Changing an intranet from 'talk at' to 'talk with'

Traditional media tends to talk at consumers rather than talking with them.

This is often due to the one-way mediums used and is also a reflection of the self-centric world view people and organisations tend to develop.

Humans tend to carry over existing ideas, approaches and methods into new mediums, and then figure out how they have to change them. The early days of movies, with stage show-like productions is a classic example.

This tendency has also led to ten years of websites and intranets falling into the same pattern of talking at their audiences, with the new new thing only now being to talk with them.

Our audiences, also used to being talked at, sometimes find it a little confronting to suddenly be asked what they think, though the last ten years have changed this to some degree.

One of my challenges for my agency's intranet is to influence the approach of our content publishers and consumers from talk at to talk with.

It's a tiny change in words, but can be life-changing for an organisation or individual.

Our latest initiative in this area has been to add a page rating/feedback system, which allows any staff member, on most pages of our intranet, to tell us whether the contents met their needs fully, partially or not at all.

They can then leave feedback as to why the content didn't meet their needs, to allow the content owner to consider and reassess the page and make any necessary changes.

We allow staff to make comments as frequently as they like, and do not protect any pages from commentary (although certain pages are excluded as they are either transitory news stories or purely navigational pages).

The only restriction on staff is that they are identified when submitting a rating and/or feedback. This is to ensure the system is used responsibly and prevents any anonymous biasing of page content - either to the positive or negative.

Content authors can view the ratings and feedback for their pages, and centrally we can view all ratings and feedback, to help identify areas of improvement.

Since introducing the system in the second week of August, we've received an average of more than 30 ratings per day, with feedback on over 100 pages in the intranet. There's a good spread of 'yes', 'partially' and 'no' ratings, indicating that our staff are willing to tell content owners when they've provided exactly what was needed, as well as when they have not.

We're now working with content owners to help them take full advantage of the system in adjusting content, where required, to more fully support our staff and thereby help them in their jobs.

Centrally my team is using the system to identify areas where our intranet currently lacks content important to staff and support our other measures of staff satisfaction.


This type of feedback system isn't particularly new or leading edge in itself, but the impact it can have on the organisation is profound.

In the short-term we are forming a better understanding of staff needs and building towards more of a two-way interaction with them to support them in their roles.

Over the longer-term we're creating greater engagement and participation in the intranet as a staff support tool.

We're also supporting the success of content authors and owners. While we have a fantastic group of authors now, who are committed to ensuring our staff have what is needful, the page rating/feedback tool adds a layer of accountability to their actions. They can more rapidly identify how successful they have been and make their content even better targeted.

This type of interaction system is a lot of work to run and manage. It requires more effort to interact with others and continually improve than it does to write content, tick the box and move on - never to review it again.

However the rewards for the organisation are immense.

• Improved staff morale - as they are heard and supported
• Better customer service - as staff can access appropriate content and support
• Greater intranet engagement - allowing the system to become a strong staff support tool
• More effective organisational management - the system increases managerial understanding of staff needs
  

The next step (in six months) is to consider this approach for our website....

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Managing a cross-agency/government project online

I believe that one of the keys to successful projects is to maximise time spent on the project goals and minimise time spent dealing with project tools.

In the past I've seen projects fail or delayed due to the difficulty in managing project teams across different areas of a single organisation or, worse yet, across organisations.

The tools used to manage project teams often do not translate across organisational silos.

Fortunately, in a connected world, we can do better. Below is one vision of how to run a major project (at low cost) using secure and well established online tools.

You'll see most of them in my Top Tools list - and, yes, I've eaten my own dogfood.

1. Create a secure Govdex group to centralise project information and allow project team members to collaboratively develop project documents (as wiki pages)
   
2. Use a Yahoo group or Google group to manage an email discussion list and calendar
3. Use Mindjet to brainstorm the project
4. Use Google docs to collaboratively work on project tasks and formal documents such as a risk register and issues list
   
5. Use Basecamp or Copperproject for project timelining and gantt charting
   
6. Use Webex for video conferencing across the team, or free voice conferences via Skype
   
7. Use Flickr or Photodump to store photos and images
8. Create and manage a project blog/diary via Blogger (public or private)
9. Share PowerPoint presentations via Slideshare
10. Share project videos via YouTube

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How should intranet teams spend their time?

Catherine Grenfell of Step Two Designs has written an excellent article on how intranet teams should spend their time, divided between day-to-day maintenance, new projects and initiatives and relationship management with internal stakeholders.

She left out one small area - networking with peers for fresh ideas and approaches to common issues.

For this, the Intranet Peers in government group is well worth a look (it's operated by Step Two as well).

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Trialing Windows Live Writer

This is a quick test of the use of Windows Live Writer to produce blog posts offline - for those rare occasions where I am not connected to the internet.

