Does Canberra already face a shortage of experienced government ICT executives?

The Mandarin reports that six significant federal agencies are currently seeking permanent Chief Information Officers, while both the ACT government and the Federal government's Digital Transition Office recently resorted to overseas hires to fill senior leadership roles requiring strong digital backgrounds.

Does this signify a shortage of senior digital and ICT talent in Australia (or at least of talent willing to work for government)?

Or is it merely a timing issue, representing a temporary hiccup in the supply of appropriately skilled executives?

While I'm sure the current shortage will be managed, it is worth considering in the light of Australia's declining number of ICT graduates, which represents a future challenge for both government and the private sector in attracting the best talent for future ICT and digital roles.

While increasingly Australia is off-shoring ICT work, or is able to buy in foreign digital services and talent, this disguises a deeper concern - that there may not be sufficient ICT and digitally trained and experienced locals in the future able to step into senior strategic roles.

If many entry and mid-level programming and digital positions are outsourced to overseas specialists, Australia won't be providing enough locals with appropriate career paths towards senior roles to support the talent development we need as a nation.

Now this isn't a new issue, the ICT industry has been shouting about it from the rooftops for at least the last three years.

However the ICT industry doesn't have the lobbying power in Canberra of other groups, from doctors to miners, and with most of Australia's senior politicians being digital immigrants at best, there's limited recognition of the scale of the issue or what positive steps can be taken to address it.

As society grows increasingly digital, the lack of strategic talent available for business and government is likely to become a significant drag on our economy and governance capability, placing us at a relative disadvantage against countries with a good talent pipeline and positive digital policies.

So while agencies are searching for those senior ICT executives they need today, they should consider how they can future-proof their talent pipelines into the future.

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No it's a not appropriate to load test on your citizens in production - particularly when it's a critical service

The last week has seen a range of major issues for the Australian Government's new MyTax service.

As reported across both traditional and social media, people using MyTax to file their tax returns have experienced shut-outs, had the process freeze when they were almost complete and had it fail to autofill their pre-saved details.

MyTax is an online version of the eTax software which had been the primary way for people to digitally complete their tax returns for the last fifteen years. eTax improved year on year and had enormous take-up. In all respects it was a major success for the ATO.

This is the first year the Australian Tax Office has deployed the MyTax system and integrated it with MyGov. While the intention was, and is, good - to give Australians a single way to validate themselves with multiple government agencies - the implementation in this case hasn't withstood the real world.

This isn't a unique experience and it isn't limited to government. We've seen it with certain banking services, with retailers (particularly on a certain contrived Australian online shopping day each year), with A-grade games (such as SimCity) and with a range of other online services such as Apple maps.

In fact this issue is relatively rare, in comparison to the private sector, in government, with the last major issue of this type internationally being with healthcare.gov in the US, and the last I recall in Australia being with the MySchools site launch.

This type of issue will happen from time to time. Unforeseen bugs or network issues, denial of service attacks or other environmental issues can bring down even the most robust service, particularly at launch.

In every one of these cases there's a backlash from customers - and in every one of these cases the organisation responsible is judged based on how they manage and recover from the disaster.

In the MyTax case, while the ATO were probably aware of the risks, and may even have learnt some lessons from several of the issues highlighted above, it appears they're still struggling to manage and recover from the situation.

When asked about the siituation the CIO of the ATO, Jane King, wrote, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, that "Capacity planning and testing was completed as part of the rolling out of the new digital design, however due to the complexity of our environment, production is always the real test."

I read this as her saying that while they did conduct testing, they were actually relying on real citizens, at real tax time, to fully evaluate how the MyTax system would perform.

Just as the UTS professor John Leaney, quoted in the SMH article above, says - this type of statement just isn't good enough.

"We're not in the 1950s; we're not even in 1990s, we've learnt a lot and from what we've learnt we apply the techniques for proper capacity modelling," Leaney said. "There should have been much better testing; it's not something you should learn the hard way on a major government system."

The ATO needs to do better at risk planning around situations like this. It needs to test capability properly and not hide behind the 'too many users' defense.

Government agencies need to carefully watch and learn from this experience - and learn the right lessons.

The first lesson is to conduct appropriate capacity testing. Look at the ABS's implementation of eCensus and the level of testing and resilience it put in place the first time eCensus was used in 2006. The ABS gave a great presentation on the topic, which I attended, which highlighted the risk mitigation steps they'd taken - from capacity testing through to multiple redundant systems and real-time monitoring with developers on standby and fallback manual systems in place.

The second lesson is to not release major systems at a time when they are going to come under a huge load. Release a new tax system in February or March, or after tax time in October, giving time to shakeout the production system and address issues before it hits peak load.

The third lesson is to avoid releasing major systems. Instead release smaller, but useful, services and progressively integrate them into a major new service, testing each carefully as they go. This is how Facebook totally replaced its back-end without any disruption to people's use of the service - modularly upgrading aspects of the service until it was completely done.

The final lesson is to plan your recovery before your system fails. Design a failover plan for what happens if the system doesn't work for people, a manual solution if required. The ATO should direct anyone with issues to a hotline where they can complete their tax return over the phone, or via screen sharing, so no-one is left waiting for days or in a position of financial distress due to not receiving a tax return fast.

I feel for the ATO (particularly their ICT team) and don't blame them for the issues they're having with MyTax, however I do hold the agency responsible for how the ATO recovers from this disaster.

They need to stop defending their implementation of MyTax and focus on ways to meet citizen needs - even outside the MyTax system - to ensure that the 'tax returns get through'.

Otherwise this issue could turn into another Apple maps-style disaster, or even worse, as there's no 'competitor' to the ATO that citizens can turn to to complete their tax returns. At least, not yet...

