Now it gets interesting - Australia has its first digitally literate Prime Minister

Rudd & Gillard could work the Twitters.

Abbott understood the need to engage digitally, if not the tech, the value or the full impact (and mistakenly thought one of his Ministers had invented the Internet).

Even Howard got onboard the digital express with a few YouTube videos.

However Australia has never before in its history had a digitally literate Prime Minister of the likes of Malcolm Turnbull.

This could mean nothing, or it could mean enormous change if the Australian Government is told to lift its game on digital engagement and treat technology as an integral part of designing and implementing government business rather than as a service to be called on when needed.

Turnbull has already laid down a positioning statement in this area, stating in his inaugural media announcement as PM that "We need an open government, an open government that recognises that there is an enormous sum of wisdom both within our colleagues in this building and, of course, further afield."

We'll see quite quickly which is true by Turnbull's approach to several of the key planks of openness and digital transformation.

Key steps would include endorsing and progressing Australia's membership of the Open Government Partnership, something agreed to by the Gillard government but was placed on the perpetual back burner by Abbott as he focused on closing, rather than opening up, government.

I'd also expect to see a rethink of the government's position on the Office of the Information Commissioner - an agency the Abbott government failed to legislate to remove but has been killing by degrees by cutting funding and refusing to replace Commissioners.

Another sign of change would be an elevation of the role of the Digital Transformation Office, making more of its approaches mandatory and providing more teeth to the agency when dealing with big and slow moving Departments more interested in the status quo. 

This could include shifting  the DTO back to the Prime Minister's department, but with a direct reporting line to Turnbull that minimizes the obfuscation prevalent within that department at senior levels. 

Other areas that could use attention include the open data space, which is run on a shoestring by Finance and could greatly magnify its impact with additional resourcing and mandates, and, of course, the NBN - Turnbull's former responsibility as Communications Minister. 

A shift back to a FTTH approach, delivered more cost-effectively than the previous Labor model, would provide Australia with the infrastructure it needs for the 21st century and cement Turnbull as a visionary with Australia's long-term future at heart.

There's also many things that could be done at a micro-level within agencies to shift the reliance on corporate IT suppliers, 1990s systems and large, virtually undeliverable technology projects - many of which could be led by a revitalised AGIMO in association with the DTO.

Of course Turnbull may have other fish to fry, he has quite a lot to do to get the Liberals back to an electoral-ready position within 12 months, and if not re-elected much of the program above could find itself on the scrap heap of a new government that wants to do things differently.

However I am hopeful that we'll see some true digital leadership from Turnbull whilst he is Prime Minister and potentially some real shifts in how government is delivered in Australia, to the benefit of all Australians now and in the future.

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Designing the sharing state - an interview with Steve Schmid of the Open Technology Foundation

This is the fourth in a series of interviews I'm doing as part of Delib Australia's media partnership with CeBIT in support of GovInnovate. I'll also be livetweeting and blogging the conference on 25-27 November.

View other posts in this series.

With thousands of governments at local, state and national level around the world that need many of the same technological systems to govern effectively, why do governments often believe they must develop new enterprise systems and their related assets (ie guidelines, policies, methods and other shareable ICT assets) from scratch?

This question triggered the creation of one of Australia’s most interesting and innovative organisations, the Open Technology Foundation.

Founded in 2011 with the support of the South Australian government and Carnegie Mellon University Australia, the Open Technology Foundation (or OTF), has the mission to help facilitate technology sharing at all levels of government across Australia and New Zealand.

The OTF’s leader, Stephen Schmid, is passionate about the work his organisation is doing.

“All governments perform the same basic functions but historically we have built our own solutions to meet a need. This tide is changing."

He said, “a very cost effective method of provisioning services is to investigate and potentially reuse what other governments have done when faced with the same challenge – sharing rather than reinventing."

Steve isn’t a newcomer to this vision for government.

After working for Microsoft in Redmond, Worldcom in Colorado Springs and IBM, Steve’s last role in South Australian Government was as Director of the state government’s ICT division, which is responsible for whole-of-government voice and data systems.

“A single data network and voice network servicing all government departments provides significant efficiencies”, Steve says, “Other states could leverage this model as they explore opportunities for converged technologies.”

This work led Steve to the view there was a strong need for a sharing program to support connected governments, and through his role at the OTF he’s working to build a bridge for cooperation between jurisdictions.

The work has already had some significant successes.

“We work cooperatively to facilitate sharing between public administrations across Australia and New Zealand. The OTF is also working on a range of projects with Vietnam and implementing a global knowledge-sharing platform for interoperable technology solutions”

The road has, at times, been bumpy. Steve says that “one federal agency asked us ‘who gave you approval to represent Australia”.

He told me that he doesn’t see the OTF as representing Australia, “we represent our members, jurisdictions who wish to participate in a sharing program with other jurisdictions. We create our own mandate. And everything the OTF does is open to every jurisdiction, with a focus on tangible outcomes.”

Sharing technology resources isn’t simply a nice idea. Steve believes there are significant opportunities to reduce the cost of provisioning public services while improving service delivery, “we’re here for Australian & New Zealand governments to leverage the investments of other jurisdictions and reuse them – in software, materials and other services. We also help share our [AU & NZ] knowledge with other countries, especially in the Asia Pacific region.”

Steve is not the only one who believes these outcomes are worthwhile.

A number of key Australian agencies and governments are represented on the OTF’s governing council. This includes Defense, the Bureau of Meteorology, the New Zealand Government and Australian state governments such as NSW, Queensland and South Australia.

Steve says that there’s also some urgency about the work. Europe is moving ahead with interoperability solutions and technology sharing at a great rate, and the US is moving forward with NIEM, the National Information Exchange Model.

He says that “Australia is still at the starting line, and we can’t afford to be there much longer.”

Steve also discussed four projects the OTF is working on for delivery in the next twelve months.

“Our first project is about modern design for a sustainable government”.

Steve says the aim of this project was to provide a set of principles for developing portable government platforms, including associated guidelines and procurement clauses.

“There was an interoperability approach developed by Australian government back in 2006, but things have progressed since then.”

The OTF aims to deliver an outcome that allows platforms to be portable not only in Australia and New Zealand, but globally.

“European Commission have expressed interest in being involved and we will potentially also have the UN involved, linking into all major regional governments at a global level.”

