The DTO is hiring - and not in the traditional complex and clumsy public service way

Australia's Digital Transition Office (DTO) has finally lifted the covers on the personnel it's seeking to hire to fulfil its ambitious transformation agenda.

However, unlike traditional APS hiring, the DTO's positions vacant use modern corporate job titles and each job description clearly and in detail explains what applicants will be expected to do in the role.

There's no mention of APS level and no need for applicants to write a selection criteria essay based on standard public service capabilities and values.

In fact the DTO job descriptions look like a good example of how good modern companies recruit.

Hopefully as a result of this approach the DTO will attract a range of highly skilled people from across the private sector, people who normally would not apply to a government job due to the difficulty in doing so.

So if you're interested in working in an area where there's the potential to make enormous change and where you can understand from the job description what the role will involve - check out the DTO's positions vacant at www.dto.gov.au

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Standardising content across government (or why does every agency have a different privacy policy?)

Every government website serves a different purpose and a different audience, however there are also standard content every site must have and legislation and standardised policies they must follow.

This includes content such as a privacy policy, legal disclaimer,  terms of use, accessibility statement, copyright, social media channels, contact page, information publication (FOI) pages and so on. It also includes the navigational structure and internal ordering of pages and the web addresses to access this content (such as for 'about us' pages).

So is there a case to standardise the templates and/or content of these pages and where to find them in websites across government?

I think so.

From an audience perspective, there is a strong case to do so. Citizens often use multiple government websites and it makes their experience more streamlined and efficient if they can find what they need in a consistent place (such as www.agency.gov.au/privacy), written in a consistent format and, where possible, using identical or near identical language.

It would also save money and time. Rather than having to write and seek legal approval for the full page content (such as for privacy information), only agency-specific parts would need writing or approval. Websites could be established more rapidly using the standard content pages and lawyers could focus on higher value tasks.

To put a number on the current cost of individually creating standard, if you assume it cost, in time and effort, around $500 to develop a privacy policy and that there are around 941 government websites (according to Government's online info offensive a flop), it would have cost up to $470,500 for individual privacy policies for all sites. Multiple this by the number of potentially standardisable pages and the millions begin adding up.

Standardisation could even minimise legal risks. It removes a potential point of failure from agencies who are not resourced or have the expertise to create appropriate policies and expose themselves to greater risks - such as over poorly written legal disclaimers which leave them open to being sued by citizens.

In some cases it may be possible to use the same standard text, with a few optional inclusions or agency-specific variations - such as for privacy policies, disclaimers, accessibility statements, terms of use, and similar standard pages.

In other cases it won't be possible to use the same content (such as for 'about us' pages), however the location and structure of the page can be similar - still providing public benefits.

Let's take privacy policies specifically for a moment.There's incredible diversity of privacy policies across Australian Government websites, although they are all subject to the same legislation (the Privacy Act 1988) and largely cover the same topics (with some variation in detail).

While this is good for lawyers, who get to write or review these policies, it may not be as good for citizens - who need to contend with different policies when they seek to register for updates or services.

Many government privacy policies are reviewed rarely, due to time and resource constraints, which may place agencies at risk where the use of new tools (such as Youtube, Slideshare and Scribd) to embed or manipulate content within agency sites can expose users unknowingly to the privacy conditions of third party sites (see how we handled these in myregion's privacy policy with an extendable third party section).

So, how would government go about standardisation? Although effectively a single entity, the government functions as a group of agencies who set their own policies and manage their own risks.

With the existence and role of AGIMO, and the WebGuide, there is a central forum for providing model content to reflect the minimum standard agencies must meet. There are mandatory guidelines for agencies, such as for privacy, however limited guidance on how to meet it. A standard privacy policy could be included and promoted as a base for other agencies to work from, or even provided as an inclusion for sites who wanted to have a policy which was centrally maintained and auto-updated.

Alternatively web managers across government could work together, through a service such as GovDex, to create and maintain standard pages using a wiki-based approach. This would allow for a consistently improving standard and garner grassroots buy-in, plus leverage the skills of the most experienced web masters.

