Government tops the list of effective email marketers

For all the claims of government communication being expensive or ineffective compared to the private sector, government has topped the Vision 6 Email Marketing Metrics Report for January - June 2012.

Vision 6, an email marketing company based in Queensland, has reported on the email marketing effectiveness of Australian companies and agencies for the last five years.

Government has consistently performed well in these reports, well ahead of industries such as IT & Telecommunications, Insurance and Superannuation, Advertising/Media/Entertainment, Retail and Consumer Products, Hospitality and Tourism and other 'traditional' heavy email marketers.

In the January - June 2012 report, Government topped the list of 16 industries both for most email opens (33.64%) and most clickthroughs (8.89%).

Open rates for industries from Vision 6's Email Marketing Metrics Report

Looking across all industries, the average bounce rate for emails was around 5.5%. This varied slightly by size of list, the lowest for lists of 10,000 or more email addresses at 5.01% and the highest for lists of 500-9,999 email addresses at 5.81%, with Government averaging 5.38% across the board.

The lowest bounce rate was received by the Trade and Services industry at 1.98% and the highest by Science and Technology at 11.67%.

All days saw fairly even open and click-through rates, dispelling the myth that people prefer opening emails on Tuesdays, and Thursday appeared to be the most popular day for sending emails, despite being average for open and click throughs.

Almost two-thirds of emails (64.65%) that were opened were opened within the first 8 hours (30.2% within one hour and another 34.45% between one and eight hours), four in five within 24 hours and 91.66% within 72 hours (three days) of sending.

Vision 6 says that with increasing use of mobile devices the time before emails are opened is falling - so with only about half of Australians using smartphones and 12% of households owning a tablet (compared to 18% in the US according to Pew Internet), there's plenty of scope for email open timeframes to continue to decrease.

Mobile has become so important already for consumers that Vision 6 also reported that the iPhone mail application has leapt into third spot (at 16.28%) behind Outlook 2003 (at 17.54%) and Apple Webkit (at 16.53%). In fact mobile accounted for 24.33% of all email opens.

To gain more insights on email marketing, and to view all of the reports back to 2006, visit Vision 6 Email Marketing Metrics centre.

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How has the world changed for the class of 2012?

When things change over time and we live through the changes, we often don't notice their scale or impact on our behaviour or thinking.

It's like growing up - you don't wake up each day thinking 'wow! I'm a millimetre taller' - but your uncles and aunts notice the difference as they see you less frequently.

So too do we sometimes forget the massive technological changes occurring around the world, simply because we're living through them.

However, IBM has created an infographic to help us recognise the extent of these changes, called the Class of 2012 (which I learnt about from GovLoop).

Take a look here.

The world has changed. Have you?

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CFA report on their Facebook account

The Country Fire Authority in Victoria has released a infographic on their Facebook account, providing a view of the traffic and interactions on their page.

Note that any organisation or individual can do this, using the free data visualisation tools at Visual.ly.

I've taken the standard report (which is very long), cut it in half and placed the pieces side by side for easier viewing (below).

https://twitter.com/CFA_Connect/status/205794349584359425/photo/1/large

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Mapping Australian Twitter discussions

Associate Professor Axel Bruns, who has previously done marvelous work mapping Australian blogs and tracking social media activity around the Queensland bushfires, has released his team's latest research on mapping the Australian Twittersphere.

Drawing (slightly paraphrased) from the joint CCI and Queensland University of Technology media release:

With as many as two million Australians now using Twitter to exchange news, views and information, the internet phenomenon has become a focal element in the nation’s social discourse, say Axel and Dr Jean Burgess.

By analysing topics of interest and concern to Australians the researchers built a ‘network map’ showing the connections between different issues and areas. “Just as newspapers have circulation reports and TV has its ratings, it is important to understand the role which new media are playing in our society,” they say.

“The map offers us a completely different way to view Australian society – not by where people live or what job they do, but by how they connect to each other through Twitter,” said Professor Bruns.

“You can use the map to study developments in Australian politics, natural disasters or trends in public thought and opinion,” Dr Burgess says. “It offers us a completely fresh way to view the discourse that is taking place between Australians or different groups.

“It shows there are multiple, overlapping publics, interacting and interweaving in time and space across Australia.”

The map also revealed which Twitter networks are isolated from the Australian ‘mainland’ tending to connect among themselves more than with other networks. These include evangelical groups, cities like Adelaide and Perth, followers of pop stars, and various sports and beer lovers.

The researchers based their map on data from 950,000 Australian Twitter accounts, but say that the national Twitter population is estimated to be as high as 1.8-2 million. The world Twitter population is now thought to be around 200 million – about a quarter that of rival social medium Facebook.

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Chrome beats Internet Explore in browser stakes

There was surprising news from StatCounter earlier this month when Chrome topped Internet Explorer as the most popular web browser for the week of 14-20 May.

Sourced from CNET: Chrome now world's top browser, but beware the math

While this is only one of the services reporting browser use, represents only one week and is a global figure - so may not represent the situation in specific countries (such as Australia) - it is indicative of the changes underway in the web browsing habits of people around the world.

All major international reports on web browser usage have reported that Internet Explorer has been on a downward slide for several years, with Chrome or Safari picking up most of the market share shift and Firefox and Opera being limited beneficiaries.

While this reflects the growth of mobile browsing (Apple iOS uses Safari, Android devices use Chrome), it also represents a significant change in desktop and laptop computer use.

While corporate and government organisations remain major uses of Internet Explorer due to its lead in corporate management features (though Firefox and Chrome have moved to match these), households are choosing their main web browser based on speed, usability and usefulness.

Reliable Australian web browsing figures are harder to find - it would be very useful if organisations such as Google or Facebook (the top sites visited by Australians) released their figures.

However I can say that, from Microsoft's figures, Internet Explorer 6 use in Australia has fallen to 1.2% of the browsing public. This is a GOOD THING as IE6 is an 11 year old vendor-unsupported, insecure and standards non-compliant web browser, unsupported by many major websites and which adds, in my experience, 20-30% on the costs of any web development project.