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Select your strategic approach carefully in social engagement - Treasury faltering at Census-like approach

Imitation is often referred to as the sincerest form of flattery, however the attempt by the Treasury to mimic the success of Census Australia's lighthearted Twitter approach demonstrates how carefully agencies must consider their social strategies in light of public opinion.

Many will remember when the ABS launched its Census Twitter campaign with an engagement styled to help make census numbers relevant to the average Australian using humour and cleverly written tweets.

The @2011Census account (now @CensusAustralia) attracted enormous public and media attention across Australia and internationally, and there was a significant increase in Census completion rates (though a number of initiatives would have helped contribute to this).

The ABS even went so far as to 'Rickroll' its followers, a sign of a government agency so comfortable with its own communication and audience that it could engage them playfully and without fear.

It was a brilliant strategy (well done Michelle), breaking the mold for government social engagement.

Now The Treasury is attempting a similar strategy on Twitter, however is receiving a very different reaction and engagement from the public.

The Treasury is a relative newcomer to social engagement, having first tweeted in July 2012. Being one of the more formal and less public-facing government agencies it took longer for The Treasury to make a decision that a social presence was safe and needed to support its external engagement activities.

However when it leapt into social, it did so with both feet, using Twitter to announce and engage on tax reform consultations and highlight its very important activities, which rarely receive public attention. 

The agency did suffer some of the usual starting pains of new organisational social users, not using hashtags, avoiding engagement with other users and generally treating Twitter as a broadcast feed resembling a news ticker, however they've grown more interactive of late and look more comfortable on the platform.

This year The Treasury has taken an additional step - taking a leaf out of the ABS's book to engage more proactively around the organisation's most significant annual event, bringing down the Australian Government Budget.

Using factoids, like the Tweet below, the agency is seeking to engage Australians in a more human and interactive way.

It would take 98hrs to print #Budget2015 papers on a standard printer. Don’t do this-check out http://t.co/AZTkfPw6lX Live: Tues 7.30pm AEST

— Australian Treasury (@Treasury_AU) May 9, 2015

Now this is a good thing, and speaks to the growing confidence of the agency on social channels. It's not easy for conservative organisations to 'let go' and allow themselves to engage in less formal and more human ways.

However the specific strategy The Treasury is using runs a large risk of backfiring on the agency.

The ABS could take a very interactive and light approach with the Census to make it relevant to Australians for the very reason that it wasn't especially relevant to many of them.

Few people had strong views about the Census process, either negative or positive. It only occurs once every five years, it has no discernable impact on people's lives the rest of the time and, while completing a census form was inconvenient for some people, it didn't really trigger a strong opposing reaction.

Essentially the ABS approach helped make the Census relevant to people, taking it from a position of irrelevance.

The Treasury is in a very different position with the Australian Government Budget.

The Budget is one of the most significant government activities each year. It is comprehensively covered by the media and is seen as a defining moment for governments, used by the public to judge their performance and their future.

Decisions in the budget affect every Australian, often in very personal and direct ways. Some see their lifestyles improve, others see them falter. It is extensively leaked and discussed ahead of its release, and the shockwaves it can send through the Australian economy can profoundly shape how the government and Australia are perceived globally and locally.

In the case of the current budget, much of the public still feel wounded from last year's budget, which saw a number of budget measures not passed and the government have to take steps back in a number of areas.

The government has taken steps to 'defuse' concerns over the current budget, and have done a good job of leaking key measures ahead of its release to assay some of the community's fears regarding its impact on their lives.

However it probably isn't the right environment to replicate the ABS census strategy - the differences in the public's starting views towards Census 2011 and Budget 2015 are enormous.

As such it looks to me as if The Treasury has perhaps become too ambitious in its approach to budget social engagement this year - a view that's being supported by the types of comments the agency is receiving on its account.

For example, The Treasury's latest tweet deals with the amount of M&Ms consumed by their Budget division staff in the weeks leading up to the budget (image below).

While the tweet, coming from the ABS Census account, would likely be well-received, coming from The Treasury it is interpreted in quite a different manner.

While it has decent retweets, the responding comments suggest that the agency doesn't (yet) have the same license to be as light and engaging as the ABS.

The tweet suggests to me the very public social mistake by Qantas a few weeks after it grounded its fleet. The #QantasLuxury campaign turned into an opportunity for the public to vent their anger.

The Treasury is risking a similar backlash to what could be seen as self-indulgent and commercial tweets, such as the one portrayed above. 

Talking about their staff's consumption of a brand of chocolate treats, or otherwise being light-hearted in engagement is not the best strategy at a time when the public is waiting in trepidation at the impact on their lives from the budget.

For the ABS a high engagement, high risk strategy had limited downside, for The Treasury there's far more potential risk and far less reward - although this tweet did get the gong as the most engaging government tweet in Australia for 10 May 2015 from Great Oz Gov Tweets (which I helped establish).

It's a bold strategy for The Treasury, and I hope it pays off, but in future the agency need to more carefully consider the environment they operate in and the profile of their subject matter, not simply their own desire to communicate and connect.

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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are more likely to use Facebook than the general Australian population

I've witnessed indigenous communications teams in government agencies dismiss the use of social media in indigenous engagement out of a belief that indigenous Australians prefer face-to-face communication and that those in remote communities had significant access issues to the Internet.

While these two views may be true, it's good to see some actual research on the topic by the McNair Ingenuity Research Institute.

As reported by SBS and in BandT, the Institute surveyed four-hundred Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders nationally on their media habits.

The results found that Facebook use by this group was twenty per cent higher than the national population average.

Lead Survey Researcher Matt Balogh said that typically across Australia 42 per cent of the adult population had a Facebook account, whereas 68 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders living in metropolitan areas of the capital cities used Facebook.

In regional towns, 61 per cent of Indigenous Australians used Facebook and in remote communities it fell to 44 per cent - still above the national population average.

