20 thoughts on government blogging

I was asked today by a representative of another agency for my thoughts, advice and observations on government blogging.

While I don't think I have any particularly unique insights, I realise that people who are new to the medium are at an earlier point on their learning journey. So here's the 20 thoughts I shared (slightly reordered, reworded and extended for flow).

1. Post at least weekly to maintain an audience. Less than weekly tends to lose your audience as they don't develop a habit.
   
   
2. Keep a couple of posts in hand at all times to cover busy periods. Otherwise you can easily miss a few weeks and start losing your audience.
   
   
3. Where possible keep each post to a single concept or topic. If you have multiple topics, consider breaking them into multiple posts - even parts in a series if appropriate (people will return for Parts 2 and 3 - or seek out Part 1 if they start in the middle).
   
4. Keep posts as succinct as possible. I use 250 words as a rule of thumb for length (though break this for in-depth pieces). Posting very short (50 or less word) items is fine if there is value.
   
   
5. Create an RSS feed for your blog. This will account for potentially 50% or more of your readership. Consider using Google Feedburner or a similar tracking service to allow you to report on RSS traffic more effectively.
   
   
6. Cross-promote the blog via your other channels. For example, in Twitter announce your posts with a link; in email announcements include a short summary and your blog and include it in email signatures.
   
   
7. List your blog in appropriate directories and services such as Technorati. It leads to new traffic.
   
   
8. Design your blog to look like a blog. Wordpress, Blogger or Typepad blogs are the 'norm' that everyone looks for, just like Google is what people expect in search. A blog that doesn't look like a blog won't be reacted to like a blog.
   
   
9. First impressions count. Launch your blog with 5-10 posts already live to give people valuable content to start with and to communicate to them the scope you will be covering. This can include older information rewritten for the blog.
   
   
10. At minimum moderate the first comment made by an individual. This reduces spam significantly. Moderating all comments is OK for risk-adverse agencies, but does stifle discussion - be aware and weigh the risks both ways.
    
    
11. Make sure the topical scope of your blog and your moderation guidelines are visible and transparent. Review them regularly to ensure that they still cover what you need.
    
    
12. Give people a reason to engage with you through comments. This can be done by asking questions or posing dilemmas and ideas. Avoid simply posting authoritative statements - save them for media releases.
    
13. Use guest posts to add diversity of views and encourage the audiences of other writers/bloggers to 'try' your blog.
    
    
14. Release information exclusively/early on your blog where possible. This will encourage people to visit it regularly.
    
    
15. Keep post approval processes simple and fast. I appreciate this can be a challenge. Keep moderation approvals simpler and faster. Where possible write guidelines on what is acceptable/unacceptable and have it signed off by senior management so that you can manage the blog on a day-to-day basis with a minimum of overhead.
    
    
16. If you post something incorrect, edit it ethically. If a spelling or grammatical mistake, or a broken link or formatting issue, correct your post. If a factual correction, add it below your post as an edit or as a comment that acknowledges the error. People will respect you for it.
    
    
17. Blogging is a journey, not a destination. Keep your blog iteratively evolving and live. I 'play' with the design of my blog every month or so - adding new resources, links and features and removing those that didn't work.
    
    
18. Put a name to your posts - just a first name is fine (if required for privacy). If there are multiple authors, use their different names with their posts. People blog, not organisations (organisations send announcements).
    
    
19. Keep individual personalities (linked to names) in posts. Nothing rings more false than a sanitised and cleansed neutral tone. People have their own writing styles - used to great effect by newspaper columnists. These styles are what make the columns interesting, and make your blog interesting.
    
    
20. Give your blog time to find its feet. It can take 6-12 months or more for a blog to find its audience. Few succeed overnight or in a 6 month pilot. However be ready to kill it if it simply doesn't work out. Not all blogs are successful.

Anyone have other blogging tips? Please share.

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The strategic benefits and risks of permeable boundaries for government websites

In the 'old days' before the internet, the boundaries of government reports, brochures, fact sheets, policy statements and other discrete documents were hard and unyielding.

While a document might feature several attributed quotes and some purchased stock art, all of the content was owned by the organisation that created it. This was a logical approach given the mediums available.

The first government websites followed the same approach. Each was a discrete island containing its own text, images, maps and code. The only enhancement was to link to other websites (sometimes wrapped in a warning that people were leaving one silo to enter another).

