Living on the edge in social media - two case studies of Australian social media issues

Back in November 2010 I attended a Garner conference to speak about Gov 2.0. I was also able to attend a workshop about social media use in the banking industry.

At the time I estimated that the banking industry was 2-3 years behind government in their social media effectiveness.

That impression has been reinforced this weekend with the reaction of Westpac to negative comments on their Facebook page - and how effective the bank's strategy has been.

Westpac has been taking heat for two decisions, to cut staff and to raise variable home loan interest rates by 0.1%.

Both staff and customers have vented their concerns on Facebook, commenting on Westpac's page.

The reaction from Westpac, as reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, has been to delete negative comments, with the company claiming that,

''partisan views'' could deter customers from researching its financial products on social media sites.

This strategy is fraught with risk. Deleting comments only incenses people and can cause them to escalate legitimate concerns through other channels, which can be more damaging for an organisation.

In fact this has already happened for Westpac, with the Financial Services Union having established their own Facebook page, Save Westpac Jobs, where Westpac's customers and staff can voice their concerns.

It is important for organisations to remember that the channels they create or manage are not the only place people may gather and discuss issues. If a company pushes people away from the channels they control or influence, they lose influence over their customers, who might end up in a far more extreme place.

Given the conversation on Westpac's Facebook page, the company appears to have stopped deleting these comments - which is a good sign. The question now is what should they do with upset customers.

I think there's a good opportunity here for Westpac to learn from Laurel Papworth's 8 ways to deal with negative comments in online communities.

The strategy I would select for Westpac would be to Educate - deflect concerns into a separate channel where they can be addressed separately to the discussion Westpac wishes to have on its Facebook page.

Handled correctly, Westpac could listen closely to upset customers and discuss with them possible solutions - refinancing, different loan types or other approaches that would result in a win-win for the bank and the customer. The same approach can be used with staff.


A second example of a dangerous decision in social media was by Woolworths, as highlighted in Mumbrella's article, This weekend Woolworths can’t wait to give everyone an opportunity to give them a massive kicking.

Apparently Woolworths thought it would be a good idea to run an event on Facebook asking people to complete the statement,

"Happy weekend everyone! Finish this sentence: this weekend, I can't wait to: ____________"

This is similar to Qantas's recent QantasLuxury competition on Twitter, where Qantas basically gave an opening to people to unleash their repressed concerns at Qantas grounding its fleet and any other concerns they had with the company.

Equally, and predictable, that's what happened to Woolworths. With 472 comments and climbing, there's a range of viewpoints, with many negative towards the company.

Organisations need to be careful when giving the public openings like this. They need to consider what other influences are at work, media coverage about their company and any current sources of customer concerns reported through other channels.

Organisations can, and should, participate with customers online via social media. However they should consider social media in light of other channels and customer engagements and not expect their online customers to exist in a vacuum.


These emerging case studies both have some time to run before we see how they end up, however they already demonstrate lessons for other organisations - including for government.

Don't shut down negative conversations, engage, educate and be constructive.

Treat social media within the framework of all your communications and current events. Be careful inviting customer views when they will be shaped by major events or perceived issues with your brand.

Most of all, keep listening and talking to your customers and stakeholders. Being absent from a discussion only removes your influence.

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Have a drink with Vivek Kundra in Canberra

Vivek Kundra, former CIO of the US government, is in Australia next week and thanks to the efforts of Pia Waugh there's an opportunity for public servants and others working in Gov 2.0 there's an opportunity to meet him.

For full details, see Pia's post on the Gov 2.0 Google Group.

Of course, if you already subscribed to the Group, you'd have had a head start :)

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Share your public service war stories online anonymously

Everyone has war stories, observations and experiences working in or dealing with government agencies or departments.

These aren't necessarily whinges or complaints, they may be positive or learning experiences, or examples of where small changes could lead to large productivity gains.

Previously there was't really any way to share these stories, except by speaking with colleagues. They may have been a 'suggestion box' mechanism in your agency, but nothing designed to share experiences and learnings across the APS.

Now there's a place to do so, sharing them anonymously, so they can be recognised and learnt from, thanks to work done by Steve Davies, OzLoop founder and former public servant.

To learn more, and to share your stories visit https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PXT9F3T

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Many national laws are increasingly irrelevant - how will governments adapt?

Facebook decides whether photos of nursing mothers are allowed to be displayed in its site (including in Australia and other nations where such photos are legal).

Google leaves China to avoid complying with its national censorship laws.

Gaming and gambling websites base themselves in jurisdictions where they are legal while attracting most of their customers from nations where such services are regulated or illegal.

Shoppers flock to buy online from countries where prices are cheap and the range is good, incidentally avoiding paying GST or sales taxes on goods and, to compete, retailers, such as Harvey Norman, open online stores based in foreign jurisdictions to avoid charging GST.

People at home use proxies to bypass copyright restrictions on viewing certain content on services like Hulu and establish overseas postal addresses with mail forwarding services to avoid copyright restrictions that only allow certain physical products to be sold in some jurisdictions.