I should note that Microsoft is trying to end the use of Internet Explorer 6 and has even begun taken steps to automatically upgrade people to more modern versions (beginning with Australia and Brazil).

You can learn more about Microsoft's campaign to end IE6 at their website, The IE6 Countdown.

Sorry if you are one of the remaining organisations using IE6, however my FOI request on web browsing and social media use across government has revealed that largely agencies have made or are making the move to upgrade.

From the now 65 responses I've been able to analyse, only 7 (11%) indicated they still used IE6 on desktop computers. While this is quite a bit higher than the national rate (1.2%), it is much smaller than I had anticipated. Of course if this includes large agencies the percentage of APS staff using IE6 may be significantly higher.

I've provided a breakdown below of the browsers that government agencies indicated they used.

Notes and caveats

• this represents 65 agencies, large and small, of 166 approached - so is representative but not population data
• many agencies used more than one web browser, so the figures don't add up to 65. 
• I've excluded browsers that no agency indicated they used (and I asked about all major browsers back to the time of Internet Explorer 6's release). 
• I forgot to ask about the use of Blackberry's browser on mobile phones - essentially every agency using Blackberries use this browser.

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Final chance to participate in the Online Community / Social Media Management survey for Australia and New Zealand

This is the final week to participate in the Online Community / Social Media Management survey for Australia and New Zealand, which closes on 19 May.

If you're an online community or social media manager or advisor, please complete the survey using the button at right.

To provide some quick background...

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 then released online as a free report.

The survey is being co-sponsored by Quiip and Delib Australia and was inspired by The Community Roundtable's 2012 State of Community Management report, which drew from a largely US audience and asked a limited set of questions.



For more information visit Quiip's site at http://quiip.com.au/online-community-management-2012-survey.

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

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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eDemocracy report from Lowey - US striding ahead

If I were the leader of a nation that wasn't friends with the US I would be very concerned with the successes of their eDiplomacy program and looking to counter it with my own.

And if I was the leader of a friendly nation, I'd still be seeking to carve out my own eDiplomacy space, to retain some element of influence in the future.

The UK has realised this, Canada has realised it, though I'm not as sure Australia has woken up to it as well.

The Lowey Institute has released an excellent report on the state of US eDiplomacy by Fergus Hanson, which may help as a wake up call.

Brought to my attention by Peter Timmin, who writes the Open and Shut FOI blog, Fergus's report, the result of four months spent in the US with the State Department, found that there are now 25 separate ediplomacy nodes operating at State’s Washington DC Headquarters employing over 150 full-time equivalent staff.

Additionally (the report says) a recent internal study of US missions abroad found 935 overseas staff employing ediplomacy communications tools to some degree, or the equivalent of 175 full-time
personnel.

The report states very clearly that, in some areas ediplomacy is changing the way State does business. For example,

In Public Diplomacy, State now operates what is effectively a global media empire, reaching a larger direct audience than the paid circulation of the ten largest US dailies and employing an army of diplomat-journalists to feed its 600-plus platforms.

In other areas, like Knowledge Management, ediplomacy is finding solutions to problems that have plagued foreign ministries for centuries.

One of the key changes that Fergus noted was how the organisation functioned as a start-up, not as a staid old-fashioned bureaucracy. For example,

In interviews with office staff, conversation quickly turns from notional duties to ‘passion projects’ – the new ideas and platforms staff work on in their spare time. And there are plenty in the works. The Inspector General, whose recent report on the office made it sound like a review of a Silicon Valley start-up, noted over 40 underway.

Other employees also seem to have got a message regularly repeated at the Office of eDiplomacy; Experiment. It’s okay to fail. One enterprising official working on US library spaces abroad realised how costly and pointless it was sending physical books across the globe and cut a deal with Amazon to get discounted Kindles delivered instead.

And in Zimbabwe, the greying US Ambassador, Charles A Ray, has embraced Facebook as a way of circumventing the iron grip Robert Mugabe exercises over freedom of the press. He engages in an active and animated discussion with Zimbabweans about how they view the world.

In my view this report doesn't only highlight the new world of diplomacy, but also the new world of the public service.

The approach taken to engage foreign citizens could be transferred to domestic agencies and used to engage US citizens as well.

Is State the future of public services around the world? Time - and good leadership will tell.

However just as nations who fail to remain commercially competitive find it increasingly difficult to maintain incomes, education levels, lifestyles and services, countries that fail to be competitive in their public governance are likely to be at significant disadvantage in international relations.

eDiplomacy is already here and working. The challenge has been laid down. Can Australia's present public sector and political leaders take it up?

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Which social networks should you use when? Great infogram from Mashable

I thought this infogram had huge relevance to governments, as well as to corporations, so have posted it to ensure it doesn't get missed by people in the daily hurley-burley.

The infogram provides some excellent suggestions on the strengths and weaknesses of various social media services and when to use each.

Find out more at Mashable: http://mashable.com/2012/04/16/social-networks-tips-infographic/

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Canberra event: Public interest journalism and its digital future

Organised by the Public Interest Journalism Foundation, as part of the New News public events program, Public interest journalism and its digital future is a public event in Canberra on the evening of 29 May.

I'm taking part in the discussion, alongside Mr Denmore and Professor Matthew Ricketson.

It should be a very interesting evening!

Details

Those with an interest in the future of public interest journalism in the digital age are invited to attend a Meetup event in Canberra on May 29.

