The perils of legislating channels (and the issue of website filters)

The Australian Parliament House recently released their new website - a major step-up from the previous site.

However in reading an article about it on ZDNet I discovered that the APH had, in the process, decided to block an entire top-level domain (.info) from view by the Parliament and the thousands of people working at Parliament House in order to prevent access to potentially malicious websites.

I haven't been a fan of the internet filtering systems used in government. At varying times I have seen the websites of all the major Australian political parties blocked, preventing access to their media releases, blog posts and announcements - often vital information for public servants writing policy or briefs.

These filters can be quite indiscriminate and are often controlled by commercial parties outside government. That's right, commercial entities, often foreign owned, can be broadly controlling what is allowable for Australian public servants to view online. This could affect government information inputs and potentially influence policy decisions. This is a situation that leaves me vaguely uncomfortable.

Some of the individual categories of content blocked can be equally problematic. For example many filters block access to generally to 'blogs', which may include the Australian Public Service Commission's blog-based consultation of public servants last year, 'video sites', including, for Immigration, their own YouTube channel, social networks (including those used by citizens to discuss specific policies) and, in a range of other cases, 'political' content from citizens and stakeholder groups that could otherwise be influential in the development and implementation of good policy.

One of the biggest issues I have personally found is that you don't know what you don't know. Could a blocked site be vitally important for the decision you need to make? You cannot assess this if you can't look at it.

Some systems allow specific blocking by group of employee - which sounds useful and often is (for example when I worked at ActewAGL I was one of the few allowed to view adult (soft porn) sites, needed in my role of preparing website schedules and analysing the competition for the adult channel TransACT displayed). However when implemented poorly staff may not be able to access the information their managers direct them to use.

In certain cases public servants may be required to use their personal devices to rapidly access critical content blocked by these filters. This is one reason why, for the last four years, I have carried my own Internet-connected device with me while working in government agencies. It makes me more productive in meetings and in preparing business cases when I can access and refer to critical material immediately, rather than not being able to even see if a site may be valuable or not and then waiting for a site to be unblocked so I can access it on a work PC.

It can be time consuming and, in some cases, impossible to request opening sites up. In many cases public servants can ask for specific exceptions, however when you have 48 hours to finish a minute to your Minister in response to public stakeholder or citizen comments on an important piece of proposed legislation, it can be impossible to do the job properly. Identifying which sites you need to see, receiving senior approval, requesting and having IT teams or filtering companies make access available, can take weeks, or even months.

This damages the ability for departments to do their jobs for the government and the public and, quite frankly, delegitimizes those citizens and stakeholders who choose to use forums, blogs, Facebook, YouTube and similar social tools or sites to discuss their views.

Blocking an entire top level domain, as in the APH case, comes with additional risks.

A little known fact is that Australian legislation requires the use of info.au for the Quitnow website, an ongoing major component of the Australian Government's campaign to reduce the instance of smoking.

Quitnow.info.au is advertised on all material for the quit campaign, including on all cigarette packets in Australia.

Now in practice the Department operating this site automatically forwards anyone who types 'Quitnow.info.au' to 'Quitnow.gov.au', so it is not noticeable to citizens. However this is a technical translation (if x go to y) - the domain that citizens see on advertising material still says Quitnow.info.au

If .info.au domains, as well as .info domains, were automatically blocked by the APH (I don't know if this is the case), anyone who tried to go to Quitnow.info.au would arrive at a "you cannot access this site" page and not be forwarded to the Quitnow.gov.au site.

Fortunately the APH does allow staff to request access to specific sites (apparently at least 60 have been opened up to access) and I don't have specific information on whether the APH blocked .info.au sites alongside .info sites, so this specific problem may not exist. However it does demonstrate the risks of blocking entire top level domain groups.

Personally I don't think legislation should specify domains or specific communication channels, in most cases. Technology changes too fast and governments don't want to be caught spending exorbitant funds in supporting defunct channels after the community moves on.

For example, the tabling of documents in parliament should not specifically require a paper copy to be presented and there should be no legislation that requires that a citizen present their claims or complaints via a particular device - postal, phone, fax or web.

Equally governments should not be constrained by legislation to communicating with citizens via postal mail, email, fax or a specific form of written communication (as some legislation does now).

The information transmission and reception mechanisms should simply need to meet levels of modern usage and veracity.

This would prevent agencies from having to spend large amounts of money on preserving and using old technologies where communities have moved on and reduce the time and cost of updating legislation to meet community needs.

Is there a downside of not specifying channels (such as that Quitnow.info.au domain) in legislation? I don't think so. Specification, where required, can happen at the policy level, making it easier and more cost-effective to review and change when the environment changes.

This would remove any potential embarrassments, such as if a government agency does block staff access from an entire domain group (such as .info.au) and accidentally block access to its own legislated websites.

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Don't forget the why of Gov 2.0

In any job it is easy to get caught up in the details - the what and how of what we need to do, day in and day out, to deliver the outputs demanded of us.

Whether it's writing a brief, building a website, managing a social media channel, responding to a crisis or some other activity driving our actions, the focus is on what we need to do and how we need to deliver.

However amongst all this activity it is important to take time out periodically to consider why we are doing what we do.

What is the purpose of our activities, what are the outcomes we want, not simply the outputs.

This is particularly important for Government 2.0, which is essentially a set of strategies, tools and techniques - not a goal in and of itself.

When, as an individual or an agency, we decide to use social media to communicate or collaborate with our stakeholders and citizens, or release data in machine-readable formats for reuse, we need to consider why we are taking these steps. What is the goal we're trying to accomplish, or the change we're trying to make.

