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Crispin Butteriss from BangTheTable has released his presentation from the recent International Association for Public Participation Australasia (IAP2) event in South Australa.
It's well worth a review.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Moving government community engagement into the digital age | Tweet |
Thursday, February 19, 2009
ATO launches credit card payment trial | Tweet |
The ATO has begun a two month trial of allowing the use of credit cards to make payments of all tax liabilities (up to $10,000 in value) via the government easypay site.
Details of the trial are on the ATO website.
When looking at egovernment, supporting credit cards payments is one of the few ways in which the government can directly support online payments within its own websites. BPAY and other similar online financial transactions are generally facilitated through a bank's website as a direct transfer from a citizen's account.
I'm encouraged that this trial has begun as it supports the case for other agencies to use the same approach for payments of fees and dues to governments - other than purchases of goods and services.
Over in New Zealand it is already possible to pay child support via credit card.
Increasingly credit cards are seen as being a viable payment alternative for government with less of the social stigma initially attached to supporting a high interest cost financial tool. The introduction of debit credit cards has helped this along and I'd expect to see the growth in their use continue.
The use of credit cards has been on the radar for a long time. Searching the Tax Office website, the Ledlin report, conducted in 2003, recommended the consideration of credit card payments,
‘We recommend consideration be given to a survey of Taxpayers on possible use of Credit Cards to pay tax. It is our belief that Credit Card payment would be embraced by many Taxpayers – it also has the added advantage of the ATO being paid in a prompt manner and the taxpayer then having the option of paying a financial institution over a period of time (which is the function of a financial institution and not the ATO).’
ATO response: agreed in principle.
I reckon the ATO has picked a good time to begin its trial.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
US government uses online social media to manage salmonella outbreak | Tweet |
Online social media is becoming an important tool for governments to engage citizens during emergencies to rapidly disseminate information.
in fact it is even beginning to be credited with saving lives during health crises.
According to Nextgov,
Federal health agencies relied heavily on social media to inform the public about the recent outbreak of salmonella tainted peanut butter, possibly reducing the number of death and injuries caused by the illness, according to federal health officials.
Officials with Health and Human Services Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said social media helped them spread the word that peanut butter recall. The agencies used widgets, blogs, Twitter, podcasts, mobile alerts and online videos to warn the public that peanut butter manufactured by Peanut Corp. of America for institutional use and for additives in other products such as snacks may be tainted with salmonella. Eight people died and 500 were sickened by the infected peanut butter.
"The response has been really amazing," said Janice Nall, director of the division of eHealth marketing at CDC, on the public's reaction to her agency's social media campaign. "We look at social media as additional channels to reach people where they are."
The article, Agencies used social media to manage salmonella outbreak, goes on to say that agencies were surprised with the response, with the widget, designed for use in websites, blogs, Facebooks and MySpace, was accessed 1.4 million times in nine days.
We've begun to see similar use of tools such as Twitter and widgets in Australia at state government level, and hopefully the success of these tools will see greater use across all Australian governments.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Wellington city government begins online consultation for long-term plan | Tweet |
Wellington city in New Zealand is preparing for its next ten year plan (2009-2019) and has launched a website, Wellington long-term plan, to facilitate citizen involvement in the planning process.
The site features an ideas market-based discussion area allowing citizens to suggest ideas, then vote on different suggestions to provide their vision and priorities for the city's future, as well as a budget simulator where you can try your hand at balancing the trade-offs a city government needs to make when allocating funds.
There's also various documents and other information provided to inform citizens on different planning topics and a great introduction by the Mayor (below).
A side benefit, through the budget tool, is to better educate citizens in the hard choices necessary in government. After you've attempted to balance the budget and read about the consequences of the choices, it provides citizens with a clearer view of why the government makes certain decisions. This can help when selling a revised budget to citizens (they even make the budget comments by citizens available online).
Now if you consider that the main tools used to deliver this site are available online freely or at a very low cost (ideas market, budget simulator, youtube and poll tool), even factoring in overall website integration, moderation and the need to guide people to the site via other media and promotional channels, this is an extremely cost-effective form of consultation for government at any level.
Integrating online media into a persistent channel | Tweet |
There's been a lot of 'bitsa' initiatives in Australia around the online channel as both the private and public sector come to terms with the new online options to support communication, collaboration, consultation and engagement.
However it's been rare to see effective integrated use of online channels in a co-ordinated fashion to support ongoing initiatives.
I'm not quite sure why this is so - perhaps the newness of the channels and relative inexperience of local online practitioners, the process of piloting new approaches in organisations (one step at a time) or the need to overcome resistance and achieve buy-in across various groups and management levels.
I think this change in thinking is just beginning to take root. Rather than simply posting a video, creating a short-term blog or taking steps into online conversations through forums, I am seeing more initiatives making use of a diverse set of online tools in a more consistently integrated fashion.
I have been doing a lot of thinking around how to implement an integrated department or agency level online channel, integrating various tools from blogs, forums, wikis, video and podcasts through to idea markets, social networks, virtual worlds and micro-blogs (plus new media as they become available and grow in usage - such as mobile platforms).
The aim is to create an ongoing conversational channel with citizens and stakeholders rather than a short-term promotional 'flash-in-the-pan'. This would become an established engagement channel for an agency, facilitating long-lasting customer relationships.
This channel would sit alongside and support existing channels such as face-to-face, other media avenues and various stakeholder and citizen groups to enable an agency or department to research, test, review and deliver initiatives and campaigns while receiving constant intelligence from the public to help it understand and maintain appropriate alignment with community values and needs.
This is the 'end-game', so to speak, that I've been interested in achieving since joining the public sector - making government agencies more accessible and responsive to the community they serve while ensuring appropriate transparency and accountability is maintained.
I'm interested in chatting with anyone who has been thinking in a similar vein, or has implemented such a system. Please drop me a line.
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