If the project is successful it will make it far easier for agencies to add standard principles into their procurement clauses. For Australian technology companies this opens a door to global business, providing clarity on how they provide a specific service.

Steve says that they hope to turn the project over to a standards body at a future stage to ensure its sustainability and broader uptake.

The OTF’s second project is related to managing shared guidelines for internal ICT management and for managing vendors. He believes this project will assist both governments and vendors.

“Having vendors spend additional money to meet the separate requirements for each jurisdiction adds significantly to the cost of software to government and the development costs of vendors.”

Steve says that common shared guidelines for many of our technology needs that can be used as a baseline for our public administrations would remove this extra cost.

The project is being led by the NSW government with the initial goal of developing a set of guidelines for cloud that can be shared and reused across jurisdictions.

OTF involves all of its participating jurisdictions in the development process, and hopes to use it as a model for further shared guidelines.

The third project involves investigating whether the European Commission’s eProcurement platform can be reused by Australian governments.

“The EC’s platform was developed to be an end-to-end eProcurement platform for European countries and was released under an open source license. We’re evaluating modules of the platform with Australian state governments to test whether it meets their needs. So far we’ve found it just works, out of the box”

Steve says that the platform, Open e-PRIOR, has been developed to international standards that suite Australian governments and is a good example of how systems developed elsewhere in the world can be reused by local jurisdictions.

“We’ve found that most governments are willing to share most of their investment in ICT with other governments, beyond their secure systems. The primary barriers to sharing are the cultural ones and appropriate licensing.”

Finally, Steve says the OTF is working on building a platform for managing shared enterprise platforms.

“Our member governments feel there is no place for them currently to place their shared enterprise platforms for reuse by other governments.”

Steve says this isn’t simply a Forge for code sharing, but a robust system that incorporates management and support to provide the quality control and support necessary for large government system.

The development of this ITIL-based platform is being led by the Queensland government, with the support of other OTF members. If successful it could revolutionise how Australian governments share their shareable platforms.

Steve believes these projects are some of the foundation stones for building a technology-sharing environment for Australian and New Zealand governments, and go far beyond earlier government attempts at interoperability.

If successful Steve believes they will help herald in an age of more connected and responsive government, dramatically cutting the cost and need for agencies to develop their own new systems.

It’s a big goal but a worthy one.

“Gaining the required levels of participation to make this sharing cooperation a real success story is challenging, but with the continued support of our member governments and networks, we will all benefit in the long term.”

You’ll be able to hear more from Steve at GovInnovate on 25-27 November in Canberra.

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What's beyond transparency? Find out at the next Code for Australia event in Melbourne

As part of the CodeAcross2014 series of global events (over 44 events in 9 countries), Code for Australia is holding a free event on Friday 21 March from 5:30pm in Melbourne.

Featuring four guest speakers, the event will approach the "Beyond Transparency" theme by discussing how citizens, civil servants and entrepreneurs can move beyond open data to come together and build new ways of solving problems.

For more information, or to register, visit canbook.me/codeforaustralia

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Having a website crash due to high traffic is a failure of management, not load

Today has provided an interesting lesson for several organisations, with the crash of both the David Jones and ClickFrenzy websites in Australia.

But first, some background.

ClickFrenzy is a new 24-hour sale for Australian online retailers starting from 7pm on Tuesday 20 November.

Based on the US 'Cyber Monday' sale, which now attracts over 10 million buyers, ClickFrenzy was designed to entice Australian online shoppers to buy from local online retailers by offering massive discounts on product prices for a short period of time.

The event was announced over a month before it was due to start and has been promoted through newspapers, online and in some retail stores, with the ClickFrenzy team expecting thousands of shoppers to log on, likening it to a "digital boxing day sale".

I've kept an eye on the ClickFrenzy site and signed up to receive an email alert when the sale began.

Just before the sale started I hopped back onto the ClickFrenzy site to see how it was going, and only saw a basic page of text, with no graphics or formatting. Puzzled I tried reloading - and the site wouldn't load at all.

That's when I hopped onto Twitter and learnt from the #clickfrenzy hashtag that the ClickFrenzy site had already crashed from the load and no-one had any idea when it would be back online.

This meant that the list of participating retailers (many of whom had been kept secret) was inaccessible. No shopper knew who had the specials, meaning few sales could occur. Of the retailers that were known to be participating, two-thirds of their sites crashed too (such as Priceline and Myers).

In competition with ClickFrenzy, David Jones had decided to run its own independent 24-hour sale over a similar time period. Their sale, named 'Christmas Frenzy', was to be run from their main website.

How did their launch go? Their site also crashed, and was down for several hours, taking down not only the shopping site but all their corporate information.


So we had two major online sales on the same day from Australian retails, and both experienced crashes due to the volume of traffic.

What was to blame? Both claimed the failure was due to unprecedented demand. So many people tried to get onto both sites that their servers could not cope (the same reason given for the mySchools website issues at launch in 2010 and the CFA website issues during the Victorian fires in 2009).

Let's unpick that reasoning.

The world wide web is twenty years old. Amazon.com is 18 years old. The US 'Cyber Monday' sale is six years old.

David Jones is an experienced retailer, with significant IT resources and has been operating an online store for some time. Their Christmas Frenzy sale was planned and well promoted.

Click Frenzy is being run by experienced retailers as well. They built an emailing list of people interested in the event and also widely promoted the sale. The retailers supporting them are large names and operate established online shopping sites as well.

In both cases the organisers had a wealth of experience to draw on. The growth of Amazon, the US Cyber Monday sales, their own website traffic figures and email list sign-ups, not to mention a host of public examples of how to manage web server load well, and badly, from media sites, social networks and even government sites (such as mySchools and CFA examples above).

There are many IT professionals with experience on how to manage rapid load changes on web servers.

There's scalable hosting solutions which respond almost instantly to fast-increasing loads, such as during an emergency or with breaking news, and 'scale up' the site to support much larger numbers of simultaneous users. (Though in the case of Christmas Frenzy and Click Frenzy a large increase in load was expected, rather than unexpected.)

There's even automated processes for testing how much load a website will be able to bear by simulating the impact of thousands or millions of visitors.

In other words, there's no longer any technical reason why any organisation should have their website fail due to expected or anticipated load.


Load is not a reason, it is a justification.

We have the experience, knowledge and technology to manage load changes.

