Is it time for governments to extend digital security protections to all parliamentary candidates & parties?

Over the last few years we've seen increasing attention on the use of personal technology by politicians.

From our current Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who uses Wickr, to Hilary Clinton's use of a personal email server, and even the struggle President Barack Obama faced to use an iPhone, politicians - like the rest of us - are increasingly using a diverse range of technologies to conduct both personal and official business.

Not all of these technologies are officially approved or secured. Many are newer technologies with both known and unknown security concerns.

However politicians, like the rest of us, continue to use them either because we perceived the benefits (convenience, flexibility, speed, utility) far outweigh the risks we accept, or because the risks are not clearly understood by non-technical people.

This becomes a particular issue for politicians, political parties and individual candidates for parliament when state-sponsored agents, organised crime or unscrupulous businesses attempt to access their information.

There's many motivations for 'political hacking' - commercial advantage where particular information or decisions are obtained before the market knows, political advantage, blackmail or an improved capability to 'groom' politicians to a given perspective supportive of a particular desired goal or outlook, or opposing an undesired reform or initiative.

In fact I think it can be said that political power doesn't only originate from the muzzle of guns, but now political power also emerges from the keyboard.

Information is power, and the best source for information about an individual's views and decisions can be their private email and social accounts.

With the revelations of Russian state-sponsored hackers penetrating the Democratic National Convention and Clinton's Presidential campaign data stores, it's clear that state-sponsored and other organised hackers are increasingly seeing unelected potential parliamentarians as targets.

This is a logical development. It's in the interest of foreign nations to understand the views and decision-making approaches of powerful national leaders. Combine this with the likelihood that the security deployed by a political party is far easier to penetrate than the security deployed by a national government, and the fallout if caught is far less and it becomes a no-brainer for nations and large commercial interests to conduct hacking before an election locks away leaders behind tighter firewalls.

So, now we know that there's a reasonable to high risk that electoral candidates and parties will be hacked - particularly if they have a good chance at election - there's a question for governments to consider.

Should governments extend their security expertise and protections to all electoral candidates, placing them behind state-supported firewalls and security provisions, as soon as candidates nominate for electoral roles? And should this protection be extended to all political parties as well?

Given that even medium-sized governments, such as Australia's, secure hundreds of thousands of devices and people through their security regime, extending this to a few hundred more would be a technically manageable exercise.

The approach would help protect more of Australia's governance institutions from foreign and commercial influence, though likely would only be a partial measure as traditional intelligence gathering and governance influencing methods (background research, infiltrators, electoral donations and hosted trips and tours) would still be available to interest groups and countries.

Individual politicians and candidates would still have personal digital accounts vulnerable to hacking, with which they may engage with the public, the media, each other, business partners, friends, family and, occasionally and hopefully discreetly, with potential sexual partners.

So perhaps the step would provide partial protection - avoiding situations like the one the US Democrats have found themselves in, where the long-term ramifications are as yet unclear.

However even government systems are not totally impervious to cyberattacks, and the limitations of working within a government firewalled system might be too invasive or restrictive for some in the political world.

Also in a world where no security is perfect, partial protection can provide an illusion of security where none should be assumed, with the potential that protecting candidate correspondence could lead to more significant information theft or leaks from either hacking or internal disgruntled staff - or the misuse of candidate data by a future unscrupulous government to influence an electoral result.

On balance I think we're going to have to take our changes over whether political parties and individual candidates are hacked by foreign or corporate interests.

No security solution will ever be perfect and so Australia, and other nations, need to focus less on hiding potentially damaging information and focus more on developing transparent and fair agendas, with individual candidates and politicians being as honest and forthright as they claim their opponents should be.

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New South Wales's iVote® system - an interview with Ian Brightwell

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

View other posts in this series.

If I had to pick someone to be in charge of developing an electronic voting system, I’d want them both to be highly skilled at technical project management and a passionate supporter of democracy.

Ian Brightwell fits both criteria in spades.

“My first voting experience was in 1974 when the Whitlam government was re-elected. Then in 1975, when this government was dismissed, I recall seeing people arguing in the street over politics, which I had not seen before and indeed not seen since.”

“After the dismissal in 1975 and before the election, no-one I knew said they would vote liberal, and then we saw a liberal landslide. It was at that point I realised the virtues of our electoral system and value of the secret ballot, allowing people to express their view without undue influence from others.”

As the CIO of the NSW Electoral Commission, Ian Brightwell is responsible not only for all of the commission’s IT infrastructure, but also for Australia’s most exciting online electronic voting initiative, the iVote® system.

The iVote® system is an internet-based voting platform which has been custom-built to support the NSW government’s requirement for remote voting at parliamentary elections. Under current legislation only electors with vision or physical disabilities and remote or voters absent from NSW on election day are entitled to use the system.

In 2011, the first time the iVote® system was used, some 46,684 electors used it while over 200,000 people are expected to use the system in the next state election in 2015.

Ian says that despite the limited number of voters currently entitled to use the iVote® system, it has already demonstrated its value.

In 2011, he says, there was a much larger group of out-of-state voters than they had seen in previous elections, as people didn't have to go to specific locations to vote.

Ian says he can see the iVote® system being expanded to other groups of voters in the future, but at this stage he is comfortable with using the platform for those voters the Commission find difficult to service– where it is hard to get to them manually –it also allows more time for the system to be refined before it is scaled.

One group Ian identified as a potential future target audience were postal voters.

The head of Australia Post has said that first class mail may not be available within 5 – 10 years as a result of Australia Post reducing postal services in line with declining demand. On this basis it is possible that all Australian jurisdictions with postal voting will need a replacement approach for future elections.

He also sees absent voting at local government elections as an area the iVote® system can help. This is particularly a concern because NSW’s Local Government legislation doesn’t permit absent voting at a council elections (this problem will be exacerbated if the proposal by Sydney City Council to require businesses to vote is enacted). For NSW local government elections there’s around 300,000 more non voters fined than at state elections because absent voters are not able to vote.

Another area of interest has been for plebiscites and ‘mini-polls’. Ian demonstrated the system at Parliament House in Sydney, primarily to minor party representatives. They were excited about the potential for using a system like iVote® to include more direct democracy in our system through polling voters on what they thought on different topics.

Ian isn’t sure this is necessarily a good idea, “I’m not sure voters are always well placed to make decisions on complex individual topics, due to the depth of material to absorb and the range of options, but it is an interesting proposition which needs further exploration.”