Due to poor access to desktop computers and broadband, the research found that most remote users relied on mobile devices for Facebook access. As a result, Balogh said to BandT, “Indigenous Australians living in remote areas are having a completely different experience of social networks and the Internet than mainstream Australia”.

So if you're engaging with Indigenous Australian audiences, don't dismiss social media.

The research is ongoing, so expect more insights in coming years.

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What happened at the National Library's Digiculture event: Social Media and the Public Sector

On Tuesday 16 September I participated in the panel for the National Library's Digiculture event: Social Media and the Public Sector, along with Facebook's Mia Garlick and the Department of Finance's John Sheridan.

It was well attended and well-discussed on Twitter (under #digiculture), with the biggest laughs of the afternoon coming from the surprising (blooper) revelation that John's army career had lasted 22,000 years.

Speakers preparing to talk at #digiculture @nlagovau pic.twitter.com/iqZrZh4D55
— Caroline Faucher (@WriteCaroWrite) September 16, 2014

He certainly looks good for his age.

One attendee, Kenji Walker, used his sketching skills to create a visual record of the panel, which I've embedded below - thanks for this Kenji!

@nlagovau #digiculture talk: Social Media & the Public Sector sketchnote with @miakgarlick @AusGovCTO @craigthomler pic.twitter.com/EOXe9e5KqO
— Kenji Walter (@KenjiWalter) September 16, 2014

Finally The Mandarin published an article on the event, Social media in public sector: beat the journos, don’t say anything stupid 

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Get ready for the GovHack Red Carpet Awards night

This Sunday GovHack returns with the 2014 GovHack awards night.

With an exclusive Red Carpet Award event in Brisbane, and local events across Australia, it should be a great night to see which teams win the top GovHack awards for the year.

The invitation only red carpet event will be streamed nationally from the Brisbane City Town Hall from 7pm on August 10 (see video feed below).

The event will feature Adam Spencer as Master of Ceremonies, senior representatives from participating Federal, State, and Local government jurisdictions as well as many of the finalists - over 200 people in all.

I will be covering the event in Brisbane, and with over 200 entries into GovHack, there should be plenty of excitement as the National and Local winners are announced.

A complete list of GovHack entries is available online, and you can still vote for the People's Choice winner at http://hackerspace.govhack.org

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Giving the community an opportunity to understand and reshape the Australian Government budget for 2014-15

While common practice in many countries overseas, there's still limited authentic consultation on government budgets undertaken in Australia - and I think we're poorer for it.

Involving the community in setting budget priorities and educating them on how a budget is developed goes a long way towards building understanding and (very importantly) trust in public institutions and politicians.

Even if these processes are only used for informational or even political ends, such as Strong Choices in Queensland, they at least give the public visibility into the challenges that governments contend with.

Of course budget processes are far more valuable when they give people authentic opportunities to influence government decisions, but one step at a time.

With so little public consultation undertaken around the Australian Government's budget for 2014-15, I've worked with Fairfax Media this year to give the Australian public an opportunity to understand how it is constructed and provide their views.

Via my company Delib Australia, we've modelled budget revenues and expenditures in Budget Simulator and made this available via the Sydney Morning Herald's site.

The Australian Budget Simulator is open until the end of next week, at which point we'll be tallying up the feedback and presenting it to the Australian Government for review.

It's not likely to change any decisions, but at least it will help inform the discussion.

To share your views via the Australian Budget Simulator, visit: www.smh.com.au/business/federal-budget-2014/budgetsimulator/

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Time has run out for Australia to meet its April 2014 Open Government Partnership commitment

Last year the Australian Government (under the Labor party) made a commitment to the international and Australian community that it would take the necessary actions to join the Open Government Partnership (OGP) by April 2014.

The OGP is a group of 63 nations committed to making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens. It was co-founded by nations such as the US, UK and India and is currently co-chaired by our nearest neighbour, Indonesia, which is hosting the OGP's Asia-Pacific Regional Conference this year.

As one of the fourth wave to join the OGP, along with nations such as New Zealand, Australia was hardly an early adopter of this agenda. Our efforts to join started three years after the organisation was founded and at a time when many OGP members were already working on their second set of open government commitments.

Joining the OGP may not be like joining the UN's Security Council or another highly influential international body. Its aims are very specific.

However Australia is an obvious nation to be a member, as a liberal democracy with strong FOI provisions and well recognised for our past work in the Government 2.0 field, it would seem a natural fit.

Despite this, and many attempts by various journalists and civic organisations to discover how Australia's OGP membership efforts were progressing, there's been almost total silence from the Australian Government on the topic over the last six months.

There's even now an FOI request underway to discover what steps the Australian Government has been taking in regards the OGP.

The requirements for OGP membership include developing an action plan containing concrete and measurable commitments undertaken by the participating government to drive innovative reforms in the areas of transparency, accountability, and citizen engagement.

This plan must be designed through a multi-stakeholder, open, and participatory process.

These types of processes take months, not weeks. In fact nations have taken up to a year to develop their OGP action plans.

In fact there's a great post online about the 12-month process the UK ran to develop its 2013-15 plan, Story of the UK National Action Plan 2013-15.

Australia has not yet begun the process of consulting and, given the membership intake is in April 2014, I don't see there is sufficient time for even an abbreviated process.

Even if the Australian Government began public consultation this week, the UK recommends allowing at least three months for this process - plus additional time for refining the feedback, detailed consultations with the civic sector and for actually writing and approving the plan.

The only nation thus far to withdrawn from its commitment to join the OGP has been Russia, which decided it was not able or willing to meet the requirements of membership.

Will Australia join Russia, becoming the second nation to withdraw?

Or will it simply delay membership - one year, two years or more?

Perhaps we'll find out with a government announcement in the next month regarding its OGP commitment.

Or perhaps all we can expect is ongoing silence.

