Getting creative with visualisations in Government sites and documents

Government is the master of the written word. Across Australian governments we probably produce billions of them each year, carefully organised into documents designed to impart knowledge and influence decisions.

If you were to consider a medium-size agency producing, let's estimate, twenty 100 page reports each year, fifty 2-page media releases and 200 4-page minutes, with 200 words per page, that's 580,000 words already - not to mention emails, websites, internal documents, procurements, recruitment processes, forms presentations and all the draft versions produced.

Many of these words are important and necessary - however some might be better communicated graphically. Do we use visualisations as much as we could to represent choices and data?

I have rarely seen information presented in a visually exciting and impactful way in government documents or website.

Why? It can't be due to accessibility - it is simple to display the same information in text or tabular form and to provide alt text.

This is where the web can provide support.

I'm a big fan of infographics and the Information is beautiful and Cool Infographics blogs are two of my favourite sites. They provides some stunning examples of how information can be presented pictorially to convey meaning.

They can be as simple as this comparison of the amount of time US citizens spend each year sitting in front of the idiot box television passively watching, versus the estimated amount of time it took to create all of Wikipedia - over 1 billion english words alone (begging the question, what would happen if we could redirect all that wasted energy).

 

Or as complex as this explanation of the Left vs Right US political world (click to view it larger).

Thanks to the growth of Web 2.0, there are now an array of online services and tools designed to assist you visualise data in creative and useful ways.

These can help agencies revitalise their data, see it in new ways and generate new realisations and understandings.

It is even possible, with open data approaches, to integrate data from other agencies with your own information and present it in visually effective ways, updating it live.

To help you get started, here's a set of online services that can be used to generate interesting visualisations. Most are free.

Online tools

Creately
Particularly useful for flow diagrams, Creately is a highly collaborative and flexible tool, allowing the creation of very professional infographics solo or in a collaborative way. The tool is also useful for project planning and other visually focused activities.

Gapminder
As used by Hans Rosling in brilliant TED talks, GapMinder provides the ability to automate time series to look at data changes over time. You can choose from existing data or add your own to create brilliant mash-ups.

Google Public Data
Google Public Data is more of a simple charting tool that you can use to display your information as bar, line and pie charts, however it also allows you to add bubbles over Google Maps and provide time series data, where you can map one or two variables and manually jump around in time, or hit a play button to watch changes unfold step by step.

Hohli Charts
A simple, yet elegant tool for creating simple charts, scatter plots, radar charts and venn diagrams based on Google's charting tools, Hohli makes it very easy to make distinctive graphs.

Many Eyes
This is a beta service provided by IBM,  but don't let that scare you - the tool works fines. Many Eyes lets you upload your own data or use data in the site to generate a wide range of visualisations including a good range of world maps, word clouds bubble charts, scattergrams and treemaps. There's a good chance you'll find some of your publicly released data already visualised here.

New York Times Viz Lab
This can be used to visualise New York Times data using an embedded version of IBM's ManyEyes technology. You can also look through visualisations created by others. While not a separate service, it should make you consider whether you could integrate a visualisation tool into your own website to allow your own visitors to visualise your data and create their own views.

Statplanet
Visualise the planet using existing data, or create your own charts, scatter plots and world maps by adding your own. StatPlanet's flash-based mapping tool is used by a number of public sector organisations at a global scale to plot development data across the world.

TagCrowd
A functional word mapping tool, TagCrowd isn't as versatile as Wordle (below), however is very good for some uses, such as creating an even block of text, mapping frequency by size - such as for the backdrop of a document cover.

Wordle
If you need word maps, Wordle creates the most elegant and flexible ones on the web. Use it to look at your documents or speeches in a visual form (you might be surprised at which words occur most frequently) and tweak settings such as font, direction and colours. It can also be useful for mapping open answers in survey data to visually represent the top concerns.

Other tools
Here's some web-based visualisation tools that use existing online data to present it in visual ways. They provide inspiration and new approaches for viewing internet information, 16 Awesome Data Visualization Tools and The Best Tools for Vizualisation.

And here's 28 tools you can use to add visualisations to your own website.

Know of any other great visualisation tools? Add then in the comments below.

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Whether to reuse or build - government choices in a connected world

There's been discussion on Twitter over the last day about whether Australian government should be building online platforms, such as a video aggregation and distribution service, URL shortcut tools (which Victoria have done) or collective infrastructure for hosting and developing all government websites.

This has been an area of on-and-off discussion for over a year in the Government 2.0 context, with several Gov 2.0 Taskforce projects exploring potential opportunities for Australian governments to build systems such as these.

I expect this to continue to be a debate for many years. Choosing whether to build a service, or tap into a commercial one, can be a tough decision - even tougher online than it is in the physical world.

Why so tough a decision?

For starters, many of the services which government could use are hosted overseas, therefore posing some level of sovereign risk - whether that be,

• a concern over whether the service will continue to provide what Australia needs (when foreign laws and business policies may change),
• that personal or secure data might be accessed and misused by another jurisdiction (especially all those people who only use one password), or
• that it might provide an entry point for hackers seeking confidential and secret government information.

On the other hand, existing online services are frequently cheap and fast to implement, plus several are the 'norm' that people use around the world (such as Google, YouTube and eBay).

