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In what I believe might be a first in Australia, the ACT Government has released the requirements and wireframes for its upcoming open government website for public scrutiny and comment at its Time to Talk website.
Essentially the ACT government has decided to allow the community to give feedback on the upcoming website's proposed functionality and design before they spend the resources to actually build it.
This step could help reduce site costs and improve community satisfaction by ensuring the site is build to a specification tested to meet public needs.
Of course, as this is the first time the ACT government has taken this kind of step, it may take time for people to become aware of the consultation, to consider the material and to comment. Also, many people are unfamiliar with specifications or web design processes, so it could be a challenge for them to understand and provide constructive advice. Hopefully a number of the web-savvy people in Canberra will step up, take a look and provide comment (as I intend to do).
Otherwise this might be a very quiet consultation and not deliver an outcome that encourages others to take similar steps in the future.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
ACT Government opens discussion on open government website | Tweet |
Gov 2.0 at the 2011 Public Affairs Conference | Tweet |
You may still have time to consider attending the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance and the Walkley Foundation's Public Affairs Conference in Canberra from 5-6 September this year.
The conference has a significant Government 2.0 and open government flavour, looking at the new toolkit of digital communication and engagement options available to public relations professionals and the effects of the FOI reforms on public relations.
There is also what looks to be a very interesting case study on the Clean Energy Future digital campaign including its social media and web engagement.
I'll be presenting a keynote (on Government 2.0) at the event and participating in one of the panels.
Other speakers specifically in the Gov 2.0/Open Government area will include Professor John McMillan, Australian Information Commissioner; Hank Jongon from DHS; Sandi Logan from Immigration; Tom Burton from ACMA; Kylie Johnson, University of Canberra journalism academic Julie Posetti; and Greg Jericho, known for his blog Grogsgamut.
if you can't attend, keep an eye on Twitter - there should be plenty of interesting titbits from the day.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Online-first: Building in web at the front-end, rather than the back-end of government processes | Tweet |
One of the largest challenges for all forms of online use by government is how, as a late addition to the communications, engagement and policy stable of tools, web initiatives often get added to the end of processes rather than the beginning.
A good example is in content development of all kinds. Often officers across agencies use desktop publishing packages to create communications materials, briefs, papers and reports, finalise them via publications teams and printers, then send the final 'web-ready' PDF to the online team, to be loaded online - usually within a few hours.
This poses challenges and risks throughout.
The documents may be initially created without effective use of word processor standard styles (with format issues such as the use of spaces or tabs instead of tables or paragraph marks, and poor use of nested lists), the print design process loads them up with print-quality (sometimes inaccessible) images, adds charts and tables without appropriately text alternatives and incorporates formatting that requires substantial time to replicate online or simply doesn't suit screen viewing.
The final PDF may have 'printer's edits' (last minute changes at the printer) which are not replicated in the original final word processor document. This requires the online team to convert the PDF, rather than the faster and easier final word processor document, into the web version. Often the background information for charts or descriptive text for images is unavailable. Images may also not be available as separate files to the document to make them easier to embed online.
Finally, due to approval timeframes or last minute edits to reflect changing events, the online team may receive the final document too close to the go live deadline to do justice to the web publishing. This often results in the PDF version being uploaded with an apology stating that the agency will convert the document to an accessible HTML web page as soon as possible. Depending on priorities this may take months, disadvantaging people who cannot access the printed or online PDF versions.
As sometimes all the budgeted funds for the document are spent on the physical print process, online teams may be left without sufficient budget to do the document justice, time or dollars to convert the document into a fully web-enabled deliverable, which could be higher quality and far more usable and useful than a printable PDF.
A combination of some of all of these issues adds to the cost and stress of government documents. They can put pressure on agency timelines and result in lower community satisfaction and understanding of communicated material. They may also create greater legal risks due to accessibility considerations.
These potential costs could be avoided by embedding an online-first philosophy, policies and mandate throughout an agency. This would recognise at the beginning of document creation processes that content will need to be delivered online and, indeed, this might be the only, or most important, distribution channel.
This approach would, after initial training and support costs, save significant expense and human effort, freeing up agency staff for higher value activities while delivering more effective, and timely, public outcomes.
The shift could begin with appropriate training, support and mandates for public servants creating material which will need to go online. Including websites and intranets this reflects the majority of documentation now created by government agencies.
Online teams would be engaged at the start of document creation processes, advising other staff on how specific materials can be best designed for online representation, whether as 'traditional' documents or as web services, apps, interactive modules, data feeds or in some other format.
Every document would then be created using appropriate formatting in word processing tools or the appropriate alternative, with an express goal of being able to be quickly and easily placed online in an effective manner.
The created documents may be structured and laid out quite differently depending on the eventual form they will take online - representing the range of variation we already see between a video script, report and brochure.
The document creation process would include the steps necessary to deliver a quality accessible product, identifying the text behind every chart and appropriate explanations for every image and diagram.
As documents were created, graphic templates would also be created by graphic designers, both online and print templates which can be executed through online style sheets. Using this approach documents would appear in a web browser as native webpages but, when printed, be automatically reformatted for A4 paper.
This means agencies can deliver online and print versions from a single version of the content, a 'single point of truth' that removes the need to manage multiple versions, such as HTML, RTF and PDF copies. A print-quality template would also be developed at this stage as a shell for any printed copies needed.
