How management beliefs inhibit egovernment

I've met people who consider their online communities and online friends as significant and real influences on their lives.

I've met others who regard online communities as some kind of crutch for a few lonely people with limited social skills.

This is often characterised as a generational gap, shaped by how people see themselves in context of digital technologies;

• those born before widespread internet use are more likely to be 'digital immigrants'
• those who grew up in a connected world are more likely to be 'digital natives'

This division is significant for organisational management. It shapes the underlying beliefs, assumptions, culture and therefore strategy, policy and behaviours around internet use.

For example, a group of senior executives I worked with a number of years ago were avidly interested in technology and thought of themselves as in tune with the modern world.

However when presented with the concept of an online forum for their customers, they were extremely unwilling to take the risk of having negative feedback posted about their company.

They saw this as a major risk - many customers were already complaining about their company via other online forums, which were totally outside their control.

Their initial decision was to either prohibit any comments on their forum that could be construed as negative, or to not have a forum at all.

It took several months to help the group understand that if they did constrain the participants in this way the forum would not be credible.

It took about as long to convince them that if they decided to not have a forum then others would fill the gap and the organisation would have no effective online channel to present their side of the story.

The organisation eventually gave the go-ahead to experiment with a forum - which my organisation managed and moderated. Other than screening for language and tone, no censorship of customer sentiment took place.

There were negative comments made. These were responded to with objective and factual information about the organisation's approach and how the matters raised were or would be addressed.

This approach helped turn several of the most vocal objectors into supporters of the company. It also allowed the organisation to uncover several easy, but important improvements that helped many other customers (who probably would never have bothered complaining, but would have changed suppliers).

The organisation now operates a number of extremely popular and successful forums and blogs and conducts much of its business online.

It has changed its mental model of the online world, and this has helped them better understand and meet their customers' needs.

Many organisations have not made this leap as yet, and some are in the process of doing it.

Where does your department sit?

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Does your agency really hear customers and staff?

A constant theme I hear from friends, family and peers is that, while government agencies do put a lot of time and effort into listening to their customers, they don't often hear what is said correctly (any do not even appear to put much effort into listening to staff at all).

This issue is not limited to the public sector, but in the private sector there's a simple metric for judging how well an organisation meets its customers' needs - it's called sales.

In the public sector we don't have this simple feedback mechanism - we often judge by backlash, which can have large impacts on governments, agencies and individual careers.

DOCs is seeing some of this at the moment. It's not always useful as an early warning system.

Fortunately, with digital media, we have many new tools we can use to open lines of communication. Forums, collaborative groups, wikis and social media networks all help organisations to listen to their customers, stakeholders and staff.

Use of these tools by a government agency requires an operational shift in organisational policies. This can be difficult but is normally achievable.

But it isn't enough simply to hear - government agencies must also hear what is said.

This involves putting aside organisational filters, perceptions and judgements and actively working to understand the context and goals of those we are listening to. It means initiating and participating in conversations, getting to know the other participants as equals, as communities and as individuals.

Digital tools can help support conversations, but they cannot create them. This requires cultural change, which can be significantly more difficult than simply introducing online social tools.

It also does no good to delegate participation to those with no power in an organisation - the decision-makers must be part of the discussion.

Otherwise, no matter how many listening channels you use, you can end up getting the message as wrong as the lady in the BMW commercial below.

How well does your agency really hear what customers, stakeholders and staff are saying?




By the way - did you notice that I said it was a BMW commercial, when really it was for Mercedes-Benz.

How well were you hearing?

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Nextgov introduces security assessment tool for government websites

Over in the US, Nextgov has released an online tool explicitly for US public sector website administrators can use to check the security of their website versus the stipulations of the 2002 Federal Information Security Management Act.

As hackers do not restrict themselves to national boundaries - or to government legislation - this tool is useful for government webmasters around the world as a simple test of their security levels against the standards applied by professional security analysts.

As stated in the Nextgov release,

Nextgov and the SANS Institute, a nonprofit cybersecurity research organization in Bethesda, Md., have teamed up on a Web-based tool. It's designed to provide federal officials a means to compare how secure FISMA says their systems are to what professional security analysts would say. As Alan Paller, director of research at SANS, points out, an agency can get an A on FISMA compliance, but receive an F from security analysts on how secure its systems are.

How secure are your systems?

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ATO showcase - government innovation on display

Yesterday I attended the ATO showcase - a day-long event demonstrating some of the ATO's vision for the future for enabling technologies across customer service, information management, collaboration and personalisation.

As part of the day, ATO employees demonstrated a series of working prototypes from business intelligence dashboard through facebook-style intranet applications to virtual customer service agents.

It was a fantastic opportunity to look inside another public sector organisation at how they are using tools available today to generate business value and improve outcomes for customers and for the agency for the future.

I hope it will not be the last such event.

The day also included a number of exceptional talks and panels by leaders from the private sector which ranged across the opportunities and challenges involved in digitalising public sector organisations.

Unfortunately I was only able to attend the morning and lunch-time sessions, however brought away three key ideas for further exploration within my own agency.

I had a lot of takeaways from the day, including:

• We're moving into a 'Participation Age' - younger people see and use PC desktops and browsers as a gateway to connecting and networking with other people
  
  
• Sometimes we focus too much on the technology, instead the focus should be on citizen benefits; creating value and generating better outcomes
  
  
• Significant reform needs to occur in government legislation, policy and agency operations to support participation
  
  
• Government needs a clear mandate on how it may collect and use information in order to improve services to individuals
  
  
• An aging population will make it necessary to use online tools to deliver services which are otherwise not cost-effective
  
  
• Government should not duplicate services that are provided by the market, but should tap into them
  
  
• eGovernment requires reassessment - presently it is government's view of how to interact with citizens, not citizens' views on how they wish to interact with government
  
  
• The end goal should be more effective service provision - which doesn't necessarily mean more efficient service provision.
  
  
• At times government tends to overanalyse - the best way forward is to get started and evolve services over time
  

More of my notes were recorded via Twitter during the event.

Much food for thought.

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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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