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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Why open data and public collaboration is important for 21st Century democracy

Beth Noveck, formerly the White House Deputy CTO, has published a fantastic paper on why it is so important to evolve democratic systems for the 21st century, and providing details of how a range of governments around the world are doing so.

The paper is titled "Evolving democracy for the 21st Century" and is available from her blog.

Through a combination of improved transparency and accountability, the public release of data in reusable formats and the willingness to openly collaborate with individuals, not-for-profits and companies in using that data and thinking from outside public services to develop new policy insights, governments today have the most significant opportunity in over a hundred years to reframe their relationships with their constituents and draw on the wisdom of the crowd to improve policy outcomes and services.

 I hope the opportunity is not squandered.

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Traditional media insiders are the least qualified to comment on the future of traditional media

With the release of News Ltd's Future of journalism 'discussion' I've submitted a 'Your view' to the site which may, or may not, be published at some point in the future.

On the basis that traditional media is no longer the gatekeeper for participation in public debate I have posted my submission below.

I see a lot of the debate over traditional media relevancy and business models being very 'fiddling on the edges' stuff, attempting to use technical or legal barriers (such as copyright) to preserve an industrial era view of media which media consumers, now also media producers, are rejecting in droves.

Today any individual or organisation can create and maintain its own media platform capable of reaching 95% of Australians, and over 2 billion people worldwide.

The Internet, by merely existing, allows entrepreneurs and agile organisations to question all previous assumptions about the collection, collation, filtering, distribution and monetization of content. As a global playing field, the importance of geographic boundaries has been further diminished.

Being agile, efficient and effective is no longer sufficient. Organisations must be prepared to destroy and reconstruct themselves under entirely different models to remain competitive and relevant.

The jury is still very much out as to whether traditional newspapers, radio and television media organisations will be able to do this before they see a substantial amount of their profitability dry up.

My submission:

It is no surprise that people who work in traditional media, who have a financial and emotional stake in its future, are supportive of their organisation’s future (provided they are agile, efficient and effective).

I can see expert blacksmiths believing the same with the arrival of mass-produced cars and metalwork.

However what those beholden to traditional media cannot see is the viewpoint from the outside world.

Yes access to information is a requirement for liberal democracies. Yes quality news is a tool used to stabilize societies and promote understanding.

However there is no law of nature that states that profitability must be at the root of quality news coverage and reporting. Nor is there a causal link between professional journalism and professional news reporting – journalists, as humans, are as prone to reflecting their own biases as others and, even when trained to be objective, are at the mercy of sub-editors (where they still exist), editors and the overall political ambitions of for-profit media concerns.

Now I am not saying that government-run media (with no profit objective) is the answer. These systems bring their own control and bias issues, they still need cash and still have oversight from humans who may be influenced by political views.

Nor am I saying that for-profit, or even not-for-profit independent media outlets do not have a future. They do.

However the vast expansion in expressive capability that has been realized through the Internet has offered a second model to news gathering and reporting that will seriously challenge the biases of distribution systems with tacked on news collection and reporting facilities.

There is no reason to assume that industrial news services will continue to be the leading players in the media market – certainly the impact of the web on other industrial era centralised industries has been profound. When the means of production and distribution are diversified, some necessary changes and adaptation is required.

However those who have financial and emotional connection to the old models, while the most prolific commenters on new models, are not the gatekeepers to these new media forms, nor are they objective and impartial observers, able to assess the changes without bias.

I would challenge News Ltd and all other industrial-era news industry players to look outside themselves and their orbits (bloggers who are, in effect, news people) to the broader changes occurring in society.

We need to consider new models – perhaps the disaggregation of news collection and distribution, creating an open market for people to write news, have it submitted to, paid for and distributed by strong distribution channels, or for citizens (who are now all journalists, so we can drop the ‘citizen journalist’ tag) to be paid based on views, likes and reputation when submitting their work to an open news distribution platform.

News is no longer the news, access to distribution is the news and there is a pressing need to experiment with new approaches to opening up news distribution rather than locking it down into professional guild-like channels.

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Social media is now normal - so why do government agencies persist in treating it as an edge case?

As this article in Fast Company illustrates, social media is now normal, an integrated set of tools for ongoing human interaction.

We've known for several years that Australians are enormous users of social media, with Nielsen research indicating that the average Australian Internet user (and 95% of us are users based on Sensis figures) spends upwards of 7 hours per month actively using one of a range of online social networks - and this doesn't include the full range of online participation possible via forums, blogs and comments.

We've also known for several years that the community's number one preferred channel for engaging with government is via the Internet. AGIMO's research in this area has seen a steady (and predictable) upwards trend in the desire for greater online contact over the last 4-5 years.

So why do government agencies, by and large, still treat social media engagement as a fringe case, with access to these channels often restricted to a few people in the communications area and senior executives often still wary or debating how to monitor or support online contact (while enthusiastically supporting their phone-based contact centres)?

It has been interesting to watch agencies attempt to shoehorn social media and online engagement into the traditional models they are used to - one-to-one communication, with the timing and extent carefully controlled by the agency itself (and look how positively the community has regarded this form of engagement with government over the last ten years). Clearly control is an issue, as is budget and the exact context and content of messages.

