Citizen 2.0 - fostering collaboration (Workshop 2 CEBIT Gov 2.0 Conference)

We have bid farewell to Andrew Stott and welcomed Patrick McCormick to lead the second workshop at the CEBIT Gov 2.0 conference.

One of the first things we've done is an exercise in information overload that is easy to replicate in your own office.

Get a group of four people, nominate one as the subject. Each of the others is responsible for a particular activity that the subject must respond to as follows:

• Person 1: Ask quantitative questions (how much, how long, maths questions, etc) the subject must answer.
• Person 2: Ask qualitative questions (what, why, how, etc) the subject must answer.
• Person 3: Perform physical movements the subject must copy.

For one minute, the participants must, without interrupting each other, question and make physical moves that the subject must answer/copy.

Next rotate the roles to the left and repeat for a minute, and so on until everyone has experienced information overload as the subject.

Pat has also shown great videos on collaboration (below - Jeff Howe) and Ushahidi (also below - Erik Hersman) and Open Street Maps, examples of public collaboration in action.

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Benefits and risks of online collaboration with citizens (Workshop 1 CEBIT Gov 2.0 Conference)

Following on from our last exercise, Reasons for not releasing data in government, we've been discussing the benefits and risks of increasing (online) collaboration and consultation with citizens.

Below is what the room came up with (and discussed). Please add your own in the comments.

Note this is a raw dump - I've not sorted or categorised them.

Benefits

• Good source of expertise
• More engaged audience
• Better market research
• Target tools and services better by understanding clients better
• Meets desire of Ministers and top executives to get ideas from outside traditional channels/sources
• Increasing interest, access and understanding of information
• Provide a public face for agencies
• More effective way to get real-time information and warnings to communities
• Able to centralise queries – mitigate email traffic and reduce resourcing
• Increase public understanding of what agency does
• Find out ways and means different to those we use to get information out there
• Increasing transparency and accountability
• Providing a fair and reasonable process
• Ongoing 'focus' group
• Low cost engagement
• Allows agencies to understand how community wants information presented / services designed
• Allows 'completing the circle' engagement through a process (policy development/service design/etc) as there's an ongoing relationship with participants
• Reach more audiences than by traditional communications
• Helps attract high-performing staff (as agency is seen as proactive, forward-looking, collaborative and open)
• Can use a pre-registration process to determine potential response rate and demographics of interested parties, thereby allowing provisioning of right level of resources for management and analysis of collaboration outcomes
• Can provide context and explain complex issues in depth
• Can moderate responses – before or after publication (not possible in a face-to-face consultation)
• Can identify critical flaws in legislation/policy before becomes a major issue

Risks

• Muddied by media involvement
• Uninformed people commenting
• Administrative issues
• Generate too much work (too much work)
• Too few responses – embarrassment
• Security and privacy of participants' details (if agency runs collaboration)
• Afraid that people will be rude or abusive
• Lobby groups will dominate
• We won't do what some people say they want
• Public don't understand the context
• Content is not easy to absorb
• It will be hijacked by a particular issue in the consultation and other issues don't get enough time
• It will be hijacked by an unrelated issue (one that doesn't align with our policy framework)
• Slow and highly involved approval processes (both speed of response and cost of senior time)
• What if staff contribute as individuals
• Our staff won't be able to see the consultation (due to our internal security framework)
• Staff don't have experience in managing an online consultation
• Equity issues
• Accessibility issues
• Media might get hold of it
• Belief that any content on the web can be changed
• Could be hacked
• Can identify critical flaws in legislation/policy which become major issues
• Agency responses could be construed as providing advice which has legal implications
• Timing issues (election cycle and alignment with other consultation activities)
• Too many people involved and they don't agree with what an agency believes
• Too short a time allowed to build audience and discussion
• People will criticise the Department
• People will criticise the Minister
• May expose the lack of consultation
• The risk of NOT doing it (won't reach enough/right people, creating issues in the future, government looks like it is not consulting
• Accidental release of confidential information by agency
• Technology failure (Hardware/software issues and loss of information)
• Lack of staff social media guidelines
• Incorrect data
• Data breaching copyright (not our data)
• Differences in view on which agency/area is responsible and should manage the consultation

Any more that should be added?

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Reasons for not releasing data in government (Workshop 1 CEBIT Gov 2.0 Conference)

We're in the first workshop of the day at the CEBIT Gov 2.0 conference.

It is led by Andrew Stott, the Director for Digital Engagement for the UK government.

The first exercise of the day has been to come up with reasons that government may give for not releasing data online. I don't know if I'm happy or disappointed that our table did the best - coming up with 36 reasons (second was a table with 27).

I've listed them below - and added an additional set that Andrew says that he has also encountered in his role.

Note there are no value-judgements implied as to the validity of these reasons in specific cases.

Reasons for not releasing government data

1. Costs too much
2. No business case
3. Has commercial value
4. It could breach privacy
5. It's classified
6. It's not ours and we don't know whose it is
7. Unsure about quality
8. We don't know where it is
9. It's not our job
10. It's not in a useful format
11. I'm not authorised
12. People will misuse it
13. The minister will lose reputation
14. It's not ready yet
15. The department will lose reputation
16. Files are too large
17. We don't have enough bandwidth
18. Thin edge of the wedge
19. Can find it but cannot access it
20. It is out of date / too old
21. We only have it on paper
22. We don't know if we're allowed to do it legally
23. Our Secretary says no
24. We've never done it before
25. We don't know why anyone would want it
26. Don't see the value
27. Don't have time / resources
28. They can FOI it
29. We'll release it (but 90% redact it)
30. It is incomplete
31. It is incorrect
32. Commercially sensitive
33. Mosaic theory – could put it together with other data
34. People would focus on the wrong things
35. It may cause unnecessary public discussion
36. We can't confirm or deny we collect it

Here's Andrew's additional reasons:

• We know the data is wrong, and people will tell us where it is wrong, then we'd waste resources inputting the corrections people send us
• Our IT suppliers will charge us a fortune to do an ad hoc data extract
• Our website cannot hold files this large
• it's not ours and we don't have authorisation from the data owner
• We've already published the data (but it's unfindable/unusable)
• People may download and cache the data and it will be out of date when they reuse it
• We don't collect it regularly
• Too many people will want to download it, which will cause our servers to fail
• People would get upset

 Please add your own in comments...

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No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft...

It used to be said that no-one ever got fired for buying IBM products.

More recently much the same sentiment has been expressed about Microsoft.

However that perception now appears to be under challenge.

ReadWriteWeb reports in its article Google Sues US Government Agency Over Using Microsoft Only that,

Google has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior for requiring that messaging technologies must be part of the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite in order to be considered for procurement.

Apparently the case has some merit (the article goes on to say). While the Department had justified a Microsoft preference due to 'enhanced security', Google Apps were recently the first cloud service certified by the US Federal government's Federal Information Security Management Act certification.

This case, if successful, might see other software makers challenging US government requirements for vendor-specific solutions. Internationally it could even, over time, help open source and cloud application developers gain greater consideration in government procurement processes.

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Why use social media tactics in public sector communications

Madeleine Clifford, a communications and stakeholder engagement director in the APS, has posted some advice on her blog for public sector communicators who don't yet see reasons for using social media in their campaigns.

It could be useful for you, or for someone you work with - check it out at Implementing social media tactics into public sector communications.

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