Solving the problems of cities via crowdsourcing - LLGA Cities pilot the future program

As cities are become more complex, so are their strategic challenges and the need to find innovative solutions to best serve their citizens.

With governments tightening their budgets at the same time, the challenges of modern cities are beginning to slip beyond the ability of city councils, or even national governments, to solve alone.

As a result many are now looking beyond their bureaucrats for support and solutions, using crowd sourcing to drive innovation and broaden their policy and service options.

A key example of this is the LLGA's Cities Pilot the Future program, now entering its fourth year.

The premise is simple. Cities publish details of a strategic challenge they need help solving and the public, social enterprises, research centres, not-for-profit and for-profit organisations are invited to contribute their solutions. Jurors shortlist and select winning solutions, which are then implemented.

Over the past three years 42 global cities from Europe, North, Central and South America, Africa and Asia have taken part in the annual programs - in fact the only populated continent not to have taken part in the program is Australia.

The last three programs received in more than 1,197 entries, leading to over 30 pilot programs, affecting 285 million citizens across 38 cities.

The 2013 program, which opened last week for entries, features an enormous range of different strategic challenges from 21 cities including:

• Aalborg, Denmark: Traffic congestion early-warning system
• Barcelona, Spain: Regenerate neighbourhoods using vacant space
• Boston, USA: Rethinking road castings
• Christchurch, NZ: Transformational lighting system
• Eindhoven, The Netherlands: Data exchange on public facilities and activities
• Fukuka, Japan: Smart international conference destination
• Lagos, Nigeria: Networked standalone content hotspots
• Lavasa, India: Social uplift and empowerment
• London, UK: Energy and greenhouse gas measurement
• Mexico City, Mexico: Digital tools for better, healthier ageing
• Oulu, Finland: Encourage visitor engagement through technology
• Paris, France: Making outside seating more resilient
• Rio De Janeiro, Brazil: Accessible healthcare in intelligent cities
• Rosario, Argentina: Network of green homes
• San Francisco, USA: Storm response coordination tool
• Sant Cugat, Spain: Smart Cityscape - maximising existing resources
• Sheffield, UK: Capturing and distributing industrial heat
• Tacoma, USA: Sustainable return on investment tool
• Terrassa, Spain: Connecting people to progress
• York, UK: Reducing health inequality in York

I think the list above, together with the diverse range of strategic issues cities identified in past years, demonstrates the potential range of challenges that crowdsourcing can be used to help cities solve.

Given the global range of participating cities in the LLGA program, my question is - where are the Aussies? 

Is it that our governments have single-handedly solved every strategic challenge in our cities?
(I don't believe this is true)

Or is it that Australian governments are dropping behind the rest of the world in adopting innovative approaches to solving challenges - afraid of involving citizens more broadly in finding solutions?
(I hope this isn't true!)

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OpenAustralia Hack(s)fest on FOI - for hackers, media, activists & FOI gurus

The OpenAustralia Foundation will be holding the first Australian Hack(s)fest as part of the countdown to the launch of their new FOI assistance site, designed to make it easier for ordinary Australians to put in FOI requests to Commonwealth agencies.

The event, being held in Sydney at Google's office, will be held on the weekend of 17-18 November.

For more details and to register, visit: www.openaustraliafoundation.org.au/2012/11/05/youre-invited-to-our-freedom-of-information-hacksfest/

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National Audit Office invites the public to contribute to departmental audits

In what I believe is a global first, Australia's National Audit Office (ANAO) has launched a pilot program inviting members of the public to contribute to selected audits in progress, aimed at promoting closer citizen engagement in the audit process.

The system allows the public to provide contributions related to the efficient and effective implementation of government programs, policies, projects or activities—including whether the intended benefits are achieved.

Contributions can be provided via an online form, mail or in a document (MS Word or PDF) and will be kept confidential except for defined purposes (a legal requirement under sections 36 and 37 of the Auditor-General Act 1997).

This confidentiality may allow public servants - who often know a lot about how programs operate in practice - to contribute in ways that protect them from retribution in the office.

The pilot program will run until early 2013 and the ability to contribute is limited to certain audits (at least for now). However this is a great start and a huge step forward for one of our most important institutions.

