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Wellington city in New Zealand is preparing for its next ten year plan (2009-2019) and has launched a website, Wellington long-term plan, to facilitate citizen involvement in the planning process.
The site features an ideas market-based discussion area allowing citizens to suggest ideas, then vote on different suggestions to provide their vision and priorities for the city's future, as well as a budget simulator where you can try your hand at balancing the trade-offs a city government needs to make when allocating funds.
There's also various documents and other information provided to inform citizens on different planning topics and a great introduction by the Mayor (below).
A side benefit, through the budget tool, is to better educate citizens in the hard choices necessary in government. After you've attempted to balance the budget and read about the consequences of the choices, it provides citizens with a clearer view of why the government makes certain decisions. This can help when selling a revised budget to citizens (they even make the budget comments by citizens available online).
Now if you consider that the main tools used to deliver this site are available online freely or at a very low cost (ideas market, budget simulator, youtube and poll tool), even factoring in overall website integration, moderation and the need to guide people to the site via other media and promotional channels, this is an extremely cost-effective form of consultation for government at any level.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Wellington city government begins online consultation for long-term plan | Tweet |
Integrating online media into a persistent channel | Tweet |
There's been a lot of 'bitsa' initiatives in Australia around the online channel as both the private and public sector come to terms with the new online options to support communication, collaboration, consultation and engagement.
However it's been rare to see effective integrated use of online channels in a co-ordinated fashion to support ongoing initiatives.
I'm not quite sure why this is so - perhaps the newness of the channels and relative inexperience of local online practitioners, the process of piloting new approaches in organisations (one step at a time) or the need to overcome resistance and achieve buy-in across various groups and management levels.
I think this change in thinking is just beginning to take root. Rather than simply posting a video, creating a short-term blog or taking steps into online conversations through forums, I am seeing more initiatives making use of a diverse set of online tools in a more consistently integrated fashion.
I have been doing a lot of thinking around how to implement an integrated department or agency level online channel, integrating various tools from blogs, forums, wikis, video and podcasts through to idea markets, social networks, virtual worlds and micro-blogs (plus new media as they become available and grow in usage - such as mobile platforms).
The aim is to create an ongoing conversational channel with citizens and stakeholders rather than a short-term promotional 'flash-in-the-pan'. This would become an established engagement channel for an agency, facilitating long-lasting customer relationships.
This channel would sit alongside and support existing channels such as face-to-face, other media avenues and various stakeholder and citizen groups to enable an agency or department to research, test, review and deliver initiatives and campaigns while receiving constant intelligence from the public to help it understand and maintain appropriate alignment with community values and needs.
This is the 'end-game', so to speak, that I've been interested in achieving since joining the public sector - making government agencies more accessible and responsive to the community they serve while ensuring appropriate transparency and accountability is maintained.
I'm interested in chatting with anyone who has been thinking in a similar vein, or has implemented such a system. Please drop me a line.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Microsoft online campaign encouraging US government IT officials to post best practice videos | Tweet |
Over in the US Microsoft is running a major campaign targeting government which aims to collect best practice videos from senior IT leaders in the public sector.
Based on the premise that shrinking government budgets means that IT has to achieve more with less, the Bright side of Government site aims to,
spotlight the “bright side” of IT in the government sector with videos, by you and from you, that showcase how government IT pros are putting technology to use to help state and local government agencies do more with less.
Videos are viewable from the campaign's Youtube site - government star.
There are a number of videos already from CIOs and other senior public IT officials, however my favourite so far is the video below from the State of Missouri.
Are we ready for that kind of online knowledge sharing with the goal of reducing costs here in Australia?
And can Australia public sector IT professionals script and shoot better videos than their US counterparts?
The reality of marketing and comms today | Tweet |
Marketing just isn't the same anymore - customers are harder to reach, they trust brands less and spend their time listening to each other rather than to media or to corporate or government marketers and communicators.
Yet many comms and marketing people are still stuck on the 'shout louder and longer' theory. If someone isn't listening, the theory goes, you keep shouting at them louder and louder until they MUST listen to you.
It's an interesting theory - one that I sometimes see English speakers use to attempt to reach those who speak other languages. The twin fallacies of the approach are that people can simply walk away (switch you off) or may not actually understand you in the first place. They may also find you obnoxious and rude and go tell all their friends that.
