Benefits of universal broadband - "enormous" - UK Minister

I continue to be impressed by the UK government's approach to egovernance, and the understanding they have of the importance of broadband infrastructure to their nation's future.

Lord Stephen Carter, the minister for communications, technology and broadcasting in the UK, has discussed the importance of broadband access at a Westminster eForum and Westminster Media Forum Keynote Seminar on Digital Britain in London.

Reported by Silicon.com, the Minister made it clear that for him fixed wire broadband was only part of the mix, with mobile broadband also being a very important approach for the UK's future.

He also commented that,

"There is a convergence of need and opportunity that calls on government to make its contribution [to digital infrastructure]," Lord Carter said.

If the UK has an array of technologies delivering next-gen services, there is an opportunity for the government to change the way it delivers services to the public, he continued.

UK Telcos are already in the process of rolling out 50Mb internet connections (up from a slow 20Mb) and laying fibre to millions of homes to provide 100Mb access by 2012, and 1,000Mb access (or 1Gb) in the future.

I worry about Australia's ability to remain internationally competitive with our current broadband situation - or a future scenario when Australia proudly launches a 6-12Mb broadband network when other developed nations are already enjoying 50-100Mb speeds.

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Mosman council had launched online consultation site - Mosplan

Mosman Council is well known to online advocates in government as one of the leading public sector organisations in adopting online tools for consultation and engagement with their public.

As reported in the Online Community Consultation blog, Mosman has launched its 'Planning Mosman's Future' online consultation site with video and forums.

It's a great example of how a public sector organisation can use cheap or freely publicly available tools to begin a process of engagement with their constituents.

Sometimes I wonder if large government agencies, with correspondingly sized IT groups, overengineer expensive custom solutions when they could instead meet Ministerial, business and customer needs quickly and cheaply with currently available third-party online tools.

After all we are spending money from the public purse and it behooves us to spend it scrupulously.

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If you can't join them, at least counter them - US Airforce devises 'counter blogging' guide

Nextgov has reported in the article AF Counter-Blogs with Trolls that the US Air Force has developed a comprehensive 'counter-blogging model' to help Air Force blog commenters categorise the type of blogger and respond appropriately to negative feedback.

While I'd suggest that it's better to join the conversation, as a fallback strategy it's a good idea to have this type of framework to help agency staff understand the tone of the blogs they are reading and guide their responses. The Air Force model isn't a bad one to start with - and is available publicly online.

According to the Air Force's model,

if an Air Force member wants to respond, the model suggests he or she consider five things, which are always good advice to follow:

1. Be transparent. (Disclose that you are a member of the Air Force.)
2. Site sources. (Use links to video, documents and images.)
3. Take your time to create meaningful responses.
4. Be aware of your tone. (Respond in a way that "reflects the rich heritage of the Air Force.)
5. Influence. ("Focus on the most used sites related to the Air Force."

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It's time for government to consider the mobile internet

What do the Apple iPhone, Nokia N97, T-Mobile G1, Samsung Omnia, Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1, Blackberry Storm and Palm Pre have in common?

     

Yes they are all sleek, carefully-designed handheld gadgets with a focus on usability.

Yes they're also all 3G smartphones - meaning they provide mobile access to email, web and video as well as voice - most supporting free wi-fi as well as mobile telephone networks. 

They are also all relatively new - either released in the last two years, or in the process of release now (with Sony Ericsson investing in a very innovative campaign).

The Independent likes most of them too (Just how smart are smartphones).

However none of them can load a mobile friendly version of most Australian government websites.

Across Australia.gov.au, ATO, Centrelink, Business.gov.au and more - most government departments simply haven't invested in creating a mobile version of their site. 

After a good look around, the most prominent government website I could find with a full mobile version was Multimedia Victoria - try it out on a mobile device.

Is mobile internet actually important?
I'll admit that for a very long time I was a mobile internet skeptic.

I was involved in developing a mobile platforms around the turn of the century, finding at the time we were too far ahead of the market (despite being showcased at several Olympics and winning international mobile awards).

I watched the WAP fiasco from the sidelines - predicting correctly that Australians would not be interested in taking up a service that provided slow and basic access to selected web content at a relatively high cost.

However since the release of the iPhone and others began scrambling to catch up with Apple inthe mobile phone market, I've become more optimistic about the future of the mobile internet.

It is still early days - only 7-16% of mobile phones in Australia were smartphones in October 2008 (depending on whether you believe Telesyte or Gartner). That's between 1.5 and 3 million  phones.