The seven audits currently open for public contributions are listed in this page: http://www.anao.gov.au/Publications/Contribute-to-an-Audit-in-Progress

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Mapping government policies online - Govmonitor, a great new aussie site

For all the attention on government policies, the various announcements and documentation on political party sites, it can be very difficult to compare and contrast where different parties sit on different issues and, for governments, difficult to keep track of whether they are sticking to their election policies or amending them for pragmatic, political or other reasons.

While the capacity to provide quick and easy insights and access to party policy statements online is technically possible, it isn't often done. Even traditional media outlets tend to turn it into a shopping list or a tool for punishing parties rather than a tool for informing the public and improving policy discussions within and outside parties.

That's why prior to last election I participated in a Google doc project to map the policies of various parties, which prompted some very interesting conversations, but has not been maintained.

I suspect it is also part of the motive behind the latest attempt to 'crowdmap' the policies of political parties at govmonitor.org

The Govmonitor site (http://govmonitor.org)

This, however is a far more visual, accessible and interactive approach than the prior collaborative document idea, providing for easier searching and visual identification of what policies and positions parties support, don't support and haven't made a decision on yet.

The site offers a range of ways to view content, by party, by issue and by topic, with a full text search as well.

It also provides an easy way for people to contribute, adding party policies or positions on issues complete with evidential links and references supporting the party positions.

This is an excellent example of Gov 2.0 in action, providing information and education through evidence-backed crowd-sourcing to support people to identify the parties their views most correlate with.

It is also a great first step as a site, with the potential to expand to support robust issue-based discussions and allowing individuals to state their positions and connect them to like minded people. There's also quite broad international potential as the same approach can be applied to any level of politics anywhere in the world where citizens have a role in selecting their leaders.

Chris Doble has done a great job with this site and I hope it gains increasing attention and traction as we move closer to the next federal election.

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If citizens can help explore galaxies, unfold proteins, track birds and transcribe texts, why can't they help analyse government data?

One area of Gov 2.0 I really think hasn't been thoroughly considered or adopted by many governments, including in Australia, is the process of having citizens help in the creation, exploration and analysis of data.

Is it due to a lack of time, money, imagination or courage?

I don't know, but I would dearly love to see more government agencies consider how they could engage citizens in crowdsourcing initiatives that could help society.

Let me give a few examples of what I mean.

Galaxy Zoo is a collaborative effort from a range of universities and astronomers to classify galaxies in our universe. The site launched in 2007 with a paltry one million galaxies visualised.

The site worked by allowing people to register to classify galaxies (as either spiral or elliptical), with multiple classifications used to verify that each classification was correct.

The team behind the site thought it might take two years to classify all million galaxies, however within 24 hours of launch, the site was receiving 70,000 classifications an hour.

In total more than 50 million classifications were received by the project during its first year, from almost 150,000 people.

This effort was so successful that the team took a selection of 250,000 galaxies and asked people to analyse them for more detailed information, calling this Galaxy Zoo 2. Over 14 months users helped the team make over 60,000,000 classifications.

This work has led into a number of lines of research and supported scientists in understanding more about how our universe works.


Planet Hunter takes a more focused approach, looking for planets around other stars. A collaboration between the group behind Galaxy Zoo and Yale University, it works on a similar basis whereby users register to look for signs of planets based on data from radio telescopes.

Users mark likely targets and, over time, when sufficient users have marked a star as a likely target, the professional astronomers analyse that star in depth.

The site is an experiment, and there's no indication of how many planets have been found using the process, however as the human eye is particularly good at detecting patterns or aberrations, while computers can struggle, it has a good shot at success. The classifications by humans may also help in improving the computer algorithms and therefore make computers better at detecting patterns in data which may indicate planets, or could be used for detecting patterns in all kinds of other data as well.

eBird is an initiative from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society launched in 2002. What it does is aggregate bird sightings by location from professionals and amateurs to better match the range, migration patterns and changing distribution of bird species.

The system is the largest database of its kind in the world and in March 2012 alone participants reported more than 3.1 million bird observations across North America - data that is valuable to educators, land managers, ornithologists, and conservation biologists amongst other groups.

The data can be viewed on maps by species or as bar and line charts to explore when in the year particular birds are in a particular region. The site also supports gamification elements, listing the top 100 eBirders and tracking each user's personal record of sightings.