The other communications approach I see used a great deal is the 'love'em and leave'em' or 'big bang' approach. An organisation will go for saturation coverage, a big launch event and then - nothing. After launch they settle back to assess the numbers, maybe doing a mini-relaunch every now and then to attempt to regain interest. Big launches are good fun and I've participated in a number of them over the years, but they don't shape lasting impressions.
As most people have discovered, it is hard to build a long-term relationship with another person by leaping out of a box with a bunch of flowers while a plane skywrites their name in the sky and then ignoring them totally for the next year.
So what's another option?
How about starting with a conversation - simply talking to your customers without expectations or attempting to direct or control the conversation. Over time, as trust builds your relationship, you can inject ideas or build on suggestions and co-create a product, service, policy or program in collaboration with your audience.
Sounds crazy? It's been done - with everything from government policy (in New Zealand) to beer. In fact it even has a name - relationship marketing.
Even if you think this approach is too out there, or would take too long, it's clear that our audiences have changed their behaviours. Old marketing techniques are less effective and old marketers need to learn new tricks.
And if you believe that just because we're in government we're different in some way, sorry no. People are bombarded with advertising all the time. Putting an Australian crest into an ad doesn't mystically help it cut through the morass of messages. We have to do better than that.
Steve Collins from AcidLabs recently blogged about the video below in his post Engage them.
As a marketer I found this video tells a compelling story of how markets have changed.
The big question for me is - have government communicators?
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
What would occur if the STOP sign was invented today? | Tweet |
Public Sector Marketing 2.0 has published an online video looking at the process government would go through if it was first inventing a STOP sign for traffic intersections.
While cynical, perhaps there's a few grains of truth in the message that sometimes in government we focus on our own importance and processes to the expense of the customer and outcomes. What do you think?
What would happen if the STOP sign was invented in 2008?
Friday, December 05, 2008
Is self-organised government coming? | Tweet |
Reading the Connected Republic this morning, Paul Johnston has written an interesting post, Us Now: On the Road to Self-Organised Government?, about the new documentary, US Now, which explores the power of self-organising groups and what they might mean for society and the public sector.
The film has just previewed in London, however clips, a blog and other information is available at the Us Now website and the Us Now Youtube channel.
Monday, December 01, 2008
What governments could learn from Mumbai - citizens now control the flow of information | Tweet |
Like many other Australians I have a direct link to the recent attacks in Mumbai.
One of my family's friends was trapped in the Taj Mahal hotel. She managed to avoid being taken hostage - or worse. Her husband was out of the hotel at the time and found shelter elsewhere.
Fortunately both of them remain safe. My thoughts go out to all who lost their lives, were injured or who lost loved ones in the attacks.
During the siege it was difficult to get accurate and timely information about what was occurring from Australia's traditional mainstream media. This was repeated in many other countries around the world. Events unfolded too fast for television crews or print reporters to get onto the scene or file stories. When they did they were not able to access people at the heart of the crisis, their access was controlled by Indian authorities.
Due to this many people around the world turned to the online channel for information, finding a wealth of eye-witness reports, videos, photos and maps, with many citizens self-organising to support those in Mumbai and the people who care for them.
Commentators have called it the first crisis where the internet completely dominated other media channels.
Where were governments? They were left waiting for official updates, providing limited information in pre-packaged messages via traditional media, while citizens took control online.
If the communications experience of Mumbai can be learnt from, I believe it teaches governments that they must become more nimble and open to use of public online channels, or lose control, influence and relevance.
Mumbai is a wake-up call - in many ways.
People used many online channels to self-organise and share current information and personal accounts as events unfolded. This included sites such as blogs, Youtube, NowPublic, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google Maps, Google docs (a complete list of dead and wounded) and Twitter.
This frequently involved live updates from people in Mumbai directly experiencing the events, or repeating local news reports that did not get picked up outside India.
There was so much information that, on Twitter alone, CNN Online reported that at peak there were an estimated 80 messages (or tweets) sent to Twitter via SMS every five seconds providing eyewitness accounts and updates.