At: Tilly’s Pub, corner of Brigalow and Wattle Sts, Lyneham, Canberra
From: 7pm
On: Tuesday, May 29

Discuss your ideas and questions about public interest journalism in the digital age with:

• Well known blogger and media analyst, Mr Denmore, of the blog, The Failed Estate: rejuvenating journalism in a jaded age. Mr Denmore was a journalist for 26 years. He has worked in radio, television, newspapers and online media. He now works in the corporate sector. His blog is a finalist in the Best Australian Blogs 2012 competition. Follow him on Twitter: @MrDenmore
  
• Professor Matthew Ricketson, who assisted Ray Finkelstein QC with his inquiry into media regulation, and is a journalist and the inaugural Professor of Journalism at the University of Canberra. His PhD was titled “Ethical Issues in the Practice of Book-length Journalism”. Follow him on Twitter: @MRicketson
  
• Craig Thomler, Managing Director of digital democracy company Delib Australia, and a Gov 2.0 advocate who spent five years in the APS leading and supporting online initiatives. An author and former freelance journalist, he was awarded the Individual Gov 2.0 Innovator Award by the Gov 2.0 Taskforce and was awarded as one of the ‘Top ten changing the face of the Internet and Politics’ by PoliticsOnline and the World eDemocracy Forum in Paris. Follow him on Twitter: @CraigThomler

Please register via: http://www.meetup.com/Public-Interest-Journalism/

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Two year review - has the Australian Government delivered on its Government 2.0 commitments?

It has been almost exactly two years since the Australian Government responded to the Government 2.0 Taskforce report on 3rd May 2010.

The response, which committed to implement most of the recommendations in the report, was made under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and with the support of former Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner (neither of whom hold a position in the current Australian Government).

So how has it gone? Has the government, through a change in leadership, an election and the retirement of the responsible Minister, implemented most of the recommendations or not?

Below is a summary of what they agreed to implement and, in my view, what has been achieved in the last two years. Under this is my conclusion, and a more detailed analysis of each recommendation.

Recommendation	Status
Central Recommendation: A declaration of open government by the Australian Government	Implemented
Recommendation 2: Coordinate with leadership, guidance and support	Implemented within the Government's agreed commitments
Recommendation 3: Improve guidance and require agencies to engage online	Implemented within the Government's agreed commitments
Recommendation 4: Encourage public servants to engage online	Implemented within the Government's agreed commitments
Recommendation 5: Awards	Implemented
Recommendation 6: Make public sector information open, accessible and reusable	Largely implemented, although it is unclear if agencies have "been required to ensure that public sector information which is released is also made available through [data.gov.au]"
Recommendation 7: Addressing issues in the operation of copyright	Implemented, however I am unsure whether the review of orphaned copyright works has taken place
Recommendation 8: Information publication scheme	Allocated to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner to implement, whose office is operating at 75% staffing and faces budget cuts through the increased efficiency dividend
Recommendation 9: Accessibility	Nothing to implement directly - however the Government has done exceptionally well in outlining and enforcing the Web Accessibility National Transition Strategy
Recommendation 10: Security and Web 2.0	Nothing to implement directly
Recommendation 11: Privacy and confidentiality	Nothing to implement
Recommendation 12: Definition of Commonwealth Record	Implemented
Recommendation 13: Encourage info-philanthropy	Nothing to implement and no activity based on either the review or the report has significantly affected the info-philanthropy area

In conclusion

In my view the Australian Government has implemented and completed the vast majority of the commitments they agreed to following the Government 2.0 Taskforce.

There are a few areas where commitments were not actually made (although some might have liked them to be), a few where meeting the agreed commitment might have been done in practice, but not in spirit and a few where changing circumstances have changed how commitments were implemented.

Now the challenge for the Australian Government, and the Australian Public Service, is to move beyond the Government 2.0 report and agreed commitments. To define the next level for Gov 2.0 in Australia, and  consider how to build it.

Central Recommendation: A declaration of open government by the Australian Government

The Australian Government committed to making a declaration, which was met by Minister Lindsay Tanner shortly before he left office and is available at Finance's website at: http://www.finance.gov.au/e-government/strategy-and-governance/gov2/declaration-of-open-government.html


STATUS: Implemented.

Recommendation 2: Coordinate with leadership, guidance and support

The Australian Government committed to establishing a lead agency to lead a cross-government steering committee for Government 2.0.


The Government selected the Department of Finance as the lead agency (the recommendation did not specify which agency), and Finance formed a steering group involving senior representatives from a range of agencies.


The Steering Group moved to quarterly meetings (four times a year) in 2011. The last update I am aware of from the Steering Group was published in June 2011.


STATUS: Implemented within the Government's agreed commitments.

Recommendation 3: Improve guidance and require agencies to engage online

This involved improving guidance, which the Australian Government agreed to deliver via the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC), resulted in three circulars regarding online engagement, with this guidance now embedded in the APS Code of Conduct in Practice as the 'Contributing online' section.


The Australian Government also agreed it was important for agencies to embed Gov 2.0 practices in their everyday business activities in order to progress cultural change, although the only real activity promised was to have the Steering Group oversee activity and operate a Gov 2.0 blog for twelve months (which has been delivered via http://agimo.govspace.gov.au)


The Government also committed to incorporating an Open Government progress report in the State of the Service for 2010-2011 (but did not commit on an ongoing basis) and agreed in principle to more transparency in public inquiries - which was to be delivered through having the Steering Group develop a policy "to encourage best practice in this area that simultaneously protects information that ought not to be disclosed."


STATUS: Implemented within the Government's agreed commitments.

Recommendation 4: Encourage public servants to engage online

The Government agreed to implement this through the revisions to APSC guidance (as per Recommendation 3) and by developing guidance on Government 2.0 engagement by agencies, delivered through AGIMO's Government 2.0 Primer.


The Government also stated, without committing to any action, that,

It is incumbent on the senior APS leadership to ensure that top-down change is enabled in agencies, and that APS employees are genuinely encouraged and empowered to engage online within their agency-specific context.

The cost of agency change required to address internal technical and policy barriers will be the responsibility of agencies to absorb as part of their business-as-usual activities."

and that,

Australian Government agencies should therefore enable a culture that gives their staff opportunity to experiment and develop new opportunities for online engagement. 

Agencies may wish to develop internal incentive mechanisms – in addition to the Government 2.0 awards proposed at recommendation 5 of the Report – to encourage employee innovation and online engagement. 

Agencies should also ensure that a broad range of stakeholder groups are considered for engagement online, for example, a health practitioner’s blog providing feedback on Medicare procedures, in addition to citizen’s blog on proposed improvements to the claims’ process.