What the Click Frenzy and Christmas Frenzy failures illustrate is that some organisations fail to plan for load. They haven't learnt from the experience of others, don't invest in the right infrastructure and may not even test their sites.

They are literally crossing their fingers and praying that their website won't crash.

A website crashing when it receives a high level of load that could be expected or planned for is crashing due to a failure of management.


The next time your agency's management asks you to build a website which is expected to have a big launch or large traffic spikes, ask them if they're prepared to invest the funds necessary for a scalable and tested website, built on the appropriate infrastructure to mitigate the risk of sudden large increases in traffic.

If they aren't then let them know to cross their fingers and pray - and that a website crash due to high traffic is a failure of management, not load.

You might even get a Downfall parody video to memorialise the failure - as Click Frenzy received within two hours of their launch crash.

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How should governments treat mobile apps in an age of open data?

EmergencyAUS app

I had a very interesting conversation the other day regarding the challenge of government mobile apps in the age of open data.

The example used was the EmergencyAUS app, which has been developed by Gridstone Pty Ltd.

As an app created by a commercial entity, EmergencyAUS aggregates emergency information released by a variety of state and federal agencies and presents it through a single interface.

The public can also take photos of emergencies and share them through the app. Best of all the app is free to use

Alongside this, Australian governments have also released mobile apps related to disasters and

DisasterWatch app

emergencies. Federally there is Disasterwatch, released by the Attorney-General's Department, which also aggregates emergency information from a variety of state and federal agencies.

At state level there's several emergency apps now available, but particularly notable is the Victorian Country Fire Association's CFA FireReady app.

This is available across all major mobile platforms and while it focuses on Victorian fire emergencies (including backburning), it also allows the public to take photos of emergencies and share them through the app. These photos can even be used by the CFA to help inform their staff regarding developing issues.

Essentially the commercial app and government apps are competing. They all aggregate information from openly released emergency and disaster data and all have a similar aim - to help inform Australians of critical events occurring near them or near their families and friends.

CFA FireReady

Generally governments in Australia take the position that they do not compete in providing services where commercial entities are prepared to do so. They essentially try to minimise where they compete with private enterprise.

So this example raises some clear issues. As government releases more data in reusable formats (open data), there are likely to be more commercial entities who use this data to create mobile apps or other services.

So should governments stop making apps for this data, and leave the field to commercial entities?
Should governments restrict themselves to apps for data that doesn't have commercial value?
Should governments continue to compete against private firms in creating apps?

To answer these questions I think it is vital for government to begin to think about mobile apps (and websites for that matter) as strategic assets and infrastructure rather than costs or PR tools.

Mobile apps as infrastructure

Government built the telephone network in Australia because it was not commercially viable for a private player to invest in this type of infrastructure. We're now repeating this process with the NBN. We did the same with roads, electricity networks, water networks, the Commonwealth Bank, Qantas and other core infrastructure.

However past a certain point it became viable - even desirable - to sell some of this infrastructure to private concerns, with appropriate legal safeguards in place (such as foreign ownership in Qantas and Telstra's universal service obligation).

To develop some new infrastructure governments began looking at public private partnerships - such as toll roads and utilities such as ActewAGL (the ACT's electricity provider).

These have either taken the form of co-investment in development, and co-ownership in some fashion, or the form of complete private ownership, with the government simply providing incentives, support or ideas to the private sector.

Finally there's infrastructure that government has been totally hands-off during development - such as for mobile networks and for virtual infrastructure including search engines.

Mirroring these to mobile apps (or websites), there's five categories for government to consider:

• Critical - apps which governments consider core to its ongoing business and therefore both creates and maintains, retaining ownership on an indefinite basis (though commercial entities may create their own versions).
  ie: Emergency management apps, train/tram/bus timetable apps
• Very important - apps which governments believe must be provided and will make, however are not critical for them to own on an ongoing basis, and therefore may sell to private concerns (with appropriate distribution and maintenance conditions and perhaps a 'resumption' clause if the private concern ceases development)
  ie: Traffic or toilet map apps.
• Important - apps which governments prefer are developed, but are only prepared to partially invest in - via partial funding or other support or a partnership with private entities.
  ie: Crime statistic/locations, parliamentary information or library/gallery works apps.
• Interesting - apps that governments find interesting, but not worth investing in. In this case they may release the ideas and data for the apps and leave up to private enterprise to develop - or not.
  ie: Sports field locator or health information apps.
• Uninteresting - apps which government doesn't care (from a public benefit perspective) whether they are created or not and leave entirely to the private sector.
  ie: most apps you'll find in app stores

Based on this model government agencies need to think about the criticality of a particular app to their core business and act accordingly, treating the apps as an infrastructure investment.

Here's examples of my thinking.

Critical apps
Emergency and disaster apps can be considered critical public safety tools, provided by governments to ensure citizens are informed and supported in times of crisis.

As a core function of government, while private sector organisations may also develop them, agencies would still develop and maintain good quality apps to ensure public safety and information concerns are met.

While commercial entities may develop similar apps, this is not a reason for government to cease maintaining its own, as the government must ensure that a service is provided to the community and commercial entities may stop maintaining - or even withdraw from sale - their apps at any time, leaving a gap that the government's apps will continue to fill.

Very important apps
Traffic apps, while very important for managing traffic congestion and supporting productivity, are not core to the responsibilities of government agencies, but offer significant public value.

Therefore governments would develop these apps, but potentially may sell them to private concerns to maintain and profit from, with provisos that they deliver a certain quality of information and, should the private company decide to stop maintaining the app, the code and app go back to the agency (like an exploration lease for minerals).

The sale of these apps should be considered a cost-recovery exercise as well as pricing the value of the service to the community, ensuring that the public receive some return for the value transferred from public to private hands.

Important apps
Parliamentary information apps, such as ones providing Hansard feeds and information on proposed laws and parliamentary schedules are useful and important to government, however are not essential, or very important to government. Hence it makes sense for government to contribute to the development of these apps - financially or through support - however government shouldn't invest in their creation.

Co-investment might be done through grants or matching funds - such as if a private entity ran a Pozible or Kickstarter fund raising activity and an agency agreed to match up to $X dollars raised.
Support might include access to key individuals, research or data which would support the creation of these apps, or promotion of them through Ministers and agency media contacts and networks (potentially with a level of endorsement).

