Is social media blurring the non-partisan status of appointed public servants?

A separation that is widely understood within governments, but often less well understood in the rest of the community, is the separation between politics and public service.

Elected public servants, politicians, ascribe to specific political ideologies and policy positions which form the basis of how people select which politicians and parties to support and cast their votes for.

Unelected public servants, the appointed public service, strive to remain politically unaligned and non-partisan, neutral advisors and implementers of the ideological and political wishes of elected politicians.

This system is designed to balance the instability of democracy with the continuity, stability and certainty of continued governance and public service delivery, allowing appointed public servants to continue on an ongoing basis while elected politicians of various political stripes come and go.

Shifting the balance to largely political - where the majority of the public service is replaced at each change of government - would make governance unstable, with nations unable to rely on the continuity of contracts, laws, support or services they need to conduct their lives and businesses.

Whereas shifting the balance to largely apolitical - where elections are rare or of figurehead positions only - would remove the democratic option for nations to change their minds as to how they prefer to be governed, effectively dictatorships in all but name.

Therefore preserving the separation between politicians and public servants is a primary consideration of Australia's system of governance - as it is in most democratic states - while a delicate balance needs to be maintained where public services willingly and proactively carry out the will of the elected (political) government, however unelected career public servants retain the independence to provide frank and fearless non-partisan advice in their professional lives and the ability to participate as full citizens (with their own political views) in their private lives.

Australia has legislation, codes and policies to maintain this separation, which have largely worked well over the last century, although I - and most current or former public servants - have seen cases where the lines can get quite blurry between serving the government of the day and 'signing on' to the government's political position and cases where individuals have let their personal views overwhelm their professional need to remain non-partisan.

Social media is adding complexity to this mix, providing channels for government agencies and appointed public servants to have a louder and more direct public voice whereas previously government communications was limited to traditional media channels - radio, television and newsprint - where comments could be tightly filtered through communications teams, media specialists and Ministerial offices.

Today's media landscape allows every government agency and appointed public servant to be a participant, informer or influencer, in public debate. They can establish their own communications channels at little or no cost and distribute messages with, potentially, little or no central oversight (or as many approval processes as they like, but at the cost of speed and relevancy).

While for the most part agencies and public servants have been guarded and cautious in the use of these new channels - ensuring they have sound guidance and principles in place to preserve their non-partisan position - a few channels have become more blurry, presented as government channels but presenting political views.

These channels - and their proliferation as precedents are established - could easily confuse the lines between partisan and non-partisan, politicians and the professional appointed public service. This risks politicising the public service, confusing the public and damaging democracy.

Let me offer a few examples.

Firstly, in the Australian Government's list of official government social media accounts, Australia.gov.au (managed and administered by AGIMO in the Department of Finance and Administration) lists the Twitter account of Julia Gillard (@JuliaGillard), Australia's Prime Minister, alongside the accounts of departments, agencies and government programs.

Unlike all of the other accounts listed by Australia.gov.au, Julia Gillard's account is operated by a politician (Julia Gillard herself) and her Ministerial staff - who are largely political appointments with strong links to the Australian Labor Party.

While Julia Gillard fills an official government role, that of Prime Minister, she is a politician, elected to this public office by her party, who happens to hold enough votes in the House of Representatives to be able to form government.

While her Twitter account (@JuliaGillard) does include apolitical tweets about the Australian Government, it is also used for her personal and party political purposes and cannot be considered apolitical or part of the professional and apolitical machinery of government.

Her account regularly tweets messages that slip into politically partisan territory, such as:

"As a government of purpose and strong policy commitments, we won’t be distracted by their weakness and negativity."http://www.ow.ly/fKZYs

Source: https://twitter.com/JuliaGillard/status/275385120863703040

5 years of Labor. A lot done, a lot left to do. TeamJG http://yfrog.com/oe1bxfnj

Source: https://twitter.com/JuliaGillard/status/272165948952285184

RT @AustralianLabor: Greg Combet today gave a great run down of how the #carbonprice is going and the Spring Racing form of the Liberals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyQ1CR50KwU&feature=youtu.be …

Source: (Original tweet) https://twitter.com/AustralianLabor/status/263893246667812864

It is perfectly legitimate for our Prime Minister to have this account and to use it as she sees fit. However, on the basis of tweets such as those above, her account shouldn't be included in a list of official government Twitter accounts where it could be confused as the standard approach for all government departments and create a perception that the Australian Public Service is partisan towards the Labor party, rather than a non-partisan body that advises and implements the Australian Government's (who happens to be the Labor party) dictates.


A second example is from QLD, the @QLDStateBudget twitter account, owned and managed by the QLD Department of Treasury and Trade (see it linked from the bottom right of their page).

This account, which has provided good news and updates regarding the QLD government budget in a largely non-partisan way, has also (disconcertedly), published tweets like:

TOUGH CUTS: Wayne Swan should take a leaf out of Campbell Newman's book: fb.me/uNkp3yfx

Source: https://twitter.com/QldStateBudget/status/246439391512371200

Which is a very political tweet indeed.

This account, as a purported departmental account, shouldn't stray into this type of political commentary and is clearly being influenced by a Ministerial office.

While this Twitter account hasn't been tweeted from for over 80 days, and may no longer be active, the tweets remain public and therefore the perception remains plausible.

Perception is reality
In both examples above the lines between elected and appointed public servants are blurred - which can create confusion and a perception that Australia's professional public service is no longer operating in a non-partisan and independent fashion.

While I don't believe this is the case, as for many things in government perceptions are reality. In a situation where the public and the media are often already confused about the separation between elected and appointed public servants, it is critical for agencies and governments to ensure that the separation remains distinct and clear in perception, as well as reality.

If social media makes this harder, due to the ease of posting publicly and the difficulty in removing material from the public domain, then it becomes even more necessary for senior public servants and politicians to understand social mediums, be aware of the risks, sponsor the creation of appropriate guidance and training for their staff and apply appropriate discretion at all times to minimise and resist any tendency to blur the lines.

Read full post...

View summary...

NSW government consulting on their social media policy for public sector staff

It's good to see that the NSW Government has taken the step to consult the community and public service regarding the social media policy and guidance it is planning to put in place for agencies.

The consultation, visible at http://haveyoursay.nsw.gov.au/socialmedia (which unfortunately only has comments from me right now) uses a forum-based approach to solicit comments.

I hope other Australian governments will take similar steps!

However more important than this specific consultation is the commitment behind it.

The NSW government has committed to adopt the principles of open government: transparency, participation, collaboration, and innovation through digital technologies.

They have committed to two actions under this related to social media:

• Implement a whole of government policy that supports the use of social media for enhanced public engagement and service delivery 
• Make reference guidelines available to agencies for public sector staff use of social media 

Finally they have committed to a move to greater public consultation on policy development.

