Ignoring social media is a 'strategic error of the most basic nature' - Chief of US Naval Operations Adm

Fierce Government IT reports that Chief of US Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead says Ignoring social media is a 'strategic error of the most basic nature'.

In the US the military has been an active adopter of social media, with online channels seen as a critical theatre of influence. Most members of the US armed forces (with a few necessary exceptions) are encouraged and guided on how to communicate, collaborate and represent their nation and US forces in a effective manner through social media channels.

The article reported that,

"When you empower your workforce to be communicators, you must understand that you won't always agree with what they say or perhaps how they say it. You can certainly set reasonable boundaries--we tell our Sailors not to disclose classified information, and we expect everyone to treat everyone else with dignity and respect. But you can't dictate everything your people say," said Roughead.

The article also touched on the challenges of integrating social media into a hierarchical organisation,

Roughead said leaders must help the workforce navigate the blurring line between professional and personal, set policies that strike a balance between accountability and empowerment, and guard against the temptation of "making it about you," and not the organization.

It will be very interesting to see what the current review of social media use in Australia's armed forces says in comparison - and how they execute.

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Delib's downunder digital democracy documentary deliberations definitely defining

Delib's Chris Quigly has released the edited Australian digital democracy mini-documentary that he recorded earlier this year with a number of Government 2.0 leaders (plus myself) across Australia.

The nine minute mini-documentary provides an interesting perspective on Gov 2.0 approaches and trends in Australia. It also provides a defining view from the outside - how people in other countries might view what is happening in Australia.

I have not embedded the video below as it is worth reading Chris' post about the mini-documentary for context.

I cannot wait for the blooper reel! (well OK I can)

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Dutch Civil Servant 2.0 books now available in English

Davied van Berlo's two books "Civil Servant 2.0" and "Civil Servant 2.0 beta" have finally been translated into English and are available online for free.

I've admired and followed the work of Davied, a Dutch Civil Servant, for several years now. Davied has been using the internet for about as long as I have and (at least in my opinion) is one of the leading thinkers regarding Government 2.0 in Europe.

Davied was named Dutch Information Professional of the Year in 2009 and voted second most influential person in local Dutch government in 2010.He participates broadly in global discussions on Government 2.0 through sites such as Govloop and is active on Twitter as @Davied in both Dutch and English. Davied also runs the 6,500 member Civil Servant 2.0 network in The Netherlands and is an active proponent for Pleio, a free open-source system for governments to rapidly roll out Government 2.0 initiatives.

Over 25,000 copies of Davied's two books have been circulated in The Netherlands and Belgium. Now they are in English, I expect to see this increase rapidly.

To paraphrase Davied's blog post Dutch Civil Servant 2.0 books translated in English,

The book "Civil Servant 2.0" (originally released in Dutch in 2008) explains the significance of web 2.0 for government in terms of its internal organisation, its relationship with the public, and the working methods of the civil servant. It also contains a lot of examples from the Netherlands.

"Civil Servant 2.0 beta" (2009), is an extension of Davied's first book, providing a practical interpretation of the concepts expressed in the first book, and contains action points and ideas for government organisations to develop their own strategies for government 2.0.

I regard both books a must-read for Government 2.0 practitioners and would-be practitioners in Australia.

Download Civil Servant 2.0 and Civil Servant 2.0 Beta for free

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AGIMO launches Government 2.0 Register for Commonwealth government

I've been a bit behind on blogging in the last two weeks due to my new job, however expect to get back into the flow next week.

In the meantime, this week has seen the important announcement of the Government 2.0 Register from AGIMO, which attempts to collect all of the Australian Government's social media initiatives into a single place.

The Register makes it much easier for agencies to compare and contrast executions, learn by others' innovation and build business cases for their own activities (where decision-makers are unaware of how much is actually going on).

While any list of this type is almost certainly going to miss a few initiatives, AGIMO has done an excellent job of identifying what is going on and is supporting user updating - meaning that agencies can self-report activities (or third parties can report for them).

Given the struggle I've had at time maintaining lists of Australian Gov 2.0 initiatives - as many agencies don't announce their public activities as publicly as they could - I'm very happy to see AGIMO taking on this challenge with their much greater resources and as they're actually paid to know what's going on so they can advise people effectively.

It is vital for Australian Governments to have internal self-knowledge of what their various agencies are doing, and sharing, collaborating and borrowing from the successes of others.

Otherwise we'd constantly be reinventing the wheel and waste public money hand over fist.

I hope we'll see similar initiatives outside of Gov 2.0 as well, enabled by Gov 2.0 platforms. Such as agency recruitment sites, research activities and reports, procurement practices, financial systems, organisational policies (starting with social media policies) and other areas where government agencies can share information in ways which improves collective knowledge and skills, reduces redundant work and saves money.

Who knows - maybe in the future new agencies will simply be able to pick from a 'shopping list' of best practice policies and approaches across government!



I'll keep updating my Twitter list with all the additional accounts AGIMO has identified, and with a bunch of others I've found - when I have spare time to do so.

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Talking about Twitter

Thanks to links from John Sheridan (@sherro58) and Kerry Webb (@kwebb), I've been reading some of the latest articles and blog posts talking about Twitter.

They attempt to analyse and 'place' Twitter on the spectrum of human communication - discussing whether the service is more like text or like speech.

They also discuss the potential impacts of Twitter and other digital mediums on our brain chemistry and behaviour (which, incidentally, are affected by everything we do and learn).

I personally believe the best analogy to Twitter is thinking, not speech or text.

Twitter involves millions of individuals sharing small pieces of data at irregular intervals.  Taken together they form a mechanical stream of consciousness, layers of data, thoughts and experiences, most of it occurring outside of the conscious level of Twitter users (who don't follow these accounts or simply aren't looking at Twitter at the right time).

Many tweets - pieces of data - simply flow through the system and disappear, much like random thoughts.

However some contain data with interesting information pieces, such as news stories and events. These trigger some individual to click through to the full article in a webpage or video - a 'memory'.
 At other times Tweets form into conversations, between individuals or groups - frequently under a hashtag. While many of these conversations end unresolved, some build new knowledge on existing information or otherwise generate new ideas, leading to a further cascade of realisations.


The goal of all of these tweets is not necessarily to be lasting monuments to human achievement, or even to be relevant to most Twitter users. Some are signposts to more comprehensive content, memory markers for the web, others are processes of rationalisation, realisation or decision-making, or instant reports and analysis on 'now'.

If humans developed mechanical telepathy and connected several hundred million people together I believe the flow of content would not be dissimilar to the flow of information and dross across Twitter.

In fact, if we invented mechanical telepathy, Twitter might be a excellent medium for the transition of ephemeral and fast changing thoughts, using tools like hashtags to tie together sequences.


I've attached links to the pieces John and Kerry brought to my attention below, together with several student views on Twitter and several interesting infographics:

• The Twitter Trap
• Why Twitter’s Oral Culture Irritates Bill Keller (and why this is an important issue)
• Is Twitter writing, or is it speech? Why we need a new paradigm for our social media platforms
• Jarvis: News articles sometimes a ‘luxury’ for stories already covered live

Thoughts about Twitter from several students in the Advanced Broadcast Journalism course at the University of Canberra:

• My Time in the Twittersphere
  A Semester in the Twittersphere: Academic blog post
• The Twitter Revolution

Twitter Infographics:

• The Twitterverse Map
• The who, why and how of Twitter

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