We shouldn't be engaging in Gov 2.0 activities because of the 'bling' of working with cool technologies, the thrill of doing something new first or the kudos from peers, speaking engagements and awards.

The Gov 2.0 activities need to help us deliver on the why we are there. Helping the public to make better choices, helping government better understand its customers and what they need to live full and rich lives.

Government 2.0, just like government, is a tool to achieve a desired goal - a happy, healthy, fair society where everyone can live securely and with mutual respect and understanding under a transparent and accountable system.

So stop, take a breath and consider why you're doing what you're doing. Think about whether you've picked the right approach - the 'how'- and whether there's more, less, or different things which you could do to best achieve your why.

Put your why first - decide why you are going to do what you are going to do - before you decide what you will do and how.

Also consider the video below - the power of considering the why - it can do much more than assist aligning your Government 2.0 initiatives, it can reshape organisations or revolutionise the world.

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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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IT can drive big productivity gains in government

With the rise in the efficiency dividend and increasingly tight budgets across government, I keep wondering whether there are places where government can make real savings and raise productivity other than simply by cutting costs.

The crunch is often that one must invest money to save money - a position common in business but often a struggle in government, where the focus is so often on grants and programs.

However, having spoken to a fair few frustrated people lately from a range of agencies, there appears to be a significant source of productivity gains - and thereby cost savings - right under the noses of many departments. Their IT systems.

Over the last year more and more of my friends and peers changing departments have cited IT as one of their reasons for wanting to make a move. They all want to be productive, however grappling with slow and aging computers and software or restrictive internet access policies appears to be rising as a concern and even becoming a question to agencies in interviews.

This doesn't surprise me - in fact I noticed when I originally joined the public service that, through no fault of departments, the IT equipment and software wasn't up to the same standard as I'd experienced in the private sector. Over time people adapt and learn to work within the constraints of the system, however what productivity could be unlocked if these constraints were relaxed?

Today I'm aware of agencies where reportedly close to 50% of staff have their own computing devices at their desks. Personal ultra-light laptops, tablets and smartphones have become one route to employee productivity, overcoming desktop IT restrictions.

However since a friend of mine left an agency late last year frustrated that they lost over an hour a day of productive time in struggling with their desktop computer and that they couldn't access the forums and blogs written and frequented by their stakeholders due to access limits, I thought it was worth doing a calculation of the productivity losses that could be attributed to IT constraints.

Let's say that an agency's low bandwidth or older desktop PCs and software cost 2 hours of productive time per employee each week. This may sound like a lot, but if a PC takes 10 minutes to start up each morning you're halfway there already.

For a moderate sized agency of 4,000 staff the lost productive time would be 8,000 hours per week - the equivalent of employing another 200 staff.

At an average wage, including onboarding costs, of $70,000 per year (about $35 per hour), this lost time equates to $280,000. Each week.

Per year the cost of the IT productivity loss would be $14,560,000. Every year. Or, if you prefer, a productivity loss of $3,640 per person per year. Every year.

For an agency experiencing this type of productivity loss there's a few ways to offset it:

1) Reduce wages across the board by $3,640. This would be deeply unpopular.
2) Find efficiencies in other areas (reducing expenses) equivalent to the lost productivity. This may be difficult to do every year.
3) Reduce expenditure on programs and activities affecting citizens. This is politically dangerous.
4) Invest in IT improvements.

So how much would agencies have to invest to reclaim that 2 hours per worker per week? It would vary quite widely as it depends on what is causing the IT productivity drain.

However it is possible to model how much an agency should be willing to invest into improving their IT. This, of course, assumes that agencies can convince their Minister, the Department of Finance and Treasury that they should invest in IT systems - not an easy sell.

Assuming that an IT cycle is around five years (from a top-end PC becoming a low-end PC and corresponding software and network impacts), an agency should spend less than the cumulative five years of productivity loss in order to emerge ahead.

On that basis, a Department should spend less than $18,200 per staff member (the $3,640 productivity loss multipled by five years). Given wage rises, let's round this up to a maximum of $20,000 per staff member.

Therefore a Department with 4,000 staff should spend at most $80 million to rejuvenate its IT and remove the productivity shrinkage. If it spends less than this it is realising a productivity increase.

That's a fair chunk of cash - and far more than most agencies of that size would ever need to spend on IT equipment and software.

In fact, if you bought every staff member a $3,000 PC plus the same amount for support, equipped each staff member with $2,000 of software and $2,000 worth of broadband (coming to $10,000 per staff member), you'd only have spent $40 million for a 4,000 person agency.

Of course with bulk purchases agencies can get much better prices than these. Also I didn't include staff, training and overheads. Hopefully it would balance out.

If it did, that would leave you with $40 million dollars in productivity savings - $8 million per year.

Of course all these figures are 'finger in the air' rough and some of the productivity benefits can be realised quickly and cheaply by simply adjusting internet policies and filters or giving staff who need the best equipment the equipment they need.

However the basic premise holds, that IT isn't just a cost for agencies, it is a valid and important source of productivity gain for agencies. If an agency can equip their staff with the right tools and connectivity for their jobs they will be able to be more productive.

And if an agency can do so at less than the cost of their staff not having the right IT tools then the agency, the government, and Australia, are all ahead.

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Should governments be using popular VOIP tools for customer enquiries?

In Australia about 10% of households don't have a landline phone any more.

In some other countries the figure is higher - and it is growing as people abandon the 'fixed to one location' phone for personal mobile phones.

When calling a government agency - even a 'free call' line - there's often additional charges for mobile phones, plus time-based charges that don't apply on landlines.

