US Army testing redeveloping manuals via wikis

The US Army is running a 90 day trial allowing service men and women to directly comment and edit seven of their 550 manuals online via a wiki-based approach to test crowdsourcing in the military.

Reported in the Army Times, Army to test wiki-style changes to 7 manuals, the article states that,

The people who write doctrine say that with things changing so fast in the field, it has been hard to keep the Army’s 550 manuals up to date and relevant.

By letting the entire Army update the manuals, they say, more and better information can go out to a wider population of soldiers.

I wonder how many Australian government publications could benefit from crowd sourcing the wisdom of their audiences?

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Government 2.0 Taskforce holding Open Forums in all states

Australia's Gov 2.0 Taskforce will be holding Open Forums in every state and territory of Australia over the next few weeks, seeking input from a range of audience groups - government, industry, academics, NGOs and interested others.

If you wish to influence the future of the Australian government's Gov 2.0 agenda, look for details and RSVP for one of these meetings from the Taskforce's website at http://gov2.net.au/roadshows/

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Introducing a common web reporting platform across federal government

Over the last few years I've often thought about the value of having a complete picture of web traffic to the Australian government.

This would require a common way to track and report on the usage of each discrete government website and the ability to track and measure the traffic between them over time (using anonymous user data).

I see enormous value in this approach. Firstly it would help government departments holistically understand how citizens see the inter-relationships between different government services and information across agency boundaries.

Secondly it would support smaller agencies to cost-effectively develop appropriate reports and access the data they need to improve their online presence and provide ROI for online initiatives. Rather than web reporting sophistication being a factor of agency size it would become a consistent core whole-of-government capability, regardless of agency size, budget, technical skills and inhouse web expertise.

Thirdly this approach would help executives and web professionals moving between government departments as they could expect a consistent level of reporting for the online space no matter where they worked. This would cut down learning curves and help improve the consistency of online channel management across government.

Finally, having standardised and consistent web reporting would lead to consistent and more accurate reporting to parliament of the overall size of the government's online audience, and the share held by each department, supporting decision making for the use of the online channel.

So could this be done?

I think it could.

We have precedents for whole-of-government licenses in the use of technologies such as Funnelback for search (which crawls all government sites for Australia.gov.au and is available for departments to use for their web search) and Adobe Smartforms for business forms (via business.gov.au).

The technology for whole-of-government online reporting is readily available without requiring major changes to how any department operates. The reporting could be deployed simply by requiring the addition of a small piece of code to every web page on every site, as is used by systems like Google Analytics and WebTrends On-Demand. Departments could even continue to also use their existing in-house tools if they so chose or exclude websites where special circumstances applied.

Through aggregating the reporting function, more funds and expertise could be focused on producing more meaningful and useful reports. Standard report templates could be developed for departments to use - or not - as they preferred.

Finally, this approach would provide cost and procurement efficiencies for government. Only one procurement process would be necessary to select the product, rather than individual processes being conducted by various agencies. The scale of the federal government means that government could purchase and maintain the tool at a much lower cost per department than it would cost a department to purchase an appropriate tool.

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PM launches first direct web chat

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd yesterday held his first live web chat on climate change with a group of 20 commenters from his climate change blog post.

While the chat apparently suffered from some technical hiccups and, reading the transcript, the PM's typing skills were limited (he stated that "my typing skills are a toal embarassment to my kids", it still received some well considered responses and achieved several major step forward for Government 2.0 in Australia.

Firstly, this was the first time, to my knowledge, that an Australia Prime Minister has participated in an online chat session with citizens as part of a mandated consultation process. This opens the door to using online chat as a mechanism in similar processes across Australian government.

Secondly the Prime Minister participated personally rather than via a proxy. No-one was typing on behalf of the PM, he was directly involved in the experience. In my view this sends the message that the government is serious about online engagement. If the PM is going to make the time and effort to directly engage constituents in online consultations, what excuse can senior public servants and Ministers have for refusing to similarly participate or permit their departments to engage?

Thirdly, the chat wasn't executed perfect, but it still managed to deliver beneficial outcomes and is publicly visible for scrutiny. I take this as an indication that, within reason, it is becoming more acceptable for government to take risks when using the online channel. We can experiment with new approaches, pilot concepts in order to establish their effectiveness and usefulness (rather than waiting for 'someone else' to trial them first) and incomplete successes can be considered learning experiences that assist in educating government in improving its approach in the future.

I'm very encouraged that the Prime Minister was willing to lead by example by holding and participating in an online consultation. I hope this is only the first of many trials in using newer technologies to connect better with the public - hear their concerns, thoughts and ideas, and allow the government to become better at our main duty of serving the citizens of Australia.

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UK Prime Minister driving government 2.0 to address global issues

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has given an astounding presentation, Gordon Brown: Wiring a web for global good, in opening TED Oxford. It firmly establishes his interest and commitment to the use of new technologies by government to aid in the solution of global and national issues.

To quote from the synopsis,

We're at a unique moment in history, says UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown: we can use today's interconnectedness to develop our shared global ethic -- and work together to confront the challenges of poverty, security, climate change and the economy.

Despite being highly inspiring, the video (embedded below) is worth watching to gain an understanding of how seriously Government 2.0 and the benefits of new technologies are being taken in leading countries around the world.

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