How authentic are government communicators?

Are government communicators - and their agencies - perceived as authentic?

If you believe the Authentic Enterprise report from the Arthur W. Page society, this is one of the most critical questions for government in the digital age.

The report looks at three converging trends for corporate and government communications in the 21st society,

1. The digital network economy
   "...providing interlinked, low cost (even free) and easy-to-use ways to communicate, to publish and to broadcast, to work and to organize people with common interests. This is driving a shift in the way people interact with each other and with companies and institutions. It changes how dialogue occurs, how perceptions are shaped and how relationships are forged."
   
   
2. The reality of a global economy
   "Free trade agreements, the Internet and the emergence of highly skilled populations in developing regions have created a “flat world.” This is reshaping the footprint – and even the idea – of the corporation. It’s shifting from a hierarchical, monolithic, multinational model to one that is horizontal, networked and globally integrated."
   
   
3. The appearance and empowerment of myriad new stakeholders:
   "...there is now a diverse array of communities, interests, nongovernmental organizations and individuals. Many of these new players represent important interests, while others are not legitimate stakeholders, but rather simply adversarial or malicious.
   Regardless of motive, all are far more able to collaborate among themselves around shared interests and to reach large audiences.
   

The consequence of these changes, as outlined in the report, is that organisations no longer hold the power in the information/communication relationship with their customers - and it's visible to everyone when 'the emperor has no clothes'.

As it states in the report,

"The quality of the company’s products and services (or lack thereof) is apparent to all customers and potential customers. Its treatment of employees and retirees is visible across the corporation and to potential employees and public interest groups. Its citizenship, environmental behavior, corporate governance standards, executive compensation practices and public policy recommendations are transparent to all."

The upshot is that public and private organisations that wish to continue to thrive need to rethink their approach in a holistic way, not simply shifting their externally communications messages, but making authentic and lasting changes in how they conduct business, deliver customer service, treat staff and address environmental and governance issues.


What does this specifically mean for government communicators?

I've already begun exploring this topic in previous posts - we're already seeing greater online scrutiny and more information available on government agencies in channels that agencies have limited influence or control over.

Over time it will become increasingly important for departments or senior public officials to walk their talk every time, as any differences between message and reality will become more obvious and widely known, potentially creating embarrassment and more for governments or the individuals involved.

Where message and action are not consistent PR issues will arise faster, from unexpected angles and potentially do lasting damage to the credibility of government agencies and the government of the day.

That's not an epitaph any government communicator should like to have.


So what can government agencies do?

There's an opportunity right now for government agencies to join the online conversations, establish credibility (being government isn't automatic credibility anymore) and become an opinion leader, rather than an opinion victim.

While government communicators cannot control these discussions, we can at least ensure we're in the loop, able to explain misunderstandings before they spiral out of control and correct agency mistakes before they become damaging.

This does mean making hard decisions - comment approvals cannot take weeks, the audience's language must be used rather than jargon and bureaucratise, honesty and authenticity are paramount, to the extent of admitting (and rectifying) mistakes and, as the biggest kid on the block, government agencies have to play very gently or be perceived as bullies.

The alternative is for government communicators to fall back on the old approach - make no comment, only engage via 'official' channels and hope the storms that arise will blow over.

There are examples already of how poorly this has worked for organisations elsewhere in the world.


How to take action

• Search for mentions of your agency on the internet and discover some of the centres of discussion and debate. Gauge their tone and approach and whether they would welcome official representation, familiarise yourself with the appropriate way to write for the audience.
• Prepare internal policies on online engagement - how should your organisation react to or address negative blog or forum posts?
• Prepare an engagement strategy that provides the flexibility to communicate the facts, with as little spin as possible, then get it approved and get involved in the discussion.
  

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eGov review: Vic Graduated Licensing System

The Victorian government has impressed me for several years for their commitment to the effective use of the online channel in government initiatives.

Their Graduated Licensing System (GLS) for young drivers has been extremely well-supported online, with one of the most creative approaches to the channel I've seen in government.

I don't know the budget for the development, however they have made good use of cheap open-source applications, using the Joomla content management system (one I use personally) for the website and using Youtube for storage and distribution of the campaign video.

The video created for the GLS was the highlight for me - it is quite watchable, full of humour and very unlike a traditional government advertisement. In fact I first discovered this site through people recommending the video on blogs.

The website is well designed to appeal to the main target market - young drivers - using strong imagery and fewer words that your average government website. The navigation is clear and the text effectively customised for the different audiences, but consistently retaining the same voice and with minimal jargon.

The site is designed to function effectively across Firefox and Internet Explorer and has well formed code and metadata, so realistically a few tweaks would make this complete.

Interestingly enough, the site's government branding is placed at the bottom of the page. Given the audience this may help make the site feel more friendly and less formal.

I found many parts of the website a little disappointing. The body text in the site is quite small and there is no control built into the site to allow adjustments to text size. While this is acceptable for the main audience, one of the secondary audiences - the parents of young drivers - could have difficulty reading the small text, particularly as it is white on black.

There is a search function, which is a positive, particularly as there is no site map. However it is unusually placed in the middle-right side of the site, detached from the top menu and most frequent placement for this type of function.

The search results did not appear to be optimised well either. A search on 'GLS', the initials of the system, presented as the top result the new radio campaign. A page actually explaining the GLS did not appear at all in the first (of 5) pages of results.

The FAQ section could also do with some refinement. Firstly it presents results in question then answer format, but without a list of questions at the top. This means that someone seeking an answer has to read down the page in the hoping of finding it. This is made even harder as the questions are in gray text, on the site's black background, making them easy to miss as they are less visible than the rest of the text.

So in conclusion, it's a good campaign, with an excellent video for the medium and backed by a decent website.

With some refinements to the text sizing (such as a control to change name), search placement and results weighting and to the presentation of the FAQs, it could be a great site.

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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?

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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?

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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?

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