govdex upgrade coming soon!

In all the time I worked in the public service I had a fondness for govdex.

As a secure collaboration system (built from the Confluence wiki platform) for government, it was often one of the few pre-built tools that agencies could use to share information between agencies.

Although it did, at times, suffer from slow speeds, low levels of promotion and a clunky interface, the support team was unfailingly helpful and cheerful and AGIMO's management stuch with it through thick and thin, knowing that govdex had the potential to transform the way agencies interacted with each other and with external stakeholders.

I am extremely pleased to see that AGIMO is working on an upgrade to govdex that will dramatically reshape the appearance and usability of the service.

Anticipated later this year (though I, for one, am happy for it to take as long as needed to ensure quality), the upgrade to govdex appears from the screenshots to make the interface far more comparable to modern online and social media tools - the tools that public servants are familiar with at home.

 AGIMO says in the govdex support pages that the new upgrade will,

make govdex more user friendly, provide easier use for navigation and collaboration, incorporate better use of customisation, improve interoperability and functionality, and accommodate Web 2.0 tools and technologies.

 The new govdex will,

will bring faster performance, greater levels of accessibility, improved document management capability, a higher degree of networking within communities, and better user customisation.

Even better, AGIMO is modelling an excellent user-centred design approach in that the system is being redeveloped based on a simple principle, "build a system for users, by users", with govdex "seeking feedback from its users on the design features of the new govdex."

I hope, with the success of this redesign, we'll see other agencies with less experience using this approach adopt this as a best practice example of user-centred design and employ the approach for their own online services to staff, stakeholders and citizens.

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ABS embraces internal blogs and wikis

As covered in The Australian's article, Australian Bureau of Statistics embraces world of blogs and wikis, the ABS has implemented an internal collaboration platform supporting blogs, wikis and collaborative documents.

The article reports that 30% of staff have begun using the wiki and blog functions. If reported correctly this reflects a huge demand for internal digital collaboration within the Bureau and bodes well for the implementation of similar platforms in other government agencies.

Given that the platform is said to simplify the management of collaboratively written and edited documents, removing the load from email and enabling better version control, there are significant long-term knowledge management and internal efficiencies that could be realised by the ABS.

I've often wondered why government agencies have been so slow to move away from desktop-based word processing towards wiki-style collaborative documents (with appropriate security and version control). Admittedly there are transition costs - both ICT and training - however the savings in not having incorrect versions sent around as large email attachments and the time saved by not having to compile edits from numerous people back into a single document are quite large.

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Victoria releases best-practice Gov 2.0 Action Plan

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

The Plan outlines four priority areas for Gov 2.0:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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100 Ideas to Help Engage your Community Online - the book and the wiki

Bang the Table has released a fantastic little handbook for online community engagement.

Titled 100 Ideas to Help Engage your Community Online the book provides 10 ideas in each of 10 topics.

The book has been released under Creative Commons (BY) - allowing organisations to reuse, share and mash it up for their own needs - provided they attribute the creators.

To help this along, and in recognition that online community engagement is a living topic, I have converted the book into a wiki, allowing anyone to add their own topics and ideas.

I hope this proves useful, and becomes a living resource for online community managers across governments and the private sector.

View the wiki at: http://engageonlineideas.pbworks.com

Or download the original book from: 100 Ideas to Help Engage your Community Online

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Bringing government into the age of persistent communications

Many organisations use campaign-based communications models.

They develop their campaign strategy, identify and engage their audience, communicate a message, then wind down the campaign and allow the audience to disengage and disperse.

At a future time, when the audience no longer seems influenced by the previous message, they repeat this process - potentially reusing campaign materials, but having to locate and engage the audience all over again.

A cynic could call this communications amnesia - we deliberately forget all about our audiences as soon as we've finished shouting our message at them.

I prefer to call this episodic communications as it operates very similarly to episodic programming, at the end of each episode the set may remain in place, but the actors are returned to their starting points.

Social media, on the other hand, allows organisations to cost-effectively establish an ongoing relationship with their audiences.

By developing online spaces where their audience can gather and interact, seeding them with content and well-considered participation guidelines, organisations can encourage audience members to join and participate in a community around a given topic for an extended period of time.

Best of all the approach supports and improves the efficiency of episodic communications campaigns by providing a ready-made engaged audience who can be encouraged to pay attention to new messages at significantly less additional cost.