He believes that “voters are far better at picking the people they want to represent them for parliamentary decision-making.”

Ian does however believe that the iVote® system could be valuable for referendums, which he says there’s a current reluctance to run due to the cost, “the marginal cost of electronic voting, once the system is established, is much lower than that of paper voting.”

One area that Ian doesn’t see the iVote® system moving into any time soon, is replacing the local voting booth.

He believes paper voting is a key method for retaining confidence and trust in the electoral system – particularly given the concerns that have been raised overseas with electronic voting systems in physical locations.

Ian also said that, “for the most part with our current arrangement, replacing attendance paper voting with electronic attendance voting would be quite costly, and there would have to be clear set of benefits to offset that cost.”

Ian believes there isn’t a strong push for Australia to move to electronic attendance voting as there’s sufficient trust in the existing electoral system.

However, he says “with manual systems voters have to trust electoral authorities to do their job and although there is some ability for voters to see this in polling places there can be no evidence votes are finally counted as cast because the final count happens weeks later in remote offices and electors cannot observer this process.

However, with an electronic system you can provide the elector with a little more transparency, though they will have to understand the more complex electronic process to fully appreciate the verification information they have been provided – it’s a different kind of trust.”

Speaking of trust, the iVote® system has been designed with modern security to ensure that the system is as secure and unshakable as possible. Ian says they have updated the security and will conduct penetration testing to mitigate the risk of hacking at the 2015 election.

Also, he says, as the system is in place only during election periods, there’s a very limited window for a hacker to break through security and alter the results.

While no electronic system is perfect, he’s confident that his team has done everything possible to ensure that NSW voters using the iVote® system can trust that their vote will be recorded and counted accurately.

Ian says that the international experience has been that electronic voting isn’t a universal preference if offered to all electors anyway, “a few countries have offered electronic voting to all citizens, and have found that it peaks out at 20-30% of voters, with others preferring physical polling places or other forms of voting.”

“In Australia voting is a community and social activity and taking away a polling place from a small community can create enormous controversy and concern in the community.”

Ian thinks that we should not take away from physical voting or the opportunity for civic social contact, but definitely should offer a diversity of ways to vote, with electronic voting part of the mix.

In particular Ian said that there are issues with areas, with large and growing populations, where in older areas the available polling places can get overrun and newer areas there are no available venues for polling places. He says there is a need to manage the pressure on the attendance voting system which is already feeling over loaded.

While the iVote® system may not be used now to replace physical voting, this still leaves a large number of voters it can service. Ian says that these days 20-30% of votes are not attendance votes (in district votes in a polling places or pre-poll).

an also says that, from the data we have on voting patterns by voting channel, all voting channels generally have a similar electoral outcome. That is electoral commissions see similar voting trends across attendance, postal, absent voting channels. Electronic voting in NSW in 2011 was no exception, it gave a similar electoral outcome to other channels, so in the future this pattern should hold for other jurisdictions that choose to use electronic voting. This is a useful way of determining if major electoral fraud has occurred in just one voting channel.

While the iVote® system has been designed for NSW state voting, Ian’s team kept in mind that it could be used for local government voting in the future. He says that NSW has far less turnout for local elections, “we send out up to 300,000 more penalty notices for local government voting than for state voting.”

Ian also says that other states and territories are watching his team’s work closely, “we’ve had lots of interest from other states, federally and overseas, and expect interest to translate to some action after the next election.”

Looking into the future, Ian said that he didn’t see huge change in voting approaches in the next five to ten years, but expects an ongoing shift from postal to electronic and increasing levels of absent voting driving electronic voting.

He also sees increasing levels of early voting being the first avenue for attendance electronic voting being used “it is already immensely popular and we see 50-100% increase in early voting election on election - but parties hate it as they have to get their party volunteers there for 2-3 weeks prior to election day and it is hard for them to manage their election message. The public love it as it frees them up on election day. The reality is the public will win this one in the long run.”

Australia already has a very high voter participation rate, so while in the US electronic voting may be seen as a way to raise voting participation, Ian says that’s not a consideration in Australia, “as we have such a high participation rate we have has bipartisan support for electronic voting.”

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

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92% of Australia's federal politicians now use Facebook and/or Twitter

I've been tracking the number of Australian Federal politicians using Australia's leading social channels for two years now, seeing the number using at least one of Facebook and Twitter grow from 79% in April 2012 to 90% in November 2013 to a current level of 92%.

What's even more interesting is in the details, which you'll find in my thoughts below.

 To access the raw data and statistics, go to my latest Google Doc at: docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ap1exl80wB8OdFhaQ1gzdzg3d1VWcFJpSl91bkQwbWc&usp=sharing

While the overall use of social media is at 92.48%, or 209 out of 226 federal politicians (150 Members of the House of Representatives and 76 Senators), the situation is very different between the houses.

The House of Representatives has a far greater level of social media use at 95.33% compared to the Senate at 86.84%. The gap has remained consistent with my last review in November 2013, where it was 92.67% compared to 85.14%. Senators, on average, are slightly older than Representatives (51.55yrs versus 50.19yrs), which is likely a factor, as is the consideration that Senators don't campaign in the same way as Representatives due to the difference in how they are elected and who they represent (states/territories, not electorates).

I still believe that Senators are missing a trick here - due to their different responsibilities in most cases they represent much larger electorates and thus social media can be of value for listening to and engaging with people they can't as easily drive out to see face-to-face.

This rationale also carries over to Representatives with geographically large electorates, such as in the NT, WA, SA and Qld.

I am particularly glad to see that the Nationals, who focus on rural and regional seats and were previously the party whose elected politicians were least likely to engage online, has picked up their act in this area, and 19 of their 20 elected members now uses social media, a greater proportion that either Labor or Liberals (and I count Qld LNP Nationals as Nationals federally).

Social media remains very important for smaller parties to get their message out, with the Greens maintaining their 100% use of social media and every other minor party (KAP, PUP, DLP, Family First) and independent politician using social to some extent.

I see the same trends we've seen in previous years from politicians, and the population in general, still hold true.

Similar to my past reviews, female politicians are more likely to use social channels than male politicians, though by a smaller margin (4% rather than 7%) than previously.


Equally, the older a politician is, the less likely they are to engage on social media, with a clear divide by decade.