In many cases government created systems could have to be developed to the extent where they are commercially competitive in order to attract the level of user traffic needed to justify their continued existence.

So how to reconcile these differing perspectives... There's no single answer in my view. Decisions need to be made case by case. What makes sense for some jurisdictions won't for others and decisions that are right for one type of service won't be for another.

In lieu of an easy answer, I offer up four tests that I believe these types of reuse or build choices need to consider.

1. Will it reduce private sector competition?
   In other words, is the government competing directly against enterprise. If so there may be job and tax implications. Generally Australian governments shy away from entering commercial markets except when private enterprise is unwilling or unable to deliver the services to the entire population at a fair price.
   
2. Will government deliver a superior outcome?
   This tests whether a government-run enterprise will provide a better outcome than a private sector organisation. Strange as it may seem, governments are better at providing some services and outcomes than private industry - particularly where equity or public value is an issue. If the government can deliver a superior outcome there is a strong case for stepping in - if private sector companies miss out then they need to look at whether they should have restructured.
   
3. Will it attract a significantly large and appropriate audience?
   It is very important to consider whether a government-run service will attract enough users to make it worthwhile. For example, Facebook has build its audience over a number of years, holding on to them through being so useful that people cannot abandon it without damaging their social networks. If the bulk of the audience use Facebook, would they use 'Govbook' - a government equivalent service, even if it is a superior product? The answer may not always be yes - and without audience a government service may not achieve its goals.
   
4. Is it sustainable?
   In asking this I mean will a government continue to support and run the service over an extended period of time - perhaps even transitioning it to a private concern. Or is it possible that funds will be cut to a level where the service is unable to continue to innovate and improve, thereby seeing the service slip into irrelevance. Funding maintenance alone is no longer sufficient to address the rate of development online.

Of course these tests are merely suggestions. As pointed out on Twitter they are more guidelines than rules.

However I think that applying these tests will support more effective, evidence-based decisions - particularly in light of the large number of demands on government resources and time.

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Participatory budgeting - big in Europe and South America, but not in Australia - why?

One of the more curious things about Government 2.0 is how differently it is interpreted and delivered around the world.

For example the map below (clickthrough to more information at Google Maps) illustrates how widespread Participatory Budgeting (PB) is - an approach whereby a government allocates some or all of its budget based on direct citizen participation.

The practice has become extremely popular in Europe and in South America, however has not thrived in North America or Australia.

Is this due to different political conditions, cultural factors or Gov 2.0 maturity?

I'm not sure - I would welcome your thoughts.

However the differences do emphasise the breadth of Government 2.0 and the many uses it can be put to in a nation.

If you are interested in participatory budgeting, also see the Facebook group at: http://groups.to/pb/ and the post from Bang the Table exploring at 10 Ways Participatory Budgeting has been used Around the World.

Participatory Budgeting  Google map (click for more information)

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It's now so easy to establish a social network - is this a good thing?

I've recently been looking around some at some of the 'white-label' social network services.

They allow anyone to establish their own branded social network at little or no cost. Most include features such as personal profiles, blogs, forums, newsfeeds, photo and video libraries, live chat, email lists, calendars as well as widget markets (with custom features you can add) and more - much more.

These services have made it incredibly easy to set-up and manage social networks. In fact you can have one branded and live within five minutes for less than it costs for a coffee per day.

But is this a good thing?

I wonder sometimes if it has simply become too easy.

Successful social networks need a purpose and regular nurturing (particularly in their infancy). Given how easy it is to now set them up, are there many that were established without a clear purpose or need?

And do organisations have the skills and experience to manage successful social networks. Sure everyone HAS personal experience through a social network of their own but, as anyone moving to a new city appreciates, it takes time and effort to turn strangers into friends - even virtual ones.

I'd like to think that organisations largely follow a strategic approach. In this case they'd start by defining their goals, identifying their audience and seeking existing communities to engage with before considering establishing a new one.

They would then employ the right tools and tactics, deploying the correct functionality and nurturing their social network until it was capable of standing on its own feet.

If you are going about community building - social network building - in this way, let me know.

If you are new to the area and want to know what's out there, I've included a list of some of the white label social network providers below. I haven't provided a review of the services, as I've not used all of them however I have seen good executions of Elgg, Ning, Groupsite and SocialText.

• AffinityCircles
• Blogtronix
• Boonex 
• Converdge
• Elgg
• GMI 
• GoLightly
• Groupsite
• Kickapps
• Liveworld
• Mixxt
• Mzinga
• Ning
• OneSite
• Plum 
• SixApart
• SocialEngine
• SocialGo
• Social Network Server
• SocialSpring
• SocialText
• Sparta
• Userplane
• Webcrossing

Finally, here's a summary of Forrester's report on Community sites which provides more details on white label social network providers; Forrester Wave™: Community Platforms, Q1 ’09

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CEBIT Gov 2.0 conference Twitter stream

As a record of the event, below is a link to the Twitter stream, for the CEBIT Gov 2.0 Conference (#gov2cebit) from the record at wthashtag.

In all there were 1,416 tweets by 231 participants during the two days.

Note that the times are US Pacific Time. Add 18 hours for the correct tweeting time.

View twitter stream.

Photos of the event are also available at the CEBIT Flickr group.

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