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It is common practice for government Departments to go to consultants when they need specific skills or experience. The strategy is often to draw on this expertise to get started, transfer as much knowledge as possible to staff and move forward.
However sometimes it can be more cost-effective to draw on the existing skills of people already employed within a Department - insourcing rather than outsourcing. In many cases staff have past experience that is directly relevant to an initiative, or may even have expert knowledge in the area.
This is particularly relevant for online initiatives. Web development skills are not limited to degree-qualified IT staff and there are many people with experience in scripting HTML, Javascript, PHP and similar languages who might not choose to work in an ICT area.
Equally social media engagement skills are not limited to Communications professionals. Forrester reported late last year that about 45% of Australians have joined social networking groups, 35% comment on blogs and forums and 26% are content creators - writing blogs and articles and/or posting videos and photos online. Matt Hodgson has a good blog post on this topic, Social media engagement: What are Aussies doing?.
It is extremely likely that some of these people are public servants and work in your Department - not necessarily in the Communications, Web or ICT teams.
If you can identify these staff and enlist an hour or two of their time each week you may be able to build a sustainable online engagement team without needing to rely as heavily on consultants or other outside expertise.
This insourcing approach has been used successfully in the private sector and in the public sector in other jurisdictions. For example the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office encourages diplomatic staff to blog and the US military is encouraging servicemen and women to engage in social networks.
So now you know where to find experienced online professionals, all you need is to identify them.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Drawing on experience within your Department for online initiatives | Tweet |
Vote for the Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce banner - closes the morning of Thursday 9 July | Tweet |
The Government 2.0 Taskforce are asking for the public to vote on their preference of user-submitted banners for the taskforce website.
There are 24 banners to choose from, of a very high standard.
While this vote is non-binding (meaning that the Taskforce reserve the right to pick a different banner to the public) the process is transparent.
You can vote now at the Taskforce website.
Voting closes on the morning of Thursday 9 July - so vote fast!
Monday, July 06, 2009
Two Australians nominated for the international award 'The 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics' - vote for one of them now | Tweet |
In 2008 the Victorian eGovernment Resource Centre was one of the ten finalists for PoliticsOnline and World eDemocracy Forum's international award 'The 10 Who Are Changing the World of Internet and Politics'.
Prior to that GetUp was in the Top 10 twice, in 2006 (David Madden & Jeremy Heimans) and 2007 (Brett Solomon). The ACTU was also in the Top 10 in 2007 for their Rights At Work site.
To quote the site, the award recognises,
the top 10 individuals, organizations and companies having the greatest impact on the way the Internet is changing politics.
This prestigious award seeks to recognize the innovators and pioneers, the dreamers and doers who bring democracy online. This year marked the toughest year ever in choosing the 25 finalists. The integration of politics and the Internet are reflected in this year's diverse, international nominees.
For 2009 two Australian nominations have reached the top 25, with public voting now open to select the final ten award winners.
The first is the Hon. Senator Kate Lundy MP for her series of Public Sphere events.
The second is embarrassing to mention, because it is me, Craig Thomler, for this eGovAU blog. Thank you to those who nominated me - it has come as a complete surprise.
It would be wonderful to see at least one Australian receive the award this year, so please go and vote for one of us at PoliticsOnline.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
What citizens want out of government 2.0, and the benefits for public sector organisations | Tweet |
Accenture has released a new report, Web 2.0 and the Next Generation of Public Service (PDF), which highlights four key things that citizens around the world want from government 2.0.
They are,
- Improved social and economic outcomes.
- Balance between choice and flexibility on the one hand and fairness and the common good on the other.
- Higher levels of engagement, meaning educating and enrolling the public as co-producers of value.
- Improved accountability and transparency.
- Enabling more effective social networking, citizen engagement and collaboration with the community.
- Providing rich Internet applications for the community—information and services that are more personalized, faster, easier to use and able to be delivered through multiple channels (such as Internet and phone).
- Enabling effective collaboration and teamwork — especially among disparate teams and across agencies.
- Providing a presentation development tool for internal staff that offers higher productivity than the Web alone can provide.
The report goes on to provide a public value framework for governments to use when evaluating Web 2.0 technologies,
The Accenture Public Service Value Governance Framework helps public service organizations deliver high performance by providing an important model for public service executives to use in evaluating Web 2.0 technologies in terms of their ability to generate positive social outcomes, to serve the common good, to engage the public as co-producers of public value and to improve accountability and transparency.
Friday, July 03, 2009
Getting the government out of government 2.0 | Tweet |
A key factor in government 2.0 is that it doesn't have to be a government body that delivers the government 2.0 experience.
Sometimes government should simply be the platform providing the data and allow external organisations to provide the combined services and information that the public wants.
This can lead to faster, cheaper and more innovative service and information delivery. External parties are not bound by the same restrictions and overheads as the public sector, can draw on more diverse pools of ideas and compete to provide the best solutions.
Of course there needs to be oversight to ensure that accuracy and equity remain top of mind. Everyone eligible for a service should be able to access it, and information needs to be available in an accurate and timely fashion.
These concerns can often be managed through appropriate copyrighting (such as Creative Commons) or by having government provide a base-level service.
One of the best examples of government 2.0 in Australia fits these criteria.
OpenAustralia republishes Hansard records and the Members' Register of Interest for Federal government, making them easier to access, search and comment on.
Should government provide a similar tool?
I'd argue no. Provided government can make the information available in a basic way, and ensure the information is readily accessible to be republished by others, the government can focus its investments into other areas of improvement.
In my view this doesn't only hold for Hansard records. There are many areas across government where we would be better served by making data available in a simple reusable format and allow the not-for-profit and private sectors to provide services on top.
Below is a speech by one of the founders, Matthew Landauer, given to the employees of Google about the purpose and journey of OpenAustralia, with a glimpse into the future of the site.
A post about the speech - and the OpenHacking event OpenAustralia recently held is on the Google Code blog, Australia goes open.