However the world has moved on and agencies have to recognize and adapt, not merely tweak the corners or treat social media engagement as an edge case, for use by small groups under tightly controlled 'laboratory' conditions.

It is evident overseas how other western governments are beginning to accept these channels as core - with, perhaps surprisingly, the US armed forces serving as a good object example of how every soldier, sailor, pilot and support crew member is now regarded as a public engagement officer.

By taking the step to recognize this, then putting appropriate policies in place, the US armed forces have done an excellent job of managing the landscape changes, steps that Australian governments have, for the most part, been very slow to accept.

Today every government agency, at every level of government, needs to start by accepting that their staff, for the most part, are active online participants in their personal lives. They need to acknowledge that online channels are increasingly the source of public views and policy ideas from the community and must be accessible for staff to mine for intelligence, use to identify interesting and influential people and viewpoints and to engage actively in "robust policy conversations" (to quote APSC guidance on the topic).

Agencies need to recognize that social media and online channels are integral to their public reputation and the reputation of the Ministers and governments they serve. A view, complaint or compliment placed in a social network is equally valid to one made directly to an agency via their 'controlled' communications channels - and may be significantly more influential (or damaging) due to its public reach.

Certainly there are risks in online engagement - as there are in all communications to and with the outside world. However failure to engage online also bears risks, often much greater, of being seen to be irrelevant and ineffective, reducing the credibility of agencies and the Ministers they are required to serve. Failure to engage actively online can damage recruitment, procurement, policy development and program or service delivery outcomes in measurable and unmeasurable ways.

So agencies are really reaching a crunch point for their reputation and relevancy. Do they choose to continue to treat social media as an 'edge' activity, carefully quarantined from their everyday business, and risk becoming edge organisations?

Or do they choose to state a commitment to the use of social media and other online channels as a core aspect of their interactions with the outside world, and with their staff, then move to implement these commitments (taking the precautions necessary to make the change a pragmatic and well managed process rather than a headlong rush to catchup and survive).

This decision (integrate or quarantine) should be on the agenda at the highest levels of all government agencies in Australia today as it will soon begin to shape career prospects and even the long-term effectiveness of public organisations.

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The changing face of media, communications, politics and agency engagement

I've just read the latest speech by Annabel Crabbe on the changing face of the media and politics and thought it worth highlighting as, to my knowledge, it is the first serious piece by an Australian professional journalist in recognizing the changing face of journalism, politics and communication (including by government agencies).

Her views embody much of what I have believed over the last fifteen years and spoken personally about at conferences and in my blog over the last five years - the traditional view of journalism and politics is being washed away, being replaced with a far more equitable, if less controllable, environment.

Give Annabel's article a read at The Drum, An audience, an audience, my kingdom for an audience.

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What if computer problems happened in real life?

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

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The role of social media during the Arab Spring

John Sheridan posted a link on Twitter to a very interesting analysis of the impact of social media on the revolutions across the Arab world over the last year.

The paper provides strong evidence that social media was one of the key causes of these revolutions due to its ability to place a human face on political oppression and had a critical role in mobilising dissidents to organise protests, criticise their governments, and spread ideas about democracy.

The report claims that social media had a central role in shaping political debates, for example,

Our evidence shows that social media was used heavily to conduct political conversations by a key demographic group in the revolution – young, urban, relatively well educated individuals, many of whom were women.

Both before and during the revolutions, these individuals used Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to put pressure on their governments. In some cases, they used new technologies in creative ways such as in Tunisia where democracy advocates embarrassed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali by streaming video of his wife using a government jet to make expensive shopping trips to Europe.

The report also provides evidence that online conversations about liberty, democracy and revolution on Twitter often immediately preceded large protests. This supports the use of social media as a civic organising tool.

Governments that attempted to shut down the internet, or specific social media services, were clearly also of the view that these were key channels for public dissidence outside their direct control, unlike  government-run or influenced newspapers, radio stations and television channels.

Finally, the paper demonstrates how social media was used to open up internal discussions to the world, helping spread democratic ideas across borders, providing global support networks for local dissidents and informing the media, which then fuelled awareness, interest, engagement and support for the Arab Spring through media reports.

The paper is an excellent read and quantifies a number of the effects of social media during the Arab Spring, which could be used by political 'dissidents' in other countries to help influence local debate.

Note that like all research, it is a little of a two-edged sword, as the paper could also be used by governments seeking to minimise debate to pre-empt online dissidence by establishing frameworks that can be extended to allow strict control of online discussion.

These frameworks  include national firewalls, broad-based and readily expandable online censorship regimes, internet kill switches and approaches that place the control of national internet infrastructure into government-controlled monopolies.

Often justified as beneficial initiatives designed to protect people from international cyberattacks, online fraud or inappropriate online content (which they may also do), these frameworks, if implemented without appropriate legal and privacy checks and balances, can be repurposed to restrict citizen access and quash undesired public debate, exclude certain individuals or organisations from participating online or even identify specific troublemakers for incarceration or worse.

