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Steve Davies posted a very interesting piece on OzLoop last week, which with his permission I've posted below.
The original, including comments from one of Australia's Senators, is available at http://apsozloop.ning.com/profiles/blogs/are-australian-politicians
Are Australian politicians really comfortable with Gov 2.0 and social media?
I thought a lot about this post. On the one hand it is political, on the other it is about how the community and politicians talk and listen to each other. The essence of Gov 2.0 if you will.
So my focus in this post is on the dynamic we have all witnessed. The politics and issues associated with the example I use - climate change and the proposed carbon tax - are being chased around the back garden by my dogs. That should keep both those elements in check.
The contrast between members of the Australian Government and the United States Government could not be more stark.
In the United States we see Townhall @ The White House. In Australia we see a very traditional and controlling approach over Climate Change and, more specifically, the proposed introduction of the carbon tax. If ever there was a case for early discussion and engagement with the whole community using social media the carbon tax was it.
Instead, what we see is a flurry of political activity and committee work, a poor flow of information and, of course, the media making a lot of commentary. Sitting somewhere in the middle of all this activity is the community.
What is challenging, however, is that if the essence of Gov 2.0 is talking and listening then it seems pretty clear that we have to ask questions about the behaviour of our politicians.
We all know there are politicians who are passionate advocates of Gov 2.0. However, the fact that we see nothing like the Townhall @ the White House and see such a traditional approach to the question of climate change and the proposed climate tax is a clear indication that most of our politicians (and their advisors), are locked into a set of behaviours that are, well, very Gov 1.0.
While it is the job of politicians to be political over questions of policy and direction, the time may now be with us when our politicians need to be un-political about when and how they talk and listen to the community. So the bottom line is that for Gov 2.0 to really work the quality of the talking and listening needs to improve between members of the community, public service and politicians.
For many of our politicians that probably means a changing professional practices and habits built up over years. So no, at present many of our politicians are not comfortable with Gov 2.0 and social media.
Wouldn't it be nice to actually sit down over coffee with a few and explore how to improve the quality of listening and talking and take it from there. The vast majority are great face-to-face. Just like the rest of us.
Check out Expert Labs.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Guest post: Are Australian politicians really comfortable with Gov 2.0 and social media? | Tweet |
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
What type of rubbish service should we expect from government? | Tweet |
A couple of weeks ago I had one of the most traumatic experiences a citizen can have with government, the type that can shake one's faith with the system to the core...
My garbage wasn't collected on schedule.
Just like any other week I put out my garbage and recycling bins on Wednesday night.
On Thursday morning, when going out to collect my bins, I found to my horror that while my recycling had been collected, my garbage bin, alone of all the bins on the street, remained full of rubbish.
Naturally I did what any other 21st century citizen would do - I completed the form on the Canberra Connect website for reporting incidents and making complaints.
The website emailed me a nice little receipt:
Your correspondence has been received by the ACT Government and referred to the relevant business unit for action and/or response.
Your reference number is: #xxxxxx-xxxxxx
You should expect a response within 10 working days.
A response to a simple, and fairly standard, online request within ten working days...
Being the optimistic type, I left my bin out in the hope that the garbage collectors would be notified and return for it over the next few days.
Six days later, on the following Wednesday (garbage night again) I received the following email reply:
Dear Craig,
I am so sorry about the delay.
When you bin has not been collected please call Cleanaway on 62601547 and they will arrange a collection ASAP.
I hope this helps.
The email was almost totally useless in resolving the present issue. My garbage was meant to be out that night anyway, and was collected as normal the following morning.
Is this the type of rubbish response we should expect from government?
Promising a response to an online form within ten days. Responding in six days. Certainly the ACT government significantly exceeded their performance requirement!
However best practice for email responses is closer to two hours than ten days. Even this is very slow compared to the response timeframe normally allowed for telephone calls.
Realistically shouldn't government agencies be aiming for timeframes significantly better than ten days for emails and online forms?
Shouldn't they use the benefits of digital automation to build databases of standard responses to common questions, which would allow new questions to be analysed and responded to with little or no human intervention?
