The strategic benefits and risks of permeable boundaries for government websites

In the 'old days' before the internet, the boundaries of government reports, brochures, fact sheets, policy statements and other discrete documents were hard and unyielding.

While a document might feature several attributed quotes and some purchased stock art, all of the content was owned by the organisation that created it. This was a logical approach given the mediums available.

The first government websites followed the same approach. Each was a discrete island containing its own text, images, maps and code. The only enhancement was to link to other websites (sometimes wrapped in a warning that people were leaving one silo to enter another).

Today the internet has matured further as a medium and we have seen a thaw in this approach, albeit an uneven one.

Many government websites (but not all) have discarded their warnings on leaving the site. Some sites now effectively cross-link between knowledge centres, regardless of which departmental or private sector site they live within.

I've even seen some sites embed external functionality, such as Google Maps or Youtube videos, and a few allow other sites to reuse or embed government information or functionality through RSS or other means.

I am very glad to see this shift from rigid to permeable boundaries occurring. It provides a number of strategic benefits for government.


Strategic benefits of permeability

• Greater reach
  Just as governments site their customer-facing offices in high traffic areas to improve reach, in the online channel government must have presence in appropriate sites.
  With permeable boundaries government can be where people choose to congregate, in social networks such as MySpace or Facebook, or media sites such as NineMSN.
  
  
• Reduced duplication (information/effort)
  With permeable boundaries there is less effort required in re-inventing the wheel. Government agencies can embed publicly available tools in their sites and link to pre-existing information repositories.
  This allows the government to focus on filling the gaps where there are currently no tools or information rather than wasting money on replicating what already exists.
  
  
• Improved awareness and trust
  Research demonstrates that people trust who their friends trust - word-of-mouth is a key influencer of decisions and behaviour.
  Permeable boundaries allow government organisations to become part of the network of friends. By engaging openly across existing communities over time this integrates government with these communities, making them a trusted member rather than an aloof outsider.
  

How to build permeable boundaries

These are quick thoughts on easy ways to start turning rigid into permeable boundaries.

• Provide your media releases via RSS/Atom and promote them with your key partners.
  
  
• Display audio-visual material using popular mediums, for example using Youtube for video, Slideshare for powerpoint slides, Scribd for documents.
  
  
• Use existing third-party tools to deliver key features rather than building new tools, for example using Google Maps for map-based functions, Google for website search, Weather.com for weather information, Blogger or Wordpress for in-site blogs and Footytips for an internal football tipping competition.
  
  
• Use Govdex to develop an extranet to share information with trusted strategic partners.
  
  
• Engage officially with existing online communities where there is clear benefit for doing so, for instance with online forums related to your area of business, with appropriate social networks and industry groups.
  
  
• Build an appropriate and managed presence in a virtual world, such as Second Life.

And manage all these online initiatives, just as your agency would manage a new shopfront or service. Online engagement isn't tick-a-box, it requires ongoing commitment to succeed.

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Build egovernment trust, not privacy

Government Computer News reports that in Singapore government departments share the personal information of their customers in order to provide better egovernment services.

As reported in the article, Singaporese put a lot into passwords,

Singapore’s citizens are accustomed to the government knowing who they are when they access e-government services. With a mandatory password system named SingPass, in place since 2003, government forms download — after authentication — with personal data prepopulated into the fields.

Since the early 1990s, the government has used standardized, cross-agency data-naming conventions for elements such as names and addresses. It also has standardized data elements in the business and land registry domains. SingPass is also a reusable component for agencies building e-services.

In Australia data sharing across government departments is often perceived as a bad thing. Singapore's egovernment approach would be considered as reducing citizen privacy.

However within Singapore the approach is seen as a privacy enhancement.

What's the difference? Trust

As it states in the article (bolding is mine),

Citizens don’t welcome Big Brother surveillance, said Prashent Dhami, a senior consultant at the Singapore branch of consulting firm Frost and Sullivan. But most Singaporese tend to trust their government, Dhami said. Plus, technology infuses the lives of citizens from a young age. “You use technology so much, you start to understand it, you start to trust it. People have seen very few failed attempts at technology,” he added. SingTel, the largest local telecommunications provider, even sends text advertisements to mobile phone subscribers based on their current location.

Perhaps in Australia we need to invest more in raising the level of trust citizens place in government rather than investing more in technical systems to mitigate concerns over privacy.

In the long-run this could result in improved and more accessible egovernment services and a better relationship between citizens and government.

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The value of engaging staff with your intranet

No matter how well designed, structured and written, an intranet has little value if it isn't top of mind for your staff.

One of my primary goals in managing my agency's intranet is to ensure it remains well used - high on the list of resources used by staff when they require information or need to complete a task.

