The value of web 2.0 to government

I've been reading about a presentation given by Michael Specht at PubCamp Sydney, an event that brought together old and new media people to look at opportunities and threats facing the industry.

He gave a an impromptu presentation on Enterprise 2.0, which contained a number of insights that apply equally to the public sector.

The full presentation and Michael's slide notes are at Enterprise 2.0, employees and profits.

Below is a summary of some of the key takeaways for me, with quotes from Michael's slide notes.

• The active engagement of employees in an organisation delivers enormous financial benefits
  A 2007/2008 Watson & Wyatt research report looked at employee engagement on a global basis and showed a strong linkage between engagement and financial performance. In summary organisations in the top 25% of engagement had a 20% total return to shareholders, a 22% market premium and $276K productivity per employee when compared to the bottom 25%.

• Most Australian workers are not fully engaged - this results in productivity losses
  A Gallup poll in 2005 of 1,500 employees found that 20% are actively disengaged (disruptive, unproductive or disloyal), with another 62% not committed to their role or employer. Gallup estimated this was costing the Australian economy A$30 billion annually. This research is backed up by recent studies in the US that found only 27% of workers were actively engaged.

• Communication and customer focus are key drivers for staff engagement
  A finding of the 2007/2008 Watson & Wyatt research report mentioned above was that communication and customer focus were two of the four key drivers for engagement. The others were compensation/benefits and strategic leadership.
  

My conclusion from these is that as social media is a key way to expand communication and customer engagement it's an important influencer of organisational effectiveness.

For government agencies this means that staff have a better understanding of customer needs and views and are able to collaborate effectively either within the agency or across all of government.

The combination of these two outcomes - understanding and collaboration - improves policy development, execution and service delivery.

Reduced costs, improved outcomes - that's the value I see in Web 2.0 for government.

What do you think?

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Does wireless internet access improve government productivity?

The Federal Mobility 2.0 Study, released a couple of days ago in the US, has reported that wireless internet access for Federal public servants improves their productivity.

In fact over 70% of respondents, who all used wireless internet, reported that it improved their productivity.

At the same time only 40% of Federal agencies reported that they allowed wireless internet access.

I'm currently blogging on my personal laptop using wireless and would agree with the productivity benefits.

I primarily use my laptop for work reasons, from conferences, at home and around town. I use it for taking meeting notes, developing wireframes, writing strategy papers, referencing net sites and monitoring activity on our website - amongst other things.

Internet access is a critical requirement for all of these tasks and I can generally access a wireless network wherever I go.

Except for one place - my office.

My agency has no wireless network in place for staff, although there are a couple of test networks in use by the IT team I can see when my laptop is at work.

This presents an interesting issue for me and for others. When at the office I am often in meetings in rooms with no computer, electronic whiteboard or any way to access resources on our internal network or on the web.

This leads to the need to print out any documents needed and bring them to the meeting. I don't know how many people attend how many meetings each day at my agency, but all that paper, printer ink and elecricity adds up quickly.

It would both be a major cost for the agency as well as a major timewaster - printing the documents in the first place, finding the references within the documents, then taking hand notes in the meeting and retyping them into a computer afterwards.

I'd like to see an inhouse wireless network we could use to save all this money and environmental cost.

Would that be secure you ask?
The same report indicated that 83% of IT Executives said that wireless networks can be secure.

Do you have wireless internet access in your agency?

And do you believe it improves productivity?

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Probably the first official Australian Commonwealth and State government Blog: blog.training.gov.au

Nathanael Boehm has provided more details on what may be the first official joint Commonwealth/State/Territory government blog in Australia.

In Government Blog: blog.training.gov.au, he talks about the purpose behind the site and how it was constructed, using opensource technologies to deliver a fast, cheap and secure solution.

This achievement is a great example of how a great deal of value can be delivered within government without the need to invest in high-cost and complicated infrastructure.

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Participate in the World Usability Challenge - 1 August 2008

This is a very worthwhile event with a simple theme.

As described on its website, what you need to do on 1 August 2008 is:

1. Find a usability problem - it could be a poorly designed toaster, a confusing or redundant letter from your bank, or even a problem with your experience boarding, flying and disembarking an aeroplane.
   
2. Design a solution - solve the usability problem, and write your solution down, sketch it up or (if you're feeling particularly keen) make a quick prototype of the improved product/service.
   
3. Share it with a person who can solve the problem by implementing your solution - write to the toaster designer, call your bank manager, or talk to a stewardess. Hand him/her your idea. Encourage them to implement it. Be persuasive! and don't forget to post what you've done on the Google Group or the Facebook group.

Will you be participating in the World Usability Challenge?

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Web browser security - what is an agency's duty of care to customers?

Google recently released a report on web browser security, conducted in June 2008, which found that more than 630 million internet users were not using the most secure version of their chosen web browser.

Mainly this reflected Internet Explorer use - 577 million users were not using the most secure version of the browser - largely represented by those using Internet Explorer 6 (rather than upgrading to IE7, which was released in October 2006).

My agency also still uses Internet Explorer 6 as our default web browser.

Fortunately, as a large organisation. we do not rely on our web browser to provide network security. Our IT professionals employ a series of firewalls and other safeguards to mitigate the risks in using an older and more vulnerable browser.

However the majority of our customers do not have access to this level of IT skills and resources.

Home users either do not use firewalls, or rely on either the basic Windows firewall or one that came with their modem. Sometimes there isn't a robust anti-virus product in use either.

Based on our website statistics, about 27% of visitors still use Internet Explorer 6 and another 3-4% use old versions of other web browsers.

This means that more than 30% of our website users are more vulnerable to security risks than they need to be.

My question is, what is our agency's duty of care towards these people - 0ur customers?

I've identified the following options.

1. No duty of care - it's a jungle out there, our job is to deliver government services not take on responsibility for the web browser choice of our customers.
   
2. Warn - we should actively let people know that they should use the most current version of their web browser to protect their own security, but take no action to enforce the use of current browsers.
   
3. Warn and inform - we should both actively warn people and show them visibly when they are not using the most secure version of a web browser, with a path to upgrade if they choose.
   
4. Warn, show and take action - we should first warn and then block anyone not using the most secure browser versions, forcing our customers to upgrade.

Which is the best option?
I tend to disregard the first option - doing nothing is a poor solution when customer security is at risk.

The last option, take action, is a dangerous path to walk. For customers accessing our sites from within corporate environments there is generally no option to upgrade their browser. Forcing an upgrade would simply stop the sites being usable for these people - including our own staff (who use IE6).

We currently apply the second option - telling people they should use the most secure web browser, but stopping short of telling them whether they are using the most secure version. The shortcoming here is that many people do not know how to check if their web browser is the most current version, so may place themselves at risk unknowingly.

The third option - warn and inform
The report from Google recommends the third option - both warning the customer about the risk and telling them whether they are using the most secure version - with a path to upgrade if needed.

This approach is the most satisfying for me. It covers the duty of care I feel our agency has and supports customers who are not technically literate.

Which approach does your organisation take, and why?

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