Posts
I am pleased to present this guest post from a colleague who has done a fantastic job of incorporating online tools into the government project management mix.
I feel that the work Nathanael Boehm and his team have been doing on the Training.gov.au project is an example of how social media can improve the ability of government to support consultation with stakeholders and customers and to deliver successful outcomes.
Guest post:
Nathanael Boehm is a web user interaction designer currently working for the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) on the Training.gov.au project. In addition to web design he is involved in the project and contract management, training and social media aspects of the project. In this guest blog post on eGovAU Nathanael talks about why the Training.gov.au team decided to use social media and how they did it.
The Vocational Education and Training sector in Australia is complex, with many stakeholders playing a role in delivering training information and industry regulation. Collectively they are known as the National Training System and the information infrastructure supporting this System is legislatively referred to as the National Training Information Service. This Service is currently provided by NTIS.gov.au, a website developed by the now decommissioned Australian National Training Authority.
In order to accommodate current policy, stakeholder expectations and user needs, Training.gov.au is being developed by the Department to replace NTIS. The new service is planned to be launched later this year.
The Training.gov.au project team was firmly committed to following a User-Centred Design (UCD) approach. Due to the complex nature of the National Training System, this meant coordinating input and expert opinions from thousands of organisations and key personnel.
The method for managing consultation had to take into account all of the dependencies and linkages between Registered Training Organisations (RTOs), Registering/Course Accreditation Bodies (RCABs), State Training Authorities (STAs), the Commonwealth, legislation, National Quality Council (NQC), Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF), Industry Skills Councils (ISCs) and other players.
To solve this the centerpiece of the project team's thinking was the launch of the Training.gov.au Project Blog which to my knowledge was the first ongoing Australian Federal Government blog.
There wasn't much effort or cost involved, we had existing web hosting infrastructure in place and web skills in the team. Therefore, over a few weeks, the team combined a WordPress theme with static information about the project and launched the Training.gov.au Project Blog.
In the spirit of engagement we aim for a very personal style. Each blog post is attributed to a member of the team, not the team as a whole, with the main blog contributors being Jo, Marty, Jonathon and myself. We try to steer clear of government speak, jargon and acronyms as much as possible.
We're aiming for openness and transparency - people appreciate that they know what we're doing and where we're up to every step of the way. They also appreciate the insights into how the project is being conducted and it gives the Project team an opportunity to show both that we're working really, really hard and that we are talking to our stakeholders.
The blog has been well-received by our stakeholders and users. It allows us to broadcast useful information that would otherwise not be available through traditional channels, simply because we're not prepared to spam everyone involved with an email telling them how our training sessions last week went. But there's still value in that content and the blog allows us to leverage it.
The blog also provides a method for our stakeholders to respond. In addition to formal response mechanisms, like the interest registration form, they can easily post comments attached to blog posts. With Jo out in the field promoting the blog as part of her engagement activities the number of comments and visitors is rapidly increasing.
In addition to deployment of the blog we stepped up our external in-person on-site engagement activities - preceded by bringing on a dedicated stakeholder engagement officer. We have a Twitter account @TrainingGovAu, although that is a secondary channel. We're not really pushing it at this stage but we do use it to engage in the Twittersphere when needed and to provide an additional entry point to blog content.
In the last few weeks we've also started using DOPPLR to demonstrate how much on-site engagement we do around the country and to assist with coordination of travel with stakeholders. Although the incorporation of DOPPLR into our social media strategy is under evaluation, our goal is to let people more readily see when we will be in their region or city if they want to attend a system demonstration or training.
Yes it's hard work doing all this engagement - the easy option would be to lock ourselves up in a room for 12 months and just build the website. However that doesn't give the project team any satisfaction in our work or any assurance that we're going to deliver a solution our stakeholders will like or that people will want to use, in support of the policy and business objectives.
In summary, the project team cannot read our stakeholders' or users' minds. It is essential to the success of the Training.gov.au project that we engage and consult broadly. Online social media has been a fundamental component of achieving this by closing the gap between the project team and the people we're delivering for.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Guest post: Supporting a major government project with social media tools | Tweet |
Friday, March 27, 2009
Information held by the Government is a national resource | Tweet |
Information held by the Government is a national resource and should be managed in the public interest. Access to government information increases public participation, and leads to increased scrutiny, discussion, comment and review of government activity.