Finally, under this recommendation the Government committed to showcasing best practice through an online forum - which has been achieved via the Gov 2.0 Register and the Innovation showcase.


STATUS: Implemented within the Government's agreed commitments.

Recommendation 5: Awards

The Australian Government, through the Department of Finance, agreed to include Government 2.0 awards for individuals and organisations within the existing Excellence in eGovernment Awards.


STATUS: Implemented.

Recommendation 6: Make public sector information open, accessible and reusable

This contained quite a complex recommendation.


The Government agreed in principle, based on the existing reform of Freedom of Information laws and the appointment of the Information Commissioner.


The Australian Government did commit to revisions of copyright policy to make the default copyright position for Commonwealth agencies Creative Commons By Attribution (CC BY).


The Government also committed to establishing the data.gov.au website, "to facilitate access to public sector information. Agencies will be required to ensure that public sector information which is released is also made available through this central portal. Information which is posted on data.gov.au should contain details of the nature, format and release of the information."


STATUS: Largely implemented, although it is unclear if agencies have "been required to ensure that public sector information which is released is also made available through [data.gov.au]".

Recommendation 7: Addressing issues in the operation of copyright

The Government agreed to implement a change in copyright (as in Recommendation 6), but not to move the administration of copyright to the new Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), leaving it with the Attorney-General's Department (AGD).


The Government also agreed to a review of orphaned copyright works, though again left this with AGD, rather than transferring responsibility to the OAIC.


STATUS: Implemented, however I am unsure whether the review of orphaned copyright works has taken place.

Recommendation 8: Information publication scheme

This recommendation was accepted by the Government, with the Information Commissioner tasked with taking all the issues outlined within it into account.


STATUS: Allocated to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner to implement, whose office is operating at 75% staffing and faces budget cuts through the increased efficiency dividend.

Recommendation 9: Accessibility

The Australian Government agreed with the recommendation, however only committed to improving accessibility, without defining what 'improvement' means.


The response did not outline any other specific activities or commitment, but reaffirmed that the Government had set WCAG 2.0 compliance as its standard for accessibility and that accessibility would be considered as a criterion in the Excellence in eGovernment Awards.


STATUS: Nothing to implement directly - however the Government has done exceptionally well in outlining and enforcing the Web Accessibility National Transition Strategy.

Recommendation 10: Security and Web 2.0

This recommendation stated that the lead agency, in co-operation with the Defense Signals Directorate, develop a better practice or 'how to' guide "to assist agencies in the effective, efficient and secure use of Web 2.0 tools and how to undertake associated risk assessment."


It also stated that,

"DSD should provide guidance to agencies on the appropriate mitigation treatments that could be adopted to address concerns or exposures identified in relation to the use of social networking and related tools. This guidance should take into consideration the different environments in which agencies operate, the varying risk profiles that exist and the range of tools that may be used. DSD should update the Information Security Manual (ISM) accordingly."

And,

"the proposed OIC should provide advice to agencies in relation to the treatment of PSI to enable its broadest possible release. Consistent with good practice, and the requirements of the Protective Security Manual (PSM), agencies must avoid the over classification of data so as to limit the need to review or pre-process data to enable its release."

The Government didn't commit to any specific actions, though it did state that,

"The Australian Government believes that public sector information is a national asset and is committed to working to find the best ways for both government and citizens to utilise its value. Within this frame, it is important that agencies are supported in implementing this measure this by better practice guides and appropriate mitigation treatment options. 

The Information Commissioner will take account of recommendation 10.3 when issuing guidelines under the FOI legislation."

STATUS: Nothing to implement directly.

Recommendation 11: Privacy and confidentiality

This recommendation stated that,

11.1 To protect the personal information of individuals included in PSI, the Privacy Commissioner should develop guidance on the de-identification of PSI before it is released. 

11.2 To protect the commercial-in-confidence information of businesses included in PSI, the proposed OIC should develop guidance on the de-identification of PSI.

The Government's response was that this was already in operation,

either by protection of the personal information or by relevant exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act 1982.

And that,

The Information Publication Scheme will provide the legislative framework for information held by government to be published, subject to the exemptions consistent with the FOI legislation. 

STATUS: Nothing to implement.

Recommendation 12: Definition of Commonwealth Record

The recommendation focused on providing clear guidance on what, in the Gov 2.0 world, constituted a record and how they should be archived.


The Australian Government committed to having the National Archives of Australia (NAA) provide guidance for agencies on "what constitutes a Commonwealth record for the purposes of actions undertaken in the Web 2.0 context."

The NAAhas provided guidance through several articles, including Your social media policy – what about records? and Social media: Another type of Commonwealth record.

The Government also committed Finance and the NAA to provide guidance on endorsed metadata standards, which has been delivered via the WebGuide.

STATUS: Implemented.

Recommendation 13: Encourage info-philanthropy

This recommendation was deferred, to be "considered in the context of the Australia’s Future Tax System Review and the Productivity Commission’s report into the contribution of the not for profit sector."


For more about these, see:

• Australia’s Future Tax System Review
  Government response at: www.futuretax.gov.au
• Productivity Commission’s report into the contribution of the not for profit sector

STATUS: Nothing to implement and no activity based on either the review or the report has significantly affected the info-philanthropy area.

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Australian government agencies achieving the highest click-throughs of all sectors for email marketing campaigns

I've been browsing the latest Email Market Matrics Australia report from Vision6 and it definitely has good news for government agencies.

This series of reports has been running since the second half of 2006 and has, for me, provided a very useful insight into the effectiveness of email marketing in Australia over the last five years.

The reports are based on data from Vision6, so there's a slight bias based on being a single vendor (competitors such as CampaignMonitor don't yet release similar reports, or combine their information into a single industry report). However it is based on 259 million messages distributed via 112,000 separate campaigns by predominantly Australian companies (and they exclude all emails sent by  stand alone resellers and corporate networks) - so it is a large sample for reporting purposes.