It does make me wonder. Can government agencies expect to successfully introduce advanced Government 2.0 practices - featuring extensive and robust real-time and near-real time interactions with citizens - when they've not yet mastered the art of responding to email or online forms in reasonable timeframes?
Monday, July 11, 2011
Building an innovation framework in a government agency | Tweet |
I founded a number of innovative companies during the 1990 and 2000s (and even at school in the 1980s), so have a deep and abiding interest in inspiring and promoting innovation in public sector workplaces.
As such, with the release of the Public Sector Innovation Toolkit, I thought I'd share an approach to managing innovation in a government agency.
While I developed it a couple of years ago and have pushed it up through 'suggestions' channels in a number of workplaces, I have yet to receive any feedback from senior management in any agency or have the system see the light of day.
Maybe it's that bad :)
However, I thought someone might be able to use aspects of it, so here it is.
Innovation framework for public sector agencies
The 'secret' of innovation
The secret to innovation is that there is no secret. Virtually every individual is innovative and engages in innovation on a regular basis.
What is a challenge, however, is effectively distributing innovations - communicating them beyond an individual, small team, branch or agency.
While government agencies have well-developed channels for communicating official matters, many are still developing system for the formal exchange and normalisation of new ideas (such as change management networks).
This lack of rigorous systems is also often reflected in the level of sharing of research, policies, templates and best practice approaches within (and between) agencies - all of which often happen informally where formal channels are weak.
To strengthen the practice of innovation in government agencies, it is necessary to strengthen the formal structures for assessing, distributing, reporting and rewarding innovation. This aids a cultural shift towards the support of innovative thinking as it becomes thinking that is valued, measured and rewarded by the organisation.
A formal framework for innovation assessment and advocacy
Most organisations require senior support to move innovation from being a clandestine pursuit by teams on the outer edges of agency systems to being part of the systems themselves.
This starts with executive sponsorship, supported by a review and recommendation framework (to qualify and promote good innovations) and a network designed to funnel innovations into the formal system for review, acceptance and propagation.
I see the following bodies and appointments as critical:
Agencies should devise and adopt some form of innovation process which acts as a funnel to encourage staff to:
This process could be based on similar processes adopted elsewhere, and on suggestions from the MAC Innovation products, using a template system for each stage from ideation, development, risk assessment, business case, peer review, pilot test, implementation and change management.
Agencies should also prepare innovation toolkits to provide innovators with the support necessary to critically review their innovative ideas – and discard all that are unworkable before significant resourcing is spent on them. Again this can be based on similar processes adopted elsewhere, and on the Public Sector Innovation Toolkit.
An ideation review and prioritisation system should also be developed or adopted that provides significant transparency through the process.
It should supports a visible progression of ideas and the capability for all staff to access, suggest ideas and contribute to existing ideas (supporting a peer review process). The system should then allow reporting back as ideas are rejected, reformed, implemented or partially implemented.
Several US Departments have developed these types of systems for staff and some information is available on them, although they are not publicly visible, such as the Department of Homeland Security’s IdeaFactory (www.whitehouse.gov/open/innovations/IdeaFactory) and the Department of Health and Human Services’ IdeaLab (www.whitehouse.gov/open/innovations/idealab).
The most visible ideation systems are public-facing, such as IdeaStorm from Dell (www.ideastorm.com) and Starbucks’ My Starbucks Idea (www.starbucks.com/coffeehouse/community/mystarbucksidea).
DAFF’s i-Gen system is an example of an agency system designed to manage this process. While it is quite manual (and there's lots of potential to automate parts of the system), it has achieved the most important goal. It works.
Of course, it would be even more beneficial if an agency developing an automated ideation system would share it with other agencies - leveraging the knowledge and experience and supporting cross-agency innovation.
Culture
Innovation flourishes in cultures which commensurately reward success and counsel (but do not ‘criminalise’) failures.
Given government departments already have governance processes to manage and mitigate potential failures (risks), agencies should investigate appropriate rewards for innovations based on their effective impact on agency costs and activities.
As cash rewards are difficult to issue in the APS, and demonstrably are not the most valued reward approach for many staff, alternatives such as recognition and training opportunities should be explored.
