The government that sets data standards controls the world

I was reading through the comments on my post on Make government data freely available, and found Gav's (RedIguana) comments particularly thought provoking.

...Government also must create national standards for data, for example in terms of controlled vocabularies, etc, to ensure that data can in fact be aggregated nationally. It is no good if each council classifies roads differently, to actually produce a national aggregated dataset of roads with wildly differing definitions.

This comment, explored in more depth in Gav's blog, raises an important consideration for government as a whole.

Who in government is responsible for defining consistently usable data standards?

I don't think this is clear at the moment.

I'm not only talking about big picture data standards - such as national inflation, unemployment and population distribution (for which the ABS does an excellent job).

I'm talking about data standards all the way down through state to local levels, such as Gav's example of road hierarchy classification and areas such as geological data.

Currently it seems that every Federal department, every state and even every local council is collecting information on their local environment and areas of responsibility.

However there is no mechanism for combining and making sense of all this data within a single interface.


Looking into the near future I believe that nations that organise their data at all levels to agreed standards, those I call the Data-Haves, will have a significant competitive advantage against those that keep data siloed and on inconsistent baselines, those I call the Data-Have-Nots.

In the Data-Have nations data at all levels can be shared freely online, making it possible to build information maps, cross-reference trends and discover connections and causal events that would otherwise remain concealed.

These informational benefits will allow Data-Have scientists, business people and governments to test and prove new governance, management and scientific theories - leading to discoveries that improve the welfare of their people and their long-term economic success.

Meanwhile the Data-Have-Not nations, who are not sharing data openly, will be rapidly left behind, socially, economically and politically.

This isn't a new scenario - there's a strong case that the Soviet Union, with its rigid and siloed political and economic systems, was unable to survive in the global marketplace because it could not effectively share information between internal groups. It therefore fell further and further behind in an information sharing world.

This leaves me with one question.

How do we help ensure that Australia becomes a Data-Have nation rather than a Data-Have-Not?


Any suggestions?

Read full post...

View summary...

How would you start out sourcing social networking tools?

I've been looking around at some of the interesting social networking tools that are coming onto the market, such as Webjam, for some that could be rapidly implemented within our firewall.

I apply some fairly rigorous criteria. Any system must:

1. Meet W3C, Federal, Department and Agency web standards
2. Support at least AA accessibility (and preferably AAA)
   
3. Meet our ICT requirements for interoperability, stability, bandwidth use and technology platform
4. Integrate with our identification system
5. Be server lite
6. Track usage by user
   

For blog platforms, they must also:

1. Support both individual and team blogs
2. Allow us to centrally control who can set up a blog
3. Be template based
4. Support WYSYWG editing
5. Integrate with an image management tool
6. Support comment moderation (on or off)
7. Incorporate email as well as RSS/ATOM notifications

For wiki/collaborative group platforms, they must also:

1. Allow us to centrally control who can set up a wiki
   
2. Be template based
3. Support WYSYWG editing
4. Integrate an image management tool
5. Incorporate email as well as RSS/ATOM notifications

For forums, they must also:

1. Support multiple admin and moderation levels (discussion/forum/global)
2. Allow us to centrally control who can set up a forum or discussion group
   
3. Be template based
4. Support WYSYWG editing
5. Incorporate email as well as RSS/ATOM notifications
6. Support both threaded and unthreaded discussions

There's some other criteria as well, but I don't have them immediately in front of me.

Fortunately I've found Jeremiah Owyang's post on a List of “White Label” or “Private Label” (Applications you can Rebrand) Social Networking Platforms

The good news - it lists around 80 'white-label' social networking products available in the market.

The bad news - it's now 12 months old. More than half of the products on the list are likely to have disappeared or changed names, and there's likely to be double that number of new players (again like Webjam).

So I'm now thinking about my best course in finding a product that is stable, reliable, and will be in the market for at least a few years - at a low price point with great functionality.

Any pointers?

Read full post...

View summary...

It's not about the technology - it's all about the people

Arthur C Clarke, the renown science fiction writer, formulated three laws of prediction, the third of which stated;

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

We seem to have largely reached this point in society. The majority of people do not understand how an internal combustion engine works, let alone a microchip or mobile phone.