In other words, for 10% of households it has become more expensive to call government agencies, particularly if they get put on hold.

True, losing the landline is a choice, however there's a choice for government agencies as well which can cut the cost - using VOIP services.

VOIP stands for Voice Over IP. In essence it involves using the internet to make phone calls.

Many government agencies have already adopted VOIP or VOIP-like phone exchanges inside their workplaces. This means that while phone calls still arrive at an agency via a POTS (plain old telephone service) system, once they arrive at the agency's switch they are directed onto a digital network which is far more customisable, flexible and cost-effective.

This means that when agencies make internal calls between offices (often across the continent), their calls don't go via the POTS network - those wires we see hanging from the inappropriately named 'telegraph' poles. Instead they get sent via the internet or on dedicated digital cables at a much lower cost to the agency.

Citizens can also take advantage of VOIP - whether using dedicated services like Skype or Engin, or through ISPs who offer VOIP calls via landlines. This also helps them save significant money on long-distance calls.

However these agency VOIP systems and citizen VOIP systems rarely overlap. Many agencies can't call citizens via VOIP and while citizens might attempt to use VOIP to call agencies, few can take the call.

My question is why?

How difficult would it be for an agency to establish a Skype number, which would allow citizens to use their home Skype connection to call the agency for free?

How difficult would it be to establish agency VOIP numbers on major domestic VOIP services, which allowed free calls to the agency. TransACT, Canberra's fibre-optic network provider (now owned by Internode) has been offering free calls between its VOIP subscribers for years.

Sure there are likely to be a few technical issues to sort out. Resolving this one would re-establish a free call option for that 10% of Australian households without landlines. Surely that has significant value.

Given that it appears that even rural doctors, when receiving Commonwealth Government funds to implement costly VOIP services are often setting up a free Skype account instead, there's undoubtedly some appetite for being able to call the government via these VOIP tools.

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What if computer problems happened in real life?

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

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Advertising agencies, digital agencies, web developers & printers - you need to understand government's online requirements

It has been an interesting experience working with advertising and digital agencies, web developers and printers while in government - particularly having been on the other side myself for more than ten years.

While some are very good, others definitely 'need development' - particularly in the web delivery space.

Government has a number of requirements for websites and other online properties, however it sometimes appears that these are not always well understood by service providers - or maybe it is simply that some may occasionally seek to 'cut corners' on quality to increase profit margins.
 Service providers are expect to know the mandatory government web requirements when responding to government tenders. As AGIMO states in the WebGuide:

Service providers should be familiar with the Mandatory Requirements and the other guidance provided by the Web Guide when responding to Australian Government tender processes for relevant services.

Below is a list of things that service providers really, really need to know when building Australian Government websites:

• Complying with WCAG's accessibility minimums is a mandatory requirement for government
  I've been told by supposedly experienced (private sector) web developers that the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 doesn't apply to government, and that it is optional for governments to meet WCAG requirements as it is a 'non binding international agreement'.
  I've also been told by web developers that they won't implement some accessibility features because they 'believe the site is accessible enough already' - despite not meeting WCAG standards.

• A scanned document turned into a PDF isn't accessible under WCAG 2.0
  Telling me that a scanned document - essentially an image - is accessible to screenreaders if it is converted to PDF doesn't communicate that you're a 'web professional with more than 10 years experience'.
  A Microsoft Word document or InDesign file converted to a PDF also won't meet the Australian Government's minimum standards.
  When you provide PDFs to government, if you are not also providing the content in an alternative accessible format, you will often not meet your contractual requirements.

• You must include a privacy statement, disclaimer and appropriate copyright notices on government websites
  Telling government staff that a 'Website privacy policy is only necessary if you're collecting email addresses or other information online' is incorrect and creates significant risk for your client.
  
  
• Government Departments can use social media channels
  There is no stricture forbidding Government agencies from using social media channels for communication or engagement activities. In fact many already do - and often in more advanced ways than the private sector.
  There's also no 'conclusive study showing that Australians don't want to associate with agencies or government campaigns via social media channels'.
  There's also limited need for government to engage 'social media experts' who don't understand how to use social media services - such as having a Twitter account that doesn't use hashtags or retweet others or writing a Facebook strategy that just lists the standard Tabs and doesn't provide evidence of expertise in using 3rd party applications or iframes to customise a Page.
  
  Having an account illustrates you're aware of a channel, using the account well demonstrates your expertise.
  
• Building a fake persona on a social media channel then revealing it as fake and a government promotion can be considered false and misleading practice
  Suggesting to a government agency that they should create fake personas and interact as though they were real, build a following or trusting friends and then unveiling the activity as a campaign at the end isn't good advice to provide any organisation.
  Sure there's LonelyGirl and the Jacket Girl, and several other instances of actors used to create fake personas - but never by government agencies. Providing the truth is important in government campaigns and being authentic is important to build trust and respect online. Creating fake personas usually isn't conducive to these and can also break the acceptable usage terms of services such as Facebook (which you should read).
  

Finally here's some tips - collected from discussions with my peers across a range of government agencies and jurisdictions:

• We don't need you to build us a CMS and we don't want to finance the creation of your own 'you-beaut' in-house CMS and then pay you every time we need it upgraded. Consider building expertise in an off-the-shelf product - particularly an open source platform with global support.
  
• Frontpage doesn't qualifies as a modern web development tool used by experienced professionals. It also leaves code in your pages if you don't edit it out (caught!)
  
