Government etiquette on Twitter

Neil Williams of Mission Creep has published an interesting question around how government should use twitter in a post, Government Twitter etiquette: talk but don’t follow.

It talks about the agency twitter account his employer runs - which is working well - and whether they should 'follow' others (which allows you to see what others are saying on twitter) or whether this is too Big Brother.

The post doesn't answer the question, but does present some views on the topic.

Here's mine....

Twitter is a very loose two-way mechanism. Its design does not foster the level of debate that is supported via a forum or allow for the level of indepth personal commentary (with comments), as does a blog.

The two things it does really well are placing short stream of consciousness messages, announcements and comments into the public eye and allowing for brief Q&A style exchanges of views, without enormous depth or follow-on.

This has made Twitter an increasingly popular medium for government (and for corporations), particularly in the US, to announce VIP schedules, status information (such as traffic status) and notices pointing to indepth website or media information.

It it less used as a method to respond to customers and constituents - but in its two-way mode can be used to gauge public satisfaction and collect top-of-mind responses as part of a consultation process.

It is important to have a goal when using any tool and, depending on the goal and level of resourcing, following has its place.

If it is being used solely as a one-way mechanism (as the BBC, CNN and NewsCorp do for article notices), there is little value in following others.

However if you wish to engage and extend the reach of the channel for your agency, following and responding to direct questions/comments, humanises your organisation and integrates you into the Twitter community. It does require ongoing resourcing and monitoring, which is beyond the capacity of many organisations - but perhaps not Mosman council.

I think the big brother concern is more linked to unwanted follows - following someone before they follow you, however if someone chooses to follow your government department's Twitter feed, if appropriate for the goals of your agency, you should follow them back (perhaps with a notice somewhere to state that you do so).

I can only think of rare occasions where a government department on Twitter should follow individuals who have not followed them - though following some of the one-way twitter feeds.

What do you think?

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How do you sell the idea of a social media strategy in government?

Nick over in the WA egovernment blog Web 2.0 showcase, posted an excellent article back in August entitled, Selling the idea of a social media strategy.

This focused on approaches for encouraging government departments to look at social media - at least as a research tool to understand what people were saying.

Nick referred to an article from Jeremiah Owyang, How to overcome social media scare tactics.

The basic approach Jeremiah recommended was to understand how the market was using social media, set a goal and, where possible, experiment internally where failure costs less.

This is a good approach, but the third step is not always appropriate or desirable.

For example, my agency has been participating in a public forum for some months as a pilot online engagement strategy. The approach taken followed the first two steps recommended by Jeremiah but not the third.

Firstly our communications group had already spent over a year following forums and blogs as part of our monitoring of public channels. This was part of the agency' broader ongoing work to understand the general mood and key issues of our customers.

Secondly the agency set a clear goal as to what it aimed to achieved through forum participation - and communicated this in the forum so that other participants could understand the basis on agency engagement.

However, due to the nature of the discussions taking place, and the technology available within the firewall, it was not practical for the agency to trial a similar approach internally. Plainly speaking, your staff do not always act in the same way as your customers, particularly on different technology platforms.

Moving back to Nick's article - selling the idea. I was actually surprised at the level of support to establish the pilot.

The research previously conducted via reading blogs and forums had helped build the agency's understanding of these channels and reduced concerns around entering unknown waters. Through this it had also become clear that the online discussions were robust and that sometimes complex questions or issues were raised that the agency may have found difficult to fully address via the intermediary of traditional media.

Therefore the agency's decision to conduct a pilot was based on a number of factors, such as a genuine need to broaden our understanding and commitment to a medium growing in influence (amongst others).

As a particular bonus, what the agency learns via the experience will help if there are future needs for crisis management via the online channel.

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How does the government maximise information distribution while minimising copyright risk?

It has always struck me as a little contradictory that while one of the government's primary goals is to build citizen awareness of various services, issues, initiatives and opportunities, at the same time many government communications and publications (than need to be) are protected under rigid copyright disclaimers.

I've even seen situations where government agencies require that organisations formally request permission before linking to their websites, although this is almost totally unenforceable and contrary to one of the primary reasons for using the internet.

These copyright disclaimers and reuse permission processes were designed for a useful purpose, to stop the misuse, misrepresentation or reselling of government material.

This is fair enough. However in many cases the copyright restrictions go so far (all rights reserved) as to work against government communications objectives, making dissemination of government information more difficult, costly, slower and less effective.

Who loses out? The public.

Who benefits? I'm not sure anyone does.

Do legitimate approaches exist to protect government interests but still allow appropriate reuse of information?
At least one does, Creative Commons licensing.

This issue of how do organisations and individuals allow selected but not universal reuse of content is not unique to government. It matured in the open source software area, with a solution devised by the Free Software Foundation named GNU General Public License.

This license was specifically developed for software, but prompted the creation of a similar licensing arrangement in 2002 for other creative works such as websites, audio, video and print publications named Creative Commons. Creative Commons is now in use in 43 countries around the world (and growing), including Australia, to allow selective reuse of otherwise copyright-protected content.

What is Creative Commons licensing?
Creative Commons is a flexible form of copyright designed for the evolving copyright needs of the modern world.