The document would be directed loaded into the web template with the metadata and alt tags required and viewed and edited online, or printed in the print template and hand edited, to finalise the document.
Once approved the 'document' can be simultaneously released online and in print format, appropriately formatted for the different mediums, maximising its impact. There would be no time lag for an accessible version.
Sounds too easy? Well yes, there are a number of changes that agencies need to make to implement an online-first philosophy.
The most significant and influential change in agency policies. They would need to be redeveloped for the modern age, a business process improvement step to integrate web as a core platform rather than an afterthought.
While significant, changing these processes is technically quite simple, it just involves adjusting a few words on (ahem) 'paper'. The most difficult change is related to people - changing culture and retraining staff responsible for producing documents (public or internal) to reflect the new capabilities and skills required of a public servant.
I believe it is inevitable that agencies will gradually move in the direction of online-first publishing, for cost and efficiency reasons if not due to legislative and high-level policies (such as the recent FOI changes). However the speed and difficulty of this transition can be influenced by staff.
Senior staff can set policy in their areas and embody the behaviours they support, while middle management can build their own understanding and support and encourage their teams. Those teams responsible for agency document outputs can seek out new skills through training and lobby their management to make their jobs easier, allowing them to be more productive and satisfied with their jobs.
Online teams have a large central role to play, by demonstrating and modelling the behaviour themselves, identifying processes where documents are only published as web pages and piloting improved processes which lead to efficiencies (helping themselves as well as the teams responsible for the content).
Online teams may also to lobby for improved training, so that officials across an agency understand how to use the word processors and other document creation tools they use daily more effectively - this knowledge by itself improves efficiency.
Having a given level of skills with document creation tools, or developing it once in the job, could become a requirement of recruitment processes and performance reporting. It has often surprised me how otherwise highly intelligent and capable people may simply never have had the opportunity to learn how to most effectively use the tools of their 'trade' - document and presentation creation programs - at school, university or in the workforce.
An online-first philosophy isn't native to government agencies, and it will take conscious and directed effort to make it the default approach.
However in today's world, with online increasingly the first and sometimes the only distribution platform for government information, the rising cost of print, falling budgets and the legislative requirements to deliver government content online - shouldn't we be putting in active efforts to change our philosophy and make it so?
Monday, August 22, 2011
Eight governments, led by US, form an international Open Government Partnership - should Australia be involved? | Tweet |
Launched under the oversight of a multi-stakeholder International Steering Committee including representatives of eight governments and nine civil society representatives, and initially co-chaired by Brazil and the USA, the OGP has broad ambitions to promote open government around the globe.
The OGP has already launched a networking mechanism to "help participating governments identify and connect with one another (peer to peer) and other relevant expertise and service providers (NGO and private sector) as they develop their OGP commitments and action plans. This mechanism is a partnership of Global Integrity and the World Bank Institute."
The OGP will formally launch in New York City on September 20 this year when the governments on the steering committee will embrace an Open Government Declaration, announce their country action plans to promote OGP principles, and welcome the commitment of additional countries to join the Partnership.
I wonder if Australia will take this opportunity to become involved.
Australia is already listed as being eligible (DOC), due to our activities in the open government area and meeting the other eligibility criteria (DOC).
The process for actually joining (DOC) is reasonably simple, although there are some actions the Australian Government would need to take to participate in the formal launch in September 2011 and to meet the March 2012 Open Government Action Plan
So which governments and organisations are already involved?
The US government, together with the governments of Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, South Africa and the United Kingdom, and leading civil society representatives, Africa Center for Open Governance (Kenya), Instituto de Estudos Socioeconômicos (Brazil), Instituto Mexicano para la Competitividad (Mexico), International Budget Partnership (Intl), MKSS (India), National Security Archives (US), Revenue Watch Institute (Intl), Transparency and Accountability Initiative (Intl), Twaweza (Tanzania).
An interesting group, and one that Australia has much to learn from and share with.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Next ACT Virtual Community Cabinet coming up 30 August at 7pm | Tweet |
The Chief Minister of the ACT has announced via Twitter that the next Virtual Community Cabinet (on Twitter) will be held on 30 August at 7pm AEST.
As last time it will include all four ACT Cabinet Ministers, @KatyGMLA, @ABarrMLA, @SimonCorbell and @JoyBurchMLA.
It will use the same hashtag, #actvcc.
Participants do not require a Twitter account to watch, but will to participate.
The Chief Minister also commented that further Virtual Community Cabinets would be single topic focused.
I'm waiting for a copy of the transcript of the last Virtual Community Cabinet to be published (As Tom Worthington comments a record is required by law) to analyse any tweets missed in my analysis of the first event and compare the claims of 700+ Tweets with the 299 I recorded via CoverItLive.
I aim to repeat my analysis for this community cabinet.
Friday, August 19, 2011
If you're in Perth, don't miss the RightClick 2011 Conference | Tweet |
If you're in town, or can make it there, I recommend that you consider attending.
The event is organised by the Institute of Public Administration WA (@ipaawa) and the event hashtag is #rightClick
More details below:
Transform the Way You Communicate - RigthtClick 2011 Conference
Attend RightClick 2011 and find out how you and your organisation can effectively use social media and new technologies in the workplace both safely and securely. Hear case studies from the public and private sector and the challenges and opportunities technology has provided.
Discussions will include:
- Why should government adopt digital media?
