Don't help your official agency and Ministerial photos become parody memes through poor selection and timing

A challenge today for politicians and public servants is how easy it is for a photo or frame from a video to be reused out-of-context to parody, well, literally anything.

We've seen the increasing use of 'photoshopped' images on social media to support all kinds of political and social positions, ranging from the clever and amusing to the downright disturbing.

Two of the most notable examples - which have become memes in their own right - include the 'floating Chinese officials' from 2011, the result of the accidental upload of a poorly photoshopped image of three council officials (below).

The image appeared to show the officials (including the County mayor and vice-mayor) floating above the road and was immediately parodied by internet users, who placed the officials in a range of amusing and inappropriate locations, such as below.

The second example of a government photo-turned-meme was the phone call from David Cameron to President Obama in March this year, where the UK Prime Minister tweeted a serious photo of him listening to a landline phone, claiming he was on the phone to President Obama of the USA to discuss the Ukrainian situation (below).

I've been speaking to @BarackObama about the situation in Ukraine. We are united in condemnation of Russia's actions. pic.twitter.com/7Rk2k8iOIK
— David Cameron (@David_Cameron) March 5, 2014

This was parodied by a range of people, who started by posting tweets of them speaking on the phone, and then on a variety of other items. It even attracted celebrity attention from people like Sir Patrick Stewart (as below), and in the end David Cameron played along and tweeted a photo of him meeting an ex-US President in person.

.@robdelaney @David_Cameron @BarackObama I'm now patched in as well. Sorry for the delay. pic.twitter.com/elLQcKcV3w
— Patrick Stewart (@SirPatStew) March 5, 2014

This second 'on the phone' meme was replicated a month after the Cameron call in Australia when the Prime Minister tweeted a serious photo of himself on the phone addressing the MH17 crisis. This was predictably mocked by many people online in the same vein.

Now while it isn't possible to prevent the 'photoshopping' of images and their reuse in parody form, it is possible for agencies and politicians to consider what images they wish to 'put out there' to reduce the prospect of having their message overshadowed by a clever, funny or touching parody.

This means avoiding deliberately publishing images which are obvious fodder for parody - anything related to being 'on the phone', 'inspecting developments' or easily misinterpreted facial expressions.

It is also important to avoid 'follow the leader' shots - where an Australian official is photographed in a similar pose, or doing a similar thing, to an overseas official who was recently parodied for the same pose (such as the Cameron - Abbott situation).

I saw one of these images yesterday from an Australian politician and decided to see how easy it would be to modify it for use in parody.

Using my trusty copy of Seashore - a free graphics editing tool with many of the same features of Photoshop, I was able to cut out the relevant parts of the original image within about 15 minutes.

It then took a simple Google image search to locate some freely available images and a matter of second to import and place the politicians within the scenes.

Below I've included a copy of the original image (in its original tweet), as well as several of the 'photoshopped' parody images.

Consider this what is possible by a relatively inexperienced user of a free graphic design program in under an hour - then consider what someone with more experience and more intent could do with images that make parody easy.

The original Tweet (with a 'watching infrastructure' image - a type very likely to be parodied):

Watching the NBN rollout with @peterdutton_mp at Murrumba Downs in Peter's electorate of Dickson. pic.twitter.com/IEbDp1TcZ1
— Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) August 11, 2014

My (very quickly) 'photoshopped' images - starting with my favourite:

Now think about how you want your Minister and staff portrayed, and how you can minimise the likelihood of your official images being reused for parody purposes.

While you can't prevent this from happening, prudent image selection and advice can, at least, minimise the potential and help you retain control of your message.

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Australia's e-tax service hits 20 million lodgments over 13 years - an egovernment case study

Most people under the age of 35 probably don't remember a world without e-tax, a system developed by the Australian Tax Office to make it simpler and faster for Australians to complete their tax returns.

Before e-tax was introduced in 1999 Australian taxpayers all had to do their tax by hand, or get an accountant involved even for the simplest tax returns.

I still remember labouring over the complex and long (130+ pages) pre-eTax tax packs, like this 1995 Tax pack (PDF), a scanned version that has been archived in the ATO website. Even looking at this old tax pack makes me feel jumpy and tense - although these packs attempted to make tax easy, they were still daunting to complete.

While early e-tax software was a little rough around the edges and wasn't available for platforms other than Windows (a point of contention for Apple fans), it immediately made tax time much less of a burden.

The software has developed a great deal since 1999, become much easier to use and added useful functions such as autofilling employer group certificate information if you have an internet connection. e-tax now caters for a much broader group of taxpayers than when it was first created.

Sure e-tax still isn't available for Apple or Linux, but having a product for 85% of the market is far, far better, in my view, than not having one at all. As an Apple user myself, I have no problem with using a secondary PC to do my tax if it saves me time and effort overall (though an Apple version would be a nice-to-have, as would, now, a tablet version).

Last week I noticed an announcement that e-tax had just reached 20 million lodgments (as at 31 October this year). So I asked the ATO for some information about e-tax over the years - who is using it and where they live.

The information I received provided an interesting glimpse into the history of e-tax.

Growth of e-tax

In 1999, the year e-tax first launched, the tool was used by only 27,146 people to lodge their tax. By 2011, the latest available full year of data this had grown by 74 times to 2,600,228 people.

