor their employer Southern Cross Austereo, were prepared to engage with the public online response, whereas many of the sponsors and advertisers did, helping to minimize damage to their own brands.
None of these events impacted the government or public service - and in fact there's never been a significant social media disaster due to online engagement by public servants or agencies in Australia (I don't include media attacks on public servants such as by News Ltd on Greg Jericho) - however they all have lessons for government agencies to learn.
It is important to recognize that being absent or unresponsive online and in social media is no protection against public outrage (as the Sandilands incident shows), and failing to monitor online sentiment is a recipe for PR disaster (as Qantas demonstrated). However if organisations act with good faith, communicate and engage actively (as Nissan and several advertisers from the Sandilands issue did), they can minimize the impact of social media gaffes and build strong online relationships with their customers.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Cannot defame with a hyperlink - Canadian Supreme Court ruling | Tweet |
In the spirit of actually being in Canada, I learnt last Thursday that in a groundbreaking case the Canadian Supreme Court has supported two lower courts in ruling unanimously that hyperlinking to defamatory information is not the same as defaming someone, unless the information is replicated in the link or on the hyperlinker's site or page.
Learn more about the ruling (in a case originally brought in a British Columbia court by a Vancouver business person and political volunteer against a local website) in this BBC article, Canada Supreme Court: hyperlinks cannot libel. Yes there is a certain irony about reporting in Vancouver on a Vancouver case by referring to a British website - however I read the original story in a local (paper) newspaper.
This ruling may have flow-on influence to Australian courts, who do take some note of rulings in other Westminster jurisdictions, particularly in Common Law areas where precedents are important in clarifying grey areas in law.
The Canadian ruling, where the Court considered hyperlinks as "content neutral" (as hyperlinkers have no control over the content they link to), may even extend further to cases where links point to prohibited, but not necessarily illegal content, such as some Refused Classification (RC) content under Australia's classification for content deemed offensive but not necessarily illegal under Australian law.
Currently it is an offense to link to RC-rated content, or even to know what is rated RC - which poses a challenge for all individuals and organisations who may not realize that content they are linking to is prohibited in Australia. There has been at least one case where an Australian government agency has inadvertently linked to RC content (in a published user submission to a consultation) - which was certainly not the agency's fault.
Also as the destination content of links can change rapidly, or even appear different to users from different IP addresses, there is an ongoing risk under current Australian regulation that individuals or organisations might in good faith link to valuable relevant content which is later changed. I have seen this happen myself in a book on kids' websites with links where after publication several kids' sites were sold to adult content organisations who changed the content significantly. This could affect both defamation and RC related situations.
While I am drawing a bit of a long bow from a Canadian Supreme Court ruling to other manifestations of hyperlink-related law in Australia, it is an area that requires ongoing careful consideration and adaptation to reflect what is sound and practicable, not simply what may be popular or reflect an ideal state without recourse to technical facts.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Do we really need a common look and feel for government websites? | Tweet |
Recently Luke Fretwell over at Govfresh asked the question Time for government to plug into one platform?
While I am a big fan of Luke's and agree with his view that transferring government websites to Facebook, granting partial control over them to a foreign-jurisdiction company, is not a good idea, I find it harder to agree with Luke's point on centralising government websites and employing a common look and feel.
I've never been a fan of the 'one site fits all' approach of the UK Government's attempted Directgov website - or a supporter of the view that all government sites should have a common look and feel.
Why?
Because websites need to be designed to meet their specific set of goals within the constraints of the needs and preferences of their key audiences.
Where the goals and audiences are different, the websites need to be designed and operate differently.
Even when the goals and audience of two separate websites are similar, there can be good reasons to solve the 'problem' of usability and quick access to key information in different ways.
Web design is an art as well as a science. There's often multiple ways to achieve a good outcome, not one single approach that is best. This means that a government that did lock itself into a single 'right' website look and feel may find itself in a blind alley over time, requiring a huge shift in design to jump onto a more future-proof track.