Fold.it is a site where users can solve scientific math problems through playing games. The site is most famous for the speed at which gamers solved an AIDS protein puzzle that had stumped traditional scientific approaches. Gamers solved the puzzle in less than three weeks while scientists had been struggling with it for thirty years.

Supported by both universities and corporate interests, the site is exploring many biological puzzles related to protein folding that offer hope for solving many of the worse diseases and conditions afflicting humans and our domesticated animals and plants.

Again the site includes a ranked ladder of the most successful players and offers ways to socialise and share information.

Whale.fm is a great site for whale lovers as it's a place where people can listen to whale songs from Killer and Pilot whales in order to match their patterns. Supported by Scientific America, the site contains thousands of samples of whale songs.

Users can listen to snatches of song and listen for patterns, providing data that help marine researchers answer questions such as how large is the call repertoire of pilot whales and do the long and short finned pilot whales have different call repertoires (or ‘dialects’)?

Teamsurv also has a watery focus, involving mariners to help create better charts of coastal waters, by logging depth and position data whilst they are at sea, and uploading the data to the web for processing and display.

The information collected by the site helps improve nautical maps and thereby reduces risks at sea, helping sailors and reducing rescue costs.

While still in early stages and very european focused, this crowdsourcing site has great promise. I'd like to see a similar concept extended onto land, using cars with GPS as the collection point of atmospheric and traffic data that can be used to map microclimates and plan traffic measures.

BlueServo, on the other hand, focuses on collecting land-based data on the movements of illegal immigrants across the Mexican-US border. Using a range of web cameras, users are asked to watch for movement and report people crossing the border to the Texas Border Sheriff.

Called the Virtual Border Watch, the approach currently involves twelve cameras and sensors at high risk locations, though the site doesn't actually list how successful the project has been (though why would it).


reCAPTCHA is the crowdsourcing tool that people don't notice they're participating in. In fact you've probably participated in it yourself.

The system, now owned by Google, uses snippets of digitalised books and documents as 'CAPTCHA codes' - those images of letters and numbers used to help stop spambots, programs designed to break into systems to send spam messages.

Whenever you verify you are human by retyping the letters in a reCAPTCHA image you are contributing to the preservation of millions of vintage books through digitalisation, with a 99.5% accuracy rate. In fact, the accuracy of reCAPTCHA matches that of human "key and verify" transcription techniques in which two professional human transcribers independently type the data and discrepancies are corrected.



Trove is last crowdsourcing project I'll mention, but definitely not the least, the project by the National Library of Australia to digitalise old newspapers, using people to correct errors in digital scanning. I've discussed Trove before and it continues to go from strength to strength, judging from the Hall of Fame of content correctors.

Tens of millions of lines in newspapers have been corrected, improving the accuracy of Australia's historic record (the Trove site even lists my blog in its archive.


If you're interested in finding more examples of crowdsourcing, a good first stop is the Wikipedia page listing crowdsourcing projects.

Can't governments, with all that data sitting in archives, find uses for crowdsourcing too?

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Modelling open data - new visualisation from recently released BOM data

The Bureau of Meteorology has released new data for reuse under Creative Commons licensing, ahead of the upcoming GovHack in Canberra next week, and Mark Hatcher has used it to model 153 years of Sydney weather in a short video (image to right).

The higher the temperatures, the warmer the colours.

This is a good example of how data can be reused by the public to provide different insights or perspectives into topics - providing evidence to inform different viewpoints.

These public mashups could then potentially be re-adopted (crowdsourced) and shared by governments, where they offer new insights, to better communicate with and engage the community or staff.

Of course there are technical smarts involved in this type of modelling, however tools such as ManyEyes, Visual.ly, Infogr.am and Piktochart make it easy for individuals with no technical training to create interesting views from raw data.

These tools can even be used by government agencies to model their own data - useful both for public engagement and internal engagement with staff or management. Though note it is important to only create infographics from publicly available data as the processing may be done in the cloud!

Mark's complete (41 second) video of his visualisation is below. If viewing it at work I suggest turning down the sound so as to not distract colleagues.





