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In The Techie in Chief, appearing in next week's Newsweek, Anna Quindlen provides a strong case why no-one at senior levels in the public sector can afford to be unfamiliar with modern telecommunications technologies.
One key reason she highlights is that leaders need to lead - they need to be out in front of the pack, rather than trailing behind.
If not, they are vulnerable to faster moving opponents, as well as to loss of respect from their constituents and staff.
Quindlen also points out that without making effective use of modern telecommunications tools government-agency heads can become blind to how their policies really work for ordinary people, and political figures can be insensible to undercurrents amongst their constituents.
So fundamentally senior public officials need to be web-savvy because they are senior figures with decision-making responsibility.
If they do not embrace emerging technologies they will be increasingly unable to understand their environment or make appropriate decisions in order to deliver relevant outcomes for citizens.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Why senior public officials need to be web-savvy | Tweet |
US releases eGovernment satisfaction results - useful benchmark for Australian sites | Tweet |
ForeSee Results has just released the findings of the latest quarterly US eGovernment satisfaction survey, looking at citizen satisfaction with over 100 US government websites.
Available as a PDF download, the E-Government Satisfaction Index (PDF 1.2Mb) uses a uniform system to compare satisfaction across US sites and was selected as the US government's standard measure in 1999.
Based on the results of this latest survey, there has been a small increase in average satisfaction to 72.9 percent, the first rise in a year.
The report does a good job of identifying the US government sites with the highest level of citizen satisfaction, which can be used by Australian government as good benchmarking examples.
It identifies the major priorities for improvement across agencies, with search topping the list (88% of agencies identified it as a top priority) followed by functionality at 59% and navigation at 41%.
The benefits of higher satisfaction have also been identified in the report, being that highly satisfied customers (scores of 80 or more) are;
- 84% more likely to use the website as a primary resource
- 83% more likely to recommend the website
- 57% more likely to return to the site
The use of a standard government website satisfaction methodology, as I have previously suggested, makes it much easier for government agencies to compare their performance, identify and learn from successes and address issues. It is also an excellent accountability tool for Ministers and agency heads.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Why can one man in a cave out-communicate the government of the world's superpower? | Tweet |
There was an interesting admission from the US Army Secretary last week in Inside Defense as reported in the Wired Danger Room Blog,
Senior Army leaders have fallen behind the breakneck development of cheapThe article went on to describe some of the initiatives underway at the US Army to help it prepare for the new world - including adding blogging to their graduate school curriculum and allowing a tiny office of Web-savvy mavericks at West Point to create Army-specific Web 2.0 tools (blogs, forums, social networks) for soldiers.
digital communications including cell phones, digital cameras and Web 2.0
Internet sites such as blogs and Facebook, Army Secretary Pete Geren said at a
trade conference on July 10. That helps explain how "just one man in a cave
that's hooked up to the Internet has been able to out-communicate the greatest
communications society in the history of the world -- the United States," Geren
said.
"It's a challenge not only at home, it's a challenge in recruiting, it's a challenge internationally, because effective communication brings people over to our side and ineffective communication allows the enemy to pull people to their side," Geren continued. He said the Army brass needs to catch up -- fast. But how exactly?
One solution: "Find a blog to be a part of," Geren said.
Young people embrace social media "as a fluent second language," he added. Army leaders have to do the same.
At the same time the US Air Force is using blogs, wikis and personal profile pages to better support its missions, per a Network World article, U.S. Air Force lets Web 2.0 flourish behind walls.
I expect that the Australian armed forces are watching and learning from our US counterparts. The online channel can deliver major benefits to the training and operations of a defense force.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
What's the level of security risk from government's internal IT staff? | Tweet |
Over the last week a rogue IT employee in the San Francisco Department of Technology Information Services has held the city to ransom - locking down many of the city's services by refusing to disclose an administration password.
The employee, Terry Childs, helped create the city's FiberWAN network , used for controlling the city's emails, law enforcement records, payroll, and personal records. It controls 60 percent of the city's municipal data.
Using his access as administrator, Childs stopped other authorized network users from accessing parts of the network and gave himself access to parts from which he should have been restricted.
To compound this, the city apparently did not keep adequate system backups, and so cannot restore the system from an earlier state.
Fixing the situation is likely to take several weeks and cost in the order of $500,000, including hardware and system changes.
Childs was taken to court by the city, with a US$5 million bail set - that's five times as much as is usual for a murder in California.
Why did Childs lock down San Francisco? Network World reports in IT administrator pleads not guilty to network tampering that,
He became erratic and then hostile with colleagues after a recent security
audit uncovered his activity on the network, according to a source familiar with
the situation.
An article in Wired, San Francisco Admin Charged With Hijacking City's Network, discusses how Childs could have brought down the entire San Francisco city's network if he'd wanted to.
Fortunately for San Francisco, as reported in eFluxMedia, Childs finally turned over the password to San Francisco's Mayor on 24 July - claiming that only the Mayor was trustworthy enough to have the password.
Do you know how much power your department's IT team has?
Obama pledges to appoint a national cyber advisor - does IT need more senior representation in Australia? | Tweet |
As reported in NextGov, Barack Obama, the Democratic Presidential candidate, has pledged to appoint a direct report focusing on online security.
Today most of the money supply and trading in the finance sector, our telecommunications and entertainment industries, a significant proportion of our retail activity and a number of government initiatives are focused on, or reliant on, the use of robust and secure broadband and online services."As president, I'll make cybersecurity the top priority that it should be in the 21st century," Obama said during a summit on national security at Purdue University. "I'll declare our cyber-infrastructure a strategic asset, and
appoint a national cyber adviser, who will report directly to me. We'll
coordinate efforts across the federal government, implement a truly national
cybersecurity policy and tighten standards to secure information -- from the
networks that power the federal government to the networks that you use in your
personal lives."
Security analysts praise Obama's pledge for a cyber chief
I wonder when a similar approach to Obama's proposal will be adopted in Australia?
