Don't let a focus on quick wins lead to slow losses

These days it seems almost everyone in government is focused on quick wins - outcomes that can be achieved fast, with limited resources but a big impact.

I recognise the logic. Going after low hanging, minimal risk, cheap and (sometimes) easy, quick successes satisfies both the insatiable desire for Ministerial media announcements and helps build trust within an organisation.

The theory is that a series of quick wins will lead to more freedom and resourcing to go for larger (and longer-term) victories, getting to work on projects that matter, changing lives for the better and improving real outcomes for citizens.

I saw, and continue to see, fantastic operators across government striving for that one more quick win that will convince senior managers or Ministers to give them greater responsibility, more resources and a chance to make a real difference. I get asked regularly by agencies for ideas or proposals that can be delivered fast, will have huge impacts while costing them almost nothing.

At times it almost appears like an addiction, "just give me one more hit of that quick quick win, then I will be respected and allowed to focus on the real game, the big picture."

Unfortunately this theory doesn't always hold up in practice.

Sometimes a series of quick wins is just a series of quick wins, with no scope for bigger, better or more effective things.

The Minister or Secretary's eyes may turn to you approvingly, and you may still be relied on when the chips are down, but this may only be when more quick wins are needed - when resources are tight, timeframes short and the wrong team in place.

If your quick wins seem only to lead to more 'opportunities' for quick wins, if your ability to overcome bureaucracy, internal politics, lack of resourcing and mediocre staff is recognised and rewarded by new projects ('challenges') with even less resourcing, more politics and bureaucracy with teams that can't work together - you're simply trading your quick wins for slow losses.

Eventually you may be put into a position where no win is possible, Keep in mind that failure is still remembered and 'rewarded' in most of the public service far longer than success.

So when you're looking for that next 'quick win' that will make management love and trust you, keep in mind that sometimes you'll have a bigger win by staying off the treadmill.

Yes quick wins, used strategically, can open doors for bigger successes, but that's not a given. Make sure the wins you're chasing will have broader positive outcomes than simply demonstrating your ability.

Focus on working on things that matter (to misquote the Digital Transition Office). Your wins will count as more than quick, they'll make a real difference, to the citizens you are serving, to the government and to you.

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Omega to Alpha - a new start for UK government online

The UK government last week launched alpha.gov.uk, an experimental site that explores different ways of presenting government information online to better support citizens.

Designed based on recommendations from the 2010 Review Report led by Martha Lane Fox, which was intended to revolutionise the UK Government’s online services, the site provides a glimpse into a citizen-centric future that takes a very different direction to Directgov.

The site is designed to seek comment and feedback from citizens and public servants. As the site's about page states,

What Alpha.gov.uk does do is trial a selection of new, simple, reusable tools aimed at meeting some of the most prevalent needs people have from government online. The aim is to gather feedback on these new approaches from real people early in the process of building a new single website for central government.

The site does away with the crowded index-based navigation approach of Directgov (which is internally the more common approach for central government sites) and instead focuses on a search-based mechanism for most enquiries, with top enquiries listed below the main search window.

Search results are formatted in more useful ways, such as calendars (which you can add to your own), such as this one for a search on "Holidays" and instant forms - such as this result for "Lost passport".

Note that many searches will not currently provide relevant results as the site is a prototype, however there's already an impressive range of 'top of mind' searches supported.


Below the fold is a set of 'latest news from government', however laid out with lots of white space and with a simple, well-structured side menu.

The note stating 'EXPERIMENTAL PROTOTYPE - This section will almost certainly not be up to date after 10th May, it is for illustrative purposes only' demonstrates how experimental the site truly is.

The site blog talks about the aims of the site and allows comment and discussion and there's a tool for providing feedback enabled through the GetSatisfaction service.

All in all this site is an excellent research tool and it will be very interesting for governments around the world to view the public comments and criticisms of the site to inform the future development of their own central government and departmental sites.

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The journey to social public service

We often talk about the professional values of the public service - honesty, integrity, respect, courtesy, care and responsibility.

These professional values comprise a major part of the Australian Public Service's (APS) Code of Conduct, and similarly are prominent in many public service codes and charters in Australia and around the world.

They aim to define and shape the professional behaviour of public servants in the interest of better governance.

However in many of these codes and charters, again including the APS Code, there's one extremely critical behaviour that isn't named. Communication.

Perhaps this is because communication is assumed to be at the core of other professional values, perhaps it is believed that communication is implicit in any act of public service.

