Australian Public Servants want the right to comment respectfully on political and policy matters online

I've been monitoring the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) public consultation on the current social media guidelines for Australian public servants (APS).

While they clearly aren't interested in comments from former or potential future public servants, having neglected to publish, or even link to, my comments - which I submitted to the APSC four weeks ago - there's been 109 public comments published from current public servants.

While there may be private responses to the consultation, or other public comments as yet unpublished, I've analysed the comments available and the viewpoint points consistently to one conclusion.

Australian Public Servants overwhelmingly want the right to comment respectfully on policy and political matters via the social media channels of their choice.

It's clear from the responses that social media is increasingly seen as a normal way to communicate - like chatting at a barbeque or on the phone - and public servants increasingly feel the medium should be treated in the same way, with an emphasis on the 'social' rather than the 'media'.

Only nine of the publicly published responses supported the current guidelines for public servants, which state (in part) that:

6.2.7 When employees make public comment in an unofficial capacity, it is not appropriate for them to make comment that is, or could be reasonably perceived to be:

1. being made on behalf of their agency or the Government, rather than an expression of a personal view
2. compromising the employee's capacity to fulfil their duties in an unbiased manner—this applies particularly where comment is made about policies and programs of the employee's agency
3. so harsh or extreme in its criticism of the Government, a Member of Parliament from another political party, or their respective policies, that it raises questions about the employee's capacity to work professionally, efficiently or impartially
4. so strong in its criticism of an agency's administration that it could seriously disrupt the workplace—APS employees are encouraged instead to resolve concerns by informal discussion with a manager or by using internal dispute resolution mechanisms
5. a gratuitous personal attack that might reasonably be perceived to be connected with their employment
6. compromising public confidence in the agency or the APS.

 Whereas 90 of the published responses stated that, to quote from one respondent,

It is important to recognise that, as citizens, public servants should have the right to express an opinion on key political issues providing they do this respectfully and that the issues they are commenting on do not not relate directly to their area of employment.

This view was represented many times, using different words and phrasing...

I can see that there is an argument that there should be more caution about what is said about the area in which you work, but why should I be prohibited from making comment publicly about immigration policy or environment policy if I don't even work in that area?

...if I want to make a comment about the work of my department in my position as a customer of that department, or as a taxpayer who has an interest in the direction of government programs generally, I ought to be able to do so.

Remaining a-political should not preclude someone from criticising an individual's performance in government… Questioning obviously wrong policy is not straying from the APS code of conduct.

People should not be persecuted or railroaded for making public comment in their own personal time on any social media platform regardless of what the posting is about or responding to that is not work/employment related.

If the APS are censored from making any criticism of the government of the day and their policies, it's going to be even harder to encourage good people to want to work with us. 

As an employee of the APS I am 100% committed to upholding the Values and Code of Conduct whilst at work, and in situations that are in connection with my employment. As a citizen I have my own set of values and beliefs and shouldn't be forced to remove myself from public debate on social media platforms just because I am a public servant. 

Having the right to vote, by default, forces you to have a political opinion. While public servants retain the right to vote, they should also be able to voice that opinion.

We should have freedom of speech, so long as we speak respectfully about issues

Public servants should be allowed to say anything on social media during their unpaid time.

If it does not relate directly to the programs administrated by their agency, preventing APS employees from engaging in public discourse as private citizens is excessive and oppressive.

No matter how distasteful, racist, sexist, or whatever an opinion is, a person should have the right to express that opinion, provided it is not obviously linked to an organisation.

Public servants should have the same rights as any other Australian to comment on the government of the day and political matters.

Some were even more blunt,

Every vote counts. So EVERY voice should have the ability to be heard… Why is the government so afraid of the people?

It's unfair and oppressive to expect that because someone works in the public service that they can't be affected by political and social issues and therefore have opinions about the issues which may affect them and the people who are important in their lives. 

Why pretend we agree with everything we're told to do? It's like an atheist praying in Church to make their religious parents happy. As long as expression is respectful, it should be permitted.

When a politician says something stupid (which many of them do) I should be allowed to comment that they said something stupid.

While others questioned whether the government's current policy suggested that public servants were not trustworthy or that Australian democracy was broken,

In 10 years of working in Government I have only ever seen fantastic, impartial and evidence based decision making, and this is despite the fact that as humans, Public Servants naturally hold opinions. To imply that they cannot be trusted to comment responsibly on social media is to imply they cannot be trusted anywhere. Why does the medium change things? I.e. if we're questioning the integrity and trustworthiness of the Public Service; why should it be limited to social media? Either we are trustworthy everywhere, or we are not.

In Australia we have a liberal democracy. Public servants are part of that democracy. As such the boundaries on political and social commentary should be set quite generously for all, public servants included. In our history we have fought totalitarian regimes that have sought to inhibit free speech, my father and grandfather both fought for freedom and democracy. I see the curtailing of free speech that all citizens currently have as a huge infringement on hard-fought and won rights.

People who work for the public service have just as much right to question the Government in a democratic society as the next person. If they don't, then how democratic a society is it?

 Any democracy that cannot deal with criticism, regardless of the source, is no longer a democracy.

Only a few believed the current limitations were fair,

To protect public servants from any erosion of trust now or in the future, I believe they should not be posting anything critical.

I have worked for three federal government agencies in my working life and am proud to have done so; I believe in what these agencies stand for and deliver to the Australian community. I am not about to bite the hand that feeds me. If I find a significant shift in agency policy and practice which would be at odds with my own belief system and make being a-political in a professional role impossible I wouldn't hang on for any length of time I would simply leave.

No matter who your employer is, whilst you are in their employ, I believe you should respect that bond and not do or say anything that would damage that company's reputation.

A minority (14) suggested that public servants should conceal their connection to the public service while posting, to prevent an obvious link to their employer, while a few others pointed out that this wasn't really a protection at all.

My suggestion would be that APS employees should not list their Department or Agency as their employer on social media sites. They should not divulge any information that is not already available on public record and should not publically denegrate their employer. Ooutside these restrictions, I should be able to have the same rights as Australians who work in the private sector.