The tool lets me

• Set up my blogs
• Write posts
• Save them for later publishing
• Send them automatically when I connect

It picks up the categories from my blog, and largely uses my blog styles.

I like the spellchecker in Firefox better however!

Setting the date and time of publishing is a little odd as well.

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Does government assess online channel risks effectively?

When chatting with a friend about risk management via IRC recently, he referred me to the essay The Psychology of Security.

This is quite a good paper discussing how poor humans are at understanding and assessing risks and their impact on security.

Most of the time, when the perception of security doesn't match the reality of security, it's because the perception of the risk doesn't match the reality of the risk. We worry about the wrong things: paying too much attention to minor risks and not enough attention to major ones. We don't correctly assess the magnitude of different risks.

Gain versus loss
One area it explores is how most people are more worried about the risk of a potential loss than inspired by a potential gain - even when the probability is the same.

When the same risk is presented in two different ways, as the probability of a gain or as the probability of a loss, people respond differently, as illustrated in this example from the essay,

In this experiment, subjects were asked to imagine a disease outbreak that is expected to kill 600 people, and then to choose between two alternative treatment programs. Then, the subjects were divided into two groups. One group was asked to choose between these two programs for the 600 people:

• Program A: "200 people will be saved."
• Program B: "There is a one-third probability that 600 people will be saved, and a two-thirds probability that no people will be saved."

The second group of subjects were asked to choose between these two programs:

• Program C: "400 people will die."
• Program D: "There is a one-third probability that nobody will die, and a two-thirds probability that 600 people will die."

In this experiment A = C and B = D, so logically both groups of subjects should choose the same option.

Yet most people (72%) choose A over B, and most people (78%) choose D over C. People make very different trade-offs if something is presented as a gain than if something is presented as a loss.

A familiar or known risk is underrated
Another area discussed was how people tended to worry less about the familiar than they did about the unfamiliar and have difficulty assessing risks outside their experience. To quote from the essay,

• People exaggerate spectacular but rare risks and downplay common risks.
• People have trouble estimating risks for anything not exactly like their normal situation.
• Personified risks are perceived to be greater than anonymous risks.
• People underestimate risks they willingly take and overestimate risks in situations they can't control.
• Last, people overestimate risks that are being talked about and remain an object of public scrutiny.

What does this mean for assessing online channel risks?
The internet is still very young and poorly understood by many organisations.

The risks are unfamiliar and outside the experience of many people.

While there are many possible gains through using the online channel, there is also the risk of loss. Potentially the loss of reputation and the opportunity cost of funneling resources to online initiatives that fail.

Based on how humans commonly assess risks the combination of an unfamiliar environment and the potential downside can lead to many online risks being overexaggerated, whereas risks for a more familiar channel would be understated.

For example, consider the alternatives of having a minister or senior public servant engage in a scheduled online chat versus participating in a radio talkback session.

For the talkback the risks would often be considered minimal - it's a well-known environment, and while there are risks of awkward questions from the host or callers, these are accepted as part of the background of the medium and processes on how to manage them are well understood.

For the online chat the risk of unmoderated chatters could be a major concern - even though mechanisms for handling this exist, such that questions can be screened even more effectively than on radio.

There could also be risks raised around hacking, which can also be thoroughly mitigated. For the radio talkback the risk of someone blocking the radio signal or sabotaging the power supply to the transmitter would not even register.

Finally, there could be concerns raised around the ability of the minister/public servant to communicate clearly and effectively via the chat tool. This can also be managed - some answers can be pre-prepared, or a typist could be on hand to type the responses as they are needed.

On talkback radio a similar concern would be raised - and managed through media training.

There are many other examples I've witnessed and heard about where online channel risks were exaggerated alongside the risks of other channels.


How to ensure that online risks are assessed accurately
This is the billion dollar question - determining a process that allows risks related to the online channel to be accurately weighed and considered alongside risks for other channels.

My feeling is that the only effective solutions are education, process change and time.

Of these the first can be directly influenced. Those managing their organisation's online channel or web-based services need to be actively educating others across their organisations on the benefits and issues with online. This raises familiarity and understanding, therefore helping other normalise the internet in their worldview and thereby begin treating online risks in a similar way to those for other channels.

Process change involves modifying the processes around risk identification and rating in order to rebalance the consideration. This can be influenced by education, however generally requires profound changes to organisational risk frameworks, corporate guidelines and policies. High level support is necessary to move this along.

The final solution, time, can be influenced by education, but only to a degree. At the end of the day it may simply require another 20-30 years for organisations to undergo the changes required to understand and integrate online risks accurately into an overall risk framework.


How does your organisation weigh online risks?
I'm interested in how other organisations weigh online risks - whether the risk of change
or the risk of not changing.

What's been your experience of how organisations compare online risks versus others?

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