• We do often notice when you copy code and leave the original author's name and credentials in the (web page) source without appropriately compensating or crediting them.
• Everyone knows that designers love arty fonts, but if the government agency doesn't own the rights to them they can't use them. 
• Making all the text links in a website into images isn't a good idea - it makes them inaccessible!
  
• Audience usability testing should almost always be a required step in web design. Even if your random sample of three staff really liked the design and could use the functionality, what does the website's audience think?
  
• Background music is never acceptable in a website. Self-playing video is only acceptable where there's accessible alternatives and the video can be controlled by the user.
  
• Government agencies don't want to pay for your custom reporting system that only you can access so you can give us interpreted results for web traffic. Use a standard web-based platform and give the agency access to the reports.
• Don't tell agencies it will cost $5,000 per month to host a small government website via your ISP. Particularly when their website lists their prices (up to $30 per month) - oops!
  
• When a government agency asks for an email newsletter system with double opt-in subscription, bounce detection, automated unsubscribe, open and click-through reporting, simply using a web-form to collect email addresses and sending emails via Outlook is not a quality outcome.
  
• When asked to design a website for an agency to implement in-house, don't provide code or custom functionality that can't be used or build on the agency's platform.
  
• It doesn't cost $10,000 to add a share button / reporting system / embed a YouTube video into the website - particularly when the agency is providing all the code for you.
  
• You're not a 'Government 2.0 pioneer' if you've never heard of the Gov 2.0 Taskforce, the eGovernment Resource Centre or this blog. Knowing Obama used social media in his first Presidential campaign no longer earns brownie points.
• Even if this is 'the first time' a government agency has asked you to make a website or PDF accessible to WCAG 2.0 standards, that doesn't mean that your previous standard will meet current government needs.
• Just because your contact in government hasn't had previous experience developing websites doesn't mean they aren't supported by people who have a lot of experience.

Any other gems out there that people are prepared to share?

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Should the government be leading on computing energy-efficiency?

As government increasingly digitalises, one of the hidden costs is the increase in electricity use by government computers and servers.

More computers equals more power use, more cost and, ultimately, more strain on electrical generation across Australia.

So a practical way for the government to prompt energy-efficiency, not only for the government itself but across the country, may be to mandate the electrical use of the computing devices and data centres it is willing to buy.

We've been seeing some companies with a large data footprint looking to reduce their power use per device for a number of years now.

Google has led a massive program to reduce power use across the hundreds of thousands of servers it needs to deliver the most popular website in the world. While search is the company's main business, their main cost is power, so it makes good economic sense, as well as good environmental sense, to minimise the power they need. Google unveiled their work several years ago and releases data quarterly on their data centre performance through its Google Data Centers website.

Facebook, which has begun competing with Google for the top global site position, has now come out and made its data centre design open source, freely available for other organisations to use. As discussed in this article from ZDNet, Facebook open sources its server, data center designs: Hardware fallout to follow, the strategy is designed to reduce costs for Facebook, as well as prompt large hardware manufacturers to focus on improving the energy efficiency of their servers.

More information is available at Facebook's new Building Efficient Data Centers with the Open Compute Project page and at OpenCompute. We're not talking small savings here - Facebook reports a 38% reduction in energy use coupled with a 24% reduction in costs in one data centre.

Imagine if government took a leading position on energy-efficiency for computers and data centres. With over 162,000 staff in the Commonwealth public service and around 5,000 websites, there's massive scope to encourage positive structural change in the computing field.

Like Google and Facebook, government's job is not to design the most cost and energy efficient data centres.

However there's potentially massive cost savings and economy-wide efficiencies if we introduce policies which encourage data centres to continually reduce their energy costs.

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Getting creative with visualisations in Government sites and documents

Government is the master of the written word. Across Australian governments we probably produce billions of them each year, carefully organised into documents designed to impart knowledge and influence decisions.

If you were to consider a medium-size agency producing, let's estimate, twenty 100 page reports each year, fifty 2-page media releases and 200 4-page minutes, with 200 words per page, that's 580,000 words already - not to mention emails, websites, internal documents, procurements, recruitment processes, forms presentations and all the draft versions produced.

Many of these words are important and necessary - however some might be better communicated graphically. Do we use visualisations as much as we could to represent choices and data?

I have rarely seen information presented in a visually exciting and impactful way in government documents or website.

Why? It can't be due to accessibility - it is simple to display the same information in text or tabular form and to provide alt text.

This is where the web can provide support.

I'm a big fan of infographics and the Information is beautiful and Cool Infographics blogs are two of my favourite sites. They provides some stunning examples of how information can be presented pictorially to convey meaning.

They can be as simple as this comparison of the amount of time US citizens spend each year sitting in front of the idiot box television passively watching, versus the estimated amount of time it took to create all of Wikipedia - over 1 billion english words alone (begging the question, what would happen if we could redirect all that wasted energy).

 

Or as complex as this explanation of the Left vs Right US political world (click to view it larger).

Thanks to the growth of Web 2.0, there are now an array of online services and tools designed to assist you visualise data in creative and useful ways.

These can help agencies revitalise their data, see it in new ways and generate new realisations and understandings.

It is even possible, with open data approaches, to integrate data from other agencies with your own information and present it in visually effective ways, updating it live.

To help you get started, here's a set of online services that can be used to generate interesting visualisations. Most are free.

Online tools

Creately
Particularly useful for flow diagrams, Creately is a highly collaborative and flexible tool, allowing the creation of very professional infographics solo or in a collaborative way. The tool is also useful for project planning and other visually focused activities.

Gapminder
As used by Hans Rosling in brilliant TED talks, GapMinder provides the ability to automate time series to look at data changes over time. You can choose from existing data or add your own to create brilliant mash-ups.