Of course the devil is in the details - how these are implemented and whether the culture of the NSW public service is sufficiently supported and empowered to make the shift to a 2.0 public service.


FYI: my two comments were as follows - just in case they are useful to other agencies and governments (though need to be read in context of the consultations:

Have your say on the draft guidelines for agencies

None of this actually mandates or prompts agencies to provide effective guidance, training and support to staff. 

I advise mandating that all agencies:
1) Have a social media policy that aims to define how the agency will use social media in the course of its activities and make it clear to staff that social media engagement is encouraged and supported within the agency's context.
2) Provide guidance to staff regarding how they maintain a separation between their individual, professional and official positions in social media (such as disclaimers on personal/professional accounts where appropriate "All opinions mine.")
3) Provide guidance and support on appropriate conduct online and build awareness of applicable laws around defamation, abuse, etc
4) Integrate social media training into the workplans for all staff and specifically within induction processes to ensure that staff are equipped to engage online in a safe and professional manner and, where staff do not engage via social media, they are equipped to accurately identify and mitigate risks the agency may face through external social media conversations and the agency's engagement through social media
5) Conduct specific training for senior management, including hands-on experience using key social media channels, to ensure they are able to effectively govern and support the social media activities of the agency.

Have your say on the draft guidelines for public sector staff

The statement 'Respect privacy and confidentiality and only publish information that is or is approved to be in the public domain.' is extremely awkward and I'm not sure what it means. 

Taken in two pieces it state: 'Respect privacy and confidentiality and only publish information that is' and 'or is approved to be in the public domain.'' - the first part reads contrary to the meaning I think you intend. 

Better reworded as: 'Respect privacy and confidentiality. Only publish information that is approved to be in the public domain.'

Read full post...

View summary...

Is inappropriate social media use really an issue for government?

With some of the concerns and processes I've witnessed in government it would be easy to draw the conclusion that hundreds or even thousands of public servants are using social media daily in ways that damage the reputations of their departments and the government.

Fortunately, a couple of articles I saw yesterday have given me a place to start to look at the realised level of risk of inappropriate social media use by trained and well-governed public servants.

The Australian reported Public servants' pay docked over Facebook comments and SmartCompany followed up with Bureaucrats disciplined over work-related comments on Facebook made on home computers.

Both articles referred to information from the Commonwealth Department of Human Services (DHS). Over the 2010-2011 year four DHS employees had been investigated and found to have made inappropriate use of social media (well, one case referred to private email use, but let's let that one go).

I was intrigued by these articles as, to my knowledge, they represent the first time that inappropriate social media use by public servants at a Commonwealth level has been reported in the media.

To quote the Smart Company article,

The Department of Human Services says there were four code of conduct cases involving the inappropriate use of social media in 2010-11 - three related to work-related comments posted on Facebook from the individuals’ private computers. 

The other case was about material sent from the employee’s private email account.
“The incidents all involved work-related misconduct that contravened their Australian Public Service obligations,” the department said. 

According to The Australian, one worker had had their job classification cut, the second was given a 5% pay cut over 12 months, and the third was reprimanded.
The fourth employee no longer works for the department.

I am very glad to see that this inappropriate conduct was managed effectively using existing business policies in government - noting that the DHS has made great steps forward in the social media space, establishing a social media policy and working to ensure staff are aware of it and how it aligns with the APS Code of Conduct.

I am not quite sure what the staff concerned did, this wasn't explained, however as there's been no major media blow-outs from the actual incidents, I'm going to assume that the transgressions were relatively minor - bullying, inappropriate language about work colleagues or similar breach activities, rather than leaks of Cabinet-In-Confidence documents, naked photos of colleagues released online or similar major public indiscretions.

Given we now have a public incident at Commonwealth level, I decided to use it to do some evidence-based analysis on the actual risk of inappropriate use of social media to agencies.

Let's start from the top.

It has been reported that DHS had four employees go through a formal code of conduct investigation based on their personal social media activities in 2010-2010 (and again we're letting go that one of these four was actually related to email use - not social media).

Now I happened to have been able to find out from IT News that the DHS conducted 197 formal code of conduct investigations in 2010-11. These four social media-related investigations accounted for 2% of these investigations by the DHS in that year.

Broadening this out, DHS has about 37,000 employees, so the four employees who were investigated equals 0.0108% of their staff. Note that's not 1% of staff, that's one-hundredth of one percent.

In Australia around 59% of people use social media personally in some form (62% of internet users, with internet users being 95% of the population). Let's be conservative and estimate that only 40% of DHS staff use social media personally - well below the average for all Australians.

On this basis there are about 14,800 DHS staff members using social media personally. Of these, four were reported to be using it inappropriately and investigated. That's 0.027% of the staff at DHS using social media personally. Again, that's not 2.7%, it's 27 thousandths of one percent.

So  27 thousandths of one percent of DHS staff estimated to be using social media personally during 2010-11 were investigated for code of conduct breaches.

That's not many, but let's go deeper...

Nielsen has reported that Australians are the most prolific users of social media out of all the countries they measure. We spend, on average, 7 hours and 17 minutes using social media each month.

Let's assume, again, that DHS staff are below average for Australians, that those DHS staff using social media are only spending 5 hours using it each month. On this basis, with an estimated 14,800 DHS staff using social media, their personal use for 2010-2011 would be 888,000 hours (37,000 days or just over 101 year of continuous use).

In those 888,000 hours there were four reported code of conduct investigations - that's 0.00045% of the time spent online through the entire 2010-11 year, assuming they each were an hour in duration.

If you assume DHS staff are average Australians, the percentages shrink dramatically further.

To sum up, the information from the DHS suggests that the risk of social media misuse by public servants is extremely low.

There were no indications of significant impact due to the four incidents, therefore I assume that the consequences were minor.

So on the basis of an extremely low risk and minor consequences, the risk of social media to a government Department (such as DHS) is negligible - and easily mitigated through appropriate management procedures (a policy, guidance and education).

So for any agencies still hanging back from social media, consider the evidence, the mitigations you can put in place, the potential benefits of engagement AND the risks of not using social media (reduced capability to monitor key stakeholders/audience views, inability to engage citizens in the places they are gathering, no ability to counter incorrect information or perceptions and so on).

You might find that your current strategy of non-engagement is far more risky.

Read full post...

View summary...

How should public servants report online volunteer work?

Last week the Department of Human Services changed its policy regarding staff who participated in volunteer activities - unpaid work undertaken on their own time.

The Department decided that, in order to protect against potential conflicts of interest, public servants had to report their volunteer activities to their Manager and seek approval to do it. Approval would last a year, after which time the employee would have to go back to their manager and ask again.