The service has grown every year, at an average rate of 43% over its 12 year life. This year looks to be no different, as e-tax lodgments only took four weeks to reach a million, compared to five weeks in 2011.

With over 2.5 million e-tax lodgments by the end of October 2012, and as the ATO doesn't 'close the books' until May 2013, e-tax is extremely likely to reach twelfth consecutive years of growth in absolute lodgement terms.

However while this is impressive, e-tax growth has slowed substantially over the last four years, to a rate of around 5% per year.

This is barely larger than the overall growth in tax returns, which suggests that e-tax has reached a plateau in usage. This isn't a bad thing overall - e-tax has been very successful and isn't in decline, however it has reached a point where the ATO might wish to consider expanding or redesigning e-tax to encourage a new group of tax payers to leap on board, or at minimum adopt a new marketing approach to encourage more people to trial the service for 2013.

e-tax lodgments from 1999 to 2012 (2012 is a partial year only) Source: ATO

e-tax demographics

It was also interesting to look at the demographics for e-tax, which the ATO was able to supply for 2011 (and I hope earlier years will become available as well, to show how the demographics have changed).

Gender was very balanced, largely reflecting Australia's population, with 48.9% of lodgements being by males and 51.1% by females.

However the average e-tax user was young and earned far less than the average weekly wage. In fact almost two-thirds (65%) of e-tax users were younger than 40 years old, with only 12% being aged 55 or older and half (51%) had an income of $21,600 or less, with only 11% earning $63,001 or more in the 2011 financial year. (see tables below).

This might reflect the digital enthusiasm of younger people, where pre e-tax generations may not be as familiar or comfortable using an e-tax system. It may also reflect the more complex tax situations of older and better paid Australians, which may require the aid of accountants.

Hopefully e-tax users are 'ageing', just as internet users are. If this is this case, which would need a number of years of e-tax demographics to detect, then it is likely that people who take up e-tax are sticking with it, meaning that the older and better paid groups will become more highly represented over time.

Age group	e-tax users	Percentage
18 yrs or less	105,284	4.30%
19 - 24 years	506,869	20.72%
25 - 39 years	991,412	40.52%
40 - 54 years	549,727	22.47%
55 years or older	293,575	12.00%
Total	2,446,867	100.00%

Income	e-tax users	Percentage
Less than zero	9,437	0.39%
Equal to $0	8,342	0.34%
$1-$6,000	146,675	5.99%
$6,001-$21,600	1,098,806	44.91%
$21,600-$63,000	913,771	37.34%
$63,001-$95,000	250,725	10.25%
$95,001 or more	19,111	0.78%
Total	2,446,867	100.00%

The location of lodgers was also interesting, particularly when compared to Australia's population. In absolute numbers, more Queenslanders than Victorians use e-tax, despite Victoria's 20% larger population, and more ACT residents than Tasmanians, despite Tasmania having 50% more people than the ACT.

Comparing e-tax usage against state populations at June 2011, proportionately the leader was the ACT with 21.1% of residents using e-tax. Next was Western Australia with 12.9% of residents followed by Queensland with 12.6%.

The lowest adopters of e-tax by population were the Northern Territory at 9.4%, Victoria at 9.9% and New South Wales at 10.2%. There may be substantial room for growth in e-tax use in these states, although the ATO might find targeted, rather than national, campaigns would best encourage take-up.

Location	e-tax users	Percentage	Population (June 2011)	Percentage
NSW	708,933	0.39%	6,917,658	10.2%
QLD	547,212	0.34%	4,332,739	12.6%
VIC	530,870	5.99%	5,354,042	9.9%
WA	289,235	44.91%	2,239,170	12.9%
SA	196,936	37.34%	1,596,572	12.3%
ACT	75,313	10.25%	357,222	21.1%
TAS	57,291	0.78%	495,354	11.6%
NT	19,857	0.81%	211,945	9.4%
Overseas	21,120	0.86%	NA	NA
Total	2,446,867	100.00%	21,504,702	11.4%

Conclusions

Overall my view is that e-tax has been an extremely successful initiative by the Australian government, encouraging millions of Australians to adopt a digital channel to engage with government.

The e-tax system itself, while necessarily complex (as is the tax system), has been refined to be usable and a far more pleasant experience than the prior paper-based tax packs.

However, like many innovative services and products, e-tax is now reaching a plateau, with little growth in annual usage over the last few years.

Assuming that e-tax saves the government money in chasing people to complete their annual tax chore, and therefore the ATO wants to keep growing e-tax use, it is time for the ATO to review the service to understand who isn't using it and why.

From this knowledge the ATO can make decisions on how to improve and promote e-tax, giving it a new kick in usage and, hopefully, both make tax time faster and easier for citizens and bring in tax dollars faster for government.

The ATO has taken a few steps to promote e-tax already, through media releases, the ATO Facebook page (though the e-tax Facebook page appears to have been deleted) and the video below.

These are a good start, however if with these communications e-tax still only has a marginal increase in usage this year, clearly more will need to be done to boost e-tax to the next level.

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Should government agencies or Ministers supply content to newspapers if it will end up paywalled?

Thirty years ago if you wanted to read the news, you bought a newspaper. A paper newspaper, with real money.

As a result all of a government's announcements - media releases, Ministerial statements, advertising and other content had a price tag by default.