Whatever the case however, communication - social interaction between individuals and groups - is necessary in virtually all public service activities. Improve communication and other improvements follow - understanding, information exchange, engagement, efficiency, physical outcomes.

If we consider improving communication as one of the key ways to improve the effectiveness of any public service, then it is worth considering the impact of poor communication.

What does this look like? Individuals that choose to not share their experience and learnings. Siloed teams that hoard information to preserve their jobs. Hierarchical structures with communication bottlenecks. Agencies that take the view that they own data collected with public fund and that cannot be shared with other government agencies, let alone the public.

In all of these cases the solution isn't always to hold an enquiry, change processes, break structures apart (or put them together) or even change leaders.
However the solution must also involve increasing communication - sharing data, information, experience and best practice so that individuals and teams alike can grow, adapt and improve their effectiveness.

In the corporate sector this is often termed a 'social business', one that recognises that its survival and success is based on making every staff member as effective as they can be, tearing down any barriers that reduce their individual or collective prowess.

In the public sector I call this a 'social public service', one where there are open lines of communication across professions, programs and policy areas. Where both individual and team learnings are shared - not just within a team, but across the entire public service. Where individuals are valued not by the knowledge they horde, but the knowledge they share and their personal contribution to the net wisdom of their team, branch, agency, entire service and across multiple services at various levels of government and in different jurisdictions.

I've glimpsed aspects of the social public service across the Government 2.0 community, where many people are willing to share their experiences with others in other agencies and at different levels of government. I have also glimpsed it in certain professional groups in government, where Fraud officers and Freedom of Information units share experiences across agencies in order to build their own capabilities, at conferences and at events.

However once people return to their own agencies the budding social public service seems to fade almost into non-existence. Occasionally it is useful to know who to call in another agency for information or support, however the widespread and collaborative creation of knowledge and best practice still remains in its infancy.

Over the next ten years, as the Government's Gov 2.0, APS reform and innovation agendas unfold, and as we see a new generation of public servants, digital natives used to social media interactions, take on increasing responsibility, I believe we'll also see an increasing trend towards a social public service.

In fact I believe there's few ways that any of the 'old guard', who built their careers on silos and hoarded knowledge, can slow or stop this trend. As society and policy grows in complexity, individuals will increasingly specialise in smaller areas and, rather than forming new and smaller silos, will need to interact with each other to form a holistic policy and societal view.

This mirrors the progression of the sciences, which started as an undifferentiated topic - 'scientists' who studied the entire world around them - and fragmented into specialised disciplines. These disciplines, similar to the public servants of today, formed silos defined by their area of speciality and then, over the last twenty years, have begun re-converging, with many major discoveries coming from the combination of specialists from different fields.

Equally we're seeing more and more public policy issues that cross 'traditional' portfolios. There's more and more collaboration between government levels and increasing requirements for people to cross-skill.

This progression will drive the impetus towards a social public service, supported and facilitated by an array of communications tools, amongst them - and possibly the most important - social media, used to collaborate, communicate and empower.

So what will this future social public service look like?

Possibly flatter and more fluid, with cross-functional groups formed as needed to develop a given policy, manage a project or program or deliver an outcome, less loyal to departments, divisions and branches and more loyal to the public service as a whole, more adaptable to change, less separated by portfolio or layer, more focused on customer service and definitely more communicative and social.

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Victoria releases best-practice Gov 2.0 Action Plan

Victoria has maintained its lead over other Australian states in the adoption of Government 2.0 through today's release of the Government 2.0 Action Plan - Victoria.

The Plan outlines four priority areas for Gov 2.0:

1. Driving adoption in the VPS > Leadership
2. Engaging communities and citizens > Participation
3. Opening up government > Transparency
4. Building capability > Performance

With 14 initiaitves under these priorities, the plan was devised using extensive consultation and a wiki-based approach, engaging a wide range of stakeholders across government.

This approach, previously used in New Zealand, the US and the United Kingdom, has proven effective in generating significant engagement and support for the eventuating plan.

Rather than a 'big bang' approach - as used for many government initiatives, the Plan state that:

Our approach to implementation is think big, start small and scale fast.

In my view, Victoria's Gov 2.0 Action Plan is an example of best practice in how to prepare to systematically embed Government 2.0 techniques and tools into a government, taking the necessary steps to reform public sector culture, build capability, engage proactively and innovate iteratively to deliver the best outcomes for citizens.

I believe that the effective execution of this Action Plan, ahead of Gov 2.0 efforts in other states, will give Victoria a substantial first-mover economic advantage, positioning the state as more innovative and better equipped to service citizens and businesses in the 21st Century.