Either way, it is disappointing to see the Australian Government fail to live up to the high standards of openness and transparency that our politicians espouse as a core requirement for our national democracy.

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A good community engagement professional understands their tools - and picks the right ones to meet their goals

I had an interesting conversation via Twitter with @hughstephens of Dialogue Consulting on Friday regarding how and when different consultation and engagement tools should be used by government.

His view was that online surveys should not be the default consultation method for government,

Possibly going to be controversial by saying that online surveys should NOT be governments' default consultation method #gov2au
— Hugh Stephens (@hughstephens) February 21, 2014

I found this a rather unusual thing to say - though I did agree with his follow-up tweet that,

@vivmcw exactly! Just a pity that many take "innovative"/"online" to mean 'SurveyMonkey'
— Hugh Stephens (@hughstephens) February 21, 2014

There was an interesting discussion between Hugh and myself after this point, which you can follow via my Storify or directly on Twitter.

However I can boil my position down to one point: focus first on the goals of your consultation or engagement, then select the tools based on which will best suit your needs.

This approach works whatever your goals and whether you're consulting online, offline or both.

It causes me no end of concern when senior management, communication or community engagement professionals start from a position of which tool they prefer to use and then justify it within the goals they seek to achieve.

This can lead to distortion of the goals, poor outcomes and, potentially, significant pain for agencies, councils and governments or councillors when there's substantial pushback on the decisions arrived at via this process.

I'm also concerned when I hear engagement professionals state personal biases for or against specific types of tools. This can also bias an engagement process.

Someone who doesn't like, is unfamiliar with, or out-of-date on the capabilities of certain types of consultation and engagement tools may not be able to provide the best advice as to which tools and approaches will best meet an organisation's engagement goals.

I've been talking about this issue for around eight years now within and with government, exposing public sector professionals to a range of online approaches now available to them for engagement purposes to deepen and broaden their toolkit.

Only by understanding the capabilities, strengths and weaknesses of a good cross-section of the tools available today can communication and engagement professionals provide good advice to their senior management and elected officials regarding how to achieve their goals.

So for everyone involved in community engagement from the public sector - don't focus on the tools you like or dislike, focus on your goals.

Use your breadth of experience with different engagement and consultation approaches, together with evidence of past successes and failures, to select the right tools to meet your goals, whatever they happen to be!

PS: I'll shortly be crowdfunding a product designed to help community engagement and communications professionals to understand and select the right online tools for their goals. It is based on the training tool I developed and have been using successfully around the world for the last eight years.

Keep an eye out for more information in my blog and at socialmediaplanner.com.au

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First the internet, then social media and now crowdfunding is disrupting government

Government has proven no more immune to disruption by digital than any other industry.

The internet changed the model for governments in delivering information and dealing with pressure groups. It has been a largely positive disruption, facilitated billions in savings as government moved services online in egovernment initiatives. At the same time it has seen governments able to provide the same, or more, services to citizens without growing staff numbers at the same rate as population growth.

In Australia the Australian Public Service employs roughly the same number of staff as in 1990, despite a 30% increase in our population. While not all attributable to egovernment, I think it is fair to say that considering the range of services and activities of the Australian Government today, compared to 40 years ago, digitalisation has had a substantial impact in respect of job numbers.

Social media has been a more uncomfortable disruption for government, thus far providing for a mixed experience. Governments in Australia have rapidly adopted the use of social media - as I track through the proxy of Twitter accounts (over 920 today compared to none in early 2007) - using social platforms for activities from communication to engagement, customer service, codesign and policy development.

At the same time social media has challenged government by giving millions a more public voice and way to organise groups - from simple petitions for bank notes usable by blind people through to connecting people and facilitating the organisation of mass rallies during the Arab Spring.

Governments have found it more difficult to ignore self-organising groups than single isolated individuals, and have begun to face continual critiquing of every decision as soon as it is announced - an unprecedented environment of scrutiny and noise.

However the clamour of critics on social networks can be ignored - we've already seen several elected politicians cancel social media accounts and put much greater constraints around how their staff use these networks.

The next disruption, crowdfunding, is already showing some signs of having a material impact beyond that of raised voices and organised protests.

Historically when governments stopped funding activities or services, or changed what they delivered - as a result of electoral and policy changes - the media would comment, the public would talk about it for a few weeks, maybe even protest, and then generally governments could get on with delivering their new mix without significant disruption.

Governments were in control - they chose where their budget was spent and things that were cut remained cut.

Of course some form of charity or other provider might choose to find alternative funding to continue delivering a service on a small scale, however this could be safely ignored, or even declared a win by government as it was clear that government didn't need to fund that service anyway.

This line was actually used very recently by the current Australian government after it defunded the Climate Change Commission (a government-funded body for providing expert advice on climate change to the public) and the commissioners went out to find alternative funding.

However something was different on this occasion.

Rather than having a few organisations or wealthy and concerned individuals provide funds to keep the Climate Change Commission alive under a new name, the Climate Council, the Commissioners used a crowdfunding route.

The first donation to keep the Climate Council live was $15. Over the first 12 hours it raised $160,000 - literally overnight.

At the end of the first week the Climate Council had raised one million dollars, and the donations continued to arrive.

For awhile it was unclear whether this was a once-off event. The Climate Commission dealt with an emotive topic - climate change - and was led by prominent and well-respected Australian, Professor Tim Flannery. It was an existing body with an existing purpose, so already had structure and goals.

This was a useful combination for crowdfunding, providing a leg-up for marshalling the right crowd to provide the donations required to continue operations.

However we're now seeing crowd funding used to underpin the completion of another defunded Australian Government project, the Blueprint for an Ageing Australia.

While it is unclear whether this project will meet its goal, it is beginning to suggest that crowdfunding may become a regular tactic used to counter government decisions.


Effectively communities could use crowdfunding, in certain casesm as an alternative to government funding. The approach allows them to self-organise and finance public initiatives that they feel are important but governments, for funding or ideological reasons, do not.

