Government-related initiative tops Fast Company's "The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies" list for 2009

It's uncommon (at least in Australia) to see a government-related initiative promoted as a leader in innovation.

It's even rarer to see publications such as Fast Company, with its focus on the most innovative companies in the world, feature government-related initiatives.

However this year Fast Company's profile of "The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies" is topped by a government-related initiative. One which,

took a skinny kid with a funny name and turned him into the most powerful new national brand in a generation.

This reflects my view that the government could be one of the largest beneficiaries of the online channel. The internet allows government to have real conversations with citizens on an unprecended scale - participatory democracy in a way that has not been possible since communities grew too large to fit within a single town hall meeting.

To quote Fast Company,

Barack Obama's presidential-campaign team relied on technology -- what was known internally as the "triple O," or Obama's online operation -- to connect with voters better, faster, and more cheaply than ever before. The team has become the envy of marketers both in and out of politics for proving, among other things, just how effective digital initiatives can be.

More information can be gleaned from Stilgherrian's live blog of the Media 09 event, which featured Ben Self (a founder of the company BlueStateDigital who provided Obama's online community infrastructure) providing insights into how it was done.

Digital initiatives tick many boxes for government - in my view even more boxes than they tick for commercial organisations.

There are the cost, speed and reach benefits - the ability to contact, engage and solicit views from more people than ever before in a matter of hours or days at very low cost.

There is also the benefit of being able to speak with your own voice, making statements and holding conversations outside the moderation, influence and slant of media gatekeepers.

These benefits reach across all organisations, politicians and other individuals using the internet.

For government there are additional benefits in understanding the ongoing mood of a community and proactively creating and amending legislation and policy to better meet current citizen needs.

It is also possible to receive feedback on existing initiatives and develop collaborative policy and programs to help the finetuning process often necessary after legislation is introduced.

Finally, the internet allows government to mobilise a population behind a given cause or initiative, such as has occurred around the Victorian bushfires. For this crisis, for the first time ever, I've seen people 'retweeting' (forwarding) messages sent out via the KevinRuddPM Twitter account.

Of course there are hurdles that need to be considered - the need to be transparent (to a point), and the need to engage in a human-centric manner, rather than as a media statement robot.

These last two factors can be stumbling blocks for government. Transparency involves willingly admitting mistakes and committing to doing better. Speaking with a human voice requires a willingness to allow government representatives to do more than copy and paste the words of existing media releases - to inject their own style into communications.

These are both possible and in many cases already supported in other channels, such as radio talkback and live television. However often the internet is treated more as a long lead time press channel than as a real-time multimedia one.

For Australia to remain a leading nation in the world, I believe our governments need to overcome these hurdles, demonstrating innovative approaches to engagement and governance as we're now seeing in nations from the US to Estonia.

Time and citizen feedback will tell if we manage to do so in a meaningful way.

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How can we do better? Mobile web is just like desktop web from 1998 - Nielsen

Jakob Nielsen, often considered one of the world's leading thinkers on usability, has discussed the mobile web in his latest Alertbox monthly update, equalling the state of mobile websites today as similar to the state of the desktop internet in 1998.

I tend to agree that for many organisations this is the case, with Nielsen's comments all hitting close to the mark - abysmal success rates in users achieving their goals, pages requiring too long to download and featuring too much bloat, code crashes and excessive scrolling.

I've blogged previously about the need for government to begin more seriously considering and positioning for the importance of mobile sites. The growth of larger screen (and touchscreen) smartphones has finally turned mobile devices into an acceptable platform for web browsing.

A major point Nielsen raised was that many mobile sites are still being designed like desktop sites, just as in 1998 when websites were being designed like print brochures (ala brochureware).

This is a trend I've discussed previously - each new medium is first defined in terms of the paradigm of the last.

For instance, when television was introduced, programs were first structured like radio shows, and further back when movies were introduced they were structured like stage shows. The initial radio programs often consisted of an announcer reading the local newspaper on air.

It takes some time for society to begin to understand the true value of a medium and look on it as a new and distinct form, rather than as an extension of an older form.

This causes me to reflect on what the mobile medium will eventually become. Defining it in terms of a 'mobile internet' may be too limiting, too caught in the desktop internet paradigm.

Mobile devices have their own characteristics, strengths and weaknesses. For a government organisation - or any organisation to use these to best advantage, they must look at the specifics of the platform, not simply port their website to mobile (as they ported their publications to online).

Some of the obvious strengths of mobile include;
geo-location - it knows where you are
interaction time - people interact with mobile devices 24/7, whereas desktops require a conscious action
voice integration - voice communications can be embedded easily into the platform
photo and video capture - people can take photos and video anywhere, all the time

Some of the obvious disadvantages include;
Small screen size - makes displaying complex information more difficult
Short interactions - people make many more interactions with mobile devices, but most are only a few minutes in duration. Try concentrating on a mobile screen for an hour
reception quality - can vary enormously, making some online-only applications less usable
small keyboards - makes sustained typing more difficult
Many different platforms - there's less uniformity of screen size and internet capability (including cost of access) than on desktops, where there are a few dominant players

When developing a mobile site taking these factors into consideration will help your organisation develop more than a simple mobile port of your website, but a custom experience that helps people complete the different types of tasks they wish to complete on a mobile device.

So when you get your senior management across the line on having a mobile version of your website, ensure you also take them on the journey to understand that a simple reformat of existing content, navigation and functionality probably will not deliver the best result for your customers and stakeholders.

There's an opportunity to step beyond the desktop paradigm and deliver a mobile experience with real value. I challenge you to take it!

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Moving government community engagement into the digital age

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.

IAP2 South Australia - Bang the Table Presentation

View more presentations from BangtheTable. (tags: bangthetable online)

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ATO launches credit card payment trial

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.

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US government uses online social media to manage salmonella outbreak

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.

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