Another step for Australian Gov 2.0 - PM endorses public service reforms

According to the ABC, the Prime Minister has endorsed all 28 recommendations in the APS review report, Ahead of the Game: Blueprint for Reform of Australian Government Administration.

This report includes recommendations for the use of Gov 2.0 in citizen engagement and open government, turning citizens into active participants in the process of government, rather than passive recipients of government decisions.

Reform 2: Creating more open government, discusses a vision of a future APS that,

captures ideas and expertise through the transformative effect of technology by:

• Citizens directly communicating their views and expertise to government through multiple channels, including Web 2.0 approaches (for example, online policy forums and blogs);
• Greater disclosure of public sector data and mechanisms to access the data so that citizens can use the data to create helpful information for all, in line with privacy and secrecy principles; and
• Citizens become active participants involved in government, rather than being passive recipients of services and policies.

This is another plank in the Australian Government's Gov 2.0 push, following the recent release of its response to the Gov 2.0 Taskforce's final report.

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Emergency management with Gov 2.0

The internet has proven itself time and time again to be one of the fastest platforms of disseminating information during emergencies.

The latest example has been in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

One of the largest spills off the US coast in history (though far from being the largest in the world), the spill is now threatening the marine life and economic survival of sea-based industries in four US states.

To inform people about the unfolding emergency and share news as it happens, a group of companies involved with the spill and US government agencies has been operating a website and social media presence.

According to the article Oil Spill Social Media in Read Write Web, the group includes British Petroleum, who own the oil; Transocean, who own the rig; the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The social media presence includes a Facebook page for conversations, Twitter for announcements, Flickr for images and YouTube for videos - all linked off the main site, Deep Water Horizon Response.

This type of presence can be put together very quickly when an emergency occurs. There is no cost to any of the social media tools, and they can be in place within minutes.

The approach works very well at informing the public in a more reliable and factual way than, sometimes, traditional media allows.

Provided organisations are attuned and prepared to provide information rapidly, without onerous approval processes, second guessing or political concerns, social media can be a very powerful emergency management tool in the public sector's arsenal.

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Still a long way to go to reach a Government 2.0 world

With the release of the Australian Government's response to the Gov 2.0 Taskforce Final Report and the increasing push of governments around the world to encourage, and even mandate, the use of Government 2.0 approaches by public sectors and politicians, it would be easy to begin thinking that we're off and running towards a Gov 2.0 world.

However a few recent incidents I've become aware of, and been involved with, indicate that there is still a long way to go before public servants are broadly aware of Gov 2.0, let alone skilled in its use.

One example was when a very highly skilled and professional colleague elsewhere in the public service called me up and asked whether they could now begin using 'that Gov 2.0 tool' that everyone was talking about. They had heard that the government had just introduced a Gov 2.0 tool that would make it easier to engage online with their stakeholders. After some questioning, I realised they were asking about GovDex - which has been around for quite some time.

Another example was when someone from outside the public sector railed to me at a social event against the rising tide of government secrecy, complaining that government was hiding more and more information behind impenetrable walls. When I commented about data.australia.gov.au and some of the open data and online consultation underway, they at first didn't believe I was telling the truth, then conceded that while these things might be happening, said approximately that "the government doesn't care what the public thinks anyway, it's all a snowjob to keep us from complaining too much."

These examples are no surprise to me.

In the first instance I am aware of many public servants busy doing their jobs exceptionally well, but simply not having the time, nor always the interest, to learn about every new innovation or initiative under the sun. They don't frequent the right conferences, social events, mailing lists or online forums to get exposed to Gov 2.0. Even if they've heard about it, they don't often know enough to understand the risks or meaningfully consider the ways it may be applied to make their jobs easier or improve their effectiveness and efficiency.

The second instance is a classic example of how people tend to form strong views then cling to them for quite a while rather than going back and test them regularly. If the search tool on your intranet performs poorly and you upgrade it to make it effective, in my experience it can take 6-12 months and quite a bit of communication and nudging before people stop talking about their bad search experiences and start trying the new search engine. People are simply too busy to repeat their actions or rethink their views on a highly regular basis.

So what can be done to increase the speed towards a Gov 2.0 world?

The key, for me, is threefold:

• Leadership through example - Government 2.0 practitioners need to get out there and recommend, champion and drive the initiatives that teach others how these techniques and technologies can deliver new benefits.
   
• Formal and informal education - We need to make courses available more broadly for public servants to gain the expertise they need to understand how new media and public engagement using Gov 2.0 techniques can benefit them, giving them the tools to assess risks, consider different approaches, decide on an optimum solution and to deliver.
  