- Benefits of social networking services.
- Implications for policy makers and those employing young people in the workplace.
- Expanding young people’s digital citizenship.
- Communicating and engaging internal & external stakeholders.
- Security and privacy issues.
- The role of a Government 2.0 Advocate.
Who should attend?
Any professional interested in developing and using technology more effectively in the workplace.
Tell your colleagues:
We encourage you to tell interested colleagues about the conference.
Date
9:00am - 4:30pm
Hyatt Regency Perth
Cost
Non Member
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Can microblogging save or destroy governments? | Tweet |
While the more negative views are beginning to shift, due to the active role Twitter played in the Brisbane floods, Australians still largely consider microblogs as a tool for emergency and breaking news, rather than as a tool for democracy, government engagement and accountability.
In China, in dramatic contrast to Australia, government officials have been waking to the potential of microblogging services for reconnecting with the public - and to the shock of being held accountable at a speed that outraces the fastest censor.
China's first microblogging services were introduced in 2009 and have grown in popularity extremely quickly. Today there are reportedly more than 195 million users of the leading microblogging services, almost ten times the population of Australia and approximately 15 percent of the Chinese population.
Interestingly about the same proportion, 15 percent, of Australians use Twitter, our most popular microblog service.
A Global Times study in March-April this year found that "71 percent of Chinese Web users attribute their growing interest in politics to microblogging". Of the respondents, 59.3 percent said "they had become more inclined to express their political views on microblogs" and 23.1 percent chose politics as their favourite topic of discussion via microblog (with 36.6 percent citing social news and 19.6 percent daily-life topics, such as fashion and heath).
The respondents were highly in favour of politicians using microblogs, with 72.1 percent backing the idea. However two thirds (65.6 percent) complained that most government microblogs were merely publicity stunts.
Microblogs have also become a major source of news in China, with the Communication University of China in Beijing reporting in their Internet Real-time Public Opinion Index Annual Report 2010 that within 20 months of being allowed into China, microblogs had become the third-favorite online source of information, after news portals and online forums.
The report highlighted land acquisition and official corruption scandals as being hot on microblogging sites - both highly sensitive and politicised topics that rarely are discussed in mainstream Chinese news channels.
A separate report in 2010 was reported to state that more than 20 percent of the 50 most-discussed public events in China through 2010 were first reported on by microbloggers.
Government in China has increasingly recognising the potential uses and risks of microblogging.
It has become increasing difficult for the Chinese government to control sensitive discussions online due to the speed and reach of microblogs. Equally the size of the main microblogging networks makes it dangerous for the Chinese government to simply close down them down.
Therefore government officials are increasingly actively engaging via microblogs in order to influence conversations. In fact, "How to open a microblog" has become a training course for high-level Beijing government officials.
Accordingly, in March 2011 Sina, one of the leading microblogging services, reported that there were over 3,000 official government microblog accounts on their service, spread between agencies and high-level officials.
In July it was reported that 4,920 government departments and 3,949 government officials had opened microblog accounts at weibo.com. The same report indicated that the ten government microblogs in China had a total of 5.08 million followers in the first half of 2011.
It has also been reported that more than 1,200 microblogs have been opened by police authorities throughout China, resulting in a number of high-profile successful convictions.
For example, police in Xiamen, reported that they were able to solve the murder of a three-year-old girl in six days by releasing details of the murder via their microblog, together with a reward offer for further information. The message was forwarded more than 10,000 times and, according to a report by China Daily, led to the collection of more than 100 pieces of information used to solve the case.
The highest ranking individual official microblogging in China is Zhang Chunxian, the party chief of Xinjiang province. He took over in Xinjiang in April 2010, about nine months after ethnic riots led authorities to shut down mobile and internet services across the province.
Zhang has more than 148,000 followers for his microblog and has told the China Daily that microblogging can "be used to promote the government's efforts in Xinjiang's development."
Given there are over 450 million internet users and 900 million mobile phone users (those on smartphones can microblog), there is enormous potential for the sustained growth of microblogging in China.
With microblogging able to circumvent many censorship barriers, China's government is being forced to choose between closing down entire services, potentially facing extreme public backlash, or embracing increased openness and engagement with the public, dealing actively with charges of corruption, inappropriate conduct by officials and allowing citizens to share news before government communications channels can present official viewpoints.
If microblogging has the potential to have this impact in China, it is a channel that cannot be ignored or given lip service by governments in Australia or other nations.
Perhaps the two statements below best sums up the potential of microblogging for the Chinese government - and other governments around the world.