Google Public Data
Google Public Data is more of a simple charting tool that you can use to display your information as bar, line and pie charts, however it also allows you to add bubbles over Google Maps and provide time series data, where you can map one or two variables and manually jump around in time, or hit a play button to watch changes unfold step by step.

Hohli Charts
A simple, yet elegant tool for creating simple charts, scatter plots, radar charts and venn diagrams based on Google's charting tools, Hohli makes it very easy to make distinctive graphs.

Many Eyes
This is a beta service provided by IBM,  but don't let that scare you - the tool works fines. Many Eyes lets you upload your own data or use data in the site to generate a wide range of visualisations including a good range of world maps, word clouds bubble charts, scattergrams and treemaps. There's a good chance you'll find some of your publicly released data already visualised here.

New York Times Viz Lab
This can be used to visualise New York Times data using an embedded version of IBM's ManyEyes technology. You can also look through visualisations created by others. While not a separate service, it should make you consider whether you could integrate a visualisation tool into your own website to allow your own visitors to visualise your data and create their own views.

Statplanet
Visualise the planet using existing data, or create your own charts, scatter plots and world maps by adding your own. StatPlanet's flash-based mapping tool is used by a number of public sector organisations at a global scale to plot development data across the world.

TagCrowd
A functional word mapping tool, TagCrowd isn't as versatile as Wordle (below), however is very good for some uses, such as creating an even block of text, mapping frequency by size - such as for the backdrop of a document cover.

Wordle
If you need word maps, Wordle creates the most elegant and flexible ones on the web. Use it to look at your documents or speeches in a visual form (you might be surprised at which words occur most frequently) and tweak settings such as font, direction and colours. It can also be useful for mapping open answers in survey data to visually represent the top concerns.

Other tools
Here's some web-based visualisation tools that use existing online data to present it in visual ways. They provide inspiration and new approaches for viewing internet information, 16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools and The Best Tools for Vizualisation.

And here's 28 tools you can use to add visualisations to your own website.

Know of any other great visualisation tools? Add then in the comments below.

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Whether to reuse or build - government choices in a connected world

There's been discussion on Twitter over the last day about whether Australian government should be building online platforms, such as a video aggregation and distribution service, URL shortcut tools (which Victoria have done) or collective infrastructure for hosting and developing all government websites.

This has been an area of on-and-off discussion for over a year in the Government 2.0 context, with several Gov 2.0 Taskforce projects exploring potential opportunities for Australian governments to build systems such as these.

I expect this to continue to be a debate for many years. Choosing whether to build a service, or tap into a commercial one, can be a tough decision - even tougher online than it is in the physical world.

Why so tough a decision?

For starters, many of the services which government could use are hosted overseas, therefore posing some level of sovereign risk - whether that be,

• a concern over whether the service will continue to provide what Australia needs (when foreign laws and business policies may change),
• that personal or secure data might be accessed and misused by another jurisdiction (especially all those people who only use one password), or
• that it might provide an entry point for hackers seeking confidential and secret government information.

On the other hand, existing online services are frequently cheap and fast to implement, plus several are the 'norm' that people use around the world (such as Google, YouTube and eBay).

In many cases government created systems could have to be developed to the extent where they are commercially competitive in order to attract the level of user traffic needed to justify their continued existence.

So how to reconcile these differing perspectives... There's no single answer in my view. Decisions need to be made case by case. What makes sense for some jurisdictions won't for others and decisions that are right for one type of service won't be for another.

In lieu of an easy answer, I offer up four tests that I believe these types of reuse or build choices need to consider.

1. Will it reduce private sector competition?
   In other words, is the government competing directly against enterprise. If so there may be job and tax implications. Generally Australian governments shy away from entering commercial markets except when private enterprise is unwilling or unable to deliver the services to the entire population at a fair price.
   
2. Will government deliver a superior outcome?
   This tests whether a government-run enterprise will provide a better outcome than a private sector organisation. Strange as it may seem, governments are better at providing some services and outcomes than private industry - particularly where equity or public value is an issue. If the government can deliver a superior outcome there is a strong case for stepping in - if private sector companies miss out then they need to look at whether they should have restructured.
   
3. Will it attract a significantly large and appropriate audience?
   It is very important to consider whether a government-run service will attract enough users to make it worthwhile. For example, Facebook has build its audience over a number of years, holding on to them through being so useful that people cannot abandon it without damaging their social networks. If the bulk of the audience use Facebook, would they use 'Govbook' - a government equivalent service, even if it is a superior product? The answer may not always be yes - and without audience a government service may not achieve its goals.
   
4. Is it sustainable?
   In asking this I mean will a government continue to support and run the service over an extended period of time - perhaps even transitioning it to a private concern. Or is it possible that funds will be cut to a level where the service is unable to continue to innovate and improve, thereby seeing the service slip into irrelevance. Funding maintenance alone is no longer sufficient to address the rate of development online.

Of course these tests are merely suggestions. As pointed out on Twitter they are more guidelines than rules.

However I think that applying these tests will support more effective, evidence-based decisions - particularly in light of the large number of demands on government resources and time.

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No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft...

It used to be said that no-one ever got fired for buying IBM products.

More recently much the same sentiment has been expressed about Microsoft.

However that perception now appears to be under challenge.

ReadWriteWeb reports in its article Google Sues US Government Agency Over Using Microsoft Only that,

Google has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior for requiring that messaging technologies must be part of the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite in order to be considered for procurement.

Apparently the case has some merit (the article goes on to say). While the Department had justified a Microsoft preference due to 'enhanced security', Google Apps were recently the first cloud service certified by the US Federal government's Federal Information Security Management Act certification.

