Presentation from Friday's Seamless conference

Last Friday I presented on a personal basis at the Seamless CMS Government Conference in Melbourne to a collection of Councils from around Australia and New Zealand about the state of Government 2.0 in Australia.

I've included my presentation below.

It was an interesting conference. Councils are struggling with the same issues regarding Government 2.0 as their larger cousins at state and federal level, limited resources, management buy-in and mitigating the risks of engaging online.

As the 'front-line' of government, service-focused but smaller and often very agile, local councils have some unique advantages in the practical implementation of Government 2.0. In many cases their smaller constituencies can allow for deeper engagement simply as there are less relationships to maintain at any one time.

However they may suffer as well, having insufficient constituent mass on some issues to maintain an effective conversation and their individual lack of resourcing can make it difficult to add new capability.

One topic I spoke about was how councils can work together to leverage their resources. As they generally don't compete (except over attracting population or tourists) and perform almost identical functions - garbage, roads, community services - they have many opportunities to co-design solutions across council boundaries.

I also suggested that as the first government mash-up competition was run by a local council, the District of Columbia, they have a similar capacity to run events which attract best practice ideas and solutions from around the world - not simply their own constituents.

Over time I'm expecting significant Government 2.0 innovation to come out of councils - as we've already seen from places such as Mosman Council.

Also speaking at the conference was Ben Peacock, a founder of Republic of Everyone. He laid down five guidelines for social media that I felt were worth repeating:

1. Involve people,
2. Show respect,
3. Share the wisdom,
4. Don't be boring,
5. Be prepared to lose control

View more presentations from Craig Thomler

Read full post...

View summary...

How much work time spent on social media use in a government department is 'excessive'?

According to The Australia, at least one Australian Government agency is full of 'Bureaucrats twitting at our expense' (sic - the correct term is 'tweeting').

Based on a question which identified that, in a single week of measurement last year, staff at the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR), spent 400 hours using social media, The Australian reported that "Liberal senator Cory Bernardi said millions of dollars were being wasted as public servants whiled away the hours on social media sites."

I thought it worth unpacking this article and this number. Government agencies are struggling to decide whether to allow, and how to manage, social media use by staff - whether on official, professional or a personal basis.

How much social media use is appropriate? Should staff have access to the Department's official social media channels? How does a Department respond to claims that use may be excessive?


Firstly the article didn't identify what was meant by 'social media'. Does it include newspaper websites (such as The Australian) which support comments? Does it exclude government mandated platforms such as GovDex and GovSpace?

Is YouTube 'social media', or a video distribution service? How about Wikipedia, encyclopedia or social media?

This makes it harder to characterise how these 400 hours were spent. I'm happy to accept a broad inclusive view and consider social media as including any website which supports multi-way interaction (public publishing of user comments), even if the user doesn't actually interact in this manner. That includes YouTube and Wikipedia, as well as newspaper websites and many government sites.


Secondly, there are many legitimate reasons that public servants may need to use social media channels. There are many forums, social networks and other social media channels discussing topics related to the Department's portfolio areas (Innovation, Industry, Science and Research).

In fact I'd consider it negligent if any Department was not at least monitoring and preferably participating in discussions appropriate to their portfolio interests - this level of ongoing consultation is vital for good policy formation and service delivery.

Certainly some social media use may be incidental personal use and not interfering with agency business (similar to banking online, taking a personal call or going to the toilet), however a substantial proportion of social media use is likely to be legitimate and important business activity.


Finally, it is important to consider the time spent using social media proportionate to the number of employees. While the article indicated that the 400 hours of social media use per week by DIISR was equivalent to ten full-time tweeters, this claim is highly misleading.

DIISR has about 2,112 employees based on DIISR's 2009-2010 annual report.

Spreading 400 hours of weekly social media use across 2,112 staff, led me to an average of 11 minutes and 20 seconds spent using social media per employee per week.

That's less time than it takes to get a single coffee from a nearby coffee shop and shorter than the average smoke break.

On that basis, in my view, 400 hours per week social media use for a 2,000 person agency, should not be considered excessive.


So how much social media use is appropriate for a government Department?

The right answer, I believe, is 'it depends'.

It depends on the activities of the Department. Some agencies have a pressing need to monitor community sentiment, address enquiries and/or respond to incorrect statements to ensure that the correct information is available to the community, including in popular forums, blogs and other frequently used online channels.

It depends on the situation. During a crisis there might be greater need to engage the public online, such as the recent example in Queensland where the Queensland Police made world class use of Twitter and Facebook.

It depends on staff's individual job responsibilities. Following in the footsteps of the corporate sector, we're seeing more social media advisor and community management roles in the public service. These people are required to monitor, advise and respond via social media. It's their job.

Lastly, it depends on how effectively a Department is using social media.

In my view we're still in very early stages of adoption with few staff trained or experienced in effective official use of social media channels (but learning fast).

The Department of Justice in Victoria requires staff to demonstrate capability using social media (via their internal Yammer service) before being allowed to use social media officially for the Department - like conducting media training before placing a senior executive in front of a journalist. However many other Departments still discourage social media use except amongst specific staff tasked with relevant duties.

I wouldn't be surprised if a mature Department, using social media appropriately as a core communications and engagement tool, could rack up ten times the use of social media that DIISR does today - 4,000 hours per week.

This may sound like a lot, but would still represent less than 2 hours per week per staff member, only five per cent of their time. What else do you spend two hours a week on?


The real question to fall out of the consideration above is what activities does and will the time spent using social media replace?

Will it replace some town hall meetings (planning, travelling and running) with online consultations; some stakeholder phone conversation and emails with stakeholder social network groups; internal staff meetings with intranet forums; or writing media releases with blog posts and tweets?

Given the relative productivity of social media over 'old ways' of doing things - maybe politicians and senior managers need to push for MORE social media use in government Departments rather than less.

Read full post...

View summary...

Mobile internet trends - an online game changer

Mary Meeker, managing director for Morgan Stanley's global technology research unit recently gave an excellent presentation on mobile internet trends.

It highlights the incredible growth of tablets and apps, the rise of Android, the new uses that smartphones are being put to (only 32% of time is spent on phone calls) and the relative effectiveness of mobile and internet advertising compared to traditional media (internet matches television and mobile exceeds it).

I've embedded it below - it is a must see.

Mary meeker mobile trends 11 feb 2011

View more presentations from ceobroadband.

Read full post...

View summary...

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.

Read full post...

View summary...

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.

Read full post...

View summary...