You didn't get to see them if you didn't pay the paper's price (except if you browsed in-store - a practice news agents discouraged).

Over the last twenty years however, news has become freely available online. Go to any print publisher's masthead, online-only news service or agency website and you can read the releases, statements and even see the ads without paying a cent.

Clearly this has been good for governments, who can reach a wider audience with their content due to the lack of a 'paywall' barrier to consumption.

However with the major newspapers now considering paywalls, should government agencies be prepared to go back to the days of allowing commercial providers to charge money for the content they provide to newspaper proprietors for free?

This is a thorny question. On the surface it looks easy - it was OK before, it should be OK now. However we have a new generation of citizens who grew up with free news, who are less inclined to pay for news and therefore government is likely to struggle to reach them.

At the same time we have a phlethora of news sites, some will be paywalled but others won't. Agencies can now distribute releases, statements and even advertisements via their own websites, email lists, and social media channels.

So does government need to rely on traditional media to carry straight news? It is still appropriate for agencies to allow newsprint publishers to 'clip the ticket' for the content they release for free?

Should there be a requirement that Ministerial and agency content isn't hidden behind the paywall and remains part of the free content provided by news services? A traffic generator, but not a profit centre?

I don't have a ready answer to this.

I would expect the news publishers would be quite happy commercialising government content, as they have done in the past, as it gives them cheap content to boost their profits (which can, of course, be taxed).

I also expect that older public servants and politicians wouldn't even question the right of publishers to make money from government content, as it was done before.

However for younger people the situation may not be so black-and-white.

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Paywalls for media providers mean government agencies need blogs and social media more

With the news this week that Fairfax is following News Ltd in introducing paywalls to their major metro online news mastheads, organisations need to think deeper about their social media strategy.

With a paywall strategy two things happen.

Firstly a large number of people stop using the paywalled websites. For example it's been reported in Wired's article, How The New York Times Paywall Is Working, that the New York Times, which has successfully increased online revenue using a paywall, has seen their visitors fall by more than 60% - and note that some (if not most) of their remaining visitors are not paying, therefore can only see a few articles each month.

That's with a two-tiered model, with some free content still available. If a single-tier model is used, such as by the London Times, visits can drop 90% or more.

Secondly, the reach of paywalled articles falls dramatically. Content behind paywalls cannot be easily shared via social media or email with people who do not pay for the content, reducing the 'readership' even more than the 'circulation'.

So regardless of whether paywalls work for the proprietor, raising their online revenue, they can gut readership and circulation - the reach that is important to media and PR professionals.


So let's consider the numbers based on the Sydney Morning Herald, for example.

As of their report for January - March 2012, as covered in Mumbrella, Fairfax reports that the Sydney Morning Herald receives 2,889,000 unique visitors per month and that they visit 158,656,000 pages - or an average of 55 pages per unique visitor.

Let's say that the Sydney Morning Herald introduces its paywall, on a two-tier model that allows people 20 free articles per month. Let's also assume that they are as successful as the New York Times and only shed 60% of their audience (note they're likely to shed more initially and 'win' some of it back over time, but we'll keep this simple).

Immediately we see a fall in unique visitors to 1,155,600. However page views drop far further than you'd expect as not all their remaining visitors will pay. So assuming that 50% of their remaining visitors pay and maintain a 55 page average, while the others only view 20 pages per month (the unpaid maximum), page views drop to 43,287,200 per month.

That's about a quarter of the pageviews before the paywall was introduced.

(Of course, if the fall in unique users is much greater, as may particularly be the case in the short term and was the case for the New York Times, these numbers could be much worse.)


Now assume this is happening, as planned, across Fairfax's Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Canberra Times, as well as across The Australian and News Ltd's other state-based mastheads.

Essentially all of Australia's major online metro news publications.

And what happens?

Suddenly all those media releases crafted and distributed to mainstream media are reaching a small fraction of the audience they reached in the pre-paywall days.

Your media release, which you could reliably claim to a Minister's office was reaching a large number of Australians, is no longer as effective by a long, long, long way.

Equally your advertising in 'mainstream' online news outlets reaches a lot less people. Hopefully this will reduce the cost as well - although historically as traditional media audiences have shrunk, advertising costs have grown.

So what should government agencies do to preserve their reach in a media landscape where the majority of Australians have abandoned traditional media in favour of free, but more niche, news sites?

Extend their social media presence and their own media channels (such as blogs) of course.


While paywalls may help traditional media players better monetise their online mastheads, they will not help organisations that need reach.

As a government agency, if you have information you MUST get out to Australians, the introduction of paywalls means you will need alternatives to traditional media channels for distribution.

So it's worth ensuring now that you have the skills, experience, procedures and governance in place to switch to a social media focused information distribution strategy to ensure that you preserve your reach while traditional media battens down their hatches to preserve their revenues.

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Accessibility - a great video from FaHCSIA to educate staff & management

Last week FaHCSIA released a great video on accessibility that they're using to educate staff and management on its importance, who it affects and the basics of what to do.

I think it is an awesome resource for all organisations (not just government) to help them understand their legal obligation and how to meet it.

We need more resources like this for government, tools that use video, pictures and sound to help educate and influence, not simply more PDF manuals like this.