Vision6's software (similar to its competitors) tracks email campaigns by sends, bounces, email opens and click throughs (to links in email messages).

This provides very useful ROI data for agencies. I have always tried to encourage agencies to use these types of tools to manage their email newsletters so they can properly report on them and detect user sentiment and trends (this also takes the load off the, often overburdened, email systems used by government agencies).

The cost of these products is quite low considering their capabilities - particularly when looking at A/B testing to identify the most effective newsletter format and content (by sending differently formated emails to several small subsets of your email list, comparing open rate/click throughs and then distributing the most effective email format to the full list).

I'm not aware of any agencies who do currently use A/B testing for either email or websites, though this is widely used by business to maximise ROI - however I live in hope.

Back to the Vision6 survey and its results - the latest July-December 2011 survey reports that  government agencies and defense have retained their position as achieving the highest open rate of any industry sector in Australia, with 31.66% of emails opened by recipients (an increase of 0.97% from last survey).

This means that if, as a government agency,  you send out an email to a 10,000 person list, on average 3,166 of them will be opened. The others will end up deleted, ignored, blocked or bounced (where email addresses are full or closed).

While this doesn't sound great, it's actually a much higher exposure level than achieved through other mediums. It's also a much better rate than for many other industries, such as construction (20.99% open rate) or sales and marketing (14.79% open rate).

It is also important to consider that smaller lists tend to achieve higher open rates - perhaps due to the additional effort in managing the integrity of larger lists.

By send volume, on average across all industries, lists with under 500 subscribers achieve a 33.17% open rate, dropping to 19.76% for lists with more than 10,000 subscribers.


Government also topped the unique clickthrough rates for all sectors, with 8.42% of subscribers clicking through from the email to further information on a website. This compares to the bottom-place IT and Telecommunications sector, which only received a unique clickthrough rate of 2.25%.

The average clickthrough rate for all sectors was 4.22%, although this also declined by list size (from 7.31% for up to 499 subscribers down to 4.07% for lists of 10,000 or more.

Government also did well on bounce rates, with only 4.43% of emails not getting through. Whilest not the lowest rate, which is held by the Call Centre/Customer service sector with 3.29%, government was third highest and much, much better than the 15.27% bounce rate suffered by the Science and Technology sector, or 10.47% by the Manufacturing/Operations sector.

The average bounce rate was 5.45% and, interestingly bounce rates didn't consistently increase with larger lists.

Vision6's report indicated that lists with under 500 subscribers received, on average, a bounce rate of 5.28%. However lists with more than 10,000 subscribers received a marginally lower 5.26%. There was a bump in the middle however, with lists of 5,000-9,999 receiving 6.07% bounces and lists with 500-999 and 1,000-4,999 reaching 5.90% and 5.70% respectively.

The time taken to open email addresses appears to be falling, with 29.46% opened in the first 24 hours and 90.72% in the first 72 hours. Vision 6 reports that this last figure has increased consistently onver the last five years.

So, finally, what about the email clients used by people? This is important as emails can be distorted, or even unreadable, if the email client doesn't correctly display it.

While the majority of government agencies use Outlook or Lotus Notes email, this isn't the case in the broader world.

When looking at the email clients used by people opening received emails (an average of 21.83% of emails sent), Outlook accounted for 43.54% of clients (22.24%, 14.90% and 6.40% for Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010 respectively).

Hotmail accounted for another 16.21% and iPhone Mail accounted for 15.14% of email clients (and iPad Mail for another 3.7%) - demonstrating how strong mobile email has become - followed by Apple Mail at 11.98%.

'Other' received 20.11% - which included a range of services such as Gmail, Lotus Notes and others. I would like to see Vision6 really break this out further - however individual agencies can do this if using this type of email management platform.

There's clearly a strong need for organisations to understand how their subscribers receive and view emails as there can need to be important design differences depending on the client - even between different versions of the same product (such as for Outlook).

In conclusion, government in Australia already appears to be using email marketing well - at least when they are using email management systems such as Vision6, it's harder to judge email lists that don't use a management and reporting tool.

However there always remains room to learn from the figures and further improve the design and cut-through of email newsletters - particularly as mobile email continues to strengthen.

Email is still a very strong channel for reaching people with information, particularly in older demographics where social media engagement is less, and should be a core plank of any government communication strategy.

Remember that an email list is an organisational asset. People who have agreed to receive information from you are far more likely to engage and influence others. Don't squander and destroy this asset through poorly considered email strategies, which may include too frequent, too irregular or too 'boring' email updates.

Use approaches like A/B testing to determine what layout and headlines get the most cut-through, improving your ROI, and keep an eye on what people click on to see what types of information or stories hit the mark.

Email marketing is a science, there's plenty of evidence available on what works and cost-effective quantitative measurement tools for tracking and tweaking your own email newsletters.

Don't waste the opportunity by ignoring the evidence, or destroy the ROI by not measuring, reporting and adjusting.

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Social media drives five times as much traffic to Australian government sites as online news media

A couple of years ago Hitwise, an internet measurement company that uses ISP logs to measure traffic to websites, reported that social media sites had become a larger source of traffic for Australian government websites than online news sites.

This was a seismic change in user behaviour. Suddenly people were more likely to reach a goverment site in Australia from Facebook, Twitter or another social media site than from news.com.au, smh.com.au, abc.net.au or another traditional news source.

Of course it may have also been a simple one month hiccup.

Therefore last week I asked Hitwise to provide a 'two years on' view at their blog to see if there was a trend.

And there was!

Social media referrals to government sites in Australia hadn't only remained above news and media sites, they'd skyrocketed.

Source: Hitwise Experian

As Tim Lovitt posted in Hitwise's blog, in a rather understated manner, Social Media important to Government, between December 2008 and December 2011 social media had doubled it's share while news and media had barely held it's own.

In fact, by December 2011 social media was sending 9.75% of the traffic to government sites while news and media sites were only sending 2.27% of the traffic.

So should agencies invest in producing more media releases or in developing their social media presence?