The impact of this crowdfunding may be benign - communities simply getting the services they wish, regardless of the government's priorities - or may be considered highly political.

If a government defunds something and then supporters find the funds in the crowd to keep it alive, what does that say about the community's view of the government's priorities and decisions? Will governments be forced to back down or change their approach? Will it affect elections?

This is still very early days, however it is worth governments beginning to build their awareness of crowdfunding and how it is beginning to be used - as well as how it can be used for the benefit of government, such as by seeking some public crowdfunding for an initiative before agreeing to put public money into the mix.

At the end of the day an individual putting down their personal cash to back a crowdfunding project is a significantly greater commitment of belief and value than a signature on a petition, a social media backlash or even a march on the street. Governments need to appreciate and understand this and treat it accordingly.

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Register now for BarCamp Canberra (on 15 March)

Register now for BarCamp Canberra 2014

What is BarCamp Canberra? An annual event now in it's seventh year, BarCamp Canberra is part of the global movement of self-organised conferences, of which thousands have been run.

As a free event, BarCamp Canberra covers topics from science and social media to design and democracy, inviting attendees to network and interact with each other through the day.

Speakers are not pre-organised, but determined on the day, with the three rooms available meaning there will be up to 40 presentations to choose from.

To see what others think about BarCamp Canberra, view the videos below.

For more details on what you can expect at the event, visit the BarCamp Canberra website.

Note - I am one of the 'unorganisers' for the event.

The view of an attendee at BarCamp Canberra 2013

A presentation from BarCamp 2013: Where's my jetpack?

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Has Gov 2.0 in Australia got too boring too fast?

Clay Shirky once said, about social media, that "These tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring."

Over the past year I've seen extremely encouraging signs across government in Australia that the use of social media has reached this point, become boring, as it has been normalised into agency operations.

Most federal and state government agencies now have multiple active social media accounts (with councils lagging a little behind), the majority of government communications campaigns involve social media - often in a central way.

Formal and informal support for social media use by government is now widespread. For example the Victorian Government has appointed a senior person in Premier and Cabinet to lead the education of the public sector in using social media. The Australian government's Secretary's Board has also recommended that agencies make greater use of social media channels in their operations and public engagement. The APS Cross Agency Social Media (CASM) group in Canberra is flourishing, as is the Emergency Management Social Media group in Victoria and other states have well-attended groups meeting semi-regularly - from #SocAdl in South Australia to NSW's IPAA Social Media Special Interest Group.

In fact any state and federal agencies who aren't engaging via social channels are now tail-enders - you know who you are.

Agencies have also made firm, if cautious, steps into crowdsourcing, sponsoring independent events like GovHack and, in some cases, running their own crowdsourcing campaigns, like Victoria's Seed Challenge, the ACT's Digital Canberra Challenge and NSW's AppsForNSW.

Governments across Australia are now actively considering mobile, both when designing websites and for specialist apps, with a long list of federal agency apps at Australia.gov.au. Victoria has a similar list, as do various agencies in other states, such as WA Health and QLD's Department of Education, Training and Employment.

Open data is on a slower path, but has momentum. Most states and territories (excluding Tasmania, Western Australia and the Northern Territory) have open data catalogues, with varying degrees of sophistication. The federal data.gov.au site has taken major steps forward recently, reorganising its approach and starting to release more data. I still feel there's a patchwork approach to open data, with explicit mandates similar to US and UK examples rare and many agencies conspicuously absent from these catalogues, but progress is being made.

With all of this going on, we are stepping into a situation where the use of Gov 2.0 techniques, at least in pockets across government, is becoming business as usual - everyday, boring, humdrum.

Potentially as a result we've seen a reduction in the level of conversation on Twitter via #gov2au, with the volume of tweets well down on previous years. Social media and Gov 2.0 conferences for government are also finding it harder to attract attendees using the same formulas as in past years - with people seeking more sophisticated and specific information.

We've seen attendance at free Gov 2.0 events (such as the ones I run for several years in Canberra), fluctuate more widely - with less of a core base and more 'one-timers' coming to sessions that specifically interest them.

There's been no increase in the number of public servants blogging about the topics. Frankly I see more fear of speaking out on social media across the public service today then existed four years ago when the Gov 2.0 Taskforce's lead-by-example approach was still influencing public servants to actively discuss their successes and professional challenges online.

So has Gov 2.0 become boring too fast in Australia?

Harkening back to Shirky's statement from the start of my post, with Gov 2.0 now less concerned with the technology and more with engagement and behaviours, shouldn't we see more conversation, innovation and experimentation online by governments now that the basics of Gov 2.0 are largely accepted?

Shouldn't we see more conversation, more voices, more blogs, more tweets, more people packing out events seeking the latest information in what is one of the most rapidly changing environments in history - the internet?

I can see this happening in the UK, US and across Europe and South America, where public servants are increasingly excited about the potential for Gov 2.0 approaches to save money, engage citizens and improve outcomes. The first wave of enthusiasts is still involved as thought leaders and in more senior roles, which successive waves of public servants have kept agencies driving forward to improve and extend their social media capabilities.

In Australia, however, the voices appear to be falling mute. The first generation of Gov 2.0 enthusiasts (including myself) have either moved out of government to  other things, have taken on broader duties or are burnt out and disillusioned (the fate of many first wave enthusiasts across many areas).

The second wave, who have been left to implement the 'standard' social media channels now accepted and widespread in government, are busy with the machinery of running day-to-day channels - content, tone and crisis management. They often have less time to look at new developments or the bigger picture, or less interest in stepping up after seeing the first wave move on.

And the third wave - who bring a renewed sense of wonder and passion to the area, who stimulate the next set of leaps forward - don't appear to have emerged to any great extent. I hope they are simply waiting in junior roles for the opportunity to step up and reshape the public sector in new ways.

