Share my story website sets a high standard for Australian egovernment offerings

I was recently alerted to the Queensland government's Share My Story website, which invites individuals to share their stories of road tragedies in order to help others rethink their conduct on the road and avoid future traffic injuries and deaths.

In my opinion Share My Story is an amazingly good website and a model for other egovernment initiatives by governments across Australia.

Developed using open source technologies, the site is simple to use, employs plain english, invites and supports participation and is cleanly and accessibly designed.

Launched this month (January), and already containing 35 real-life stories, the value and appeal of Share My Story to citizens is clear to me in the words of one of the authors, Bernadette Gilligan, when writing of the death of her first grandchild in a road tragedy,

Firstly, thank goodness for this website. I have been looking for something like this for 3 and a half years.

The site empowers citizens, giving them a way to share and reflect in a respectful and caring environment.

Stories are moderated, with clear guidelines on what can be submitted. The copyright arrangements are clear and stories can be simply 'rated' by clicking the 'saying thanks' button for stories that strike a chord in a reader, adding a star to a story.

It is easy to share stories across popular social networks such as Facebook and Myspace, bookmark them with Del.icio.us, rank them in StumbleUpon or Digg, or simply forward them to friends.

There is also a mechanism to flag stories and ask for their removal in exceptional circumstances.

As the About Us page for the site states,

Sharing is a powerful phenomenon. When a community comes together for a common cause, it can achieve amazing things. We can actually reduce the road toll, and that means saving lives and reducing suffering.

This is the type of well-designed and meaningful service I think of when I think of egovernment.

I hope to see other government agencies across Australia work to empower and support our communities, citizens, customers and stakeholders in similarly appropriate ways.

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Winners of UK eGovernment awards 2008 announced

The UK has announced 11 winners and 10 highly commended initiatives in its annual eGovernment awards.

Selected from 68 finalists, there are many interesting initiatives that could be adapted and used by Australian governments to deliver better and more cost-effective services.

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Democrats release 'bastardwatch' site in time for Australia Day

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.

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Law not keeping up with internet

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.

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Anatomy of an online political (or program) campaign - social media lessons from Obama

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.

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