• Create relevant community experiences - Finally we need government departments to look for opportunities to deliver Gov 2.0 initiatives that people will want to use. This doesn't just mean they look pretty, are accessible and have a wow! factor. It means that they deliver real benefits to the community, address community needs and wants (not all of community - one audience at a time). If we focus on releasing data in raw form with no easy-to-use analysis tools, or creating public engagement tools and then not promoting them so people are aware they exist (due to our strict advertising guidelines) it will take much longer for the community to notice something positive is going on.

If as Gov 2.0 professionals we strive to support these three areas we will be helping the community make sense and engage with government and assisting government to fulfil its goals.

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AGIMO releases Govspace blog and blogging platform

On Monday, coinciding with the release of the Government's Gov 2.0 Taskforce report response, AGIMO launched its new blog and blogging platform at AGIMO.Govspace.gov.au.

More than simply a Departmental blog, Govspace, as discussed on Twitter by John Sheridan, is a blogging - and eventually a wiki - platform available for other Departments to use,

@purserj We want it to be able to host either blogs or wikis and be easily recognisable - like data.gov.au #gov2au

I see this as a similar service to GovDex, which is used broadly throughout the public sector for engagement and collaboration purposes.

The Govspace platform is powered by Wordpress, which I believe to be one of the most powerful, widely used and well supported blogging platforms available on the market. There are tens of thousands of 'skins' to change the design (plus you can customise your own), plus there are thousands of plug-ins adding different kinds of functionality to the Wordpress service (you'd have to confirm with AGIMO which are supported).

So if you are looking to start a blog for your agency and your internal systems don't entirely (or on a timely basis) support what is needed, Govspace is now a viable option.

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A big step forward for Gov 2.0 in Australia - Government response to Gov 2.0 Taskforce report

If you've been watching Twitter (specifically the hashtag #gov2au), you might have seen that yesterday the Government released its response to the Gov 2.0 Taskforce, supporting 12 of the 13 recommendations (and deferring the 13th, information philanthropy, pending the outcomes of several related reviews).

The response was announced in AGIMO's new blog platform, Govspace, released in time with the report. A blog post by Minister Tanner stated that,

...today is the completion of one phase, it is also very much the beginning of a new one. The task now is to implement these changes, beginning with assisting agencies to make the most of the opportunities offered by Web 2.0.

The response provides broad support for Gov 2.0 in the Federal Government, authorising the Department of Finance and Deregulation to lead activities across government under a multi-departmental steering committee including Prime Minister and Cabinet, the proposed Office of the Information Commissioner, the Australian Public Service Commission, National Archives of Australia, Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, the Department of Human Services, the Australian Taxation Office and the Attorney-General’s Department.

This group provides a viewpoints across online engagement, open data and governance which should provide a health mix of input into some of the detailed questions that will need to be addressed.

One of the recommendations of the Taskforce was that,

4.3 The default position in agencies should be that employees are encouraged and enabled to engage online. Agencies should support employee enablement by providing access to tools and addressing internal technical and policy barriers.

The government agreed with this by stating,

It is incumbent on the senior APS leadership to ensure that top-down change is enabled in agencies, and that APS employees are genuinely encouraged and empowered to engage online within their agency-specific context.

This is a major step forward in defining the scope in which public servants can engage online on behalf of their agency, and also provides some impetus to upgrade technologies (such as web browsers) and unblock sites where public discussions relevant to agencies are taking place.

As an aside, the Government's response has been released under a Creative Commons copyright license - another example of the government 'eating its own dogfood' in terms of shifting from a proscriptive copyright approach to publications towards a descriptive approach, which allows and supports appropriate use of materials - potentially saving a great deal of time for those tasked with approving use of government materials and freeing a great deal of intellectual property value so that it can be more widely and rapidly disseminated (I hope we'll see actual legislation, acts of parliament, released in the same manner).


The response is, by necessity, not fully detailed as to every contingency - we'll see more of this detail emerge over time. However there is a key area I would like to see addressed quite rapidly, change management.

As I commented this morning on Kate Lundy's blog post, Australia commits to Gov 2.0, (correcting the iPhone use related spelling and grammatical errors), there are still many regulations and governance practices that must be reviewed, reinterpreted or adjusted to allow the process-driven public service to effectively approach Gov 2.0 in a timely (rapid) and cost-effective manner. To make engagement successful, there is the need to streamline approvals for things such as public responses and moderation of public comments (where moderation is used at all) in order to allow conversations to begin and communities to form.

For many public servants – and politicians – the concept of ‘letting go’ and allowing authentic online engagement to occur is a new and scary concept, unlike their previous experience or the directives they have received in the past. I hope we will see substantial change management support and training to help these groups normalize Gov 2.0 within their worldviews.

Otherwise it will remain a long and rocky road towards the widespread embedded use of Gov 2.0 within government agencies. Change had to occur in the heart as well as the head to be lasting.

I believe that we are on the right path and now, as Minister Tanner suggests, the challenge is to walk it confidently - hand in hand with our community.

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