The story was covered lightly in a few news sources, including the Sydney Morning Herald in the article, Public servants told to seek approval to volunteer.

Putting aside the discussion over whether a public sector employer should exercise this level of oversight and control over the personal lives of their staff (a conversation for a different forum to my blog), I am concerned about how well this policy might work in the face of online volunteerism.

I haven't read the policy myself, however I wonder about the treatment of online volunteer activities, such as moderating an online forum or Facebook page for a volunteer group, building a website to support people in an emergency, curating Twitter conversations, managing an online chatline, curating pages in a wiki, correcting text in digitalized newspapers, adding records to genealogical databases, tagging photos for a museum, checking wavelengths to detect exoplanets, or establishing donation tools and encouraging friends to donate their own time and money.

These activities might be ongoing, or taken at extremely short notice - such as during an emergency. Often there may not be time to brief managers and seek approval. People would face the choice of either not volunteering (a net loss to the community) or volunteering their time and services and defying the policy.

I can personally think of five different volunteer activities I have undertaken online - just since returning from my honeymoon last month. Over a full year I might be involved in 30 or more separate online volunteer activities.

Real-world activities, such as manning a soup kitchen, painting a community centre or caring for old people may be easy to observe, quantify and classify as unpaid volunteer activity, however I am very unsure about how any agency policy might effectively cover the growing range of unpaid online volunteer activities in which people are now able to engage.

Read full post...

View summary...

Collective protests highlight a 21st Century crisis for traditional government

What do the the Arab Spring, Anonymous, the Occupy movement, Iranian election protests, Anti-Putin protests, the #VileKyle push and the #Qantasluxury incident all have in common?

Each of them was a demonstration of collective action by groups of people without a clear hierarchy of leadership against traditional hierarchical organisations.

In each case the traditional organisations threatened found it difficult to respond in an effective and proportionate manner, with responses often slow and creating greater hostility to the organisations involved.

The traditional organisations around today draw from the US railway corporations of the 18th and 19th century, which were some of the first commercial organisations to develop a 'modern' management model involving strict hierarchical structures and the division of resources into specific responsibilities to be managed (siloing if you prefer).

These organisations, which any manager today would clearly recognize, were designed to coordinate the information, resources and effort required to deliver enormous infrastructure projects - continent spanning railway networks.

Given the modes of communication and management available at the time, with most information moving at the speed of a horse and most previous organisations limited in size to a few locations, family-based ties and people who could turn their hands to any of a more limited set of skill, the railway corporations were an innovative and effective tool for delivering the outcomes desired. They coordinated the efforts of tens of thousands of workers, hundreds of experts, and led to some of the first large companies that a modern observer would recognize.

Two hundred years on, most organisations still use very similar methods of organising resources - hierarchical constructs with coordinators at the top, managers in the middle, worker bees at the bottom and an assortment of specialists and experts who slot in their skills as required, with appropriate compensation.

Governments were particularly enthusiastic adopters of hierarchical models due to their massive scale and increasing responsibilities. They rapidly organised their machinery to take advantage of divisions of responsibility and labour.

As more and more non-family organisations began arranging themselves into the hierarchical model, governments and corporations began to discover it was easier and more efficient for them, with their strict structures, to engage similar organisations. Corporations created trade 'treaties' or merged their resources into even larger management constructs, governments created legislation that could more effectively regulate trade through dealing with significant corporations and redeveloped its own internal procurement processes to favour hierarchical suppliers.

These steps, together with the fact that hierarchies were a more efficient organisation model for the time, led to our modern society, where the hierarchical model of resource management is dominant, well-understood and still considered the most efficient and effective way of arranging resources. After all, most other models would no longer suit our state and national legal systems or our international trade relationships and ownership structures.

This approach to hierarchy has become a self-fulfilling and propagating approach. The legal and economic environment of today, or at least up to very recently, put strictures on non-hierarchical organisations, limiting their size and complexity. This, in turn, ensured that the main hierarchies, governments and large companies, could compete and cooperate in a congenial environment.

These hierarchies had clear leadership structures - a President, Prime Minister or General Secretary, a Chief Executive Officer, Managing Director or Chairman - and they interacted with each other through clearly defined 'channels' of communication. Level to level, officer to officer. This made it easy for deals to be made between them. CEOs met Prime Ministers, Presidents met General Secretaries and the minions met their counterparts to do deals all the way down.

However with the rise of the Internet the environment has changed. Suddenly information can be distributed rapidly, frictionlessly and with great accuracy. Organisations can coordinate resources and manpower without enormous corporate hierarchies and infrastructure. Small teams can create global products, overturning the business models of large corporations and entire global industries.

Strict hierarchies are no longer clearly the best form of organizational structure, no longer clearly the most efficient or effective approach to marshaling resources or coordinating human activity.

This is posing an enormous global challenge for what are now traditional organisations. When customers are no longer limited to geographic competitors, when small and nimble organisations can adopt novel non-hierarchical structures to better marshal resources from any timezone, the dinosaurs begin to stumble.

However commercial 'entities' (traditional hierarchical structures) are not the only ones affected. Governments are also under enormous stress, with their strict hierarchies struggling to develop the systems and approaches needed to rapidly, proportionately and effectively engage, service or contend with non-hierarchical groups challenging their policies, structures and legitimacy.

With traditional lobbyists and companies it was easy for governments to engage. There were clear hierarchies for both state and non-state players and effective protocols could be put in place for meetings at level, systems for complaints, reviews and agreements. However when faced with a collective movement, fueled by a common feeling of rage, disempowerment, hope or other emotion and coordinated and concentrated effectively through online tools into outpourings of dissatisfaction, authoritarian, communist and democratic governments alike have failed to effectively engage or respond in a proportionate or effective way.

Whether a mayor seeks to meet the local leader of the Occupy their town movement (or just calls them a leaderless rabble) or a Prime Minister seeks to meet the national leader of their civil uprising (or just calls it an unsupported riot led by drug dealers and foreign terrorists), the pattern is the same.

The hierarchical government fails to effectively engage as they cannot identify a structure they recognize, another hierarchy. They apply tolerance, then security constraint and then force and they then lose or face diminished legitimacy.

In some cases the loss of legitimacy causes their fall and the fall of their government structure. In other cases the organisation continues liming along, but begins to slowly fade, waiting for the next encounter and the next, until it finally fails as a state or manages to adapt itself to cope with the changed conditions.

The question that remains open, in our hierarchy dominated world, is what will this adaptation look like. Governments remain an important tool for coordinating national and international relationships, resources and activities. They reinforce each other, no populated area of the globe can survive in today's hierarchical world with no government, although many different flavours are 'allowed' to exist.