I have embedded the document below for easy reading, or it can be downloaded in PDF format here, Opening closed regimes.

Opening closed regimes - What was the role of social media during the Arab Spring?

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21st Century society vs 19th Century laws and policing

Laws have always struggled to keep up with society, however rarely in such a vivid and public way as in Wednesday's arrest of Sydney Morning Herald journalist, Ben Grubb, and the confiscation of his iPad.

The incident, well reported in the SMH, occurred when Queensland Police responded to a complaint regarding a photo hacked from one security expert's private Facebook page and displayed in a presentation at the AusCERT conference in Brisbane as an example of a major security hole in Facebook's system.

Grubb was attending the conference and received a briefing about the security hole. Seeing the public interest in telling the community that their supposedly private Facebook photos could be easily accessed, Grubb reported the matter in an article featuring the image, which I can no longer find on the SMH site.

The following day police questioned Grubb about the matter and then demanded he hand over his iPad on the basis that police wanted to 'search' it for evidence of a crime. When he was unwilling to do so, he was arrested and his iPad confiscated for a complete image of its content to be taken and analysed by police (let's not even explore the potential conflict with Australia's Shield laws, which incidentally also cover bloggers and tweeters).

The basis of police concern was that the image retrieved by the security expert and used in the SMH article was 'tainted material', stolen from a Facebook account and then passed on to others.

What is more worrying is that the Queensland police, in a press conference, then equated receiving an email containing a stolen image as 'like taking stolen TVs'. To quote:

Detective Superintendent Hay used an analogy to describe why Grubb was targeted.

"Someone breaks into your house and they steal a TV and they give that TV to you and you know that TV is stolen," he said.

"The reality is the online environment is now an extension of our real community and if we go into that environment we have responsibilities to behave in a certain way."

Let's think about this for a moment.

Firstly, when someone 'steals' an image - or music, movies, books or other online content - it isn't stealing if the content remains at the point of origin for the original owner to continue using. It may be a copyright infringement or privacy breach, but unlike stealing a television, where the owner of the television is left without it, there is no theft, simply replication.

On that basis any laws around theft simply don't apply online. You can copy my idea, my words, my images. However unless if you somehow delete the originals, you are not stealing them, you are breaching my copyright.

Secondly, when an email is sent to our email address it gets delivered regardless of the legality of its contents. We have no say in whether we receive legal or illegal messages and images. Sure there's spam blockers and the like, however these automated tools can't tell if content is legal or not, only if it violates certain rules, such as containing certain four letter words or phrases.

However, according to the QLD Police, if someone sends you an email containing a 'stolen' image, you are breaking the law. This is even though there is no way possible for you to refrain from receiving the email in the first place. You don't even have to open the email. If it has been stored on your device, based on the QLD Police's interpretation of Commonwealth law, you are a potential criminal.

This has enormous ramifications for society. Anyone can frame someone else by sending them an email. As it is relatively easy to set up a disposal email account, you can do so anonymously. This could be used against business rivals, political opponents, or even against the police themselves simply by sending them an anonymous email and then making an anonymous complaint.

Equally, if the person receiving the email is a potential criminal, then what about all the organisations whose mail servers were used to transmit the message?

When an email is sent from one person to another it can pass through a number of different systems on its journey. At each stop, a mail server copies and saves the email, checks the route then sends the email on.

In most cases these mail servers delete these emails again for storage reasons, however at a point in time each of them has received the email, making the organisations and individuals who own them liable, again, under the QLD Police's interpretation of the law.

Given the number of emails sent each day in Australia it's clear from the QLD Police's legal interpretation that most ISPs must be operated by criminals, receiving, storing and transmitting illegal content all day and night.

Applying this type of 19th Century policing and legal approach clearly isn't going to work in the 21st Century.

When everyone can publish and illegal content can be received without your consent or knowledge, laws need to change, as does police training and practice.

Without these changes government bodies will become more removed from the society they are meant to serve, unable to function effectively and efficiently in today's world.

By the way, the security analyst who originally 'stole' the Facebook images hasn't been questioned, arrested or charged. And Ben Grubb still hasn't received his iPad back.

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Is this the first eGovernment research paper? Published 1954

I've been reading the excellent blog post by Richard Heeks in ICTs for Development on The First e-Government Research Paper.

He discusses a research paper by W. Howard Gammon on "The Automatic Handling of Office Paper Work" published in 1954 that looks that the impact of ICT on government - noting at the time that there were approximately 40 computers in use by the US Federal public service.

What I find very interesting is that many of the points raised in Gammon's article - and highlighted by Heeks - reflect the situation we are in today with eGovernment and Government 2.0.

In a most insightful paper, Hammon identified the importance of understanding how and when to employ technology over understanding how to create or maintain technology, the need to re-engineer business processes rather than simply automate existing processes, the importance of 'hybrid' skills that combine an understanding of the ‘business’ of government with knowledge about the application of technology and the need for top management support, particularly to resist the politics of entrenched interests.