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Google launches Student Voice mock Australian election for high school students

Google has launched the Student Voice initiative, whereby 15-17 year old Australian students will be able to vote online in a mock election reflecting the current Federal election.

The goal is to help these students learn more about elections and also provide a perspective on how Australia's future voters (who will be eligible to vote in the following Federal election) may vote.

The launch has been supported by videos by Julia Gillard and Bob Brown.

I applaud Google for launching and managing this initiative, however it distresses me that no Australian organisation has tried to make something like this a reality. It is a shame that we are relying on a foreign-owned company to broaden Australian democracy, while Australian companies, institutions and other organisations sit on the sidelines and do nothing to support democracy in this country.

Also interesting is that this approach involves online voting. Today's high school students are already likely to expect to be able to vote online in real elections and the Student Voice initiative could further reinforce this expectation.

Perhaps, over time, this type of initiative will be a trigger that encourages Australian governments to support online voting (with appropriate security in place).

Certainly this initiative could help Google position itself as a potential provider of online voting facilities in the future. I would also expect to see them rolling out similar Student Voices in other jurisdictions over time, after using Australia as a guinea pig.

Student Voice launch video

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Reinventing website perfection

Traditionally, in my experience both in the private and public sector, the way to build a 'perfect' website has been considered to be;
invest a large quantity of resources, personnel and time at the start of the development process,
use this investment to build all the functionality that the developers can dream up, write all the content the communicators can think of and test it with audiences,
launch the 'perfect' website and hope it works, and then
replace the website (fixing most of the bits that failed) after 3-5 years by repeating the process again.

Personally I've never liked this approach. It places a lot of reliance on using past knowledge to guess future (organisational and audience) needs, involves investing a lot of resources upfront with limited ability to terminate or redirect projects until after they have failed and it also results in websites that degrade in effectiveness over time which can lead to progressively greater reputation and legal risks.

I'd like to see the process for developing a 'perfect' website reinvented. The new process must involve a low upfront cost, the ability to be flexible and agile to meet changing needs quickly and be capable of making a website more and more effective over time, improving reputation and reducing legal risks.

But how is it possible to achieve all these goals at once?

The answer is actually quite simple and well understood by successful entrepreneurs.

Rather than aiming for a perfect site on release day after an extended development period, the goal is to quickly build and launch a site that meets at least one critical audience need.

Once the site has been launched, ensure there are tools for monitoring how it is used and identifying user needs. Then progressively build extra functionality and write more content, guided primarily by the needs of your audience.

This approach ensures the site has enough value at launch to be successful, albeit in a more limited fashion than a 'kitchen sink' website (with more functionality at launch). It also ensures that the website grows progressively more useful and relevant to the audience you aim to serve.

In this way the site becomes increasingly perfect in a more realistic way - perfect for the audience who use it, rather than 'perfect' for the stakeholders who think they know what different audiences want.

We see this approach taken with all kinds of websites and products - from Apple's iPhones through to online services such as Gmail.

It's time to see more of this approach used with government websites as well.

After all - don't we want to create the 'perfect' website for our audiences' needs?

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What would you do if you had unlimited funds to spend on your department's online presence?

Everyone who runs a website dreams of what they would do if they had more funds to spend on improving their online presence.

I've been doing some thinking around this lately as a thought exercise around building priority lists for what needs to be done to strengthen my department's online presence.

I always come back to strengthening base infrastructure first. Ensuring that our own staff have the best tools for their tasks, including high-powered computers, the right software, effective and fully implemented content management and reporting systems, appropriate connections between data and publishing to enable a consistent approach to openness and transparency and, very importantly, that all the staff concerned have the training and support to use all of these systems effectively and to their full potential.

Next for me is strengthening governance and management, doing what is necessary to ensure my department has all of the appropriate governance and standards in place to operate a current, flexible and responsive online presence - including outreach activities to third party websites. blogs, forums and social networks.

Third I look at capability building. Putting in place the systems and functionality that extends the basic infrastructure to allow the department to manage emerging needs.

Interspersed amongst the priorities above are the staffing required to deliver what is needed and redevelopment of websites and tools as required to ensure our online presence meets the needs of our audiences, stakeholders and the government.


Given that funding is not unlimited for most online managers, the next step is to consider what can be done within budget constrains. It's important to also look at which pieces can be funded from other budgets (such as staff training) or whether additional funds can be requested to meet legislative or campaign requirements or as part of modernisation initiatives.