How will government hierarchies adapt to collective activity - cations by leaderless, hierarchy free, adaptive groups with superb intelligence sharing and resource-coordination capabilities? Will they force movements to nominate n'leaders or 'representatives' who speak for their movements and can make binding deals? Or will governments find methods to adapt themselves to engage and, where necessary, fight and win, against 'faceless' foes and frenemies?

The jury is still out on this verdict and the evidence is still being presented. However thus far governments in most parts of the world have failed to develop effective, nonviolent approaches to contend with amorphous, leaderless collective movements.

While the internet exists in its current form, an international system for frictionless information sharing, coordination and amplification, governments will have to continue to work hard to adapt themselves, or change the rules, to contend with continuing leaderless protests and movements.

It will be a fascinating - and bloody - war between traditional hierarchies and amorphous, adaptive 'organisations'. However the policies and approaches used to engage, and the method of resolution of this war, will shape the next stages for human societies for many years to come.

Read full post...

View summary...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read full post...

View summary...

This week's social media score - Public: 3 Organisations: 0

This has been an insightful week for organisations using, or considering using, social media with three successive events demonstrating how far power has shifted to the public and illustrating how Australians companies are struggling to engage effectively online.

First up was Qantas with its poorly timed "Qantas luxury" promotion. Qantas launched the Twitter competition by inviting the public to tweet their idea of travel luxury using the hashtag #qantasluxury.

However Qantas appears to not have recognized that the tens of thousands of negative comments levied against the organisation since their shutdown represented a deep seated frustration and disillusionment with the company. Even though Qantas had hired four additional staff focused on monitoring social media the week before.

Within minutes of Qantas's tweet announcing the competition the public hijacked the hashtag and turned it against the company, using it to vent their concerns and frustrations at the airline.

This was picked up by traditional media and covered widely, turning a small ($1,500 in prizes) competition into what was called a national PR disaster for Qantas.

Next was Nissan, whose online competition, managed through their Facebook page, went pear-shaped when the winner of the competition turned out to be good friends with one of Nissan's staff running their social media presence.

While the competition was totally above board, with the winner selected objectively by finding the most car graphics on websites, unfortunately the winner's friendship with the Nissan staff member made it appear otherwise.

Nissan themselves were very upfront about it - indicating that while they congratulated the winner they'd have preferred if he hadn't won, but he'd done so fair and square without breaching any competition terms.

In this situation Nissan's approach did a lot to mute the concern, however it demonstrated the issue of friendship networks. If you're a staff member operating social media channels for an organisation it is highly likely you have many friends online. So what do you tell when a new company competition launches? You let your friends know online so they can spread the word and increase the competition's reach. Entirely above board, however risking a backfire if your friends can gain advantage by being first into a competition.

Third, and most significant, has been the social media backlash against the Kyle and Jackie O show following the comments of Kyle Sandilands regarding the deputy editor of news.com.au after her article about the reaction to Kyle and Jackie's TV special (which rated extremely poorly).

The backlash, much of it under the hashtag #vilekyle, has led to around a dozen companies deciding to withdraw their advertising from 2DayFM and sponsorship from the Kyle and Jackie O show - even the Federal government has now withdrawn all advertising from any show hosted by Kyle Sandilands.

Over 15,000 people have signed an online petition calling for advertisers to drop support for Sandilands and a number of people (myself included) have called for Southern Cross Austereo to let Sandilands go. Whether they will or not remains to be seen, however the loss of significant sponsors and advertisers will place significant pressure on the company to reconsider Sandiland's contract and on air presence.

All three examples above this week demonstrate different risks in social media.

Qantas failed to monitor and accurately assess the public view, selecting the wrong social media approach to attempt to rebuild its brand. Nissan made an easy misstep, selecting a competition mechanism that raised the risk of someone close to a staff member winning a prize, however by handling the situation in a proactive and robust way minimized the damage and emerged largely unscathed despite initial public concerns.

The Sandilands incident (which remains ongoing) demonstrates how public outrage can translate into the need for rapid organisational action, both through advertiser withdrawal and the attempts by Sandilands and Austereo to apologies for his behaviour (albeit fairly weak apologies that have not satisfied many online). In this case even though Sandiland's comments were made on radio, not on social media, the backlash occurred online and neither Kyle nor Jackie O, nor their employer Southern Cross Austereo, were prepared to engage with the public online response, whereas many of the sponsors and advertisers did, helping to minimize damage to their own brands.

None of these events impacted the government or public service - and in fact there's never been a significant social media disaster due to online engagement by public servants or agencies in Australia (I don't include media attacks on public servants such as by News Ltd on Greg Jericho) - however they all have lessons for government agencies to learn.

It is important to recognize that being absent or unresponsive online and in social media is no protection against public outrage (as the Sandilands incident shows), and failing to monitor online sentiment is a recipe for PR disaster (as Qantas demonstrated). However if organisations act with good faith, communicate and engage actively (as Nissan and several advertisers from the Sandilands issue did), they can minimize the impact of social media gaffes and build strong online relationships with their customers.

Read full post...

View summary...

In traditional organisations, innovation often appears to happens at the wrong end of a gun

When I think back over the most well known innovation successes over the last few years, and I am not specifically referring to the public sector, an aspect that springs out at me is how often these innovations occurred during a major crisis or due to a funding crunch.

In other words, these innovations frequently happened when organisations were placed at the wrong end of a gun.

It appears to me that often these innovations only occurred, or were allowed to see the light of day, because the pressure put on organisations by environmental or internal changes altered the perceived risk of innovating to be less than the perceived risk of not innovating - "the ship is sinking anyway, so we might as well try something different.

This raises several major concerns for me. Firstly that some organisations are incredibly resistant to innovation and can place themselves, or their management, into unviable situations by not beginning to innovate soon enough.

Secondly if the leadership of an organisation can see this conservative at work but wish to see innovation occur they may draw the conclusion that they need to place the organisation in significant distress - cutting budgets or hoping for (stimulating?) an external crisis that threatens its future viability.

This places enormous stress on individuals, with all kinds of negative consequences.

Isn't it better for organisations to proactively institutionalize innovation and change processes? Become capable and willing to change before a crisis occurs? To make innovation a key strategy for organisational adaptation rather than a last resort when system failures are already well underway?

This would involve changing the view of innovation to be an activity that is rewarded as a behaviour and activity, rather than being one that is punished, except at the organisation's "death's door".

A few organisations have successfully integrated innovation into their DNA as a core driver of their success. I hope more do so in the future and, at a larger scale, more societies as well.

Read full post...

View summary...

Pfft - who needs to understand social media to be a social media advisor

Over the last year I've observed a couple of good and bad trends in governments around Australia.

The first - the good trend - is towards the recognition that social media is a valid and significant channel for government communication and engagement. This has led to the creation of a new type of role, the 'social media advisor', separate to online communications functions (which primarily concern themselves with traditional website production and content management).

