How to save $2.6M in government by spending $50,000 - engage the community

I've been reading an interesting article about Vivek Kundra, the CIO for Washington District and an advocate for using new technology to cut government costs.

The Washington Post article, D.C.'s Kinetic Tech Czar, talks about how Kundra has re-energised Washington's government IT approach. As described in the article,

Kundra has introduced popular consumer tools to bureaucratic processes, runs his office like a tech start-up and works by the mantra that citizens are "co-creators rather than subjects."

Where in many governments around the world this would lead to him being shown the door, in the US it had led to him being invited to be one of President Obama's Technical Policy Advisors and his approach may be copied by the incoming US Chief Technology Officer.

Why has his approach been successful?

It's saved money and empowered both government employees and citizens.

One example illustrated in the article was his contest 'Apps for Democracy',

In October, he launched a contest called "Apps for Democracy" to encourage developers to create applications for the Web and cellphones to give District residents access to city data such as crime reports and pothole repair schedules.

"I expected to get maybe 10 entries, but we got 47 apps in 30 days," Kundra said. He said he spent $50,000 for the contest and prize money, and estimates he saved $2.6 million over what it would have cost to hire contract developers.

He also stays in close personal touch with what is happening across the commercial sector, regularly consulting venture capitalists and computer science professors, and spending time visiting the research labs of top companies such as Apple, Cisco and Google.

Kundra's approach is one I'd like to see adopted in Australia. An approach which aims to harness innovation and open the doors to government data. One that acknowledges that to maximise customer outcomes collaboration is at least as powerful a tool as control.

To give the final words to the article,

Arun Gupta, a partner at venture capital firm Columbia Capital who often joins Kundra's brainstorming sessions with District employees, said "there's normally a dividing line between the public and private sectors -- a different culture and mindset." A government agency could take years to make changes a start-up would do in weeks, Gupta said. "Vivek is someone who can bridge those sectors to really unleash innovation."

That strategy is likely what Obama is trying to replicate in the federal government, Gupta said. Giving citizens access to government data and letting entrepreneurs and other firms develop new technologies are considered cornerstones of Obama's agenda.

"You have to have the confidence to say, 'I don't need to control everything,' " Gupta said. "That's very much a Web 2.0 mentality. Is that the panacea to everything? Probably not. But it's a step in the right direction."

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How long does it take to adopt new ideas in government?

Often those of us within government, and those on the outside, can form an impression that the process of change, innovation and the adoption of new ideas in government can be very slow.

However sometimes it is worth a reality check - while the world appears to be moving extremely fast, in some ways really it isn't.

A great case in point is this article from Harvard Business publishing, The Greatest Product Demo Ever and What to Learn From It.

It talks about the first presentation of the mouse, hyperlink, hierarchical lists and other concepts that most of us now use regularly - 40 years later.

Most of these ideas, demonstrated by Douglas Engelbart, took at least a generation to become popular. Some, such as the chord keyboard (must faster and easier to use than the QWERY keyboards we use use from the earliest days of typewriters), have never become popular.

So when we look at the speed of internet development compared to the speed most of the world is moving, perhaps organisations aren't moving that slowly.

After all organisations are made up of people and people can be very slow to change.

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Can virtual agents replace contact centre staff?

The US Defense department is currently investigating the development of virtual parents to allow children to communicate online with parents who are on active duty.

Reported by Nextgov in the article, Military hoping chat bots can comfort children when parents deployed, the article states that,

the military says it's seeking to "develop a highly interactive PC- or Web-based application to allow family members to verbally interact with 'virtual' renditions of deployed Service Members."

While the idea of faking out your children with a comforting AI may sound bizarre, other applications of this type of technology could save organisations significant costs, while maintaining or even improving service standards.

Rather than a virtual parent, consider a virtual contact centre staff, sophisticated enough to engage a human customer online via text chat and address their enquiry.

Termed a 'chatbot', 'online agent' or 'virtual assistant', these applications have been been in use for a number of years now to facilitate human interactions and perform basic administrative tasks.

