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The Pew Internet & American Life Project has surveyed a group of internet leaders, activists and analysts on their predictions for the internet of 2020 - now only 11 years away.
Some of the predictions are very relevant to government and our role within society, such as views on organisational transparency, copyright and social justice.
In many cases the views of the experts were that while the internet would enable transparency and reduce the capacity for copyright to function under current models (with a constant arms struggle into the future), this would not necessarily lead to a fairer and more just society.
It's a very interesting and thought-provoking read, if not a particularly positive view.
It looks as if an internet-enabled utopian society may fall victim to the same human foibles, politics and power struggles as have all former utopian dreams - with a caveat that at least we'll be more transparent and open about it.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
2020: future of the internet | Tweet |
Monday, January 05, 2009
Vic government publishes intranet IA best practice analysis report | Tweet |
The Victorian government has published the Intranet Information Architecture Best Practice Analysis report, conducted by the IA Strategy project team in the Web Domain Group, Department of Human Services (DHS) Victoria.
The analysis is available in summary and in full from the eGovernment Resource centre.
One of the writers of the report, Suze Ingram, has also published comments on her blog as 10 Intranet Best Practice (and more...).
The best practices outlined in the report are supported by evidence statements from various intranet experts to help intranet teams support their case when arguing for improvements.
One of the most interesting sections for me is regarding adequate resourcing of intranets. To quote the report,
It is crucial to the ongoing success of an intranet, that intranet teams are treated and funded at the level of other vital business tools and projects. A successful intranet needs the appropriate staff and resources so they can research, develop and produce.
In his “Managing the Intranet and Teams” report, Jakob Nielsen’s research has calculated that the average size for a core intranet team is five people. As a percentage of an organisation’s total employees, the average proportion of people with responsibilities for the intranet is 0.27% (for an organisation the size of DHS - approximately 12,500 staff - this equates to 33 staff). Some of these team members had other job responsibilities as well; team members often worked only part-time on their intranet. Nielsen asserts that “this is a small number given that intranets are a majority productivity and communication tool for organisations”.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
TweetMinister launches in UK as central way to communicate with MPs | Tweet |
Co-incidental to my post about Twitter on Friday, in the UK the TweetMinister site has launched as a central way to track UK Members of Parliament using Twitter.
It's a very slick looking site, developed as a public service initiative by private organisations, designed to allow members of the public to view what MPs are saying on Twitter.
Currently it lists seven MPs, from all sides of UK politics, together with party Twitter streams for Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
It has received some attention in the UK already, with a mention in the House of Lords, which itself operates a blog site, Lords of the Blog.
TweetMinister has its own Twitter account (naturally), where the creators discuss the design and next steps for the site.
It wouldn't be hard for an organisation to set up a similar site in Australia - though it might still find it difficult to find many Australian MP Twitterers to follow. Perhaps a blog-based site would be more successful here to start with.
Friday, January 02, 2009
Twitter successes - case studies for government use | Tweet |
As the government is generally a monopoly provider of services it can at times seem less important to monitor customer sentiment on an ongoing basis or address customer service deficits...until an MP writes a letter to a Minister, traditional media picks up an issue, or the next election comes around.
Personally I see enormous advantage in monitoring public sentiment towards specific agencies and departments - particularly online sentiment (where journalists often get their stories).
This allows departments greater early warning of issues, with the ability to address them more quickly. It also provides a baseline of public perceptions that senior public servants can use when a Minister receives details of a specific incident, which might be able to be correctly positioned a complaint as isolated or used to support the case for wider reforms that an agency has already identified as necessary.
I've posted previously about the range of US government agencies and elected officials using Twitter, the most popular web-based 'micro-blogging' service, in various initiatives ranging from disaster recovery, through traffic management, policy development, customer service and monitoring public sentiment. You'll find my post at Twitter catching on in the public sector and List of US government Twitter users.
An upcoming book by Shel Israel will be recounting stories of how organisations have used Twitter to navigate public relations issues and deliver positive customer service experiences. It will also contain some of the examples where organisations ignored online conversations and lost business and public reputation.
Shel has begun publishing notes about some of the case studies he'll be using in his book in his blog, Global Neighbours. These include,
- U-Haul - where a single bad experience has echoed to more than 10,000 people and taken up in broader media,
- Zappo - a US-based online retailer founded in 1999, now selling more than US$1 billion per year, which uses Twitter as a tool to carry the corporate culture beyond the organisation's walls to establish credibility with customers,
- HR Block - who uses Twitter to build bridges with Gen X and Y clients just entering the tax paying arena, in order to lock them in as customers for life, and
- Ford - who used Twitter to minimise a major reputation issue which could have created national media headlines - but only because they had built online credibility over time prior to the issue.
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Selecting the right online tools for community consultation | Tweet |
The International Association for Public Participation has developed a Community Engagement Spectrum (PDF) to assist public servants in selecting the right approaches to use in different forms of public engagement.
The Online Community Consultation blog has built on this, with a post, Which Online Tools are Right for your Project? detailing a chart of some of the online tools that can be used for different forms of community engagement.
While the post is slanted towards the features in 'Bang the table' it's still a useful guide as to which online tools are best used for particular engagement needs.