A more effective result could be achieved by instructing PS employees to remove any identification as a PS employee on their personal social media accounts and to not permit comments which identify their opinion as being related to their employment. Without any identification to the person's employment, it's difficult to see how someone can perceive an employee as making comment on behalf of their employer.

On the topic of whether public servants should be able to comment on their department and work, opinions were split. 36 respondents clearly indicated they believed that public servants should not comment on their own work and agency, whereas 14 directly stated that they should and a number of others were ambivalent.

The arguments were fairly clear on both sides.

Those opposed to talking about their work and agency said it could compromise their ability to do their job impartially, and potentially release information that shouldn't be public.

Those that supported talking about their work and agency pointed out that they were the best informed about their areas and could provide critical facts and information into the public domain in ways that could enrich and improve the public conversation. They also noted that at times they were also customers of their own departments, and as such should have the same rights as other customers.

...if I want to make a comment about the work of my department in my position as a customer of that department, or as a taxpayer who has an interest in the direction of government programs generally, I ought to be able to do so.

I should be able to comment on policies and topics in the public spotlight that affect me, my family or my field without fear of reprisal from my employer - particularly where the discussion is not at all related to my employer.

It is said that Qantas staff can't publicly criticise their employer, so nor should public servants. But Qantas doesn't confiscate 20% of my income. Qantas doesn't tell me what I can and can't buy, sell, import or smoke. Qantas doesn't tell me who I can and can't marry. Qantas can't send armed men into my house to arrest me. Qantas doesn't decide what my children are taught at school... Public servants have a duty as citizens to participate fully in political debate, including in relation to the programs they administer. 

A few believed the existing policy was clear,

I do believe the social media stance is perfect as it stands.

Yes they are clear. They do not appear to require revising.

But most respondents felt otherwise,

...this area is extremely grey and needs not only definitive clarification, but absolute determination as to what can and can't be said on political issues without fear of reprisals or recriminations.

Overall all respondents agreed on one point - that public servants should be respectful when they engaged.

Hi, I think that we should have the same rights and rules of every Australian Citizen. We should be able to speak our mind, even to the point of a difference of opinion with a Government Minister, providing we do not denegrate our department, our managers or colleagues.

It is now up to the APSC as to what they do with this information and how it affects the next iteration of the APS's social media guidelines.

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Australia leaps to 2nd place in the United Nations eGovernment Study

The United Nations defines e-Government as "the use and application of information technologies in public administration to streamline and integrate workflows and processes, to effectively manage data and information, enhance public service delivery, as well as expand communication channels for engagement and empowerment of people."

In brief - it's about using IT strategically and tactically to make government more efficient, transparent and engaging.

Of course this doesn't begin and end with the technology - there needs to be deep-rooted cultural shifts and good IT literacy across a public service to realise the benefits from IT.

Internationally the UN has been reporting on this through a series of eGovernment development studies since 2001, tracking the performance of 193 nations (click on the images to enlarge them).

UN e-Government development index top 20 nations for 2001-2014 (click to enlarge)

I've reviewed the top twenty rankings for every study (2001 to 2014), and found some interesting stories in the trends - particularly amongst the countries highlighted in the image below.

Country trends in the UN e-Government development index
 top 20 nations for 2001-2014 (click to enlarge)

Australia has consistently ranked extremely well in the e-Government development index. We've always been in the top twenty nations, and only once slid below 10th position. However we've been in gradual decline, from 2nd in 2001 to 3rd in 2003, then 6th in 2004 and 2005, down to 8th in 2008 and 2010 and 12th in 2012.

This turned around in the 2014 study, where Australia leapt ten positions to 2nd place (see chart below).

This is an amazing turnaround, particularly given the e-Government development index is a relative measure of country performance - countries are continually improving their IT strategy and implementation approaches, so a nation must continually improve performance just to hold its position against other contenders.

It's a huge testimonial to the work the Australian public service and government have done over the last four years to change how IT is viewed, structured and implemented within agencies. We've not only held our own, but leapt ahead of ten other nations.

Australian performance in the UN e-Government development index
 for 2001-2014 (click to enlarge)

Some of our close neighbours have also done well.

New Zealand has consistently been in the top twenty, albeit never overtaking Australia. They've also begun recovering in the rankings after a long period of time languishing in 13th to 14th position, returning to the top 10 in 2014 with 9th position.

Hopefully the work going on now in Wellington will help New Zealand to cement a place in the top ten for years to come.

New Zealand performance in the UN e-Government development index
 for 2001-2014 (click to enlarge)

Singapore ranked 4th in 2001, however had a mixed performance for a number of years - even sliding out of the top twenty in 2008 to 23rd place.

Since then the country has achieved an amazing turnaround, and in the latest study ranks 3rd, just behind Australia (see red columns on the chart below).

South Korea, on the other hand, has been a consistent achiever over the last fourteen years. They started out in 15th position in 2001 and have increased or maintained their position in every study, except in 2008, when they dropped from 5th to 6th position.

However they recovered quickly, achieving the number one spot in 2010 and holding it ever since (see blue columns on the chart below).

From my experience with South Korea, the country has undertaken an extensive program of retraining public servants and embedding IT thinking into how they manage government. This is a significant advantage over countries that haven't yet fully understood the importance of this cultural shift in thinking and how it plays out when implementing technology.

Singaporean and South Korean performance in the UN e-Government
development index for 2001-2014 (click to enlarge)

How about the 'usual suspects' - the two countries that Australia spends most time looking at, the US and UK.

The US started very strong in the e-Government development index - holding the top position from 2001 to 2005. However their position started to decay as other nations started lifting their government IT capacity. This trend has continued, with the US achieving its lowest ever rank (7th) in 2014 (see yellow columns in chart below).

US and UK performance in the UN e-Government development
index for 2001-2014 (click to enlarge)

Now while the US has been consistently in the top 10, it is exhibiting signs of weakness due to a combination of budget cuts and the expense of maintaining a large and ageing IT infrastructure. 

Unfortunately the country has become the victim of its own success - much of the technology implemented at the end of the 20th century and start of the 21st needs to be completely replaced and the US government lacks the money and will to commit to all of the capital redevelopment required.

This is even despite the huge steps the current President has led into Government 2.0 and open data. While these steps are important, they tend to happen on the edges of the system, rather than in the core. Many US agencies are still reliant on software originally designed in the 1980s and 1990s and the process of moving away from these is a slow and expensive one.