Traditional mainstream media relied heavily on citizen journalism to understand what was occurring, contacting Indian bloggers, using on-the-scene photos from Flickr and amateur video published on the web. Several traditional media players were able to tap directly into citizen journalism, such as the BBC and CNN.
However most mainstream media played catch-up, particularly in Australia where online commentators quite vocally criticised the slow reactions and poor coverage by local outlets.
It appears that even the terrorists involved in the attacks made use of the internet, using Blackberries to monitor world public opinion during the attacks.
With all this online activity, how were most governments communicating to the community?
Via traditional mainstream media outlets.
This highlights to me the disconnect rapidly emerging between how citizens choose to communicate and how comfortable and skilled governments are in using new media channels.
More and more citizens are seeking timely, relevant, plain english and personalised information. Whereas governments remain focused on traditional methods to assure accuracy and message management.
By the time a government assesses events, writes appropriate messages, gets approvals and distributes their views via traditional media channels (hoping they get a 15 second grab), the public has moved on, relying on personal, on-the-spot accounts.
Traditionally this approach has served government well. It maintains their appearance of authority, dignity and accuracy, preventing disturbing rumours or information from spreading in an uncontrolled way.
However the world has changed. Many eyewitnesses can publish their personal accounts directly without going through 'official' channels.
Using traditional approaches governments can appear slow to respond or even painfully out of date, particularly where events progress rapidly.
Similarly in organising a response and support for people, while governments do an invaluable job behind the scenes (organising counseling and transport), publicly the self-organising online citizen groups are more nimble and responsive.
The perceived slow response from governments can reduce the trust and faith of citizens. Over time this leads more people to seek more responsive channels and, though receiving timely eyewitness accounts, reduces citizen satisfaction with the language and messages of government. Governments become less relevant.
People who relied on traditional media or official reports to stay informed during the Mumbai seige probably find it hard to believe the impact the online channel had on global communications.
Fortunately no-one has to rely on my opinion.
The failure of traditional media has become a topic of much debate, by the media itself, such as in Wall Street Journal's Live Mint and Yahoo News, as well as by well-known bloggers including David Henderson (Emmy award winning former CBS news correspondent) and Laurel Papworth (one of Australia's top experts on social media).
To finish with a quote from Laurel's post (link above),As someone who doesn't have Cable TV I can - hand on heart - swear that I learnt nothing about #Mumbai from Australian MSM [Mainstream Media].
I relied totally on Twitter. Not because I wanted to, but because TV wouldn't interrupt Kerri Anne Kennerly or children's morning TV with real news.
Twitter filtered to me websites, and tidbits I couldn't get elsewhere. ALL news was broken to me by Twitter and the links they sent.
In amongst retweeting MSM were the REAL stories. Someone hearing the bombing while lying bed. Someone else driving past a hotel as it was attacked. A guy worried about his friend. I realised this: who on earth ever said that social commentary is not News? O.o
For me, MSM doesn't make the news, they simply report OUR stories. Just another filter. After people-in-crisis are interviewed on CNN India (I watched online, thanks to link sent by Twitter) they tell a friend, who puts it on Facebook or Twitter or MySpace. More links to real stories.
Australian Media is dead. It failed to meet my needs (I channel hopped from 9:30am until about 4pm hoping for new News) and by the time the 6 O'clock News came on, MSM was simply retweeting what I had already seen and heard through Twitter links.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Simple guide to understanding phishing | Tweet |
Like many organisations, my agency warns our customers about the threat of phishing - where criminals use emails and/or websites to attempt to dupe people into providing personal information or account information to a fake website.
Commoncraft has released a 'Plain English' video, which provides a visual way of communicating phishing to people and helping them understand the risks.
It's an approach that, by reducing the word count and adding visual and audio dimensions to the communication, can be much easier to absorb and understand.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Australian history on show - on Flickr | Tweet |
Thank goodness that another Australian institute has taken the step to start placing a pictorial history of Australia up in Flickr.
As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald in the article, Australian history gets Flickr treatment, the State Library of NSW has begun loading its photo collection into the online image library.
It can require a great deal of hard work and organisation to get archives into a viable state to place online (as the Powerhouse museum has already done so well).
The benefit is that a priceless visual history of Australia becomes visible to all Australians, rather than requiring people to travel to the photos to see them (such an antiquated notion!).