This reflects the same phenomenon as we see in the community - with politicians aged 60+ far less likely to use online channels for engagement, and those aged under 45 likely to use it as one of their primary ways to communicate and collect information.

This tends to suggest that the maturity of political decisionmaking regarding the internet is likely to continue to improve as older politicians retire and younger digital natives take their place.

For your reviewing pleasure, below is an infographic with some of the key statistics, please have a play with the interactive elements - they provide an interesting view of how actively different groups of politicians engage via Twitter and Facebook.

Australian Federal politicians - Twitter and facebook use - AUG 14 | Create Infographics

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Young people in Australia are highly engaged in politics - but engagement has moved online. Have governments?

A few years ago I heard it said by political advisors that one hand-written letter to a Minister counts for more than 100 emails on the same topic.

The perception was that if someone sat down and wrote their thoughts in long-hand it showed more interest and commitment than if they typed and posted them online in a blog, social network or website.

I believe this has changed slightly, with emails now accorded almost equal status with postal mail (largely by treating them in the same manner as postal mail, which isn't always appropriate).

However the value placed on blog posts or social media commentary by both politicians and departments still remains far lower than the value that individuals using these channels place on their communication via these channels.

This discrepancy becomes particularly concerning when looking at the level of political activity amongst younger and older people in Australia.

Based on the 'traditional' forms of political engagement - joining political parties, participating in street protests, writing letters and otherwise using physical means to communicate political views - young people are generally considered unengaged, even disconnected, from politics.

This appeared to be supported by a recent study by the University of Canberra commissioned by the Museum of Australian Democracy. (reported on by the ABC and Hijacked)

This study found that, based on these traditional forms of engagement, young people were far less engaged than older people. In fact people aged under 35 were only about half as engaged as those over 70 years old, and were the least engaged of any age group.

Source: ABC Lateline

However, the study went much further, looking at modern forms of political engagement - blogging, tweeting, memes, apps and other digital techniques - as well.

When combining traditional and modern forms of engagement the situation was very, very different.

Suddenly young people were just as engaged as the oldest Australians and more engaged than many of the age groups inbetween.

On this basis, including both marching in the streets and creating online petitions, young people are quite engaged in politics in Australia, with a large amount of their engagement occurring online rather than offline.

This can be hard for older Australians to grasp - they often don't understand the internet as younger people do, having been brought up on newspapers, radio and television.

Not coincidentally, a disproportionate number of our politicians, top bureaucrats, corporate leadership and leading journalists fall into these older groups - therefore they are often not equipped to even see, let alone understand, the ways in which younger people are engaging politically.

This divide isn't necessarily a problem, but it could become one. When insisting that young people follow the same political approaches as their elders, older people are devaluing newer forms of political expression and underestimating its reach and force.

Where politicians, departmental Secretaries and CEOs gauge the public's mood by signals such as how many people show up to protest, they may overlook the new signals, when hundreds of thousands, or millions, of people organise and protest online, until it is too late for them to change course.

There have already been examples of how politicians, media and CEOs have misread the public mood as they still rely on traditional, rather than modern political signals.

Until our 'elders' begin to recognise that times have changed and continue to change, they will continue to be blindsided as innovation continues in political protests.

For example, there was the creation of the Stop Tony Meow plug-in for Chrome, which replaces images of Tony Abbott in the web browser with pictures of kittens. The plug-in has been downloaded over 11,000 times and attracted significant media coverage as an anti-Coalition political statement.

There's also been the recent Dolebludger app available for Android mobile devices, which allows someone to send job application emails in a matter of seconds to 40 Coalition MPs, meeting the proposed monthly job application requirement. This was designed specifically as a political protest against a policy seen by the creator (and many public commentators) as absurd.

On top of this we have the endless string of memes created using free online tools which take photos of politicians and adds text to make a political point. These are then shared widely on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other platforms.

And, more disturbingly, we've recently seen hackers take down a stock exchange and call on the nation's president to take action on a given matter under threat of having confidential financial data released publicly. Where did this last form of political protest occur? In Syria - a country not known as a bastion of democracy.

Similarly striking into illegal behaviour, we've recently seen the use of a phony bomb threat tweet to disrupt the flight of a Sony Executive as part of a protest against Sony's corporate behaviour.

Online political expression is evolving quickly, with new approaches emerging frequently and proliferating widely, if they work, or dying away when they don't.

The old view that people would get out on the street and protest if they were really unhappy is no longer supported by the evidence - and the notion that online activism is simply 'slacktivism' and doesn't represent significant numbers or strong views is equally no longer supportable.

Governments - both politically and administratively - need to build their understanding of modern approaches to political engagement and learn how to use and defuse them (as appropriate) to serve their own ends.

Otherwise there are real and growing risks that a government or public agency will be severely damaged or brought down through online political avenues - channels that they weren't effectively monitoring, didn't hold in high regard and catastrophically undervalued.

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Mirror, mirror - can modern societies survive looking into the internet and seeing their own reflections?

One of the most major challenges for governments and societies around the world today is the rapidly declining trust in politicians, institutions and governance systems.

I'm willing to make the claim that politicians today are no more corrupt, self-serving or beholden to special interests than politicians were fifty, a hundred or even a thousand years ago.

Regardless of the political system in place, it takes hard work, compromise, negotiation and a willingness to be pragmatic and flexible in one's values and ethics to achieve high office. Even the cleanest and most ethical politicians have to deal with people with different standards, and must find ways to accommodate diverse views in order to achieve great ends.

I'm also willing to say that it isn't the economic situation. The world has faced huge financial strains in the past, and while governments may rise and fall (as Greece's has done), or constitutions may be redrawn (as in Iceland) the underlying governance systems have rarely changed as a result.

No country changed from a democracy to something else as a result of the GFC, and none changed from 'something else' to a democracy as a result of it either.

Maybe its our institutions - are government agencies, courts, armies and police failing in their jobs?

Well no, to a large degree public services around the world remain highly capable of delivering the services they are required to deliver. Of course there's always room for improvement, and successive governments have changed the configuration and goals of public services - but the core capability remains largely intact, at least to-date.

So what do I believe is causing the rapid decline in trust, potentially the greatest threat facing governments today?

It's the rise of the internet and supporting technologies.

The internet - particularly social media - has become a mirror that society cannot escape.

Every action and decision taken by elected politicians is now almost instantly communicated, critiqued and analysed by thousands or millions of people - many looking for the slightest sign of deviation from a past statement, position or decision.