I call this approach persistent communications.

I'm starting to see governments use social media tools to build engaged audiences around specific topics - from the Digital Economy and National Culture Policy to yourHealth.

However so far I have seen limited appreciation of how these audiences can be leveraged as persistent communities of interest.

To me it makes sense that once you've invested money, resources and time into building one of these groups, it is worth continuing to invest a small amount to keep the group - a budding community - functioning and growing.

This turns it into an ongoing resource that can be leveraged in the future for additional input or directed into future campaign-based initiatives.

This can create a positive feedback loop - with campaigns becoming more cost-effective over time.

Campaign (used to build a) -> Persistent audience (leveraged into further) -> Campaigns (used to build a) -> (bigger) Persistent audience -> and so on.

This approach hasn't been totally ignored in government.

Future Melbourne has done a reasonable job of maintaining its momentum. It makes sense - Melbourne has a long future ahead of it, why not leverage the investment in the community by keeping them engaged and willing to participate. It saves money, time and effort.

Similarly Bang The Table has been peppering me with additional consultations being held by the ACT government, leveraging my participation in an earlier consultation as someone who is interested and willing to comment on further topics over time (although they've not yet taken the step to build a profile for me and invite me to consultations from other governments which fit my interest profile).

Most commercial organisations know that a relationship with a customer is worth its weight in gold. Once a customer is deeply engaged with one of your products you are able to leverage this into new areas at much lower cost than - take Apple's progression from computers to music players to phones or Sony's fiercely loyal Playstation audience.

Government also has this opportunity to use persistent communication centred on social media to build and sustain persistent relationships with our community.

We can leverage interest in one consultation via one department at one level of government into future interest in another engagement activity in a different agency in another government level through sustaining an persistent communications strategy.

This would save significant public money, however to get there we will need to rethink our departmental communications approaches - revisiting our systems for developing, governing, tracking and analysing communications.

From episodic communications tactics to a persistent communications strategy -should we call this Communications 2.0?

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Is the social media revolution merely a fad?

Watch the video below, then I'd like your opinion.

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US Army testing redeveloping manuals via wikis

The US Army is running a 90 day trial allowing service men and women to directly comment and edit seven of their 550 manuals online via a wiki-based approach to test crowdsourcing in the military.

Reported in the Army Times, Army to test wiki-style changes to 7 manuals, the article states that,

The people who write doctrine say that with things changing so fast in the field, it has been hard to keep the Army’s 550 manuals up to date and relevant.

By letting the entire Army update the manuals, they say, more and better information can go out to a wider population of soldiers.

I wonder how many Australian government publications could benefit from crowd sourcing the wisdom of their audiences?

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Contribute to the Government 2.0 Public Sphere Camp wiki

As an outcome of the Government 2.0 Public Sphere Camp last Monday, the points raised by speakers have been aggregated into a wiki for public comment prior to being submitted to the Australian Government as a briefing paper for the new Government 2.0 Taskforce.

If you attended Public Sphere and wish to contribute your perspectives, or are interested in reviewing the points made by the speakers and participants, please visit the Public Sphere wiki.

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Global Intranet report found that organizations without a 2.0 strategy risk outright failure

Prescient Digital have released the results of their Intranet 2.0 Global Survey, reporting that organisation without a 2.0 strategy risks being left behind, or outright failing.

The survey, with 561 responses globally (13% from government), found that Intranet 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and other vehicles have become mainstream, and are present in nearly 50% of organizations (regardless of size) in North America, Europe, and Australia and New Zealand.

Toby Ward, CEO of Prescient Digital Media & author of the Intranet Global Survey said in a press release that,

“Employees want to work for progressive and innovative organizations, and expect 2.0 environments from employers of choice.”

The survey found that organisations that had deployed Intranet 2.0 tools such as wikis, blogs and forums had spent very little doing so, with 46% having spent less than US$10,000 and only 19% having spent US$100,000 or more.

A summary of the Global Intranet 2.0 report is available freely online.

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Integrating online media into a persistent channel

There's been a lot of 'bitsa' initiatives in Australia around the online channel as both the private and public sector come to terms with the new online options to support communication, collaboration, consultation and engagement.

However it's been rare to see effective integrated use of online channels in a co-ordinated fashion to support ongoing initiatives.