Interesting apps
Interesting apps, such as one providing the location of all sports fields in a city, might be suggested by a council or agency as an idea, based on data they've released or an identified community need. A paper prototype or business case prepared, but rejected, within the agency may even be released to flesh out and provide context and direction for the app. However agencies and councils would not deem these apps important enough to co-invest in or support, leaving it up to the private sector whether to take on and own the idea or not.

Charging for mobile apps

Another consideration for governments is whether they should charge for apps they create and manage.

I have mixed views on this. There are definitely services that government provides as 'user-pays'. Why should people who don't use the app share in paying for its development and maintenance?

Charging for an app can also provide some funding for its maintenance and improvement over time - very useful where government agencies provision for app development, but have a time limit on funding for it to be maintained and improved, updated to reflect changes in mobile operating systems or even released on new platforms as they emerge.

However in many of these cases the mobile app may not be core to government service provision and potentially could be provided by the commercial sector rather than the public. Perhaps it should be sold off, or left to private hands rather than maintained by government.

If there's a mobile app that your agency is considering charging users to buy or use, perhaps, instead, it is a candidate for sale to a commercial entity to run and maintain, with the sales price being the value of the app.

Or if it is core for government agencies to provide as part of their service mix, should it really be charged for?

In summary

When having a discussion in your agency regarding whether you should make a mobile app, or leave it to the private sector to do - or are thinking about charging users a fee to buy or use your app - it is useful to consider the five categories above and into which your mobile app fits.

If the app is core to your agency's operations it should probably be developed and managed under your agency's watchful eye. If it isn't core, you should think about how important it is and use this to frame your decision on whether to build it yourself, support a private entity to do so or simply give the idea away.

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Opening up government in NSW

While largely unreported, earlier this year the NSW government became the first state jurisdiction in Australia to provide a formal written commitment to open government at a Premier level.

In Victoria, which took an early lead as a state, Government 2.0 (which isn't quite the same as open government) never received a formal commitment from the Premier, and while the ACT has done good work in this space, and is actively pursuing an open government agenda, there's not been an actual formal written commitment from the Chief Minister.

Equally in Queensland, which pioneered a whole-of-government open copyright framework, or in South Australia, which has done great work in the online community engagement space, there's not been a formal mandate issued under the names of their Premiers.

Even the Commonwealth Government, with the Declaration of Open Government, could only manage a senior cabinet Minister, Lindsay Tanner - who resigned shortly after the Declaration was published.

So what did NSW's commitment to open government actually say?

To quote NSW's Open Government Memorandum,

This memorandum advises Ministers of the Government’s commitment to a new era of open government. The NSW Government is committed to the open government principles of transparency, participation, collaboration and innovation. 

In the memorandum, Premier O'Farrell stated that the NSW Government would be:

• Open in our work for the people of NSW 
• Open to participation in the policy process 
• Open to collaboration on how we do business 

These would be achieved by enhancing:

• Online access to government services to make them available anywhere, anytime
• Online communications, including social networks, for internal and public dialogue 
• Online mechanisms for community and industry collaboration on innovative solutions 

Now these are just words, the proof will be in how the NSW Government executes these approaches.

There are still some worries. The memorandum is framed as part of the NSW ICT Strategy, and has a very strong IT-first focus.

Those of us who have worked in the Government 2.0 and open government space for some time and who have also worked with colleagues oversears very clearly recognise that it is rare for ICT executives to lead in this space.

Openness is a business goal requiring culture change across government. ICT executives rarely have the skills to lead human change in this way.

However ICT does has an enabling role, in providing the base infrastructure on which openness can be built. Hopefully the NSW Government will supplement it's ICT strategy with corresponding business strategies and change programs, drawing on Government 2.0 and open government expertise from across Australia and internationally.

This approach will ensure that the NSW Government doesn't only build the infrastructure layers, but simultaneously builds the business understanding and capability to use these layers effectively to deliver on the Premier's promise.

The next milestone will be at the end of this year when, under the NSW Government ICT Strategy 2012, each Director-General is required to report to the ICT Board with a plan to:

• Identify priority datasets for publication at data.nsw.gov.au 
• Increase open access information available at publications.nsw.gov.au 
• Facilitate public participation in the policy development process 
• Make greater use of social media to communicate with staff, customers and industry 
• Increase online access to government services 
• Collaborate with community, industry and research partners to co-design service solutions 

Those of us in the Government 2.0 space will be watching - and helping where we can, both openly and behind the scenes.

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Is Parliament House the peoples' house? Beth Noveck: Demand a more open-source government

Is Parliament House the peoples' house or the government's house?

This is one of the fundamental considerations within the open government movement. Does government exist to serve the public? Who participates in developing policy, creating laws and deciding what is best for citizens and communities?

Beth Noveck, in her TED Global presentation, Demand a more open-source government, poses a number of challenges to citizens and governments around the world to open up governance processes, involving citizens at every stage.

Brought to my attention by Andrew Krzmarzick of Govloop, Beth Noveck Delivers Terrific TED Talk on Open Government, Noveck's talk is the best I've seen on the topic this year.

There's also a great blog post about the presentation at the TED site, Demand a more open-source government: Beth Noveck at TEDGlobal 2012

I strongly recommend that you watch Noveck's talk and share it widely with your colleagues.

 

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Mapping open data site generations

Over the last three years we've seen an increasing level of sophistication and capabilities in successive generations of open data sites.

To aid governments in their open data journey, I've mapped five generations for the progressive development of open data sites, detailed in the document below.

Please feel free to reuse the information within the bounds of the embedded Creative Commons license.

My next task is to release a view of open data sites around the world mapped against these generations to provide a view as to who is leading and who is lagging in the open data stakes.

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Australia's first 3rd Generation open data site - from the ACT

The ACT government today announced the soft-launch of their new open data site,  dataACT, through their equally new  Government Information Office blog.

In my view this is now the best government open data site in Australia.

What makes it the best?

• Data is available in a range of common reusable formats - from JSON and RDF through RSS and XML - as well as CSV and XLS for spreadsheet users.
• Visualisation tools are built into the site, so data is not only useful to data scientists and programmers, but to the broader public who can chart and map it without having to leave the site.
• The built-in embed tool allows people to take the data and rapidly include it in their own site without any programming knowledge.
• Users can reorder the columns and filter the information in the site - again without having to export it first, and
• discussions are built into every dataset by default.

