Crowdsourcing serious government policy - now not only thinkable, but desirable

Crowdsourcing is often used in government for 'light' topics, such as selecting a logo or sourcing audience-created videos or photos.

However it also offers enormous potential for informing and developing government policy in areas that are considered both sensitive and serious - such as security.

About a year ago the Atlantic Council released its recommendations report from the 2010 Security Jam.

Unlike previous closed-room security discussions, the Security Jam ran on an open basis, bringing 4,000 military, diplomatic and civilian experts from 124 countries together online to thrash out the challenges facing global security.

Held from 4-9 February, the Jam, run by Security and Defense Agenda in partnership with the Atlantic Council and with support from IBM, was supported by both the European Commission and NATO.

The thousands of participant included defense and security specialists and non-specialists in order to broaden the security debate beyond purely military matters.

According to Robert Hunter, former US Ambassador to NATO, "The Security Jam has done something that NATO's Group of Experts has not - to reach out beyond the ‘usual suspects’, to people who have truly original ideas and a range of analysis that goes to the heart of today's and tomorrow's security issues."

Imagine applying the principles of the Security Jam to Australia's Commonwealth and state policy issues.

With the comments in Terry Moran's speech last week it is clear that this type of approach is not only becoming thinkable, but desirable.

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Defence's social media review

A few weeks ago the Department of Defence announced it had selected the advertising agency, George Patterson Y&R to conduct a review of social media risks.

This followed the Skype scandal in April this year where several male Defense Force cadets conspired to broadcast a female cadet having consensual sex without her knowledge to half a dozen other (male) cadets. The female cadet reportedly went to the media after being told that there was no possibility of police action.

On some exploration I found a reason why George Patterson Y&R was selected - their long association via the Defence Force recruitment advertising contract. A trusted working relationship and a 'known quantity' would have decreased the review's risks from Defence's perspective. The existing contract may even have simplified and expedited the procurement process whilst remaining within government guidelines.

However I still found this choice surprising. In my view traditional advertising agencies in Australia haven't demonstrated a sound understanding of how to use social media effectively, particularly for government purposes.

I'm not the only one who thinks this. Laurel Papworth, a social media specialist, also had doubts about the choice, summed up in her post, Australia Defence Force ADF and social media. This included comments made to Crikey, reported in the article, ‘No conflict’ over Defence Force social media probe.

My concerns about the choice were heightened by the coverage this weekend over the personal comments by senior George Patterson Y&R staff,

• Defence review team's sex controversy
• Defence review firm backed despite insults

Alongside this, there are a growing number of people within Australian government with a sound understanding and experience of using social media effectively for their agencies. This is evidenced by the rising number of social media policies and channels in use by many agencies. There's even a few staff in Defence who are very experienced social media practitioners.

Externally there's a growing number of specialist digital agencies and social media specialists in Australia who are able to provide effective risk assessment, support and training.

There is also quite a lot of experience in Departments similar to Defence in other countries, such as the US Defense forces.

The US has provided a great deal of effective and well-structured guidance for US sailors, soldiers and air force personnel, from the Navy Command Social Media Handbook, Social Media and the Air Force guidebook (2nd Edition) and the 2011 US Army Social Media Handbook (a follow-up from their 2010 handbook).

There's also the fantastic Web Posting Response Assessment flowchart from the USAF and even the Marines have embraced social media use.

They've even indexed their official social media channels to make them easier to discover. US's Defense forces have social media directories, the US Navy's social media directory, the US Army's directory and a similar directory for the US Air Force.


The social media report is due in July - I look forward to seeing it released publicly.

I hope that George Patterson Y&R are able to provide useful findings and actionable recommendations - and that they particularly consider the social media expertise and experience of the groups above.

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1,000th post at eGovAU - looking backwards and forwards

It is hard for me to believe that I've reached 1,000 posts on eGovAU - all talking about Government 2.0 and related topics.

That's well over half a million words I've written on the topic in around three years - around 5 decent-sized novels.

Now I'm here I'm indulging in the opportunity to look back and forward.

Think on the world a decade ago, in early 2001.

The twin towers still stood, Australia had just celebrated 100 years of Federation and John Howard was soon to be re-elected.

The Internet bubble had collapsed a year earlier, leaving people deeply suspicious of investing in dotcoms and creating a global tech depression. There was no Google, YouTube, Facebook, Myspace or Twitter.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 web browser (still used 10 years later by some government agencies) ruled the web with around 90% market share. The web was dominated by brochureware and surviving ecommerce start-ups like Amazon and eBay.

There was no such concepts as social media, Web 2.0 or Government 2.0 (only eGovernment) and the Australian government had only recently mandated accessibility standards for government websites. Some Departments didn't have websites yet.

There were about 458 million internet users globally (in March 2001) - compared to today's 477 million internet users in China alone, or over 500 million active Facebook users.

The world has changed a great deal since 2001, geographically, politically and socially. Every living individual in the world has changed - some more than others.

Governments have also changed - however much has remained the same.

The next ten years promises to only bring more change, at a faster pace, than the last ten.

