Simple guide to understanding phishing

Like many organisations, my agency warns our customers about the threat of phishing - where criminals use emails and/or websites to attempt to dupe people into providing personal information or account information to a fake website.

Commoncraft has released a 'Plain English' video, which provides a visual way of communicating phishing to people and helping them understand the risks.

It's an approach that, by reducing the word count and adding visual and audio dimensions to the communication, can be much easier to absorb and understand.

Given that video is easy and cost-effective to deliver online - and that it is easy to include text equivalents for those unable or unwilling to view video - it is well worth considering this approach, when appropriate, to better inform customers.

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Twitter catching on in the public sector

While in Australia Malcolm Turnbull is the latest Australian parliamentarian to join Twitter (at http://twitter.com/TurnbullMalcolm), in the US the public sector is now applying the tool for everything from crime updates and traffic alerts to the daily schedules of US governors.

The US public sector is beginning to discover that Twitter and other microblogging services are useful tools in supporting crisis management and in distributing small chunks of information rapidly to diverse stakeholders in a targetted way.

As reported in the Govtech article, Twitter is a Continuity of Operations Tool, State Agency Discovers, the Washington State Department of Transport (WSDOT) is now using Twitter to aid the organisation to manage the impacts of major weather events.

"In an emergency, people will come to our Web site, [www.wsdot.wa.gov] en masse to the point that it overwhelms our servers -- we've had that happen during snowstorms and other major weather events," Brown said [WSDOT spokesman Lloyd Brown]. Because the Web site is a popular source of traffic updates, sometimes it can't handle a sudden spike in page hits, he said.

"One of the things that we're considering if we get into an emergency situation like that, we can update Twitter and our blog with our handheld BlackBerry or iPhone or whatever we have. It's a continuity of operations opportunity for us," Brown said.

The potential for this use of Twitter arose from a recent series of major traffic incidents which left the department's website reeling under the traffic. The webmaster began tweeting updates on the situation and the number of people listening in grew rapidly.

Given that WSDOT, like a number of other public agencies in the US, is already an active user of diverse online channels (with its site containing Youtube video, a blog, rss feeds and an internet radio station), adding Twitter to the lineup isn't a big step outside their comfort zone.

To view how WSDOT is using Twitter, visit their channel at http://twitter.com/wsdot.

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Case study - micro-blogging in the organisation

In February 2008, Janssen-Cilag Australia & New Zealand launched an internal microblogging platform called Jitter.

The platform won the organisation an Intranet Innovation Award.

Nathan, from the Jannssen-Cilag team, has published a case study, Jitter: Experimenting with microblogging in the enterprise, on how the tool has been used.

This provides some insights into the challenges of using this type of technology inside an organisation - namely, introducing people to micro-blogging, and stimulating it's use as a communications channel.

Thanks to Ross Dawson for making me aware of it.

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French government joins the online conversation

The French government has introduced a Web 2.0 portal featuring a forum, wikis and video to support debate on their digital strategy and encourage ideas outside traditional 'government-think' limits.

As discussed in The Connected Republic, the French site is at http://assisesdunumerique.fr/forum/.

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UK establishes digital mentors to reduce the divide

The UK government is working towards the pilot of a 'Digital mentoring' system to support people on the wrong side of the digital divide to cross over.

As discussed in Connected Republic, Digital Mentors, the white paper for the initiative states,

Government will pilot a ‘Digital Mentor’ scheme in deprived areas. These mentors will support groups to develop websites and podcasts, to use digital photography and online publishing tools, to develop short films and to improve general media literacy. The Digital Mentors will also create links with community and local broadcasters as part of their capacity building, to enable those who want to develop careers in the media to do so. Depending on the success of these pilots, this scheme could be rolled out to deprived areas across England.

More information is available at http://digitalmentor.org

It could be an interesting program to consider for Australian communities.

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