Today the internet has matured further as a medium and we have seen a thaw in this approach, albeit an uneven one.

Many government websites (but not all) have discarded their warnings on leaving the site. Some sites now effectively cross-link between knowledge centres, regardless of which departmental or private sector site they live within.

I've even seen some sites embed external functionality, such as Google Maps or Youtube videos, and a few allow other sites to reuse or embed government information or functionality through RSS or other means.

I am very glad to see this shift from rigid to permeable boundaries occurring. It provides a number of strategic benefits for government.


Strategic benefits of permeability

• Greater reach
  Just as governments site their customer-facing offices in high traffic areas to improve reach, in the online channel government must have presence in appropriate sites.
  With permeable boundaries government can be where people choose to congregate, in social networks such as MySpace or Facebook, or media sites such as NineMSN.
  
  
• Reduced duplication (information/effort)
  With permeable boundaries there is less effort required in re-inventing the wheel. Government agencies can embed publicly available tools in their sites and link to pre-existing information repositories.
  This allows the government to focus on filling the gaps where there are currently no tools or information rather than wasting money on replicating what already exists.
  
  
• Improved awareness and trust
  Research demonstrates that people trust who their friends trust - word-of-mouth is a key influencer of decisions and behaviour.
  Permeable boundaries allow government organisations to become part of the network of friends. By engaging openly across existing communities over time this integrates government with these communities, making them a trusted member rather than an aloof outsider.
  

How to build permeable boundaries

These are quick thoughts on easy ways to start turning rigid into permeable boundaries.

• Provide your media releases via RSS/Atom and promote them with your key partners.
  
  
• Display audio-visual material using popular mediums, for example using Youtube for video, Slideshare for powerpoint slides, Scribd for documents.
  
  
• Use existing third-party tools to deliver key features rather than building new tools, for example using Google Maps for map-based functions, Google for website search, Weather.com for weather information, Blogger or Wordpress for in-site blogs and Footytips for an internal football tipping competition.
  
  
• Use Govdex to develop an extranet to share information with trusted strategic partners.
  
  
• Engage officially with existing online communities where there is clear benefit for doing so, for instance with online forums related to your area of business, with appropriate social networks and industry groups.
  
  
• Build an appropriate and managed presence in a virtual world, such as Second Life.

And manage all these online initiatives, just as your agency would manage a new shopfront or service. Online engagement isn't tick-a-box, it requires ongoing commitment to succeed.

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Here comes the (egovernment) New Zealanders!

New Zealand is a beautiful place to visit and I have fond memories of my last trip there.

It also happens to be one of the most happening places in eGovernment, at least in this part of the world.

In fact I feel a little disappointed in Australia's progress at the national level compared to the achievements of our nearest neighbour.

For instance, in New Zealand public officials are regularly blogging to share information across the government sector, such as in the Thorndon bubble and Eye of the Fish.

The Network of Public Sector Communicators in NZ also has the Network of Public Sector Communicators Blog to support and aid the discussion.

The NZ State Department runs not one but two official blogs, In Development and Research e-Labs, demonstrating central commitment to the online medium.

The Department also conduct their review of government Web Standards using a wiki, as well as their Guide to Online Participation (Australia doesn't have one of these yet for public sector employees).

In Australia these types of collaborative developments could be easily facilitated via the existing Govdex service (though in my view Mediawiki - as used in NZ - is a lighter, faster and more flexible solution).

New Zealand also uses the online channel for government initiatives, such as their Police Act wiki, when the public was able to provide input into the review of the NZ Police Act through a wiki. This was passed as an act of NZ Parliament as the Wiki Policing Act 2008.

Worst of all, New Zealand beat Australia in the Fullcodepress competition last year in front of a global audience.

I wonder if they have any jobs going?


For more of our neighbour's online initiatives, see this list of eGovernment initiatives in progress in New Zealand.

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Social media initiatives at my agency - what is your agency doing?

Part of my interest in social media at the moment is related to how I'm encouraging its use within our agency.

I'm very interested in hearing about what other agencies are doing.


At work we have a team rolling out a community of practice using a wiki-based system, with an extranet to follow. I hope to replicate this for other areas of the business that could benefit from such a system.