While it's not possible to do everything you want, there is often quite a bit you can actually achieve if you're prepared to spend the time educating decision-makers, liaising with other business areas and building the business cases needed to source funds.

So if you were given a blank cheque, what would you prioritise?

And given that you are unlikely to have one, what will you choose to actually achieve?

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Gov 2.0 Taskforce requesting additional project ideas

The Gov 2.0 Taskforce has blogged that they are looking for further ideas they can fund for Gov 2.0 projects.

So if your Department - or you personally - have project concepts that require some extra funds to get off the ground, read the post Allocating the project fund: we want your ideas and make a submission.

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Defining success for web projects

Not all projects completely succeed. For a variety of factors some do not meet some or all of the original goals laid out for them.

There is a tendency to label these projects as failures, to totally write them off and be more cautious when initiating similar projects in the future.

In the web space, which is changing fast, many projects are firsts of their kind. This can make it harder for organisations to allocate appropriate resourcing, time or constraints, or to set appropriate success criteria. There may also be unanticipated side effects which can distract from the project's focus.

This can lead to failures in otherwise reasonable projects, failures which could be prevented through a better understanding of project needs.

When web projects are considered failures, organisations can become more cautious and less willing to attempt similar projects or place additional constraints on how projects are run. These can reduce the likelihood of subsequent successes and lead to dininishing returns and greater reluctance.

So how do we, as web professionals, help organisations engineer for greater success in web projects?

Firstly it's important to speak up during the initial planning stages. To provide honest views of what resourcing and time is required to achieve the project's goals. There's no point in beginning a project with inadequate resourcing - it doesn't serve the government, the agency or yourself.

Where time and resourcing isn't flexible, it is important to negotiate and clarify the criteria for success. Make sure all the stakeholders have a common understanding of what success looks like and how probable it is given the constraints.

It is also possible in some organisations to define certain non-critical projects as experimental, with an underlying goal of increasing knowledge within the organisation. In this case you can define success as identifying approaches that do not work. While this may sound like a cop-out, defining success as failure, remember how Thomas Edison invented the light bulb - he 'failed' many times, allowing him to learn what did not work in order to focus on an approach that would.

It is also important to record all the unintended impacts of a web project. Sometimes a project can be successful in areas important to the organisation but outside its defined goals. An example of this is the post-it note, which resulted from experiments by a 3M employee, Spencer Silver, to develop a strong new adhesive. The adhesive was a failure - it was super-weak - however Silver kept the formula. Four years later another 3M employee, Arthur Fry, discovered that the adhesive could be added to the back of paper notes and stuck to things and removed without causing damage. After another six years convincing 3M of the commercial value (which he eventually did by providing prototype post-it notes to the executive assistants of senior managers) it finally was released in the market as post-it notes.

Most important of all, it's important to help organisations understand that a partial success isn't necessarily a total failure.

In most projects, even those that are regarded as catastrophic failures, there are components that succeeded. These successes can sometimes be just as important as the failures for educating future projects - there's even a saying for it, "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater".

Particularly in large web project, or where web forms part of a larger project, it is important to differentiate between the parts that failed and those that succeeded - to acknowledge the successes even where the project is rated as an overall failure.

While this approach holds for all aspects of projects it is particularly important in the web space. As the internet is reasonably new for most organisations, some people can be more sensitive towards perceived failure in the area and more willing to use it as an excuse to kill or restrict future projects.

This is simply human nature - we fear the unknown and attempt to limit its impact on us through controls or avoidance. This is mirrored in project management strategies which define and minimise the potential impact of what we don't know through risk mitigation techniques and project controls.

So if you find yourself in the midst of a project hurtling towards failure, make sure that you spend time identifying what is going right as well as what is going wrong.

If the web component (or any other component) is meeting its goals - or at least providing key insights and tools that will enable future projects - make sure these are highlighted to the organisation and that these learnings are shared outside the project team.

Even where you cannot save the project, you can at least add to corporate knowledge and prevent the organisation from mistakenly throwing out that baby with the dirty water.

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Gov 2.0 Taskforce announces second project round - asks for quotes

The Gov 2.0 forum has released a second round of projects for quotes including for a Whole of Government Information Publication Scheme, Online Engagement Guidance and Web 2.0 Toolkit for Australian Government Agencies, Framework for Stimulating Information Philanthropy in Australia and Hypotheticals — Ethical and Cultural Challenges of Digital Engagement by Government - amongst other projects.

Full details of the projects are available at the Gov 2.0 Taskforce's blog in the post, Submit a quote for our round two projects.