Concepts such as personal notes, innovations awards, opportunities to spend time with senior personnel (i.e. lunch with the CEO/Secretary or presenting the innovation to the executive) and similar recognition approaches have been used effectively in other organisations.
An appropriate selection of these could be adopted in any government agency through the innovation bodies suggested above - after consulting with staff to gain a view on the reward approaches which would most motivate them.
In fact, carrying out this staff consultation could be done using the same ideation system the agency intends to use (which breeds familiarity and comfort with the system and is a good example of 'eating one’s own dog food').
Resourcing
My view is that there needs to be a team allocated to managing the innovation system and encouraging cultural behaviour changes, just as there’s specific teams tasked with Procurement, Legal, FOI or other matters which impact on most staff.
The DAFF i-Gen system requires 1.5 full-time equivalent staff to manage. Note this is a partially manual process with a significant level of active internal advocacy.
I would contend that an agency would need to employ one full-time staff member (EL1 level), within a supportive team with a broad innovation objective. The individual would need to have strong experience in advocacy and change management.
There would also need to be appropriate funding and support to put the ideation system in place and manage the secretariat of the committees. With all of this in place I believe an agency can ramp up an effective innovation agenda in 1-2 years.
Agencies that adopted a more fragmented approach - asking existing staff to set aside time to design/manage and maintain an innovation agenda and system - would take much longer to achieve buy-in, embed in an organisation and see positive outcomes.
As such, with the release of the Public Sector Innovation Toolkit, I thought I'd share an approach to managing innovation in a government agency.
While I developed it a couple of years ago and have pushed it up through 'suggestions' channels in a number of workplaces, I have yet to receive any feedback from senior management in any agency or have the system see the light of day.
Maybe it's that bad :)
However, I thought someone might be able to use aspects of it, so here it is.
Innovation framework for public sector agencies
The 'secret' of innovation
The secret to innovation is that there is no secret. Virtually every individual is innovative and engages in innovation on a regular basis.
What is a challenge, however, is effectively distributing innovations - communicating them beyond an individual, small team, branch or agency.
While government agencies have well-developed channels for communicating official matters, many are still developing system for the formal exchange and normalisation of new ideas (such as change management networks).
This lack of rigorous systems is also often reflected in the level of sharing of research, policies, templates and best practice approaches within (and between) agencies - all of which often happen informally where formal channels are weak.
To strengthen the practice of innovation in government agencies, it is necessary to strengthen the formal structures for assessing, distributing, reporting and rewarding innovation. This aids a cultural shift towards the support of innovative thinking as it becomes thinking that is valued, measured and rewarded by the organisation.
A formal framework for innovation assessment and advocacy
Most organisations require senior support to move innovation from being a clandestine pursuit by teams on the outer edges of agency systems to being part of the systems themselves.
This starts with executive sponsorship, supported by a review and recommendation framework (to qualify and promote good innovations) and a network designed to funnel innovations into the formal system for review, acceptance and propagation.
I see the following bodies and appointments as critical:
- Executive Innovation Champion (Dep Sec/FAS level), empowered to support, advocate for and resource appropriate innovations across the Department.
- Innovation Review Committee (EL2/AS/FAS level), able to review innovations from the perspectives of areas of the business (Finance, HR, Procurement, Communications, IT, Policy, etc) and to recommend to the Executive which innovations should receive support and sponsorship.
- Innovation Mentors (EL1/EL2/AS level), equipped to support and empower junior staff to develop their innovative ideas to a level where they are pilotable/executable. This group will require some training in change management and approaches to innovation. Organisations such as ASIX (www.asix.org.au) can support this type of requirement.
- Innovation Network (all levels) of people interested in innovative practice – can be an informal network, but requires a convenor with the support and resourcing to organise speakers and regular events for discussing and evaluating different innovative ideas from across the public sector, private sector and corporate world. Can link as an affiliate to the Public Sector Innovation Network. The Convenor should be on the Innovation Review Committee to link the network back to the formal process.
Agencies should devise and adopt some form of innovation process which acts as a funnel to encourage staff to:
- conceptualise (ideation) new ways of working,
- develop innovations in a structured manner, identifying the benefits and savings,
- review them thoughtfully with peer support (identifying and mitigating risks),
- develop a pilot implementation to test them, and
- work through a formal review process which may lead to adoption.