The original concept comes from an application named 'ELIZA', developed in 1966. Quoting the Wikipedia entry,

[Eliza] parodied a Rogerian therapist, largely by rephrasing many of the patient's statements as questions and posing them to the patient. Thus, for example, the response to "My head hurts" might be "Why do you say your head hurts?" The response to "My mother hates me" might be "Who else in your family hates you?" ELIZA was named after Eliza Doolittle, a working-class character in George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, who is taught to speak with an upper class accent.

While ELIZA was very basic, depending on the entries by the human in the conversation it could remarkably simulate a human for minutes at a time. You can give a copy of the original ELIZA a go online at Eliza test.

Over the last 40 years these types of applications have developed significantly, modern systems are very complex and able to learn how to mimic an individual by 'watching' how they engage online, such as MyCyberTwin.

They can also draw from a database or FAQ system to answer specific questions and learn how to become better at answering questions over time.

The ATO demonstrated a version last year at the ATO showcase and several companies now offer very mature and widely used chatbot technologies for supporting customer service initiatives.

These include eGain and Colloquis (owned by Microsoft).

A number of organisations already use chatbots for customer service in their sites. In the public sector this includes Almere City Council in Holland, Eurail and the US army. Commercially it includes organisations such as Ford and Ikea.

A list of some of the organisations currently using chatbots is hosted at Chatbots.org.

While no chatbots have successfully passed the Turing test to win the Loebner Prize, over a short specific conversation, such as an enquiry to a government office, modern chatbots may provide an effective first level of support, backed up by humans where necessary to address complex scenarios outside the chatbot's programming.

Is anyone in the Australian public sector currently looking at using chatbots to supplement their online (or phone) customer service?

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Does your department adequately manage your website?

As a former and current business owner I'm constantly considering and reflecting on our numbers regarding how well my agency's online channel is performing. My goal is to maintain an ongoing awareness of our performance and why we're performing in that manner.

To that end my agency has multiple web reporting systems in place and I use them regularly - given that I've been measuring websites now for over ten years and have a good feel for valid and invalid web metrics.

For me measurement leads to effective management. Without the information from measurement over time I cannot make good decisions regarding our online channel, provide expert advise to senior decision-makers, advocate for appropriate development of the channel or prioritise the content updates that are most importance to our audience.

However this doesn't appear to be the experience for all website managers across the Federal public service.

Per a report in the Canberra Times, the Commonwealth Auditor-General says many Federal Government agencies inadequately manage their websites, are unaware what they cost to run, and risk providing the public with outdated or inaccurate information.

The ANAO report, available as a PDF at Government Agencies' Management of their Websites was published on 16 December and involved a survey of 40 federal agencies, followed by an audit of five.

It found that agencies were increasingly relying on websites to provide information and services to the public and that,

This increased reliance by agencies on websites to provide information and services, brings with it a greater need for agencies to have sound approaches to manage their sites. Poorly managed websites not only increase the risk that information and services are not provided to website users at reasonable cost to government, but can have adverse impacts on other service channels such as extra work loads for call centres and inquiry outlets.

It also commented that,

All of the audited agencies monitored website user activity and satisfaction. However, none of the audited agencies reported specifically on how their websites were meeting their respective purposes and how they were contributing to agency business goals. Also, most agencies had little information on the costs of operating and maintaining their websites. Agencies with websites that pose significant risks to service delivery or that have multiple websites would benefit from an improved understanding of their website user activity, performance, and cost information.

In the forty agencies surveyed, only six maintained firm website cost data - meaning that the other 34 did not have a clear idea how much their online channel cost relative to other channels.

In another case the ANAO reported that one agency simply provided raw weekly hit data to management as a performance tracking tool, with no explanation of what 'hits' meant, nor what a good or bad outcome would be.

The ANAO followed up with four recommendations for agencies,

• develop a clearly stated purpose for each website;
  
• strengthen agency decision making through improved risk management;
  
• review content management processes and practices; and
  
• strengthen performance monitoring and reporting.
  

I agree with all of these recommendations. They're an important basis for the management of any type of channel, program, project or product - and a website is certainly no exception.

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2020: future of the internet

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.

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