When I commented on Twitter about my views I was told that a common look and feel made citizens more comfortable that a website was 'official'. This is quite a useful technique in the real world, where standard uniforms are used in a number of government professions to convey officialness and trust (such as police forces).
However online governments cannot trademark a given 'uniform' design for their websites, leaving it open for others to employ a similar or identical layout in order to mislead people into believing they are official websites.
The best safeguards of 'officialness' are those we already use - a common crest (where legal action can be taken to protect it from fraudulent duplication) and the use of a common domain '.gov' which is unavailable to anyone other than government agencies.
These two safeguards ensure that anyone visiting a government website can be assured that it is owned and maintained by the government in a way that a common look and feel cannot.
I always try to keep in mind that government websites are not common places for citizens to visit. Citizens only go to government sites for specific purposes - to find information on a given topic, to access a service or to report an occurrence.
Meanwhile government web staff visit government websites all the time, particularly their own.
I've generally found that while government web teams can point out all the flaws in their sites, visitors (who may go to the site once a year) don't notice them and often have a much more positive view towards government sites than do the internal experts.
I've yet to see evidence that citizens want a single website for government, at any level. What they do want is to find the information or service they are seeking quickly and easily. Google has become the front door into many websites - including government sites - because it meets this need.
Why should government invest a cent into replicating what search engines already do well? We could better invest our money into ensuring that when people get to our sites that the content is current, relevant, written in plain English and fully accessible.
Touching a little further on the concept of a single central government site, often the structure of government works against this approach anyway.
Agencies are funded separately, managed under different laws and often have restrictions on how and when they can share information.
They have widely different needs to engage the public and generally need to control their own web presences in order to maximise their flexibility when the environment changes.
Moving to a single content management system and single website poses a number of challenges for operational management structures, flexibility and funding.
Do all agencies forgo some funding for websites to fund a central agency web unit?
How does an urgent ministerial need (which requires the equivalent of a website today) get fulfilled in a timely manner? How does the central team prioritise development work, and who has access to content - and at what level.
There's just so many questions as yet unconsidered - even in the UK's Directgov model.
While I hate the proliferation of web sites across government, where every policy or program area, government directive and new initiative often 'requires' a new and discreet website, I think we'd be better placed putting a common framework around when and how government websites are built, and developing a central public list of these sites, than attempting to fit all these diverse properties into a single content management solution, central site and common look and feel.
By all means recommend a standard approach (always put the About link at far right, include a Contact, Privacy, Terms and Copyright page, organise content in relation to the audience, not the Department's structure), but don't compel a standard look and feel or central site.
I predict that many agencies would work around a centralised model, simply to meet the government's explicit policy requirements.
While I am a big fan of Luke's and agree with his view that transferring government websites to Facebook, granting partial control over them to a foreign-jurisdiction company, is not a good idea, I find it harder to agree with Luke's point on centralising government websites and employing a common look and feel.
I've never been a fan of the 'one site fits all' approach of the UK Government's attempted Directgov website - or a supporter of the view that all government sites should have a common look and feel.
Why?
Because websites need to be designed to meet their specific set of goals within the constraints of the needs and preferences of their key audiences.
Where the goals and audiences are different, the websites need to be designed and operate differently.
Even when the goals and audience of two separate websites are similar, there can be good reasons to solve the 'problem' of usability and quick access to key information in different ways.
Web design is an art as well as a science. There's often multiple ways to achieve a good outcome, not one single approach that is best. This means that a government that did lock itself into a single 'right' website look and feel may find itself in a blind alley over time, requiring a huge shift in design to jump onto a more future-proof track.
When I commented on Twitter about my views I was told that a common look and feel made citizens more comfortable that a website was 'official'. This is quite a useful technique in the real world, where standard uniforms are used in a number of government professions to convey officialness and trust (such as police forces).
However online governments cannot trademark a given 'uniform' design for their websites, leaving it open for others to employ a similar or identical layout in order to mislead people into believing they are official websites.
The best safeguards of 'officialness' are those we already use - a common crest (where legal action can be taken to protect it from fraudulent duplication) and the use of a common domain '.gov' which is unavailable to anyone other than government agencies.
