Is it really a lack of trust, or a fear of connecting that leads to discouragement of social media in workplaces?

I hear a great deal of discussion by colleagues (and have engaged in it myself) about the lack of trust within organisations.

• "There's all this process because our senior leadership doesn't trust its own staff."
• "If they'd just trust the [Communications/Web/IT/Finance/Procurement/Program/Policy] team - we know what we are doing and have some very talented people here"
• "If you want to influence managers, get in a consultant - bosses trust them more because they are not staff."
• "What does someone with twenty years experience and a successful track record have to do to be trusted around here?"

What if it is not really about trust? What if fears of senior management about use of social media in the office, while expressed or viewed as trust issues, are really just about preserving professional distance.

Managers often find there is a need to stay slightly separate from their staff. They may be advised not to go out and party like a team member, or to get too close to the personal lives of younger people (particularly of the opposite gender) in the organisation.

This separation is to 'keep the relationship professional', to avoid forming personal connections which might interfere with professional responsibilities, to avoid perceptions (or actual) favouritism or bias and to preserve a sense of authority. This allows difficult business decisions to be made more objectively - people disciplined or let go, changes that are painful to individuals but better for an organisation to be made, critical information to be kept secret when needed.

Thinking about the situation in this way, it isn't that senior managers distrust their staff - in most cases they probably hold them in high regard - it is that they have been trained to maintain distance.

If so those endeavouring to introduce social tools into organisations might find a different tact works best. Managers can use social media in different ways to staff - just as they can use email and phones differently.

Sure, allow teams to socialise - humans are social creatures, we perform better and more productively when we know enough about our colleagues to work with them well.

However managers can still use them with professional distance - communicating facts and announcements teams need to know, seeking and providing feedback on work, mentoring, instructing - even chastising.

Perhaps that's some food for thought next time your senior managers appear to block a social media channel. It's not that they distrust their staff. It could be that they fear connecting too closely.

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What's the risk for government agencies of NOT engaging via social media?

If you do not embrace social media soon, the digital divide in your country will be dwarfed by the divide between your country and the rest of the world.
Chris Moore, the CIO of Edmonton Canada, as reported in FutureGov Magazine.

When people ask me to consider the risks of government agencies engaging with audiences via social media, I often respond by asking them if they've considered the risks of not engaging.

This often gets blank looks; many people don't often consider the risks of not doing things, even though it is a normal part of life.

For example, who today doesn't understand the risks of not wearing seat belts? However, only 15 years ago there were plenty of concerns still raised about the risk of wearing them.

Here's a list of some of the risks highlighted by the US anti-seatbelt movement:

• Wouldn't you rather be thrown through the windshield of your car to safety than trapped in a rolling vehicle? And after you are thrown through the windshield, how can you jump out of the way of your rolling car if you're all tangled in a seatbelt?
• As much as one tenth of one percent of auto accidents involve sudden fire or plunging into water. If everyone in the United States takes part in an annual auto accident, that's 23,000 people who run the risk of being trapped and fatally killed by a seatbelt each year!
• Psychiatrists say that exposing young children to practices such as bondage from an early age can cause confusion during puberty.
• A section on seatbelts in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Web site's FAQ says (when edited for clarity): "Wear ... a seatbelt ... and ... you will ... died."
• Even the statistics of the pro-seatbelt Automotive Coalition for Restraint of Freedom proves the case of their opposition. The Coalition says that seatbelts cut the risk of serious or fatal injury by 40% to 55%, but even if this number is believed, it means that seatbelts are potentially deadly in the remaining 60% to 45% of cases!
• Seatbelting is related to the hideous ancient Chinese practice of foot binding.

I expect, over time, that many of the risks of using social media will become normalised and accepted or explained away as myths, whereas the risks of not using social media will become more acute.

A good case in point is an article from The Australian published on Thursday 2 December, DFAT the dinosaur needs to find Facebook friends.

Besides the actual article appearing, which could be seen as reducing faith in the capability of DFAT to effectively carry out its duties, the article highlights the level of online activity by foreign services in countries like the US and UK, compared to the level of activity from DFAT.

For example, the article states that:

The [US] State Department operates 230 Facebook accounts, 80 Twitter feeds and 55 YouTube channels and has 40 Flickr sites. And the story of e-diplomacy doesn't end here. Other governments are experimenting with dozens of other innovations and the pace of change is rapid.

Notwithstanding the need to run quite so many accounts, the US State Department is becoming an astute user of social media to reinforce US foreign (and domestic) policy goals. This supports the US government to project its power globally and influence world opinion in its favour.

The expertise the State Department is building puts it far ahead of other nations, although the UK is doing an exemplary job with its diplomatic blog network. For example:

Digital tools would also allow DFAT to play in spaces it is cut off from at present. Take the blogosphere, for example. The US, Britain and Canada have all entered this space. The US maintains nine full-time Arabic-language bloggers, two Farsi bloggers and two Urdu bloggers while the British Foreign Office also has two full-time Farsi bloggers.

So, what is the risk to Australian government of not using social media, or of entering the space late (a position some Departments already face)?

Departments may become less effective at informing or influencing public opinion, locally and abroad. Our governments will be less able to compete diplomatically, both overseas and locally against social media savvy interest groups, corporations or even individuals.

As other nations continue to develop and exercise their public sector social media 'muscles', by institutionally blocking Australian public servants from using social media in their jobs we could be allowing our own government's 'muscles' to become increasingly flabby and weak.