Technology is advancing faster than ever, new options and challenges for governments are appearing every day - how do we foster the continued enthusiasm necessary for agencies to continue to evolve their approaches and tools to generate better outcomes for old issues and to meet the challenges that emerge?

How do we cultivate the spark of Gov 2.0 in Australia, so that it doesn't get 'boring', frozen in place and time?

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Canberra University launches Graduate Certificate in Social Media and Public Engagement

Universities in Australia have lagged behind public and commercial use of social media and need for their staff to be trained in effective development and implementation of online engagement approaches.

However this looks to be changing with the launch of Canberra University's Graduate Certificate in Social Media and Public Engagement.

As a one year part-time primarily online course the Graduate Certificate aims to give participating students the practical skills and theoretical knowledge they need to work in rapidly changing online and social media environments - with a particular focus on a public sector context.

Each semester involves a face-to-face masterclass with academics and social media professionals, with ongoing lectures and coursework delivered online. This means the course is accessible to potential students right across Australia.

Designed to support public servants who are new to online engagement, or are seeking formal qualifications to back-up their existing experience, the course is rated as relevant for a broad range of public sector professionals including communications and information communications technology staff, policymakers and stakeholder/community/online engagement managers.

It may also be valuable for people working in other sectors in roles that touch on or who are interested in social media and social technologies, change, e-government more broadly, public policymaking, the media and society, and the formation of public opinion.

I'm pleased to say that the course developers have consulted extensively with senior public servants and public sector social media practitioners. I've also been involved in providing input into the program (and will help out in some of the course delivery).

More information on the course is available at Canberra University's website (http://www.canberra.edu.au/faculties/arts-design/courses/postgraduate/social-media) - and there's still time to enrol for the 2014 intake!

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Why Australian councils and other governments need to be very careful using SurveyMonkey & other US-owned online engagement tools

I've had an interesting and robust conversation online in the last day regarding how Australian councils and governments are using overseas services like SurveyMonkey to collect information from citizens and residents.

It's no secret that SurveyMonkey in particular is widely used, with other tools like SurveyGizmo and Wufoo also used by many Australian councils and governments to collect personal information from citizens in consultations.

I think these are great tools - well-made and cost-effective. In the past, I have also encouraged and supported their use.

However every council and agency using them needs to be very careful in doing so.

Many of these tools are owned by US companies, which makes them subject to the Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The Patriot Act, passed in 2001, was designed to fight terrorism in the US and strengthened FISA, originally passed in 1978 , to make it legal for certain US agencies to request data from US companies pertaining to non-US citizens, while prohibiting the company from revealing that the data has been taken.

What this means in practice is that any data collected by an Australian government or council in a US owned services such as SurveyMonkey may be provided to the US government, without informing or requiring the permission of the Australian jurisdiction or the individuals whose personal data is taken.

Whether or not the US government exercises its rights under the Patriot Act and FISA, any Australian government using US-owned online services (regardless of where in the world they are hosted), cannot legally make the guarantees they are required to make under the Australian Privacy Act to control how any personal information they collect on citizens and residents is distributed or used and to only use the data for the purpose for which it was collected.

This poses a major challenge to Australian councils and agencies as they are open to being found in breach of the revised Privacy Act, which now includes million dollar fines for governments that do not comply with it.

I recommend reading the new Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), as provided by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, to get an overview of the impact of the privacy changes, in particular APP 1 (which requires actual privacy documentation from entities), APP 2 and APP 8.

APP 2 outlines the requirement to support anonymous and pseudonymous responses to consultations - meaning that any service or approach (including RSVPs to a physical event) that requires a user's real name may no longer be legally able to be the only channel for consultation responses.

APP 8 is particularly worth reading for how organisations that collect personal data are allowed to share it across jurisdictions. I'll let people read it for themselves and source their own legal interpretation, as it places a large legal question mark over the use of US-owned services due to the Patriot Act and FISA.

Any council using US-owned online engagement tools must decide whether convenience and saving a few dollars is worth the risk - knowing that they are breaking Australian law.

Of course this shouldn't stop councils or agencies from using online engagement services. Provided an online engagement service meets the requirements of the Privacy Act it is fine for an Australian government to use them.

This covers data collection services from companies domiciled in nations which do not have an equivalent to the Patriot Act and FISA - such as the UK, New Zealand and Canada, amongst others.

It also doesn't exclude the use of US-owned services such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter where citizens have directly chosen to sign-up to the service based on its terms of service. The presumption is that citizens will do due diligence and make their own risk assessment regarding whether they are happy to comply with US laws. Where governments have a presence, they are not the direct intermediary for citizens using the service and therefore only need to be mindful of the privacy ramifications of information published on the council or agency's own account pages.

It may also be possible to mitigate legal risks around tools like SurveyMonkey through excluding all personal questions in surveys - although this could be more difficult to defend in some cases as the IP address and other metadata automatically collected by these services may be sufficient to built a connection and identify a respondent.

Or government agency or council could require all respondents to agree explicitly before engaging that they understand that the Australian jurisdiction collecting their data cannot guarantee the safety of that information due to US law - although this could seriously damage the level of actual engagement and trust.


Fortunately, however, when agencies and councils look into the use of online engagement tools they don't need to only look at US or other overseas providers.

There are local providers of online engagement tools, including the company I now lead, Delib Australia.

Local providers are required to meet all Australian laws and, for the most part, host their services locally (as Delib does), removing jurisdictional risk and potentially making them faster to use (as data doesn't have to travel over congested international networks).

That can raise prices a little - hosting in Australia is more expensive than hosting in the US and local providers can't access the same economies of scale or venture funding as US companies.

However it doesn't raise the price that much, when considering the benefits of local support (in Aussie timezones) and greater responsiveness to local government needs.