I expect the US will continue on a gentle downwards trajectory in this area until there's a major restructure of how core US government IT operates. I think this is a 'when' rather than an 'if' however, as the US cannot afford to give up its technological edge over the rest of the work without a fight.

The UK has had an interesting 14 years for government IT. The country, like the US, has never fallen out of the top 10 spots, however has bounced up and down due to the impacts of the GFC and changing government IT policies (see purple column on chart below).

While the UK did improve its position from 2001 to 2005 and, after backtracking, again from 2008 to 2012, it has dropped back to 8th spot - just below where it was in 2001 - in the 2014 study.

I don't think this 'bouncing around' is necessarily a bad thing. So long as the UK is somewhere in the top 10 it remains a world leader in the egovernment space, and the work that has been going on since 2012 to reframe how IT is considered, managed and implemented in government, via the Government Digital Service and government-supported bodies such as the Open Data Institute, mean that the UK has a sound base for IT into the future.

Even more exciting has been the UK's commitment to have programming as a mandatory subject in every public primary and secondary school from the start of their next school year in September. 

This step will have long-term benefits to the UK economy, raising the digital literacy and competency of almost every school child. In ten years time this may transform the UK into a global computing superpower, with proportionately more programmers than any other nation on earth.

Asia-Pacific now dominates the top 10

One of the most exciting things for me in the latest 2014 e-Government development index is the composition of the top ten.

Back in 2001, of the ten nations with the highest eGovernment capability, five were in Europe, two in North America, and three in Asia-Pacific (Australia, New Zealand and Singapore).

Asia-Pacific never had more than three countries in the top ten until the latest study, and regularly had less, two or even one country. Europe dominated, with between five and seven countries consistently in the top ten.

However in 2014 the ratio shifted.

Five countries from the Asia-Pacific region reached the top ten nations for the e-Government development index - South Korea, Australia, Singapore, Japan and New Zealand.

This included the top three positions (held by South Korea, Australia and Singapore).

This is a major achievement for our region of the world and reflects the global shift occurring as Asia-Pacific nations take on more of a global leadership role.

I expect to see this continue, with more Asian nations emerging as leaders in the egovernance space.

What this also says is that Australia needs to pay more attention to countries in our neighbourhood as they progress on their eGovernance journeys - we can both provide a great deal of support and learn a great deal from what our neighbours in Asia are doing.

Composition of the top ten by continent by study

2001: Europe: 5, North America: 2, Asia-Pacific: 3
2003: Europe: 7, North America: 2, Asia-Pacific: 1
2004: Europe: 5, North America: 2, Asia-Pacific: 3
2005: Europe: 5, North America: 2, Asia-Pacific: 3
2008: Europe: 6, North America: 2, Asia-Pacific: 2
2010: Europe: 6, North America: 2, Asia-Pacific: 2
2012: Europe: 7, North America: 1, Asia-Pacific: 2
2014: Europe: 4, North America: 1, Asia-Pacific: 5

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The economic value of open data to Australia

This morning I attended the breakfast launch of the Open for Business: How Open Data Can Help Achieve the G20 Growth Target report.

The report was written by Nicholas Gruen (former chair of the Gov 2.0 Taskforce) and his team from Lateral Economics, with support from Victoria University and commissioned by the Omidyar Network (the not-for-profit organisation established by eBay's founder).

It makes a compelling economic case for open data, estimating aggregate direct and indirect value for Australia was in excess of $15 billion per year. This was based on estimating the economic value of open data just across the G20's seven priority areas, which I've provided below as a table.

G20 priority area	open data value  per annum to Australia
Anti-corruption	$1.5 billion
Employment	$3.4 billion
Energy	$1.7 billion
Fiscal and Monetary policy	$3.6 billion
Infrastructure	$3.6 billion
Trade	$1.6 billion

Relative progress on open government data areas
Source: http://theodi.github.io/open-data-barometer-viz

The report suggested that Australia was still doing very well in the open data space, ranked 3rd amongst G20 nations (7th or 8th overall globally) - but that there was still much room for improvement and learning from other countries.

During the presentation Martin Tisne from the Omidyar Network said that Mexico and India had demonstrated leadership in opening up education data, while South Africa had taken great steps with open budgetary data - making the point that different nations have excelled in different aspects of openness, but few had demonstrated consistent strength across all aspects of open data.

The report included a great deal of detail on different areas in which governments could achieve economic value through open data - and also highlighted that the cost of realising these benefits could be up to a third of the value received, giving a clear signal of the need for government to invest in this area, not simply allow it to thrive or die on its own with no support.

Both Nicholas Gruen and Tony Shepherd, head of the Commission of Audit, highlighted the need for senior Ministerial leadership, and Gruen noted that no Australian Prime Minister had ever been a passionate supporter of open data, to Australia's detriment where the US and UK had significant political as well as public service leadership for openness.

The presentation also highlighted some of the current pitfalls for entrepreneurs seeking to take advantage of open data while there was no consistent commitment to its release.

Gruen illustrated this point by discussing APSjobs.info, a site created at a past GovHack, that mashes up data on public servant movements from APSJobs.gov.au. He said there was clear added value realised via APSJobs.info, which could be a useful reference tool for recruiters and agencies seeking to identify the best talent.

The report states that:

APSJobs.info's business model was predicated on its development of successful technical methods to 'scrape' the data from pseudo-print PDFs. However frequent changes to the formatting and layout of these files meant continuous re-development of the PDF conversion software to continue to access and add value to the data. The skills required to perform such work (data-mining and text-analysis) are in great demand, and the cost of frequently using such resources exceeded the benefits to Pivotal Analytics.

APSJobs.Info is now defunct - a casualty of government inconsistency.

The Open for Business: How Open Data Can Help Achieve the G20 Growth Target report is highly material in establishing the value of open data to governments and the steps they need to take to realise the economic value that could result from greater release of reusable data.

Hopefully Australian governments will continue to build their commitments to open data and we'll see some of this value filtering back into our economic.