I know which I would choose.

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11 things to consider when using Facebook in government

When websites first starting to become popular it became common for Marketing and Communications teams in organisations to receive requests from various areas saying "we need a website".

Now that social media is firmly embedded in Australia, I'm seeing and hearing about the same type of requests - particularly for Facebook.

So, drawn from a response I provided to one agency who asked for my views, I've compiled a list of 11 things to consider when looking to use Facebook in your campaign, program, consultation, activity or otherwise for your agency.

This looks like a long list, but realistically is no more than should be considered for other channels (particularly online). Many of these areas can be addressed quickly through borrowing strategies and approaches from other agencies.

1. Purpose – Why the page is being created
   There are many different purposes for creating a Facebook page and before you take any steps to create one, you need to consider why you are doing it and what benefit the page will have to your campaign, program, consultation or agency.
   Some of these purposes may include; to build awareness, inform or educate users; to facilitate dialogue and discussion; to aggregate users for future campaigns; to engage key influencers and use them to build campaign awareness; to consult users; or to sell a message, service or product.
   
   
2. Expectations – Targets for the page
   Next it is important to think about what you expect your page to achieve and set some targets to help guide resourcing and reporting on effectiveness.
   This may consider how many fans you expect and the level of activity in the page and, importantly, resulting from the page (through other Facebook pages and other online and offline channels).
   
   
3. Entry – Physical establishment of the page
   Next you need to consider how the page will be established. Will you do it in-house or via external parties? Will you develop custom welcome and other pages, what content and design work will be necessary when first putting the page in place?
   
   
4. Promotion – Building awareness of the channel
   You will also need to keep in mind that "build it and they will come" seldom works. Facebook is no exception, you need some kind of communication and promotional strategy to draw people to your page and convince them to fan it. Will you target key influencers, leverage existing agency channels or develop a communication strategy that directs people to your page? What benefits will people receive through using the page that will entice them to come and engage?
   
   
5. Integration – Cross-channel marketing
   You must also consider how your Facebook page interacts with your other communication channels.
   
   I call this "completing the loop" - you should encourage people from your website or advertisements to fan your Facebook page, then use your Facebook page to direct them back to relevant content in your website, advertisements or other channels.
   
   Map out the strategies and processes you'll use to get people back off your Facebook page (or their news feeds) back to your important announcements.
   
   
6. Management and moderation – Channel operation
   This is one of the biggest topics you need to consider. Here are some of the questions you need to ask and answer before you launch:
   Who will manage your Facebook page? What type and frequency of content will be provided? What is the approval workflow for content, and how do you ensure that this allows content to be published on a timely basis? How will user content be moderated? How will user content be responded to, including enquiries (which may be off topic)? How will users be able to view the moderation policy and guidelines?
   
   
7. Exit – Closing the page or transitioning to an ongoing vehicle
   So you've got your Facebook page up and running but what happens when the campaign or consultation ends?
   
   Before launching your page, spare some time to consider whether you will need to close it down after a defined period or whether it has an undefined or ongoing lifespan.
   
   If you know or suspect your Facebook page will end after a given period, consider developing an exit strategy to outline what happens to the page's content and how you manage the relationship with your fans when the page closes.
   
   You might wish to communicate the lifespan of the page upfront to fans as they visit, or develop a strategy to reuse the page periodically for further campaigns. If you have to close down the page you may want to consider a transition strategy to encourage fans to move to another agency Facebook page or channel to maintain at least some of the relationships - after all it would be wasteful to simply abandon your fans, both throwing away your investment and potentially damaging your future Facebook engagements.
   
   
8. Archiving – requirements
   Now we get into some of the more administrative areas you need to consider, starting with archiving. Every government agency has some need to archive material in the public interest and for internal knowledge management purposes.
   
   Make sure you know your obligations under the appropriate Archives Act and what you are required to store as records and what you are not required to store. This may mean you need an ongoing strategy to keep a copy of all posts (and everything you delete, for legal reasons), or need a tool that captures the RSS feed from your page into a document that you can file on paper or digitally.
   
   
9. Privacy – protecting users
   Privacy is a consideration whenever you capture user information. By default in Facebook you capture peoples' name and generally their image, plus whatever personal details they choose to share. Also as you're using a third party service (Facebook), the service has its own privacy policy which comes into play but is outside your direct control.
   
   You will need to consider whether the type of content that users might share with you in your page may pose a risk to their privacy online or offline and what you need to tell them to ensure they are posting as an informed choice.
   
   You also need to consider how your agency will capture and reuse any personal information you get from users via Facebook, and your obligations and responsibilities under Australian privacy law.
   
   Remember that you never know what personal stories users might choose to share in a Facebook comment. Make sure that you have provided enough information so that people can do so aware of the choice they are making.
   
   
10. Reporting – Measuring effectiveness and success
    It is very useful to be able to measure how effective and successful your Facebook page has been, relevant to your original purpose (or any channel for that matter).
    
    There are a number of ways to do this, from using the purely quantitative activity statistics from Insights, Facebook's analysis tool or using qualitative means through the tone of user comments and any perceptible changes in peoples' awareness and attitudes in-line with your campaign goals.
    
    It may, however, be more useful is to look at Facebook within a whole-of-campaign/consultation review, which looks at the effectiveness of all your channels in combination. Sometimes reporting on single channels can under-emphasise their overall influence on a campaign as these reports may only look at direct outcomes, not at the secondary effects that bolster other channels.
    
    
11. Lessons learnt and sharing
    Finally, it is well worth producing a ‘lessons learnt’ report on operational learnings from your Facebook experience.
    
    This can provide vital insights to other teams in your agency and to other organisations on how to extract the maximum value from the channel and how to avoid any pitfalls or unnecessary risks.
    
    If you can, share this report through whole-of-government channels, such as AGIMO's Gov 2.0 group, cross-agency communications groups and even by holding an event for other agencies to discuss your experience.
    
    By sharing your experiences you are helping to make it easier for other agencies to use Facebook, and use it well. This reduces risk for agencies and helps build on good practice over time.
    