I'm not quite sure why this is so - perhaps the newness of the channels and relative inexperience of local online practitioners, the process of piloting new approaches in organisations (one step at a time) or the need to overcome resistance and achieve buy-in across various groups and management levels.

I think this change in thinking is just beginning to take root. Rather than simply posting a video, creating a short-term blog or taking steps into online conversations through forums, I am seeing more initiatives making use of a diverse set of online tools in a more consistently integrated fashion.

I have been doing a lot of thinking around how to implement an integrated department or agency level online channel, integrating various tools from blogs, forums, wikis, video and podcasts through to idea markets, social networks, virtual worlds and micro-blogs (plus new media as they become available and grow in usage - such as mobile platforms).

The aim is to create an ongoing conversational channel with citizens and stakeholders rather than a short-term promotional 'flash-in-the-pan'. This would become an established engagement channel for an agency, facilitating long-lasting customer relationships.

This channel would sit alongside and support existing channels such as face-to-face, other media avenues and various stakeholder and citizen groups to enable an agency or department to research, test, review and deliver initiatives and campaigns while receiving constant intelligence from the public to help it understand and maintain appropriate alignment with community values and needs.

This is the 'end-game', so to speak, that I've been interested in achieving since joining the public sector - making government agencies more accessible and responsive to the community they serve while ensuring appropriate transparency and accountability is maintained.

I'm interested in chatting with anyone who has been thinking in a similar vein, or has implemented such a system. Please drop me a line.

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Australia's 2008 eGovernment Survey results released

It has taken me a little while to post about this report, as when I first saw the media release in my webfeed I mistakenly thought this was news about the previous survey.

However having finally caught up, thanks to the eGovernment Resource Centre, I'm pleased to see that the 2008 eGovernment survey shows the same trends as previous years of increasing internet usage by Australians and increasing online engagement with government.

It also bursts a few of the prevalent myths about internet users, such as all internet users being young and hip (ok so they are all hip, but some of them are also older).

Some of the key findings included,

• 79% of Australians use the internet, this decreases by age, with 94% of those 18-24 years old, 93% of those 25-34 years old, 90% of those 35-45 years old, 81% of those 45-54 years old, 74% of those 55-64 years old and only 44% of those over 65 years
  
• Nearly two-thirds of people had contacted government by internet at least once in the previous twelve months
  
• More than three in ten now use the internet for the majority (all or most) of their contact with government
  
• The internet has replaced contact in person as the most common way people had last made contact with government
  
• Those who use the internet to contact government have the highest levels of satisfaction followed closely by those who made contact in person. Those who used mail to contact government had the lowest levels of satisfaction.
  
• Over two-thirds of people use broadband at home
  
• More than four in five people use newer communication technologies at least monthly. The most common are email, SMS, news feeds, instant messaging, social networking sites and blogs

So, in short, 

• most people can contact government online, 
  
• more people are choosing online as their most preferred way to contact government, and
  
• those that contact government using the internet are more satisfied.
  

That's a great story to sell to senior public servants!

The full report is available for download from the Department of Finance as, Interacting with Government - Australians' use and satisfaction with e-government services—2008

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A place to start for those totally new to Web 2.0

A great resource has been released via the Public Works Group to support people totally new to the concepts of Web 2.0 or social media.

Named, Your Social Media Journey Starts Here, the publication provides a basic guide to the latest online trends and how people are using the web to achieve their business and community goals.

Written by a public servant, it has very useful information for anyone in the public or private sector trying to get an understanding on online media.

The publication has been released under a Creative Commons copyright, meaning that you can modify it for use within your own workplace provided the author, Pam Broviak, is credited.

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Selecting the right online tools for community consultation

The International Association for Public Participation has developed a Community Engagement Spectrum (PDF) to assist public servants in selecting the right approaches to use in different forms of public engagement.

The Online Community Consultation blog has built on this, with a post, Which Online Tools are Right for your Project? detailing a chart of some of the online tools that can be used for different forms of community engagement.

While the post is slanted towards the features in 'Bang the table' it's still a useful guide as to which online tools are best used for particular engagement needs.

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What governments could learn from Mumbai - citizens now control the flow of information

Like many other Australians I have a direct link to the recent attacks in Mumbai.

One of my family's friends was trapped in the Taj Mahal hotel. She managed to avoid being taken hostage - or worse. Her husband was out of the hotel at the time and found shelter elsewhere.