Websites have sprung up to collate and consider every public political statement - and some of their private ones too. Tools such as Polliwoops ensure that even comments that politicians later delete remain accessible - Google's cache is another way to find deleted media statements made in a politician's early career, and even government-funded platforms such as PANDORA are repositories of deleted Prime Ministerial speeches (removed so as not to 'confuse' voters).

Old-school politicians, who chameleon-like reflect the views of the physical audience in front of them, are potentially finding instant mass communication the greatest challenge. Gone are the days where a politicians could travel from event to event, each time subtly adjusting their message to appeal to the audience at hand.

Now every inconsistency, weasel word, off-the-cuff remark and error of judgement by elected politicians (as well as many unelected ones and public figures) is captured, shared and discussed online.

And that's just the facts - the internet is also full of commentary, predictions, suppositions and lies about political leaders, some benign, some actively trying to understand or help and some trying to bring them down.

The problem isn't that our politicians are flawed, our economies failing and our institutions corrupt - many countries have been there before and survived, even thrived.

The problem is that society is now seeing both truth and fiction in greater quantity and detail than ever before - the mirror of the internet is always on, and no society can choose to look away from it.

It is easier to believe politicians when all we see are the good things they do. It is easier to believe in a system of government when we don't think about the deals done to support it.

However people today now expect some form of purity from their political leaders that has never been achieved in history - they want leaders better than they are, without flaws, with no need to compromise and who appear mystically in a leadership role without years of learning their craft and making mistakes on the way.

How would the political leaders of the past have been effective in today's mirror society?

Would any of them successfully been able to face the mirror without flinching?

Can any aspiring political leaders now make it into parliament without casting a mixed reflection?

Even a political leader who is pure and uncompromised in every way will find that hostile elements - rivals, other parties, lobby groups, disruptive citizens - attempt to distort their reflection into a funhouse caricature that the public reject.

I wonder whether our system of government can survive the relentless focus of this mirror. Whether we'll attract competent politicians, see ongoing mass civil disobedience or simply lose all trust and faith in the people who put themselves forward to be elected and the system they are elected into.

Will we learn to accept that all political systems, their institutions, leaders and decisions, are flawed under sufficient scrutiny. That everyone has something they're not proud of, or can be distorted into inappropriateness, in their past, and accept that our leaders and system are what they are - faults and all?

Will we demand systemic change - that our electoral systems are reformed and the people inhabiting the current system be removed, possibly even tried?

Or will we simply opt-out. Treat politics and our governments as an annoyance that we evade wherever possible and only engage when we have to - leaving us at the mercy of politicians who choose to use their powers for actions not in the interest of the public?

I really don't know which course will be taken in many countries around the world, but I do expect to see many more governments fall over the next twenty years, hollowed out through loss of talent and put into the hands of petty tyrants, or collapsing under their own weight.

However what I hope to see are governments and societies finding ways to truly look at themselves in the mirror. To rationalise that while they can no longer persist with the myth that they are the 'finest of them all' they're actually not that bad looking - despite the wrinkles and scars.

I also hope to see governments recognise that they need to experiment more at the core, not simply around the edges - reverse trends towards political functionaries being the majority of elected members and institute practices which turn parliaments back into the servants of their societies, rather than their masters.

This will take real political courage and will to change.

Ironically political courage may be one thing that increases as the as the mirror's reflections become more and more defined.

Soon anyone seeking to enter politics will need to have courage simply to put themselves forward for election, because if there is a single blemish on their reflection they will be hounded relentlessly.

Standing up to that scrutiny, displeasure, disappointment and abuse in order to make a difference through public office will take enormous public courage.

Ultimately, however, societies will need to find a new accommodations. We will need to accept that there's as many pure politicians as there are unicorns, and when we look into the mirror of the internet the reflection we see isn't solely that of the politicians we elect, it is a reflection of our entire society and the choices we have made to create it.

If we want to feel something other than disappointment or horror when we look at our reflection, our society's reflection, in the internet, then we will have to consciously, personally and collectively, make the decisions that will allow us to gaze on it with pride.

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It's all about recovery - tech disruption and government

My post yesterday on Has Gov 2.0 in Australia got too boring too fast? (thanks @sandihlogan for the title correction) attracted some good debate on Twitter and in comments, including from @chieftech who said:

@sherro58 @grmsn @craigthomler rather that asking if #gov2au has got boring, ask if gov in AU has been disrupted by tech. I'd say a little
— chieftech (@chieftech) January 30, 2014

Disruption, or the 'throwing into confusion', is a common occurrence in times of major social or technological change.

The discovery of agriculture disrupted man's nomadic lifestyle around 22,000 years ago - dramatically changing the shape of human society, how we lived, worshipped and organised ourselves.

When humans learnt to smelt iron, roughly 3,500 years ago society was again disrupted, with more advanced civilisations able to outfight and outproduce their bronze-dependent neighbours, causing larger cities and states to form and leading to greater productivity and more time for creative thought.

Gunpowder and then handguns changed society again in fundamental ways, ushering in the end of castle fortresses, making warfare far more bloody and deadly. Incidentally Genghis Khan, known for his horse archers, may have used gunpowder bombs fired from Chinese catapults in his wars.

Further disruptions occurred with the printing press, oil drilling, tanks, computers, television, nuclear weapons, satellites, and the internet - amongst thousands of other technologies. Each time societies had to adapt how they operated, governments rose and fell, the balance of power between states shifted.

In other words disruption is normal. Society is constantly adapting to new technologies, rejecting some, embracing some and tolerating the others.

Governments have never been immune to this disruption. They also have had to constantly adapt their approach as technologies changed. We've seen time and time again how more technologically advanced civilisations have colonised, absorbed or destroyed less technologically advanced ones - and, on a few occasions, have seen civilisations falter when they advanced their technology too far too fast and it became out-of-step with social values, or caused unintentional harmful side-effects.

So has the Australian government been disrupted by technology - yes, many times even in our short 113 years as a nation.

Is there anything special about how technology is disrupting government right now? Anything that makes it different to how major technologies disrupted our government in the past?

Well yes and no. Certainly the speed of technological change has increased, which means that government has less time to understand the impacts and consequences of new technologies before deciding how and when to adopt them.

Also 'now' is the time when we are alive. Watching change occur is very different to reading about how changed occurred in the past. It's always more visceral to live through change then to observe it remotely through another person's eyes.