UPDATE:
I've received a clarification as to what data was new - and it's actually new functionality.  You can now download 'all years of data' in a single file, for daily rainfall, temp and solar exposure - hat tip to Jim Birch.

This improvement makes it much easier to produce mashups like Mark's above.

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Standardising content across government (or why does every agency have a different privacy policy?)

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):

• 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

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Can social media make a genuine impact on the democratic process?

While in the UK last week I was involved in a number of discussions about whether social media can make a genuine impact on the democratic process.

This reflects similar conversations I've witnessed or been involved with in Australia and in other countries.

This conversation is very important - it helps people involved in the Gov 2.0 space to define, refine and share their ideas and helps people outside the space gain a broader appreciation of the topic.

To encourage further conversation, Delib has set up a global online discussion about social media's impact on democracy.

You can participate - or watch this discussion at: http://www.dialogue-app.com/600


It will remain open for commenting until the end of May and visible after this for people to read and think about.

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Share in over $30,000 worth of prizes by participating in GovHack 2012

With a strong focus on government data, GovHack is inviting teams of programmers and designers to invent new and better ways of delivering government data to Australians and will be rewarding the best apps, data mash-ups, and data visualisations with a share of $30,000 in prize money.

The event, being held in Canberra and Sydney from 1st - 3rd June, will challenge teams to answer the question and develop solutions for 'how can government data be better used to benefit Australians?'

The organisers have secured over thirty thousand dollars in prize money through sponsorships, although Pia Waugh, the chief organiser is tight-lipped about the prize categories, "We want people to come with fresh ideas and concepts and to build them at GovHack using publicly released data from government agencies. To keep the playing field level, we won’t tell anyone the prize categories until the event."

In previous years GovHack winners have found ways to compare government lobbying with the results of successful tenders, and designed mobile apps to help people find the nearest public toilet.

"This is a unique opportunity to be a part of generating ideas for how government can better use and re-use the wealth of information hidden away in its databases. By being a part of this event the participants get to, in a small way, directly influence how government data managers will look at and manage their data stores" Pia said.

GovHack is being supported by organisations including Adobe, MailChimp, Palantir and some of the biggest data holders in the Australian Government are providing prize money and data, including the National Archives of Australia, the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO), and the Bureau of Meteorology.

GovHack is an official part of 2012 APS Innovation week, with the support of the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education.

You can now register to participate, review the competition rules, or see an outline of the data to be made available on the GovHack site (http://www.govhack.org).

Prize categories will be announced at the event's opening on Friday 1st June.

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Patient Opinion launches in Australia

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

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What are Australian Government agencies using social media to achieve?

I'm still collecting responses to my FOI request, however felt it worth providing some interim data on what Australian Government agencies are telling me that they are using social media to achieve.

Of the 166 FOI requests I sent out, I have, so far, received 59 legitimate responses in survey format (35%), another 10-20 in other formats (not analysed below) and 6 refusals to respond.

(I also received a survey response from the 'Dept of Silly Walks and Frilly Pants' that I've disregarded in this analysis. However I am pleased that FOI officers have healthy senses of humour!)

Of the 59 legitimate responses, 43 agencies indicated in Question 8 of my survey that they used social media channels for some purpose.

That is, 73% of Australian Government agencies in my sample are using social media.

This demonstrates how far the public service has come in embedding social media into their activities. However what do they say they are using social media to achieve?

Question 8 of my survey asked agencies:

Has your agency used social media services in the following activities?
(Please indicate all that apply and name each of the specific social media services used, ie: agency operated blogs or forums, third party blogs or forums, social networks such as Facebook or Twitter, social sharing sites such as YouTube, SlideShare or Flickr, etc)

The responses (so far) are as follows, listed from most to least popular uses of social media:

Answer choice	Responses	Share
For stakeholder engagement or collaboration	32	54.24%
Operating an information campaign	25	42.37%
Responding to customer enquiries/comments/complaints	25	42.37%
For engaging with journalists and media outlets	24	40.68%
For engagement or collaboration with other government agencies	24	40.68%
Monitoring citizen, stakeholder and/or lobbyist views and activities	17	28.81%
For a public consultation process	16	27.12%
For a stakeholder or other restricted access consultation process	13	22.03%
Other type of activity	11	18.64%
For policy or services co-design	7	11.86%

The 'Other' category was broken into the following 11 responses:

• cartoon competition - Flickr
• day to day information for subscribers and stakeholders
• Youtube
• No, but use of social media to advertise Gov Jobs is being assessed.
• YouTube
• LinkedIn (recruitment activity)
• Internal communication
• Yes
• Crowdsourcing
• Yes. Facebook (Promote Aboriginal Studies [ED: followed by two unreadable words])
• Facebook, Twitter

So, what are my conclusions from this data?

