Opening up public sector information in Australia - have your say by 1 March

We've seen enormous movement towards the opening up of public access and permission to reuse government information in Australia over the last year, both at state and Commonwealth levels.

However these attempts to improve transparency and increase the capability for information reuse shouldn't be led by government alone. The public, media, commercial and not-for-profit sectors have a significant interest in how, when and which information the government makes available.

That's why I am encouraging people to read and contribute their comments to the Office of the Information Commissioner's consultation on Australia's Government Information Policy.

If you're a support of more open government, or agree with the draft policy, go to the OIC blog and tell the Office via comments that you agree with their approach.

If you don't agree with a point, or don't agree with the entire process, this is your opportunity to tell the Office how they should improve their approach.

Even if you don't understand what they are doing or why it is being done, tell them. It will help the Office consider its future approach to communication and education.

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Don't let failure be the enemy of success

Votaire said, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good".

This is often quoted in politics where the acts of creating, selling, passing, implementing and maintaining complex policies can result in challenging decisions between perfect, yet practically impossible and practical but only good outcomes.

I'd like to suggest a similar saying for bureaucrats, "Don't let failure be the enemy of success"

There are many situations in life when people have to choose between trying something difficult, risky or new and staying with the 'tried and true' approach.

This is often portrayed as choosing between risking failure or accepting a lessor level of success. Indeed many people often see their choice as between failure and success - one outcome seen as negative and the other positive.

However failure and success are not opposites, are not opposed to each other and both can be useful steps on a path to better outcomes.

Every success is born from a range of failures, every failure occurs on the back of successes. The two are locked in a continuous dance of possibilities, risks and choices.

When we remember successful inventors, we often overlook the failures on their path to success. When we remember failures, we often downplay the successes that were achieved and often had longer-term implications. We also forget how that failure helped us shape our thinking, abandoned an approach or otherwise consider more variables in order to improve future success.

It is rare to find an individual, organisation or nation that has not had a share of, learnt from and built on both their failures and successes.

So what does this mean in practical terms for public servants and government agencies?

It means take a risk from time to time. Try something new or different - you may produce a new or different outcome.

Even if the new approach fails it may trigger further ideas worth exploring, potential successes your organisation may not have otherwise considered. It can help your staff deal with future (inevitable) failures, test your organisation's systems and otherwise help you tune activities for the better.

At worst you have new information and can justify not trying that approach again, given a particular set of circumstances. This can help you avoid larger, longer, more costly or more devastating failures in the future (fail small and fast as start-up wisdom goes)

Failure is almost always a type of success, even if it is merely used to disprove an approach and help you focus on more productive channels.

So remember, don't let failure be the enemy of success.

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The age of microblogging has arrived - in China

Listening to the US's National Public Radio (NPR) last week, I caught a story about how Chinese citizens are now using micro-blogging services (similar to Twitter) to communicate about missing or stolen children and, in some cases to locate them.

According to The Guardian article, Chinese parents turn to microblogging in hunt for missing children, China has over 80 million micro-blog users (though very few Twitter users due to blocking).

By posting messages and pictures of missing children, and by putting photos of child beggars online, there's been at least half a dozen cases where children have been located and reunited with their parents.

In particular a Chinese professor created a microblog called "Street Photos to Rescue Child Beggars" in t.sina.com.cn. The microblog, which was only registered on 25 January this year, has already gained more than 200,000 followers, many being Chinese police officers. Thousands of photos of child beggars have been posted to the micro-blog by Chinese citizens (the criteria is that photos must show the face of the child and the location and time the photo was taken).

Of course the success of the micro-blog medium in China needs to be weighed with continuing government efforts to restrict debate on certain topics - as recently illustrated in this article in The Age, China micro-blogging sites censor 'Egypt'

Must read posts:

• Chinese professor creates microblog to end child-abduction and forced child beggars - Ministry of Tofu (warning - contains pictures of child beggars, some deliberately injured to improve their begging ability)
• How microblog is helping abducted children in China - Yoland Ma

News stories:

• Chinese microblog helps parents find abducted children - The National
• Microblogs spur action on child abduction - CMP
• Special Fund to Be Set up for Child Beggars - CRI

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Who in QLD government is using Web 2.0 or Gov 2.0 tools?