These factors remain of overwhelming importance today in government. We still have to contend with individuals and groups who struggle to effectively employ technology in the service of organisations, siloed business units who seek to protect their current practices out of fear of the consequences of change and there is an ongoing need to expand the ranks of strategic thinkers who can use their combined understanding of government business and technology to create positive change.

It is worth reflecting on why, after more than 50 years, we're still dealing with the same people issues despite having completely changed our environments.

Perhaps we need to collectively spend more time focusing on how we educate and empower our people to bring them along with us into the future.

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Doing good while improving security with ReCAPTCHA

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.

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Good read: Nicholas Gruen on Gov 2.0 in Australia and cultural change

Alex Howard over at GovFresh has a great article and video interview with Nicholas Gruen regarding Gov 2.0 in Australia and some of the challenges of the required cultural change.

Read it over at Nicholas Gruen on Gov 2.0 in Australia and cultural change.

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Canberra Gov 2.0 lunch - 8 December

It has been a big year for Government 2.0 in Australia, both at the federal and state levels. The Victorian Government in particular has committed to releasing the majority of public sector information under an open copyright license, continued to improve its whole-of-government intranet and released the Government 2.0 Action plan: a comprehensive strategy for guiding Victoria's government 2.0 efforts.


To celebrate the close of the Gov 2.0 year, and to discuss the initiatives in Victoria, we're lucky to have Maria Katsonis, from the Victorian Government's Department of Premier and Cabinet, in Canberra.

Maria is currently the Principal Adviser, Public Administration in the Department of Premier and Cabinet, leading projects that examine issues that shape and influence the Victorian public sector. This has included the development and implementation of the Government 2.0 Action Plan released earlier this year and the VPS Innovation Action Plan released in 2009.

Previously Maria was Executive Director of Public Policy and Organisation Reviews at the State Services Authority where she led reviews at the request of the Premier, Ministers and Secretaries. She has also held the role of Assistant Director, Social Policy in the Department of Premier and Cabinet.

Maria has a Master of Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and is a Fellow of Leadership Victoria.


I know this is short notice, however if you are able to join us at Café in the House in the Old Parliament House for lunch Maria will be providing an interesting and insightful glimpse into how one goes about establishing and executing a whole-of-government Gov 2.0 program.

Register here

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Allow other public servants their own Gov 2.0 and social media journeys

At an event with colleagues last week, I overheard several talking about their surprise at the levels of caution and fear they still encountered amongst various professionals regarding Gov 2.0 and social media.

"It's as if they were still living in the early 1990s," said one. "Some people just don't seem to understand how far technology has advanced, nor the level of work and learning that has gone into social media strategies in the last five years or Gov 2.0 in the last year."

I strongly sympathised with this view. As I have spent a significant share of my waking time in the last fifteen years learning, developing and testing new media strategies and solutions, it can be hard at times to realise that others don't have the same level of experience as me.

One of my most valuable learnings has been that not everyone is at the same point in their Gov 2.0 and social media journey.

Many have been busy 'looking' in one of many different directions - finding them so interesting and fulfilling that they may simply not have noticed what has been going on in other directions - such as in social media or Government 2.0.

Now they have turned their gaze to Gov 2.0 for the first time. They are starting at the beginning and haven't had the same learnings or experience yet.

While it is tempting to try to pour my own experience into these people to help them get up to speed, this is rarely a workable approach. Nor is providing them with a full map of the social media landscape, this can simply scare them into inaction.

Instead they need to travel on their own journey to Gov 2.0 understanding.

The best way those of us with more experience can help is to scout just a little way ahead. Help them see the pitfalls (that they can recognise) and assist them to overcome obstacles they encounter in their path. Occasionally point out branching tracks they may not have the experience to notice but they might like to consider, and allow them to come to you when they have new questions and insights.

Is this a fast way to get people up to speed on Gov 2.0? Not really, but it works. And sometimes they will surprise you with insights far beyond your own ideas or experiences, helping you on your own Gov 2.0 journey.

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Gov 2.0 views from Gartner's Government day

I attended Gartner's Government Day on Monday for their ITXPO Symposium (I was on a panel), and it was very interesting to hear the views expressed about social media.

Below are some of the quotes I recorded from Gartner analysts and senior IT leaders. They are not all verbatim and have been reordered to flow more logically.

• Social media is not about technology, it's about collaboration - the only risk is in ignoring it.
   
• There are 20 exabytes of social media information available online today - it is real, it is not a fad.  It doesn't matter whether you are using social media - you cannot ignore it because your customers use it.
   
• In a world where people can talk to people, as an organisation you had better be believable - traditional PR no longer works.  If you wish to be credible in social media, you have to tell the truth. Black box organisations will not survive.
   
• The public will judge organisations not on whether they make mistakes, they all do, but on how they visibly recover.
   
• Google's PR strategy made mistakes OK, so that customers don't mind. Organisations that try to pretend they don't make mistakes and then attempt to hide their mistakes create huge media attention and serious reputation damage. It is better to be honest and truthful and not create those types of unrealistic expectations.
   
• Bloggers are hugely important public influencers. Organisations no longer control the message, they must influence the influencers. This is an entirely new approach to public relations.
 