Certainly we've done an excellent job of educating people about the principles and concepts - most people can explain that an engine burns petrol, or that a microchip is made up of electrical circuits, but could they repair or build one?

To live in modern society there's no deeper understanding required - simply turn the key or push the button and the technological 'thing' just works.

On this basis the people who create and repair technology become the modern wizards and sorcerers, who use indecipherable words, strange rituals and bad smelling components to perform their secret rites.

Why is this relevant to egovernment? Because politicians and public servants are humans too - subject to the same emotions, biases and psychological impulses.

Often in government - as in the private sector - technology is seen as a thing apart, managed by strange people who cluster in back rooms, speaking in tongues. These people, commonly referred to as IT, are regarded by others with a mixture of reverence, awe and fear.

Due to this whenever technology is used to facilitate an activity or task, often the focus, and the budget, is committed to buying or building the computers, software and systems necessary for delivery - and the other aspects, the communication, training and usability, is neglected.

I have watched this happen in organisations on a regular basis for many years. All the funds go into buying the facilitating tools, with little left over for the people.

In my view this is a fundamental misunderstanding of technology and is a large part of the reason why so many IT-focused projects fail to deliver the benefits predicted - or fail to deliver at all.

I've always believed the people are more important than the tools. Get the people parts right and even if the technology isn't 100% you will get a good outcome.

This is particularly significant in egovernment where systems are built to help engage people, inform them, communicate with them and interact with them.

To d this successfully organisations need to build the systems to work for the people, rather than build the systems and then try to change peoples' behaviour to match.

This is simply another way of saying go where the people are, which is a recommendation as applicable to marketers and communicators as it is for IT teams.

These principles apply even more strongly for online social media - which is all about facilitating interactions between people, the technological interface is merely the barrier in-between.

This could be why so many organisations have resisted social media - because they don't see the community interactions as the most important aspect of these projects - they focus on the technology they should use, to the expense of the technology which their staff would use.

So why are so many organisation so bad at this?

Because they think it's about the technology and not the people.

And in my opinion they could not be more wrong.

What do you think?

Read full post...

View summary...

Less words, more pictures = better government

One of the biggest issues I've seen in government websites is excessive use of words.

Government agencies often treat each website page as a stand-alone fact sheet. This means they err on the side on completeness, leading to wordiness.

Most of us have seen the research. People don't read wordy, jargon-filled pages - they skim.

People prefer web pages with fewer words, with the option of drilling down to more depth if they need it.

The web is good at this. It's called linking.

All of us have good reasons for our websites being wordy,

• The communications team doesn't understand how to write for the web
• The legal team made us put in those extra (really big) words
• The concept is very complex and people may not understand without details
• My SES made me do it!

It's time to face the music

Why are government websites wordy?

Because website content managers let them become wordy.

As website content managers we are the custodians of what appears on the pages of our websites.

When people want to write long and involved content, it's our responsibility to advise and support them in making the text accessible, readable and effective for the online channel.

We should advise them when other approaches would work better than words - images, animations, audio or video.

They don't need to learn how to write for the web - we do.

Read full post...

View summary...

10 reasons government agencies should not advertise online

1) Our traditional ad agency tells us so - and as radio, print and television advertising is more profitable for them, they must be right!

2) It's easier to simply build a bells and whistles website, promote it via traditional means for a month and then ignore it. Our audience will find it, really.

3) Our audience doesn't use the internet - unlike the other 90% of the population

4) The internet is unsafe because you don't know what people will say - you can trust print/radio/television journalists to only say what we want them to say

5) If we don't advertise online, people won't say bad things about us online

6) We can more accurately measure the success of our campaigns online and they don't always work - it's better not to know we're wasting money

7) Because our senior executives haven't gotten the hang of email yet, and we know that our executives (who approve our ad design and spend) think and act exactly in the same way as our customers, even though they earn more, are degree-qualified, much older and live in Canberra

8) Because if people don't like our campaign that much, they might say so and our feelings would be hurt

9) Because Australians don't really use the internet as much as the figures say they do, they just leave it turned on in the next room while they are busy watching ads on TV

10) Because radio, print and television have always worked for us in the past, and always will

Read full post...

View summary...