Firstly, there is a high use of social media for official purposes throughout the Australian Government. Almost three-quarters of agencies (73%) reported using at least one (and more commonly two or more) social media tools.

The most popular use for these tools is for stakeholder engagement or collaboration (53.24%) - well ahead of operating an information campaign (42.37%), indicating that social media use is expanding beyond Communication teams into broader agency use for two-way dialogues.

Responding to customer enquiries/comments/complaints was also quite high (42.37%), indicating that many agencies are serious about the use of social media channels for engaging.

Monitoring citizen, stakeholder and/or lobbyist views and activities was lower than I would have expected (28.81%). This is potentially the most cost-effective use for social media as it doesn't require engagement by an agency and can often be accomplished with free tools and limited time. I hope more agencies take this up in the future as it can provide deeper insights into their stakeholders and clients and help head-off issues.

Consultation was also lower than I had expected, with only a quarter of agencies respectively using social media for a public consultation process (27.12%) or for a stakeholder or other restricted access consultation process (22.03%). This is an area with significant potential to add value to policy deliberations and to provide a cost-effective extension or replacement of physical consultation events (particularly when budgets are tight). I hope more agencies take this up in the future as well.

The lowest rating answer was for policy or services co-design (11.86%), an emerging area which has a potentially bright future ahead of it. I can understand this being low as it is a new area for many agencies, but hope it grows as they realise the efficiencies of online co-design processes (alongside offline processes).

Finally, the other type of activity answer provided some interesting food for future thought. The answers provided by agencies, excluding the naming of specific social media tools and general use, fell into several significant categories; recruitment, internal communication and crowdsourcing.

These are all emerging areas where social media can make a significant difference and I hope we see a lot more of them in the future.

There is more analysis I will do down the track - which social media tools are most often used for each type of activity, what are the average number (and types) of tools used by agencies), however I'll wait for all responses to be received before putting this time in.

All in all the interim responses are very positive (at least from my position as a Gov 2.0 Advocate), with Australian Government agencies making strong use of social media across many different types of activities.

There's many who are testing, piloting and practicing different approaches to social media use, which will provide an ever-growing source of useful social media examples, case studies and expertise for all agencies to draw on and thereby build their capabilities and effectiveness online.

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Co-Design conference day 2

We're into day 2 of the Co-Design for Citizen-Centric Service Delivery conference and I will be liveblogging part of the day. Unfortunately I am presenting this morning, and have to run away early for a flight, however will cover as much as I can.

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Who is watching the watchers? Civilian surveillance of government

With the widespread availability of phones in cameras and tablet devices - in fact it is hard to buy one today that doesn't include a camera - it is inevitable that people will take them out and take a snap of their most - or least favourite - public figures.

These photos and video get shared, usually online, and generally contain metadata detailing when and where they were taken.

So what is the outcome when citizens, concerned at the actions of politicians or public servant officials, begin photoing and filming their movements for accountability purposes?

David Eade (from Qld's Gov 2.0 community) has written a fabulous blog post on this topic in Govloop, Citizen Surveillance and the Coming Challenge for Public Institutions.

In this post David specifically highlights citizen surveillance of law enforcement officials and agencies - something of intense interest to anyone following cases such as the recent death of a Brazilian student after being tasered by Sydney police (by the way, for more on the rise of non-lethal law enforcement devices, watch this great TEDx Canberra video from Stephen Coleman).


What if a group of citizens, frustrated at the conduct or decisions by a government official (that is any public official - elected or appointed), took it upon themselves to organise round-the-clock surveillance of that person's movements and activities, using a group of people armed with phone-based cameras, filming only from public property (as is legal)?


What if they uploaded all these images, with commentary, to social networking sites for discussion and debate?