    It also helps meet one of the core goals of the public service, ensuring we can provide the best possible outcomes for government.

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Cannot defame with a hyperlink - Canadian Supreme Court ruling

In the spirit of actually being in Canada, I learnt last Thursday that in a groundbreaking case the Canadian Supreme Court has supported two lower courts in ruling unanimously that hyperlinking to defamatory information is not the same as defaming someone, unless the information is replicated in the link or on the hyperlinker's site or page.

Learn more about the ruling (in a case originally brought in a British Columbia court by a Vancouver business person and political volunteer against a local website) in this BBC article, Canada Supreme Court: hyperlinks cannot libel. Yes there is a certain irony about reporting in Vancouver on a Vancouver case by referring to a British website - however I read the original story in a local (paper) newspaper.

This ruling may have flow-on influence to Australian courts, who do take some note of rulings in other Westminster jurisdictions, particularly in Common Law areas where precedents are important in clarifying grey areas in law.

The Canadian ruling, where the Court considered hyperlinks as "content neutral" (as hyperlinkers have no control over the content they link to), may even extend further to cases where links point to prohibited, but not necessarily illegal content, such as some Refused Classification (RC) content under Australia's classification for content deemed offensive but not necessarily illegal under Australian law.

Currently it is an offense to link to RC-rated content, or even to know what is rated RC - which poses a challenge for all individuals and organisations who may not realize that content they are linking to is prohibited in Australia. There has been at least one case where an Australian government agency has inadvertently linked to RC content (in a published user submission to a consultation) - which was certainly not the agency's fault.

Also as the destination content of links can change rapidly, or even appear different to users from different IP addresses, there is an ongoing risk under current Australian regulation that individuals or organisations might in good faith link to valuable relevant content which is later changed. I have seen this happen myself in a book on kids' websites with links where after publication several kids' sites were sold to adult content organisations who changed the content significantly. This could affect both defamation and RC related situations.

While I am drawing a bit of a long bow from a Canadian Supreme Court ruling to other manifestations of hyperlink-related law in Australia, it is an area that requires ongoing careful consideration and adaptation to reflect what is sound and practicable, not simply what may be popular or reflect an ideal state without recourse to technical facts.

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The role of social media during the Arab Spring

John Sheridan posted a link on Twitter to a very interesting analysis of the impact of social media on the revolutions across the Arab world over the last year.

The paper provides strong evidence that social media was one of the key causes of these revolutions due to its ability to place a human face on political oppression and had a critical role in mobilising dissidents to organise protests, criticise their governments, and spread ideas about democracy.

The report claims that social media had a central role in shaping political debates, for example,

Our evidence shows that social media was used heavily to conduct political conversations by a key demographic group in the revolution – young, urban, relatively well educated individuals, many of whom were women.

Both before and during the revolutions, these individuals used Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to put pressure on their governments. In some cases, they used new technologies in creative ways such as in Tunisia where democracy advocates embarrassed President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali by streaming video of his wife using a government jet to make expensive shopping trips to Europe.

The report also provides evidence that online conversations about liberty, democracy and revolution on Twitter often immediately preceded large protests. This supports the use of social media as a civic organising tool.

Governments that attempted to shut down the internet, or specific social media services, were clearly also of the view that these were key channels for public dissidence outside their direct control, unlike  government-run or influenced newspapers, radio stations and television channels.

Finally, the paper demonstrates how social media was used to open up internal discussions to the world, helping spread democratic ideas across borders, providing global support networks for local dissidents and informing the media, which then fuelled awareness, interest, engagement and support for the Arab Spring through media reports.

The paper is an excellent read and quantifies a number of the effects of social media during the Arab Spring, which could be used by political 'dissidents' in other countries to help influence local debate.

Note that like all research, it is a little of a two-edged sword, as the paper could also be used by governments seeking to minimise debate to pre-empt online dissidence by establishing frameworks that can be extended to allow strict control of online discussion.

These frameworks  include national firewalls, broad-based and readily expandable online censorship regimes, internet kill switches and approaches that place the control of national internet infrastructure into government-controlled monopolies.

Often justified as beneficial initiatives designed to protect people from international cyberattacks, online fraud or inappropriate online content (which they may also do), these frameworks, if implemented without appropriate legal and privacy checks and balances, can be repurposed to restrict citizen access and quash undesired public debate, exclude certain individuals or organisations from participating online or even identify specific troublemakers for incarceration or worse.

I have embedded the document below for easy reading, or it can be downloaded in PDF format here, Opening closed regimes.

Opening closed regimes - What was the role of social media during the Arab Spring?

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Identifying the existence and impact of transformational leadership in the Australian public sector

Steve Davies over at OzLoop has just published a thesis by Dr Derek Ambrose that looks at the topic of leadership in the Australian public sector.

It is a fascinating read (particularly from pages 68-80 and 113-185 including the conclusion from pp160), and provides insights into challenges the public sector has experienced in encouraging new approaches to public sector management, innovation, appropriate risk-taking, in modernising systems and processes and in embedding Government 2.0 as business-as-usual.

I commend Derek's paper, Identifying the existence and impact of transformational leadership in the Australian public sector as an excellent and thought-provoking read.

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QPS Media releases report on their use of social media for disaster management

The Queensland Police Service Media group has released a report on their use of social media in managing disaster situations.

It's a good read, though only scratches the surface of what they achieved or what is possible.

As the document was released only as PDF, I've converted it to HTML 5.0 via Scribd for more widespread access as embedded below.

It will be very interesting to see which government agencies continue to resist the use of social media in future disaster situations. It will provide insights into their cultures and is likely to reflect on them publicly.

It may even be fair to say that it would be courageous of senior public servants in any government across Australia to forbid the use of social media for disaster management in the future.

The original PDF, Queensland Police Service: Disaster management and social media - a case study, is available here.

QPS Social Media Case Study

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Turning open government petitions into policies in Latvia, using online banking to authenticate citizens

It can be difficult to get a perspective on the Government 2.0 activities in non-English speaking countries.

