Should public servants blog about work-related matters?

Public sector blogging is becoming established in the UK, US and even New Zealand - although there is still very little being written by Australian public servants ('government' isn't even a category in Australian blog indexes such as The Australia Index).

Situations such as Civil Serf in the UK and Washingtonienne in the US raised the awareness and risks of public sector blogging. Both involved very personal 'gossip-style' commentary on the workplaces of the bloggers.

In both cases the official reaction was to shut down the blogs and then establish clear guidelines under which public sector blogging could productively take place - rather than to simply ban the activity altogether.

In Australia there are, as yet, no guidelines for public sector blogging. This may mean that the government hasn't yet seen the need (most likely), or that it wishes to keep its options open as to whether blogging is acceptable in the long-run.

The Guardian published an excellent article on the topic in April, New sphere of influence.

There will be many people who believe, often for good reason, that it is
simply not done for public servants to sound off in public. Would we be
comfortable with the commander in chief of the armed forces being so frank about
government policy?

And yet chief executives of public organisations are no longer expected to
be mere administrators. In the era of the £200,000-a-year council chief
executive, they are also expected to be leaders - arguing the case for policy,
engaging in debate, demonstrating accountability, and providing a degree of
transparency about the organisation's work.

What do you think - should public servants be entitled to blog about their workplaces?

What type of guidelines should be in place?

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Supporting innovation within government agencies via intranet and web

I've set myself a personal challenge this financial year to support innovation within my agency at all levels.

There have always been innovative people throughout organisations. Their challenge has been distribution and access - promoting their ideas to the people that could champion and introduce them.

Being the custodian (not the owner) of our website and intranet gives me access to a channel that can support the distibution and promotion of innovative ideas.

What systems or tools does your organisation have in place via your intranet or website for encouraging and supporting innovation?

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The myth of mass media - it is only a flash in the pan

Paul Budde (former journalist and Australia's leading telecommunications researcher) has published a fantastic piece on how mass media - which anyone born since the 1960s takes for granted - is really an anomaly, titled The anomaly of the mass media.

Niche-based media is more reflective of human communications activity in the longer-term.

The piece also discusses how telecommunications developments, led by the internet, are fragmenting media back into niches - not only geographic, but also interest-based.

It is very thought-provoking for any communications professionals seeking to use media outlets to reach their audiences.

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The future of government - global mega-trends

IBM recently released it's 3rd biannual The enterprise of the future report for CEOs, identifying five global mega-trends fundamentally affecting the nature of business and public sector governance. The video is available here.

The five trends can be paraphrased as:

• Change is accelerating
  Organisations need to culturally attune to continuous change, supporting visionary champions who are empowered to effect meaningful change and embed innovation and change management at the core of their activities
  
• Customers demand more - collaboration is essential
  In a world where citizens have almost instant access to information and services, organisations must become transparent, accountable, collaborative and responsive or lose the trust and respect - and therefore the business - of their customers.
  Existing silos and command and control cultures need to develop permeable edges, allowing free interaction between groups and individuals inside and outside the organisation.
  
• The world is your constituency
  Leaders must think and act globally, considering global best practice and seeking opportunities to collaborate, innovate and integrate across nations. For government this includes sharing functions across traditional sovereign boundaries to serve constituents better.
  
• Successful organisations are bold and disruptive
  Organisations need to have a disruptive mindset - supporting and empowering internal entrepreneurs and new ways of doing business that cut into the heart of organisational cultural traditions that lock organisations into old and wasteful patterns of behaviour.
  
• Social responsibility must be internalised
  Environmental and social responsibility need to be integral to the organisation's mission, vision and behaviour - a key factor in all organisational goals and strategies and part of the organisation's culture at all levels of management.

These challenges for organisations are not substantially different from those outlined in 1999 by the OECD in the policy brief Government of the Future (PDF) or in a 2002 article in the OECD Observer, What future for government?

Do you think your organisation has taken the steps it needs to succeed into the future?

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Is a busy website really that bad?

A theme I often hear in Australian web design circles is "make the website less crowded".

It's accepted wisdom that a website should have plenty of white space, clearly separated parts - and as little text as possible - particularly on the homepage.

Similar to Google's 28 word limit, Australian communicators seem to consider the best homepage design as the one with the least on it.

Certainly in the user testing I've done over the years with Australians I've heard the terms 'too busy' and 'too crowded' come up frequently.

Those are, however, perceptual measures. What about actual usage?

I have never specifically tested for the 'busyness limit' (the theoretical limit when text, link or graphical density begins to negatively impact on user task completion) - nor am I aware of any testing that has ever been done on this basis.

I am aware, however, of cultural differences in website design and use.

Look at the difference between US or Australian and Chinese or Japanese websites for example. In China and Japan, as well other Asian countries, the density of graphics, links and text is up to five times as high as in the US or Australia.

These high-density website countries also have high populations for their geographic size - which may form part of the difference in approach. Perhaps the amount of personal space people expect is related to the amount of whitespace they want to see in a website - although some high density European nations do not exhibit quite the same trend.

With the changing demographics in Australia it's important to keep an eye on what our citizens are looking for - our communicators and graphic designers may not always represent thecultural spread of the public.

So is anyone aware of research undertaken to look at the differences in expected information and graphical density of websites across different countries or cultural groups?

It could be an interesting (and useful) thesis project for someone.

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