From the People's Daily of 2 August 2011:
Mastering the use of the internet shows a leader’s quality and ability. We hope that more and more leaders show their capacity for speech on the internet and on microblogs, and find popularity. We hope even more that more and more leaders address the conditions of the people in the real world, through real actions.From the China Daily of 2 July 2011:
If governments can correctly and properly guide public opinions, use microblogging as a good platform to learn about public opinions and the wisdom of the people, and find and solve problems as soon as possible, forming a widely-participated, orderly and interactive microblogging public opinion environment is completely possible. Microblogging will also become a "release valve" of social emotions and the "lubricant" of government-public relations.References
China’s microbloggers unafraid to rattle the censor’s cage 15/8/2011 - Business World Online
Politics in the age of the microblog 2/8/2011 - Chinese Media Project
China tackles the messy world of microblogs 1/8/2011 - Chinese Media Project
Microblogs a Threat to China's National Security: Official Report 14/7/2011 - The Epoch Times
China's government offcials open up to microblogs 14/7/2011 - Want China Times
How microblogging power shakes reality in China 2/7/2011 - China Daily
Xinhua Insight: Communist Party microblogs to reach out to public 24/6/2011 - English.news.cn
Must Officials Microblog? 6/5/2011 - Beijing Review
University names top ten official microblogs 25/4/2011 - Want China Times
Microblogging to improve governance 6/4/2011 - Global Times
Microblogs in China government's fight to win public approval 9/3/2011 - Reuters
Government Gets Big Into Microblogging 14/1/2011 - China Realtime Report
Police microblog helps catch murderers in East China 1/12/2010 - China Daily
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Don't forget to register for Australia's first Govcamp | Tweet |
A Govcamp is an unconference specifically for government people, discussing government-related topics (usually, but not always related to community engagement, IT, the internet and Gov 2.0 topics).
They've become a regular feature of the landscape in the UK, US, Canada and even New Zealand, however there's been less interest in Australia for running one - despite our successes in holding similar unconferences such as BarCamps and PubCamps.
Now, however, Australia is going to get its very first GovCamp, being organised by Pia Waugh and held at NICTA's offices in Canberra with support by AGIMO.
The (free) event is being held on 10 September from 10am - 4pm, and only has 100 spots for attendees (many of which have already been snapped up).
If you are interested and want to learn more, or want to RSVP right now, go to the GovCampAU homepage.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Do we really need a common look and feel for government websites? | Tweet |
While I am a big fan of Luke's and agree with his view that transferring government websites to Facebook, granting partial control over them to a foreign-jurisdiction company, is not a good idea, I find it harder to agree with Luke's point on centralising government websites and employing a common look and feel.
I've never been a fan of the 'one site fits all' approach of the UK Government's attempted Directgov website - or a supporter of the view that all government sites should have a common look and feel.
Why?
Because websites need to be designed to meet their specific set of goals within the constraints of the needs and preferences of their key audiences.
Where the goals and audiences are different, the websites need to be designed and operate differently.
Even when the goals and audience of two separate websites are similar, there can be good reasons to solve the 'problem' of usability and quick access to key information in different ways.
Web design is an art as well as a science. There's often multiple ways to achieve a good outcome, not one single approach that is best. This means that a government that did lock itself into a single 'right' website look and feel may find itself in a blind alley over time, requiring a huge shift in design to jump onto a more future-proof track.
When I commented on Twitter about my views I was told that a common look and feel made citizens more comfortable that a website was 'official'. This is quite a useful technique in the real world, where standard uniforms are used in a number of government professions to convey officialness and trust (such as police forces).
However online governments cannot trademark a given 'uniform' design for their websites, leaving it open for others to employ a similar or identical layout in order to mislead people into believing they are official websites.
The best safeguards of 'officialness' are those we already use - a common crest (where legal action can be taken to protect it from fraudulent duplication) and the use of a common domain '.gov' which is unavailable to anyone other than government agencies.
These two safeguards ensure that anyone visiting a government website can be assured that it is owned and maintained by the government in a way that a common look and feel cannot.
I always try to keep in mind that government websites are not common places for citizens to visit. Citizens only go to government sites for specific purposes - to find information on a given topic, to access a service or to report an occurrence.
Meanwhile government web staff visit government websites all the time, particularly their own.
I've generally found that while government web teams can point out all the flaws in their sites, visitors (who may go to the site once a year) don't notice them and often have a much more positive view towards government sites than do the internal experts.
I've yet to see evidence that citizens want a single website for government, at any level. What they do want is to find the information or service they are seeking quickly and easily. Google has become the front door into many websites - including government sites - because it meets this need.
Why should government invest a cent into replicating what search engines already do well? We could better invest our money into ensuring that when people get to our sites that the content is current, relevant, written in plain English and fully accessible.
Touching a little further on the concept of a single central government site, often the structure of government works against this approach anyway.
Agencies are funded separately, managed under different laws and often have restrictions on how and when they can share information.
They have widely different needs to engage the public and generally need to control their own web presences in order to maximise their flexibility when the environment changes.
Moving to a single content management system and single website poses a number of challenges for operational management structures, flexibility and funding.
Do all agencies forgo some funding for websites to fund a central agency web unit?
How does an urgent ministerial need (which requires the equivalent of a website today) get fulfilled in a timely manner? How does the central team prioritise development work, and who has access to content - and at what level.
There's just so many questions as yet unconsidered - even in the UK's Directgov model.
While I hate the proliferation of web sites across government, where every policy or program area, government directive and new initiative often 'requires' a new and discreet website, I think we'd be better placed putting a common framework around when and how government websites are built, and developing a central public list of these sites, than attempting to fit all these diverse properties into a single content management solution, central site and common look and feel.
By all means recommend a standard approach (always put the About link at far right, include a Contact, Privacy, Terms and Copyright page, organise content in relation to the audience, not the Department's structure), but don't compel a standard look and feel or central site.
I predict that many agencies would work around a centralised model, simply to meet the government's explicit policy requirements.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Why is no-one running 'Government 2.0 202' courses? | Tweet |
There seems to be a consistent supply of people new to Government 2.0 filtering through the various events I track around Australia.