Eventually it may be possible to aggregate all the individual collections into a national view of Australia's past in a way never before achievable. Then through user-based tagging, comments and search, different pathways through the images can be used to tell different stories, bringing the past back to live via the people who lived through it.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
The business case for social media within a government department | Tweet |
Brought to my attention by the Victorian eGovernment Resource Centre, the below video from Shel Holzman provides an excellent summary of the value of social media as an set of egovernment tools within government intranets.
It addresses common misunderstandings and myths that have limited take-up, case studies of successful social media use and talks through appropriate applications for different tools.
Shel's video should be compulsory viewing for senior public sector executives who have an interest in improving the capture and dissemination of knowledge within their workplace, reduce the knowledge drain as babyboomers exit the workforce or improving their project management capacity and success rate.
This has been postponed until 20 September, in case you want to catch it. The timing is tricky for Australians and New Zealanders, but it will be available on their site after the event.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Mapping the social media landscape - a guide for understanding | Tweet |
It can be very daunting for communications professionals to build an understanding of the social media landscape, grasping its scope and diversity and use this knowledge to select the right tools to meet their communications needs.
On occasion I've spoken to other marketers and PR professionals who have said that the sheer diversity and complexity of the social media landscape makes it easier to simply avoid the area, rather than spend the time necessary to make good decisions.
Increasingly organisations will need to take their first steps into this area - social media is in widespread use by internet users and they are talking about you.
The first step to understanding any landscape is to map it - fortunately there have been a few efforts in this regard already.
Possibly the first consolidated attempt was by Robert Scoble, who published the Social Media Starfish last year.
Pictured below, the Starfish provides one way to visualise the different categories of interactions and capabilities of the different social media tools.
A video explanation of the Starfish is also available as below.
A second approach, released more recently, is the Conversation Prism, pictured below.
This was released by Brian Solis, principal of Future Works and author of PR 2.0.
In a report in ZDNet, Brian describes the Conversation Prism as a tool that "helps chart online conversations between the people that populate communities as well as the networks that connect the Social Web." The article, ‘Conversation Prism’ helps corporations visualize social media strategies, provides a good overview of how the tool works.
Of course these maps are only a start. The social media environment is evolving as technology improves and smart people come up with new ways to facilitate human interactions via digital channels.
However now that we do have these maps, we can begin to understand the social media landscape in more detail, and apply the right tools for our communications needs.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Does your agency really hear customers and staff? | Tweet |
A constant theme I hear from friends, family and peers is that, while government agencies do put a lot of time and effort into listening to their customers, they don't often hear what is said correctly (any do not even appear to put much effort into listening to staff at all).
This issue is not limited to the public sector, but in the private sector there's a simple metric for judging how well an organisation meets its customers' needs - it's called sales.
In the public sector we don't have this simple feedback mechanism - we often judge by backlash, which can have large impacts on governments, agencies and individual careers.
DOCs is seeing some of this at the moment. It's not always useful as an early warning system.
Fortunately, with digital media, we have many new tools we can use to open lines of communication. Forums, collaborative groups, wikis and social media networks all help organisations to listen to their customers, stakeholders and staff.
Use of these tools by a government agency requires an operational shift in organisational policies. This can be difficult but is normally achievable.
But it isn't enough simply to hear - government agencies must also hear what is said.
This involves putting aside organisational filters, perceptions and judgements and actively working to understand the context and goals of those we are listening to. It means initiating and participating in conversations, getting to know the other participants as equals, as communities and as individuals.
Digital tools can help support conversations, but they cannot create them. This requires cultural change, which can be significantly more difficult than simply introducing online social tools.
It also does no good to delegate participation to those with no power in an organisation - the decision-makers must be part of the discussion.
Otherwise, no matter how many listening channels you use, you can end up getting the message as wrong as the lady in the BMW commercial below.
How well does your agency really hear what customers, stakeholders and staff are saying?
By the way - did you notice that I said it was a BMW commercial, when really it was for Mercedes-Benz.
How well were you hearing?
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Who is watching The Hollowmen? | Tweet |
For a fantastic (satirical) look into the halls of power in Canberra, the ABC's The Hollowmen is a great watch.
What does this have to do with eGovernment?