If only I didn't have a full time job already :)

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US Army to launch Apps for Army Competition

In the style of the Apps for America competitions, the US Army announced at the Gov 2.0 summit that it would hold a competition for soldiers to develop software to help the army fight wars and carry out its missions.

Reported in Information Week Government, Gov 2.0: Army Announces Apps For Army Competition, the Army views the approach as a way to break down silos and create cheap and effective software, helping reduce the cost of having military-grade applications developed.

All entries will be hosted on the Defense Information Systems agency's open source code repository, Forge.mil.

Given the massive savings reported by Washington DC when it ran a similar district-based competition, it will be interesting to see the level of value that can be achieved within the armed forces.

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From concept to implementation - Digital Britain

The UK has moved forward from its recent Digital Britain report to release an Implementation Plan. This details how the government proposes to turn the actions within Digital Britain into reality.

A very interesting, and not overly long, document, the plan lays out clear governance structures, responsibilities and accountabilities for rolling out Digital Britain.

It's a model other governments could choose to use to take the step from Gov 2.0 vision to actualisation.

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US Federal government launches public IT Dashboard

I've been known to say, from time to time, that what you cannot measure you cannot manage. This is especially true in IT-based projects, which often involve significant investments and where deadlines and budgets can easily slide.

Given it has been estimated that 68% of IT projects fail to realise the benefits or outcomes they set out to achieve, it is vitally important that good measurement be in place to manage these investments and ensure that the responsible parties are accountable for the outcomes.

The US government has taken a major step towards public accountability over government IT investments with the release of the IT dashboard website.

Speaking to the Washington Post in the article, Government Launches Web Site to Track IT Spending, US Federal CIO Vivek Kundra stated that,

"Everyone knows there have been spectacular failures when it comes to technology investments," Kundra said. "Now for the first time the entire country can see how we're spending money and give us input."

Featured at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York on Tuesday, the IT Dashboard provides information on US$76 billion of US Federal IT spending, breaking it down by agency and into individual projects.

The site is more than a list of numbers. It provides interactive graphics and charts which allows visitors to identify which projects are running behind schedule or over budget - as well as those on time and on budget.

The site also makes the underlying data available in open formats, able to be reused in citizen applications and cross-referenced with other information sources to generate new insights.

While the site is undoubtably a nightmare for CIOs who have inadequate cost accounting systems or a high level of date and over-budget projects, it provides an extremely valuable role in enforcing accountability on public spending and supporting both citizens and elected officials to visualise, understand and ask the right questions about government IT investment decisions.

In other words the site aids the democratic process and encourages Federal Departments to ensure that they are running their IT projects effectively - which Kundra has already seen happen in practice,

"I talked to the CIO Council and saw the data change overnight," Kundra said. "It was cleaned up immediately when people realized it was going to be made public."

Consider the benefits to the US if government IT failure rate could be cut significantly - potentially doubling the value of every public dollar invested in IT.

I would love to see a similar site in Australia as I believe there would be similar benefits to the democratic process, transparency, accountability and improved ROI for the taxpayer dollar.

Below is a video explaining the site.

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Guest post: Supporting a major government project with social media tools

I am pleased to present this guest post from a colleague who has done a fantastic job of incorporating online tools into the government project management mix.

I feel that the work Nathanael Boehm and his team have been doing on the Training.gov.au project is an example of how social media can improve the ability of government to support consultation with stakeholders and customers and to deliver successful outcomes.

Guest post:
Nathanael Boehm is a web user interaction designer currently working for the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) on the Training.gov.au project. In addition to web design he is involved in the project and contract management, training and social media aspects of the project. In this guest blog post on eGovAU Nathanael talks about why the Training.gov.au team decided to use social media and how they did it.

The Vocational Education and Training sector in Australia is complex, with many stakeholders playing a role in delivering training information and industry regulation. Collectively they are known as the National Training System and the information infrastructure supporting this System is legislatively referred to as the National Training Information Service. This Service is currently provided by NTIS.gov.au, a website developed by the now decommissioned Australian National Training Authority.

In order to accommodate current policy, stakeholder expectations and user needs, Training.gov.au is being developed by the Department to replace NTIS. The new service is planned to be launched later this year.

The Training.gov.au project team was firmly committed to following a User-Centred Design (UCD) approach. Due to the complex nature of the National Training System, this meant coordinating input and expert opinions from thousands of organisations and key personnel.

