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James Robertson of Step Two Designs has published an interesting scenario regarding how a mid-sized government agency can meet global needs (corporate communications, top-level strategy, culture), while also meeting varying local needs.
He's opened the floor for ideas on how to most effectively support the needs of both management and staff.
Judging by the comments so far, this isn't a unique challenge. A number of Departments and agencies are wrestling with similar scenarios and the tensions between top-down and bottom-up needs.
Take a look over at Tackling the global-local challenge?
Type rest of the post here
Monday, February 09, 2009
What would you do? Balancing intranet needs across corporate and local objectives | Tweet |
Friday, February 06, 2009
Government 2.0: The Rise of the Goverati | Tweet |
The US has had a watershed year for government and political use of the internet.
The Obama campaign has triggered a series of initiatives both at public sector and political levels by demonstrating that millions of people are willing and able to engage and mobilise online.
Now the US is beginning to talk about the rise of the new breed of public servants and political players. Those that are web and social media savvy and looking to use the online channel for the benefit of citizens.
This is covered in a new post in ReadWriteWeb, Government 2.0: The Rise of the Goverati.
I'm keeping a close eye on this trend.
US military launches website to cut software development time from years to weeks | Tweet |
The US's Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has launched the Forge.mil site supporting software developers to collaborate online in developing open-source software for engineering applications.
The goal is to cut software development cycles from years to weeks, saving costs and improving time to market enormously.
Reported in Nextgov in the article, Defense launches online software development site,
The collaborative open source software development site, called Forge.mil, is modeled on the widely used SourceForge open source Web site, which provides Defense software engineers with the environment and tools to create Defense software for engineering applications in weeks, rather than the years it usually takes, David Mihelcic, the agency's CTO, told the monthly meeting of the Washington Chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.
The site, launched on 23 January, has already delivered its first software package.
This type of approach and application to software development is not new. Linux and similar systems in widespread use were developed in this type of collaborative, fast iteration environment.
Any organisation or administration capable of stealing the jump on others by speeding their software development cycles by a factor of ten or more is likely to have a large competitive advantage into the future.
In fact I'd go so far to say that in the future those who do not adopt this more cost-effective method of software development are likely to find themselves losing ground to more highly evolved organisations and nations.
imagine the efficiencies of having a whole-of-government collaborative software development site where developers across agencies could share code and coding techniques, evolving whole-of-government standards and supporting each other in developing better software and systems for a variety of government departments.
Simply the ability to reuse code developed by other agencies would save government millions. The potential of incorporating major non-government partners into the mix on specific projects would add even more to the value.
Certainly security would be a consideration, however the systems exist to manage this effectively and policies and processes could be placed around such a vehicle to reduce risks of inappropriate code escaping into the wild.
Clearly, with the US Military leading the way, this isn't simply a pipedream, it's an important strategy for future survival.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Can Australian government become more playful? | Tweet |
I'm a keen PC and console gamer, as are many of my friends around the same age.
In fact I've been playing electronic games since about the age of 8 - which means I've been playing for about as long as the average Australian gamer is old (30 years old).
While my parents feel I am a bit strange to be playing games at my age, actually I am in the majority. 68% of Australians play PC and console games (and 88% of households had a device for playing PC or console games), based on the Interactive Australia 2009 report from Bond University, conducted on behalf of the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia (IEAA). Links to the report are below.
Now these are not people who simply pick up a game controller a few times a year. Half of all gamers play daily or every other day and another quarter play once a week, for an average game session of an hour.
Games are also not the teenage male preserve that some people appear to believe. 46% of gamers are female, with games such as The Sims, SingStar and Wii Fit doing a great deal to widen the demographics.
70% of parents play games - alongside 80% of their children (including mine).
About 84% of Australians aged 16-25 play computer and console games. That's almost as high as the number who watch TV or surf the internet. And 52% of those over 50 years classify themselves as gamers. That's more than use the internet!
In fact Australians paid twice as much on PC and console games as they did on movies in 2008 - $1.9 billion dollars, continuing a growth trend for games that has been reported over the last five or more years (incidentally music sales were much lower than movies).
Finally, 75% of gamers say interactivity in games makes them more educational
than other media.
So given the huge interest in gaming by the Australian public, shouldn't government be getting a little more playful in how it presents information?
Gaming in the public sector
We've already seen some successful gaming initiatives in Australian government, notably by the Department of Defence, who has developed a series of games to attract, interest and engage younger people to sign-up for a military career.
These mini-games have been quite successful, although they are not as large a production as America's Army - the US Army's game, which is as well-designed and polished as commercial game titles (and also quite fun).
There have been some other game-like entertainment activities produced by Australian agencies from time-to-time, particularly by Queensland Transport who has a kids' entry point similar to the US Federal government's kids.gov.
However there have been few attempts to provide solid entertainment-backed education or communications strategies for adults by the public sector. Maybe it's a dignity thing, but it seems that many Australian government agencies aren't yet ready to let down their bureaucratic hair and be playful.
I hope this changes in the future. In fact if gaming continues to grow I believe it is almost inevitable. I'd hazard a guess that the majority of public servants - like the majority of Australians, play games at least semi-regularly. As the average age of gamers increases (from 30 years old), so will the willingness of public sector organisations to experiment with more interactive and fun ways for citizens to engage with government.
Then again why wait?
Disclaimer:
I have been deeply involved with games throughout the last thirty years, so figured I should point out my bias here.
I am an avid player of games across online, PC, console and mobile platforms (often with my children), and a frequent visitor to the world of Azeroth (along with 10 million others).
I also have a background as an editor of an online gaming publication, in game review writing and in game design, both for commercial games (one as lead designer) and game-based activities for 'boring' companies (including many on this page - try out the rock concert!)
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Microsoft online campaign encouraging US government IT officials to post best practice videos | Tweet |
Over in the US Microsoft is running a major campaign targeting government which aims to collect best practice videos from senior IT leaders in the public sector.
Based on the premise that shrinking government budgets means that IT has to achieve more with less, the Bright side of Government site aims to,
spotlight the “bright side” of IT in the government sector with videos, by you and from you, that showcase how government IT pros are putting technology to use to help state and local government agencies do more with less.
Videos are viewable from the campaign's Youtube site - government star.
There are a number of videos already from CIOs and other senior public IT officials, however my favourite so far is the video below from the State of Missouri.
Are we ready for that kind of online knowledge sharing with the goal of reducing costs here in Australia?
And can Australia public sector IT professionals script and shoot better videos than their US counterparts?
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