The creation of these social media roles recognises there is a difference in the skillsets needed to manage one or more static and internally owned websites, compared with curating and co-ordinating a range of fast-changing external and internal engagement channels.

However alongside this needed job specialisation is another disturbing trend which causes me significant concern.

A number of those being employed in these new social media advisor roles don't have the mix of skills required to hit the ground running. I've heard of people with little or no experience with professional use of social media being employed as social media advisors simply on the basis of their personal use of these channel and therefore presumed competence.

I don't blame the people who take on these jobs and then work hard to learn the skills they need, it is a great opportunity working in a leading edge field. However the approach raises issues for me as to whether those hiring social media advisors are as yet clear on the skills needed to perform the role - or are clear on what their organisations need to fulfil these roles most effectively.

While agencies are generally sincerely committed to the integration of social media into their engagement mix, there are few employment consultants who can help them quantify their needs, identify suitable candidates and assist them in hiring the most effective people for these jobs.

My concern is that agencies, despite the best of intentions, may end up taking more significant risks, may lose internal momentum or even face social media stumbles - as has been the case in the private sector when social media roles first began to appear.

So how do we as public servants help address potential skills gaps and the resulting risks?

I would recommend that agencies talk to each other, share their goals and discuss the skillsets they need for these roles, they should bring in appropriate interviewers to help screen applicants and begin developing a career path for social media practitioners - with roles for rookies and experienced people.

They should also directly and indirectly lobby employment agencies to upskill to understand their social media needs and build their ability to identify appropriately skilled people for social media roles.

Most of all, they should get their new social media staff across all the great work done in other agencies and in the private sector, across all the governance and advice now available and encourage them to network with their peers across government (including attending the various community events such as Gov 2.0 lunches and BarCamps).

Hopefully what I am seeing is simply part of the growth pains for social media as agencies integrate it into their DNA.

Read full post...

View summary...

My presentation for the AMI Government Marketing and Communications Conference

I am presenting from 3.20pm today, and my presentation is now available on slideshare, viewable as below.

Developing an agency social media infrastructure

View more presentations from Craig Thomler.

Read full post...

View summary...

South Australia Local Government Association releases social media issues paper for councils

With well over 20% of local governments in Australia using social media in their communication and engagement activities I've been please to begin seeing state Local Government Associations begin to release social media guidance papers.

To my knowledge both the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) (whose document appears to be inaccessible online at the moment) and the Local Government Association of South Australia have released social media guidance, with SA's A Social Media Issues Paper for SA Councils - Incorporating a Model Social Media Policy  released last week.

Read full post...

View summary...

What impact will cyborgs have on government?

"We are all cyborgs now" claims Amber Case in her January 2011 TED Director Talk (see her video below).

The concept of humans as purely biological beings ended long ago, potentially 3,000 years ago, with the first documented prosthetic limb on an Egyptian Mummy.

However the widespread use of mechanical or electronic devices to aid or control certain human physiological processes didn't become commonplace until the last century, when progress in devices such as eye-glasses and contact lenses, prosthetic limbs and even artificial organs really took off.



In 1979 the CDC reported (PDF) that 51% of US adults wore corrective glasses. I could not find any more recent statistics, either for the US or Australia, however I doubt the figure has declined.

Add to this those using prosthetic limbs and orthotics (devices which apply external forces to the body for the purpose of support and alignment, reducing pain or enhancing mobility), hearing aids, dialysis, artificial organs and so on, and I estimate that a majority of the population of developed western countries are cyborgs, of one type or another.

We've long been doing this with mechanical devices - cars, bulletproof vests, jetpacks, binoculars and more. In the future this enhancement might be more firmly integrated into human physiology - glasses and contact lenses containing heads-up displays and power-assisted prosthetic limbs are already in use in prototype forms.

We've also been busy enhancing our mental and conversational powers, as Amber also discusses. Most adults in Australia carry an external memory and communication device with them most of the time - a mobile phone - that allows them to instantly connect and communicate with people around the world, store information and receive alerts when required or research in a global library for facts or views that they no longer store in 'meat' memory.

In this arena we've begun to see devices for direct control of external devices via mechanical telepathy - with products already in the market.

Thus far cyborgs have generally used devices to attempt to match the biological human norm, to see, hear, move and live as closely as possible to unenhanced humans.

However we are increasingly heading towards a world that will see more widespread use of devices to enhance our capabilities. Moving from breast implants to heads-up displays, nightvision, hearing amplifiers and devices that otherwise increase our versatility, physical strength, speed, precision or stamina. An early example is Aimee Mullins, a double leg amputee who has turned her legs into art and can change her height, speed and capabilities through her selection of prosthetic limbs (see the video below).



Another example is 'Eyeborg', Rob Spence, who lost an eye and replaced it with a wifi camera. Rob has now made a short documentary, in conjunction with the new game 'Deus Ex: Human Revolution' (which features a cyborg hero) asking the question of where human augmentation may lead (video below).



At some point, as highlighted in Rob's video, we may even begin to face the ethical question of people choosing to be enhanced to increase their capabilities. This could involve medical interventions, even limb replacement.

So where does this impact on government and the process of governing?

Government policies, legislation and enforcement mechanisms have been designed for people who fit a particular range of capabilities and characteristics.

If cybernetic enhancements expand an individual's capabilities outside of this range, some laws may struggle to address the needs or issues this may bring.

We've seen the same challenges as other technologies were introduced. Some technologies had no impact on our legal framework, others have forced us to rethink entire policies.

Human augmentation technology is likely to be similar. For example, someone with camera eyes - who can record everything they see - might inadvertently record inappropriate material, or film in restricted venues. Someone with a brain enhanced with a direct wi-fi connection to the internet may use that collective knowledge in closed examinations or any type of competitive challenge or job where access to knowledge provides advantage. Someone with enhanced leg or arm strength may have an advantage in any type of competitive or commercial activity involving bodily strength, speed or stamina.

As a society we will have to debate issues such as,

• should augmented humans be allowed to compete for the same jobs, sports or competitions as unaugmented humans?
• should we create new approaches, policies or laws to govern individuals who can run faster, jump higher, grip harder or think faster than 'normal' humans?
• at what level of augmentation would any changes kick in. With an artificial retina (with a heads-up display), with power-assisted limbs, with a direct neural interface to the internet?

Fortunately we still have time to consider these questions and there's likely to be opportunities to adapt our governance approaches.

However with the growing number and acceptance of cyborgs and the rate at which technology is advancing, we may not have that much time to reflect.

Note: Excluding the use of an external memory enhancement and communication tool, I don't yet qualify as a cyborg.

Read full post...

View summary...