Therefore, if public servants are not able to learn how to effectively communicate via social media now, we will be at an increasing disadvantage as others pull further ahead of us.

This loss of effectiveness could take a very, very long time to redress.

Next time you consider the risks of social media engagement by your department, consider the risks of not engaging for yourself (your career), your department, the government and Australia as a nation.

You might find that the risks of not engaging vastly outweigh the risks of engaging.

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Half-day information briefing on Google products in Canberra on 9 December

The Department of Health and Ageing is holding a free half-day information briefing for public servants on Google's products on Thursday 9 December in Canberra.

At the briefing Google representatives will demonstrate how Google's search service can provide insights into top searches, interesting trends and the use of search in behavioural analysis and prediction, such as how flu outbreaks may be predicted using search data.

Google will also discuss and demonstrate other tools that may be useful to government agencies, including:

• Google Insights for Search
• Google Wonder Wheel
• Google Hot Trends
• Google Scholar
• Google Maps
• Google Adwords
• Youtube competitions
• Google Analytics
• Google Docs
• Google Enterprise

To learn more, and to register visit http://googleinfosession.eventbrite.com.

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Canberra Gov 2.0 lunch - 8 December

It has been a big year for Government 2.0 in Australia, both at the federal and state levels. The Victorian Government in particular has committed to releasing the majority of public sector information under an open copyright license, continued to improve its whole-of-government intranet and released the Government 2.0 Action plan: a comprehensive strategy for guiding Victoria's government 2.0 efforts.


To celebrate the close of the Gov 2.0 year, and to discuss the initiatives in Victoria, we're lucky to have Maria Katsonis, from the Victorian Government's Department of Premier and Cabinet, in Canberra.

Maria is currently the Principal Adviser, Public Administration in the Department of Premier and Cabinet, leading projects that examine issues that shape and influence the Victorian public sector. This has included the development and implementation of the Government 2.0 Action Plan released earlier this year and the VPS Innovation Action Plan released in 2009.

Previously Maria was Executive Director of Public Policy and Organisation Reviews at the State Services Authority where she led reviews at the request of the Premier, Ministers and Secretaries. She has also held the role of Assistant Director, Social Policy in the Department of Premier and Cabinet.

Maria has a Master of Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and is a Fellow of Leadership Victoria.


I know this is short notice, however if you are able to join us at Café in the House in the Old Parliament House for lunch Maria will be providing an interesting and insightful glimpse into how one goes about establishing and executing a whole-of-government Gov 2.0 program.

Register here

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Why are many Australian government blogs failing?

I've just updated my list of Australian government blogs, checking the list I had is still valid, looking for others (frankly they're not that easy to find, you need to promote them and link to them from your sites guys) and checking the post frequency and level of comments.

My assessment is that Australian public sector organisations are backing away from blogging. Many are blogging less frequently. Some are shutting down their blogs altogether.

Compared to the growth of government blogs in the US, UK, parts of Asia and Europe, my conclusion, very reluctantly arrived at, is that many Australian government blogs are failing - with a few notable exceptions.

This really disappoints me. Blogging offers government a direct channel to citizens and stakeholders. It allows organisations to bypass traditional media gatekeepers, to present the fact, to dispel myths, to state their positions in their own words, humanise bureaucracies and directly source feedback and views from the community.

However I can understand why this might be the case.

In my experience there appears to be less support and greater barriers to blogging in Australian government than in some other western jurisdictions.

We don't have a Cabinet Director of Digital Engagement or a Memorandum from our executive Head of State that directs public sector organisations to engage online and holds senior management accountable when they don't.

There's a current culture of adversion to risk (as stated in the Ahead of the Game report) with very deep roots throughout the public sector. This leads to an unwillingness to say anything which might be considered the slightest bit controversial.

It is simply safer to not blog - there's no official kudos or reward for publishing.

What do we do to change this?

First we must directly confront the question of whether we need to change. Explain why using only the tools that worked in the 1980s simply doesn't cut it 30 years on.

We must skill, support and reward those who engage. Give them a more comprehensive framework of what is and isn't appropriate, how to moderate, how to handle dissenting views in a positive and productive manner.

We must ensure our managers remain willing to engage with appropriate risks, remaining frank and fearless, a culture that some have stated is no longer as evident in the public service. Our managers must be prepared, supported and equipped to engage with risk, not merely shut down engagement and hope to avoid it.

We must accept that often it creates greater risks when we don't engage than when we do. There have been many examples of how the lack of active engagement has increased the risks to government and the public sector.

Most of all we need to employ and empower motivated and skilled individuals - then get out of their way. Hire people with experience in online engagement and trust them to safeguard the interests of government, just as we hire experienced media people and trust them to speak to journalists.

We need to have these social media practitioners advise senior management on the right ways to engage on given issues and through which mediums and channels. To advise senior management of the demographics of social media - who uses it, how and why.

I am hopeful that Australia is just going through a short dip at the moment, that we'll see a reversal as more guidance is provided and the commitment of the public sector to digital engagement grows. After all, the public is not reducing its use of social media channels, it is newspapers and television channels seeing shrinking audiences as social media continues to grow.

However this dip might be elongated - negatively affecting government's ability to communicate - if we don't see a willingness to actively address the challenges and step beyond comfort zones.

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