• You could allow marketing to lead social media initiatives - but there's a risk it will disappear down a black hole. Organisations need a broader strategic approach. BHP tried all traditional communications approaches with the Gulf oil spill and they didn't work.
   
• If staff want to discuss confidential matters they will  - banning them from Facebook at work doesn't make a different, they will use other channels, like a phone, or their own devices. Secure their communications through training and support, not their technology.
   
• It isn't the right of ICT security to control social media issues - privacy and record-keeping are corporate governance issues.
   
• IT is shirking its responsibility by not providing organisational platforms for online monitoring and engagement. IT needs to be a source of data, information and strategic advice to marketing for social media as it changes.
   
• IT must support and facilitate business to realise social media opportunities. If it doesn't, its role will get smaller and less significant. Twenty years ago ICT stepped back and allowed marketing to run websites, we can't afford to step back to that again.
   
• You should own your own '[organisation] sucks' domain and site. Use it to listen and respond to customer complaints.
   
• Organisations struggle with how to engage via social media - the answer is to listen, rectify issues, contact and invite comment. Imagine a customised 'Tripadvisor.com.au' service where the public could comment on your service and rate you. It may not be far away.
   
• The more layers of management, the more barriers to collaboration and transparency.
   
• If you want to change culture, budget one year per layer of management, for example if you have eight layers of management a single culture change can take eight years (requoted from an ex-Senior Officer).

You may agree with a number of these statements.

However, the comments were not from any 'Social media in Government' workshop.

They were from a 'Social media in the Banking industry' workshop that I attended after my panel to see how the financial industry was addressing Web 2.0 opportunities.

After the workshop I've formed the view that banking is about two to three years behind government in Australia in engaging with social media effectively.

I can see some real shake-up coming to the industry based on several other statements by Gartner analysts:

• Financial services companies are inherently conservative and don't attract innovative people.
   
• The reality is that banking industry runs on opaqueness - it is the only way it can keep the prices high and profits substantial.

The banking sector is facing significant challenges. Regardless of whether its senior leadership wishes to engage via social media or not, their customers, stakeholders and even their staff are using these channels more and more.

Increasingly, banks are seeing the rise of services like Paypal, which the panel said that banks laughed off only a few years ago but now see as a genuine threat to their business.

They are concerned about the risk of Google starting a banking business, as they believe Google has a better reputation and greater capability to be agile.

They are worried about online comparison services, which make it easy for the public to compare banking and insurance rates; and about online services, which offer substitute banking services more conveniently.

In other words, the banks are facing reputation, transparency and agility crises, brought on by a culture that resists change and innovation, at the hands of social media empowered individuals and small, agile, innovative organisations.

Government isn't always slow, conservative or inflexible, particularly compared to large institutional banks.

Maybe, in the public sector, we're doing much better than some people might appreciate.

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The internet isn't a tool for democracy - it's simply a tool

Over the weekend I read an insightful an well written paper by Rebecca McKinnon of Harvard University. Presented at the two day 'Liberation Technology in Authoritarian Regime' conference on 10-11 October, the paper provides some compelling evidence that the internet is not a tool for democracy, it is simply a tool and can be used to support authoritarian regimes just as it can be used to support democratic ones.

Named Networked Authoritarianism in China and Beyond: Implications for global Internet freedom, and sponsored the Hoover Institution & the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL), Stanford University, the paper discusses the use of the internet by China. While external sources of political news and influence may be blocked, the Chinese government is making extensive use of the internet internally to empower citizens in support of the present regime - using legal means and extensive censorship controls to channel online discussions into politically acceptable thread.

It discusses the rise of 'networked authoritarianism' - where an authoritarian regime embraces and adjusts to the changes brought by digital communications technologies and co-opts the medium. Permitting citizens the illusion of freedom of speech, the ability to discuss social ills and influence some government policies, while retaining strict control over political expression.

I think it is important to bear in mind that by itself the internet will not necessarily lead to greater transparency, openness and democratic governance. It requires the efforts of individuals and organisations to unleash its potential.

To quote two of Rebecca's conclusions:

The business and regulatory environment for telecommunications and Internet services must become a new and important focus of human rights activism and policy. Free and democratic political discourse requires Internet and telecommunications regulation and policymaking that is transparent, accountable, and open to reform both through the courts and the political system. Without such baseline conditions, opposition, dissent, and reform movements will face an increasingly uphill battle against increasingly innovative forms of censorship and surveillance, assisted by companies that operate and shape activists’ digital environment.

Finally citizens and policymakers of democratic nations must not forget that global Internet freedom begins at home. One of the most urgent tasks of the world’s democracies is to develop best practices for openness, accountability, rule of law, and transparent governance of their own digital networks. That is the best possible long-term weapon against the spread of networked authoritarianism. It is also essential in order to ensure the long-term health of the world’s existing democracies.

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The media140 #OzPolitics Tweetbook

I felt that it would be useful to compile the online discussions during media140 #OzPolitics into a single work, a permanent record that could be reread, referenced and reconsidered.

So over the long weekend, with assistance from PeopleBrowsr, the support of Julie Posetti and permission from FirstDogOnMoon and Mike Stuchbery to reuse some of their material, I compiled the following Tweetbook.

