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In possibly the most innovative use of the internet by an Australian political party (please tell me if you've seen better), the Australian Democrats have launched the site Bastardwatch, building on their motto, 'keeping the bastards honest'.
The site supports Web 2.0 features such as the ability to Nominate a prospective bastard, add comments to articles and even a game which you can virally forward to friends.
These sit alongside more common features such as a subscription tool and the ability to email several key politicians. The site also feeds into the Democrats online donations system.
Finally the site links to 'the new Democrat TV commercial' - which isn't really a new Democrats commercial, but is video of the fake commercials created for ABC's The Gruen Transfer - a great true-blue Australian self-critical moment.
Let's see more of this type of human face and Aussie humour from across all tiers of politics and government.
As we deal with deathly serious issues in government, and provide crucial services of one type or another to all Australians, it is critical that citizens are listened to and are part of decision making processes, and that the institutions they rely on aren't only represented or seen as faceless, uncaring bureaucracies.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Democrats release 'bastardwatch' site in time for Australia Day | Tweet |
Law not keeping up with internet | Tweet |
In an example of how law isn't keeping pace with internet developments, last week The Age published an article, Problems with courts ordering service by Facebook, which considered the potential clash between an ACT Supreme court ruling and the terms of the US social network.
While the court ordered that a default judgement could be served on defendants by notification on Facebook, the terms of the social network state that "the Service and the Site are available for your personal non-commercial use only."
The Age article, by Nick Abrahams, a Sydney-based lawyer rapidly building his profile as an internet-age expert, stated that,
It seems unlikely that the service of default judgments in relation to a mortgage default could be regarded as "personal non-commercial use".
So we have a curious situation where on one view, an Australian court has given a judgment which may have the effect of causing an Australian entity to breach an agreement between the Australian entity and Facebook, Inc. To complicate matters further, the agreement is governed by the laws of the US State of Delaware.
It is possible that if it was put on notice of another such application, Facebook, Inc may seek leave to intervene in the proceedings and object to substituted service orders being made, on the basis that they would breach its terms of use.
On top of the issue above, I wonder if a defendant on whom a notice was served via Facebook could then appeal or counter-sue on the basis that the notice was served illegally, based on the terms of use of the site.
This raises a number of interesting questions around official commercial and government Web 2.0 services. Some allow commercial use, some only allow non-commercial use and some restrict usage to personal and non-commercia.
The ATO has a Facebook group for the e-Tax application. Does this fit within the 'personal non-commercial use' terms of use of the social network?
What about companies using Facebook groups to aid in selling product - commercial use?
How do laws in Australia and internationally need to change to better suit the realities of the modern world? (a question I am sure many lawyers, judges and policy makers contend with)
Or should we, as we do with most currencies, simply ignore the lack of legal underpinning?
National currencies began on the gold standard - where the government (or a bank) held $1 worth of gold for every dollar bill printed. Now these dollars 'float freely' against other currencies, supported only by a government promise.
Legal terms of use restrict how certain services are used, if these are ignored (or not tested legally), and other types of use is accepted, what underpins our legal system?
I am neither a lawyer nor a fish (read the article), but foresee interesting legal times ahead.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Anatomy of an online political (or program) campaign - social media lessons from Obama | Tweet |
Edelman Digital has published a paper that really drills into the strategy and tactics used by Barack Obama in his campaign to be nominated and then elected as US President.
Entitled, The Social Pulpit: Barack Obama’s Social Media Kit, the techniques used by Obama's online campaign staff, led by one of Facebook's founders, are useful in more than simply a political campaign.
The same techniques could be used by any organisation with an ongoing program or online communications need - ergo almost every public sector agency.
I've paraphrased some of the key strategies used below (the ones that stood out for me):
Provide multiple channels and depths of engagement
Allow individuals to select the channel and depth of their engagement with your organisation/program. As individuals become more confident over time, some will shift between channels to greater engagement levels.
Support super users
A one-size-fits-all approach to users (people!) doesn't take into account the natural propensity for some to become intensely involved. These high-involvement individuals are often key gatekeepers or community leaders and by supporting them in a leadership role they stimulate a lot of their followers to engage through generating trust and confidence.