I've embedded the video below and it is also available directly from its YouTube link or as a MP3 from FAHCSIA's resources section.

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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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Look for the Australian premier screening of Twittamentary at GovCamp QLD

A few weeks ago I became aware of a very interesting documentary project, Twittamentary, a movie that  explores the intersection and interplay of peoples' lives on Twitter.

Directed by Singaporean filmmaker and Tweeter, Tan Siok Siok, the documentary takes a grass roots approach, looking at how Twitter has connected, affected and influenced individuals across America.

Twittamentary touches on social policy, privacy, trust and collaboration - themes that should resonate with government policy makers. It demonstrates the diverse range of uses that Twitter and, by extension, many other social networks can be put to to support and empower citizens and communities.

The documentary was itself created in a 'social' way, with social media stories submitted and voted on via Twitter, social media and the Twittamentary web site. The production team were sourced via Twitter and other social networks and the final narrative was developed using the concept of 'beta screenings'.

This involved a series of discrete 'tweetup' screenings organised via social media to get feedback on the latest rough cut of the documentary. Viewers could interact in real-time with the Director, the cast (all real people) and each other via Twitter during the screening.  Feedback from each of these beta screenings was used to help evolve a new iteration for the next beta screening, resulting in the final documentary after 15 iterations.

Twittamentary has already screened in the US, UK, China, Malaysia and Singapore, has received positive media reviews and has been submitted to a number of international film festivals.

Now, with the permission of the documentary's producers, I'm pleased to announce that Twittamentary will premier in Australia at GovCamp Queensland on Saturday 3rd March, following with a screening at BarCamp Canberra on Saturday 17th March.

If you're attending either of these events, look for the Twittamentary room. The screening takes about an hour and is totally free - though you are invited to donate toward the production and streaming costs of Twittamentary (as it was produced .

Note this isn't simply a passive experience, though there's a lot to enjoy and learn from simply sitting back and watching Twittamentary.

If you're on Twitter, the Director and Producers of the documentary ask that you tweet about it using the hashtag #twittamentary during the screening. Your tweets will become part of the permanent record for Twittamentary, part of the evolving experience of the movie.

To learn more visit the Twittamentary website or watch the teaser video below.

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Is it time for government to take Google Plus seriously?

Often in government there's only two social media networks discussed and considered for community engagement and communications, Facebook and Twitter.

MySpace is a distant memory, LinkedIn is used just for resumes and services like FourSquare, Plurk, Ning and others are not well-known.

Also not that well known is Google Plus, and perhaps rightly so - it is very new and still quite small in social media terms, only around 62 million users, although it is predicted to grow to over 293 million by the end of 2012, or so Google believes.

However with the recent integration of Google Plus into Google search, it may be time for governments to consider establishing Google Plus channels alongside Facebook and Twitter, due to the impact on search results.

With Google's search tool holding close to 90% of Australia's search market, it is a more dominant 'publisher' than News Limited - and remains the number one website in Australia. Search engines are also the primary source of traffic for Australian government websites, with an average of over 40% of visitors reaching government sites from a search engine (according to Hitwise) - and therefore around 36% coming direct from Google.

So what has Google done? According to Gizmodo, they've integrated Google Plus into their search product in three ways,

First, it now provides "Personal Results" which include media—photos, blog posts, etc—that have been privately shared with you as well as your own stuff. Any images you've set to share using Picasa will also be displayed. Second, Google Search will now auto-complete queries to people in your circles and will display people who might also be interested in what you're searching for in the search results. Finally, it simplifies the process of finding other Google+ profiles for people or specific interest groups based on your query. So if you search for, say, NASA, it will display Google+ profile pages for NASA and space-related Google+ interest groups in addition to the normal results.

Whether you believe this is a good move, a legal move, or not, it does provide opportunities for organisations to leverage Google Plus to improve their overall presence in Google search by operating a Google Plus account.

It's certainly something to keep an eye on, if not actively consider. 

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Traditional media insiders are the least qualified to comment on the future of traditional media

With the release of News Ltd's Future of journalism 'discussion' I've submitted a 'Your view' to the site which may, or may not, be published at some point in the future.

On the basis that traditional media is no longer the gatekeeper for participation in public debate I have posted my submission below.

I see a lot of the debate over traditional media relevancy and business models being very 'fiddling on the edges' stuff, attempting to use technical or legal barriers (such as copyright) to preserve an industrial era view of media which media consumers, now also media producers, are rejecting in droves.

Today any individual or organisation can create and maintain its own media platform capable of reaching 95% of Australians, and over 2 billion people worldwide.

The Internet, by merely existing, allows entrepreneurs and agile organisations to question all previous assumptions about the collection, collation, filtering, distribution and monetization of content. As a global playing field, the importance of geographic boundaries has been further diminished.

Being agile, efficient and effective is no longer sufficient. Organisations must be prepared to destroy and reconstruct themselves under entirely different models to remain competitive and relevant.

The jury is still very much out as to whether traditional newspapers, radio and television media organisations will be able to do this before they see a substantial amount of their profitability dry up.

My submission:

It is no surprise that people who work in traditional media, who have a financial and emotional stake in its future, are supportive of their organisation’s future (provided they are agile, efficient and effective).

I can see expert blacksmiths believing the same with the arrival of mass-produced cars and metalwork.

