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Governments regularly hold consultations with their public - asking them for their views on matters as widespread as tax reform, copyright, health, culture and city planning.
Whether these consultations are held through public events, print notices, online via email or social media engagement there's one constant that governments rely on - that people are willing to provide their views freely to government.
In some ways this might seem a no-brainer. A government is making a decision that will affect you - therefore you have an interest in responding.
However it is never as simple as that. It takes time (our scarcest resource) to respond to a Government consultation. Often, when there are specific forms to complete, processes to follow and events to attend, it can take a LOT of time.
Also the audience needs to feel that they will be listened to. One of the more interesting consultations I participated in last year was by the ACT government who asked a question around how they consulted. A frequently expressed view was that many people felt no incentive to participate in government consultations because their views would be ignored. Why waste time responding if you don't feel your views will make any difference.
Even harder to justify are peoples' participation in engagements where the public is providing a service to government (or other organisations) for no direct payment. An example is the National Library's Historic Newspaper Archive, where people are able to make corrections to the text of newspapers where the scanning process didn't capture the words correctly.
Another example would be Wikipedia. While it is not government, it would not exist without the dedication of tens of thousands of volunteers.
So what's the secret to encouraging greater engagement by citizens in consultations and similar 'you tell us' initiatives by government?
The answer is simple. Value given for value received.
Most people want feedback to tell them that they have been heard. This doesn't need to be (and preferably isn't) a form letter from a Minister's office or Department - or even a personal note. It can simply be notifying them when their input is published and giving them the tools to watch their contribution travel through set stages during a consultation process - received, moderated, published, considered - just as they can now watch their parcels travel from a foreign country to their doorstep.
What could also be done is to provide public recognition (a leader board) for top contributors - people who consistently provide good input on multiple consultations, or spend the time to do the work in services like the National Library's Historic Newspaper Archive does.
Finally, a consideration that is worthwhile considering when a community is providing a substitute for a valuable service (such as the design of a website, development of a mash-up application or the translation of a document) is dollars. Cold hard cash in compensation for someone's hours of hard work. This can be hard to organise in government due to procurement procedures and other practices designed to promote transparency and consistency but not designed to provide flexibility around crowd sourcing goods or services.
As governments move to implement more digitally managed consultations and engagements it is increasingly easy to support front-end consultation sites with end-to-end consultation tracking and contribution leader boards. It even becomes possible to have departmental or cross-government leader boards, which would also provide interesting insights regarding which individuals and organisations respond to many consultations.
However to cost-effectively put these mechanisms in place organisations need to look beyond the immediate needs of a single consultation and consider their overall consultation and engagement needs over three years or more.
When we begin to see governments taking this step we'll be on the verge of seeing some very innovative Gov 2.0 processes for community engagement - and increasing engagement levels as the community feels more heard, valued and in control of their own contributions.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Where's the payoff? Convincing citizens to engage with government | Tweet |
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Social media nightmares | Tweet |
Inventorspot has compiled a list of ten of the top branded social media nightmares.
These are situations where organisations or their staff have been caught behaving badly, where social media campaigns went past the line of good taste or where organisations failed to get onto social media and were not able to become part of the discussion (to their detriment}.
It is an interesting list and shows some of the risks involved in social media - including the risk of not becoming involved.
Monday, March 01, 2010
Australian Government endorses WCAG 2.0 - stipulates compliance by 2015 | Tweet |
Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities Bill Shorten issued a joint media release last Tuesday 23 February confirming that the Australian Government had endorsed the W3C's latest accessibility standard, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (or WCAG 2.0).
The media release also indicated that the Minister and Parliamentary Secretary are stipulating that all (Australian) government websites adhere to these new standards by 2015. Given it took
The Government is preparing a National Transition Strategy for the move, however there's plenty of resources already available on the web about how to switch to WCAG 2.0 - as the new standard has been out for about 14 months.
I am hopeful that government professionals responsible for the design, technical and content changes and strategies will work together across agencies to build their knowledge and expertise on the topic - we are all in this together and there are a number of highly experienced accessibility experts dotted across the public sector.
Perhaps this is an opportunity for AGIMO to expand its Web Publishing Guide Blog to encourage cross-government professional discussion on the topic of accessibility and implementing WCAG 2.0.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
How governments can use gameplay to educate and upskill a community | Tweet |
I'm a big fan for the use of gameplay to encourage people to explore concepts, test ideas, build skills and model behaviours while generating awareness - however it is a tool that I have not seen exploited anywhere near to the extent it could be in government or most commercial organisations in Australia (and yes I have some ideas....)
The World Bank is about to launch a very interesting online game, Urgent Evoke, that encourages people to 'make a different', solving real social problems around the world - in a simulated form.
To quote the game's blog:
This is not a simulation. You are about to tackle real problems.
Food security. Energy. Water security. Disaster relief. Poverty. Pandemic. Education. Global conflict. Human rights
Welcome to the Evoke Network. Welcome to your crash course in changing the world.
To understand how this game works and the value it provides, see the Episode 1 video below.
EVOKE trailer (a new online game) from Alchemy on Vimeo.
The game launches on 3 March (but is open for preregistration now) and will offer a series of challenges - the first involving an imminent famine in Japan. Missions and quests will be available to help solve these challenges and if it is like previous alternative reality online games of this type, players will be required to research, explore real (and fake) websites, video and other material, following trails of clues to find a solution.
People who complete all of the 10 challenges in 10 weeks will be able to claim the honour: Certified World Bank Institute Social Innovator – Class of 2010.
Top players will earn online mentorships with experienced social innovators and business leaders from around the world, and scholarships to share their vision for the future at the EVOKE Summit in Washington DC.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Victoria launches App my State competition with $100,000 in prizes | Tweet |
The Gov 2.0 genie is well and truly out of its bottle in Victoria, with the Victorian Government recently advocating that the majority of Victorian public sector information be released for reuse under Creative Commons licensing.
Their latest initiative is the App my State competition, which builds on the (currently running) Apps4NSW competition and last year's Gov 2.0 Taskforce Mash-up Australia competition.
Victoria's competition is a little different from the others in that it doesn't require entrants to use Victorian public sector data (although around 100 datasets have been released for use) - entrants can use national and other publicly available data, produce applications without using this data that are useful to Victorians or even simply submit ideas, which broadens the competition beyond programmers (a very good thing I believe).
Also, unlike Apps4NSW, all the entrants are published online - a very good thing and in keeping with the entire approach to government transparency.
The one limitation I'm a little disappointed about is that everyone submitting an entry must be Victorian - which limits the scope of sourcing innovative ideas from around Australia and even around the world. I don't believe past Victorians can enter either - which leaves me out.
Regardless of this, it is great to see the Victorians getting behind innovation and I wish them all the best in this competition. Maybe it will become an annual event...