It allows a copyright holder to retain some of their rights, while permitting greater latitude for others to redistribute, extend and reuse licensed material in ways permitted by the holder.

Six main types of Creative Commons licenses exist, depending on the level of control desired by the copyright holder (with a seventh type permitting totally open access). Licenses are country specific and a new version of these licenses for Australia recently completed consultation and is in draft.

Has Creative Commons been considered by the Australian government?
It has been discussed by government over a number of years - and adopted in Queensland.

For example it states in the Stanley Declaration, 13 July 2007, Australian National Summit on Open Access to Public Sector Information,

"The adoption and implementation by governments of an open access policy to public sector information (PSI) will ensure the greatest public benefit is derived from the increased use of information created, collected, maintained, used, shared, and disseminated by and for all governments in Australia."

More recently it was recommended in the Federal Government's VenturousAustralia report Review of the National Australian Innovation System released by the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (Recommendation 7.8) that,

"Australian governments should adopt international standards of open publishing as far as possible. Material released for public information by Australian governments should be released under a creative commons licence."

This was also commented on by the Minister, Senator Carr, in what others have termed a fairly strong endorsement.

"We are and will remain a net importer of knowledge, so it is in our interest to promote the freest possible flow of information domestically and globally.

The arguments for stepping out first on open access are the same as the arguments for stepping out first on emissions trading – the more willing we are to show leadership on this, we more chance we have of persuading other countries to reciprocate.

And if we want the rest of the world to act, we have to do our bit at home."

Where can Creative Commons copyright licenses be used on government products?
While the Queensland government has permitted use of Creative Commons Licensing for several years under the Queensland Information Licensing Framework, other jurisdictions are not as advanced.

Victoria is considering Creative Commons in the Inquiry into Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information and Data, but this will not report back until 30 June 2009.

AGIMO is apparently looking at the national framework, though I have no information on their timeline or prioritisation of this work.

I am not aware of the situation in other jurisdictions - can anyone tell me?

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What's in a name? Choosing the best web addresses for government

The other day I absentmindedly typed in 'victoria.gov.au' to go to the Victorian state government's main site.

However I was surprised when my browser threw up an error, saying there was no such site.

I realised my mistake, it should have been vic.gov.au instead, however this got me thinking about all those people in Australia and overseas who would expect to type 'victoria' to find Victoria, rather than 'vic' and not have the experience that I do to find the right location.

I did a check on other states, from Western Australia to New South Wales, and found that in every case the state abbreviation was the only address accepted to get to the state portals.

In every case I received an error like this one (for tasmania.gov.au):



Given the small cost of registering another .gov.au address and pointing it to the same location, would it not make sense to register tasmania.gov.au, victoria.gov.au and the rest rather than take the risk of people getting it wrong and being directed to the wrong website by their web browser?

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Is there a groundswell of demand for collaboration tools in your agency?

This is based on some thinking (and rewriting of a reply) around a post by Stephen Collins from Acidlabs on the topic of how and why to implement 'Enterprise 2.0 technologies in organisations, entitled Enterprise 2.0 - Identify problem. Determine solution. Then tools.

Stephen was making a good point - that it is important to identify the needs before introducing the solution (or the tools), also noting that it was necessary to engage in some experimentation and 'intrapreneurship', rather than spend months on painstaking research.

In my travels and conversations with peers I've become aware that many of them are seeing needs emerging within organisations for better collaboration tools - people are seeking better and more cost-effective ways to work together to achieve organisational objectives than via shared drives, email, telephones and cross-country business trips.

However in most cases this need is forming in a 'lumpy' manner. Some groups in the organisation are happy with the tools they've used for years, others are seeking something better - particularly where budget limitations and rising costs are making old ways of working too expensive.

Within my agency I've had around eight groups approach me over the last few months seeking tools to allow them to collaborate or communicate more effectively within the agency or with external parties.

Most of these groups were not aware of the others.

Each by themselves did not have a strong enough business case for an organisational investment in new technologies.

However by aggregating their needs I'm close to a position where I can demonstrate a strong organisational ROI to senior management.

I can picture other agencies being in a similar position. Many small groups expressing needs that could be met by 'Enterprise 2.0' tools, but without a clear big picture view across the organisation of the overall need.

I recall a story I once heard regarding a large bank back in the early days of personal computing. They brought in someone to audit the use of computing technologies across middle management and discovered that hundreds of line managers had individually bought Mac personal computers because the Supercalc spreadsheet was so compellingly useful for them in their jobs.

These purchases were not authorised by the central computing department (who managed the mainframe). The individual purchases were made out of petty cash as each manager could not demonstrate sufficient need to have the central department take notice.

This was a collision between rising staff costs, increasing demands on managers to perform more complex calculations, greater technology availability and growing workforce skills. It led to the perimeter of the organisation knowing more about staff needs than the centre.

I think that we are in a similar time now. Traditional collaboration and communications approaches are rising in cost, while agencies are being asked to increase their collaboration and transparency. (Free) social media tools are growing in popularity on the internet and more and more of the staff joining the public service are experienced users of these tools.

Therefore I believe it's important for government departments to review what staff need to do their jobs and aggregating the needs of different groups to build effective organisational business cases.

Otherwise we'll see agency staff doing as the bank managers did - finding what they need elsewhere.

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