The method for managing consultation had to take into account all of the dependencies and linkages between Registered Training Organisations (RTOs), Registering/Course Accreditation Bodies (RCABs), State Training Authorities (STAs), the Commonwealth, legislation, National Quality Council (NQC), Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF), Industry Skills Councils (ISCs) and other players.

To solve this the centerpiece of the project team's thinking was the launch of the Training.gov.au Project Blog which to my knowledge was the first ongoing Australian Federal Government blog.

There wasn't much effort or cost involved, we had existing web hosting infrastructure in place and web skills in the team. Therefore, over a few weeks, the team combined a WordPress theme with static information about the project and launched the Training.gov.au Project Blog.

In the spirit of engagement we aim for a very personal style. Each blog post is attributed to a member of the team, not the team as a whole, with the main blog contributors being Jo, Marty, Jonathon and myself. We try to steer clear of government speak, jargon and acronyms as much as possible.

We're aiming for openness and transparency - people appreciate that they know what we're doing and where we're up to every step of the way. They also appreciate the insights into how the project is being conducted and it gives the Project team an opportunity to show both that we're working really, really hard and that we are talking to our stakeholders.

The blog has been well-received by our stakeholders and users. It allows us to broadcast useful information that would otherwise not be available through traditional channels, simply because we're not prepared to spam everyone involved with an email telling them how our training sessions last week went. But there's still value in that content and the blog allows us to leverage it.

The blog also provides a method for our stakeholders to respond. In addition to formal response mechanisms, like the interest registration form, they can easily post comments attached to blog posts. With Jo out in the field promoting the blog as part of her engagement activities the number of comments and visitors is rapidly increasing.

In addition to deployment of the blog we stepped up our external in-person on-site engagement activities - preceded by bringing on a dedicated stakeholder engagement officer. We have a Twitter account @TrainingGovAu, although that is a secondary channel. We're not really pushing it at this stage but we do use it to engage in the Twittersphere when needed and to provide an additional entry point to blog content.

In the last few weeks we've also started using DOPPLR to demonstrate how much on-site engagement we do around the country and to assist with coordination of travel with stakeholders. Although the incorporation of DOPPLR into our social media strategy is under evaluation, our goal is to let people more readily see when we will be in their region or city if they want to attend a system demonstration or training.

Yes it's hard work doing all this engagement - the easy option would be to lock ourselves up in a room for 12 months and just build the website. However that doesn't give the project team any satisfaction in our work or any assurance that we're going to deliver a solution our stakeholders will like or that people will want to use, in support of the policy and business objectives.

In summary, the project team cannot read our stakeholders' or users' minds. It is essential to the success of the Training.gov.au project that we engage and consult broadly. Online social media has been a fundamental component of achieving this by closing the gap between the project team and the people we're delivering for.

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The first official Federal consultative blog

The eGovernment Resource Centre has tipped me off that the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has set up a consultative Future directions blog for two weeks with the purpose of soliciting public comments that will contribute to the development of a Future directions paper for the digital economy.

It's good to see that some time has gone into thinking about having a Terms of use, Moderation policy, specific Privacy policy (rather than relying on the general policy for the site).

There's also a feedback tool for people who wish to comment on the blog itself rather than on the policy.

What is not good to see is that the approach isn't using an effective blogging platform and the moderation approach has meant that in 11 pages of comments so far, not one commenter has referenced other comments, which means that no cross-dialogue is occurring. There's also been no official responses to blog comments as yet, but it is early days (less than 24 hours since it went live) - hopefully we'll see more conversation than talking past each other.

Given that the aim of the initiative is to collect community views and reactions, fed by a series of posts by the department, a blog is a reasonable, if not the best, choice of tools and the Future Directions blog at least gets the ball rolling.

Working in government, I've encountered the difficulties in using a real blogging tool, also commented on in this APC Magazine article, The 10 sins of Senator Conroy, the blogger, and hope that as the government's acceptance and experience of the internet improves, so shall it's capacity to engage.

I am also hopeful that the Department will look further afield than at direct responses in this blog at the posts on other blogs, forums, wikis, micro-blogging channels, timelines and other Web 2.0 mediums related to the topic (here's an example).

There's already a large number of comments on the blog - dominated by the Filter discussion, which is a topic I have been developing a post on, focused on how internet users have self-organised via Twitter, blogs and forums to oppose the initiative, culminating in a series of rallies in all Australian capital cities this Saturday 13 December.

It will be interesting to see whether, with the current focus on the Filter debate, many people will respond on the specific topic of the Digital economy.