You are welcome to read, print, share and comment.

media140 #OzPolitics Tweetbook

By the way - as far as I know this is the first conference Tweetbook created in Australia. It is based on the very useful Open Government and Innovations Conference Tweetbook from their conference in Washington in July 2009.

I hope the media140 #OzPolitics Tweetbook will also serve as an inspirational model for future Australian conferences and events.

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When traditional media exposes public service bloggers

On Monday, 27 September 2010, Grog, of the Grog's Gamut blog, was outed by James Massola of The Australian as Greg Jericho, a federal public servant who happens to blog on matters of politics.

Massola, in his article Controversial political blogger unmasked as a federal public servant, has questioned Grog's right to challenge journalistic views, veiled under the question of whether, as a public servant, he was entitled to blog about politics.

Grog addressed this question through his own blog in a post, Spartacus no more, where he outlined the APSC's guidance, which states:

It is quite acceptable for APS employees to participate in political activities as part of normal community affairs.

APS employees may become members of or hold office in any political party.

APS employees, whether or not they are members of political parties, are expected to separate their personal views on policy issues from the performance of their official duties. This is an important part of professionalism and impartiality as an APS employee.

Where an APS employee is involved in publicly promoting party or other views on certain issues, and where their duties are directly concerned with advising on or directing the implementation or administration of government policy on those issues, there is potential for conflicts of interest.

Grog went on to say that he's never commented on anything other than publicly available material and did not comment on matters related to his specific duties.

I have never written anything which I have gleaned through work. All information I use comes from the media or press releases or public reports. This is pretty clear from anyone who regularly reads this blog – you never find “breaking” or “inside” news here – you find opinion and analysis.

The only thing that I find noteworthy about this 'expose' is that it demonstrates the fallacy of the argument that keeping your personal and professional identities separate online is an effective mechanism for resolving unwarranted perceptions of inappropriate online engagement.

While it is nice to believe that you can post online under a pseudonym and remain anonymous, this is rarely sustainable in the long-run. When someone is 'exposed' as using a pseudonym it becomes newsworthy simply due to the sensation.

I wish all the best to Grog - Greg Jericho.

And in the interests of the continued growth of Gov 2.0 in Australia, I hope he will have the clear support of his managers.

COVERAGE (EDITED):
Follow the discussion of this topic on Twitter using the hashtags #groggate and #grogsgate.

Statistics on the use of the Twitter hashtags is available at What the trend.

• Stats for #groggate
• Stats for #grogsgate

Articles and posts for 27 September:
ABC The Drum - Grog's great anonymity gamble
An Onymous Lefty - Grog-gate: Outing as bullying
Ariane's Little World - A person is not their job
B Sides - Privacy is not a gift for journalists to bestow or withdraw
Catherine Deveny - Groggate
Catallaxy Files - MSM arrogance
Core Economics - Transparency and blogging
Crikey / Pure Poison - The Grog’s Gamut outing: In whose interest? 
Crikey - The whys and wherefores of bureaucratic blogging
Dermott Banana - Outings 
eGovAU (here) - When traditional media exposes public service bloggers
Girl with a satchel - Monday Media Study: Grazia's Bingle Bungle & Groggate
Herald-Sun - Get away with you
Hoyden About Town - If you can’t defend yourself, you shouldn’t be allowed to speak
IAIN HALL's Sandpit - Grog’s Greg outed … so what? 
I'm not Tina Wheeze - LOVE, ANON
Larvatus Prodeo - Grog’s Gamut outed by The Australian
Mediakult - Not navel gazing at Media140 (mentions in the conclusion)
Misc and Other - Why I don’t use my real name on twitter
Mumbrella - Australian outs blogger Grog’s Gamut
Mumbrella - Why the Grog’s Gamut outing harms The Australian
Random Black Heart Glitter Moments - On #groggate
The Accidental Australian - Outing the anonymous blogger. Good for the gander?
The Angry Exile - MSM vs Blogosphere - UPDATED
The Australian - No anonymity to bloggers, tweeters
The Australian - Twittersphere hit by storm over whether political blogger had a right to anonymity
The Bannerman - No Opinions Without Reality…or, Who Is James Massola?
The Conscience Vote - Who has the right to speak?
The Failed Estate - Now that We Have Your Attention...
The Gutter Trash - The Australian launches attack on Independent Blogger Grog’s Gamut
The news with nipples - Who gets to be anonymous?
The Vicious Circle - The Grog’s Gamut Irony
The Vicious Circle - Jack the Insider on team #Gamut?