Speaking with my Delib hat on, as I know Delib's prices best, councils and not-for-profits across Australia can access Delib's combined Citizen Space and Dialogue App services for under $500 per month.

State and federal agencies, who need greater flexibility and control, won't pay much more for Delib's robust, well-tested, online survey and discussion tools, which were co-designed with governments for government use, and comply with Australian privacy, security and accessibility requirements.

Other local providers offer a variety of other online engagement tools and should also be considered.

So when an Australian council or government agency wants to engage online its staff should think very carefully about whether they select a US-based service, or a local provider - considering whether they are willing to trade a little in cost for a great deal in legal risk, loss of control and less support.

They also consider whether they wish to support Australian or US businesses, Australian jobs or US venture capitalists.

The choice shouldn't be too hard, even on a tiny engagement budget.

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Australia's great leap forward in digital diplomacy

In the UK the Foreign Office states, in regards social media, that "The FCO encourages all staff to make full use of the opportunities offered by social media to help deliver FCO objectives", and "we do expect social media to be a core part of the toolkit of a modern diplomat."

In the US the current Secretary of State, John Kerry, has said "Of course there’s no such thing any more as effective diplomacy that doesn’t put a sophisticated use of technology at the center of all we’re doing to help advance our foreign policy objectives, bridge gaps between people across the globe, and engage with people around the world and right here at home," and "The term digital diplomacy is almost redundant — it’s just diplomacy, period."

Many other nations have taken similar steps to introduce digital channels, particularly social media, into their diplomatic suite.

Australia, until recently, was regarded as a laggard in digital diplomacy. I've heard us described on forums for diplomatic staff as highly conservative and as potentially damaging our diplomatic efforts through taking an excessively risk-averse approach to using social media in diplomacy.

Fortunately this has changed over the last year, with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) having become far more active in digital channels to promote the values and character of Australia.


Under the auspices of DFAT, Australia now operates over 60 social media accounts for digital diplomatic ends, including 22 Twitter, 30 Facebook, three each for YouTube and Flickr, a blog and China-specific accounts on the Sina Microblog, Sina Blog and Youku (a YouTube equivalent).

I've briefly analysed these accounts, which you can view at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ap1exl80wB8OdDF6YTVKZWt1MGh5UEIwaFVZZ19pTEE&usp=sharing

DFAT's social media accounts now cover around 60 countries and, while most were established in 2012 or 2013, they are already growing Australia's digital diplomatic reach and influence.

Countries covered by DFAT social media accounts at 4 November 2013


While Australia still lags powerhouses like the UK, which has over 240 international Twitter accounts alone and the US, which now has over 300 Facebook page and is tweeting in over 11 languages, we've definitely established ourselves in the second tier of countries engaged in digital diplomacy.

We're roughly equivalent to countries like Ireland, or Canada, both of which have just over 30 Twitter accounts and between 60 and 80 social media accounts overall in use for diplomatic purposes.

This is a sold start - although it has occurred without a broad and public discussion of how to most effectively use social media in diplomacy, as in countries such as the USA and Canada.

Hopefully as DFAT builds its skill base and guidance, we'll see less broadcast and more engagement by embassies and ambassadors online - more public conversation that leads to real and valuable diplomatic and economic outcomes from these channels.

After all, with civilian populations and governments alike increasingly engaging each other on social media, being absent online excludes an agency or government from important conversations and allows others without Australia's best interests at heart to fill the gap.

Below is my consolidated list of DFAT's social media accounts, drawn from DFAT's media page and current at 4 November 2013.

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What's the digital communication capability of Australian governments?

On the back of the UK Government's second whole-of-government communications plan, the UK Government has been undertaking a Digital Communication Capability review asking (in simple terms), how is digital communication and engagement done, and how could it be improved?

The Review has involved consultation with Communications Directors, digital engagement specialists and senior executives across the UK Government and was led by a team of three independent reviewers with a deep knowledge of digital communications.

The review is still in the closing stages (final due in November), however has been an extremely transparent process, with all comments available online and the draft report already released for final feedback (similar to the process the Australian Gov 2.0 Taskforce used in 2009, but has been rarely used since in Australian government).

Many of the top-line findings would resonate with Australian public sector digital communications professionals, with the headline finding being:

Pockets of good practice notwithstanding, the headline finding is that digital communication in government is developing in silos and not in the mainstream. The consequence is that it is being outpaced by the best of the commercial and NGO worlds. Too much is broadcast and does not seek to engage. And, crucially, it is still treated by many in departmental leadership positions as a specialist area where the risks usually outweigh the benefits.

Underneath this, the review found that there wasn't a natural home for digital within departments - with placement in existing areas such as media relations leading to a biased approach which didn't serve all agency needs.

It also found that;

• departments were not realising economies of scale, with different agencies separately purchasing the same or different social media management and analytics tools, 
• communication focused far too much on informing rather than conversations, 
• objectives were based on easily measurable quantitive scores (such as followers or tweets) rather than on changing outcomes,
• there was an over-reliance on 'build it and they will come' approaches, 
• there was a shortage of skills - exacerbated by a lack of confidence and judgement, 
• there were limitations on access to social media due to IT security considerations - which may be valid but were poorly explained and understood, and
• there was a lack of trust and overriding pre-occupation with risk.

Unfortunately there's been none of this type of work done in a systemic way in Australia - despite it being possible to take an approach (such as the UK one) and repeat it across every state, territory and the federal government to provide a comparable model (then do a cut-down version for local governments).

This is similar to where I started with the Digital Innovation Review I conducted in Victoria (no other states or territories have been interested in a similar review as yet though).

I'd like to help. Any takers in government?

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My presentation from RightClick - the latest in global digital government

Earlier this week I presented at RightClick in WA about the latest in global digital government.

My main points were that government in Australia has largely been doing OK in the digital stakes, although talent is thinly spread and there is not a consistent level of expertise across agencies.