This process could be based on similar processes adopted elsewhere, and on suggestions from the MAC Innovation products, using a template system for each stage from ideation, development, risk assessment, business case, peer review, pilot test, implementation and change management.
Agencies should also prepare innovation toolkits to provide innovators with the support necessary to critically review their innovative ideas – and discard all that are unworkable before significant resourcing is spent on them. Again this can be based on similar processes adopted elsewhere, and on the Public Sector Innovation Toolkit.
An ideation review and prioritisation system should also be developed or adopted that provides significant transparency through the process.
It should supports a visible progression of ideas and the capability for all staff to access, suggest ideas and contribute to existing ideas (supporting a peer review process). The system should then allow reporting back as ideas are rejected, reformed, implemented or partially implemented.
Several US Departments have developed these types of systems for staff and some information is available on them, although they are not publicly visible, such as the Department of Homeland Security’s IdeaFactory (www.whitehouse.gov/open/innovations/IdeaFactory) and the Department of Health and Human Services’ IdeaLab (www.whitehouse.gov/open/innovations/idealab).
The most visible ideation systems are public-facing, such as IdeaStorm from Dell (www.ideastorm.com) and Starbucks’ My Starbucks Idea (www.starbucks.com/coffeehouse/community/mystarbucksidea).
DAFF’s i-Gen system is an example of an agency system designed to manage this process. While it is quite manual (and there's lots of potential to automate parts of the system), it has achieved the most important goal. It works.
Of course, it would be even more beneficial if an agency developing an automated ideation system would share it with other agencies - leveraging the knowledge and experience and supporting cross-agency innovation.
Culture
Innovation flourishes in cultures which commensurately reward success and counsel (but do not ‘criminalise’) failures.
Given government departments already have governance processes to manage and mitigate potential failures (risks), agencies should investigate appropriate rewards for innovations based on their effective impact on agency costs and activities.
As cash rewards are difficult to issue in the APS, and demonstrably are not the most valued reward approach for many staff, alternatives such as recognition and training opportunities should be explored.
Concepts such as personal notes, innovations awards, opportunities to spend time with senior personnel (i.e. lunch with the CEO/Secretary or presenting the innovation to the executive) and similar recognition approaches have been used effectively in other organisations.
An appropriate selection of these could be adopted in any government agency through the innovation bodies suggested above - after consulting with staff to gain a view on the reward approaches which would most motivate them.
In fact, carrying out this staff consultation could be done using the same ideation system the agency intends to use (which breeds familiarity and comfort with the system and is a good example of 'eating one’s own dog food').
Resourcing
My view is that there needs to be a team allocated to managing the innovation system and encouraging cultural behaviour changes, just as there’s specific teams tasked with Procurement, Legal, FOI or other matters which impact on most staff.
The DAFF i-Gen system requires 1.5 full-time equivalent staff to manage. Note this is a partially manual process with a significant level of active internal advocacy.
I would contend that an agency would need to employ one full-time staff member (EL1 level), within a supportive team with a broad innovation objective. The individual would need to have strong experience in advocacy and change management.
There would also need to be appropriate funding and support to put the ideation system in place and manage the secretariat of the committees. With all of this in place I believe an agency can ramp up an effective innovation agenda in 1-2 years.
Agencies that adopted a more fragmented approach - asking existing staff to set aside time to design/manage and maintain an innovation agenda and system - would take much longer to achieve buy-in, embed in an organisation and see positive outcomes.
Saturday, July 09, 2011
The world needs new forms of journalism and news distribution | Tweet |
While this post is a little outside the usual topics I cover in this blog, I thought it touched on enough to publish it. Also it is so long that The Drum may not publish it as a comment on their article Murdoch kills paper, bodycount continues - and note that if it is published, I am not the only one that uses that particular username either. Other comments at The Drum or other news sources under the same username may not reflect my views and comments.
As I am a former paid journalist and author and a card carrying member of the Media and Arts Alliance (my card says 'journalist' as their membership system doesn't yet support the term 'blogger') I reckon that I have as much right to comment on this topic as anyone else.