This isn't new for the public sector - when government agencies meet with 'business leaders', 'community leaders', 'religious leaders' and so forth, these individuals are being given a level of engagement (and respect) by the agencies that reflects their influence in the community. Online is exactly the same - treat online community leaders (super users) with respect by empowering them with tools and channels that support them as leaders in their communities. Note this including listening to them!
Feed the online community
Give a person a fish and he'll eat for a day, give a person access to online content they can mash-up and republish and you'll feed a community for a lifetime.
User-generated content is at the heart of the internet. By supporting and feeding this with content that your users can reuse (in appropriate ways) your organisation will massively increase engagement and reach.
I know that government in Australia is often very cagey about appropriate use of data, and holds deep concerns over inappropriate misuse or material being taken out of context. However this still happens every single day in the media and in peoples' homes. In the US, where government data and photos is all copyright free there is enormous re-use and useful extensions to data through community engagement. in the UK the government is giving cash prizes to individuals and groups who can re-use government information to add value.
Even in Australia the most popular government site (roughly 1/3 of ALL traffic to government sites) is the Bureau of Meteorology - because people reuse the weather data in many different ways in many different websites and applications.
Liberating data builds engagement - appropriate usage can be addressed through existing copyright schemes (such as Creative Commons) and yes, the ABS releases data under this copyright already.
Go where the people are - use the tools they know
A large number of Australians use Google, Youtube, Facebook, Myspace, Wikipedia and a number of other sites on a daily basis. By comparison they rarely go to government sites.
Therefore to reach Australians, use the tools they already use in the places they already know.
It's not really difficult to understand. Federally we run 'community cabinets', government agencies run stands at public festivals and shows and police are told to get out into the community. To remain relevant and in touch, government must go to the people - both offline and online.
Plus this saves a lot of IT dollars by reusing existing infrastructure and tools. I've seen government websites go down regularly for maintenance. In comparison how often are Google, Facebook or Youtube offline?
Make it findable
If people cannot find you, they cannot engage with you. Ensure that you make the community (particularly community leaders) aware of what you're doing. Use simple web addresses and ensure you rank high in Google and other search engines (Yahoo and Microsoft Live). Search rankings may be rocket science, but getting listed isn't.
Right-size your infrastructure
Make sure that you put sufficient infrastructure in place to start with, and that it can scale upwards and downwards extremely rapidly. These days most major hosting companies allow very flexible bandwidth scaling, and if running virtual servers it can be very easy to scale the traffic limits of a site up and down quickly.
This helps both avoid messy and public timeouts, as well as minimising overspend when too much infrastructure is provisioned.
For the users it means they get rapid service when they need it - helping increase the stickiness and engagement of your program.
Put the right team on the job
Government has a habit of rating people by level rather than by skills. This means that often people are on steep learning curves or in roles they simply do not have the interest or disposition for.
It is critical to put together the right team, with the right skills and the right mindset to do the job right.
It's also useful to involve people with strong external networks, who can tap advisors that further extend the effectiveness of your online campaign.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Turning around undersupported intranets | Tweet |
Intranets have been around in various forms for around twenty years now. Many are firmly rooted as an essential tool in the operations of organisations.
However there are many organisations where intranets are still treated as costs or are not sponsored and supported at senior management levels.
In fact in last year's Global Intranet Trends report, 40% of respondents said that the lack of senior management ownership (stewardship or championing) of the intranet was a serious obstacle to intranet success. Only 33% of intranet steering committees had c-level executives on the steering committee (rising to 50% in the 2009 survey.
So how do intranet managers build acceptance and use of their intranets?
Prescient Digital Media believes that one of the most important task for intranet managers is to be a salesperson for the intranet to senior management.
In their article, Selling an Intranet Redesign, they discuss different approaches to selling intranets to senior executives in order to gain appropriate sponsorship and resourcing.
However sometimes senior executive support isn’t available.
Where an organisation does not recognise the value of its intranet it’s likely that the intranet itself has suffered. There is limited investment, promotion or encouragement of intranet use. The intranet becomes a wasteland of outdated and useless content.
Many executives will have bought into the current situation and focus on adding value to the organisation via other avenues, essentially giving up on the intranet. Others will simply be unwilling to tarnish their reputations by taking on a losing intranet proposition.