There's undoubtably other ways to move towards standardised pages, even simply within an agency, which itself can be a struggle for those with many websites and decentralised web management.


Regardless of the method selected, the case should receive consideration. Does government really need hundreds of versions of what is standard content, or only a few?


Examples of government privacy policies (spot the similarities and differences):

• http://health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/privacy_security.htm
• http://www.immi.gov.au/functional/privacy.htm
• http://www.ag.gov.au/Pages/Disclaimers/Privacystatement.aspx
• http://www.dpmc.gov.au/privacy.cfm
• http://daff.gov.au/about/privacy
• http://www.deewr.gov.au/Pages/Privacy.aspx
• http://www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/legal/privacy.htm?OpenDocument&nav=footer

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Let your People Services/HR team know - LinkedIn reaches three million Australian members

LinkedIn has just announced to members that it has reached three million Australian members, slightly over 10% of the population and roughly 30% of our working population.

I hope People Services and Human Resources people across government are beginning to recognise the potential of the service for reaching professional people as potential hires and to connect past employees back to organisations through alumni networks (you never know when you might be able to lure them back).

While on the topic, it is also worthwhile for agencies to keep an eye on services like Glassdoor, which allows employees to anonymously rate their organisations (yes there are agencies reviewed in the site) and is also growing as a recruitment tool.

Twitter is also becoming a tool for highlighting positions to potential staff (used by the Australian Department of Human Services in a coordinated way for graduates, and by other agencies on an ad hoc basis) and several agencies have used Facebook for advertising (such as ASIO) and managing graduate groups (such as the Department of Finance and Deregulation and the Australian Department of Human Services).

Blogs are also being used (such as by the Department of Health and Ageing).

In fact, if your organisation is not using social media to attract staff, perhaps you're being outcompeted for skills by those organisations who do.

If your recruitment team still isn't sold on the value of Web 2.0 and social media as a useful recruitment and retention tool for organisations, point them in the direction of Michael Specht's 52 ideas for Social Media for HR professionals.

This ideas sheet identifies a range of techniques available to "support key HR and Recruitment processes. Including the use of Twitter, blogs for employees, wikis to create organisational polices and social bookmarking to identify talent pools.".

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IT can drive big productivity gains in government

With the rise in the efficiency dividend and increasingly tight budgets across government, I keep wondering whether there are places where government can make real savings and raise productivity other than simply by cutting costs.

The crunch is often that one must invest money to save money - a position common in business but often a struggle in government, where the focus is so often on grants and programs.

However, having spoken to a fair few frustrated people lately from a range of agencies, there appears to be a significant source of productivity gains - and thereby cost savings - right under the noses of many departments. Their IT systems.

Over the last year more and more of my friends and peers changing departments have cited IT as one of their reasons for wanting to make a move. They all want to be productive, however grappling with slow and aging computers and software or restrictive internet access policies appears to be rising as a concern and even becoming a question to agencies in interviews.

This doesn't surprise me - in fact I noticed when I originally joined the public service that, through no fault of departments, the IT equipment and software wasn't up to the same standard as I'd experienced in the private sector. Over time people adapt and learn to work within the constraints of the system, however what productivity could be unlocked if these constraints were relaxed?

Today I'm aware of agencies where reportedly close to 50% of staff have their own computing devices at their desks. Personal ultra-light laptops, tablets and smartphones have become one route to employee productivity, overcoming desktop IT restrictions.

However since a friend of mine left an agency late last year frustrated that they lost over an hour a day of productive time in struggling with their desktop computer and that they couldn't access the forums and blogs written and frequented by their stakeholders due to access limits, I thought it was worth doing a calculation of the productivity losses that could be attributed to IT constraints.

Let's say that an agency's low bandwidth or older desktop PCs and software cost 2 hours of productive time per employee each week. This may sound like a lot, but if a PC takes 10 minutes to start up each morning you're halfway there already.

For a moderate sized agency of 4,000 staff the lost productive time would be 8,000 hours per week - the equivalent of employing another 200 staff.

At an average wage, including onboarding costs, of $70,000 per year (about $35 per hour), this lost time equates to $280,000. Each week.