But also no - disruption is disruption. While the type of disruption may change or the speed increase, the potential range of responses remains limited.

In my view societies and governments only have four options when facing disruptive change - embrace, accept, absorb or oppose.

They can embrace the change, adopting it enthusiastically and quickly, throwing out old ways for the new.

They can accept it, adopting it in a more piecemeal 'as needed' way, without any resistance or dissent.

They can ignore the changes, passively rejecting them by clinging to 'traditional' ways, but gradually absorbing them over time into their traditions and making subtle adjustments to maintain the semblance of the status quo.

Or they can actively oppose the changes, actively seeking to suppress them through laws and actions - successfully or otherwise.

This leads to what I feel is a far more interesting question. How will our governments cope with, or recover, from the present round of disruptive change?

Answering this question will also answer the question of which nations will dominate the 21st Century. Governments that embrace new media and Gov 2.0, adapting themselves into the new forms necessary to thrive within empowered societies, will have a strategic advantage over governments who lag or refuse to use them.

We're already seeing this in the adopting of broadband around the world. Nations with faster broadband will have a significant economic edge over their slower and less connected neighbours. Similarly governments that are more connected and able to tap more brains for ideas, more citizens to undertake small civic acts, will be far more economically and socially acceptable than nations that restrict use of these channels to small elite, or stifle discussion through laws and censorship.

Of course there are risks with embracing disruptive changes - moving too far too fast can uncover new issues that societies don't yet have the experience to solve. However in many cases the governments that uncover these issues first may also resolve them first, sometimes putting them even further ahead of other nations.

So the really interesting question for me is how are Australia's governments doing at coping with the disruptiveness of Government 2.0, the impact of social media on public debate, of open data on accountability and economics, of citizen activism on state leadership?

Which of our governments are embracing these changes, which are accepting them and which are resisting, or actively legislating against them?

The answer to this question will tell Australians which states will be the most successful in the next twenty years and whether Australia as a nation will remain one of the wealthiest, safest and most successful in the world, or be overtaken by more nimble peers.

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Appropriate use of LinkedIn in politics? Should there be a social media electioneering blackout prior to elections?

Yesterday I received the following message from a Linkedin contact:

Dear LinkedIn Friend

I hope you may be able to help me…

Over the coming weeks the Joondalup community will decide who will lead their City for the next four years when Local Government elections are held via postal vote. All electors residing within the City of Joondalup will receive their ballot paper from Wednesday 2 October and I am seeking support to be re-elected as Joondalup Mayor.

It has been an honour and privilege to serve the Joondalup community, working hard over the past seven years to build an effective Council team that has restored stability and credibility to the City of Joondalup.

Under my leadership as Joondalup Mayor, the City has matured into a vibrant, prosperous and liveable City with a connected and engaged community. This fact was recognised in 2011 when the City of Joondalup was named the World’s Most Liveable City at the UN-endorsed International Awards for Liveable Communities. 

If you are a resident of the City of Joondalup, I am seeking your personal support. If you don't live in the City of Joondalup but have family, friends and community networks in the City (suburbs listed below), I would be grateful if you were able to support me by forwarding this email and encourage them to vote for Troy Pickard as Joondalup Mayor.

I would appreciate your support to be re-elected as Joondalup Mayor so we can build on our successes and make the City of Joondalup an even better place to live.

Yours

Troy

PS – I apologise in advance if I have offended you by emailing this election material.


Troy Pickard
Mayoral Candidate
2013 City of Joondalup Election

I wondered whether people felt this was an appropriate use of LinkedIn - and what the consequences would be as more politicians began using LinkedIn in this fashion, and marshalling their network of supporters to make similar appeals to their networks.

I do recall receiving a similar message prior to the federal election campaign - however at federal level it would be a small and fairly targeted impost on people every three or so years.

Piling state and local elections on top of that, given the non-geographic nature of LinkedIn, could result in people receiving multiple copies of this type of appeal on a weekly basis.

So it raises a question for me - there's often an election advertising blackout period imposed on candidates in the week prior to an election, maybe this type of approach needs to be extended to social media as well.

Or perhaps we need a way to choose whether to opt-in to (or out of) political messaging on social channels, or even a total blackout on political campaigning via social networks.

Of course there's a position that people opt-in by friending or following certain accounts or people. If you follow a politician you can expect to receive political messages.

However what if you simply follow professional peers and friends - people who are not already politicians - who then take up politics, or become major supporters of a particular political cause?

You may have personal and professional reasons to remain connected, but simply not want to receive the political messages they start sending.

Can there be some way on social networks to temporarily screen out the unwanted material?

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What does the election of a Coalition government in Australia mean for federal Government 2.0 and open data efforts?

As I've blogged previously, when state governments in Australia have changed ruling parties there's often been a temporary hiatus in Government 2.0 and open data activity, if not a series of backsteps - however in almost every case the trend towards greater digitalisation, engagement and openness has resumes.

With the transition from a Labor to Coalition Australian Government the question social media and Government 2.0 practitioners in Commonwealth agencies will be asking is what is their likely future under the new government?

The new Prime Minister has made it very clear that his infrastructure focus is on roads and that he has a very limited understanding of the value and importance of digital channels. The Coalition was also extremely sparing in its use of social media throughout the campaign, preferring to slip under the radar and avoid risk rather than engage with it (and their lesson in winning the election is that this approach wasn't a negative).

I'm also yet to receive any response from Malcolm Turnbull or other Coalition parliamentarians in relation to my questions about their policy position on Government 2.0, open data or membership in the Open Government Partnership - even when Peter Timmins from Open and Shut personally contacted a number of members also seeking a response.

Fortunately there's at least some light at the end of this tunnel.

The Coalition released its egovernment and the digital economy policy platform on Monday 2 September. Amongst a range of topics from NBN to cloud computing, the platform states that the Coalition will release a policy to 'accelerate Government 2.0 efforts to engage online, make agencies transparent and provide expanded access to useful public sector data'

The platform indicates that the Coalition will be taking a 'digital by default' approach, similar to the 'digital first' approach that was beginning to be adopted by the last Labor Government,

Designate the Internet as the default way to interact with users, other than for defined exceptions. We will look to establish a Digital Service Standard and Digital Design Guide, modelled on the UK equivalents, to ensure consistent design of current and future services.

Also modelled on part of the UK approach, the Coalition also outlined an aim to "Seek to ensure every Government interaction that occurs more than 50,000 times per year can be achieved online by 2017."