It would be great to hear an Australian government make a statement like the above, acknowledging that much of the information collected by the government should be readily accessible.
Well in fact they have.
The quote above is from Senator the Hon Robert Faulkner in the FOI Reform - Companion Guide (available in PDF format only from this page).
The next step is to make information available in an appropriate format for easy reuse online, allowing it to recombined and used in innovative ways that add value and lead to new insights.
That's what the US government is planning to do.
What are the best blog platforms for Australian government departments? | Tweet |
If your Department or agency is considering getting started in blogging it's worth considering the platforms that others in government are using to meet their needs.
Looking across the Australian government, there are now at least several different platforms used to deliver successful blogs.
For example the ABS's Statistically speaking blog uses Blogger (as I do for my blog), a free service from Google, whereas DEEWR's Training.gov.au project blog, the Austrade blog, the Australian War Memorial's blog, the Victorian Public Service Continual Improvement Network and the Sydney Observatory blog use Wordpress, also available for free, or in a paid version.
A couple of others I can't determine the system used - if anyone can tell me which system their blogs are using I'd appreciate it (including Defence, DBCDE and Mosman Library).
Considering the platforms I can identify, there's some clear benefits for agencies and for their audiences,
- The platforms are familiar - they are in common use across the internet (therefore offer familiar controls and functions)
- They are simple for government business areas to set-up and operate with little or no ICT involvement required
- They are hosted through third parties, rather than requiring government investments in infrastructure and bandwidth
- They provide the capacity to plug in RSS, photos, videos, analytics and various other tools quickly and easily - again with little or no ICT overhead
- They offer configurable moderation of comments
- They support single or multiple-author capabilities
In my view these are all useful in getting government blogs up and running quickly with a minimum of cost or stress. They also allow the primary focus of blogging activity to be on managing content and responses rather than on managing technology and development.
If you are looking further afield at the options for blogs, Elance has published a good article covering some of the most common blogging platforms, appropriately titled The Best Technology Platforms for Bloggers.
US government opens social media flood gates - legal deal signed to use sites | Tweet |
The US government might have become one of the most active public administrations using blogging, Twitter, Facebook and other online 'social' mediums, but until now there have been legal issues over how and whether Federal agencies could legally use these tools.
However, after nine months of negotiations and discussion, the GSA has now signed an agreement with four video-sharing and social networking sites permitting their use by Federal authorities. Agreements with another two sites are in progress, and I am sure more will come.
Seventeen Federal Agencies have already signed, or are in the process of signing up via GSA's template, opening the floodgates to a significant leap in US government use of online channels.
Reported in Nextgov, GSA signs deals for agencies to use social networking sites, these agreements are a watershed for US public sector internet use.
The four sites with agreements, structured as Memorandums of Understanding, are Flickr, Vimeo, blip.tv and YouTube. GSA is negotiating with Facebook and MySpace.
Federal agencies are also beginning to create new roles to meet the President's new transparency directive and integrate use of online communications and engagement channels within their mix,
Most agencies will appoint directors of new media to determine how they can use social networking tools to meet mission goals and comply with President Obama's open government directive, said Sheila Campbell, team leader of Web best practices for the government portal USA.gov and co-chair of the Federal Web Managers Council.
The directive will instruct agencies to make their operations more transparent and to create a process that asks the public to submit opinions on policy issues and enable collaboration with organizations in the public and private sectors.
"Agencies that already have a business case to use these tools will have the legal footing to do so," Campbell said. Tools should be used strategically, she added, "not just for the sake of using them, but to accomplish agency missions."
Thursday, March 26, 2009
The Catch 22 of government online participation | Tweet |
Government often has a narrow path to walk when engaging online, some of the measures in place to protect the privacy and security of citizens and government officials can conflict with efforts to improve the transparency and openness of government processes.
Hence this article from the New York Times, Government 2.0 Meets Catch 22.
The article highlights some of the issues that US government officials must navigate and contend with when participating with online communities or even using the internet to research potential employees.
While the article doesn't present any real solutions for government, it does highlight that there can be the need for some government policies and legislation to be reconsidered to provide the appropriate balance between government's ability to engage online and to protect those it employs and serves.