A follow-up article from James Massola explaining his decision to 'out' Grog, released at midnight on 28 September:
The Australian - Why I unmasked blogger Grog

Articles and posts for 28 September:
A Shiny New Coin - no, I am GrogsGamut
ABC The Drum - Bullet by bullet, the bloggers win the war
An Onymous Lefty - Jeremy's ear (not really on topic but mentions as an aside)
Ash's to Ashes blog - Confessions of a Blogger
Australia Incognita - Anonymity and the blogger
Blogging Townsville - Mudoch's approach to his papers' critics - will Island View be next?
Crikey - Simons: it wasn’t unethical to name Grog’s Gamut
Crikey - The Oz’s Bolt loose … science of pop-news … (touches on)
Crikey / Pollytics - Gibbons throwing poo
Crikey / Pure Poison - Don’t you know who I’m not?
Crikey / Pure Poison - Massola raises the stakes
Goonanism - A Passing Note on Grog’s Gamut
Grahame LJ - Anonymity and blogging
Happy Antipodean - Tuesday, 28 September 2010 
Larvatus Prodeo - #Grogsgate and the right to privacy
Mumbrella - Blogger-outing journo: Grog’s Gamut was tweeting during work time
Online Opinion - Blogs and anonymity - another News conspiracy?
Ozylum – Asylum in Australia - New Media 
Peter Martin - No-one should be forcibly reduced to a single identity
The Australian - A storm on the internet (Why should web writers escape scrutiny and responsibility?)
The Australian - Journalist threatened over Twitter outing
The Australian - The Oz declares war on bloggers: Rosen
The Australian - Blogosphere and Twitter no more than an echo chamber
The Bannerman - How Do They Insult Us? Let Us Count The Ways
The Canberra Times - The outing of a favourite blogger
The Failed Estate - The Empire Strikes Back
The Gutter Trash - The Australian: Accused of Just “Making Stuff Up” (Again)
The National Times - Tweets get messy as mainstream media takes on the blogosphere
The Riot Act - On Greg Jericho, groggate, and the public service.

Articles and posts for 29 September:
ABC The Drum - Why I'm quitting Twitter (Groggate given as influential)
Billablog - Who will be the next Grog-gate?
Dave from Albury's Weblog - Outing an amateur
HarrangueMan - Speaking of partisan chum buckets...
Insert Clever Title Here - Now we know who Grog is... what changed... #groggate
Instances of Ass Clownery - James Massola is an Ass Clown
Preston Towers - To Grog or Not to Grog
The Australian - Speak Queasy (see section on 'The Battle of Jericho)
The Dummer Press - We're under attack!
The Register - Media group faces both ways on the issue

Articles and posts for 30 September:
ABC The Drum - Quality sets The Australian apart
Black Dog - The Australian's War on Australia
The Australian - Grog blogger keeps his job
The Notion Factory - Anonymous


Articles and posts for 1 October:
Cafe Whispers - Fran speaking frankly (small mention)
Crikey - And the Wankley goes to… The Oz’s war on everything (bloggers, this week)
SBS World News Byte Me - #grogsgate raises enduring questions
The Bannerman - Burn Baby, Burn!

Articles and posts for 2 October:
Daily Dose - Kate’s Corner ~ Being “Outted” in Australian Society
Happy Antipodean - Saturday, 2 October 2010
James Purser [INSERT WITTY CATCHPHRASE HERE] - Grog Thoughts
The Australian - Test of Twitter-led revolution reveals a character limit

Articles and posts for 3 October:
Billablog - Grog-Gate 2  or We aren’t the ones who don’t get it, YOU are!
B Sides - A couple more points about Grogsgate
Crikey - The Content Makers - More on the Ethics of Outing Grog’s Gamut 
Gary Sauer-Thompson's Weblog - Conversations - Twitter
Kate Carruthers - My Amplify - the continued misunderstanding of the relationship between Twitter & activism is getting annoying #groggate
Still life with cat - More on Grog's Gamut
The Australian -  Salvos lobbed in the great blog war of '10
The Bannerman - Questionable Irony
The Bannerman - Going Through Hell, On A War Horse Called ‘Right’ 

Articles and posts for 4 October:
ABC The Drum - Anonymous sources no window to truth
Aide-Memoire - Twitter, commonsense and journalism #groggate
My Red Crayon - Grog Gate, may his legacy be a change for the better.
Restless Capital - Last word on #Groggate
sminney's posterous - "Media" 2-10-10 Deconstructed
Sydwalker.info -  Naked Lies & Long Noses: from Watergate to #Groggate (a mention)
The Australian - As the anonymous walls of Jericho fall, the great blog war of '10 begins

Articles and posts for 5 October:
A Shiny New Coin - To speak in the first person
ABC The Drum - The Australian. Think. Again.
Aide-Memoire - Public discourse and private citizens – how free is freedom of speech? #groggate
Crikey - The Content Makers - Information Brokerage and Citizenship. More Reflections on Grogs Gamut
eGovAU - In the noise of #Groggate, don't forget those silenced
SkepticLawyer - Journalists are Luddites #groggate
Sydney Morning Herald - Journalists' jealousy behind a blogger unmasked  The Canberra Times - Battle of Jericho
The Punch - Hitting journos where it really hurts: a handy guide
Upstart - Narcissus, Grog’s Gamut and a self-obsessed media

Articles and posts for 6 October:
eGovau - Stats on articles and posts for #Groggate (includes statistics on all articles mentioning Groggate listed in this post)