Whether commercial conferences, 'Masterclasses', government-supported events or university courses - many (though not all) now providing decent '101' or introductory information and case studies on social media use for government and even on open Public Sector Information.
However for people who already employ Government 2.0 techniques, have been involved in designing and implementing social media initiatives and channels, there's really no 'step-up' courses available in Australia to provide the greater depth and expertise these people are looking for.
Essentially, Australia is well supplied with '101' introductory courses to Government 2.0, but there's no '202' or '303' courses - intermediate and advanced training to help people build on their experience.
These more advanced courses would help improve government's effectiveness in social media by moving us to more complex and strategic use of digital channels to meet citizen needs.
There's certainly people around with the experience to run such courses, both from a strategic and implementation perspective. Many are presenting actively at the various '101' events.
I'd welcome any ideas on how to move us forward, keep the introductory courses for those still new to the area, but provided advanced training for those who now need it (at an appropriate cost).
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Apologies for the hiatus in blogging - life trumps blogging | Tweet |
I'd like to apologise to those reading my blog for effectively taking two weeks off from blogging (although I've been tweeting actively).
Essentially life got in the way, with some tight work deadlines, a death in the family, wedding preparations and a range of other factors.
I am now rebuilding my blogging habit and will keep to my 3-5 posts per week target for the next few months - then take a break during my honeymoon.
Monday, August 01, 2011
QPS Media releases report on their use of social media for disaster management | Tweet |
The Queensland Police Service Media group has released a report on their use of social media in managing disaster situations.
It's a good read, though only scratches the surface of what they achieved or what is possible.
As the document was released only as PDF, I've converted it to HTML 5.0 via Scribd for more widespread access as embedded below.
It will be very interesting to see which government agencies continue to resist the use of social media in future disaster situations. It will provide insights into their cultures and is likely to reflect on them publicly.
It may even be fair to say that it would be courageous of senior public servants in any government across Australia to forbid the use of social media for disaster management in the future.
The original PDF, Queensland Police Service: Disaster management and social media - a case study, is available here.
QPS Social Media Case Study
Thursday, July 28, 2011
What's the oldest active government Twitter account in Australia? | Tweet |
I've done a review of the registration dates for Twitter accounts from agencies at all levels of government in Australia and identified what I believe to be the oldest account.
Established in November 2007, the oldest government Twitter account in Australia is from Narromine, a small local council in Central West NSW.
You'll find them still tweeting regularly at @Narromine
The second oldest was @rfsmajorfires, providing automated updates about major fire risks in NSW since December 2007 and the third was @questacon in May 2008, providing educational and exhibition news.
The full timeline is available as a tab in my Australian governments Twitter accounts spreadsheet.
Chart of the timeline for government agency Twitter registrations by month and a cumulative registration rate is below.
It excludes three suspended accounts (for which I cannot determine registration date).
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Outcomes from ACT Virtual Community Cabinet | Tweet |
I've run the conversation from the ACT Virtual Community Cabinet, held yesterday, through some statistical systems to look at how the event went.
Based on the CoverItLive session I recorded, there were 92 participants using the #ACTvcc hashtag between the beginning and the end of the Virtual Community Cabinet. I excluded conversations outside the period of the Cabinet as not being 'on the official record'.
During the Virtual Community Cabinet there were a total of 299 tweets, an average of 3 tweets per participant and approximately 5 tweets per minute.
The top 13 tweeters accounted for 50% of tweets, and the top 63 for 90% of tweets during the event.
I divided the tweets into the categories below based on the type of content. This is not precise, but gives an approximation of the types of conversations that occurred.
- Question to Cabinet (Such as 'Can the ACT government please fix my road?')
- Directional tweet (Such as 'The event starts now' or retweets without extra content)
- Spurious comment (Such as 'Can we have more penguins?')
- Action request/statement (Such as 'We need more buses')
- Thank you (Such as 'You're doing a great job!')
- Statement (Such as 'Look at what NSW is doing on Health')
- Ministerial answer (Minister answering question 'We are expanding services')
Another 51 tweets (17%) were directional - many alerting people to the start, middle and end of the event, or retweeting Ministerial answers.
Another 28 tweets (9%) were action requests which directly asked or told the government to take a specific step or decision. 33 (11%) of tweets were statements, providing information or a view without any direct question or action request.
There were 18 tweets (6%) expressing thanks for the event or actions of the government.
Finally there were only 19 tweets (6%) that were spurious (sorry to the dolphins, the peacocks and James Scullin).
Was the event a success?
Was the Virtual Community Cabinet a success? I would say yes, for a first attempt.
Looking over the Twitter stream (as I was unable to access Twitter through most of the event), overall my view is that the event was quite chaotic, with no clear format set for questions or for responses.
It was often very difficult to identify who Ministers were responding to and there were some big questions left unanswered. However I reckon the Ministers did quite well to answer 53 questions in the time they had.
A number of people indicated they'd like to see broader social media engagement. While the Cabinet Ministers stated they were on Facebook, the members of the public participating were asking them to use blogs - to post regularly and allow comments.
I think this difference in viewpoints may reflect a difference in social media sophistication between some politicians and some members of the public.
I stand by my previous statement that there were better tools the ACT Cabinet could have employed for this form of community engagement.
However, overall I think the event went OK, most participants left reasonably happy and several asked for further events (though using a broader set of social media tools).