These two safeguards ensure that anyone visiting a government website can be assured that it is owned and maintained by the government in a way that a common look and feel cannot.
I always try to keep in mind that government websites are not common places for citizens to visit. Citizens only go to government sites for specific purposes - to find information on a given topic, to access a service or to report an occurrence.
Meanwhile government web staff visit government websites all the time, particularly their own.
I've generally found that while government web teams can point out all the flaws in their sites, visitors (who may go to the site once a year) don't notice them and often have a much more positive view towards government sites than do the internal experts.
I've yet to see evidence that citizens want a single website for government, at any level. What they do want is to find the information or service they are seeking quickly and easily. Google has become the front door into many websites - including government sites - because it meets this need.
Why should government invest a cent into replicating what search engines already do well? We could better invest our money into ensuring that when people get to our sites that the content is current, relevant, written in plain English and fully accessible.
Touching a little further on the concept of a single central government site, often the structure of government works against this approach anyway.
Agencies are funded separately, managed under different laws and often have restrictions on how and when they can share information.
They have widely different needs to engage the public and generally need to control their own web presences in order to maximise their flexibility when the environment changes.
Moving to a single content management system and single website poses a number of challenges for operational management structures, flexibility and funding.
Do all agencies forgo some funding for websites to fund a central agency web unit?
How does an urgent ministerial need (which requires the equivalent of a website today) get fulfilled in a timely manner? How does the central team prioritise development work, and who has access to content - and at what level.
There's just so many questions as yet unconsidered - even in the UK's Directgov model.
While I hate the proliferation of web sites across government, where every policy or program area, government directive and new initiative often 'requires' a new and discreet website, I think we'd be better placed putting a common framework around when and how government websites are built, and developing a central public list of these sites, than attempting to fit all these diverse properties into a single content management solution, central site and common look and feel.
By all means recommend a standard approach (always put the About link at far right, include a Contact, Privacy, Terms and Copyright page, organise content in relation to the audience, not the Department's structure), but don't compel a standard look and feel or central site.
I predict that many agencies would work around a centralised model, simply to meet the government's explicit policy requirements.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Why is no-one running 'Government 2.0 202' courses? | Tweet |
There seems to be a consistent supply of people new to Government 2.0 filtering through the various events I track around Australia.
Whether commercial conferences, 'Masterclasses', government-supported events or university courses - many (though not all) now providing decent '101' or introductory information and case studies on social media use for government and even on open Public Sector Information.
However for people who already employ Government 2.0 techniques, have been involved in designing and implementing social media initiatives and channels, there's really no 'step-up' courses available in Australia to provide the greater depth and expertise these people are looking for.
Essentially, Australia is well supplied with '101' introductory courses to Government 2.0, but there's no '202' or '303' courses - intermediate and advanced training to help people build on their experience.
These more advanced courses would help improve government's effectiveness in social media by moving us to more complex and strategic use of digital channels to meet citizen needs.
There's certainly people around with the experience to run such courses, both from a strategic and implementation perspective. Many are presenting actively at the various '101' events.
I'd welcome any ideas on how to move us forward, keep the introductory courses for those still new to the area, but provided advanced training for those who now need it (at an appropriate cost).
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Dumbing down or lifting up - writing in plain English respects your readers | Tweet |
It makes me really upset when I visit a government website and find it written in dense technical or bureaucratic language.
I can appreciate the desire of public servants to be precise and accurate in their choice of words, but often the language chosen is incomprehensible to people without two degrees and ten years experience in government.
I've heard about - and witnessed - instances when experienced writers or communication professionals have translated complex text into plain English and been told 'you're dumbing it down'.
No they're not. They're lifting the language up.
Writing in plain English is about respecting your readers - writing for them, not for yourself or your boss.
When writing complex multi-syllabic diatribes, the writer is not demonstrating their intellectual superiority or eloquent grasp of sophisticated phraseology.
The writer is showing they don't have the writing skill and experience to lift their language out of government-speak to a level used by society, by their audience - a level used every day to share and explain some of the most complicated concepts and thoughts imaginable.