What if there was an organised movement, perhaps by someone like Get-Up, to release 'mug shots' of key government decision-makers in a controversial department or matter, and then invite people to photo them and report what they were doing wherever they went?

There could even be a new phenomenon known as 'public servant spotters' - people who take, publish and even trade photos of particularly rare breeds of public servants (such as Secretaries). Imagine the kudos in that community for photographing the entire SES!

This is an interesting new area for citizen power that we haven't yet seen explored very far.

In many places around the world law enforcement agents now have the legal right to detain or arrested people for photoing or videoing their activities - a course that may be increasingly hard for citizens in liberal democracies to swallow and, given the growing use of CCTV and difficulties in identifying bystanders filming a public occurance, very hard to control. Of course, in more restrictive nations people are routinely beaten or killed for filming police activities.


Is it justifiable or appropriate for governments to broaden these legal powers to all public servants?


Should these legal powers exist at all?


In a society where everyone is a journalist, able to to record and distribute video, photos, opinions and facts, how does a government and its citizens agree on what is appropriate surveillance of the activities of government officials - particularly when activities occur in public on public property at the public's expense?


I can see this becoming a growing issue for governments around the world. It is a small and simple step from reporting police activities, filming road workers or snapping photos of elected officials flirting with someone who is not their spouse to photoing and using public facial recognition tools to identify every person entering and leaving a public office.

It is then a simple matter to use social networks or Gold.gov.au to identify their responsibilities and activities. Another simple step to film or photo or text record their public activities wherever they go. Another simple step to publish their activities online, and another to use the pressure to influence their judgement and decisions.


Note this may not be the world we want, however it is the world we already have, it has just been slightly hidden behind private investigators and paparazzi.

When every citizen has a camera with them all the time, what will it mean to governments if they choose to use them?

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GovCamp Queensland 2012 liveblog

I am in Brisbane all day today at GovCamp Queensland with roughly 200 Queensland public servants and will be liveblogging the event as far as possible, plus capturing the twitter feed for the day (which uses #GovCampQld).

Follow all the excitement below.

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Join the global Service Delivery JAM in Canberra (hosted by the Department of Innovation)

The Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education is holding the Canberra component of the Global Service Jam from 24-26 February 2012 as part of their efforts to support and foster innovative thinking across the Australian Public Service.

This is part of a 90 plus city global event where people who are interested in service and using a design-based approach to problem solving and creativity will meet all over the globe. In a spirit of experimentation, co-operation and friendly competition, teams will have 48 hours to develop brand new services inspired by a shared theme. On Sunday at 3pm, they publish them to the world.

Due to a change in venue to the newest purpose-built design thinking centre in Canberra (INSPIRE), the Department of Innovation has more space for jammers and has put out an invitation to public servants (and their friends) to join the jam.

Throughout the weekend jammers will work in teams, supported by innovation and design experts and mentors, to develop services that address key challenges and issues facing the public service and Australian community.

If you wish to help solve real issues, meet interesting and engaged peers from across Government and learn new techniques for problem solving that you can apply back in your own agency, please consider going along.

Even better, attendence is free!

For more information contact Mikaela or Wayne on psi@innovation.gov.au or by phone on (02) 6213 6613 or (02) 6213 6232.

And if you can't attend, you can follow the event on Twitter using the hashtags #GSJ12 and #servicedesign or via APS Innovation's @psinnovate account (note that you don't need a Twitter account to follow) 

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Share your public service war stories online anonymously

Everyone has war stories, observations and experiences working in or dealing with government agencies or departments.

These aren't necessarily whinges or complaints, they may be positive or learning experiences, or examples of where small changes could lead to large productivity gains.

Previously there was't really any way to share these stories, except by speaking with colleagues. They may have been a 'suggestion box' mechanism in your agency, but nothing designed to share experiences and learnings across the APS.

Now there's a place to do so, sharing them anonymously, so they can be recognised and learnt from, thanks to work done by Steve Davies, OzLoop founder and former public servant.

To learn more, and to share your stories visit https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PXT9F3T

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New Inside Story policy: provide your full name for publication or your comment won't be published

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):

Send us a comment

We welcome contributions about the issues covered in articles in Inside Story. Well-argued and clearly written comments are more likely to be published, and we’re now asking all contributors to provide their full name for publication. Because all comments are moderated, they will not appear immediately. Your email address is never published or shared. Required fields are marked *.