This case, if successful, might see other software makers challenging US government requirements for vendor-specific solutions. Internationally it could even, over time, help open source and cloud application developers gain greater consideration in government procurement processes.

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World e.Gov Forum review Part 1: Gov 2.0 flavours

Due to jetlag, work and other activities (such as TEDxCanberra) it has taken me longer than I anticipated to get around to write my impressions and review of the World e.Gov Forum I attended from the 13-15 October in Paris.

I attended the event as one of Top 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics for 2010, along with Senator Kate Lundy and eight others from around the world. As 'Top 10' we were also nominees for the International eDemocracy Award.

Several Australians, Allison Hornery and John Wells (of CivicTec), flew in from London to support us on the second day of the conference, listening to the nomination speeches for the eDemocracy Awards, attending the prize giving, in which Senator Lundy won the International eDemocracy Award, and subsequent dinner cruise.

I self-funded my attendance (with support from the organisers), taking leave to do so - which is generally how I attend international, and some domestic Gov 2.0 events - and found it was an excellent opportunity to gain insights into how Government 2.0 is progressing in non-English speaking nations.

In Australia we have a tendency to pay most attention to the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand as they are all majority English speaking and have political systems with similar roots - making them more accessible to us.

I've consciously supported this tendency in this blog because it is easier to learn what is occurring in English speaking jurisdictions and easier to communicate it to Australians. However English speakers are not the leaders in many areas of eDemocracy, eGovernment or Gov 2.0.

This was demonstrated during my trip, which also reinforced for me that there are different 'flavours' of Government 2.0 thriving in different parts of the world.


English speaking countries are focusing on Government 2.0 initiatives, increasing the openness and transparency of governments and increasing the level of community and public sector engagement. These efforts are largely led by government itself, supported to varying degrees by information philanthropy through not-for-profits (almost none in Australia and New Zealand, quite a few in the US and UK), individual citizens and the media or independent entities (primarily in the US and UK again).

In Europe eDemocracy appears to be the leading area, aiming to deliver social goods, increase the accountability of politicians and the transparency of governance processes, but without a significant emphasis on public sector engagement. Not-for-profits lead the eDemocracy charge, largely funded through government grants, followed by governments themselves at political levels.

South America has made progress on collaborative eDemocratic approaches, with a number of governments providing direct avenues for the public to influence government spending decisions (collaborative budgeting). Due to greater digital divides in these nations, governments are investing in innovative ways to provide digital access to citizens - mobile kiosks, internet centres and similar public access facilities supported by training and education.

The Middle-East is concentrating on eGovernment, digital enablement of government services. The area hosts a number of specialised eGovernment conferences each year and is using mobile services to address otherwise unconnected constituents, some of whom still follow traditional nomadic lives.

Africa has a huge focus on mobile technologies, as fixed broadband is too expensive to roll out into many remote areas and can be difficult to defend in wartorn zones. Digital enablement through information, such as providing weather, market prices and efficient farming practices to farmers, is very important. Emergency and disaster management are also big topics, with two of the world's best emergency/disaster management internet platforms emerging from the continent. eDemocracy is also a major driver, largely enabled through not-for-profit civil right groups using SMS and, increasingly, mobile internet to allow individuals to report electorate fraud.

Asia is a very mixed bag. India and other relatively under-developed countries are focused on eGovernment, with an emphasis on increasing connectivity and citizen enablement through literacy and computer skills programs. More advanced economies such as Malaysia, Singapore, China/Hong Kong and Japan, are providing more direct routes for citizen engagement but in forms that are culturally relevant to the nation, quite different in detail from Gov 2.0 initiatives in English speaking nations.

Each of these different flavours has its own strengths and challenges - and we can learn from all of them.


Tomorrow I'll publish World e.Gov Forum review Part 2: Gov 2.0 case studies - detailing six case studies from Europe, the Americas, Middle-East and Asia that we explored in a Cisco telepresence session at the conference.

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Bringing AIMIA to the ACT - plus AIMIA awards now open for entry

There's been a recent effort begun to bring AIMIA (the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association) to the ACT.

Coordinated by Reading Room, this is quite important to help improve education and standards in the interactive services being developed by government agencies and their agencies.

To find out more, and to get involved, visit AIMIA in Canberra.

Also the 17th AIMIA awards are now open for entries - including a Government and not-for-profit category.

If you want to improve the recognition of your Gov 2.0 and other online interactive initiatives this is one of the best recognised awards in Australia.

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Mind the Gap - rebranding in the social media age

Last Monday (4 October) one of the US's most loved brands tried to introduce its new logo.

The company went about it in the traditional, time-honoured way.

Marketing staff had consulted internal stakeholders (who thought after twenty years the logo looked a little tired), considered the research and wrote a brief. Working with a creative agency they tested new concepts and finally publicly unveiled their new logo to the public in a soft launch via their website on 4 October.

This is about the time they realised that the world had changed.

The company had been very successful at marketing its brand online, using Facebook (721,000 fans), Twitter (35,000 fans) and other social media channels to engage customers and build their loyalty.

So naturally the company announced its brand online first to its fans - its most loyal and engaged customers.


Within hours of the announcement criticism began pouring in. Not from a few scattered individuals, but from a massive group of people.

Customers began rallying around the old logo, self-organising their own groups in protest to the new one. A website, Crap Logo Yourself was created to mock the brand (give it a try!)

The company did what any socially aware organisation would do. It listened to its most important stakeholders - its customers.

Within three days (on Thursday 7 October) the company's President blogged publicly about what they would do to address customer concerns.