While slightly less ambitious that Labor's goals, this is a pragmatic approach to prioritising high-frequency transactions for digitalisation - although it is worth noting that there's no evidence this would provide significant cost-efficiencies. Sometimes it is better to prioritise lower frequency, but higher transactional cost services for digitalisation to gain experience in the process, realise cost-savings and as 'quick wins' as they can often be digitalised much faster.

The Coalition has also flagged an interest in mobile service delivery. While no specific goals for making services mobile-ready were outlined in the policy platform, it did go so far as to require agencies to report what proportion of their digital services are not mobile accessible from 2015.

This is encouraging, but potentially misleading. An agency with hundreds of low-use services may find it far more difficult and expensive than an agency with a few high-use services to deliver and report a high proportion of mobile accessible services.

Equally 'mobile accessible' can easily manipulated to mean different things - I can access many services via the web browser on my tablet and smartphone which are still essentially unusable on these devices due to factors including poor design, form complexity, or the requirement for a human conversation to explain specific requirements (hard to call a service desk while using a smartphone to complete the online form).

The 'digital inbox' concept sounds like a great idea in theory, however its practical value depends on how well it is implemented. In fact this is the perfect project to have a start-up develop, free of the bureaucratic constraints of government.

Having previously worked on CSAOnline, which allowed Child Support clients to access their letters from the agency online indefinitely via a secure logon, I recognise that some government approaches to developing digital services can be poorly tuned to delivering on customer needs - costing far more and taking far longer than comparative start-up development cycles.

The Coalition policy section on 'Government 2.0 and Big Data' seems oddly named and reflects a very narrow view of Gov 2.0 as meaning open data and 'tech stuff', whereas most of the international Gov 2.0 community takes the broader view of Government 2.0 being about transforming how governments and citizens interact with the aid of new tools and techniques enabled by digital channels.

The section essentially focuses on having AGIMO ask communities and businesses which data should be made open - something they already do (albeit in a low-key way) and advocating support for public-private partnership proposals from industry and researchers to use big data for public benefit. There doesn't appear to be a budget attached to this latter approach, so what the statement "The highest return proposals will be supported to proof-of-concept and beyond" means is anyone's guess.

The Coalition policy doesn't discuss how the government will or should use social and other digital channels to develop policy, shape services, engage and empower citizens, or provide any guidance as to whether events and approaches to encourage and support civic use of open data will continue to be supported.

Overall it has a very transactional 'government as vending machine' view - which is good as far as it goes (creating efficiencies is valuable) - but doesn't consider the participatory democracy aspects of Government 2.0, where digital channels can be used to support and build democratic engagement, reduce the risks of government getting policies and services wrong and introduce more ideas and analysis to 'black-box' agency processes.

We live in a world where the experts don't all live within the walls of an agency - or an ideological group - and this hasn't been reflected in either the construction or policy instruments outlines in the Coalition policy.

For all these flaws and concerns, at least the Coalition has policies in this area, and overall it isn't worse (if not much better) than Labor's policies.

As the policy platform hits the 'road' of practical governance I am sure there will be a rising interest in how digital channels can support the Coalition's goals in government, and agencies will continue using social channels for communication, customer service, engagement and other purposes.

On that basis I don't expect much slowdown in Government 2.0 progress under the Coalition, although we are unlikely to see an acceleration (as the US did under Obama and the UK under Cameron).

Ultimately Government 2.0 is not an ideological topic - it is about effective governance - there's enormous opportunities in Australia for both conservative and progressive politicians to use the bandwagon to improve government in this country, if they are willing to step onboard.

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Political participation in a crowded age

Whether we call today the information age, the digital age or the internet age, it is very true that society today has changed radically from the society we saw fifty years ago.

Massive personal access to information, entertainment and communication means this is the crowded age - every person has a plethora of choices and can individually decide what they watch, read, create or participate in.

I've been reading an interesting thread in the Australian Public Policy LinkedIn group discussing the lack of young people involved in politics, the falling level of participation in political parties and the impacts this is likely to have on our society in the future.

Named Where's the young blood?, the thread has seen a great deal of interesting and considered views on the topic.

I thought it would be useful to share my thoughts on this topic in my blog, as well as in the thread, as below as I believe this shift is a consequence of our increasingly digital world and will have a profound impact on the depth and professionalism of Australia's political leadership over the next twenty years.

My say:

Falling political party memberships is not a unique thing - it should be considered in the broader context of falling participation in all kinds of voluntary organisational activities.

And this is a symptom of wider social change - people have more engagement and entertainment options than in the past.

Thirty years ago the choices for what active minds did in the evening or weekend was more limited, so active participation in political parties (or unions) was a more common choice - it brought like-minded people together to share their dreams and visions, to socialise and form tribes.

People today form these social bonds in different ways, but still form them. Hence the old political party 'branch' where people attend every Wednesday night with cupcakes and a readiness to debate, discuss and romance, is no longer as attractive as it once was.

By and large political parties in Australia have failed to modify their membership and participation model to remain relevant to people aged 40 or under - which is why we see a vast underrepresentation of young people in political party memberships, and much lower participation and engagement from most who still sign up.

This isn't solely due to parties being led by older people, steeped in ye olden days, or due to the fact that the lower participation actually suits some active young people as they have less competition for attention and position in political parties. It is also a function of the legal framework in Australia around how such organisations must be formed and registered, and the traditions these organisations have built over a hundred or more years.

There is little radical innovation in party structures to find one which will work for present-day society, and as a result the political party tree is dying from the roots up.

One of the implications is much poorer representation for Australians. Political parties used to be testbeds for peoples' ideologies - challenging them to think, consider, test and assess their ideas in the light of broader views. Politicians who emerged from this after a ten or twenty year 'apprenticeship' in party positions were professional, broadminded and good at their jobs - sound in their own thinking, committed to the public good (whatever their ideological view of 'public good' was).

As membership numbers have fallen and people have had to be fast-tracked into political office without these long apprenticeships, we've seen a focus on the popular and less commitment to specific ideological viewpoints. While this has its benefits, it also has many disadvantages - less tested views, a lower commitment to the public good and more commitment to self-entitlements and promotion.

While the long apprenticeship approach had its flaws, creating more group-think and less ideological flexibility, with politicians ground in the values of their youth, it also had many advantages in terms of a professional political 'class', politicians with broader exposure to views and to what worked or didn't work in practice.