However what those beholden to traditional media cannot see is the viewpoint from the outside world.

Yes access to information is a requirement for liberal democracies. Yes quality news is a tool used to stabilize societies and promote understanding.

However there is no law of nature that states that profitability must be at the root of quality news coverage and reporting. Nor is there a causal link between professional journalism and professional news reporting – journalists, as humans, are as prone to reflecting their own biases as others and, even when trained to be objective, are at the mercy of sub-editors (where they still exist), editors and the overall political ambitions of for-profit media concerns.

Now I am not saying that government-run media (with no profit objective) is the answer. These systems bring their own control and bias issues, they still need cash and still have oversight from humans who may be influenced by political views.

Nor am I saying that for-profit, or even not-for-profit independent media outlets do not have a future. They do.

However the vast expansion in expressive capability that has been realized through the Internet has offered a second model to news gathering and reporting that will seriously challenge the biases of distribution systems with tacked on news collection and reporting facilities.

There is no reason to assume that industrial news services will continue to be the leading players in the media market – certainly the impact of the web on other industrial era centralised industries has been profound. When the means of production and distribution are diversified, some necessary changes and adaptation is required.

However those who have financial and emotional connection to the old models, while the most prolific commenters on new models, are not the gatekeepers to these new media forms, nor are they objective and impartial observers, able to assess the changes without bias.

I would challenge News Ltd and all other industrial-era news industry players to look outside themselves and their orbits (bloggers who are, in effect, news people) to the broader changes occurring in society.

We need to consider new models – perhaps the disaggregation of news collection and distribution, creating an open market for people to write news, have it submitted to, paid for and distributed by strong distribution channels, or for citizens (who are now all journalists, so we can drop the ‘citizen journalist’ tag) to be paid based on views, likes and reputation when submitting their work to an open news distribution platform.

News is no longer the news, access to distribution is the news and there is a pressing need to experiment with new approaches to opening up news distribution rather than locking it down into professional guild-like channels.

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The world needs new forms of journalism and news distribution

While this post is a little outside the usual topics I cover in this blog, I thought it touched on enough to publish it. Also it is so long that The Drum may not publish it as a comment on their article Murdoch kills paper, bodycount continues - and note that if it is published, I am not the only one that uses that particular username either. Other comments at The Drum or other news sources under the same username may not reflect my views and comments.

As I am a former paid journalist and author and a card carrying member of the Media and Arts Alliance (my card says 'journalist' as their membership system doesn't yet support the term 'blogger') I reckon that I have as much right to comment on this topic as anyone else.

I have also made a few edits that I could not do in the system for The Drum, so it is not quite the same as my article comment. Call it journalistic license.

The world needs new forms of journalism and news distribution.

Past models, such as small independent papers in each geographic region and, more recently, large international centralized machines with a focus on revenue not facts, do not work in an age where every individual can report and distribute to a global audience.

What must be preserved is the goal of journalism, to inform and enlighten people about the important events shaping their futures. Not the formats - news 'papers', 'radio' 'stations' or 'television' 'channels' or the funding system - advertising.

Where advertising is focused on influencing people through half-truths, opinion and spin, bright colours and sounds, sitting it alongside responsible, factually-based reporting of news is particularly dangerous. In my view the dominance of advertising and the gradual degradation of factual 'news' into 'infotainment' has a lot to do with the difficulties of placing facts and spin side by side on a daily basis.

News collectors and distributors in the future need to have a commitment to truth.

They need to be able to get their content to a global audience. Use relevant channels.

Licenses for spectrum or for citywide news distribution are dead. Cross-media laws are dead. I watch more television on newspaper sites than on television channels.

Governments have (and continue to) push media laws and licensing schemes which attempt to avoid anyone gaining too much power across mediums. This brings them enormous revenue and gives them implicit control over who may criticize them (too negative and we revoke your 'license', then the facts you distribute are suddenly illegally distributed and you can be prosecuted for distributing them).

Governments need to change this position. Separate the functions of the infrastructure (bandwidth and broadband) and the news gatherers and distributors (journalists).

The public merely needs to do what it is already doing - voting with its feet.

Regardless of the efforts of media moguls to increase their global reach and build news empires to control the messages people receive, or the efforts of government to manage and message messages to reflect what they wish believed, people now have the means to bypass the massive journo-political machine and source their news from anywhere at any time via the web.

The reality is that media organisations, as they exist today, are zombies - dead but still walking from their momentum, in search of new brains.

Governments, particularly repressive ones, are resorting to more and more drastic means to control their populations' access to the true free media - the Internet. Today they shut down services or cut the Internet to prevent the truth from spreading. Tomorrow they might ban universal literacy to limit the number of people who can read or think. They will also fail to contain journalistic freedom - which involves the freedom for any individual at any time anywhere in the world to report and analyze the events and happening of today and distribute it to anyone else in the world.

Journalism has ceased to exist as a profession of the type typified by lawyers, doctors and engineers. Today 'professional journalism' is literally defined by whether you are paid to write news for distribution to others. It does not represent a critical set of skills, a body of study or work or even a quality level that is met and must be maintained. in fact more degree-qualified journalists work on what journalists often consider 'the dark side' - corporate or public communications, spinning messages to journalists rather than reporting news.