Avoiding the 'social media graduate' approach

I've commented before that it isn't a sound strategy for organisations to entrust their social media strategy to graduates, simply because they are young and "must understand social media".

I've also commented on the need to expand social media engagement beyond the communication team to entire organisations, within designated policies. This is because communication professionals see the world through a particular set of filters that can restrict an organisation's capability to gain many of the broader benefits from social media tools.

The following video does a great job of summing up my views in a single two minute long discussion, courtesy of Socialnomics author Eric Qualman (via the Digitalbuzz blog)



And to throw in another video from Socialnomics...worth a look.

Read full post...

View summary...

Gov 2.0 at the 2011 Public Affairs Conference

You may still have time to consider attending the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance and the Walkley Foundation's Public Affairs Conference in Canberra from 5-6 September this year.

The conference has a significant Government 2.0 and open government flavour, looking at the new toolkit of digital communication and engagement options available to public relations professionals and the effects of the FOI reforms on public relations.

There is also what looks to be a very interesting case study on the Clean Energy Future digital campaign including its social media and web engagement.

I'll be presenting a keynote (on Government 2.0) at the event and participating in one of the panels.

Other speakers specifically in the Gov 2.0/Open Government area will include Professor John McMillan, Australian Information Commissioner; Hank Jongon from DHS; Sandi Logan from Immigration; Tom Burton from ACMA; Kylie Johnson, University of Canberra journalism academic Julie Posetti; and Greg Jericho, known for his blog Grogsgamut.

if you can't attend, keep an eye on Twitter - there should be plenty of interesting titbits from the day.

Read full post...

View summary...

Online-first: Building in web at the front-end, rather than the back-end of government processes

One of the largest challenges for all forms of online use by government is how, as a late addition to the communications, engagement and policy stable of tools, web initiatives often get added to the end of processes rather than the beginning.

A good example is in content development of all kinds. Often officers across agencies use desktop publishing packages to create communications materials, briefs, papers and reports, finalise them via publications teams and printers, then send the final 'web-ready' PDF to the online team, to be loaded online - usually within a few hours.

This poses challenges and risks throughout.

The documents may be initially created without effective use of word processor standard styles (with format issues such as the use of spaces or tabs instead of tables or paragraph marks, and poor use of nested lists), the print design process loads them up with print-quality (sometimes inaccessible) images, adds charts and tables without appropriately text alternatives and incorporates formatting that requires substantial time to replicate online or simply doesn't suit screen viewing.

The final PDF may have 'printer's edits' (last minute changes at the printer) which are not replicated in the original final word processor document. This requires the online team to convert the PDF, rather than the faster and easier final word processor document, into the web version. Often the background information for charts or descriptive text for images is unavailable. Images may also not be available as separate files to the document to make them easier to embed online.

Finally, due to approval timeframes or last minute edits to reflect changing events, the online team may receive the final document too close to the go live deadline to do justice to the web publishing. This often results in the PDF version being uploaded with an apology stating that the agency will convert the document to an accessible HTML web page as soon as possible. Depending on priorities this may take months, disadvantaging people who cannot access the printed or online PDF versions.

As sometimes all the budgeted funds for the document are spent on the physical print process, online teams may be left without sufficient budget to do the document justice, time or dollars to convert the document into a fully web-enabled deliverable, which could be higher quality and far more usable and useful than a printable PDF.

A combination of some of all of these issues adds to the cost and stress of government documents. They can put pressure on agency timelines and result in lower community satisfaction and understanding of communicated material. They may also create greater legal risks due to accessibility considerations.

These potential costs could be avoided by embedding an online-first philosophy, policies and mandate throughout an agency. This would recognise at the beginning of document creation processes that content will need to be delivered online and, indeed, this might be the only, or most important, distribution channel.

This approach would, after initial training and support costs, save significant expense and human effort, freeing up agency staff for higher value activities while delivering more effective, and timely, public outcomes.

The shift could begin with appropriate training, support and mandates for public servants creating material which will need to go online. Including websites and intranets this reflects the majority of documentation now created by government agencies.

Online teams would be engaged at the start of document creation processes, advising other staff on how specific materials can be best designed for online representation, whether as 'traditional' documents or as web services, apps, interactive modules, data feeds or in some other format.

Every document would then be created using appropriate formatting in word processing tools or the appropriate alternative, with an express goal of being able to be quickly and easily placed online in an effective manner.

The created documents may be structured and laid out quite differently depending on the eventual form they will take online - representing the range of variation we already see between a video script, report and brochure.

The document creation process would include the steps necessary to deliver a quality accessible product, identifying the text behind every chart and appropriate explanations for every image and diagram.

As documents were created, graphic templates would also be created by graphic designers, both online and print templates which can be executed through online style sheets. Using this approach documents would appear in a web browser as native webpages but, when printed, be automatically reformatted for A4 paper.

This means agencies can deliver online and print versions from a single version of the content, a 'single point of truth' that removes the need to manage multiple versions, such as HTML, RTF and PDF copies. A print-quality template would also be developed at this stage as a shell for any printed copies needed.

The document would be directed loaded into the web template with the metadata and alt tags required and viewed and edited online, or printed in the print template and hand edited, to finalise the document.

Once approved the 'document' can be simultaneously released online and in print format, appropriately formatted for the different mediums, maximising its impact. There would be no time lag for an accessible version.

Sounds too easy? Well yes, there are a number of changes that agencies need to make to implement an online-first philosophy.

The most significant and influential change in agency policies. They would need to be redeveloped for the modern age, a business process improvement step to integrate web as a core platform rather than an afterthought.

While significant, changing these processes is technically quite simple, it just involves adjusting a few words on (ahem) 'paper'. The most difficult change is related to people - changing culture and retraining staff responsible for producing documents (public or internal) to reflect the new capabilities and skills required of a public servant.


I believe it is inevitable that agencies will gradually move in the direction of online-first publishing, for cost and efficiency reasons if not due to legislative and high-level policies (such as the recent FOI changes). However the speed and difficulty of this transition can be influenced by staff.

Senior staff can set policy in their areas and embody the behaviours they support, while middle management can build their own understanding and support and encourage their teams. Those teams responsible for agency document outputs can seek out new skills through training and lobby their management to make their jobs easier, allowing them to be more productive and satisfied with their jobs.

Online teams have a large central role to play, by demonstrating and modelling the behaviour themselves, identifying processes where documents are only published as web pages and piloting improved processes which lead to efficiencies (helping themselves as well as the teams responsible for the content).

Online teams may also to lobby for improved training, so that officials across an agency understand how to use the word processors and other document creation tools they use daily more effectively - this knowledge by itself improves efficiency.