I hope that the ACT government continues developing its social media and Government 2.0 sophistication, tapping into the experiences of other states (such as Victoria and Queensland) and within the Australian government.
View the record
View the ACT Virtual Community Cabinet Google spreadsheet here or the embedded version below.
As it would be easy to modify specific tweets or statistics, I've left it read-only for now.
To understand the colour coding and highlights, view the Legend (link from the bottom bar of the embedded spreadsheet).
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Live ACT Virtual Community Cabinet feed | Tweet |
Below is a live feed of the ACT Virtual Community Cabinet, on from 12.30pm to 1:30pm today, Tuesday 26 July, 2011
By capturing the tweets via CoverItLive they're stored publicly beyond the lifespan for tweets.
UPDATE: Due to load issues with my blog I've removed the CoverItLive replay from this post. My archive of the ACT Virtual Community Cabinet, together my previous liveblogs, are all accessible from http://egovau.coverpage.coveritlive.com/index2.php/option=com_altcaster/task=viewaltcast
ACT Virtual Community Cabinet 12:30pm today (#actvcc) | Tweet |
The ACT government has announced that their first Virtual Community Cabinet will be held today from 12:30 - 1:30pm on the topic of Public Transport, using Twitter as the discussion tool.
To follow the discussion keep an eye on #actvcc, the hashtag for the event.
The ACT Cabinet will be in the Cabinet room, following the Twitter stream on a big screen and tweeting responses via their laptops.
Specific questions can be directed to Cabinet members via their Twitter accounts, such as @KatyGMLA (for the Chief Minister).
I have previously expressed my views on this approach - using a medium suited for light touches and news breaking for deep evidence-based discussion. No-one in the Australian Gov 2.0 arena has been consulted on the use of Twitter this event to my knowledge (or indeed on the timing of the VCC - good for ACT Ministers, but not for the 65% of Commonwealth staff and other ACT residents without access to social media at their workplaces).
I hope I am proven wrong and this event goes well.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Comments from the IPAA NSW 2011 State Conference - Session 3 | Tweet |
Fresh from my session (which was tweeted and filmed - will be up in a few days and Ross Dawson published a great article on James Kleimt's talk "The fabulous case study of Queensland Police on Facebook" and James Dellow has published his slides), I'm in the third session for the IPAA conference, in the room discussing collaboration.
Jo Lawrence from the NSW Department of Family and Community Services is talking about the topic from the perspective of how to build collaboration and co-creation with citizens for service delivery.
Her agency has developed an administrative structure for collaboration to support their reform process.
This has included the introduction of Regional Executive Directors to lead reform in regions, and the implementation of Regional Executive Forums chaired by the Directors to support engagement and conversation.
The agency has also developed a Knowledge and Learning network using social media tools to allow staff to come together, share information on particular practices, facilitate knowledge sharing and promote interactive debate across the Department.
Part of the approach is to reverse the approach used by the agency to be person-focused, rather than the traditional process-focused approach - focusing on individual needs and differences rather than forcing people into a narrow set of boxes.
Some of the challenges the agency is facing is aligning the 'walk with the talk' within bureaucracy, shifting entrenched values and practices and addressing the expectations of clients.
Jo says that if you reframe a cross-agency problem into a pitch - the benefits to specific agencies - it becomes easier to get them to engage and participate, even 'own' the problem.
She says that the traditional approach of having a central agency coordinate the involvement of other agencies to address client problems is evolving into a more decentralised approach where any agency might take the lead.
She says this can be very hard to achieve, but is well worth the journey.
Next up is Paul Ronalds from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Paul is talking about 'wicked problems' - those that involve enormous complexity and require significant involvement by a range of players to address effectively.
He says that non-government organisations are becoming very significant players in resolving these problems and have by some quarters been called 'the new superpower' (though he doesn't feel they are at that level).
Paul says there are cultural barriers in government around engaging community organisations and corporations to participate in public policy issues - including deep seated beliefs that they have limited skills in this area.
He also says there can be limited (NGO and corporate) stakeholder engagement skills in government, as well as political barriers and the challenges of a top-down hierarchy that can make it more difficult for government agencies to participate in genuine collaboration.
Now up is Monica Barone, Chief Executive Officer of the City of Sydney, talking about the challenges of achieving collaboration and policy alignment across city, state and federal levels.
She says that the challenges of urbanisation are best addressed by urban policy developed collaboratively by all levels of government.
She says that some solutions must be delivered 'in place' and requires a public sector that works collaboratively - local government holds much of the data needed to facilitate services delivered by other levels.
Monica is talking about the Sustainable Sydney 2030 ongoing consultation and ways they've built on this, such as the Matching grants program.
Monica is going through the policy areas which could benefit from policy alignment by all levels of government in Australia - including bike use, housing targets and greenhouse gas reduction plans. She is demonstrating the waterfall charts used to plan the progressive targets and goals in Sydney and discussing how to broaden the policy approach based on collaboration by all levels of government.
She is showing a fantastic 3D graphical model of the energy use across the City of Sydney, based on floor space and (confidential) electricity use. It clearly demonstrates the high and low areas of use in a geospatial sense, evidence very useful in policy formation.
We're now onto the Q&A session - then I'm back to the airport for the flight home.
Comments from the IPAA NSW 2011 State Conference - Session 1 | Tweet |
I am spending the day at the Institute of Public Administration Australia's (IPAA) NSW State Conference, which is themed "The future course of modern government".