It follows a 'generational' path for open data I've been talking about for awhile.

Most open data sites start as random collections of whatever data that agencies feel they can release as a 'quick win', to meet a government openness directive. They then progressing through more structured sites with rigour and organisation, but still only data, through to data and visualisation sites which support broader usage by the general community and finally into what I term 'data community sites', which become collaborative efforts with citizens.

In my view dataACT has skipped straight to a 3rd Generation data site at a time when other governments across Australia are struggling with 1st or 2nd Generation sites.

Well done ACT!

Now who will be the first government in Australia to get to a 4th Generation site!

Read on for my view of the generations of open data sites:

1st Generation: Data index

• Contains or links to 'random' datasets, being those that agencies can release publicly quickly. 
• Data is released in whatever format the data was held in (PDF, CSV, etc) and is not reformatted to web standards (JSON, RDF, etc).
• Some datasets are released under custom or restrictive licenses.
• Limited or no ability to discuss or rate datasets
• Ability to 'request datasets', but with no response process or common workflow

2nd Generation:  Structured data index

• Some thought regarding selective datasets, but largely 'random'
• More standardisation of data formats to be reusable online
• More standardisation of data licenses to permit consistent reuse
• Tagging and commenting supported (as in a blog for the site), with limited interaction by site management
• Workflows introduced for dataset requests, with agencies required to respond as to when they will release, or why they will not release, data
• Ability to list websites, services and mobile apps created using data

3rd Generation: Standardised data index

• Standardisation of data formats with at least manual conversion of data between common standard formats 
• Standardisation of data licenses to permit consistent reuse
• Tagging and commenting supported, with active interaction by site management
• Data request workflows largely automated and integrated with FOI processes
• Ability to filter, sort and visualise data within the site to broaden usage to non-technical citizens
• Ability to embed data and visualisations from site in other sites
• Ability to list, rate and comment on websites, services and mobile apps created using data

4th Generation: Data community

• Strategic co-ordinated release of data by agencies to provide segment-specific data pictures of specific topics or locations
• Standardisation of data formats with automatic conversion of data between common standard formats
• Standardised data licenses
• Tagging, commenting and data rating supported, with active interaction by site management and data holding agencies
• Data request workflows fully automated and integrated with FOI processes with transparent workflows in the site showing what stage the data release is up to - (data requested, communicated to agency, considered by agency, approved for release, being cleaned/formatted, legal clearances checked, released/refused release)
• Support for data correction and conversion by the public
• Support for upload of citizen and private enterprise datasets
• Ability to filter, sort and visualise data, including mashing up discrete datasets within the site to broaden usage to non-technical citizens
• Ability to request data visualisations as a data request
• Supports collaboration between hackers to co-develop websites, services and mobile apps using data
• Integrates the capability to run hack events - potentially on a more frequent basis (form/enter teams/submit hack proposals/submit hacks/public and internal voting/Winner promotion)

5th Generation: Integrated data platform

• A common platform for all national, state and local data, with the capabilities for each jurisdiction to make use of all Generation 4 features.
• Integrated mapping environment for all levels of government, enabled with all available open data.

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GovCamp Canberra – one week away!

GovCamp Canberra looks like it will be a fantastic event (I'll confirm afterwards as I'm attending).

If you've not registered to attend, it's probably too late to be there in person - though if you're on the waiting list you may get a spot at short notice if anyone pulls out.

However GovCamp will be livestreamed (if your organisation lets you stream video), liveblogged (if your organisation doesn't block blogs) and tweeted (if you're allowed access to Twitter). Keep an eye on the GovCamp Canberra site for details.

It's also not the only event on during APS Innovation Week 2012. Look at the full list of events at the APS Innovation blog.

I've included the GovCamp media release below, which provides more information.


GOVCAMP 2012 MEDIA RELEASE MAY 21 2012

GovCamp Canberra is coming up on the 5th June and event organisers anticipate a lively day of discussions, leadership, case studies and workshops, with attendees invited to share their ideas and find new opportunities to collaborate and innovate in the public service.

The sold out free event provides a platform for public servants to share and identify ideas on how government can better achieve its goals, promote transparency and support initiatives which encourage greater particpation by citizens with government.

Spokesperson Pia Waugh said “times have changed, public servants now understand the importance of change and innovative ideas in delivering a public service, particularly to meet fiscal pressures. It is critical for public servants to continually adapt to changing Australian citizen’s needs and this event is a great way to share how people have been doing just that”.

“Having GovCamp as part of 2012 Innovation week has really cemented the idea that we need free flowing conversations like this on a regular occasion. The fact we can do it as a free event, with the support of some wonderful sponsors, means it’s a good choice for government agencies to have their staff attend”.

This years GovCamp will cover a number of areas around innovation within the APS and the implementation and progress of Gov 2.0 projects. Speakers will also look at how government can better deliver services into the future.

“We are fortunate that this year we have some very senior level staff coming along to talk about innovation, technology and change at a strategy level and how they think government needs to evolve. We are hoping this type of direct interaction between a range of different leveled staff from within the public service will generate some very frank discussion”, Waugh said.

GovCamp speakers include the Australian Information Commissioner, John Macmillan AO, an Academic Forum with leading research on Public Sector Innovation chaired by Sandford Borins, a case studies panel showcasing leading examples of innovation in practice, a Senior Leaders Panel and the closing speech by Andrea Di Maio, a public sector innovation and Gov 2.0 expert from Gartner.

The lunch time address is a specially recorded speech from Mike Bracken from the Government Digital Service, UK Government Cabinet Office.

You can view the event information, including the schedule and speakers at www.govcampau.org. The event will be live streamed so check the website for video details closer to the date or register on the waitlist to be advised about the live stream details.

Organisers: #Gov2au, Rewired State, eGovernment Technology Cluster
Gold Sponsors: Adobe, MailChimp, Palantir
Silver Sponsors: Cisco, Google, Ninefold, eGovernment Technology Cluster, CSIRO, AGIMO
In-kind Sponsors: Link Digital, Newcast, Salesforce, University of Canberra

Contact Pia Waugh on 0400 966 453 for any other media enquiries.

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Chrome beats Internet Explore in browser stakes

There was surprising news from StatCounter earlier this month when Chrome topped Internet Explorer as the most popular web browser for the week of 14-20 May.