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The thin Gov 2.0 silver lining in the Commission of Audit report

Amongst the "crazy brave to politically suicidal" recommendations in the National Commission of Audit report, there are three recommendations for Government 2.0 and eGovernment initiatives that should bring a glow to the heart of digital enthusiasts and pragmatists.

Recommendation 61: Data says that the Australian Government should improve its data management and analytics capability, also improving the timely access to data as well as its general availability for reuse.

The recommendation makes a strong mention of open data and its ability to drive transparency and accountability within government, as well as business opportunities and social improvements.

It does, however, stop short of a strong position on opening up data. While it does recommend requiring agencies to maximise their own use of data, having the ABS and Chief Statistician develop a 'data strategy' for government and ask that agencies extend and accelerate "the publication of anonymised administrative data", it doesn't reach as far as US and UK position on ensuring data is appropriately repackaged for reuse when released, or that data beyond "administrative" is also released.

One thing the Commission of Audit did not mention in this recommendation was Australian membership of the Open Government Partnership - which the government says is currently "under re-evaluation". This is a no-brainer if the government is serious about transparency and accountability (which I know many currently doubt), and having the Australian Government confirm it was joining the OGP would support a commitment to implement this recommendation, if the government so intended.


Recommendation 62: e-Government states that the Australian Government should adopt a digital-by-default approach to citizen and business engagement, going beyond the current policy ambition (for services having 50,0000 or more transactions per year) and turning the approach to digital on its head, from opt-in, to opt-out. 

This could change the entire cultural outlook of government, leading agencies to design services for digital first and having other channels as secondary, rather than the current flawed model of taking existing paper processes and converting them to digital without transforming the services to be digitally native.

The current approach has largely led to digital services that are difficult to access, use and often seem illogical to role - prompting increased calls to service centres to understand processes, rather than reducing calls by providing online services easier to use than paper forms.

The recommended approach instead mirrors the current UK strategy of transforming services to be easier to use online than via other channels, thereby supporting a 'pull' effect whereby people choose digital because it is easier and faster to provide the outcomes required.

In fact this attention is required if the 'opt-out' strategy is to work. If the government simply forced people to use digital channels to engage by government without totally redesigning both customer-facing and back-end systems for a digital-by-default world, it would create significant pain and additional cost for citizens, businesses and public servants on an ongoing basis as systems failed to provide the experience that modern consumers expect from digital channels.

This recommendation also suggested the creation of a Chief Digital Officer for government, to be positioned in the Department of Communication, who would lead the approach, with the oversight of a Senior Minister as a Digital Champion (presumably the Communications Minister). This again largely mirrors the UK approach, although makes no mention of how the Officer would be resourced and supported to be effective in the role.

Given the resourcing committed to the Government Digital Service in the UK, it would be disappointing and counterproductive to see any Chief Digital Officer receive proportionately less resourcing to take on this type of role to transform the Australian Government.

There is also a big question mark over whether the Department of Communication would have the right levers and influence to lead a whole-of-government transformation of this type. Over the last six years we've witnessed a number of occasions where agencies with a policy bent were given service delivery obligations and failed to carry them out due to a mindset and skills mismatch. There's several good reports from the National Audit Office highlighting this issue and providing recommendations on a better way to structure these processes.


Recommendation 63: Cloud computing says that the Australian Government should take a cloud-first approach for "for all low risk, generic information and communication technology services".

This is a good step, however may require some rationalisation of ASD and AG requirements around cloud-computing to manage the administrative requirement for two Minister sign-off of most cloud-computing requests (a practice a number of agencies still appear ignorant of or are ignoring).

The second part of the recommendation, to establish a cloud-provider panel, is also a good step. The DCAAS panel is already in place, however there is room to grow.

However there does need to be some balance in that 'cloud' is merely a method of hosting software and storing data - many types of digital services can be delivered in a 'cloud' manner, or utilising some other form of (in-house, dedicated, virtual) hosting approach. Cloud gives no indication as to the type of service, so any cloud panel could end up as a hotch-potch of different services that can also be accessed through other panels and providers when delivered in different ways.

This could lead to confusion or the cloud panel becoming the 'every digital service' panel - which may not be as manageable or useful to agencies.


While I have no real issues with any of these recommendations, the fact they are included in the National Commission of Audit gives me some concern.

Given the Audit recommendations are already creating a strong backlash, despite no indication from the government on which will be accepted, I believe there is a risk that the eGovernment and Gov 2.0 recommendations, despite being steps forward, may get tarred with a negative brush simply by being included in the document.

I hope that the government can successfully navigate the communication jungle to implement them appropriately, and I expect we'll see whether this is the case over the next few weeks.

If it is not, this would become a lost opportunity for digital government in Australia, and we might not see further political leadership in the area for several years, despite the hard efforts of a number of public servants.

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Government stakeholders and citizens see different priorities for open data release

Socrata has released an interesting benchmark study on open government data, which looks at the state of open data from the perspectives of citizens, developers and government.

It is interesting to compare which data government stakeholders consider important to publish, compared to what citizens feel is important.

Looking at Very Important from the tables (below) it is pretty clear that government puts a higher priority on data about themselves - for example the location of government services. This tends to be easier data to release as governments know where their shopfronts are and want citizens to find them.

However from a citizen perspective there's a priority on data that supports communities and increases transparency - public safety, financial data and accountability ranking 1st to 3rd for 'Very Important' (compared to government stakeholders who rated them 3rd, 8th and 7th). Government service locations is still relatively important but only 5th on the list for 'Very Important' and even lower at 8th when 'Moderately Important' is considered as well).

Census data is perceived as far more valuable by government stakeholders (6th) than the community (13th), possibly because governments consider the business value and individual citizens only rarely directly need access to broad demographics (such as when buying a house).

Education data is also in an interesting position. It is 4th for citizens but only 10th for government stakeholders on 'Very Important' - however when 'Moderately Important' is added, it shoots up to 2nd for citizens and for government to 8th place.

This could be reflected in how there's been quite a bit of political opposition to myschool.gov.au, but plenty of community buy-in. Someone's getting the sentiment wrong here, and I don't think it is parents.


It would be very interesting to see governments hold this type of study in Australia - looking at government stakeholders, citizens, businesses and civic hackers (maybe media as well), to understand the differences in expectations and how different data is valued.