The writer is hiding behind their words, using them to conceal a lack of appreciation and respect for their audience and a lack of understanding of their topic. They are revealing their limits and fears - and they are not getting their message across.
One of the core capabilities for the Australian Public Service is to 'Communicate with Influence'.
'Influence' doesn't mean using big words, it means using effective words - words that can overcome the gaps in communication between writers and readers to convey meaning and understanding.
So when writing your websites and developing your documents, think about the invisible people in the room - your readers. Is your choice of words appropriate for their experience and education?
Will they be uplifted by your simple and clear language or left feeling 'dumbed down', lost and frustrated by your turgid turns of phrase?
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
Doing good while improving security with ReCAPTCHA | Tweet |
There's still many government online forms and consultation systems that don't make use of 'human recognition' tools such as CAPTCHA to help verify that the people filling in the forms are humans and reduce the attractiveness of online government forms to large-scale automated attacks by bot-armies.
However, even where government has added CAPTCHA security, I've yet to see an instance where this has been used for good, as well as security.
CAPTCHA, for those unfamiliar, is a technology whereby, when completing an online form, the user is asked to type in one or more words or calculate the product of a sum before submitting their response. The words or sum are presented in an image with 'background static' designed to make it hard for a computer to read.
In most cases, humans are able to decipher and type in the correct response whereas automated form completion systems, often used for spamming, are not.
Many CAPTCHA systems are also enhanced with audio CAPTCHA (where words are read out, amidst static and background noises), supporting vision-impaired people.
These systems are not perfect, however they do increase the barriers to hackers, reducing the prospect for spam submissions or attacks.
They also add a little time to each submission attempt - possibly ten seconds. This is negligible to an individual (in most circumstances), however as millions of people complete CAPTCHA forms each day, this adds up to a lot of time overall.
Initially CAPTCHA tools just presented random words, however a system supported by Google is supporting organisations to 'do good' as well as improve their security.
Named ReCAPTCHA, the system has integrated the work being done to digitalise books and documents. Rather than using random words, users are presented with words that computers could not understand during the document digitalisation process.
Each time a user completes a ReCAPTCHA, they are helping to decipher and digitalise the world's literature and records - preserving it into the digital age.
Assuming an average of two words per ReCAPTCHA, and each being repeated many times in order to validate the entry, there's a miniscule contribution by any particular individual.
However if, for example, 50 million people each verify themselves using ReCAPTCHA each day, with each set of two words presented ten times on average, a total of 10 million words in old documents and books that have been deciphered and correctly digitalised. Each day. That's 3.6 billion words per year.
So if your organisation isn't using CAPTCHA security on forms, or even if you are using a custom CAPTCHA technology, you might wish to consider exploring the use of ReCAPTCHA - which is free to reuse from Google.
Alternatively, of course, Australian institutions could develop their own type of CAPTCHA approach (for old newspapers, for example - or archival records). It would be a meaningful extension to the work the National Library of Australia is already doing.
Below is a video on the work being done with ReCAPTCHA.
Learn more about ReCAPTCHA.
However, even where government has added CAPTCHA security, I've yet to see an instance where this has been used for good, as well as security.
CAPTCHA, for those unfamiliar, is a technology whereby, when completing an online form, the user is asked to type in one or more words or calculate the product of a sum before submitting their response. The words or sum are presented in an image with 'background static' designed to make it hard for a computer to read.
In most cases, humans are able to decipher and type in the correct response whereas automated form completion systems, often used for spamming, are not.
Many CAPTCHA systems are also enhanced with audio CAPTCHA (where words are read out, amidst static and background noises), supporting vision-impaired people.
These systems are not perfect, however they do increase the barriers to hackers, reducing the prospect for spam submissions or attacks.
They also add a little time to each submission attempt - possibly ten seconds. This is negligible to an individual (in most circumstances), however as millions of people complete CAPTCHA forms each day, this adds up to a lot of time overall.
Initially CAPTCHA tools just presented random words, however a system supported by Google is supporting organisations to 'do good' as well as improve their security.