Having a given level of skills with document creation tools, or developing it once in the job, could become a requirement of recruitment processes and performance reporting. It has often surprised me how otherwise highly intelligent and capable people may simply never have had the opportunity to learn how to most effectively use the tools of their 'trade' - document and presentation creation programs - at school, university or in the workforce.


An online-first philosophy isn't native to government agencies, and it will take conscious and directed effort to make it the default approach.

However in today's world, with online increasingly the first and sometimes the only distribution platform for government information, the rising cost of print, falling budgets and the legislative requirements to deliver government content online - shouldn't we be putting in active efforts to change our philosophy and make it so?

Read full post...

View summary...

If you're in Perth, don't miss the RightClick 2011 Conference

I will be making my first trip to Perth to speak at the RightClick 2011 Conference on 30 September.

If you're in town, or can make it there, I recommend that you consider attending.

The event is organised by the Institute of Public Administration WA (@ipaawa) and the event hashtag is #rightClick

More details below:

Transform the Way You Communicate - RigthtClick 2011 Conference

Over 10 million people in Australia have a Facebook account and up to 2 million use Twitter and LinkedIn. So how can you control what people say about you and what are the security implications for your organisation?

Simple answer, you can't control what people say but you can develop policies which address internal and external communication and security risks.

Attend RightClick 2011 and find out how you and your organisation can effectively use social media and new technologies in the workplace both safely and securely. Hear case studies from the public and private sector and the challenges and opportunities technology has provided.
Discussions will include:

• Why should government adopt digital media?
• Benefits of social networking services.
• Implications for policy makers and those employing young people in the workplace.
• Expanding young people’s digital citizenship.
• Communicating and engaging internal & external stakeholders.
• Security and privacy issues.
• The role of a Government 2.0 Advocate.

Download conference program

Who should attend?
Any professional interested in developing and using technology more effectively in the workplace.
Tell your colleagues:
We encourage you to tell interested colleagues about the conference.

Date

Friday 30th September 2011 
9:00am - 4:30pm
Hyatt Regency Perth

Cost

Member

$399.00
 

Corporate Member

$515.00

Non Member

$630.00

Read full post...

View summary...

Do we really need a common look and feel for government websites?

Recently Luke Fretwell over at Govfresh asked the question Time for government to plug into one platform?

While I am a big fan of Luke's and agree with his view that transferring government websites to Facebook, granting partial control over them to a foreign-jurisdiction company, is not a good idea, I find it harder to agree with Luke's point on centralising government websites and employing a common look and feel.

I've never been a fan of the 'one site fits all' approach of the UK Government's attempted Directgov website - or a supporter of the view that all government sites should have a common look and feel.

Why?

Because websites need to be designed to meet their specific set of goals within the constraints of the needs and preferences of their key audiences.

Where the goals and audiences are different, the websites need to be designed and operate differently.

Even when the goals and audience of two separate websites are similar, there can be good reasons to solve the 'problem' of usability and quick access to key information in different ways.

Web design is an art as well as a science. There's often multiple ways to achieve a good outcome, not one single approach that is best. This means that a government that did lock itself into a single 'right' website look and feel may find itself in a blind alley over time, requiring a huge shift in design to jump onto a more future-proof track.

When I commented on Twitter about my views I was told that a common look and feel made citizens more comfortable that a website was 'official'. This is quite a useful technique in the real world, where standard uniforms are used in a number of government professions to convey officialness and trust (such as police forces).

However online governments cannot trademark a given 'uniform' design for their websites, leaving it open for others to employ a similar or identical layout in order to mislead people into believing they are official websites.

The best safeguards of 'officialness' are those we already use - a common crest (where legal action can be taken to protect it from fraudulent duplication) and the use of a common domain '.gov' which is unavailable to anyone other than government agencies.

These two safeguards ensure that anyone visiting a government website can be assured that it is owned and maintained by the government in a way that a common look and feel cannot.

I always try to keep in mind that government websites are not common places for citizens to visit. Citizens only go to government sites for specific purposes - to find information on a given topic, to access a service or to report an occurrence.

Meanwhile government web staff visit government websites all the time, particularly their own.

I've generally found that while government web teams can point out all the flaws in their sites, visitors (who may go to the site once a year) don't notice them and often have a much more positive view towards government sites than do the internal experts.

I've yet to see evidence that citizens want a single website for government, at any level. What they do want is to find the information or service they are seeking quickly and easily. Google has become the front door into many websites - including government sites - because it meets this need.

Why should government invest a cent into replicating what search engines already do well? We could better invest our money into ensuring that when people get to our sites that the content is current, relevant, written in plain English and fully accessible.

Touching a little further on the concept of a single central government site, often the structure of government works against this approach anyway.

Agencies are funded separately, managed under different laws and often have restrictions on how and when they can share information.

They have widely different needs to engage the public and generally need to control their own web presences in order to maximise their flexibility when the environment changes.

Moving to a single content management system and single website poses a number of challenges for operational management structures, flexibility and funding.

Do all agencies forgo some funding for websites to fund a central agency web unit?

How does an urgent ministerial need (which requires the equivalent of a website today) get fulfilled in a timely manner? How does the central team prioritise development work, and who has access to content - and at what level.

There's just so many questions as yet unconsidered - even in the UK's Directgov model.

While I hate the proliferation of web sites across government, where every policy or program area, government directive and new initiative often 'requires' a new and discreet website, I think we'd be better placed putting a common framework around when and how government websites are built, and developing a central public list of these sites, than attempting to fit all these diverse properties into a single content management solution, central site and common look and feel.

By all means recommend a standard approach (always put the About link at far right, include a Contact, Privacy, Terms and Copyright page, organise content in relation to the audience, not the Department's structure), but don't compel a standard look and feel or central site.

I predict that many agencies would work around a centralised model, simply to meet the government's explicit policy requirements.

Read full post...

View summary...

Comments from the IPAA NSW 2011 State Conference - Session 1

I am spending the day at the Institute of Public Administration Australia's (IPAA) NSW State Conference, which is themed "The future course of modern government".

There's a packed room and a great speaker lineup, featuring commentators such as Ross Dawson and Martin Stewart-Weeks, leading (past) public servants such as Peter Shergold and the Premier of NSW, Barry O'Farrell.

I am participating in a panel discussion (straight after the Premier) along with James Kleimt of the Queensland Police Force Media team, Paula Bray from the Powerhouse Museum and James Dellow of Headshift.

Due to a late plane I arrived slightly late, catching the end of Ross Dawson's presentation, however a few points still stood out for me - citizens expect more from the public service and the public service has access to the tools to deliver, as long as we understand that governance is not only about controlling risk, but also about innovation and improving delivery while managing risk.

Ross provided examples such as the US intelligence Services' Intellopedia and the New Zealand police wiki Act - highlighting that the tools a modern government needs to employ are available and already in widespread use. The challenge for agencies is to normalize their use, find better ways to use technology to enable public service and combine 'play' with work.