What's the value?
My top-of-mind values for the use of the intranet include,

• Strategic alignment
  Supports the organisation in communicating and reinforcing its strategic goals, thereby helping staff act in support of the organisation's aims in a consistent manner
  

• Consistent levels of quality service delivery
  The intranet, as a single current navigable source of processes, information and tools, can influence the consistency and quality of services delivered from diverse locations more effectively than managers, training or printed documentation.
  

• Organisational knowledge creation, retention and dissemination
  As a well-structured and searchable repository, an intranet can both help capture and disseminate organisational knowledge, as well as facilitate expert networks and collaboration. Note this doesn't make an intranet an information management system in the traditional definition, but it does make the intranet a primary interface to this system.
  
  
• Internal communication and collaboration improvements
  An appropriately constructed internet facilitates communication and collaboration across both remote and nearby staff and management, reducing the tendency to silo and enhancing the quality of decision-making processes.
  

• Cost savings
  Intranet delivery of information is cheaper than extensive travel or the maintenance of paper records for all but the smallest organisations. It is also more effective than email blasts at delivering large quantities of information in digestible and referable chunks.
  
  

Achieving staff engagement with your intranet
To improve engagement with my agency's intranet, my team focuses on improving four areas:

• Usefulness
  Ensuring that the intranet contains the tools and current information required by staff. Outdated or missing content quickly reduces staff engagement with any medium.
  

• Awareness
  Raising the profile of the intranet and what it contains across the organisation. This means frequently communicating how our intranet can assist people in their roles and highlighting new features and developments.

• Convenience
  Continually improving the usability and accessibility of our intranet, particularly around search and navigation, to make it easy and quick to use. The less thought and time staff need to commit when using our intranet, the more they will use it over alternatives.

• Inclusion
  I have positioned the my team as an leadership group to support staff in succeeding in their goals via the intranet, rather than as an expert black box team that interposes itself between the broader organisation and the intranet.
  This means that we share knowledge openly across our author network and encourage other staff to take ownership of their intranet sections, with my team acting in an advisory fashion to help improve the quality of what and how they communicate.
  

At the end of the day our agency's intranet is there to empower and support staff in achieving the strategic aims of the agency.

As the intranet team our goal is to support this rather than control it.

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Transforming government via communities

Every generation seems to live through some kind of transformational national or global experience, be it the Great War, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the 60s, the Space Race, the Personal Computer revolution, the fall of Communist, or the rise of the internet.

A lot of people see the growth of social networks as the next great transformational event for the world - and with some reason. We've seen a billion people become 'internet citizens', with access to global communities on a scale never before possible in human history.

This, in turn, is causing change throughout society. Our choice of entertainment, our approach to philanthropy, to education and to social engagement are all adapting to the new tools available.

It is inevitable that social changes transform governments. For every transformational event in world history there has been equally significant changes in politics and in public institutions.

Governments have had to change along with their citizens, their employees and their peers in order to remain relevant, to ensure their nations remain competitive and to address changing social norms.

There has already been significant government change due to the growth of the internet reflecting changes in how citizens wish to interact with government.

Ten years ago there were few government services online and websites were primitive 'brochureware'. Today the egovernment agenda is a leading driver for government reform.

What we are only just now seeing the start of are changes in how society interacts with government in determining policy and community engagement.

In the UK we're seeing Lords blogging and civil servants encouraged to participate in public discussion forums. In the US we're seeing political leaders broadcasting their voting intentions and facilitating online communities. In New Zealand we're seeing legislation created by the community.

Around the world citizens are asking if their governments will embrace this change, or resist it for as long as possible.

Little of this style of activity is, as yet, occurring at a national level in Australia, but it will.

The question for those of us within Australian government is how can we begin working with communities within the framework of the legislation, policies, processes and perceptions of today's public service - or how do we go about reshaping the business of government to enable the level of participation that our citizens now expect.

This presentation from Deloittes and Beeline Labs, the 2008 Tribalization Of Business Study, offers some insights into what we should expect along the journey.

2008 Tribalization Of Business Study

view presentation (tags: metrics measurement beelinelabs deloitte)

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Should all public housing come with cheap broadband internet access?

ScobleizerTV ( by Robert Scoble) has released a very interesting video interview with David Kralik, Newt Gingrich's internet strategist on egovernment improvement in the US.

It discusses areas such as,

• the provision of cheap broadband access in public housing to help reduce the digital divide and provide lower income people with an economic window
• the practical difficulties in introducing laptops into schools due to the poor ratio in education of IT workers to computers and the limited PC skills of teachers, and
• government transparency via internet tools,
  

It's very thought provoking, if a little grainy.

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