However thanks to Francis Irving, who posted an account in the My Society email list in the UK, forwarded to the OpenAustralia Community list in Australia, here's a very interesting mini case-study on one initiative in Latvia.

In this case the initiative was created outside of government, however has become part of their parliamentary and law-making process.

It involves using online banking accounts to identify users, in partnership with the major local banks. This is an approach I've not seen used anywhere else in the world.

It is a well-structured open government initiative and one that I think Australia could do well to model similar activities on.

I've quoted Francis' email below. To learn more, join the OpenAustralia Community list.

Francis Irving (posted 24/6/2011):

I just met Kristofs Blaus, who spent a year researching petition / online initiative projects across the world. i.e. things where citizens propose and vote on new laws.

He launched ManaBalss.lv (Eurosay.com) in Latvia two weeks ago. Already two laws are going into force entirely because of the site.

Six things you ought to know about it:

1. 2 days after launch, the president of Latvia promoted an initiative on the site because 20,000 people had signed it. It is to open the owners of offshore companies. Within 1 week of launch (i.e. last week!) it was passed in to law.  http://eurosay.com/atveram-of-orus/show
   
   You can watch for future ones being signed into law on this page: http://eurosay.com/initiatives/signed
   
   (What self respecting e-democracy site doesn't have a specific, high profile page, just showing things it has got passed into law!) 
   
   
2. Within 2 weeks, a second initiative got enough support that both major groups in Parliament now support it (it'll become law after the recess in September). It's a meta-law - it makes the platform itself mandatory, so if any petition gets 10,000 authorised signatures, then the creator gets 5 minutes in Parliament to present it.
   http://eurosay.com/atveram-saeimu-/show
   
   
3. There is a workflow process for making sure the initiatives that get through are sensible (rather than tabloidy stuff that tends to be popular on the UK's no. 10 petition site)
   
   1. You write an original draft
      
   2. Comments by skilled volunteers tell you what is wrong with it.
      
   3. You can fix it up.
      
   4. Then you gather support. You get a URL. The initiative doesn't appear in an index on the site, you have to promote it yourself.
      
   5. When you get 100 people (they're going to up it to 1000 due to popularity)
      
   6. Some real volunteer lawyers make it into a proper, viable legal text in a PDF on the initiative page.
      
   7. It goes on the public site, where large numbers of people can back it.
      
      
4. That process ensures that:
   - It is a real proposal rather than aspirational
   - It can regulated by legislation
   - Technical details, such as if it requies a constitutional change it is written in the right form
   
   
5. It's social. The GroupOn/PledgeBank nature of gathering support, and then later the petition nature of getting people to back finalised initiatives, both encourage spread. It links to your Facebook/Twitter so the initiatives can have a montage
   
   
6. To ensure it can't be gamed, you authenticate yourself to the site using your online bank account (via your social security numebr). It launched (undemocratically!) with just one bank, but the others were then deseparate to be added.
   
   
7. The site is now wildly popular. It trends all the time on Latvian Twitter. Politicians fall over themselves to back it. The media love it, as articles they publish about it get traffic from the site.
   

An article in English about it, but rare. Nobody has heard of this thing yet. Except you for being smart enough to be on this list ;) http://bnn-news.com/latvia%E2%80%99s-society-enormous-power-30587

Notably the two people who made it are businessmen rather than programmers. The coding was done by staff at Kristofs's company.

Kristofs Blaus - business strategy, inventing new products
Jānis Erts - marketing (he made this fake metorite http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8326483.stm)
 
Obviously, the above formulae is easy to critique in the UK. But I'm not really interested in that kind of stop energy.

What is extraordinary is that the right combination done in the right way can be wildly successful. That is almost certainly true here.

If anyone on the list wants to help Kristofs do that, please email me privately.

Francis

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How much risk is really attached to cybercrime and hacking?

As a follow-up to my post last week Familiarity trumps understanding (dealing with Neophobiacs), John Sheridan has made me aware of a Sydney Morning Herald article by Chris Berg on One hack of a crime wave, or so they say.

The article argues that while claims have been made that online hacking and cybercrime industries are up to the size of Germany's economy (US$3 trillion per year), these are often made by consultants and, as a Microsoft report discovered, "the bulk of what we know comes from tiny surveys. The authors found at least 75 per cent of losses were extrapolated from just one or two unverified, cases."

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Dutch Civil Servant 2.0 books now available in English

Davied van Berlo's two books "Civil Servant 2.0" and "Civil Servant 2.0 beta" have finally been translated into English and are available online for free.

I've admired and followed the work of Davied, a Dutch Civil Servant, for several years now. Davied has been using the internet for about as long as I have and (at least in my opinion) is one of the leading thinkers regarding Government 2.0 in Europe.

Davied was named Dutch Information Professional of the Year in 2009 and voted second most influential person in local Dutch government in 2010.He participates broadly in global discussions on Government 2.0 through sites such as Govloop and is active on Twitter as @Davied in both Dutch and English. Davied also runs the 6,500 member Civil Servant 2.0 network in The Netherlands and is an active proponent for Pleio, a free open-source system for governments to rapidly roll out Government 2.0 initiatives.

Over 25,000 copies of Davied's two books have been circulated in The Netherlands and Belgium. Now they are in English, I expect to see this increase rapidly.

To paraphrase Davied's blog post Dutch Civil Servant 2.0 books translated in English,

The book "Civil Servant 2.0" (originally released in Dutch in 2008) explains the significance of web 2.0 for government in terms of its internal organisation, its relationship with the public, and the working methods of the civil servant. It also contains a lot of examples from the Netherlands.

"Civil Servant 2.0 beta" (2009), is an extension of Davied's first book, providing a practical interpretation of the concepts expressed in the first book, and contains action points and ideas for government organisations to develop their own strategies for government 2.0.

I regard both books a must-read for Government 2.0 practitioners and would-be practitioners in Australia.

Download Civil Servant 2.0 and Civil Servant 2.0 Beta for free

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