All the claims of journalists that they perform an important function of interpreting current events for the common person is simply a way of saying 'we are smarter and more articulate than you - you cannot understand your world without our intervention'. That kind of arrogance in an age of almost universal literacy and high school education, simply because paid journalists have more time to read and write news, is both ludicrous and affronting to 'common people'.

Journalists need a better way of defining their profession if it is to remain one (potentially based on the quality of their writing and thinking and their independence from commercial concerns).

Media is an amazing mess at the moment, and has an enormous transformation ahead. The question is whether governments, media organisations and journalists will write and carry out this transformation, or it will occur regardless, dragging them reluctantly into a new world that none of them would choose.

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Delib's downunder digital democracy documentary deliberations definitely defining

Delib's Chris Quigly has released the edited Australian digital democracy mini-documentary that he recorded earlier this year with a number of Government 2.0 leaders (plus myself) across Australia.

The nine minute mini-documentary provides an interesting perspective on Gov 2.0 approaches and trends in Australia. It also provides a defining view from the outside - how people in other countries might view what is happening in Australia.

I have not embedded the video below as it is worth reading Chris' post about the mini-documentary for context.

I cannot wait for the blooper reel! (well OK I can)

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Getting creative with visualisations in Government sites and documents

Government is the master of the written word. Across Australian governments we probably produce billions of them each year, carefully organised into documents designed to impart knowledge and influence decisions.

If you were to consider a medium-size agency producing, let's estimate, twenty 100 page reports each year, fifty 2-page media releases and 200 4-page minutes, with 200 words per page, that's 580,000 words already - not to mention emails, websites, internal documents, procurements, recruitment processes, forms presentations and all the draft versions produced.

Many of these words are important and necessary - however some might be better communicated graphically. Do we use visualisations as much as we could to represent choices and data?

I have rarely seen information presented in a visually exciting and impactful way in government documents or website.

Why? It can't be due to accessibility - it is simple to display the same information in text or tabular form and to provide alt text.

This is where the web can provide support.

I'm a big fan of infographics and the Information is beautiful and Cool Infographics blogs are two of my favourite sites. They provides some stunning examples of how information can be presented pictorially to convey meaning.

They can be as simple as this comparison of the amount of time US citizens spend each year sitting in front of the idiot box television passively watching, versus the estimated amount of time it took to create all of Wikipedia - over 1 billion english words alone (begging the question, what would happen if we could redirect all that wasted energy).

 

Or as complex as this explanation of the Left vs Right US political world (click to view it larger).

Thanks to the growth of Web 2.0, there are now an array of online services and tools designed to assist you visualise data in creative and useful ways.

These can help agencies revitalise their data, see it in new ways and generate new realisations and understandings.

It is even possible, with open data approaches, to integrate data from other agencies with your own information and present it in visually effective ways, updating it live.

To help you get started, here's a set of online services that can be used to generate interesting visualisations. Most are free.

Online tools

Creately
Particularly useful for flow diagrams, Creately is a highly collaborative and flexible tool, allowing the creation of very professional infographics solo or in a collaborative way. The tool is also useful for project planning and other visually focused activities.

Gapminder
As used by Hans Rosling in brilliant TED talks, GapMinder provides the ability to automate time series to look at data changes over time. You can choose from existing data or add your own to create brilliant mash-ups.

Google Public Data
Google Public Data is more of a simple charting tool that you can use to display your information as bar, line and pie charts, however it also allows you to add bubbles over Google Maps and provide time series data, where you can map one or two variables and manually jump around in time, or hit a play button to watch changes unfold step by step.

Hohli Charts
A simple, yet elegant tool for creating simple charts, scatter plots, radar charts and venn diagrams based on Google's charting tools, Hohli makes it very easy to make distinctive graphs.

Many Eyes
This is a beta service provided by IBM,  but don't let that scare you - the tool works fines. Many Eyes lets you upload your own data or use data in the site to generate a wide range of visualisations including a good range of world maps, word clouds bubble charts, scattergrams and treemaps. There's a good chance you'll find some of your publicly released data already visualised here.

New York Times Viz Lab
This can be used to visualise New York Times data using an embedded version of IBM's ManyEyes technology. You can also look through visualisations created by others. While not a separate service, it should make you consider whether you could integrate a visualisation tool into your own website to allow your own visitors to visualise your data and create their own views.

Statplanet
Visualise the planet using existing data, or create your own charts, scatter plots and world maps by adding your own. StatPlanet's flash-based mapping tool is used by a number of public sector organisations at a global scale to plot development data across the world.

TagCrowd
A functional word mapping tool, TagCrowd isn't as versatile as Wordle (below), however is very good for some uses, such as creating an even block of text, mapping frequency by size - such as for the backdrop of a document cover.

Wordle
If you need word maps, Wordle creates the most elegant and flexible ones on the web. Use it to look at your documents or speeches in a visual form (you might be surprised at which words occur most frequently) and tweak settings such as font, direction and colours. It can also be useful for mapping open answers in survey data to visually represent the top concerns.

Other tools
Here's some web-based visualisation tools that use existing online data to present it in visual ways. They provide inspiration and new approaches for viewing internet information, 16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools and The Best Tools for Vizualisation.

And here's 28 tools you can use to add visualisations to your own website.

Know of any other great visualisation tools? Add then in the comments below.