Sourced from CNET: Chrome now world's top browser, but beware the math

While this is only one of the services reporting browser use, represents only one week and is a global figure - so may not represent the situation in specific countries (such as Australia) - it is indicative of the changes underway in the web browsing habits of people around the world.

All major international reports on web browser usage have reported that Internet Explorer has been on a downward slide for several years, with Chrome or Safari picking up most of the market share shift and Firefox and Opera being limited beneficiaries.

While this reflects the growth of mobile browsing (Apple iOS uses Safari, Android devices use Chrome), it also represents a significant change in desktop and laptop computer use.

While corporate and government organisations remain major uses of Internet Explorer due to its lead in corporate management features (though Firefox and Chrome have moved to match these), households are choosing their main web browser based on speed, usability and usefulness.

Reliable Australian web browsing figures are harder to find - it would be very useful if organisations such as Google or Facebook (the top sites visited by Australians) released their figures.

However I can say that, from Microsoft's figures, Internet Explorer 6 use in Australia has fallen to 1.2% of the browsing public. This is a GOOD THING as IE6 is an 11 year old vendor-unsupported, insecure and standards non-compliant web browser, unsupported by many major websites and which adds, in my experience, 20-30% on the costs of any web development project.

I should note that Microsoft is trying to end the use of Internet Explorer 6 and has even begun taken steps to automatically upgrade people to more modern versions (beginning with Australia and Brazil).

You can learn more about Microsoft's campaign to end IE6 at their website, The IE6 Countdown.

Sorry if you are one of the remaining organisations using IE6, however my FOI request on web browsing and social media use across government has revealed that largely agencies have made or are making the move to upgrade.

From the now 65 responses I've been able to analyse, only 7 (11%) indicated they still used IE6 on desktop computers. While this is quite a bit higher than the national rate (1.2%), it is much smaller than I had anticipated. Of course if this includes large agencies the percentage of APS staff using IE6 may be significantly higher.

I've provided a breakdown below of the browsers that government agencies indicated they used.

Notes and caveats

• this represents 65 agencies, large and small, of 166 approached - so is representative but not population data
• many agencies used more than one web browser, so the figures don't add up to 65. 
• I've excluded browsers that no agency indicated they used (and I asked about all major browsers back to the time of Internet Explorer 6's release). 
• I forgot to ask about the use of Blackberry's browser on mobile phones - essentially every agency using Blackberries use this browser.

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

Every government website serves a different purpose and a different audience, however there are also standard content every site must have and legislation and standardised policies they must follow.

This includes content such as a privacy policy, legal disclaimer,  terms of use, accessibility statement, copyright, social media channels, contact page, information publication (FOI) pages and so on. It also includes the navigational structure and internal ordering of pages and the web addresses to access this content (such as for 'about us' pages).

So is there a case to standardise the templates and/or content of these pages and where to find them in websites across government?

I think so.

From an audience perspective, there is a strong case to do so. Citizens often use multiple government websites and it makes their experience more streamlined and efficient if they can find what they need in a consistent place (such as www.agency.gov.au/privacy), written in a consistent format and, where possible, using identical or near identical language.

It would also save money and time. Rather than having to write and seek legal approval for the full page content (such as for privacy information), only agency-specific parts would need writing or approval. Websites could be established more rapidly using the standard content pages and lawyers could focus on higher value tasks.

To put a number on the current cost of individually creating standard, if you assume it cost, in time and effort, around $500 to develop a privacy policy and that there are around 941 government websites (according to Government's online info offensive a flop), it would have cost up to $470,500 for individual privacy policies for all sites. Multiple this by the number of potentially standardisable pages and the millions begin adding up.

Standardisation could even minimise legal risks. It removes a potential point of failure from agencies who are not resourced or have the expertise to create appropriate policies and expose themselves to greater risks - such as over poorly written legal disclaimers which leave them open to being sued by citizens.

In some cases it may be possible to use the same standard text, with a few optional inclusions or agency-specific variations - such as for privacy policies, disclaimers, accessibility statements, terms of use, and similar standard pages.

In other cases it won't be possible to use the same content (such as for 'about us' pages), however the location and structure of the page can be similar - still providing public benefits.

Let's take privacy policies specifically for a moment.There's incredible diversity of privacy policies across Australian Government websites, although they are all subject to the same legislation (the Privacy Act 1988) and largely cover the same topics (with some variation in detail).

While this is good for lawyers, who get to write or review these policies, it may not be as good for citizens - who need to contend with different policies when they seek to register for updates or services.

Many government privacy policies are reviewed rarely, due to time and resource constraints, which may place agencies at risk where the use of new tools (such as Youtube, Slideshare and Scribd) to embed or manipulate content within agency sites can expose users unknowingly to the privacy conditions of third party sites (see how we handled these in myregion's privacy policy with an extendable third party section).

So, how would government go about standardisation? Although effectively a single entity, the government functions as a group of agencies who set their own policies and manage their own risks.

With the existence and role of AGIMO, and the WebGuide, there is a central forum for providing model content to reflect the minimum standard agencies must meet. There are mandatory guidelines for agencies, such as for privacy, however limited guidance on how to meet it. A standard privacy policy could be included and promoted as a base for other agencies to work from, or even provided as an inclusion for sites who wanted to have a policy which was centrally maintained and auto-updated.

Alternatively web managers across government could work together, through a service such as GovDex, to create and maintain standard pages using a wiki-based approach. This would allow for a consistently improving standard and garner grassroots buy-in, plus leverage the skills of the most experienced web masters.

There's undoubtably other ways to move towards standardised pages, even simply within an agency, which itself can be a struggle for those with many websites and decentralised web management.


Regardless of the method selected, the case should receive consideration. Does government really need hundreds of versions of what is standard content, or only a few?


Examples of government privacy policies (spot the similarities and differences):

• http://health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/privacy_security.htm
• http://www.immi.gov.au/functional/privacy.htm
• http://www.ag.gov.au/Pages/Disclaimers/Privacystatement.aspx
• http://www.dpmc.gov.au/privacy.cfm
• http://daff.gov.au/about/privacy
• http://www.deewr.gov.au/Pages/Privacy.aspx
• http://www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/legal/privacy.htm?OpenDocument&nav=footer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Intranet Innovation Awards 2012 open for entries

Step Two's annual global Intranet Innovation Awards for 2012 are now open for entry until 31 May 2012.

