From the TV to the net - politics in evolution

I've been following the blog of the Hon Penny Sharp MLC, Red Leather, as one of the best examples in government of blogging and a strong proponent of the use of the online channel.

In late October she gave a speech to the NSW Parliament regarding the level of online engagement by NSW MLCs.

Published at her site under the title, Politics online, the speech flagged the enormous influence the online channel has on voters today, and the level of attention NSW politicians were giving the channel.

In it she asked the following question of the NSW Members of Parliament (my bold),

Political participation of all citizens is being transformed by new media; 80 per cent of Australians have access to broadband and of those, 75 per cent are regular Internet users. For them this is the most important source of information. Without change the traditional ways of gathering and communicating information, such as newsletters, television advertising, direct mail and traditional mainstream news media, will become less relevant as large portions of the population no longer get their primary information through these mediums. This will have a significant impact on the participation within our democracy. The question I ask tonight is: what are we, the elected representatives in New South Wales, doing to make ourselves part of the transformation of political participation?

She also answered this question, having had an intern research NSW MLC use of the online channel,

Only 39 of the 136 members of the New South Wales Parliament have personal websites. Only 12 of the 39 websites had recently updated information; 18 others had media releases as their only current information; three were a few months old and were out of date, and five were a few years out of date. Only seven members of the Parliament are using Web 2.0 tools, such as blogs, polls and online petitions.

As a comparison (also from Penny's speech),

As a comparison, 655 out of 746 members of the House of Lords have their own website. It is also worth noting that the House of Lords recently launched a combined blog from numerous Lords from various parties. The www.lordsoftheblog.net is worth a look. In the United States, all 100 senators have their own website.

Many people may remember the first televised political debates in Australia - they were only around 30 years ago - and how awkwardly politicians first engaged the medium.

Compare that today with the picture perfect polished performances of our pollies (most of the time).

I believe we will see a similar curve with online usage. The 2008 US Presidential election represents the first electoral watershed - equivalent to the first televised debate.

It will be very interesting to see how future internet politicians use the internet - and how their departments and public officials will be expected to embed the medium into their day to day activities at departmental and agency levels.

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How much would your department pay for a 10% improvement in customer satisfaction?

I've been reading an article in the New York Times regarding the public competition Netflix has been holding.

The competition, named the Netflix Prize, has a prize of US$1 million for the individual or group who can improve their movie/TV recommendations engine by 10%.

The article, If you liked this, sure to like that, discusses how Netflix's programmers had gone as far as they could with their available resources and skills, so the company decided to make a large slice of their information available publicly (anonymised to protect privacy) and see where others could take it.

There are now over 33,000 teams around the world competing to come up with insights and algorithms to improve Netflix's recommendations, with a public leaderboard tracking the top forty (the best is currently at 9.44%) and a forum where the teams collaborate on improving results, sharing tips and code.

I can't help but think about this in the context of government.

Every agency struggles to provide the best possible outcomes and customer service with the resources they are given. However few departments or agencies look outside for help - even to other government bodies.

I'm sure there are many complex problems in government that could be looked at in a similar context to the issue Netflix is facing - ranging from simple IT programming issues, to customer service maximisation (such as the most effective placement of face-to-face locations to cover audience needs) and those huge thorny issues, such as devising fair policies or reforming tax regimes.

I wonder if government would be more effective if it allowed talented people to devise potential solutions (for kudos or prize money), which could then be tested, reviewed and the best solutions potentially adopted.

This isn't just a pipe dream. The UK government is running a competition at the moment, asking the public to come up with innovative ways to use government data to add value. The US and Japanese Patent Boards are piloting having the public examine patents and provide views before they are granted and New Zealand had the public write the Police Wiki Act 2007 (on how the police are to act towards the public).

I cannot think of any Australian examples - if anyone know of some let me know.

Clearly there's all kinds of guidelines and governance required for Australian governments to feel 'safe' in inviting outsiders to assist us in improving governance in Australia - but what do we really have to lose?

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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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