Per year the cost of the IT productivity loss would be $14,560,000. Every year. Or, if you prefer, a productivity loss of $3,640 per person per year. Every year.

For an agency experiencing this type of productivity loss there's a few ways to offset it:

1) Reduce wages across the board by $3,640. This would be deeply unpopular.
2) Find efficiencies in other areas (reducing expenses) equivalent to the lost productivity. This may be difficult to do every year.
3) Reduce expenditure on programs and activities affecting citizens. This is politically dangerous.
4) Invest in IT improvements.

So how much would agencies have to invest to reclaim that 2 hours per worker per week? It would vary quite widely as it depends on what is causing the IT productivity drain.

However it is possible to model how much an agency should be willing to invest into improving their IT. This, of course, assumes that agencies can convince their Minister, the Department of Finance and Treasury that they should invest in IT systems - not an easy sell.

Assuming that an IT cycle is around five years (from a top-end PC becoming a low-end PC and corresponding software and network impacts), an agency should spend less than the cumulative five years of productivity loss in order to emerge ahead.

On that basis, a Department should spend less than $18,200 per staff member (the $3,640 productivity loss multipled by five years). Given wage rises, let's round this up to a maximum of $20,000 per staff member.

Therefore a Department with 4,000 staff should spend at most $80 million to rejuvenate its IT and remove the productivity shrinkage. If it spends less than this it is realising a productivity increase.

That's a fair chunk of cash - and far more than most agencies of that size would ever need to spend on IT equipment and software.

In fact, if you bought every staff member a $3,000 PC plus the same amount for support, equipped each staff member with $2,000 of software and $2,000 worth of broadband (coming to $10,000 per staff member), you'd only have spent $40 million for a 4,000 person agency.

Of course with bulk purchases agencies can get much better prices than these. Also I didn't include staff, training and overheads. Hopefully it would balance out.

If it did, that would leave you with $40 million dollars in productivity savings - $8 million per year.

Of course all these figures are 'finger in the air' rough and some of the productivity benefits can be realised quickly and cheaply by simply adjusting internet policies and filters or giving staff who need the best equipment the equipment they need.

However the basic premise holds, that IT isn't just a cost for agencies, it is a valid and important source of productivity gain for agencies. If an agency can equip their staff with the right tools and connectivity for their jobs they will be able to be more productive.

And if an agency can do so at less than the cost of their staff not having the right IT tools then the agency, the government, and Australia, are all ahead.

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Defence's social media review

A few weeks ago the Department of Defence announced it had selected the advertising agency, George Patterson Y&R to conduct a review of social media risks.

This followed the Skype scandal in April this year where several male Defense Force cadets conspired to broadcast a female cadet having consensual sex without her knowledge to half a dozen other (male) cadets. The female cadet reportedly went to the media after being told that there was no possibility of police action.

On some exploration I found a reason why George Patterson Y&R was selected - their long association via the Defence Force recruitment advertising contract. A trusted working relationship and a 'known quantity' would have decreased the review's risks from Defence's perspective. The existing contract may even have simplified and expedited the procurement process whilst remaining within government guidelines.

However I still found this choice surprising. In my view traditional advertising agencies in Australia haven't demonstrated a sound understanding of how to use social media effectively, particularly for government purposes.

I'm not the only one who thinks this. Laurel Papworth, a social media specialist, also had doubts about the choice, summed up in her post, Australia Defence Force ADF and social media. This included comments made to Crikey, reported in the article, ‘No conflict’ over Defence Force social media probe.

My concerns about the choice were heightened by the coverage this weekend over the personal comments by senior George Patterson Y&R staff,

• Defence review team's sex controversy
• Defence review firm backed despite insults

Alongside this, there are a growing number of people within Australian government with a sound understanding and experience of using social media effectively for their agencies. This is evidenced by the rising number of social media policies and channels in use by many agencies. There's even a few staff in Defence who are very experienced social media practitioners.

Externally there's a growing number of specialist digital agencies and social media specialists in Australia who are able to provide effective risk assessment, support and training.