There's a packed room and a great speaker lineup, featuring commentators such as Ross Dawson and Martin Stewart-Weeks, leading (past) public servants such as Peter Shergold and the Premier of NSW, Barry O'Farrell.
I am participating in a panel discussion (straight after the Premier) along with James Kleimt of the Queensland Police Force Media team, Paula Bray from the Powerhouse Museum and James Dellow of Headshift.
Due to a late plane I arrived slightly late, catching the end of Ross Dawson's presentation, however a few points still stood out for me - citizens expect more from the public service and the public service has access to the tools to deliver, as long as we understand that governance is not only about controlling risk, but also about innovation and improving delivery while managing risk.
Ross provided examples such as the US intelligence Services' Intellopedia and the New Zealand police wiki Act - highlighting that the tools a modern government needs to employ are available and already in widespread use. The challenge for agencies is to normalize their use, find better ways to use technology to enable public service and combine 'play' with work.
Ross also highlighted that today's young people have an incredible array of technology at home - should they expect less in the office? As school leavers are increasingly normalized into, and expect access to technology to enable them to be more efficient, public services much provide the tools required to enable them to work effectively - which also brings productivity gains to government.
Now speaking is Christian Bason, the Director of MindLab in Denmark, speaking to us live via video from the US. He agrees that society is in the midst of a 'perfect storm' of technology that needs to be understand and adopted by organisations if they wish to remain relevant and effective in a fast changing world.
Christian is giving an example of a hospital in Scandinavia, where a gourmet chef noticed that the hospital was throwing out large quantities of food that was not eaten by patients. When he put himself in the position of patients he realized the food was unattractive, portions were too large and it was provided at set times regardless of patient hunger levels.
He tried introducing a new menu, with smaller portions, more attractive and nutritious food and better presentation at more flexible times.
He found that food costs declined by 30% - mainly use to less waste. He also instituted a study on the impact of nutritious food on patient stay times in hospital, which found that the average stay time was reduced by a day by providing more nutritious food presented in a way that people would eat willingly.
Christian sees this example as how public servants can put themselves in the shoes of citizens - looking at the outcomes, rather than the processes - in order to deliver better outcomes for society.
He says that by integrating citizens into the policy and service delivery process and by placing public servants in the shoes of citizens, much better outcomes can be achieved.
Christian says we need to move from public management to new public processes, creating solutions with people, not for them.
He advocates design-driven processes, employing new modes of qualitative knowledge, with a broader scope of people.
Christian says that "co-creation can enable co-production". Public servants can no longer create solutions as 'experts', we need to integrate the wisdom of citizens, leveraging their own skills and resources. He calls this employing "professional empathy", embedding ourselves in the experiences of citizens to avoid creating 'expert systems' which negatively impact on citizens or counter the effectiveness of programs (such as health systems where the amount of paperwork and stress increases patient sickness).
Christian asks "how do we rehearse what the future may look like?" saying we need to analyse needs better and consider the design of our services, integrating a broader range of skills and experience, creating and testing prototypes in partnership with citizens to identify unintended benefits and negative consequences.
Christian asks whether dissatisfaction should be the new status quo for public sector ethos. Dissatisfaction drives innovation and change in a way no other approach can do.
Peter Achterstraat, NSW Auditor-General, is now saying that public servants must create their own luck, using professional empathy and innovation to improve policies and services.
He is now introducing Peter Shergold to provide the third keynote address of the morning (no questions allowed so far).
Peter says that for the last three years he has been a liberated public servant, less constrained on what he can publicly say, however he remains committed to the values of the public service.
He says he is excited about the capability of social media to reinvent egovernment and the benefits of co-creation and co-production to reinvigorate public participation in democracy.
However Peter says that today he wants to talk about the historic values and traditions of public service that must be maintained into the future, to be "the boring old tart".
For example, by "non-partisan" doesn't mean that public servants should be non-political, it means that the public service must be able to serve consecutive governments without fear or favour. As public servants it is important to have an interest in politics and the political processes, however that should not remove the capability to offer confidential, robust, frank and fearless advice or carry out the decisions of the parliament.
Peter says it is crucial that the parliament make the decisions and the public service carry out their policies with commitment - even where public servants may consider the government as being "courageous".
Peter says that the public service needs to get serious about merit - it is not simply an outcome. He says he has lost count of the times in the Commonwealth public service that selection criteria has discriminated against people in the community or private sector as it was virtually incomprehensible to them.
He says there are four core values he believes the public service should embody.
Integrity (honesty, consistency, impartiality and acting in the public interest). Honesty to the system and consistency that delivers appropriate outcomes rather than turning the public service into a 19th century industrial machine - including flexibility in the system for particular geographic and demographic needs. He says that with impartiality we must remain responsive to community needs and when acting in the public interest, bearing in mind that it is the elected government who decides what is in the public interest (advised by public servants), not the public service directly.
Trust (respectful, empathic, compassionate, collaborative).
Respectful and empathetic towards citizens and collaboration "across the extending range of actors that are now involved in the delivery of government", not simply with other agencies.
Service (quality-focused, citizen-centric, innovative, flexible).
Peter is absolutely of the view that it is better for a government to have no new policy at all than for a government to announce new policies and have the public service fail to deliver it on time and on budget. He says that the public service, by failing to be quality-focused, damages its own reputation and that of government - leading to issues in the future. Peter days that citizens are not customers, representing a profound difference in approach. "Yes we deliver with people's rights, but they come with responsibilities. Yes we deliver people benefits, but they come with obligations".