The Queensland State Archives recently commissioned a whole of Government
Recordkeeping and Web 2.0 online survey to investigate how Queensland's public
authorities were using Web 2.0 and social media2 tools to conduct government business.

The survey also asked public authorities about the policies and procedures they had in place to guide the business use of Web 2.0 tools by public sector staff.

While the survey focused on exploring how records of Web 2.0 activity were kept, it provides some useful insights into the extent of Web 2.0 and Gov 2.0 activity across the Queensland government.

There were 135 responses from 193 authorities invited to participate.

The full survey is available in PDF from http://www.archives.qld.gov.au/downloads/recordkeeping_web_survey_report.pdf (this link now works!)

Here are some highlights, paraphrased from the survey:

• Over half the responding Queensland public authorities are currently using, or intend to use, Web 2.0 tools for business purposes.
• All State government departments (13) responded, with 10 indicating they are currently or would soon be using Web 2.0 tools (76%) 
• Forty-seven local government agencies responded, with 23, slightly less than half (49%) indicating they were currently or would soon use Web 2.0 tools for business purposes.
• The most common uses by public authorities of Web 2.0 tools are to provide information, promote, or receive feedback on services or products. Community consultation is also commonly undertaken using Web 2.0 tools.
• Public authorities are using Web 2.0 tools on externally hosted websites, on government websites and on government intranets.
• Web 2.0 tools are used by and in diverse areas within public authorities, including communications, marketing, corporate services, IT, community engagement and customer services functions.
• Pertaining specifically to record-keeping, while most responding Queensland public authorities had recordkeeping policies in place, they had not yet developed and implemented recordkeeping policies which specifically address Web 2.0 records.

So what tools or services were State government agencies using?

RSS feeds - which I wouldn't consider a Web 2.0 technology, ranked the highest, with 70% of state agencies already using the technology.

Facebook and Twitter were the most common services used,  with 60% of state agencies currently using these services, followed by YouTube at 50% current use.

Blogs and wikis were also quite popular, with 40% of state agencies already using these tools.

Agencies didn't indicate any current use of crowdsourcing, however 40% of agencies indicated they intended to use crowdsourcing tools in the next twelve months.

Mash-ups received a small mention, alongside other Web 2.0 tools.



Why did local government use Web 2.0?

It's interesting to see the diversity of uses for Web 2.0 services and technologies - for promotion, information, feedback, consultation, information release, professional networking, organisational learning and so on (see graph below).

It's clear that Web 2.0 services and tools have enormous horizontal utility in organisations which, in my view, supports the case for social media not being the sole preserve or under the control of government communications units.

Web 2.0 policy

Finally, there's still an enormous gap in the area of policy and procedure for Web 2.0 use.

Over 40% of Queensland public sector authorities who responded to the survey did not yet have guidance in place to support, educate and guide staff in the use of Web 2.0.

In many other cases guidance was specific to a particular medium (such as Twitter) and did not adequately cross all the different forms of social media and Web 2.0 channels.

I believe this remains an area of significant concern for government agencies. It makes it more difficult to identify, flag and address inappropriate use of digital channels, or to educate and support staff on how to use these channels effectively and appropriately for their own benefit as well as the organisation's.

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Learning from the social media policy mistakes of the Commonwealth Bank

Last week the Commonwealth Bank received a panning for its new social media policy.

Going beyond guidance for staff in their use of social media, the policy made it a requirements that Commonwealth Bank staff tell their managers about any negative comments about the bank they see online. The policy also required that staff do everything in their power to have these negative comments removed from the internet, under risk of disciplinary action or even dismissal.

You can read the CBA policy online, courtesy of the Business Spectator. Pay particular attention to Point 4 "Material posted by others" and point 6 "Breach".