There is also quite a lot of experience in Departments similar to Defence in other countries, such as the US Defense forces.

The US has provided a great deal of effective and well-structured guidance for US sailors, soldiers and air force personnel, from the Navy Command Social Media Handbook, Social Media and the Air Force guidebook (2nd Edition) and the 2011 US Army Social Media Handbook (a follow-up from their 2010 handbook).

There's also the fantastic Web Posting Response Assessment flowchart from the USAF and even the Marines have embraced social media use.

They've even indexed their official social media channels to make them easier to discover. US's Defense forces have social media directories, the US Navy's social media directory, the US Army's directory and a similar directory for the US Air Force.


The social media report is due in July - I look forward to seeing it released publicly.

I hope that George Patterson Y&R are able to provide useful findings and actionable recommendations - and that they particularly consider the social media expertise and experience of the groups above.

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Tips for hiring a public sector social media manager

We are now starting to see government departments advertising social media roles - although the titles vary, including 'New Media Adviser', 'Community Manager' and even 'Online Media Coordinator'.

In Australia it is difficult to recruit people with substantial experience for these roles. I am seeing many filled by media specialists or website managers, who are qualified in their professions, but can be new to the social media space.

This shortage of experienced people also reflect competition from the private sector. Corporate social media roles are now advertised at entry levels around $50,000, mid-range around $90 and at senior levels at $130,000 or more. Government agencies are not always able to offer similar levels of compensation, although attempt to compensate through conditions and superannuation contributions.

Some agencies are taking the route of having graduates lead social media initiatives in the belief that their youth gives them greater familiarity with the medium.

While graduates do come with enthusiasm, innovation and fresh ideas, they haven't always had time to build experience in the public sector, to understand the governance processes or political considerations or build networks of influence. They need support from mentors and sponsors to overcome these challenges.

Graduates may also not be the most experienced users of social media - the types of social media used by a graduate can be quite different from those used by a professional communicator with five or more years experience, simply due to the different professional needs they have in their lives.

Introducing social media into an organisation is a complex and delicate endeavour. When was the last time organisations added a major new communications channel? What type of cultural, procedural and technical changes were required? How major was the change program - and how well resourced?

Traditionally government employs specialist teams for policy development, program management and service delivery - yet in the social media space a single person or small team is often required to have all these skills in ample measure.

This means agencies need to think seriously about the experience and expertise they need in the people they employ to lead their social media initiatives. The experience and expertise required to navigate the cultural and change considerations, work within the governance and processes and appreciate the public communications and political sensitivities around social media adoption.

To aid in this challenge the post 12 Steps To Hiring A Social Media Manager from SocialMediaToday provides many useful tips and considerations that organisations need to take on board when making a social media manager hire.

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ASIO advertising jobs on Facebook - is your department using social media in recruitment?

I was checking my Department's week-old Drinking Nightmare Facebook Page from home the other day and noticed that besides it up popped an ad for ASIO, inviting me to learn more about being a Survelliance Officer.

This was the first time I'd seen ASIO advertising on Facebook - or for that matter any Australian government job ads on the site (though it's entirely possible there are many I have not seen).

It did give me a positive feeling that Australian government agencies are beginning to grasp some of the opportunities in tapping into social media communities for recruitment purposes.

Social media is a growing area for human resources professionals to use in recruiting and re-recruiting staff, as Michael Specht, possibly Australia's leading advocate in the area, would agree.

If you are interested in using social media in recruitment, but don't know much about it yet, this is a useful (free) eBook to start with: User’s Guide to Talent Recruitment through Social Media (PDF)

Recruitment 2.0 anyone?

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Is your team ready to implement Gov 2.0?

I found an interesting post on Govloop the other day by Martha McLean, Bureaucracy 2.0 – make sure your team is ready to stand and deliver.

This identified a challenge that is facing public servants - do we prepare our teams to engage in Gov 2.0 activities (possibly preempting the need), or do we wait for senior leadership to define the direction.