However with improving designs, usability and battery life and falling phone and data costs, Telesyte predicts that 30% of new phones sold in Australia in 2009 will be smartphones, as reported in The Courier-Mail article, Australia braces for the smartphone revolution.

For a country that buys 9 million mobile phones each year (and has more mobile phones than people), that means that another 3 million Australians will be using smartphones by the end of 2009. That's a total of around 6 million smartphone users - or 29% of the market.

Following the same trend, by 2012 the majority of Australians will be using smartphones with full internet connectivity.

Or maybe even sooner if you believe the more bullish figures from Gartner, as reported in the SMH article, Mobile Revolution: It's the year of the Smartphone.

What does this mean for government?
It's clearly still early days for the mobile internet market, however most major commercial news and portal sites already have a mobile version.

Why so? Not because they see a mass market ready to go. 

It's because they want to be prepared for the mass market when it arrives (in 12-24 months), having already established their position and gained the experience to avoid expensive mistakes.

It's also because most content management systems make it relatively easy to offer a mobile version. It's simply a matter of developing a few additional templates, tagging content and using simple scripts to detect they type of user device and serving up the right template and content. If you're more dedicated (or have deeper pockets), content and navigation can be custom-developed for mobile access.

Mobile versions of websites can also be created on-the-fly using services such as Mofuse (see my mobile blog here)

Now I'm not saying that now is the time to throw millions investing in a mobile version of your site. Just as mass market isn't there yet, neither is critical mass for most government departments.

However it's a great time to begin cheap experiments with the medium. Such as finding out how your website looks on mobile devices (ask friends with smartphones), and dipping in a toe by mobile-enabling part of your site - such as media releases.

You can also monitor smartphone use of your website via most website reporting systems - just in case your agency does have a large consistent group of mobile internet users that need special consideration.

This type of experimentation is good preparation for the day in the not-too-distant future when your Minister is asked, or asks, why your department isn't mobile ready.

It will ensure that at least you'll have an intelligent answer, the experience to back it up and the knowledge to implement a full mobile solution when needed.

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Using teleworking to drive outcomes-based governance

I keep a watch on events in the teleworking world as an adjunct to egovernment - it is a move away from geographically restricted service provision and a strategy for betters managing recruitment and retention outcomes.

If much of a government's business is conducted online and by phone, and widespread broadband access allows teams to be in constant communication by video, voice and chat, the reasons for co-locating teams diminish.

This type of change requires leadership at the top to fully buy into the model and make it part of the organisational culture.

Over in Virginia in the US, led by the Governor, they've run the state since 2005 on an outcomes-focused model of governance, with the emphasis on results rather than traditional time-based measurement methods.

Reported in The Teleworker, one of the key initiatives Virginia has implemented was a teleworking program that is,

...enabling state agencies to improve productivity significantly, slash turnover rates and excessive leave time, and save money.

Quoting from The Teleworker,

"Governor Kaine immediately acknowledged that when it comes to managing by outcomes, the very natural question is: ‘Why do we care where you work?'" [Aneesh] Chopra [ecretary of Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia] recalled, noting that one of the Governor's very first actions was to create an office to promote telework, managed by Karen Jackson, and he set an ambitious goal of enabling 20 percent of the Commonwealth's workforce to telework on a regular basis by 2010. "Telework became a very natural priority for us as we thought about outcomes-based government."

The outcomes have been amazing, from the article,

"This has rocked our culture," Chopra stated. "Prior to this, the attitude was, ‘Yeah, telework is important for the agencies because those people process paper, but we're really important people in the Cabinet. It's going to be hard for us to telework.' Gov. Kaine said, ‘Not in my administration.' Now, I must report weekly who teleworked and how many days, by name. That's leading by example."

The Tax Department, meanwhile, volunteered to conduct a telework pilot program, and the effort effectively illustrated telework's benefits - but with a few surprises, Chopra noted. Teleworkers who do mail processing achieved an 80 percent improvement in productivity when compared to the standard by which they're supposed to perform, while data-entry workers at home showed efficiency rates of 110 percent above the standard. In addition, employee turnover is considerably lower among full-time teleworkers at the Tax Department, just eight percent versus the overall agency average of 58 percent. This retention rate, coupled with productivity gains, translates into $141,000 in measurable decreases in retraining and job vacancy costs.

Today, the Virginia Tax Department's top executive teleworks, as do 62 percent of its eligible workers. All of this shows, Chopra told his audience, that telework "is not a nice-to-have but a need-to-have - especially in this budgetary environment. It's why more and more agencies are looking to telework as a strategy to meet the tough goals."

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