Well in Episode 2 it does suggest that 90% of what most of our overseas embassies do could be done remotely via the internet with a few local staff.
Now that's an interesting thought!
Monday, June 23, 2008
A different way to look at agency customers | Tweet |
My agency spends a lot of money learning about our customers with the goal of identifying how to provide them with better services.
These research processes quite often lead to huge presentations full of statistics that attempt to explain customer intentions and motivations.
If you have a maths bent, these presentations speak very loudly - however they don't always translate well for others and can be difficult to absorb and interpret.
An approach that I find is very eloquent is to imagine that you have only 100 customers living in a village and look at their conditions, hopes and aspirations in this framework.
This has been used with great effect by Miniature Earth - which takes this concept and applies it to the entire globe.
There's also an application of it to companies, looking at large corporations or agencies from the same perspective of a 100 person village.
Brought to my attention by Steve Collin's Thoughtglue blog, you can view it at: McDaniel Partners: Are You Effectively Managing Your Most Important Asset?.
So using this concept for your customers, what do they look like, and where are they going?
Thursday, June 19, 2008
The breakdown of the advertiser/consumer relationship and how to fix it - get inspired! | Tweet |
This is a great series of short videos exploring how communicators have lost their audiences because consumers have changed, but advertisers have not.
Does it apply to government?
Probably even more so...
Here's the first movie 'The Break Up'
And the sequel 'Inspiration Anyone'
More to come!
Visit their website at GetInspiredHere
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
What's the difference between the Bureau of Meteorology and a movie star? | Tweet |
Why is it that movie and sports stars, who are already earning millions for their public performances, feel the need to lend their reputations to endorse products such as lipstick, running shoes and advanced hair restoration treatments?
Of course there's the money and the extra public exposure to build their celebrity status and it helps stars leverage their reputations to support important causes, influencing the views of millions - but besides these obvious rewards, why would they behave in such a manner?
I'm sure this is a question often pondered at the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), who own the most trafficked government website in Australia (based on the Hitwise data I've seen).
From visiting the BOM's site I don't know if they've successfully answered this question as yet.
The BOM site is a tour-de-force of weather information. From the homepage it's possible to literally take Australia's temperature - and check if it's raining outside too!
For the average citizen, this wealth of meteorological information is vitally important for starting those awkward conversations with strangers, "Nice weather we're having - I've just checked the BOM website and it's 30 degrees outside".
For many other Australians this information is vital to their planning and financial wellbeing. Farmers rely on this information to make decisions on planting, harvesting and water use. Sailors and fishermen need to know the latest conditions at sea. Aviators need to check the winds before they take to the skies.
All of this information is needed by citizens on a daily basis - so it's no wonder that the BOM's site manages to consistently reach more Australians each day than other government website juggernauts, such as the Australian Tax Office, Centrelink or Australia.gov.au.
But do they really leverage these visitors well?
At a second glance at the BOM homepage, there's a small area promoting the BOM's 100 year anniversary and a couple of links to allow people to learn more about meteorology.
There's also a small link at the bottom of the page (below the fold) to the Australian government locator service (AGLS) and links to the BOM's Department, to Australia.gov.au (but named 'Federal Government') and to the Prime Minister's website.
However there's no links to other government services that would be of use to the many sailors, farmers and aviators visiting the BOM's site.
This is the difference between the BOM and a movie star.
The movie star leverages their relationship with their fans to present them with appropriate products and services that may be of interest to them.
The BOM misses a major trick in joined-together government by not doing the same with services across the public sphere, and then using these connections to further increase its own star appeal and audience.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Dummies' Guide to Social Media | Tweet |
Commoncraft have made another fantastic video, this time focusing on Social Media.
This (older) presentation is also a great Dummie's Guide to social media: Social Media and Marketing: Evolution or Revolution?
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Where do you start with Web 2.0? | Tweet |
I've never liked the term Web 2.0, but it's become established as the 'in term' for websites involving more than flat pages and information.
These days everyone wants to be seen to be doing Web 2.0 - even when they are not.
But what really IS Web 2.0?
What separates the sites that are really engaging in an interactive way with their audience? That are driven by participation rather than command and control?
And what does this mean for government (a user-participation activity!) and business in the future?
Professor Michael Wesch has some ideas in his video, The Machine is Us.