We have a rating/comment system being implemented into our intranet to further help content authors and the intranet management team (part of my team) understand where our content requires significant improvement to meet staff needs. It's not quite social media, but it's a step towards it.

After our major 1 July deadline we will be documenting a strategy and approach for internal blogs and forums, with the support of our Internal Communications team - then hopefully introducing the enabling tools with ICT's assistance.

We are also preparing to engage more actively in public online discussions around our agency and its services, in a measured and structured manner. Around this I'm looking seriously at whether we should introduce online participation principles, as has occurred in the UK.

We have initial plans, with some buy-in from our Media group, to trial the enhancement of our media releases to make it easier to get them into Digg and Reddit, and potentially deliver them via Twitter or similar tools.

Finally I'm encouraging the members of my team (currently spread across several states) to make use of appropriate tools to aid contact and collaboration. Phone and email work reasonably well for us, however I want to explore how we can further improve engagement in a less interruptive way. Over time I'd love to extend this to other areas as appropriate - I'm already aware of more than 60 Facebook and Linkedin users in the agency, so the grassroots growth is already occurring.

If your agency has any social media initiatives underway that others could learn from, please let me know

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Baby steps into extranets

When I joined the public service a few years back I was very pleased to discover that my agency was very proactive about engaging stakeholders when creating products and services for our customers.

The agency was still using 20th century methods to achieve these outcomes and was making no use of online collaborative groups or extranets.

This isn't a criticism of the people or the systems - the agency had developed the skills to manage this collaboration using the readily available technologies - email, mail, phones, faxes and face-to-face meetings. Since these were working well there had not been the need or money available to innovate new ways of engaging.

However over the last few years the tempo has accelerated.

The agency has placed a greater focus on stakeholder consultation, the level and complexity of engagement has increased and there has been the need to involve more players in approval processes. At the same time the agency has needed to manage its staffing levels carefully.

When most types of system double in size the effort required to manage and maintain them increases much more than double. This is because the connections between the different parts of the system increase exponentially.

For example, if you draw four dots on a piece of paper they can be connected in 6 possible ways (3+2+1), however 8 dots can be connected in 28 possible ways (7+6+5+4+3+2+1).

While it could be argued that as all these extra stakeholders deal with the agency as the central organiser the complexity doesn't increase that much - theoretically all these interactions can be fed into a central point at the agency, like spokes on a wheel.

However in reality the interactions between the stakeholders are an important factor and this is where all the additional potential connections come into play.

So with increasing need, increasing complexity and fixed or diminishing resources an important questions becomes;

How does the agency manage this on an ongoing basis - and do so cost-effectively?

This is where my Online Communications Team been able to add value to the process. We've worked with the stakeholder managers to introduce an approach that is both freely available and totally government approved - an online collaborative wiki.

We've established two collaborative communities for my agency using the Govdex platform provided by AGIMO. This wiki-based system is secure, readily configurable to agency needs, has support available and is free to use by government departments. Best of all it's easy for the relevant groups in the agency to manage themselves, with my team simply providing back up and account managing the Govdex relationship.

As we're in early days yet and learning as we go, the two communities we've established are internally focused. One is supporting the ongoing development of our intranet and helping the agency's online team understand the capabilities of such a system (so we can stay a few steps ahead of other users).

The other is a knowledgebase and discussion forum for the agency's stakeholder engagement officers across Australia. This is the prototype for a future system for engaging with our stakeholders across the country.

The experience of setting up these systems has been largely painless. Other than some issues with the access speed within our firewall, which appear to be due to government networks not playing nice with each other and are rapidly being resolved, our Govdex experience has begun as a positive one.

I'd particularly like to commend the customer service provided by Govdex - they have helped us get the sites up and running in record time.

I'm now in the process of beginning to promote Govdex as a business tool within my agency so that anyone who has the need to deal with a set of internal and external stakeholders can consider it as a potential solution to their communication and collaboration needs.

Note that Govdex and similar online collaboration systems aren't a replacement for face-to-face meetings, phone calls or emails, but they are another tool that can be used to facilitate and manage complex collaboration situations in a cost-effective manner.

By the way - here's a great presentation on GovDex from the Web Directions Government conference on May 19 2008 - Ralph Douglas - GovDex: Collaborating online in a secure environment

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eGovernment in Australia is like a chocolate éclair

There is some exciting activity happening in the Australian eGovernment scene.