Unfortunately we may be a little immature culturally to ask this as yet, open data has not had a significant impact on most people's lives and hasn't consistently been championed at a political level or put 'on the agenda' in more than a niche way.

It is clearly important for people inside and outside government to appreciate that government stakeholders may have very different views to others in the community on what open data is a priority to release and governments take appropriate steps to engage and consult with other groups in the community on an ongoing basis to understand the differences.

And a tip for politicians seeking to get elected or a Ministerial slot - there's clear support in this survey from citizens for politicians who advocate for open government and walk the walk. In fact three out of four citizens said they'd be more likely to vote for a politician who was an open government champion.

Citizens also see open data as worth investing public money in. I'm sure our Treasurer will consider this in his upcoming budget statement - which will be released under Creative Commons and as reusable data of course!

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90% of Australian federal politicians now use Facebook and/or Twitter

I've been tracking the number of Australian federal politicians using social media channels for some time, with the proportion using these channels (principally Facebook and Twitter) sitting at the low-mid 70% level for several years (see my last post on this from June 2012).

However I've just finished updating the figures based on the September 2013 election and have found a large jump - just over 90% of federal politicians now use social media to engage with Australians.

I'll give a breakdown below, however I thought it worth comparing Australia to the US government. Twitter recently blogged that 100% of their Senate and 97% of their House of Representatives used Twitter.

That compares to 71.62% of Australia's Senate and 72.67% of our House of Representatives - still some way to go to catch up.

In fact our politicians appear to favour Facebook, with 72.97% of Senators and 90.67% of MPs using the service.

From my analysis there's three key features that distinguish Australian federal politicians that use social media from those that do not - age, gender and House.

Firstly age - older politicians are far less likely to use social media than their younger colleagues.

The average age of this parliament is several years less (at about 50 years) than the previous parliament (at about 52 years), with a number of older politicians having retired or lost their seats.

The largest increase was in politicians born since 1980, who increased from two to seven in the latest parliament. Those born in the 1970s also saw a significant increase from 36 to 50, while those born in the 1960s increased slightly from 76 to 82 parliamentarians. In contrast, politicians born in the 1950s or earlier declined from a total of 112 to only 85 parliamentarians - with no-one born before 1940 remaining, down from one in the last parliament.


(Note there's fewer politicians (224) counted in the latest parliament because there's a Senate vacancy to be filled and an extra was counted in the previous parliament (226) due to a member resigning and being replaced. This does not statistically alter my findings.)

The large number of younger politicians significantly impacted the level of social media use. While politicians born in the 1980s or 1990s all used social media (100%), and those in the 70s were almost as prolific at 98%, this declined to 93.9% of politicians born in the 1960s, 83.56% of those born in the 1950s and only 66.67% of those born in the 1940s.

 

This reflects the adoption we see in the wider population and there's been a similar experience in other countries - people aged 50 and over are far less likely to engage via social media. This takes generational change to alter (within organisations as well as within politics).

I haven't looked into the average age of residents in electorates with older representatives, however I would be surprised to find a difference to other electorates - my conclusion is that older politicians are less likely to use social channels due to their own media preferences, not due to the preferences of the people they represent - leaving them increasingly vulnerable to younger and more social media savvy would-be politicians.

The second major factor impacting on social media use by politicians is their gender. Women are generally more likely to use social media channels than men and this shows through in our politicians as it does in the broader community.

While women represent 30.8% of our elected representatives, they represent 32.7% of politicians using social media - with 91.3% of female politicians using Facebook and 76.8% using Twitter, compared to only 81.9% of male politicians using Facebook and 70.3% using Twitter.

Overall 95.6% of our elected female politicians use social media, compared to only 87.7% of male politicians.

The uses the genders put social media to also varies significantly, with female politicians far more likely to interact actively with their constituents than males, who spend more time broadcasting political messages, engaging in political slanging matches or interacting with a small circle of journalists - more on this another time.

The final significant factor was which House of parliament that politicians had been elected to. While one might think that Senators, who represent an entire state or territory, might find greater utility in social media to reach the larger number of, and more spread out, constituents they represent than members of the House of Representatives, whose electorates are usually much smaller than our states, the situation is exactly the reverse.

While 92.7% of the Members of the House of Representatives use social media, 90.7% on Facebook and 72.7% on Twitter, only 85.1% of Senators do, 73% on Facebook and 71.6% on Twitter.

The particular discrepancy is in Facebook use - which suggests to me that politicians see Facebook more for connecting with their constituents (which Senators tend to find less important) while they see Twitter more for connecting with journalists and scoring political points (which is as important for Senators as for Reps).

Factors that didn't impact significantly on whether a politician used social media were their party and the remoteness of their electorate. While regional areas of Australia tend to have lower internet and social media penetration than the cities, the representatives of these electorates actually could find more value in social media as it helps transcend large distances between settlements - there was no significant difference between social media use by metro and regional representatives except in respect the age of the politician.

All of Australia's parties (and independents) are relatively consistent in their level of social media use by politicians - with the Greens and Independents (including KAP & PUP) the most likely to use social channels (100% of politicians), as social media can help them overcome any limitations on their ability to attract traditional media attention - helping to level the playing field for communication and fund raising.

The two major parties (Labor and Liberal) were neck and neck in their use, each with about 90% of their elected politicians using social media. At the tail were the Nationals, where only 84% of their politicians use social media - though this isn't really that low as it only meant 3 of their 19 parliamentarians aren't using social channels, and these are three of their oldest politicians, aged 70, 63 and 54.

Below is an infographic that explores the data a little further, and you can view the spreadsheet of my data and analysis using the link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ap1exl80wB8OdDYtNXA1ZE9oaEtWX25OM2paNGlIcHc&usp=sharing

I also have Twitter lists following all Australian federal politicians - divided into house and party affiliation, which can be accessed from https://twitter.com/eGovAUPollies.

I have also created daily newspaper-like digests of these lists, which can be found at: http://egovau.blogspot.com.au/2012/06/read-all-about-it-get-your-daily-dose.html (updated to reflect the current parliament).

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About 1.5m tweets have now been sent by Australian councils and government agencies

I've updated my tracking of Australian government and council Twitter accounts and found that the roughly 920 accounts I track have sent in total 1.47 million tweets.