If you've done something extraordinary with your intranet this is a great way to get your organisation recognised for this work and share your idea with others across the intranet space.

The awards aren't just for entire intranets - you can simply enter a particular feature or tool - and you don't need to be a big organisation to necessarily win, many smaller organisations have done well where they've been agile and innovative.

For more information and to enter, visit http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/the-2012-intranet-innovation-awards-are-now-open-for-entries/

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Victorian government launches consultation blog for a new Vic.gov.au site

The Victorian government has launched a blog asking users for their ideas on how to improve the vic.gov.au website as it goes through a redevelopment.

The /blog states that the aim of the redevelopment is to provide:

• an appealing new branding and identity for the www.vic.gov.au website 
•  a new and usable look and feel 
• a more modern and relevant site to visitors 
• an easier way to find information (improved search and a clear starting point and navigation options) 
• more dynamic content 

So far the blog has attracted 14 comments on its (so far) three posts - with several being comments from the blog team responding to user feedback.

Alongside the blog it is also possible to rate vic.gov.au at the Victoria Online Customer Satisfaction survey.

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Governments need to ensure their websites work for modern users

I went to the Australian Business Register site (www.abr.gov.au) this afternoon to set up an ABN (Australian Business Number) for a company.

This is a very common step, taken by hundreds, if not thousands, of Australians every week.

However I immediately hit a speed bump.

The site's online ABN registration process threw up an error message (image below) stating:

Browser not supported

The Australian Business Register currently supports the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer 5.0 and above
• Netscape 6.0 and above

You should update your browser version before you continue using the Australian Business Register. If you believe your current browser is suitable to use, please continue.

Refer to Technical Information for details on how to configure for your browser for the Australian Business Register.

This was confusing and offputting as I was using Firefox 11.0 - one of the most modern web browsers available.

Fortunately I had Internet Explorer 9 on my system and gave this a try - no error screen appeared.

Now if you read far enough into the error message it does state that 'If you believe your current browser is suitable to use, please continue.' - however I was in a hurry at the time and, like many users, didn't read the error message all the way through.

The error message visible at the Australian Business Register site,
together with the 'About' information window for the web browser in use

Regardless of whether this translates into a user error, I believe that there is an obligation on government agencies to ensure their websites are accessible and usable in modern web browsers without unnecessary and confusing error screens.

Essentially, when I have Firefox 11.0, I don't expect to receive an error stating I need 'Internet Explorer 5.0 and above' or 'Netscape 6.0 and above' - as my web browser is "above" both and, in fact neither of those web browsers have been current for more than 10 years!

For such an important and common business process as registering an ABN the responsible agency needs to take a little more care in its online delivery of services.

Otherwise their online services will damage trust and respect in the government's ability to deliver and cause customers to migrate to what are slower and (for agencies) higher cost channels.

I'll bring this issue to the attention of the responsible agency, the Australian Tax Office, and check back in six months to see if anything has changed.

For all other government agencies out there, please check that your public online systems aren't needlessly damaging your credibility in this way. Please make sure your websites work for modern users!

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Australian government agencies achieving the highest click-throughs of all sectors for email marketing campaigns

I've been browsing the latest Email Market Matrics Australia report from Vision6 and it definitely has good news for government agencies.

This series of reports has been running since the second half of 2006 and has, for me, provided a very useful insight into the effectiveness of email marketing in Australia over the last five years.

The reports are based on data from Vision6, so there's a slight bias based on being a single vendor (competitors such as CampaignMonitor don't yet release similar reports, or combine their information into a single industry report). However it is based on 259 million messages distributed via 112,000 separate campaigns by predominantly Australian companies (and they exclude all emails sent by  stand alone resellers and corporate networks) - so it is a large sample for reporting purposes.

Vision6's software (similar to its competitors) tracks email campaigns by sends, bounces, email opens and click throughs (to links in email messages).

This provides very useful ROI data for agencies. I have always tried to encourage agencies to use these types of tools to manage their email newsletters so they can properly report on them and detect user sentiment and trends (this also takes the load off the, often overburdened, email systems used by government agencies).

The cost of these products is quite low considering their capabilities - particularly when looking at A/B testing to identify the most effective newsletter format and content (by sending differently formated emails to several small subsets of your email list, comparing open rate/click throughs and then distributing the most effective email format to the full list).

I'm not aware of any agencies who do currently use A/B testing for either email or websites, though this is widely used by business to maximise ROI - however I live in hope.

Back to the Vision6 survey and its results - the latest July-December 2011 survey reports that  government agencies and defense have retained their position as achieving the highest open rate of any industry sector in Australia, with 31.66% of emails opened by recipients (an increase of 0.97% from last survey).

This means that if, as a government agency,  you send out an email to a 10,000 person list, on average 3,166 of them will be opened. The others will end up deleted, ignored, blocked or bounced (where email addresses are full or closed).

While this doesn't sound great, it's actually a much higher exposure level than achieved through other mediums. It's also a much better rate than for many other industries, such as construction (20.99% open rate) or sales and marketing (14.79% open rate).

It is also important to consider that smaller lists tend to achieve higher open rates - perhaps due to the additional effort in managing the integrity of larger lists.

By send volume, on average across all industries, lists with under 500 subscribers achieve a 33.17% open rate, dropping to 19.76% for lists with more than 10,000 subscribers.


Government also topped the unique clickthrough rates for all sectors, with 8.42% of subscribers clicking through from the email to further information on a website. This compares to the bottom-place IT and Telecommunications sector, which only received a unique clickthrough rate of 2.25%.

The average clickthrough rate for all sectors was 4.22%, although this also declined by list size (from 7.31% for up to 499 subscribers down to 4.07% for lists of 10,000 or more.

Government also did well on bounce rates, with only 4.43% of emails not getting through. Whilest not the lowest rate, which is held by the Call Centre/Customer service sector with 3.29%, government was third highest and much, much better than the 15.27% bounce rate suffered by the Science and Technology sector, or 10.47% by the Manufacturing/Operations sector.

The average bounce rate was 5.45% and, interestingly bounce rates didn't consistently increase with larger lists.

Vision6's report indicated that lists with under 500 subscribers received, on average, a bounce rate of 5.28%. However lists with more than 10,000 subscribers received a marginally lower 5.26%. There was a bump in the middle however, with lists of 5,000-9,999 receiving 6.07% bounces and lists with 500-999 and 1,000-4,999 reaching 5.90% and 5.70% respectively.