We are losing these advantages as people are increasingly entering politics with less party grounding, and as we are drawing from a thinner and thinner (and more incestuous) talent pool.

How do we reframe politics for the modern day? That's yet to be seen.

In twenty years we might employ politicians like corporate managers in order to attract professional and more objective individuals to these jobs, with citizens being shareholders in massive corporate states.

Or we might see a massive change in how politicians operate, having online 'brains trusts' of thousands of citizens, who are selected, like juries, to contribute to selected decisions via algorithms, picking how their representative should vote using their always-on mobile devices and have the politicians be merely a proxy votes in a more direct democratic model.

We may even see political parties reinvent themselves for a modern age, potentially the most unlikely option!

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My presentation to the UK Government Digital Service

I'm going to do a full post on my visit to the UK Government Digital Service (the GDS), but thought I'd lead with the presentation I gave to them regarding the state of Government 2.0 and open government in Australia, and how we've reached the point we're at.

Note this is purely my view of the situation - if I've gotten things wrong, please correct me so I keep it in mind when speaking to others.

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What competing Australian broadband policies really tell us about how Australian politics and government are changing

Yesterday the Liberal-National Coalition released its broadband policy for Australia, in front of a high-tech set at Sky News, in contrast to the Labor Government's NBN plan and current rollout.

I'm not going to go into the politics of this announcement, nor the potential economic and social impacts of the differences between the policies in the short and long-term for Australia.

Instead I'd like to focus on what, for me, is the real story. Technology has, for the first time, become a leading consideration in Australian federal politics.

Looking over the last fifty years, topics such as industrial relations, jobs, families, resources, taxes and the environment have all been prominent areas for political debate. 

All have had their time in the sun as major electoral issues, while technology issues have largely remained off the main political radar, a minor concern dealt with by individual representatives or Ministers but not capturing the attention of Prime Ministers or entire governments.

Even the internet filtering proposal put forward by the Labor party in 2007 was released quietly only a week before the election, extensively tweaked and adjusted (with at least seven versions over three years) and finally abandoned with some face-saving - yes it became more public than previous technology-related topics and an election issue, but only a minor one, largely dealt with by the responsible Minister rather than a Prime Minister and entire government.

With the NBN and Coalition broadband policy we have seen a very different approach, with technology becoming a major and central electoral issue for the first time. The NBN is a leading topic for the Prime Minister and all of her Ministers, while the Coalition has taken the step to publicly release their rival policy a long way before the election, demonstrating the importance they place on countering the government's position.

This is unprecedented for what could be considered a technology issue and reflects the growing importance placed on internet access and use by Australian communities, businesses and government itself.

So what does this mean for the future?

The importance placed on broadband, whatever the outcome of the next election, means that politicians and their advisors are having to learn more to talk on technology topics, to discuss areas like broadband, ehealth, elearning, video conferencing and digital content.

Politicians who saw the internet as simply additional channels for communicating messages to electorates are now required to come face-to-face with how their electorates are using these channel and wish to use them in engaging with governments.

This flows to politicians having to learn more about the opportunities for governments to use digital channels to become more efficient, cutting costs, improving communication and engagement and becoming more open, transparent and collaborative.

In fact it is unlikely we'll see many new politicians enter parliament who don't have some awareness, appreciation and understanding of the value and importance of technology to Australia.

For a long time people working in and around the technology industry have deplored the low attention played to technology in politics and, besides a few leading lights, the lack of understanding of the potential ability for digital technology to drive Australia's economy and improve our governance.

I think this time is now coming to an end. 

With politicians more aware and engaged with technology issues, due to their higher awareness in the public eye, the implications are that all political parties at all levels of government will need to pay more attention to the impact of technology on society and on government.

They'll need to begin to think more deeply and holistically about how to leverage technology to improve their communities and their government agencies.

The notion of Government 2.0, or whatever political parties choose to call it, will become a more important part of their policy platform and there will be more focus - and funding - for how agencies go about using digital channels to improve government policy development and operations.

We're at the end of the beginning for Government 2.0, and at the beginning of an appreciation and understanding that Government 2.0 is simply Government.

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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.

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Sharing and comparing political party policies - developing an XML schema for party policies

Something I've had on the backburner for awhile has been the development of a better way to share and compare political party policies.

If you've ever looked at the policy platforms of different political parties in the same election campaign, you'd recognise that each writes their policy in a different format, including different information and a different flow.

For example, compare the way the policies are presented by the three main parties in the ACT election:

• Labor policies: www.actlabor.org.au/policy/policy-announcements
• Liberal policies: www.canberraliberals.org.au/html/s02_article/article_view.asp?art_id=2281&nav_cat_id=141&nav_top_id=58
• Green policies: http://act.greens.org.au/policies/act

The differences in how policies are constructed and presented leads to four critical problems:

• It is hard for average voters to quickly understand policies from different parties (as they are formatted and written in different ways)
• It is very hard for average voters to compare policies on the same topic across parties (as they don't contain the same types of information)
• Sharing policies with constituents through third party sites is very hard. Parties rely on their own sites and have no effective way for supporters or media to rapidly embed their policies into other websites for promotion, comparison or discussion purposes.
• Accessibility of many party policies is poor. They are often presented as PDFs only (and not accessible ones), or in other inaccessible formats.

A solution must address the four problems:

• Make it easy for average voters to quickly understand policies from different parties - supporting a common format and approach
• Make it easy for average voters to compare policies from different parties - containing a standard set of information
• Allow policies to be easily shared with third party websites, mobile apps and other digital services but keeping a single point of truth
• Support accessibility by separating content from format

What's the best approach to achieve these four things?

An open XML schema for policies! 

Why is this the best approach?

• Because this allows political parties to provide their policy information in an easily reusable and comparable manner, without sacrificing their ability to provide unique information important to their own policy position.
• It preserves the party as the 'source of truth' for their policy, they can update it whenever they wish and anyone who has embedded a copy of their policies will have them automatically update (drawing on the updated XML), ensuring there's no confusion as to what a party's current policy may be. 
• It improves openness and transparency for the party, supporting an open government agenda and helping voters and the media quickly understand what the party is communicating. 
• It also promotes sharing, meaning that parties can enlist their supporters to communicate their policies - increasing reach and cut through across the community

To explore this idea I've created the Policy XML Schema wiki and invite others to participate in discussing and shaping this approach.