Over the nearly three years I've worked in the public service I was primarily focused on lifting the awareness of the online channel in the eyes of senior management. This involved putting in place appropriate reporting systems, flagging how the channel could be used to solve various organisational 'problems' in a cost-effective manner, and flagging all the outside research demonstrating that real people used the internet in real ways to resolve real issues - sometimes bypassing government services altogether.

I am hoping that over the next few years I can spend less time on the basics of internet education and spend more of my time helping develop public sector capabilities in utilising Gov 2.0 techniques and tools to improve government outcomes - through spreading knowledge and demonstrating successful outcomes.

It's a big vision, but all the best ones are.

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US Army gets a SecondLife

The US Army is about to set up several islands in the virtual world Second Life to explore the effectiveness of the medium as a recruiting tool.

Reported in The Inquisitr, the article, titled U.S. Army to setup camp on Second Life, the army is looking to provide virtual experiences, such as parachuting and using a weapon to entice new recruits to sign on.

Given that the US army is already using unmanned remote controlled robots, and the airforce is using remote controlled planes, some soldiers are already working in a video game-like experience, making this not too far a leap from virtual to real soldiering.

From the article, the US army is exploring these types of avenues in order to go where their audience is and start conversations, they cannot simply set up shopfronts or phone lines and wait for eager recruits to walk in the door anymore.

To quote,

What I find really facinating about these types of things involving the Army is that they seem to get what all this social mdia and technology is about better than most of the people trying to market it to businesses. They understand that social media isn’t about just setting up shop somewhere and controlling what happens. The Army understands that it is about going to where the people they want to talk with are and then creating a valid reason for a conversation to begin.

For the Army it isn’t a matter of finding a way to make money off of social media interaction. They are looking at purely from an outreach and conversation point of view. This doesn’t mean that they are seeing it as some pie in the sky either but instead are being quite realistic about its potential.

Can anyone think of other (public or private) organisations seeking to attract the best talent who might need to move beyond traditional recruitment methods?

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Do public social networks have a place in government offices?

Some departments block them totally, others just monitor usage, is there a case for allowing or even supporting public social network use in government offices?

The other day the Sydney Morning Herald published an article on The pain and potential of Facebook in the office where Nick Abrahams, a Deacons law firm partner provided his personal view on the use of public social networks within a corporate environment together with some statistics from the Deacon Social Networking Survey 2008 on usage in nearly 700 Australian organisations.

Without giving clear conclusions, Nick raised some interesting points around the commercial risks of allowing these networks, including potential over-use, harassment, discrimination and the release of private or corporate in-confidence information.

He also flagged the risks of blocking these networks - such as reduced collaboration, unattractiveness to younger potential employees and being seen as out-of-step with accepted social conventions.

A couple of the findings Nick highlighted were that 20% of organisations blocked access to public social networking sites, only 14% of employees (currently) use social network sites during office hours (including lunch!) and that 76% of employees believed that organisations should allow staff to access these sites in the office.

Demographically only 4% of employees over 35 used social networks at the office, whilst 25% of those 25-34 and 33% of those under 25 years did. Also 46% of respondents who used social networks stated that, given the choice between two job offers that were otherwise roughly equivalent, they'd pick the organisation that did not block Facebook.

There is clear evidence that social networks provide benefits. The experience of many organisations now using internal social networks bears out that they do support collaboration - where they are supported by an appropriate organisational culture.

The efforts by the US intelligence services (an internal facebook equivalent) and the work by software providers such as Microsoft to develop social networks for organisations indicates that in the future more online social networking in organisations is likely to be the norm, rather than less.

However internal social networking is different - easier to manage and control than public social networking. Once it goes public an organisation relies on each and every individual involved to conduct themselves responsibly at all times where their comments are visible.

Is the situation with public social networking any different to where we are with telephones, letters, emails and even online forums (which are not commonly blocked)?

With these mediums we put appropriate policies in place, sometimes train people on acceptable conduct and rely on trusting individuals to do the right thing, to act in their own self-interest (continued employment) and back these up with potential legal options (scaling up from disciplinary action) to ensure usage is appropriately managed.

Should government agencies treat public social networks differently to other mediums, as people are behaving in a less formal manner but may still be indirectly representing the organisation?