So if you cannot find an executive sponsor willing to take a risk on an intranet 'nobody uses anyway', what are the alternatives?
Go elsewhere
Changing jobs is almost always an option. Find a different role in the organisation, or a different one (where the intranet is valued). This isn't a failure on your part, it's simply an acknowledgement that at the level you're at and for the money you're paid it's simply not worth mortgaging your own career, health, family and future to turn the situation around.
Make the intranet indispensable
This approach involves identifying information, tools or functions that are critical for the organisation and could be more easily managed or distributed via the intranet. You only need a few of these to start with - get them into the intranet and begin encouraging use, preferably with the support of the areas that need these tools used.
Over time, as intranet usage and value grows this can be sold to other areas to place their tools online. Eventually you’ll begin attracting high level attention as executives realise that they now have a stake in the success of the intranet as it is tied to the success of the organisation.
Build usage from the bottom up
Another approach is to add features useful to large numbers of staff, such as a tipping competition, classified and tools to support social clubs. While these are not work related the goal is to build usage and familiarity - creating a habit of using the intranet.
As more people use the intranet more frequently the growing usage can be promoted to management and the intranet sold as an effective mechanism to reach staff.
Note that this is a risky strategy - if the intranet becomes too socially orientated it can be devalued even further, seen simply as a staff timewaster than a productivity tool.
Show them the money
If you're numbers-orientated, calculate the relative cost of providing services via the intranet versus printing and distributing paper=based tools (such as staff directories, manuals, staff newsletters, presentations and forms).
Also look at the cost to the organisation of staff accidentally using old versions of material - because it was either emailed to them and they saved a copy locally, or they didn't get the latest printed version.
The overwhelming likelihood is that the cost of online distribution via your intranet is significantly less than that of other methods in common use.
This approach is particularly useful when organisations are cost-cutting. Demonstrating that the intranet can save your organisation money, rather than being a cost, shifts perceptions of your intranet. From being a weight around the organisation's budgetary neck it becomes a cost-saving tool, potentially even saving executive reputations.
Keeping up with the Joneses
Another tactic is to demonstrate how far behind your organisation is in terms of its intranet compared to similar organisations. Find examples where other intranets generated wins for organisations - such as cost savings, productivity improvements, staff retention, executive reputations. Even cases where intranets look better or do funky things can help.
Humans are trained to respond to the need to 'keep up with the Joneses', so showing these examples to the right groups can build the realisation that your organisation isn’t realising the value it could be and looks old-fashioned to outsiders.
This can help create some urgency to change and update your intranet to make it more useful and modern - though the process for achieving this has to be carefully managed to ensure that the outcome produces real organisational benefit and isn't simply lipstick on a pig.
Just start
Finally, sometimes you just have to just start improving the intranet.
If you don't start making improvements, achieving a few quick wins, you could be tarred with the do-nothing brush - making it less likely that you will get support (or promotions) in the future.
When you begin with an old, outdated intranet system there are more opportunities for improvement – including many that can be made quickly and cheaply. Use these to build momentum.
Even changes as simple as tweaking search, placing links to the most used tools on the homepage or changing the visual design can give you the wins needed to begin lobbying for resources and support for bigger changes that add even more value.
What strategies have you used?
There’s many other ways to turn around an intranet situation. What strategies have you used, or heard about?
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
How accountable, transparent, collaborative and consultative is government? Could do with improvement according to latest report | Tweet |
Accenture has released an international report, Leadership in Customer Service: Creating Shared Responsibility for Better Outcomes looking at the opinions of 8,600 citizens in 21 countries towards their governments.
Australia, one of the countries studied, performed moderately well. Australians were almost evenly split amongst those who felt that government was good at seeking their opinions, with 34% saying Australian government was good or very good and 38% stating bad or very bad.
The entire report, which is very comprehensive, suggested a range of options for government to improve their ability to collaborate between departments or with non-government and commercial organisations, as well as options to improve accountability, transparency and consultation.
Without going into detail, a number of these recommendations hinged on use of the internet and Web 2.0 technologies to enable faster and more comprehensive engagement.
The report is well worth a read - but prepare to spend a few hours absorbing it.