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Short takes for public sector management Part II

Almost exactly a year ago (on 28 October 2009) I posted a set of four videos from the 'Shift happens' and 'Did you know?' series, mapping the changes in society and growth of the internet through a range of statistics.

It is time to update this - with the latest videos on the same topic - looking at the changes just over the last twelve months.

They're a wake up call. Share them around.

BTW - here's 12 things you need to know about Facebook (Australia) from Hitwise's Alan Long.

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Bringing AIMIA to the ACT - plus AIMIA awards now open for entry

There's been a recent effort begun to bring AIMIA (the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association) to the ACT.

Coordinated by Reading Room, this is quite important to help improve education and standards in the interactive services being developed by government agencies and their agencies.

To find out more, and to get involved, visit AIMIA in Canberra.

Also the 17th AIMIA awards are now open for entries - including a Government and not-for-profit category.

If you want to improve the recognition of your Gov 2.0 and other online interactive initiatives this is one of the best recognised awards in Australia.

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Listing Australia's government-run Facebook and YouTube pages - I need your help

Similar to my listing of twitter accounts from Australian Federal, State and local government agencies, I'm attempting to put together a listing of Australia's government-run Facebook pages and YouTube channels.

This is a big job and I'd appreciate your help.

If your agency operates one or more Facebook pages or YouTube channels, or you are aware of any that are operated by other agencies, please either add them as a comment below (feel free to be anonymous) or tweet or email me the details.

I am interested in any that are operated by a Australian Federal, State or local government agency or other publicly funded body.

Please pass on this post to your colleagues. Having a list of the social media channels used by government agencies helps other agencies build the case to use them for their own needs.

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Are social media professionals unfairly constrained by organisations?

When organisations hire accountants they are allowed to use specialist financial software to do their jobs.

When organisations hire customer service representatives they are given training and scripts and are then allowed to speak to customers on the phone - monitored for performance reasons but free to communicate in appropriate ways without approval of every word.

When organisations hire graphic designers, project managers, multimedia producers and programmers they are given access to appropriate software and computer systems.

So why is it that, when hiring social media professionals, organisations don't give them access to their 'tools of the trade'?



In many organisations it is not possible to access social media channels - such as Facebook or Twitter - due to old-style internal IT access policies. Tools to monitor social media channels are also often blocked, making it difficult to track what customers and clients are saying about an organisation, identify opportunities or head-off potential issues.

In many cases organisations scrutinise all social media interactions at senior levels (down to 140 character tweets). These approval processes can add significant time and effort to online responses, making it difficult to interact at the pace required for social media. Imagine if telephone conversations or live conference presentations were treated the same way.

Also often those employed to implement social media systems and manage these channels are not provided with training and support - certainly not to the level of a phone customer service representative - despite being in the position of interacting with the public every day.

Even when organisations are serious about adopting social media, their policies, processes and procedures may not be designed to allow social media to work for them. This can lead to mixed messages (as when customers are invited to fan an organisation's Facebook page - which staff are not allowed to access during work hours). This can even lead to social media engagement becoming a liability, where its use is so constrained that it casts the organisation in a worse light.

These issues are occurring in private as well as public sectors organisations - perhaps some corporations have not realised that restricting access to social media can seriously damage your business.

Progress is also very uneven and often driven by senior personalities. Organisations and agencies with clear Gov 2.0 Action Plans are driving ahead, whereas others are still considering whether twitter is a legitimate business communications channel - either from a lack of knowledge, lack of leadership or lack of interest.

How can social media professionals ensure that our organisations give us access to the tools we need to support the goals of our organisations?

How do we break down the barriers to using social media when we cannot demonstrate successes due to these same barriers?

How do we convince senior management that social media professionals are skilled and trustworthy employees who should be treated with the same respect as other trained professionals?

And how do social media professionals juggle the need to be educators, innovators, strategists, change managers, implementers, communications specialists and leaders at the same time?

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Online video ads more effective than TV ads

This week a colleague made me aware of a study conducted by Nielsen in April which found that online video ads were significantly more effective than TV ads amongst US viewers.

Reported at ClickZ (but for some reason not widely reported by traditional media), the article states that,

The research company conducted over 14,000 surveys evaluating 238 brands, 412 products, and 951 ad executions, and collected data on general recall, brand recall, message recall, and likeability. The results suggest that for each metric, consumers reacted better to ads delivered via online video than they did through traditional TV.

Nielsen says the increased impact could be attributed to the nature of the viewing experiences offered between the two platforms, with online video viewers often more "engaged and attentive" to the content they are consuming.

This wasn't a small impact either - online ads were on average more than 30% more effective per the chart below.

To learn more about how people are watching video, I recommend reading Nielsen's report, How People Watch: A Global Nielsen Consumer Report.

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Keep an eye on the Gruen sessions

If you're interested in advertising and maybe even watch the Gruen Transfer, don't forget to keep an eye on their web-only content, particularly the Gruen Sessions.

The latest session discusses Tourism Queensland's "Best job in the world" campaign, one of the best examples of how to use social media to generate interest and consumer choice (next to Old Spice).

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With a change of leadership, what's next for Gov 2.0 in Australia?

Four years ago Government 2.0 was a barely known concept in Australia and social media was regarded by many in Canberra as a youth fad.