"We chose this design as it's more contemporary and current. It honors our heritage through the blue box while still taking it forward.

Now, given the passionate outpouring from customers that followed, we've decided to engage in the dialogue, take their feedback on board and work together as we move ahead and evolve to the next phase..."

The company looked at ways to engage its customers - seeking their views and designs to help bring their customers with them on a new brand journey.

However it was too late in the process for this. Customers had rallied around the old brand and were not in the mood to consider a new look.

A few hours ago (on Monday 11 October), the company announced it would keep its old brand, stating in a media release that:

Last week, we moved to address the feedback and began exploring how we could tap into all of the passion. Ultimately, we’ve learned just how much energy there is around our brand...

... our customers have always come first. We’ve been listening to and watching all of the comments this past week. We heard them say over and over again they are passionate about our blue box logo, and they want it back. So we’ve made the decision to do just that – we will bring it back across all channels.

And on Twitter:

We’ve heard you. We only want what’s best for Gap. No crowd sourcing, but the Blue Box is back. http://bit.ly/9xvtvJ

Yes, the company was the clothes brand, Gap.

An embarrassing backdown? No - it has been lauded as a social media success story for the company.

Executives put their egos in their pockets, listened to customer sentiment and gave customers what they wanted. They did this before the company suffered sales losses, downward profit corrections, shareholder anger and an expensive and time consuming process of rebuilding customer trust.


Of course if the company had embedded social media into its branding process - as it had its marketing - the story may have been different. By engaging customers in a dialogue about what the brand stood for, crowdsourcing branding concepts and taking customers on the journey throughout the creative processes it could have reimagined the brand successfully.

However regardless of this, the company has retained its customer loyalty, created enormous positive publicity about its existing brand and learn the valuable lesson that successful organisations are the custodians, not owners, of their brands. Their brands are owned by their customers.

And it has achieved this in a week, where before social media it would have taken months or even years for a company to recognise, accept and address mistakes (with corresponding greater damage).


How does this relate to the public sector?

We too have brands. We too have customers (also called clients and citizens). We too have processes for introducing new logos, services and products (and policies).

Our customers are as capable as those of Gap at using social media to organise and make their views known.

And we too can engage our customers online in ways which bring them with us - or in way which cut them out of decision loops, leaving them feeling betrayed and angry.


When attempting to design and then sell new policies, in areas including climate change, taxation, education and so on, are we really engaging our end  'customers' - citizens?

When we rebrand a Department, rethink a service or redesign a website, do we put our citizens at the middle of the design and decision making process?

Are we using cheap and fast engagement channels - such as social media - to engage, listen and bring our citizens with us?

Or are we falling back on traditional and time-honoured approaches, as Gap did?

Defending a 'traditional' approach as 'process-driven' and 'proven' may protect a few egos, but can fail to achieve public good, desired outcomes and even damage the reputation and credibility of agencies and governments.

No good public servant wants that.

Gap case study
Gap sources:

• Gap's Facebook page
• Gap's Twitter account
• Media release (11/10): GAP LISTENS TO CUSTOMERS AND WILL KEEP CLASSIC BLUE BOX LOGO
• Gap President Marka Hansen's blog post on the Huffington Post (8/10): The Gap's New Logo

Coverage:

• Advertising Age (12/10): Gap to Scrap New Logo, Return to Old Design
• SmartCompany (12/10): Gap does back to old logo after social media users attack redesign
• Harvard Business Review (8/10): The Gap Logo Debacle: A Half-Brained Mistake
• SmartCompany (8/10): How Gap turned its logo disaster into a social media opportunity

Community:

• Crap Logo Yourself 
• Twitter account: @GapLogo
• Twitter account: @OldGapLogo
• Twitter account: @NewGapLogo 
• Tweets about the incident: New gap logo

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GovHack returns - as part of Amped

Last year Australia's Gov 2.0 Taskforce initiated the GovHack event, produced by Web Directions, to showcase what could be done with open government data.

This year I'm glad to see that GovHack is returning - as part of Amped, a free 10 hour hack day, in Sydney's PowerHouse Museum on Sat 16th of October.

Whether you're a web designer or developer, interaction designer, graphic designer, project manager, writer, or just someone who has has an interesting idea, Amped is an opportunity to strut your stuff and create something of value.

Amped is fully catered, will have expert mentors on hand. The grand prize for the best hack is a trip for the winning team to Tokyo's Web Directions East.

RSVP at the Amped website.

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Contribute to the draft Unofficial Australian Government Social Media Handbook

Lisa Howdin, who now works with me, has been compiling a set of guidelines and information around how to develop, write, manage and moderate social media tools in Government in the form of a wiki.

She's looking for contributions from people across Australian government who are working in this area and have learnings they can add.

If you've had experience operating a government social media channel, please consider sharing your ideas in this wiki so all of your peers across government can benefit.

If you're new to the area, the Handbook, whilst still in development, already has lots of useful information that might be useful to you.

Visit the Unofficial Australian Government Social Media Handbook at: http://government20bestpractices.pbworks.com/Unofficial-Aus-Govt-Social-Media-Handbook

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iPhones dominate Australian mobile internet access

Tiphereth Gloria has posted on Digital Tip a very interesting post regarding how iPhones dominate mobile internet access in Australia.

Quoting June 2010 figures, her post iPhones dominate Australian mobile internet says that iPhones account for 93% of mobile access, with Android, Blackberries, Symbian and other operating systems combined only accounting for 7% of the market.

Overseas iPhones account for 60% of mobile internet access - still a huge share, but significantly less than the Australian experience.