States such as Victoria, Queensland and WA have taken major steps to standardise their online approaches across departments. At local level South Australia has introduced a phenomenal content management system that allows every council to have a well structured website, providing access to the key services they offer while still supporting individuality and innovation.

However at a Federal level it appears to me that eGovernment activity is more patchy.

Certainly there are fantastic applications such as e-tax from the Australian Tax Office (ATO), and the 2007 eCensus from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

But across the Federal Government there is little consistency as to how websites and eGovernment applications are designed, built or managed. Standards for reporting to allow ready comparisons across government sites do not exist and there are few efficiencies in coding or content management across departments or even within agencies across websites and intranets.

AGIMO (the Australian Government Information Management Office) did some sterling work a few years ago to develop a set of Better Practice Checklists and Guides for Federal government sites, however these are not enforceable, aging and do little to 'rein in' Agencies who go their own way.

Personally I've spoken with AGIMO several times to get their position on email marketing, wikis, blogs and participation in stakeholder forums and social media - unfortunately there are no guidelines and little knowledge of what is actually occurring in these spaces across the Government sector.

On this basis, while eGovernment does have a firm outer later, full of chocolatey goodness, the core is simply mush.


There are a number of steps I have identified that would allow Australia's Federal Government to begin realising the efficiencies and benefits that could be delivered via the online channel.

These include:

1. Auditing the online channel within all Government departments to gain an understanding of the websites/intranets/extranets they run, support or engage with, the (software) systems they use, the governance in place and their strategic plans for the channel.
   
2. Establishing and maintaining a register of key people working in the online area (business and IT people) across Departments who can cross-fertilise and support agency initiatives.
   
3. Establishing appropriate and standardised reporting metrics that can be audited by the ANAO and guarantee that senior management and ministerial staff are provided with the same type of information no matter which agency. This may also include standardising on a core set of web measurement technologies.
   
4. Establish strong guidelines on appropriate governance across website, intranet and extranet management.
   
5. Create guidelines for engagement via the online channel - approaches for using social media and two-way communications tools in an effective, responsible and governable manner.
   
6. Create National and State panels of suppliers across key areas, such as content management, search technologies, web design, mobile web design, rich media development, email marketing, mobile marketing and similar online areas that any Agency can draw on.
   
7. Establish national standards around interface design - as simple as whether to place 'OK' or 'Cancel' to the left, using the same term for 'Firstname' and as complex as is needed. Due to how Agencies are so tied to their existing 'standards' no matter how different it is from other Agencies', there needs to be muscle to enforce this, perhaps with the involvement of the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO).
   
8. Negotiate Government-wide head-level agreements with key providers so that smaller Agencies can access the tools and services they need to develop their online channel at an appropriate cost and support level.
   
9. Build a government-wide library of common tools, code and 'widgets' which Agencies can draw on and reuse within their own systems. If the ongoing management and development of these common tools is an issue I'm sure appropriate arrangements can be developed to allow Agencies to contribute what they can afford while still benefiting - after all we're all the same eGovernment and all the money comes from the same source.
   
10. Establish National training standards for staff in the online area - both business and technical - to ensure that citizens receive a similar standard of service online, just as is expected from telephone or face-to-face services.

The situation isn't all gloom and doom (how gloomy can a chocolate éclair be) - there are some initiatives which have begun to address some of my goals above.

Govdex is a prime example, a centrally provided wiki system (using Confluence - my second favourite wiki system behind MediaWiki) that any Agency can use to facilitate engagement. I have implemented two wikis using the system and while it appears not all agencies 'play nice' as yet (it's hideously slow in our office), I have nothing but praise for the organisation supporting the application and for AGIMO's work in providing the service.

Another initiative is the AGOSP program, also from AGIMO - which will see Agencies be able to access a central forms system for citizen forms, as they can already do for business forms and aims to strengthen Australia.gov.au as the central point for online engagement with Government.


However from my perspective it appears that most Federal Agencies are siloed - each doing their own research, design, development, system selection, governance and ongoing management - taking few learnings from others and definitely not sharing experiences to any great extent.

Perhaps one day in the far future eGovernment in Australia will develop that extra hard gobstopper core - but for now, in my humble opinion, it remains an éclair.

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