For example, the fourth computer in the world was built by CSIR, an agency in the Australian government, and the WA government was using the internet seven years before Facebook was created.

Yes things have changed enormously in the last ten years, however the use of digital is now well-embedded within the public sector, not only in Australia but also across a large proportion of the world.

The challenge is to keep improving, to focus on designing services for digital which are relevance, simple and easy to use for citizens and to become better at connecting - reusing what others have done and at sharing what agencies are doing.

At the end of the day, however, it is not about the technology - that's simply an enabler - it's about meeting agency goals.

So even when you feel your agency, or you, are a dinosaur, remember that dinosaurs can survive massive change - provided they are prepared to change themselves.

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Watch ABC 7:30 ACT tonight for a piece on Social Media and the APS

There should be an interesting piece on ABC 7:30 tonight in the ACT looking at the relationship between the Australian Public Service and the use of social media by public servants.

I was interviewed from Brisbane for the piece and know of several other ex public servants who were also interviewed or consulted.

There's also an interesting opinion piece on the topic today in ITNews by Steve Davies which is worth a read, The Government's push towards a silent state.

There are a number of people I know of concerned over the consequences now emerging of the 2012 changes to the APSC guidance on social media use by public servants, particularly combined with the line that appears to be being taken by the current Australian Government.

The longer-term implications are still unclear, however it is apparent that significant tension remains between the rights and responsibilities of public servants when it comes to their requirement to be perceived to carry out their work duties in an apolitical way versus their ability to participate in the community as an Australian citizen, with all the political freedoms this entails.

As governments move towards greater community engagement, but place increasing strictures on how public servants can participate in these engagements, where an opinion or concern may be interpreted politically, we're likely to see more cases of public servants being forced to choose between their career and their personal rights and more opportunities for unscrupulous managers to interpret vague public sector policies in ways which can be interpreted as harassment and bullying.

I see this as a rising cost to the public sector, as well as leading to greater reluctance on the part of public servants to participate in public discussions in meaningful ways, both on their own behalf and on behalf of the governments they serve.

Fortunately this trend isn't being repeated in other countries - from the UK to New Zealand public servants are being welcomed into community discussions both as individual contributors and on behalf of agencies - so in a few years the impact of the different approaches should be starkly apparent.

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Identifiable public service social media voices no longer required in Australian government

The new Twitter profile pic for former
DIAC/DIPD Twitter spokesperson Sandi Logan.

Officials from the Department of Immigration and Border Control (formerly the Department of Immigration and Citizenship) have confirmed that Sandi Logan is no longer required to be a spokesperson for the department on Twitter (using his @SandiHLogan account).

Reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, from comments at the IPAA ACT Social Media event yesterday, effective immediately the Minister is the only spokesperson on Twitter, with the rebadged @DIBPAustralia account focusing on policy and programmatic 'good news stories'.

Sandi has already changed his Twitter profile image and changed the tone of his tweets.

I conjecture that he may even be required to close down the account, based on it having been established as a departmental asset and it being difficult to hand this over to an individual when the following has been built on the account being an official one (see my post on this topic, Is it theft if you personalise & retain an official social media account when you leave an organisation?)

More importantly this step has emphasised a 'do what I do' shift in how public servants may engage via social media. It sends a strong message that public servants may no longer be acceptable as identifiable public spokespeople for their departments.

This has significant implications both for current spokespeople and high profile social media users in the public sector and a much broader impact on the willingness of individual public servants to use these channels for legitimate customer service, policy engagement and service delivery.

While the Department's official account (@DIBPAustralia) remains and has been reinforced as an official channel, individual public servant voices will be hidden behind a departmental name.

I suspect this will only increase the reluctance of public servants to engage in public debates, reducing public understanding of how policy and services are developed and correspondingly reducing the public's ability to participate.

It will also likely reduce the ability for the broader community to understand the value, importance and difficulty of public service roles - damaging employment intakes for the public sector and the reputation and standing of the APS.

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How Australia compares on the basis of voter participation and invalid (donkey) votes

We hear a great deal about the number of people in Australia that are of voting age, but haven't registered to vote, however we don't hear a lot about how Australia compares to the rest of the world in this regard.

I sought out some data from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) to compare Australia with the rest of the world, to see how well we had been doing in electoral participation - which provides some indication of how engaged citizens are with government.

IDEA has data on national elections since 1945 for about 235 countries. This is available online as tables (such as this one) as well as downloadable custom files (through this interface) and great quick snapshots - though there's no datafeeds or APIs available.

As such it took only a short time for me to download the data, plug it into a Google Fusion table and produce the below map and charts.

This shows that Australia is amongst the roughly 18% of nations which have compulsory voting for their parliaments.



Australia also compares well in terms of voter turnout, sitting close to the top of the list (6th as below - mouseover the graph for details) based on the latest election results (looking at the period from 2009-2013), despite being one of our lowest turnouts since World War II.



Our invalid voting rate has been creeping up, particularly since 1984, and is now amongst the top 30 in the world in their last election (looking at the period from 2009-2013) - see close to far right on the chart below. This indicates a growing disillusionment with existing political parties, but hardly one which is fatal to our system.



Finally, below is a view of the entire world based on voter turnout in their last election (looking at the period from 2009-2013) - click on the coloured dots for a run-down of the voting statistics for each country, based on their latest parliamentary elections.
(larger version here)



Based on this data Australia remains a highly politically engaged state, although we've been in decline for around 30 years.

It would be nice to see Australian governments turn around this trend, reversing the decline in engaged voters and improving civic participation at all levels.

Certainly there's lots of good effort underway to engage citizens more actively in government, although this may be being undermined by increasing disillusionment with the way politics is being played.

The answer might be a rethink of politics, rather than a rethink of government - although this would need to be driven by some very courageous politicians.

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