I will also find it interesting to see whether the community perceives there to actually be a 'digital economy'. Personally I think there's one economy but with a range of different communications and distribution channels (but I'll say more on this in one of my comments on the Future Directions blog itself).

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The business case for social media within a government department

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.

By the way, Shel's regular podcast, The Hobson & Holtz Report, was to have a live phone in on 21 August discussing the topic of my blog post, the relationship between a strong commitment to internal communications and an effective intranet.

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.

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US public invited to review proposed patents in egovernment Peer-to-Patent initiative

The US Patent and Trademarks Office (USPTO), is trialing opening the patent examination process to public participation.

This allows members of the public to review pending patent applications and provide input and feedback into the process of assessing patent claims.

In effect, the patent office is acknowledging that the US public has the capacity to improve the US patent process by providing due diligence and scrutiny that the USPTO is unable to provide.

Via the website Peer-to-Patent, members of the public are able to register to review a select set of 400 pending US patents, in an initial pilot program to assess the feasibility of inviting public comments on patent applications.

While I've only just become aware of it, this isn't a new initiative - the pilot has been running for over a year and has generated enormous interest across the patent community.

The Japanese opened their own version of the peer-to-patent site in July 2008, titled Community Patent Review.

This type of project reflects the crowdsourcing potential of the internet, inviting the community to participate, comment on and support (or indicate lack of support) of government-run initiatives, rather than being held at arms length and only consulted according to the government's preferred consultation medium.

Another example I have previously discussed is the New Zealand Wiki Policing Act 2008 which used an online wiki to suggest contents.

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Becoming a more effective change agent in government

I'd like to thank Kate Carruthers, a formidable change agent and renaissance woman, for prompting this post through a presentation she's published on SlideShare, Enterprise 2.0 and stakeholder resistance.

One of my key roles and, I believe, a key role for many in the online arena, is to be a change agent for digital channels.

I've led, been involved with and witnessed both effective and ineffective change initiatives over the years - hopefully learning something over the journey.

When I am seeking to be a change agent I consider four things;

• Whether the change is meaningful - that it deliver real value to internal or external groups
• How to overcome resistance to change - bringing people with me
• The process for successful implementation of change - making it work
• Embedding change into behaviours, processes and systems - creating lasting value

To unpack the first two points,

Is the change meaningful?
Change by itself is neither good nor bad. Good changes in one organisation can be bad changes in another - either because the change was unnecessary (or even detrimental), wasn't sold well, execution was poor or it was not embedded into ongoing practice.

Change is about the future - which we like to think we can predict, but actually do very poorly. We hope and plan for change with an assumption that it will make the future brighter. My experience has been that a realistic balance between optimism and pessimism is necessary for those seeking to introduce change to ensure that they don't get carried away with the change itself and downrate the consequences.

Assessing value
So given that change can have a different impact in different organisations, and can have unforeseen consequences, how should change agents go about assessing whether a change is meaningful, irrelevant or detrimental?

I don't have a magic formula for doing this. There are many measures of value - from time and cost savings to audience satisfaction and organisational flexibility.

Any meaningful change needs to generate one or more of these benefits. The benefits must, in the views of those affected by the changes, outweigh any negative consequences.

We're only human
Unfortunately as those introducing a change are usually those who benefit from it (financially or otherwise) there is a tendency for change projects to make rosy predictions of benefits but downplay consequences and risks. It can also be much harder to be the public voice saying "don't do this, it will be bad for us", than one of the chorus in support of a change.

The best any of us can do is make an objective assessment of the change's benefits and risks and then, during the change's implementation, adapt as necessary to ensure that it provides value and minimises negative consequences.

I fall back on a mantra that meaningful change creates its own meaning by being responsive and adaptable.

Many of the negative and positive benefits of a change only become clear during or after a change occurs. A change must evolve to ensure that it delivers value as these are revealed.


Overcoming resistance
It is a common myth that people resist change.

However life changes around us every day, we must constantly change our location, our knowledge, our behaviour, our attitudes, our tools and our networks to address it.

Humans are adaptable - it makes us one of the few species able to survive and thrive in virtually any environment on this planet.

When introducing change into organisations, my experience is that most resistance is not due to the changes themselves. It is related to the way in which the change was introduced, the communication that takes place and the level of involvement with the changes themselves.

They're not wrong!
One key mistake I've seen change agents make is to introduce change because the old way of doing things was wrong or inferior.

This is almost a sure way of creating resistance as it make the people who created and manage the existing approach wrong or incompetent.

If you tell someone that they are incompetent, you will not make them want to help you.