Online pharmacies sell cheap drugs from Canada or Mexico to the US and pornography distributors sell their wares to consenting adults anywhere in the world, regardless of local laws.

Optus in Australia is legally allowed to distribute free coverage of sports events, provided they are received by customers' televisions, delayed 90 seconds and rebroadcast to customer mobile phones - meaning that mobile sports rights have almost become worthless overnight.

Electronic games, books and movies banned in Australia are available for purchase online.

People in countries with restrictive media laws use online proxies and software freely distributed by the US government to learn what is happening in their own country and the world.

Movements even work together globally to circumvent government ordered internet shut-downs or strong censorship in nations, such as Egypt and Burma to allow protesters to organise and citizens to remain informed and inform the world.


Around the world many laws created by governments are under pressure from the growth of the internet.

Laws were originally designed by societies as formal codes to guide, manage or restrict the behaviour of people, conduct of organisations and disposition of assets attached to a particular geographic location.

These 'laws of the land' worked well in a world where the majority of people lived, worked and played in a geographically limited area, where movement between areas was tightly controlled and where assets were easy to recognise and tax but hard to transport.

This remains true in many respects. Minerals, animals and offices are found in geographic locations and can be difficult, if not impossible, to relocate. We largely live and work in geographically defined areas, allowing geographically based laws to be implemented and enforced.

However with the arrival of the internet and mobile technologies certain assets, cultural values and behaviours began to drift beyond the control of any geographic nation.

Any content that can be digitalised or product that can be transacted online may fall outside of national borders, or cross many nations between creation and consumption.

Content that was previously scarce and controlled by national interests, such as news, education and research, can now be made freely available online for anyone anywhere in the world. Products that were previously shipped enmasse by a relatively small number of agents (import/exporters) are now transported by millions of individuals in much smaller quantities, making taxation and border control checkpoints difficult to enforce.

Movies, music, books and electronic games are easy and cheap to replicate, transport and share, despite the wish of copyright owners to lock them in vaults and dole them out to keep prices artificially high, as deBeers has managed diamonds.

Governments and courts are struggling to understand and re-interpret old laws in light of new technologies. Some laws and precedents date back hundreds of year, before the creation of the internet, television, radio, planes, cars or trains - all of the technologies that shape modern life.

Some of these laws and precedents remain influential in legal decisions, square blocks twisted and jammed into round holes to band-aid the legal system in the face of modern technology.

How should government and society reconcile discrepancies between new technologies, modern life and law-makers, law enforcers and laws that have demonstrably not kept up with the pace of change?

Should policy makers ignore reality in favour of legislation shaped to favour aspirational ideals? Should police forces consider all citizens guilty of crime unless they can prove their innocence?

This struggle keep broadening, from copyright, to retail, to gambling and human rights.

To attempt to retain control, governments have filled their streets with cameras to watch for criminal activity, legislated for ISPs retain an online history of website visits for their customers (just in case law enforcement agencies might need it, regardless of privacy risks), maintained secret blacklists of content that their citizens are not entitled to see, or even know what is on the list and secretly develop legislation to protect corporate copyright owners at the expense of citizens.

All of these steps have occurred in liberal western democracies. Autocratic regimes have gone even further to harass and arrest online commentators and shut down parts of the internet.

Many nations appear to have become obsessed with watching their own citizens to catch the slightest infringements at the behest of the fearful, the political and the corporate interests.

I have not yet seen discussions over the relevancy and enforceability of national and state laws in the face of new technology occurring broadly in Australian society or public service in a measured and thoughtful way. There are hall corridors and conferences but little research and mixed knowledge.

The question of how to reconcile the geography of the physical world with the expanding frontiers of limitless and jurisdictionally challenged cyberspace should be integral to many policy conversations. Even seemingly unaffected industries and people are touched, subtly, but profoundly, by modern technologies as their impact continues to ripple outwards.

Just as we require the human rights of citizens and the needs of Australia's region to be considered in legislation, we need to begin considering the workability of geographical laws in the face of modern technology.

In some cases our police and courts will need to work closely with other jurisdictions, even those with diametrically opposed views, in order to detect crimes and detain criminals

In other cases we need to debate how far legislation needs to restrict our own citizens in order to protect corporate non-citizens.

We need to review all of our laws in the face of modern technology to decide which remain workable, cost-effective and practical and determine which require improvement, international agreements or are just plain unenforceable.

And we need to do this regularly as technology keeps moving.

For any geographic state to retain pre-eminent in meeting the needs and wants of its citizens, constraining behaviours that society does not wish propagated and protecting the body, person and interests of individuals, governments need to move to the front-foot regarding modern technology, to stop treating it as the 'other' or a special case.

Governments need to recognise and internalise that our civilisation is technological by its nature. Our culture, values and behaviour are continually shaped by what is possible with technology and what technology has unlocked. 

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How easy is it really to source information from Australian governments?

On behalf of a friend I've been looking into the contact information for Freedom of Information (FOI) requests across Australia's Commonwealth and state/territory governments.

While I believe that Australia has good Freedom of Information laws (though I know some would disagree), the real tests of this are whether people are aware of their rights and how difficult it is to identify the right FOI contacts and the complexity of the processes to release information.