Fortunately both of them remain safe. My thoughts go out to all who lost their lives, were injured or who lost loved ones in the attacks.

During the siege it was difficult to get accurate and timely information about what was occurring from Australia's traditional mainstream media. This was repeated in many other countries around the world. Events unfolded too fast for television crews or print reporters to get onto the scene or file stories. When they did they were not able to access people at the heart of the crisis, their access was controlled by Indian authorities.

Due to this many people around the world turned to the online channel for information, finding a wealth of eye-witness reports, videos, photos and maps, with many citizens self-organising to support those in Mumbai and the people who care for them.

Commentators have called it the first crisis where the internet completely dominated other media channels.

Where were governments? They were left waiting for official updates, providing limited information in pre-packaged messages via traditional media, while citizens took control online.

If the communications experience of Mumbai can be learnt from, I believe it teaches governments that they must become more nimble and open to use of public online channels, or lose control, influence and relevance.

Mumbai is a wake-up call - in many ways.

People used many online channels to self-organise and share current information and personal accounts as events unfolded. This included sites such as blogs, Youtube, NowPublic, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google Maps, Google docs (a complete list of dead and wounded) and Twitter.

This frequently involved live updates from people in Mumbai directly experiencing the events, or repeating local news reports that did not get picked up outside India.

There was so much information that, on Twitter alone, CNN Online reported that at peak there were an estimated 80 messages (or tweets) sent to Twitter via SMS every five seconds providing eyewitness accounts and updates.

Traditional mainstream media relied heavily on citizen journalism to understand what was occurring, contacting Indian bloggers, using on-the-scene photos from Flickr and amateur video published on the web. Several traditional media players were able to tap directly into citizen journalism, such as the BBC and CNN.

However most mainstream media played catch-up, particularly in Australia where online commentators quite vocally criticised the slow reactions and poor coverage by local outlets.

It appears that even the terrorists involved in the attacks made use of the internet, using Blackberries to monitor world public opinion during the attacks.

With all this online activity, how were most governments communicating to the community?

Via traditional mainstream media outlets.

This highlights to me the disconnect rapidly emerging between how citizens choose to communicate and how comfortable and skilled governments are in using new media channels.

More and more citizens are seeking timely, relevant, plain english and personalised information. Whereas governments remain focused on traditional methods to assure accuracy and message management.

By the time a government assesses events, writes appropriate messages, gets approvals and distributes their views via traditional media channels (hoping they get a 15 second grab), the public has moved on, relying on personal, on-the-spot accounts.

Traditionally this approach has served government well. It maintains their appearance of authority, dignity and accuracy, preventing disturbing rumours or information from spreading in an uncontrolled way.

However the world has changed. Many eyewitnesses can publish their personal accounts directly without going through 'official' channels.

Using traditional approaches governments can appear slow to respond or even painfully out of date, particularly where events progress rapidly.

Similarly in organising a response and support for people, while governments do an invaluable job behind the scenes (organising counseling and transport), publicly the self-organising online citizen groups are more nimble and responsive.

The perceived slow response from governments can reduce the trust and faith of citizens. Over time this leads more people to seek more responsive channels and, though receiving timely eyewitness accounts, reduces citizen satisfaction with the language and messages of government. Governments become less relevant.

People who relied on traditional media or official reports to stay informed during the Mumbai seige probably find it hard to believe the impact the online channel had on global communications.

Fortunately no-one has to rely on my opinion.

The failure of traditional media has become a topic of much debate, by the media itself, such as in Wall Street Journal's Live Mint and Yahoo News, as well as by well-known bloggers including David Henderson (Emmy award winning former CBS news correspondent) and Laurel Papworth (one of Australia's top experts on social media).

To finish with a quote from Laurel's post (link above),

As someone who doesn't have Cable TV I can - hand on heart - swear that I learnt nothing about #Mumbai from Australian MSM [Mainstream Media].

I relied totally on Twitter. Not because I wanted to, but because TV wouldn't interrupt Kerri Anne Kennerly or children's morning TV with real news.

Twitter filtered to me websites, and tidbits I couldn't get elsewhere. ALL news was broken to me by Twitter and the links they sent.

