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Speaking with the locals can be one of the most rewarding - and most frustrating - experiences when traveling to foreign-language countries.
If you make an attempt at their language - no matter how feeble - they will generally respect your efforts and go out of their way to be helpful.
However if you simply try to speak with them in your own language or, worst of all, shout at them in your tongue, you may be snubbed or disrespected.
How are these examples relevant to government?
When government departments go online they often continues speaking in their native tongue - using 'govvie speak' - which often uses different words and definitions than everyday speech.
This usually isn't a deliberate attempt to obfuscate. Often departments are trying to communication well, spelling complex meanings out clearly and precisely.
Generally career public servants, public sector lawyers and specialist communicators work hard to find exactly the right words to communicate what their department wishes to say.
So where can this go wrong?
After highly skilled professionals slave over website content, which is then approved by senior public officials, there is often no step to get approval from the highest authority of all.
The 'average' punter - the person reading (and hopefully understanding) the message.
Most communicators understand that if their message isn't coded in a way their audience understands they will be ignored or viewed as less credible.
When delivering fixed length communication pieces, such as advertisements or publications, extensive audience testing is often used to ensure that the message is clear and effective.
To use govvie speak, this testing is a risk mitigation strategy to assert that the contents of a communications piece are widely understood and resonate with the target demographic, thereby achieving an effective policy or program outcome for the government, the department, and for the public purse.
Or, in plain language, testing makes ads work.
How often do we in government test every line of a website's content to make sure it is understandable to its audience in itself and within the context of the entire website?
Even when we do test, how often do we impose layers of approvals after testing?
These can turn a piece of plain language into a swamp containing patches of govvie speak quicksand, which the average punter can easily get swallowed up in.
Of course testing won't take us all the way. Generally there isn't time or resources to test every line of a website in context.
We have to rely on employing professional writers who understand our audience and speak their language. And then we need to trust them and leave their words alone.
As government engages further with the internet, moving from 'look at me' websites to listening and conversing with the public, we need to 'mitigate the risk of audience dislocation, ineffective consultations and ministerial complaints'.
In other words, to make our online discussions work and stop people getting upset when they do not understanding or trust our words it becomes even more vital that our language goes native.
In conclusion, government departments need to blog like the bloggers do and chat like the chatter do. When we listen and communicate respectfully we will earn the respect and credibility of the online world - our citizens.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Learning to speak and listen to the language of the internet | Tweet |
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
New York Transportation Authority sues iPhone developer over schedule information | Tweet |
In a sign that the discussion over what public data should be public is ongoing, the New York Times has reported that the NY Metropolitan Transportation Authority has issued a takedown notice to an iPhone developer who has used train schedules in his iPhone application.
The Authority claims that public train schedule data is its intellectual property - similar to the claim by NSW Rail when it issued four takedown notices against application developers reusing NSW rail timetable data in March this year.
In this case, however, the Authority is seeking to profit off licensing the information for distribution - despite providing it for free. This was because the iPhone application maker was charging US$2.49 for his application, which he says is merely to cover the costs of producing the application.
Note that the Authority is not completely government-owned, however is paid by US governments to operate a public service, which might become an interesting area of debate in future regarding date in the public interest generated by public-private partnerships such as tollways, utilities (ActewAGL for example) and Job Network members. Even access to postcode geodata in Australia might become a consideration.
If the government contracts a third party to provide a service, should part of that arrangement include ensuring that all public data generated is made available to the public?
I think it will be a discussion we'll need to have in the next year.
It will be interesting to see how the New York situation is resolved - particularly considering the level of negative media attention the Authority has been receiving.
Cluetrain for Government | Tweet |
Some of you may have read The Cluetrain Manifesto. This is widely considered to be one of the seminal works for Web 2.0, albeit being written in 1999, before the expression Web 2.0 was coined.
The Cluetrain Manifesto outlined 95 theses for how markets would develop and people behave online, forshadowing the growth of social media.
Now Steve Radick over at the Social Computing Journal has published a 'cluetrain' for governments, with 20 theses that it would be wise for public servants to read and consider.
The theses are available in Steve's article, Twenty Theses for Government 2.0, Cluetrain Style.
Read them now.
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
New Zealand Draft Open Access and Licensing Framework released | Tweet |
Thanks to the eGovernment Resource Centre, I've become aware of the New Zealand Draft Open Access and Licensing Framework that was release late last month.
Structured as a discussion paper, it sets out guidelines for the use of 'no copyright' and Creative Commons use across the NZ government to support the release and appropriate re-use of government generated data and materials.
One of the issues it aims to address is,
current confusion, uncertainty and criticism on the part of members of the public around Crown copyright and licensing, including difficulties being experienced through the various and inconsistent licensing practices across the State Services.
I believe this would resonate with organisations such as OpenAustralia who are attempting to reuse government data in Australia (and recently had their request rejected by Queensland).
The document provides a thorough guide to Creative Commons copyright in New Zealand.
It also includes a handy review and release decision tre to make it easy for government departments to select the licensing most appropriate for their data and documents. On first glance this tree looks jurisdictionally agnostic - meaning it could as easily be applied in Australia as it could in New Zealand.
The entire document has been released in a blog-style format, supporting comments on each page (though there are none visible to-date).
I don't expect Australia to be that far behind.
Monday, September 07, 2009
NSW launches 'Apps4NSW' with $100,000 in prizes | Tweet |
Launched by the NSW Premier at NSWSphere on Friday, Apps4NSW is the first Australian public competition for reusing online NSW government data to create useful applications for the public.
Quoting the new site,
In the competition, individuals and groups will compete for cash prizes by creating ideas and software application prototypes that can be used on websites and mobile devices. This competition will foster collaboration between NSW citizens and the Government as well as promote and highlight innovation in the digital media sector.This reflects the App for America competition that has been running for two years in the US, and a similar competition recently run in the UK via the site Show us a better way.
There will be two competition categories:
* ideas for applications or services based around public or government data, and
* prototype software applications that demonstrate the idea in action.
In conjunction with this announcement, the NSW government has also announced the launch of data.nsw.gov.au, a site that will shortly begin providing access to NSW government data feeds available for reuse online. It even has a Twitter stream at dataNSW that will provide notifications as data feeds are released.