These parts of the policy particularly raised the ire of the Financial Services Union (FSU), one of the bank's largest staff unions, and led to a media storm throughout last week.

"The FSU believes the policy is so broad that it goes beyond conduct which the bank could legitimately claim involved damage to its reputation or interest and/or was such as to give rise to a concern about an employee's implied contractual obligation of good faith and loyalty," the union says.

Reference: SmartCompany - Commonwealth Bank social media policy raises questions over control of employee actions online

Now I applaud the Commonwealth on taking a step all organisations should, having a clear policy and guidance for staff to help them understand how to 'not stuff up' when using social media, how to avoid conflicts of interest and prevent the media portray a staff member's views as reflecting official bank policy.

I also applaud the bank's efforts to listen to social media and address customer issues expressed online. Realistically organisations should respond to customer comments in social media channels in a similar manner to which they'd respond to customer comments in person, by phone, email, fax or other channels. It is even better if they employ monitoring tools to proactively identify and address comments that aren't made specifically to the organisation.

However it is both impractical and highly inappropriate for organisations to ask their staff to monitor and police the actions of their friends or total strangers under penalty of disciplinary action - whether in online social media channels, or offline (at pubs and BBQs).

I'm not sure what steps the Commonwealth Bank took to formally or informally consult staff when developing their social media policy.

I'm not sure whether the Commonwealth Bank referenced best practice examples of social media policies from other organisations, such as the Online Database of Social Media Governance.

I am also not sure whether the Commonwealth bank is mature enough as an organisation to treat its staff as adults, to trust the people they employ and to effectively encourage them to be the Commonwealth's biggest advocates and supporters online.

However I am sure that when an organisation attempts to place unworkable and inappropriate staff policies in place they will fail. Internally and publicly.

Organisations that introduce inappropriate staff policies will reduce their public reputation, reduce their attractiveness to top people and set staff relations back years.


When I attended the Garner Symposium late last year (to speak on a panel with Andrea Dimaio and Ann Steward), I also went to a session on Banks and Social Media to see how they were doing in coming to terms with new mediums for communication and engagement.

The impression I walked away with was that Australian banks, in general, were several years behind the Australian Public Service in their acceptance, adoption and support for social media use by staff.

Sure they used social media tactices for advertising campaigns, however these were at arms length. Social media was not seen as a set of tools that could support and re-energise internal cultures, underpin collaboration and innovation or transform 19th century institutions into 21st century financial powerhouses. In many cases the attitude was "block and penalise" rather than "train and manage".


I hope that, given their relative maturity, government agencies will learn from the mistakes of the CBA in this case and avoid endorsing social media policies that are unworkable, onerous or inappropriate.

Given the experience of the Commonwealth Department of Finance and Deregulation, the Victorian Government, the Victorian Department of Health, the South Australian Government and, also last week, the Queensland Government , I think the public sector is currently in safe hands.


Stung by the public and staff backlash, the Commonwealth Bank has rapidly agreed to work with the FSU to make its policy workable. I'm sure we'll hear more as this progresses.


Articles
A non-exhaustive list of articles discussing the Commonwealth Bank's social media policy

• Bank scorched by stupid Facebook policy - The Register
• Commonwealth Bank social media policy raises questions over control of employee actions online - SmartCompany
• CBA in hot water over social media policy - StartupSmart
• Commonwealth's snitch policy alarming - HeraldSun
• CBA slammed over draconian social media policy - Finextra
• Social media policy goes bad at Commonwealth Bank - HRZone
• Bank’s Social Media Policy Says Snitch & Spy on Your Friends or You’re Fired - The Financial Brand
• Workers union scores CBA social networking policy for employees - International Business Times
• CBA backpedals on social media policy - Business Spectator
• Facebook could get Commonwealth Bank staff fired - News.com.au

FSU posts
Posts by the Financial Services Union about the CBA social media policy

• CBA’s Social Media Policy Impedes Employee’s Rights
• The social media conundrum

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