Given there's some accounts that have closed down which I no longer count and probably a few more I've missed, I'm comfortable that Australian governments have now sent approximately 1.5 million tweets.

This represents explosive growth. It took 63 months (from November 2007 to January 2013) to reach one million tweets, but only 11 months to get from one million to 1.5 million.

The next half a million is likely to take even less time - I expect we'll reach it some time in July 2014 (and will report back so you can see if my prediction is correct).

But who's tweeting?

I'm glad you asked.

You can see my full list of Australian government tweeters at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ap1exl80wB8OdFhwX3BmSzV6MW5zWGlNVnFoeVhVSGc&usp=sharing

However the top ten most active, by tweets, followers, following and by age are below, followed by the number of tweets divided into category, location (state) and jurisdictional level (national, state/territory and local).

You might be surprised who's who in the roost.

Double-click to add title | Infographics

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Can government policy, reports and consultation documents be communicated through animated infographics?

Government reports are often dry - really, really, really dry.

They are also often wordy, complex, long and, due to these properties, largely incomprehensible to the broader community.

Government policy and consultation documents can suffer from similar conditions. They are often quite complex, long and structured in ways that make sense to career bureaucrats but not necessarily to the general public.

Many agencies also dislike this and make all kinds of efforts to provide summaries, to simplify language, use images and charts and use other techniques to spice up these often long and complex government documents.

However at their core, they generally remain documents, words on paper that would be familiar to the scholars of Middle-Ages Europe, to the Ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians and to the many dynasties of the Chinese over the last six thousand years - although they may now be distributed by electronic as well as physical means.

Surely modern society can devise better ways to communicate complex information than relying on an approach that is now around six thousand years old.

And we have - by drawing from techniques that are much older and more resilient in human cultures. Pictures, dance and song.

Now I don't expect governments to communicate their reports, policies and consultation materials entirely through the use of the performing arts. Not all our politicians or public servants are as accomplished singers as, say Chris Emerson, who can be viewed below communicating about government budget reporting and the Charter of Budget Honesty in song with his band Emmo and the Wipeouts on an episode of The Hamster Decides.



However with multimedia and the use of infographics it is now possible to communicate government information in far more engaging and understandable ways than ever before.

This is being done by some agencies already. The Department of Planning and Community Development in Melbourne made a series of animated infographics to communicate material from their consultation, PlanMelbourne (which I've been privileged to work on through Delib Australia).



The use is not yet widespread, with most government reports, consultation documents, policies and other material still released as words on paper - however what if it was.

What if governments mandated that agencies were required to follow a visual first approach for all materials they released to the public, only using words on paper as a secondary technique?

Could agencies rise to the challenge, communicating their material far more succinctly in visual form - a five minute video rather than a 200 page single-spaced, small-type report?

Not possible? Material too complex and long? Too many statistics to cover?

Maybe the examples below might shift a few opinions.

The first example is from the creator of PHD Comics, Jorge Cham. As an internationally renown animator Jorge asked students to describe their thesis in two minutes.

Jorge chose the best descriptions and turned them into animated infographics, such as the one below from Adam Crymble on Big Data and Old History.



Second is an example from Peter Liddicoat, a materials scientist at the University of Sydney and the winner of the Chemistry category in the 'Dance your PHD' competition.

Peter's PHD was on the topic 'Evolution of nanostructural architecture in 700 series aluminium alloys during strengthening by age-hardening and severe plastic deformation' - a wonderfully complex and obscure topic that doesn't seem to naturally lend itself to dance, but somehow works.



What I think these example demonstrate is that there are alternatives ways for government to communicate complex material. They no longer must rely on words on paper.

Certainly bureaucrats can argue that word on paper are easy for them to produce, that they satisfy a substantial proportion of the community and they have a long track record - that 6,000 years of history I mentioned earlier.

They can also argue that there's no silver bullet for communication, no technique that will satisfy 100% of the audience, and that is perfectly true.

However while governments may consider words on paper the default position, the lowest common denominator way of making information available to the public, I think they are often used as an excuse to be lazy and unengaging.

Paper make the lives of public servants and politicians easier. Paper documents are relatively cheap and fast to write, review, approve and distribute - none of which is a benefit to the intended audience and community or improves the outcomes of a consultation.

Mark Twain once said, “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

For governments words on paper are their long letters - the approach easiest for them, rather than for the recipient, their community or audience.

Agencies can now do better - using images, animations and video to communicate relegating words on paper to a back-up role.

I challenge them to try.

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DesignGov's public sector problem solving primer

DesignGov has just released the first iteration of their problem solving primer, a tool designed to share insights from the expertise and experience of decision makers and practitioners on what makes good problem solving.

Released on their blog as A problem solving primer, it's a great approach to start aggregating the combined wisdom of people who have to solve complex problems on a regular basis - particularly (but not exclusively) in the public sector.

DesignGov are seeking more viewpoints, so please consider making a contribution - your experience and insights may be valuable to others in ways you do not expect!

The entire work may be turned into a ePub (which I reckon would be a great idea and broaden its reach).


I was asked to contribute, and managed to write a piece that was far too long, so it has been shortened (with my approval) in the primer - however I thought I would include my full piece below.

It was in response to the question, 'What one thing would you recommend when dealing with limited resources and competing priorities?' and my answer was:

In every workplace it is necessary to manage situations where there’s limited resources and competing priorities.

While each situation may be different – a restrictive budget, changing environment or demanding boss – there’s an approach that has helped me work through many versions of this challenge.

I call it the Venn approach. It involves identifying synergies and similarities between priorities and designing solutions by reusing and repurposing work to meet different priorities.

The Venn approach involves the following steps:

1. Take a breath to understand the boundaries
   The first step is to put aside some time to understand the resourcing limits and priorities.
   
   Often we can get so caught up on delivering what we think clients and bosses require, we forget to confirm what they really need. We can also have a false understanding of the resource limits, thinking we have less resourcing than we can actually call on, not grasping the range of skills at our disposal, or mistakenly believing we have more resourcing than has been allocated.
   
   By taking some time upfront to truly understand what we have and what we need to deliver when it is often possible to identify opportunities to reduce priority conflicts, maximise how resources can be used and reduce the risk of being caught short on money or time before a priority is met.
   