I've fallen - and still fall - into this on occasion. It's not a deliberate step, it's an error of not thinking through my own words clearly enough.

A much better approach is to acknowledge that the current approach is right - it achieves the outcome and is entirely appropriate based on how it has developed from the past. However if the situation has changed, or if there are new technologies or systems available, it is possible to build on the current approach and make it easier for those involved and/or improve the customer service provided.

In the vast majority of cases people want to improve themselves, they want to improve their organisations and they want to improve their customer service. A change is another step on this journey and is simply a more formal approach to doing what they were already doing - a process of continual improvement.

Looking within
So when I face resistance I look first at what I have failed to do to help people be involved with, understand and influence the change. Nine times out of ten if I'd done something better, the resistance would be much less - or non-existent.

One of the key areas I look at is how much time I give people to reflect on and consider a potential change. Increasing the lead time can help enormously in allowing people to follow their own journey of understanding the value of a change - and also can help bring out any critical flaws in the change before it becomes a project.

Planting seeds
So these days I think of introducing change as planting seeds that will grow in the future. This approach is focused around establishing the preconditions for change to happen, like putting oil in a car before the gears grind to a halt.

I regularly plant seeds through telling people about new things by email (and relating them to existing context), through water cooler conversations, through participation in different groups, speaking at events and mediums such as this blog.

As gardeners know, you should plant many seeds, they should be planted in fertile ground and nurtured over a long time.

So I try to disseminate the seeds widely, identifying other change agents, influencers, decision-makers and gatekeepers within the organisation - the fertile ground where seeds can survive. I nurture them through ongoing engagement, by-the-way updates, by providing examples of success - and failure - by others and through constantly seeking opportunities to share.

I don't run strict metrics - ten seeds planted, one seed sprouts - as the value of an idea is dependent on the audience, not the innovator.

I also avoid getting trapped in 'owning' an idea. If someone wants to pick up and run with an idea I'll empower them to do so and step back into a supporting role - letting them take on most of the responsibility and the credit. Any failure is shared.


More to come
I discuss my last two points, successful implementation and embedding change in a future post.

I do appreciate all of your comments and viewpoints - they help me change myself to become a more effective change agent.

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Managing a cross-agency/government project online

I believe that one of the keys to successful projects is to maximise time spent on the project goals and minimise time spent dealing with project tools.

In the past I've seen projects fail or delayed due to the difficulty in managing project teams across different areas of a single organisation or, worse yet, across organisations.

The tools used to manage project teams often do not translate across organisational silos.

Fortunately, in a connected world, we can do better. Below is one vision of how to run a major project (at low cost) using secure and well established online tools.

You'll see most of them in my Top Tools list - and, yes, I've eaten my own dogfood.

1. Create a secure Govdex group to centralise project information and allow project team members to collaboratively develop project documents (as wiki pages)
   
2. Use a Yahoo group or Google group to manage an email discussion list and calendar
3. Use Mindjet to brainstorm the project
4. Use Google docs to collaboratively work on project tasks and formal documents such as a risk register and issues list
   
5. Use Basecamp or Copperproject for project timelining and gantt charting
   
6. Use Webex for video conferencing across the team, or free voice conferences via Skype
   
7. Use Flickr or Photodump to store photos and images
8. Create and manage a project blog/diary via Blogger (public or private)
9. Share PowerPoint presentations via Slideshare
10. Share project videos via YouTube

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In action: Training.gov.au Project Blog

This is a fantastic example of how blogs and other Web 2.0 tools can be used to support government initiatives and help reduce project costs.

First I should note that I know Nathanael Boehm, one of the members of the project team. He's an early adopter of web technologies, with a great deal of experience in social media and user design areas.

What is Training.gov.au?

In the words of the project blog:

Training.gov.au is the name of the new system that the Australian, State and
Territory Governments are developing to ensure people can get the information
they need to make informed decisions about training.

What are they using?

To manage the development of training.gov.au the project team are using an open-source blogging product to provide an online communications and collaboration space for the various stakeholders involved.

The Training.gov.au Project Blog is very clean, simple to use and flexible. It currently contains some information on the project objectives, governance and deliverables and has been set up to also manage the project timetable and provide a central communications platform for the project.

It's very easy - and cheap - to set up this type of system and it has surprised me how little these types of tools have been used by government in Australia to support the management of complex projects with multiple stakeholders.

I'm going to keep a close eye on the development of the project blog - and on the project itself - and, with the agreeance of the project team, may provide a post-mortem of how well the blog worked to facilitate project governance, communication and cost management.

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