In amongst retweeting MSM were the REAL stories. Someone hearing the bombing while lying bed. Someone else driving past a hotel as it was attacked. A guy worried about his friend. I realised this: who on earth ever said that social commentary is not News? O.o

For me, MSM doesn't make the news, they simply report OUR stories. Just another filter. After people-in-crisis are interviewed on CNN India (I watched online, thanks to link sent by Twitter) they tell a friend, who puts it on Facebook or Twitter or MySpace. More links to real stories.

Australian Media is dead. It failed to meet my needs (I channel hopped from 9:30am until about 4pm hoping for new News) and by the time the 6 O'clock News came on, MSM was simply retweeting what I had already seen and heard through Twitter links.

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Small steps into online consultation for government

It can be a challenge for government agencies to get the level of buyin required to build or buy the infrastructure required for online consultation.

Questions get asked at senior levels around security and privacy, the risk of consultations being hijacked, the level of resourcing required, the concern about publicly getting few (relevant)responses or contrarywise the risk of getting to many and the risk of excluding groups who do not have access to the Internet.

Plus there may be resistance from IT, limited understanding of the medium (which gives rise to many of the earlier concerns) and the education curve required to lift senior executives to an appropriate level of understanding to feel comfortable with initiatives.

However there are approaches which take small steps toward online consultation that can aid in building organisation comfort. These are easier bite-size ways for government agencies to begin 'eating the elephant' that is online consultation.

Email feedback
One of the easiest steps is adding an email channel for feedback which allows interested parties to more readily respond with views on a service or program. This is a cheap and easy approach to introduce with limited management overhead as it simply http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifmirrors a non-digital mail respond mechanism.

Online surveys
There is also the online survey approach, which asks visitors to a government website or email recipients their views on a given topic. Appropriately targeted and promoted this can provide valuable input,key audience insights and new ideas, aiding in setting the terms of a broader consultation.

These are reasonably easy to set up using commercially available products such as Surveymonkey or Questionpro.

User ratings
Next is the ability to ask audiences to supply their key priorities and then rank them communally, using tools such as Uservoice, which I have implemented on this site to give me guidance on the topics you'd like me to talk about (see the feedback tab at the left of the screen).

These systems can be moderated to manage user comments and can be used to gather a prioritisation of different approaches using a simple voting approach.

Participation in existing online communities
Next it is possible to engage with pre-existing external communities and ask them to ask their audience about your initiatives and programs. This is more confronting for a government agency as the moderation is left in someone else's hands - usually unpaid volunteers. However it can uncover some of the deep seated issues very quickly, allowing an agency to develop the material required to correct mistaken impressions or mitigate external fears.

This can also feed into other public debates, allowing the agency to provide Ministers and other spokespeople with appropriate pointers on how to address various concerns.

A key consideration is that these discussions are very much on the public record and outside the agency's direct control - which can be scary for many senior public servants and officials. However these discussions will happen regardless, therefore, in my view, it is better to turn over the rocks and develop an understanding of the real concerns before they are raised by the media or 'on the record' on the floor.

A key benefit of these discussions is that an agency can issue a 'thank you' at the end of the process, which makes people feel heard. This can also address some of the key issues or misunderstandings, thereby also placing the correct information on the record (provided it is in clear english).

Commercially moderated forums
The next approach is to use a commercially moderated forum, which provides some safety around how the moderation is managed, via an organisation such as Bang The Table.

This is a more controlled environment, but still out in public. Appropriately supported and managed it can provide a venue to elicit strong audience views with less control issues for government.

'Owned' forums
Finally agencies may create their own forums (which could be a blog, online forum, wiki, video feedback or other type of social media tool) to elicit feedback, as has been done with Future Melbourne.

This requires significantly more ongoing resourcing and commitment by an agency, and can also suffer from growth pains as many in the audience have to learn about and then build trust in a 'government mouthpiece'.

If these issues are handled well this can become a sustained community whereby the agency can converse with audiences, not just on spot consultations but over time.

Choosing the options
So clearly there are many different option for government to 'get its feet wet' which can reduce the risk, cost and commitment by agencies while they decide when, and if, online consultation will work for them.

Most important is to start using at least one approach and building some organisational knowledge, confidence, and small wins that aid in the future as departments are pushed to become more active in this space.

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eGovernment best practice from Utah's CIO

Ari Herzog has begun a series on social media best practice in his blog, AriWriter.