The challenge for all of us is to consider these changes strategically, their opportunities and consequences, whilst still living through them. The future has always belonged to those who can anticipate, act, react and adapt - and the future of government will equally belong to those who embrace and drive positive change, not to those who let it happen to them, or despite them.

We live in a singular moment in human history, a moment ripe with potential for humanity and the planet.

We've thrown off the shackles of distance with cheap communications technologies and given more than 2 billion humans access to a global mind - a database filled with much of the world's knowledge and thoughts, a conduit to discover, create, share and collaborate to build empowered, engaged and effective societies and institutions.

How should we use this moment in time?

How will YOU use this moment?

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21st Century society vs 19th Century laws and policing

Laws have always struggled to keep up with society, however rarely in such a vivid and public way as in Wednesday's arrest of Sydney Morning Herald journalist, Ben Grubb, and the confiscation of his iPad.

The incident, well reported in the SMH, occurred when Queensland Police responded to a complaint regarding a photo hacked from one security expert's private Facebook page and displayed in a presentation at the AusCERT conference in Brisbane as an example of a major security hole in Facebook's system.

Grubb was attending the conference and received a briefing about the security hole. Seeing the public interest in telling the community that their supposedly private Facebook photos could be easily accessed, Grubb reported the matter in an article featuring the image, which I can no longer find on the SMH site.

The following day police questioned Grubb about the matter and then demanded he hand over his iPad on the basis that police wanted to 'search' it for evidence of a crime. When he was unwilling to do so, he was arrested and his iPad confiscated for a complete image of its content to be taken and analysed by police (let's not even explore the potential conflict with Australia's Shield laws, which incidentally also cover bloggers and tweeters).

The basis of police concern was that the image retrieved by the security expert and used in the SMH article was 'tainted material', stolen from a Facebook account and then passed on to others.

What is more worrying is that the Queensland police, in a press conference, then equated receiving an email containing a stolen image as 'like taking stolen TVs'. To quote:

Detective Superintendent Hay used an analogy to describe why Grubb was targeted.

"Someone breaks into your house and they steal a TV and they give that TV to you and you know that TV is stolen," he said.

"The reality is the online environment is now an extension of our real community and if we go into that environment we have responsibilities to behave in a certain way."

Let's think about this for a moment.

Firstly, when someone 'steals' an image - or music, movies, books or other online content - it isn't stealing if the content remains at the point of origin for the original owner to continue using. It may be a copyright infringement or privacy breach, but unlike stealing a television, where the owner of the television is left without it, there is no theft, simply replication.

On that basis any laws around theft simply don't apply online. You can copy my idea, my words, my images. However unless if you somehow delete the originals, you are not stealing them, you are breaching my copyright.

Secondly, when an email is sent to our email address it gets delivered regardless of the legality of its contents. We have no say in whether we receive legal or illegal messages and images. Sure there's spam blockers and the like, however these automated tools can't tell if content is legal or not, only if it violates certain rules, such as containing certain four letter words or phrases.

However, according to the QLD Police, if someone sends you an email containing a 'stolen' image, you are breaking the law. This is even though there is no way possible for you to refrain from receiving the email in the first place. You don't even have to open the email. If it has been stored on your device, based on the QLD Police's interpretation of Commonwealth law, you are a potential criminal.

This has enormous ramifications for society. Anyone can frame someone else by sending them an email. As it is relatively easy to set up a disposal email account, you can do so anonymously. This could be used against business rivals, political opponents, or even against the police themselves simply by sending them an anonymous email and then making an anonymous complaint.

Equally, if the person receiving the email is a potential criminal, then what about all the organisations whose mail servers were used to transmit the message?

When an email is sent from one person to another it can pass through a number of different systems on its journey. At each stop, a mail server copies and saves the email, checks the route then sends the email on.

In most cases these mail servers delete these emails again for storage reasons, however at a point in time each of them has received the email, making the organisations and individuals who own them liable, again, under the QLD Police's interpretation of the law.

Given the number of emails sent each day in Australia it's clear from the QLD Police's legal interpretation that most ISPs must be operated by criminals, receiving, storing and transmitting illegal content all day and night.

Applying this type of 19th Century policing and legal approach clearly isn't going to work in the 21st Century.

When everyone can publish and illegal content can be received without your consent or knowledge, laws need to change, as does police training and practice.

Without these changes government bodies will become more removed from the society they are meant to serve, unable to function effectively and efficiently in today's world.

By the way, the security analyst who originally 'stole' the Facebook images hasn't been questioned, arrested or charged. And Ben Grubb still hasn't received his iPad back.

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Gov 2.0 Canberra lunch with Allison Hornery on Gov 2.0 around the world - 27 May 2011

For May's Gov 2.0 Canberra lunch we're joined by Allison Hornery, co-founder of CivicTEC and co-host of Gov 2.0 radio

Allison will be speaking about the Government 2.0 trends and activities that she's observed around the world in recent travels and projects.

Note that due to issues caused by no-shows at previous lunches, I am now charging for Gov 2.0 lunches on registration.

Event Registration Online for Gov 2.0 Canberra Lunch - May 2011 powered by Eventbrite

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