   
2. Identify synergies and similarities
   While the priorities you have may be different, often there are opportunities to reuse some of your work to meet varied objectives.
   
   Whether it is reusing templates, processes, systems or outputs, there can be hidden synergies which allow you to more efficiently manage your resourcing to meet priorities with less strain and more cost-effectively.
   
   Whenever I have priorities which will recur, or have similarities with other duties, I look to create systems and processes that can be used to minimise the ongoing work to deliver outcomes – even where this involves slightly more resourcing upfront. This type of approach helps reduce future priority conflicts and frees more resourcing for new goals as they emerge.
   
   
3. Share the value
   Often others in your organisation would also benefit from systems, processes, tools and the outcomes you’re required to deliver. It is always worth networking within your organisation, identifying other areas who have similar needs and challenges to you and approaching them around resource sharing and support.
   
   Having worked in online teams across both government and the private sector, I’ve become used to having a range of teams from across organisations needing similar outcomes which, if they attempted to meet them individually, would not be cost-effective for any specific group. However by aggregating these needs and their resourcing a great deal more can be achieved and more organisational needs met.
   
   
4. Negotiate the timeframe and outputs
   It may be hard to believe, but sometimes managers instruct teams to work to unnecessary deadlines, or define the outputs they want when different (and easier to deliver) outputs may actually better match the outcomes needed.
   
   It is often worth checking with the person who issued the deadline whether it is really a fixed point in time, and under what conditions it could be shifted.
   
   It is also worth confirming the outcomes they need from a project, rather than simply delivering the outcomes instructed. Managers may not be aware of the range of ways an outcome may be met and you may find there’s an easier, cheaper, faster and even better way to meet their needs.

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Complete the 2013 Community Management survey for Australia and New Zealand

Quiip and Delib Australia have launched the second annual online community management survey for Australia and New Zealand.

The survey aims to help local organisations and individuals better understand the skills required to work in these professions, help uncover role challenges, training and support needs and the actual work and salaries that online community management and social media management professionals can expect.

The results of the survey will be presented at Swarm later this year and released online as a free report.

For more information visit Quiip's site at quiip.com.au/online-community-management-2013-survey.

To complete the survey go to au.citizenspace.com/app/delib-au/cmsurvey2013 or click on the button above.

For a copy of last year's report visit: quiip.com.au/2013/03/26/australian-community-manager-benchmark-report

Note: I'm involved in the design and management and will be involved in the analysis and reporting for this survey. The goal is to provide information that organisations can use to design community management and social media management roles and to help identify the training and support individuals working in these professions require to be most effective.

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Fantastic article: The more things change: Technology, government and the public sector

Martin Stewart-Weeks, Senior Director, Public Sector, Cisco Consulting Services, has written a fantastic article on the potential for technology to disrupt and create new possibilities for governments and the public sector.

The article discusses how technology is changing the shape and speed of government, as well as many jobs in the public sector, and looks at potential models for reshaping the public service to meet the needs of the 21st Century.

The article was presented at the Australian Government Leaders Network event in July 2013 and, with Martin's permission, I've included a copy below.

It is well worth a read! 

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IAB Australia releases free guide to Best Practice in Content Moderation for social media

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Australia has released a free guide to Best Practice in Content Moderation for social media channels, drawing on the experience of organisations like Quiip and Dialogue Consulting.

The guide, while targeted at the private sector, is quite applicable to the public sector. It references many of the same steps I personally recommend to government agencies and councils (have a content moderation policy, publish it, have an internal moderation plan, create a escalation process for difficult comments and crises) and adds some useful tips and recommendations useful for anyone involved in community management.

The IAB's guide is available from their website at: http://iabaustralia.com.au/en/About_IAB/Media_Releases/2013_-_IAB_Australia_releases_Social_Media_Comment_Moderation_Guidelines.aspx

I've also uploaded it to Scribd and embedded it below for easy access - as the document in their site is in a nonstandard ashx format.

Please note the free guide is copyright to the IAB Australia. I'm simply helping build awareness and ensure it is more widely accessible to people.

The guide would have been well suited for release under a Creative Commons, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 AU) instead.

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Web and social media reporting can help Communication get a seat at the decision-makers' table

Yesterday morning I attended the first OPC IT WebEx event for the year, where we heard from three great speakers on intranet development, accessibility and the changing face of the media in Australia.

One particular statement that stuck in my mind was from David Pembroke, CEO of Content Group, who said that it was important for communications people to bring numbers to the table to gain a seat alongside other decision-makers, such as CFOs and CIOs who already have numbers in hand to support their positions.

While most agencies now track the traffic to their website and report raw numbers of followers, comments and mentions on their social channels, I believe there's still a way to go before these numbers are provided in the right way to the right people at the right time to help Communications areas - and particularly Online Communications - have the impact and the influence it deserves.

This has been brought home to me by Slideshare, which recently began sending me reports on the number of views and interactions on the various presentations I've uploaded to the service over the years.

Simply being able to see these basic stats has made me take more notice of the material I'm putting on Slideshare and whether or not it has a wider audience that I should consider when developing my slides.

I'm even considering paying money for an account to get more detailed statistics that will help me finetune material to better match what audiences want.

When working in Government I did place a considerable amount of effort into providing web statistics back to the areas responsible for specific content. I believe this type of reporting is critical to help policy and program areas receive regular and actionable feedback on what they are putting online to help inform their customers, clients, stakeholders and other audiences.

In fact, without web reporting many of these areas only receive ad hoc and irregular feedback on the content they are producing - an annual survey, or some Ministerial Correspondence. This makes it harder for them to understand whether their content is targeted correctly and also means they place much lower emphasis on what they are communicating online - what isn't measured isn't managed or valued.

Now with social media in the picture, web reporting needs to jump to a higher level of competency. While agencies might have made some steps to ensure that various areas of their business are receiving reports on the content they are providing through websites, the new frontier is to provide them with actionable information on what people are saying about their programs and policies across the broader web.

This helps areas within agencies not only assess how people are responding to the information they do provide online, but also gives them some understanding of what questions and issues are being discussed due to the lack of content.