Named ReCAPTCHA, the system has integrated the work being done to digitalise books and documents. Rather than using random words, users are presented with words that computers could not understand during the document digitalisation process.
Each time a user completes a ReCAPTCHA, they are helping to decipher and digitalise the world's literature and records - preserving it into the digital age.
Assuming an average of two words per ReCAPTCHA, and each being repeated many times in order to validate the entry, there's a miniscule contribution by any particular individual.
However if, for example, 50 million people each verify themselves using ReCAPTCHA each day, with each set of two words presented ten times on average, a total of 10 million words in old documents and books that have been deciphered and correctly digitalised. Each day. That's 3.6 billion words per year.
So if your organisation isn't using CAPTCHA security on forms, or even if you are using a custom CAPTCHA technology, you might wish to consider exploring the use of ReCAPTCHA - which is free to reuse from Google.
Alternatively, of course, Australian institutions could develop their own type of CAPTCHA approach (for old newspapers, for example - or archival records). It would be a meaningful extension to the work the National Library of Australia is already doing.
Below is a video on the work being done with ReCAPTCHA.
Learn more about ReCAPTCHA.
Friday, October 01, 2010
How to avoid turning Gov 2.0 initiatives into 'creepy treehouses' | Tweet |
I thought I'd share a post brought to my attention by Geoff Mason via the Online Communicators Forum group in LinkedIn
Written by Jared Stein at Flexknowlogy, Defining "Creepy Treehouse" explores the pitfalls when an organisation creates an online social environment.
The article defines the term "Creepy Treehouse" in several ways, including as the following:
n. Any institutionally-created, operated, or controlled environment in which participants are lured in either by mimicking pre-existing open or naturally formed environments, or by force, through a system of punishments or rewardsIn other words, an artificial community may not be real enough to attract and maintain a community - it may have too many or arbitrary rules, expect and reward unrealistic behaviours or simply be designed to advertise (shout) at people rather than foster community engagement.
Such institutional environments are often seen as more artificial in their construction and usage, and typically compete with pre-existing systems, environments, or applications. creepy treehouses also have an aspect of closed-ness, where activity within is hidden from the outside world, and may not be easily transferred from the environment by the participants.
How can these types of issues be avoided - particularly given the governance required by the public sector?
One solution is to partner with robust existing online communities. This approach allows a government agency to participate without having to take on responsibilities such as developing the systems and the community, attracting and empowering participants or moderating and guiding behaviours. Certainly an agency needs to be careful about which existing communities it partners with, however there are many long-standing well managed communities that could be viable options.
A second approach is to partner on the creation of a community, funding an external organisation to develop a community that the agency can participate in. This also outsources much of the governance and control issues, reducing the agency's overheads in these areas. It is important to be very careful about the selection of the organisation that will create and manage the community as while many will claim they can achieve this, there are in reality very few organisations with the skills, experience, networks and capabilities to do so.
If, however, the agency has no choice but to create the community, it is important to be as transparency about governance and as even-handed, consistent and as hands-off as possible in its operation. While an agency can seed a community with content it needs to ensure that there are tools and incentives that encourage the community to generate the bulk of the content and interactions themselves. President Obama's MyBarackObama website is an excellent example of this, as the site allowed participants to form communities, create, share and distribute information and largely run their virtual lives within the community without seeing virtual police on every corner.
Perhaps that is the best analogy for an agency-run community - it needs to run like a western democracy without the elections. People are free to go about their business as they please, within the laws of their community. There are no bureaucrats and officials scrutinising their every move.
Surely a government agency can justify managing an online community in the same way our government manages our nation - treating the members as citizens, not serfs.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Redefining public goods - by Nicholas Gruen | Tweet |
If you followed the Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington earlier this month, you may have seen Nicholas Gruen's presentation on redefining public goods.
If you haven't, it is well worth reviewing (see below) - as are many of the other presentations from the event.
These presentations are available online, together with slides, from the event's website.
His slides are embedded below.
Redefining Public_Private Partnerships Presentation
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