Articles and posts for 7 October:
Crikey - The Content Makers - Pseudonyms and Anonymity – a Previously Unpublished Case Study.
Mediakult - Blogging under the radar (references Grog)

Articles and posts for 8 October:
Townsville Bulletin - Cowardly world of bloggers
Blogging Townsville - The Townsville Bulletin celebrates our first birthday with style

Articles and posts for 10 October:
Peter Martin - The Australian does not follow a party line
the political sword - Grog, do come back – we need you

Articles and posts for 11 October:
ret's posterous: Cowardly world of bloggers - jeez that's rich

Articles and posts for 14 October:
The Australian - Grog's blog back in business

Articles and posts for 16 October:
Woolly Days - Grog rations (NEW)

Articles and posts for 17 October:
RickyRobinson.id.au - The Australian and the new Battle of Jericho

Related information and news:
ABC - Mark Scott's speech: The Quest for Truth: Quality Journalism and a 21st Century ABC (where Grog's comments about the mainstream media were first seem as influential) 
Grog's Gamut - Election 2010: Day 14 (or waste and mismanagement – the media) (the original article from Grog referenced by Mark Scott)

Australian Press Council - Balancing privacy and press freedom
Online Journalism Blog - Time to talk about legal
Restless Capital - Brief historical reflections on anonymity and pseudonymity
The Australian -  Twitter speaks and the ABC listens
The Australian - Hobby writers keep pros on their toes
The Advertiser - Censoring free speech in the secret state
The Herald-Sun - Outrage as South Australia's Rann Government, Opposition unite to gag internet election debate
The Sydney Morning Herald - Iranian blogger jailed for 19 years (Aside - Don't we use 'gaoled' anymore?)
The Guardian -  No one gains from blowing the cover of this secret policeman
J352: Intro to Online Journalism - Blogger outed by journalist on Twitter
The Wall - BBC’s Marr blasts bloggers: socially inadequate, pimpled, single and seedy


Other mediums:
27 September - ABC Q&A - Politics, Betrayal and Sex (See closing remarks from Senator Conroy)
1 October - The Australian Media Series Audio Webcast - Grogs-gate: A storm in a tweetcup
2 October - 702 ABC Sydney - The Sunday Panel - To Twitter or Not to Twitter (see last few minutes)
3 October - Cartoon - grogsgamut droogisheep #274


A UK view from their 2008 Civil Serf debate:
DavePress -  Public servants must blog, despite Civil Serf

There's a Twibbon in support of Grog.

There's also a Facebook page, If 100,000 people like this page I'll name my firstborn Grogs Gamut.

There's this T-shirt (I work in the public service and I tweet) and this T-shirt (Murdoch outed me and all I got was this crummy hashtag #GrogGate T-Shirt) - created by Black Bobs

And a poll I've set up asking - Do journalists have a right to remain anonymous?

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What's been the impact of Victoria and NSW's Gov 2.0 Apps competitions?

On 21 June Victoria announced the winners of its App My State competition, with prizes being given out by the Premier. A list of the winners and a video of the presentation is here.

A few days later on 24 June NSW announced the winners of the Apps4NSW competition, with their own video.

Most competitions end when the prizes are awarded. The top entries get some kudos, while everyone else goes home empty-handed, their entries forgotten.

However in an Apps competition, such as NSW and Victoria's events, the award ceremony is only the beginning.

Between these two competitions there's been about 300 Apps and ideas generated that use government data to assist citizens. The cost of developing and capturing them has been around $200,000 in prize money.

Assuming that on average these Apps and ideas could cost $20,000 each for a government to develop, the total value of these competitions has been around $6 million dollars - a direct return of 30x the prize money invested.

These Apps and ideas are now publicly accessible. This means that any other government, organisation or individual can review them and use them to stimulate further innovation, leveraging their value beyond the original competition. Some of the best Apps and ideas may be extended beyond their home states, or replicated elsewhere in the world - generating further public value.

At the same time around 500 state government datasets have been released to the public in a reusable format. This data represents millions of dollars of investment by taxpayers which is now accessible to and usable by them. Now the approach to opening data has been trialed we are likely to see more public data released into the public domain.

On top of the Apps and the data, NSW and Victoria have demonstrated that there is public interest in these types of competition, making it more likely that other jurisdictions will consider holding their own similar events.

Also this event has helped support and demystify the cultural changes required by public services to be more collaborative, transparent and innovative. The value of this to citizens is incalculable.

So what's been the major impact of these competitions?

They have helped wedge open a door to government openness and transparency that, over time, will open wider - allowing more light in, and more value out.

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The next generation of government

Living in Australia we are fortunate to be able to often look overseas to view the trends that will shape our lives and our workplaces already beginning to unfold.

While Australians often consider our country an innovative leader in many areas, my fifteen years in the online sector have suggested that, for the most part, we lag on average 18-24 months behind the United States in our thinking and activities in this industry.

That's why I found the article Watch out...Here Comes the Next Generation of Government by Steve Ressler (founder of Govloop) so interesting.

I recommend you read Steve's article. It provides some insights into how public organisations must reinvent themselves to attract the best young staff, and how they much reinvent their relationship with their communities to remain relevant.

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