In other words, web reporting helps tell agencies the quality and effectiveness of their own website content. Social media reporting helps tell agencies about the community's content needs beyond existing content.

The benefits to agencies of this social media monitoring are immense, not only can we capture known unknowns, but also the unknown unknowns - intelligence that could shape the entire way a program or campaign is designed and communicated.

It is also very important to differentiate social media monitoring from media monitoring - something that is getting harder to do as media monitoring companies move to bundle social within their media offerings.

Media monitoring tracks what commentators say about an agency and its activities when posturing to a broad audience.

Social media monitoring tracks what your customers and stakeholders are saying about an agency and its activities to each other.

In other words social media monitoring can provides a granular and specific view on what your actual customers think and understand about specific programs and how they interact with them in the real world, while media monitoring only provides a shallow reputational view on what people are saying for an audience - which may simply be an act.

So while there is a clear incentive for Online and Communication teams to roll social media monitoring in as an extension to (traditional) media monitoring, it can be dangerous to consider the intelligence received through both avenues in the same light.

As agencies get better at both web reporting and social media monitoring, and develop standardised ways to communicate actionable insights to the right people, at the right time, we're likely to see more ability for the groups providing these insights to have meaningful influence on agency decisions. This is right and proper - better information leads to better decisions and outcomes.

However it is up to Communication and Online teams and their leadership to recognise how web and social monitoring can advance their ability to positively influence decisions and take the lead on providing insights, otherwise they will find themselves on the margins as more traditional numbers-orientated disciplines take over the responsibility for these activities.

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Addressing the 'squeaky wheels'

A report from the South Australian Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) has been brought to my attention as providing brief but useful information about how to address 'squeaky wheels' who may contact councils and agencies via various channels, including via social media.

The report, which uses the IAP2 model for engagement, is available at the following link: http://www.lgmasa.org.au/Resources/Documents/ELP_Squeaky_Wheel_Report_Final1.pdf

While the contents of the report may be useful to others seeking to manage social media engagement, the fact that the ELP program publishes its reports online each year is also a great achievement - allowing knowledge and experience to be shared more broadly than simply amongst the participants.

The ELP is run by the LGMA (SA) in partnership with the Executive Education Unit at the University of Adelaide as a 10 month experiential learning program, including a group project, and is definitely worth checking out if you're a local government employee based in SA.

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Australian Online Community Management Report launched

Quiip and Delib Australia have just released the Australian Online Community Management Report, the first research that has ever been conducted specifically on the emerging profession of online community managers in Australia.

The report has been designed to:

• assist people professionally managing online communities to articulate their skills, challenges and support requirements,
• support organisations entering or in the social world to hire, train and support professional Online Community Managers to better achieve organisational goals, and
• help people seeking to become professional Online Community Managers to identify skills gaps and development priorities.

To download a copy visit: http://quiip.com.au/acm-benchmark-report-2012

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Infographic: The Australian Government's commitment to open data

Last Friday the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner released a major report on the release of public sector information by Australian Government agencies.

The report, Open public sector information: from principles to practice, is available online and is a relative straightforward read.

The OAIC also released the aggregated data for the report into data.gov.au - modelling the behaviour that other government agencies should follow (though I would have preferred raw data).

This contains lots of additional data worth reviewing that someone who just reads the report won't learn. You can find this file from: http://data.gov.au/dataset/data-from-the-oaic-public-sector-information-survey-2012/

I've developed a three page infographic (embedded below) using some of the data released for this report to explore the Australian Government's commitment to open data and the types of challenges agencies say they face.

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Victorian government releases its Digital Innovation Review

Late last year I completed a piece of work with the Victorian government reviewing and benchmarking their digital innovation performance by agency, compared to other governments in Australia and around the world.

For the purposes of the report, digital innovation was defined as:

Involves the use of digital channels, tools and relevant methodologies to improve the operation of organisations and the delivery of services.
Within government this includes the use of social media and Government 2.0 approaches and channels, as well as broader use of online tools to improve agency management, policy development and service delivery.

The report reviews how Victorian citizens and the Victorian government have adopted digital channels, surveyed Victorian public servants on their online and digital innovation activity and included a series of in-depth best practice case studies of digital innovation by Victorian agencies.

It also provides suggestions for fostering digital innovation within government and improve the consistency and cost-effectiveness of services to citizens and capabilities across agencies.

The Victorian government has publicly released the Digital Innovation Review in full, and it can be found at: http://www.egov.vic.gov.au/victorian-government-resources/trends-and-issues-victoria/information-and-communications-technology-victoria/the-victorian-government-digital-innovation-review.html

I hope it is useful for governments and agencies around the world.

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The latest infographic about Twitter - Australians the third most active users

The Twitter infographic below has been brought to my attention by The Wall and I thought it worth reflecting here.

As you'll see below, Australia is rated the third most active nation on Twitter, behind the US and UK and just ahead of Brazil, Canada and India.

There's some useful general demographics on Twitter's global audience, though I'm still waiting for the time when Twitter releases country-based demographics before it becomes possible to really assess Twitter's value as a promotional medium.

Right now for I'm tracking 633 government accounts in Australia (excluding politicians), including the latest addition, @ACTGIO.

The infographic was compiled by www.website-monitoring.com.

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Enterprise social networking - the latest infographic

I thought this infographic from the US on enterprise social networking from Tibbr, released in July 2012, was worth sharing.

Particularly notable was how high an adopter of these types of tools was government ('Public Administration') at 74%, which closely reflects the share of Australian Government agencies I've tracked as now using social media officially (73%).

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Don't forget to register for October's Canberra Gov 2.0 lunchtime thingy

On the 18th of October is the next Canberra Gov 2.0 lunchtime thingy, with a focus on open data, data visualisation and new approaches to policy development through policy visualisation.

As usual we have two fantastic speakers:

Pia Waugh, an open government and open data ninja working with the ACT government as an Open Government Policy Advisor, will provide a report on her trip to the global OKFestival, a thousand-person conference focused on open government, open data and data analaysis/visualisation in Helsinki.

Evan Hill, the Methodology and Infographics Manager within the Strategy and Delivery Division of PM&C will be discussing policy visualisation and the newly launched APS Policy Visualisation Network.

For more information, or to register, go here.

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