Working in government, I have contributed to FOI processes from the inside and studied the legislation and processes of some agencies, however I've personally never asked a government agency for information.

From my brief look into sourcing information, and from my friend's perspective, while legislation is in place and even recognising the internal cost and resourcing challenges of FOI, there's a lot still to be done to create a standard and usable framework for people to find out about FOI and contact agencies at both state and federal levels.

For example, only two states or territories (WA and VIC) have an obvious central FOI site for their governments. foi.wa.gov.au and foi.vic.gov.au.

Queensland has a similar site, at www.rti.qld.gov.au reflecting their 'Right To Information' legislation. While this is internally logical, it doesn't make sense in a broader usability context. At least if you do try to go to foi.qld.gov.au it does redirect you to the site.

The other states and territories hide their central FOI sites away behind strange and convoluted web addresses in agencies that make administrative sense within government, but may not be as obvious to the public.

For example, the site that appeared to be the central FOI information source for NSW has the web address of: http://www.ombo.nsw.gov.au/complaints/freedominfo.html (though I could be wrong - which also points to an issue) and Tasmania appears to uses http://www.ombudsman.tas.gov.au/right_to_information2/rti_process

None of these sites is actually the central repository of information released by these governments - which would also be immensely useful. Instead they are informational sites which push people to contact individual agencies for specific FOI requests.

If I were asked I would recommend that all state and territory governments - and the Australian Government - use a standard FOI website address, and cross-link them for people who end up at the wrong one. Regardless of legislation name or the organisation which centrally administers FOI legislation, these sites should be found at foi..gov.au (or for the Commonwealth at foi.gov.au).

These sites should also become the central release points for FOI information, using modern web technologies such as APIs, or even ATOM/RSS to aggregate FOIed information from all agencies. The information could be retained by agencies, but have the central FOI site as a searchable directory of FOI releases pointing to individual agencies - like data.gov.au's role for public sector information (open data).

From there I'd also advocate that agencies similarly apply a standard approach to FOI, using foi..gov.au and foi...gov.au for state and territory agencies.

This consistency would, at least, mean that people could be educated consistently on where to go to find out their rights and exercise them.

Moving on to individual agency contact information, I've looked into whether there is a single list at Commonwealth level for all FOI contacts across all agencies.

I did find that the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet maintained a list of agencies with FOI Contact Officer phone numbers - an excellent start. However as it was last updated in September 2011 it had not yet captured the machinery of government changes in the last Ministerial reshuffle.

The list did not, however, provide website or email addresses - channels most people today prefer to find government information (as AGIMO's latest report on Interacting with Government ‑ Australians’ use and satisfaction with e-Government Services 2011 will tell you).

Fortunately, via Twitter, @Maxious let me know that OpenAustralia had compiled a spreadsheet of Australian Government FOI contacts based on the agencies and Ministers subject to FOI from the Office of the Information Commissioner FOI Annual Report for 2010-11 (released in July 2011) and updated for the machinery of government changes last December.

This spreadsheet contained 12% more agencies and Ministers than the list provided on the website of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. However while it contained email and website addresses, the OpenAustralia spreadsheet didn't containcontact phone numbers.

So I spent about an hour matching the two lists and have released the combined information as a Google spreadsheet, FOI contacts for Australian government agencies.

This spreadsheet contains FOI contact details for 355 Australian Government agencies with varying levels of details (phone numbers for 86%, email addresses for 66% and FOI web pages for 60%).

It also contains information for state and territory central FOI agencies.

If anyone out there is interested in FOI I would appreciate if you added to the list, filling in any gaps :)

Looking at the list, there is enormous variability in the email addresses and web addresses used for FOI contacts. Surely the Australian Government could mandate for a standard foi@.gov.au for email and foi..gov.au for websites.

Also agencies could ensure they have appropriate search strategies in place to make this information easily findable in their sites - creating a google site map (which has many other agency benefits) and adding rules in their site's internal search engine to ensure that searches for 'FOI', 'Freedom of Information', 'Information', 'My Information', 'Right to Information' and similar terms (drawing from internal search reports) have the FOI page as their top or preferred result.

These steps would be far more useful in helping Australians locate and access FOI information than many more expensive and difficult activities.

Also, surely someone in government (perhaps the Office of the Information Commissioner) could maintain a public list of FOI contacts - set-up in such a way that agencies could maintain their own information and receive regular automated emails every six months or so to confirm their information remains correct.

This could even draw from the list I've compiled from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and OpenAustralia lists to start it off.

State and territory governments could do likewise - and perhaps link their lists to the Australian Government's list, so that the public - who often have no idea whether they need to go to a state/territory or Commonwealth agency for certain information - have a better chance of figuring out who they should first contact.

Freedom of Information is important and necessary for any democratic society. However simply having the legislation in place is not enough.

Governments need to take steps, such as I've suggested above, to make it easy to discover who to contact and explaining the process of how to contact them and what information may be released.

Without these steps, 'Freedom of Information' or 'Right to Information' become meaningless catchcries.

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