Comment - and edit at: http://policyxmlschema.wikispaces.com/home

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The Rise of the Fifth Estate - a good yarn worth reading

This morning I read Greg Jerico's book 'The Rise of the Fifth Estate' which chronicles the rise of political blogging and social media reporting in Australia.

Some of you may remember Greg better as Grog of Grogs Gamut, a blogger and former public servant, known for his detailed analysis of political and sporting matters.

He was outed by The Australian back in 2010, a matter covered widely by both mainstream media and the blogosphere at the time.

I had already been reading Greg's keen insights into Australian politics for some time - and he was exposed after attending the Media 140 conference, which I also attended and spoke at.

Greg's situation was a key test for how the Australian Public Service and our politicians handled public sector bloggers. Despite some time lag, it was handled well, with Greg's right to blog on a personal basis supported within his Department, Prime Minister and Cabinet.

This based on the APS code of conduct, which allows public servants to participate in politics, provided it doesn't compromise their ability or perception of being non-partisan.

Many people rallied around to support Greg at the time, including myself. It can be very lonely being a public servant and a blogger - and public sector workplaces do not necessarily understand, yet, how to provide appropriate support during this type of event.

Greg subsequently left the public service, though he has continued to blog. Subsequently he's worked on television programs and written for ABC's The Drum, while working on his book.

This gets me to the point of this post, reviewing Greg's newly released 'The Rise of the Fifth Estate'.

His book is written in Greg's easy to read, yet well-evidenced style (with the odd chart), which makes it an easy and accessible read, yet with a good deal of depth and analysis.

In it he tells the story of the start of Australia's political blogosphere, analyses its players and looks at the interplay between journalists and politicians, particularly on Twitter.

His book also chronicles the 'war of bloggers' that mainstream journalism, particularly News Ltd, have waged on the "anonymous armchair amateurs" of the blogging world, including his own experience as well as those of others.

He also draws some commonsense conclusions, cutting through the hype and mystique that the journalistic profession have used to justify their own specialness and detailing the convoluted mental gymnastics and lack of self-reflection that some mainstream journalists have employed to explain why real journalism can't come from a blog.

The Rise of the Fifth Estate is really the first book in Australia to chronicle the opening stages in the rising media culture ways, as old media strains to remain relevant and profitable in the face of new modes of journalism.

Given the cuts at Fairfax and News Ltd lately, this comes at a good time to help explain a little more about why events are unfolding as they are.


I did, however, ultimately feel a little let down by Greg's 'Fifth Estate'.

He's told a good yarn, in the best journalistic vernacular, a good current history and analysis of the past and present of the rise of the blogging and Twitter as political and political journalism tools.

However I was hoping for a few more glimpses into the future, some of his insights as to how the Fourth and Fifth estates might find a workable balance that profits both, with a maximum of mutual understanding and a minimum of ongoing friction.

In conclusion, I heartily recommend 'The Rise of the Fifth Estate' as a good read and as a great record of the first few years of what is proving to be a period of turbulent change for journalism and political communication.

However, don't buy it expecting any kind of model of how to build a collaborative journalistic model, involving both professional journalists and citizens, new media and old media, into the future.

For this we'll have to wait for Greg's next book (that's a hint Greg!)


You can read the first chapter of 'The Rise of the Fifth Estate' for free at Grogs Gamut.

For other reviews see:

• Dragonista's blog, Grog’s Rise of the Fifth Estate
• Fancy Goods, Eloise Keating, BOOK REVIEW: The Rise of the Fifth Estate (Greg Jericho, Scribe)
• The Monthly Quadrant Review, FakePaulKeating: The Rise of the Fifth Estate by Greg (@grogsgamut) Jericho

There's also an interview with Greg on ABC Radio National, Social media and blogs: the fifth estate?

The Canberra book launch is on 30 August at Paperchain in Manuka. For other launches (currently underway), see Greg's publisher, Scribe.

CAVEAT: Note that I helped Greg with some curation of the list of political blogs and supported Greg with some contacts and ideas. As a result I am named a couple of times in the book.

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Where's Australia's robust discussions on democracy, openness and transparency?

Australia is an interesting country.

We're one of the world's oldest democracies, with a strong tradition of free and independent (of government) media.

We have universal public health care and a strong separation between politics and religion and between politics and the enforcement of our laws.

We have an apolitical civil service with an extremely low corruption rate. As a nation we punch above our weight in Sports and Science globally.

However we appear to lack a robust public discussion on our own democracy, on government openness, transparency and the role of Gov 2.0 in this mix.

We have plenty of right-wing and left-wing thinktanks (with some intriguing backers) prepared to give their perspectives on various policy issues to influence government decisions, but rarely opine on the democratic institutions Australia has developed.

We have many media commentators willing to report bad or controversial news (or spin news in that way) about government decisions and activities, but rarely questioning the systems and traditions on which they are based.

We do have the OpenAustralia Foundation, building and maintaining several pro-openness tools - with little or no financial support from Australian Governments or philanthropists.

There's the New Democracy Foundation which, with some big name supports from politics and academic worlds, is looking at new ways of governing for a new millenium.

And there's the Institute of Public Affairs, which has an agenda to promote political and market freedom - though it is hard to assess its impact on public views.

Some scattered individuals also run small communities and services that look at whether and how governments should transform themselves to cope with changing environments and public needs.

However there's not really a broader discussion, as occurs through a network of organisations in the US (spearheaded by the Sunlight Foundation), or the more concentrated efforts in the UK through groups such as the Hansard Society.

Australia is not even a member of the Open Government Partnership (per the image below).

Nations that are members of the Open Government Partnership

So why is this the case? Is our government already so transparent and effective that we don't need more active discussions about our system of democracy, our openness and our processes?

Is it we're not interested in 'navel-gazing' about our own systems, or that we trust politicians, public servants, academics and the media to work out the best system for us and keep it working?

Is it simply that Australians don't actually care, so long as the government stays out of most of their lives - reflecting recent research from the Lowy Institute, as reported by the Institute of Public Affairs, that found that 23 percent of Australians aged 18 to 29 said: "For someone like me, it doesn't matter what kind of government we have." and that "Thirty-eight per cent said: "In some circumstances a non-democratic government can be preferable."

I really don't have an answer, and this worries and concerns me.

As they say in the US, "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty".

Where is Australia's vigilance regarding our democracy?

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