The time taken to open email addresses appears to be falling, with 29.46% opened in the first 24 hours and 90.72% in the first 72 hours. Vision 6 reports that this last figure has increased consistently onver the last five years.

So, finally, what about the email clients used by people? This is important as emails can be distorted, or even unreadable, if the email client doesn't correctly display it.

While the majority of government agencies use Outlook or Lotus Notes email, this isn't the case in the broader world.

When looking at the email clients used by people opening received emails (an average of 21.83% of emails sent), Outlook accounted for 43.54% of clients (22.24%, 14.90% and 6.40% for Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010 respectively).

Hotmail accounted for another 16.21% and iPhone Mail accounted for 15.14% of email clients (and iPad Mail for another 3.7%) - demonstrating how strong mobile email has become - followed by Apple Mail at 11.98%.

'Other' received 20.11% - which included a range of services such as Gmail, Lotus Notes and others. I would like to see Vision6 really break this out further - however individual agencies can do this if using this type of email management platform.

There's clearly a strong need for organisations to understand how their subscribers receive and view emails as there can need to be important design differences depending on the client - even between different versions of the same product (such as for Outlook).

In conclusion, government in Australia already appears to be using email marketing well - at least when they are using email management systems such as Vision6, it's harder to judge email lists that don't use a management and reporting tool.

However there always remains room to learn from the figures and further improve the design and cut-through of email newsletters - particularly as mobile email continues to strengthen.

Email is still a very strong channel for reaching people with information, particularly in older demographics where social media engagement is less, and should be a core plank of any government communication strategy.

Remember that an email list is an organisational asset. People who have agreed to receive information from you are far more likely to engage and influence others. Don't squander and destroy this asset through poorly considered email strategies, which may include too frequent, too irregular or too 'boring' email updates.

Use approaches like A/B testing to determine what layout and headlines get the most cut-through, improving your ROI, and keep an eye on what people click on to see what types of information or stories hit the mark.

Email marketing is a science, there's plenty of evidence available on what works and cost-effective quantitative measurement tools for tracking and tweaking your own email newsletters.

Don't waste the opportunity by ignoring the evidence, or destroy the ROI by not measuring, reporting and adjusting.

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govdex upgrade coming soon!

In all the time I worked in the public service I had a fondness for govdex.

As a secure collaboration system (built from the Confluence wiki platform) for government, it was often one of the few pre-built tools that agencies could use to share information between agencies.

Although it did, at times, suffer from slow speeds, low levels of promotion and a clunky interface, the support team was unfailingly helpful and cheerful and AGIMO's management stuch with it through thick and thin, knowing that govdex had the potential to transform the way agencies interacted with each other and with external stakeholders.

I am extremely pleased to see that AGIMO is working on an upgrade to govdex that will dramatically reshape the appearance and usability of the service.

Anticipated later this year (though I, for one, am happy for it to take as long as needed to ensure quality), the upgrade to govdex appears from the screenshots to make the interface far more comparable to modern online and social media tools - the tools that public servants are familiar with at home.

 AGIMO says in the govdex support pages that the new upgrade will,

make govdex more user friendly, provide easier use for navigation and collaboration, incorporate better use of customisation, improve interoperability and functionality, and accommodate Web 2.0 tools and technologies.

 The new govdex will,

will bring faster performance, greater levels of accessibility, improved document management capability, a higher degree of networking within communities, and better user customisation.

Even better, AGIMO is modelling an excellent user-centred design approach in that the system is being redeveloped based on a simple principle, "build a system for users, by users", with govdex "seeking feedback from its users on the design features of the new govdex."

I hope, with the success of this redesign, we'll see other agencies with less experience using this approach adopt this as a best practice example of user-centred design and employ the approach for their own online services to staff, stakeholders and citizens.

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Who is your Marketing or Communications CIO?

I was struck by a comment from Dan Hoban (@dwhoban) at GovCamp Queensland on Saturday, which resonated with me, and with others in the audience, that organisations now need a CIO (Chief Information Officer) in their marketing or communications teams.

This is a person who understands the technologies we use to communicate with customers, clients, citizens and stakeholders and can provide sound advice and expertise in a manner that traditional ICT teams cannot.

The role of this person is to understand the business goals and recommend approaches and technologies - particularly online - which are a best fit. Then it may be this person and their team, or an ICT team, who build and deliver the solutions needed.

When Dan named this role I realised it fit absolutely the role I had been performing in government for my five years in the public service, and for a number of years prior in the corporate sector.

Where ICT teams were focused largely on reactive management of large critical ICT systems - the SAPs, payment frameworks and secure networks - it has long been left to Online Communications, or similar teams or individuals in other parts of the organisation, to proactively introduce and manage the small and agile tools communicators use in public engagement.

No organisation I've worked in or spoken to has ICT manage their Facebook page, Twitter account, GovSpace blog or YouTube channel. Few ICT teams are equipped to cost-effectively and rapidly deliver a focused forum, blog, mobile app or data visualisation tool. They don't recruit these skills or, necessarily, have experience in the right platforms and services.

When Communications teams seek advice on the online channels and technological tools they should use they ask ICT, but frequently are told that ICT doesn't understand these systems (even when individuals within ICT might be highly skilled with them), doesn't have the time or resources to commit in the timeframes required (due to the need to focus on critical systems), doesn't have the design skills or that it would take months (sometimes years) to research and provide an effective opinion - plus it will cost a bomb.

So Communications teams, who have their own deliverables, have no choice but to recruit their own social media and online communications smarts.

It is this person, or team's role, to understand Communication needs, make rapid and sound recommendations of channels and tools, design the systems and the interfaces, integrate the technologies (or manage the contractors who do) to deliver relevant and fast solutions on a budget.

So perhaps it is time to recognise these people for what they actually are for an organisation - a Marketing or Communications CIO.

I expect ICT teams will hate this. Information has long been their domain even though their focus is often on technology systems and they do not always understand the information or communication that feeds across these systems - the reason these systems actually exist.

Perhaps it is time for them need to rethink their role, or let go of the agile online and mobile spaces and focus on the big ticket systems and networks - remain the heart, but not always the adrenal glands or, indeed, the brains, of an organisation's ICT solutions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even better, attendence is free!

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

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

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