Peter says that often the Commonwealth would deliver pilot programs, pilot not due to the goal of evaluating approaches and expanding successful trials, but due to lack of funds for a full delivery. He says we need to be serious about pilots.
Accountability (responsibility, transparency, confidentiality)
Peter says that transparency is vital and more transparency is needed. He says that the information collected by government with public money should be licensed under creative commons and be available to the public.
However he says the decision on what is to be released should be decided by parliament (in a broad sense). The public service requires confidentiality to deliver frank and fearless advice to government.
in his final thoughts on the NSW public service, Peter says we need to address the vertical rigidities in government hierarchy. We must give greater power to people who hold more junior positions in the public service.
He also says that incresingly public servants will work with others to deliver public service and the public servants must develop facilitation skills to be successful.
In the end, Peter says, we will know the NSW public service will be successful when it is known worldwide for attracting the best people and delivering effective outcomes within the core values of public service.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Guest post: Are Australian politicians really comfortable with Gov 2.0 and social media? | Tweet |
Steve Davies posted a very interesting piece on OzLoop last week, which with his permission I've posted below.
The original, including comments from one of Australia's Senators, is available at http://apsozloop.ning.com/profiles/blogs/are-australian-politicians
Are Australian politicians really comfortable with Gov 2.0 and social media?
I thought a lot about this post. On the one hand it is political, on the other it is about how the community and politicians talk and listen to each other. The essence of Gov 2.0 if you will.
So my focus in this post is on the dynamic we have all witnessed. The politics and issues associated with the example I use - climate change and the proposed carbon tax - are being chased around the back garden by my dogs. That should keep both those elements in check.
The contrast between members of the Australian Government and the United States Government could not be more stark.
In the United States we see Townhall @ The White House. In Australia we see a very traditional and controlling approach over Climate Change and, more specifically, the proposed introduction of the carbon tax. If ever there was a case for early discussion and engagement with the whole community using social media the carbon tax was it.
Instead, what we see is a flurry of political activity and committee work, a poor flow of information and, of course, the media making a lot of commentary. Sitting somewhere in the middle of all this activity is the community.
What is challenging, however, is that if the essence of Gov 2.0 is talking and listening then it seems pretty clear that we have to ask questions about the behaviour of our politicians.
We all know there are politicians who are passionate advocates of Gov 2.0. However, the fact that we see nothing like the Townhall @ the White House and see such a traditional approach to the question of climate change and the proposed climate tax is a clear indication that most of our politicians (and their advisors), are locked into a set of behaviours that are, well, very Gov 1.0.
While it is the job of politicians to be political over questions of policy and direction, the time may now be with us when our politicians need to be un-political about when and how they talk and listen to the community. So the bottom line is that for Gov 2.0 to really work the quality of the talking and listening needs to improve between members of the community, public service and politicians.
For many of our politicians that probably means a changing professional practices and habits built up over years. So no, at present many of our politicians are not comfortable with Gov 2.0 and social media.
Wouldn't it be nice to actually sit down over coffee with a few and explore how to improve the quality of listening and talking and take it from there. The vast majority are great face-to-face. Just like the rest of us.
Check out Expert Labs.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
What type of rubbish service should we expect from government? | Tweet |
A couple of weeks ago I had one of the most traumatic experiences a citizen can have with government, the type that can shake one's faith with the system to the core...
My garbage wasn't collected on schedule.
Just like any other week I put out my garbage and recycling bins on Wednesday night.
On Thursday morning, when going out to collect my bins, I found to my horror that while my recycling had been collected, my garbage bin, alone of all the bins on the street, remained full of rubbish.
Naturally I did what any other 21st century citizen would do - I completed the form on the Canberra Connect website for reporting incidents and making complaints.
The website emailed me a nice little receipt:
Your correspondence has been received by the ACT Government and referred to the relevant business unit for action and/or response.
Your reference number is: #xxxxxx-xxxxxx
You should expect a response within 10 working days.
A response to a simple, and fairly standard, online request within ten working days...
Being the optimistic type, I left my bin out in the hope that the garbage collectors would be notified and return for it over the next few days.
Six days later, on the following Wednesday (garbage night again) I received the following email reply:
Dear Craig,
I am so sorry about the delay.
When you bin has not been collected please call Cleanaway on 62601547 and they will arrange a collection ASAP.
I hope this helps.
The email was almost totally useless in resolving the present issue. My garbage was meant to be out that night anyway, and was collected as normal the following morning.
Is this the type of rubbish response we should expect from government?
Promising a response to an online form within ten days. Responding in six days. Certainly the ACT government significantly exceeded their performance requirement!
However best practice for email responses is closer to two hours than ten days. Even this is very slow compared to the response timeframe normally allowed for telephone calls.
Realistically shouldn't government agencies be aiming for timeframes significantly better than ten days for emails and online forms?
Shouldn't they use the benefits of digital automation to build databases of standard responses to common questions, which would allow new questions to be analysed and responded to with little or no human intervention?
It does make me wonder. Can government agencies expect to successfully introduce advanced Government 2.0 practices - featuring extensive and robust real-time and near-real time interactions with citizens - when they've not yet mastered the art of responding to email or online forms in reasonable timeframes?