I have also made a few edits that I could not do in the system for The Drum, so it is not quite the same as my article comment. Call it journalistic license.
The world needs new forms of journalism and news distribution.
Past models, such as small independent papers in each geographic region and, more recently, large international centralized machines with a focus on revenue not facts, do not work in an age where every individual can report and distribute to a global audience.
What must be preserved is the goal of journalism, to inform and enlighten people about the important events shaping their futures. Not the formats - news 'papers', 'radio' 'stations' or 'television' 'channels' or the funding system - advertising.
Where advertising is focused on influencing people through half-truths, opinion and spin, bright colours and sounds, sitting it alongside responsible, factually-based reporting of news is particularly dangerous. In my view the dominance of advertising and the gradual degradation of factual 'news' into 'infotainment' has a lot to do with the difficulties of placing facts and spin side by side on a daily basis.
News collectors and distributors in the future need to have a commitment to truth.
They need to be able to get their content to a global audience. Use relevant channels.
Licenses for spectrum or for citywide news distribution are dead. Cross-media laws are dead. I watch more television on newspaper sites than on television channels.
Governments have (and continue to) push media laws and licensing schemes which attempt to avoid anyone gaining too much power across mediums. This brings them enormous revenue and gives them implicit control over who may criticize them (too negative and we revoke your 'license', then the facts you distribute are suddenly illegally distributed and you can be prosecuted for distributing them).
Governments need to change this position. Separate the functions of the infrastructure (bandwidth and broadband) and the news gatherers and distributors (journalists).
The public merely needs to do what it is already doing - voting with its feet.
Regardless of the efforts of media moguls to increase their global reach and build news empires to control the messages people receive, or the efforts of government to manage and message messages to reflect what they wish believed, people now have the means to bypass the massive journo-political machine and source their news from anywhere at any time via the web.
The reality is that media organisations, as they exist today, are zombies - dead but still walking from their momentum, in search of new brains.
Governments, particularly repressive ones, are resorting to more and more drastic means to control their populations' access to the true free media - the Internet. Today they shut down services or cut the Internet to prevent the truth from spreading. Tomorrow they might ban universal literacy to limit the number of people who can read or think. They will also fail to contain journalistic freedom - which involves the freedom for any individual at any time anywhere in the world to report and analyze the events and happening of today and distribute it to anyone else in the world.
Journalism has ceased to exist as a profession of the type typified by lawyers, doctors and engineers. Today 'professional journalism' is literally defined by whether you are paid to write news for distribution to others. It does not represent a critical set of skills, a body of study or work or even a quality level that is met and must be maintained. in fact more degree-qualified journalists work on what journalists often consider 'the dark side' - corporate or public communications, spinning messages to journalists rather than reporting news.
All the claims of journalists that they perform an important function of interpreting current events for the common person is simply a way of saying 'we are smarter and more articulate than you - you cannot understand your world without our intervention'. That kind of arrogance in an age of almost universal literacy and high school education, simply because paid journalists have more time to read and write news, is both ludicrous and affronting to 'common people'.
Journalists need a better way of defining their profession if it is to remain one (potentially based on the quality of their writing and thinking and their independence from commercial concerns).
Media is an amazing mess at the moment, and has an enormous transformation ahead. The question is whether governments, media organisations and journalists will write and carry out this transformation, or it will occur regardless, dragging them reluctantly into a new world that none of them would choose.
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Governments remain a long way away from citizen-centricity | Tweet |
Queensland's Office of the Information Commissioner recently released a new guideline, Accessing Government Information. A step-by-step guide for the general public (PDF).
This is a commendable publication, providing a plain English guide to the rights of consumers and explaining to citizens how to go about framing and asking for government information.
However...
Having guides for citizens on accessing government information, while useful, represents the old world rather than the new.
Employing Government 2.0 approaches we should reverse this approach. Rather than government telling citizens how to navigate agency processes to access public information, the public should be telling government how information should be presented to them.
The community should write the guidelines and have agencies follow them, rather than the current position where agencies act as the authoritative bodies and citizens the applicants.
Unfortunately I think governments remain a long way away from the goal of being citizen-centric. Particularly where it relates to public data.
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