Kicking it off is a fascinating interview with Utah's Chief Information Officer, David Fletcher, providing an insight into how Utah has implemented its online strategy, taking it to win the Best of the Web award for US state governments twice (so far), in 2003 and 2007.

Drawing a few highlights from David's piece...

The state has over 830 services online, was an early adopter of blogging by public servants, services such as Twitter (as covered by USA Today) and online chat (24x7) and the use of video online via Youtube. Do I need to also mention they use wikis?

For many of these initiatives Utah is leveraging free online technologies rather than reinventing the wheel and spending large amounts of public funds. And Utah isn't keeping the performance of Utah.gov a secret - they publish their analytics online.

In August this year the state instituted a 4-day work week for public servants, based on Utah's ability to provide so many services on a 24x7 basis online.

Amazingly, although the state only has 2.6 million residents, the Utah state portal receives over 1.1 million unique visits per month. That's a much higher rate of citizen online participation with government than we see in Australia (for example Australia.gov.au reportedly gets around half this number of visitors (not even unique visitors) for 8x as large a population).

The state has also cut down the time for businesses to register at local, state and federal levels - cutting what could be a several week process down to 30 minutes.

A number of their services have over an 80% adoption rate - which I take to mean that under 20 percent of registrations come via other channels.

And if you want to learn more about the state of Utah's online presence, you can visit David's blog or find him on Twitter at @dfletcher - he's truly walking the talk!

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Which comes first, egovernment Web 2.0 services or government cultural change?

A debate has been going on in Europe recently regarding which comes first - successful Web 2.0 egovernment, or citizen-centric and transparent government.

One argument goes that government must first undergo cultural change in order to deliver effective Web 2.0 services.

The other is that government will undergo cultural change through releasing Web 2.0 services.

I think there's a little truth in both approaches - a government firmly committed to opacity will not be interested in rolling out interactive, citizen-focused services. They are too threatening to the powers that be.

Whereas a government that is already down the road of transparency will be helped along it by hearing, listening to and responding to the wants and needs of its citizens, as delivered online via Web 2.0 services.

Below is a presentation that summed up the area neatly for me.

E Leaders Osimo

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: ps20)

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Federal government to trial public consultation via Web 2.0 in 2009

Following up from AGIMO's 'consultation blog consultation', The Australia has reported that the Finance Minister has indicated that the Federal government will be trialling public consultation via Web 2.0 tools in 2009.

The article, Tanner eyes web 2.0 tools, begins the process of setting a direction for the Federal government, with Minister Tanner stating,

"The rise of internet-enabled peer production as a social force necessitates a rethink about how policy and politics is done in Australia," he said.

"In the longer term, governments will have to adapt to information's new online centre of gravity.

"This is not an undesirable thing; there are significant opportunities for government to use peer production to consult, develop policy and make closer connections with the citizens it serves."

I agree that it is not undesirable - in fact in my humble opinion it's a highly desirable approach, allowing more people to get involved with the decisions that affect their lives and helping educate people to the machinery of government.

Done well it may even help offset the people crisis the public service is facing, by encouraging people into the public sector.

I also believe that the government will be best served by drawing on the expertise of Australia's social media experts to achieve fast success.

Relying on traditional government communications and IT teams presents, in my view, a greater risk as they may not have all the relevant and necessary experience to effectively use social networking approaches in the online channel.

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US Navy CIO encourages and endorses use of Web 2.0 technologies

FCW.com has reported in, Navy encourages use of Web 2.0 tools, that the US Navy's CIO Robert Carey, the first government CIO to publish a public blog, has endorse the use of Web 2.0 tools to improve communication and collaboration.

Tools that include wikis, blogs and Web feeds will give warfighters seamless access to important information, Carey said.

“Web 2.0 tools are useful in a global enterprise, such as the Department of the Navy, as they enable widely dispersed commands and personnel to more effectively collaborate and share information,” he said.

In my humble opinion this approach applies equally well to any public sector organisation with multiple locations.

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Building a catalogue of Government 2.0 best practice

A public wiki has been created to capture examples of best practice Government 2.0 initiatives from around the world.

It's just starting out but already has some great examples of how different governments are using tools like blogs, wikis, video and social networks to achieve their objectives and better service customers.

If you have an example to share, or want to learn from the experiences of other egovernment practitioners, visit the site at Government 2.0 - Best Practices

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