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I highlighted the online Netflix prize quite some time ago as an example of how an organisation could work with its community to drive innovation.
Netflix has a longstanding prize of US$1,000,000 on offer for the group who could improve their online movie/TV recommendations engine by at least 10%. The goal is to substantially improve the accuracy of predictions about how much someone is going to love a movie based on their movie preferences.
Over 40,900 teams from around the world (49,000 people) have been involved over the last few years, striving for the recognition and the prize money.
Now a group of four of the leading teams from the U.S., Canada, Austria and Israel have formed a successful collaborative team (BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos) which has achieved a 10.05% improvement in movie rankings, making them the potential winners of the prize.
Firstly this achievement demonstrates the power of collaboration. Each of the four teams could only get so far on their own. By working together (across the world) they have successfully achieved what none of the teams could have achieved alone.
Secondly it demonstrates the power of crowd sourcing. Few organisations could have afforded to employ an extra 49,000 people for several years in the hope of achieving a 10% improvement in operations. However by opening up their information and inviting the public to compete to solve this data manipulation problem, Netflix has managed to improve its product and attract massive positive press at the same time for a relatively small investment.
If 49,000 people are willing to work on a 10% improvement to a movie ratings engine, think of the potential if we provided an incentive for people to develop innovative applications or solutions for public data and policy issues.
This is being tapped into in the US, with their Apps for America competition and smaller but similar events at state levels.
The approach is also being adopted in the UK.
Will it be much longer before we see it used in Australia?
Perhaps the Government 2 Taskforce will lead the way.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
The benefits of crowdsourcing - US$1,000,000 prize from Netflix | Tweet |
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Drawing on experience within your Department for online initiatives | Tweet |
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.
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.