Of course these figures were provided by Apple - I've not seen independent statistics - but they are still striking.

If your agency websites are not customised for access via iPhones you're potentially less accessible to a large proportion of the mobile internet market.

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Reinventing website perfection

Traditionally, in my experience both in the private and public sector, the way to build a 'perfect' website has been considered to be;
invest a large quantity of resources, personnel and time at the start of the development process,
use this investment to build all the functionality that the developers can dream up, write all the content the communicators can think of and test it with audiences,
launch the 'perfect' website and hope it works, and then
replace the website (fixing most of the bits that failed) after 3-5 years by repeating the process again.

Personally I've never liked this approach. It places a lot of reliance on using past knowledge to guess future (organisational and audience) needs, involves investing a lot of resources upfront with limited ability to terminate or redirect projects until after they have failed and it also results in websites that degrade in effectiveness over time which can lead to progressively greater reputation and legal risks.

I'd like to see the process for developing a 'perfect' website reinvented. The new process must involve a low upfront cost, the ability to be flexible and agile to meet changing needs quickly and be capable of making a website more and more effective over time, improving reputation and reducing legal risks.

But how is it possible to achieve all these goals at once?

The answer is actually quite simple and well understood by successful entrepreneurs.

Rather than aiming for a perfect site on release day after an extended development period, the goal is to quickly build and launch a site that meets at least one critical audience need.

Once the site has been launched, ensure there are tools for monitoring how it is used and identifying user needs. Then progressively build extra functionality and write more content, guided primarily by the needs of your audience.

This approach ensures the site has enough value at launch to be successful, albeit in a more limited fashion than a 'kitchen sink' website (with more functionality at launch). It also ensures that the website grows progressively more useful and relevant to the audience you aim to serve.

In this way the site becomes increasingly perfect in a more realistic way - perfect for the audience who use it, rather than 'perfect' for the stakeholders who think they know what different audiences want.

We see this approach taken with all kinds of websites and products - from Apple's iPhones through to online services such as Gmail.

It's time to see more of this approach used with government websites as well.

After all - don't we want to create the 'perfect' website for our audiences' needs?

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Why does government struggle with innovation?

The Public Sector Innovation Network email list (run by the Department of Innovation - you can subscribe from their website) sends out some very interesting articles about innovation every week.

This week one in particular caught my eye, a piece entitled The Biggest Obstacle to Innovation that looks at inertia and how this may have greater impact in a public sector context than in other situations.

The article's author, Tim Kastelle, argues that government has many disincentives to overcome inertia. With no profit motive, no threat of organisational failure (an agency going 'out of business' - rather than the threat of a front-page news item) and where there is often a deeply entrenched non-innovative culture, there's simply no pressure for government to innovate.

I often wonder how it would be different if departments were established on the basis of profit - with the government paying multiple departments to provide services and the departments competing to offer the same services at the best possible price.

This has some equivalents - governments frequently pay commercial providers to deliver services on their behalf based on value and service levels and in many jurisdictions pays not-for-profits on a similar basis.

Of course it could lead to duplication of effort and greater instability both in employment and departmental survival - but aren't these key factors driving innovation?

A stable, monopolistic environment doesn't tend to lead to innovative behaviour and tends to increase its bias to inertia over time - actively preventing innovation to maintain the status quo. We've seen that again and again both in the commercial and public sectors. Civilisations have failed due to their institutions being unable to respond rapidly to environmental and social change.

Perhaps a hybrid model is feasible - having departments with core responsibilities and then having 'fringe' services bid on competitively by departments for management rights. Whoever gets the rights would be responsible for delivering that service and would be 'paid' for delivery in a way that allows the department to take excess funds and funnel them back into core activities - and appropriate compensation for staff (personal gain - whether monetary or through social credit - is a key factor in innovation).

This hybrid model already exists in Australia in some ways. Often a lead agency is appointed as the manager and budget holder for cross-government initiatives. However there's unlikely to be a competitive bidding process whereby departments compete to demonstrate they can deliver the best value.

If innovation is becoming a core attribute required by government organisations, merely to keep up with the rate of change in society and the development of new ways to deliver services and fulfil public needs, perhaps we need to rewrite some of the rulebook, sacrificing part of our desire for stability in return for greater change.

Maybe this won't be such a large sacrifice anyway. Government departments often restructure due to internal or external pressures and already need to react to our fast-changing world. Stability is becoming more and more of an illusion and constant change more a reality. The need for public servants to be biased towards action, as Tim discusses, is becoming greater and greater.

Constant change has negatives and can be very uncomfortable for individuals used to stable environments, but if we can harness it to drive innovation in our policy development, service delivery and in how we organise and operate the instrumentality of government it may also uncover some major benefits.

What do you think - should we trade public sector stability for innovation?

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BarCamp Canberra 2010 - LiveBlog

I will be liveblogging as much as possible of BarCamp Canberra 2010, however note that I am also speaking and the other two rooms may not have wifi - so I will post my notes later.

This year BarCamp is standing room only, with around 90 attendees at the start of the day, and more likely to come - and go - through the day.

If you want to drop in yourself, we're at the Computer Science Building at the Australian National University in Canberra, or for the geeks, at GPS: 35° 16' 34" S 149° 7' 14" E.

Sessions are 20 minutes long with 10 minute changeovers between talks, with 5 minute lightening talks at the end of the day in the main room.

Audio is being recorded and many presentations will be put on SlideShare. Plus there is a video livestream in the main room at: www.livestream.com/barcampcanberra

A coffee van is outside, there's water, power and wifi inside, and lunch is on the way, so let's start....

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