Ross also highlighted that today's young people have an incredible array of technology at home - should they expect less in the office? As school leavers are increasingly normalized into, and expect access to technology to enable them to be more efficient, public services much provide the tools required to enable them to work effectively - which also brings productivity gains to government.

Now speaking is Christian Bason, the Director of MindLab in Denmark, speaking to us live via video from the US. He agrees that society is in the midst of a 'perfect storm' of technology that needs to be understand and adopted by organisations if they wish to remain relevant and effective in a fast changing world.

Christian is giving an example of a hospital in Scandinavia, where a gourmet chef noticed that the hospital was throwing out large quantities of food that was not eaten by patients. When he put himself in the position of patients he realized the food was unattractive, portions were too large and it was provided at set times regardless of patient hunger levels.

He tried introducing a new menu, with smaller portions, more attractive and nutritious food and better presentation at more flexible times.

He found that food costs declined by 30% - mainly use to less waste. He also instituted a study on the impact of nutritious food on patient stay times in hospital, which found that the average stay time was reduced by a day by providing more nutritious food presented in a way that people would eat willingly.

Christian sees this example as how public servants can put themselves in the shoes of citizens - looking at the outcomes, rather than the processes - in order to deliver better outcomes for society.

He says that by integrating citizens into the policy and service delivery process and by placing public servants in the shoes of citizens, much better outcomes can be achieved.

Christian says we need to move from public management to new public processes, creating solutions with people, not for them.

He advocates design-driven processes, employing new modes of qualitative knowledge, with a broader scope of people.

Christian says that "co-creation can enable co-production". Public servants can no longer create solutions as 'experts', we need to integrate the wisdom of citizens, leveraging their own skills and resources. He calls this employing "professional empathy", embedding ourselves in the experiences of citizens to avoid creating 'expert systems' which negatively impact on citizens or counter the effectiveness of programs (such as health systems where the amount of paperwork and stress increases patient sickness).

Christian asks "how do we rehearse what the future may look like?" saying we need to analyse needs better and consider the design of our services, integrating a broader range of skills and experience, creating and testing prototypes in partnership with citizens to identify unintended benefits and negative consequences.

Christian asks whether dissatisfaction should be the new status quo for public sector ethos. Dissatisfaction drives innovation and change in a way no other approach can do.

Peter Achterstraat, NSW Auditor-General, is now saying that public servants must create their own luck, using professional empathy and innovation to improve policies and services.

He is now introducing Peter Shergold to provide the third keynote address of the morning (no questions allowed so far).

Peter says that for the last three years he has been a liberated public servant, less constrained on what he can publicly say, however he remains committed to the values of the public service.

He says he is excited about the capability of social media to reinvent egovernment and the benefits of co-creation and co-production to reinvigorate public participation in democracy.

However Peter says that today he wants to talk about the historic values and traditions of public service that must be maintained into the future, to be "the boring old tart".

For example, by "non-partisan" doesn't mean that public servants should be non-political, it means that the public service must be able to serve consecutive governments without fear or favour. As public servants it is important to have an interest in politics and the political processes, however that should not remove the capability to offer confidential, robust, frank and fearless advice or carry out the decisions of the parliament.

Peter says it is crucial that the parliament make the decisions and the public service carry out their policies with commitment - even where public servants may consider the government as being "courageous".

Peter says that the public service needs to get serious about merit - it is not simply an outcome. He says he has lost count of the times in the Commonwealth public service that selection criteria has discriminated against people in the community or private sector as it was virtually incomprehensible to them.

He says there are four core values he believes the public service should embody.

Integrity (honesty, consistency, impartiality and acting in the public interest). Honesty to the system and consistency that delivers appropriate outcomes rather than turning the public service into a 19th century industrial machine - including flexibility in the system for particular geographic and demographic needs. He says that with impartiality we must remain responsive to community needs and when acting in the public interest, bearing in mind that it is the elected government who decides what is in the public interest (advised by public servants), not the public service directly.

Trust (respectful, empathic, compassionate, collaborative).
Respectful and empathetic towards citizens and collaboration "across the extending range of actors that are now involved in the delivery of government", not simply with other agencies.

Service (quality-focused, citizen-centric, innovative, flexible).
Peter is absolutely of the view that it is better for a government to have no new policy at all than for a government to announce new policies and have the public service fail to deliver it on time and on budget. He says that the public service, by failing to be quality-focused, damages its own reputation and that of government - leading to issues in the future. Peter days that citizens are not customers, representing a profound difference in approach. "Yes we deliver with people's rights, but they come with responsibilities. Yes we deliver people benefits, but they come with obligations".

Peter says that often the Commonwealth would deliver pilot programs, pilot not due to the goal of evaluating approaches and expanding successful trials, but due to lack of funds for a full delivery. He says we need to be serious about pilots.

Accountability (responsibility, transparency, confidentiality)
Peter says that transparency is vital and more transparency is needed. He says that the information collected by government with public money should be licensed under creative commons and be available to the public.

However he says the decision on what is to be released should be decided by parliament (in a broad sense). The public service requires confidentiality to deliver frank and fearless advice to government.

in his final thoughts on the NSW public service, Peter says we need to address the vertical rigidities in government hierarchy. We must give greater power to people who hold more junior positions in the public service.

He also says that incresingly public servants will work with others to deliver public service and the public servants must develop facilitation skills to be successful.

In the end, Peter says, we will know the NSW public service will be successful when it is known worldwide for attracting the best people and delivering effective outcomes within the core values of public service.

Read full post...

View summary...

Should government agencies embrace co-production for policy and services?

Ovum has published an interesting article by Steve Hodgkinson on Co-production: the new face of public services.

In the article Hodgkinson concludes that,

Agencies now need to nurture and embrace co-production by design, or risk either failing to harness this new resource or being left behind like old-style monopolists in an increasingly dynamic and competitive public services market.

What do you think, do government agencies need to integrate the wisdom of crowds in the design of public policy and services?

Or do agencies need to focus on developing their own internal design capabilities, using tried and true engagement, consultation and test processes to fine tune public policies and services to community needs?

Read full post...

View summary...

Twitter for newsrooms - useful for government media professionals

If you're not watching the #gov2au hashtag, you might be interested in the latest support information from Twitter - how to use the service effectively for newsrooms.

Twitter for Newsrooms provides information on using Twitter to search for news sources and breaking news, how to tweet effectively and engage an audience, branding, publishing via Twitter and support information.

It contains a range of examples of how media professionals and organisations are using Twitter for news-gathering, filtering and distribution.

I recommend passing on the link to your media people and Ministerial media advisors.

Read full post...

View summary...