Or should they use the same principles of policy, training and actions as for other mediums?

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US women fleeing tech jobs due to glass ceiling

With a ICT staffing crisis already underway in Australia, it's interesting to read in USA Today that in the US Women (are) fleeing tech jobs because of (the) glass ceiling.

I've never understood why people discriminate at the office on the basis of gender, and I hope that with Australia having a female Federal Government CIO, that the ICT 'boys club' is not alive and thriving in Australia.

What do others in the industry think?

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Recruitment in the age of Second Life

Missouri's state government is struggling to manage the need to competitively attract and hire IT professionals in the face of a wave of baby boomer retirements.

Their solution, as detailed in the NextGov article, Cat's in the Bag!, has been to explore new (and cheap) ways to reach young professionals - even when they come dressed as a cat with a red bowtie to the first job interview.

The CIO of Missouri has been holding virtual career fairs using Second Life.

As discussed in the article, it's important to seek new employees where they congregate and feel comfortable, rather than solely relying on techniques that worked in the past, but do not reflect the cultural bent of highly qualified applicants today.

Seeking technologists and trolling for employees with disabilities in virtual worlds makes sense. Techies are well represented there due to their curiosity about new computer frontiers. And the disabled, especially those with physical handicaps, often are attracted to worlds where those problems no longer hinder them.

For an investment of only a few hundred dollars per year in virtual worlds his ROI is excellent - and the little cat with the red bowtie, the avatar of a recent computer engineering graduate, now has a job at Missouri's Department of Natural Resources.

The opportunity cost for other organisations not yet using digital aid recruitment tools is only likely to grow over time.

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The value of web 2.0 to government

I've been reading about a presentation given by Michael Specht at PubCamp Sydney, an event that brought together old and new media people to look at opportunities and threats facing the industry.

He gave a an impromptu presentation on Enterprise 2.0, which contained a number of insights that apply equally to the public sector.

The full presentation and Michael's slide notes are at Enterprise 2.0, employees and profits.

Below is a summary of some of the key takeaways for me, with quotes from Michael's slide notes.

• The active engagement of employees in an organisation delivers enormous financial benefits
  A 2007/2008 Watson & Wyatt research report looked at employee engagement on a global basis and showed a strong linkage between engagement and financial performance. In summary organisations in the top 25% of engagement had a 20% total return to shareholders, a 22% market premium and $276K productivity per employee when compared to the bottom 25%.

• Most Australian workers are not fully engaged - this results in productivity losses
  A Gallup poll in 2005 of 1,500 employees found that 20% are actively disengaged (disruptive, unproductive or disloyal), with another 62% not committed to their role or employer. Gallup estimated this was costing the Australian economy A$30 billion annually. This research is backed up by recent studies in the US that found only 27% of workers were actively engaged.

• Communication and customer focus are key drivers for staff engagement
  A finding of the 2007/2008 Watson & Wyatt research report mentioned above was that communication and customer focus were two of the four key drivers for engagement. The others were compensation/benefits and strategic leadership.
  

My conclusion from these is that as social media is a key way to expand communication and customer engagement it's an important influencer of organisational effectiveness.

For government agencies this means that staff have a better understanding of customer needs and views and are able to collaborate effectively either within the agency or across all of government.

The combination of these two outcomes - understanding and collaboration - improves policy development, execution and service delivery.

Reduced costs, improved outcomes - that's the value I see in Web 2.0 for government.

What do you think?

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Making government recruitment effective online

This post in Shifted HR reflects an area I have my eye on - Recruitment in the Australian Public Service

In Allison's words:

HR areas in APS agencies need to stop focusing on the process of recruitment and use technology to do this. They should be focusing their energy in supporting, educating and training line managers on recruitment strategy, attraction and candidate management.

Coming from the private sector I am used to organisations having effective online recruitment systems. These remove unnecessary manual steps in applying for jobs, managing applications, communicating with applicants and filtering job seekers by abilities.

I'd like to upgrade the systems at my agency when we can give it appropriate attention.

What has been your experience in rolling out systems to support the recruitment process at your organisation?

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