President Obama made social media 'cool' for politicians by using it as a key plank in his run for office. Since his election he has spearheaded a Gov 2.0 agenda of increased transparency and engagement which is in the process of transforming the US government.

In Australia, we saw social media used in a basic manner in the 2007 election, with senior politicians starring in their own Youtube videos, beginning them with "good morning" and MPs were proud of their garish MySpace pages and email lists.

The public service also began using social media more widely around the same time, although a few early adopters were already blogging or using other social networking tools.

Gradually, through 2008 and 2009, more government agencies began adopting new media approaches to communicate with their audiences. In particular state governments such as Victoria's led this charge, engaging their citizens in online consultations and competitions.

Agencies such as Geoscience Australia and the ABS began adopting Creative Commons licensing, making much of their data available for public reuse - free.

The Gov 2.0 Taskforce, launched in July 2009, brought active Federal Ministerial support and increased awareness to the area, culminating in the Taskforce's widely read Final Report which provided a set of recommendations to advance Gov 2.0 adoption, the majority of which have been adopted by government.

This was followed by the APS Reform report, Public Sector Innovation Report and the Freedom of Information Amendment legislation, each playing its part in encouraging government to be more open, engaging and interactive online.

Today there's over 200 Australian Twitter accounts from government agencies, well over 50 blogs and at least 30 Facebook pages, not to mention various forums, competitions, open data feeds and other Gov 2.0 initiatives and activities that are underway.

Much of the Federal activity was actively support by Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner, who initiated the Gov 2.0 Taskforce and whose portfolio includes AGIMO (the Australian Government Information Management Office). Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was also a supporter and set an example for his Ministers with his blogs and online chats.

We've now seen the first Australian transfer of power in the Gov 2.0 age, with Prime Minister Julia Gillard taking over the reins of the Australian Government and Minister Tanner indicating he will retire at the next election.

The roots of Government 2.0 have been growing in the public service, however experienced talent is still few and far between and budgets are tight - Gov 2.0 still requires nurturing and support to thrive, particularly if the soil became less accommodating.

This raises a serious question for Government 2.0 advocates and practitioners both inside and outside government. With new political leadership, how deep is the commitment to Gov 2.0 approaches to openness and engagement? Who will drive the momentum at a Federal Ministerial level into the future?

This question is compounded by an impending election which may see the present government change its shape a second time, or potentially be replaced by one of another persuasion.

This will make the next year an interesting one for Gov 2.0 in Australia - we may see it thrive or die back.

What do you expect to happen?

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When public means public - Australian political party members suspended from social networking sites

The last week has seen several incidents where members of Australian political parties has been suspended from social networking sites and outed in the media for making controversial comments.

Most recently Nick Sowden, a Young Queensland Liberal National Party member, referred to US President Obama as a 'monkey' on Twitter. His tweets were widely discussed online and covered in the media, such as in this Brisbane Times news article, Monkey Business can come back to bite.

Mr Sowden has claimed that his tweets were intended to be a parody of far right US views and that his friends understood that he wasn't racist - although other Twitter users may not. Crikey quoted him as saying "There’s no point sitting behind the veil of political correctness."

It appears that Twitter closed his account after receiving more than 150 complaints about his tweets and the latest reports suggest that Mr Sowden may also be expelled from the Young Queensland Liberal National Party party.

Also in the news was Dave Tollner, a Country Liberal Member of the Northern Territory Parliament. Facebook suspended his Facebook Page for two weeks after he wrote that itinerants were "parasites terrorising innocent citizens".

Covered in the NT News article, Dave booted from Facebook, it is as yet unclear if Mr Tollner's account will be reinstated anytime soon.

The NT News reports that Mr Tollner had said that: "Political correctness has never been my strong point."


Both these cases demonstrate the interesting period we're entering in Australian government.

Both politicians and public servants are beginning to use social media both personally and, most recently, professionally - however few of them have significant experience engaging via online media in this way.

The situation lends itself to a variety of risks such as over or under-moderating comments, reacting to statements in social media channels in disproportionate ways, funny or sarcastic side comments that are taken literally and not understood in context and the differences in personal interpretations of 'political correctness'.

It is very easy to consider social network updates as 'throwaway' lines to friends, even when people recognise intellectually that their comments are public statements and may be viewed and assessed widely by the public and media as well as misunderstood and misrepresented.

This type of issue isn't limited to social networks or online media. There's a long history of radio, television and newspapers reporting candid personal statements recorded when the microphone hasn't been switched off. The US Vice-President's comment to the President during the health care bill signing (where he swore) was one of the most widely publicised recent examples.

With social media this issue can become more complex - with social networks people are 'always on', making it harder for them to keep their guard up all the time.

While there are some guidelines being put in place, there's still little training or support to help people new to these channels to understand how to use them appropriately or effectively - like the media training available to help people respond appropriately in front of a camera and reporter.

There's also limited guidance available on which channels and tools to use for particular purposes, or how to keep public and personal life separate (using the various privacy settings available in many social media tools).

I hope that soon we'll see widespread social media training and coaching for people in the public eye to help them understand that on social networks public means public.

Until then I expect to see many more gaffes from all types of public and semi-public figures - politicians, celebrities, business leaders and from public servants - as they come to grips with the ropes of how to effectively and appropriately communicate via social media.

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