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:

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

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Should you design websites for the '1%'?

A concern I’ve had for the last ten years is how websites are designed and approved by organisations (both in government and the commercial sector).

In a better-than-average world, when asked to develop a new website or improve an existing one, the web team goes out to discover what users think of the site.

This involves identifying the site’s key audiences and using surveys, focus groups, other research and past feedback to identify good and bad design and usability features. After this the team come up with concepts, tests them on audiences and refines.

 (In a average or worse world the web team isn’t given the time or resourcing to do all this research, so short-cuts the process with their ‘best guess’ design improvements based on feedback and experience. This is far too common but can still deliver improvements.)

When the web team reach final agreement on a few design alternatives, they go to senior management for approval, often with a detailed case explaining all the design decisions.

And this is where the process breaks down.

• “Can you make the website more blue? I want it to be bluer.”
• “I like (pick a random site visited in the last day). Can you redesign it so that our website looks just like that one.” 
• “I don’t use search, I use menus, so can you move the search to the bottom right of the page” 
• “I don’t believe anyone wants three columns in a webpage, please restructure to two columns.” 
• “It’s too hard for me to find anything, can you simply list all the main site categories and pages in the homepage.” 
• “We’d prefer to organise information by our divisions rather than by subject, I’m sure that would be much easier to understand” 
• “We actually wanted the website to look just like the printed brochure” 
• “I like the shirt I am wearing today, make the website the same colour”

Suddenly web teams have to reassess what they are attempting to deliver and who they are delivering for.

Their collective expertise and research is no longer relevant.

The audience of the site is no longer relevant.

They are designing for one person, or a small group of people – decision-makers who are often not the target audience and possible don’t even use the website.

This is a source of great frustration for web teams. They are no longer designing for the 99% of their audience, they are designing for the 1%.

Now what if this process was turned on its head...

Rather than having an executive or Minister approve a website, we instead released several near final designs for A/B testing on online audiences (as organisations like Google, Amazon and Microsoft do), a proven and effective technique, or took the final couple of design alternatives and put them online for the public to vote on and thereby approve.

Of course there would still need to be some level of senior executive involvement in defining the organisation’s overall requirements for the website. The site does have to meet the organisation's goals.

However the actual approval would come from the audience, the 99%, people using the website, the people you wish to communicate with, support, engage or influence.

Radical? Maybe.

Effective. Certainly.

Doable?

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50 million reasons to engage in Gov 2.0 co-creation and collaboration

Rose Holley is one of my heroes.

As a Digital Librarian at the National Library of Australia she has led one of the most effective, long-lived and under-rated Government 2.0 initiatives in Australia for the last four years.

As one of those responsible for the digitalization of Australia's newspaper archives (so far over 50 million articles), the online system she helped create has now seen 50 million lines of newspapers corrected by the public. That's over one million lines per month and a crowd sourcing effort proportionate for Australia (over the timeframe) as Wikipedia is for the world.

This project has run on a shoestring, with little promotion and no advertising. It works because it empowers people to contribute to the public good while also satisfying their personal needs. It trusts people to do the right thing, via a supportive context and light governance.

Sure these are just corrections of digitalized newspapers - where the automated digitalization process has failed to accurately read and transcribe letters and words. However it is also a collective record of Australian history, of families, of culture and of our development as a nation.

Given that the National Library's efforts have seen over 10,000 people per day updating newspaper records, with the most prolific person having corrected over one million lines - only two percent of the total - and negligible incidents of malicious sabotage - this is crowd sourcing at its best, right here in Australia.

The process used could be replicated for other archives of Australian public records - the National Archives, Parliament and every agency with a stock of paper files that have been approved for public release, but are too expensive for governments to transcribe.

Perhaps we need a central set of tools that agencies can use, perhaps a central site where agencies can load their scanned public documents. Either way, this is an opportunity begging to be exploited, a chance to do good for the country at little cost to government.

I hope it will not be ignored.

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Allowing your customers to codesign your services

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

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

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

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

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

The concept car won widespread critical acclaim. 


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

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

 How many of these could your agency benefit from?

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