Guest post from Pia Waugh: Vivek Kundra and some lessons learnt about tech in gov

Today I am publishing a guest post from Pia Waugh, a well known open government and open source advocate who recently left Senator Lundy's office as her IT Advisor to take on a mystery role in the APS.

Pia attended the presentation and dinner with Vivek Kundra on Tuesday (which I also attended). Vivek is the former US CTO who spent two years implementing the IT and open government reforms advocated by President Obama. He is an internationally renown speaker, now a fellow at Harvard and recently took on an evangelical role for salesforce.com. Pia wrote about the event and discussion on her blog - and keep an eye out for the video of her interview.

Pia's post:
Last night I heard Vivek Kundra speak about innovation, technology and Gov 2.0 at a dinner hosted by AIIA and Salesforce. It was a fascinating talk in that it exceeded my expectations significantly.

I had reasonable expectations that his experience as CIO of the US Federal Government and his insights to the US open government agenda would be interesting, but he also talked about the “epic war between the status quo and progress”, the inertia in government, the major shift in power from gov to the people, how tech in enabling a new form of democracy, the need to hire great people (and get rid of those not on board) and how issues like SOPA demonstrate that the people can overturn traditional power broker agendas through grassroots efforts.

He also spoke about the need to reform gov IT procurement practices to demand good services from the sector, to put them on notice and to engage smaller innovative players in the market. It was fascinating to see someone who was so senior in government take that strong a stance, but it makes sense. Government is the number one purchaser of tech, so how it engages the market has a profound impact. And as a huge customer, government should be able to demand the best possible service. At the same time, without great people internally who are empowered and incentivised, it’s hard to drive progress.

When asked how to actually drive tech innovation in government, policy, procurement and workforce reforms were very important, but fundamentally workforce. Vivek said that there needs to be rigour in hiring practices, a culture of getting the best people into the public service, a culture that rejects blockers and gets rid of those who don’t get on board with progress.

Some comments from Vivek that I thought useful and thought provoking (as captured by live tweeting on #gov2au from the evening):

The danger is to not move, to play safe. It’s vital to move and be thoughtful but bold to use the opportunity. Often Gov collaboration is stalled by an us vs them attitude. This needs to be overcome. It is now easier to innovate and compete due to new tech, and those that innovate dominate, as they fill the space. Indian gov drove aggressive FOI changes, results of the transformation was short term pushback and issues, but longer term transparency and improvement of gov. NBN is an enormous and exciting opportunity for Australia and for open government and Australia can play a leadership role. I have to say, it was very interesting and stimulating. It kicked off some great discussions in the group too.

I have seen a few people respond to the Vivek coverage quite negatively. There is, of course, a lot of hype and fluff out there around Gov 2.0 and “cloud”, but it doesn’t mean you don’t listen critically, research what people say and come to your own conclusions. I am constantly surprised by people who insist on loudly voicing blatant cynicism, pessimism and general negativity, seemingly oblivious to the fact that this establishes a narrative that undermines the (often) valid and good points they are trying to make, whilst making it harder for other people to get actually get things done.

I would like to put out there that the more leadership shown by everyone in the tech community, especially the Gov 2.0 community and the media, the better a chance we all have of achieving great things.

Be the change you want to be, and all that

I highly recommend people check out Vivek’s talk from the AIIA Summit on Cloud. It was a good example of thought leadership by a person who has actually got things done, a change agent who has made a difference. I’ve been told you should be able to watch it and all the summit talks online here tonight.

Thank you to Loretta form AIIA and Phil from Salesforce for agreeing to have Vivek speak to the Gov 2.0 community. A big thanks to Vivek too, it was great to meet you People can follow Vivek on @vivekkundra on Twitter.

It is worth mentioning that neither the AIIA nor Salesforce asked for anything in return for doing a Gov 2.0 discussion with Vivek, Salesforce paid for the dinner after the talk, and in the interview below I spoke with Vivek off the cuff without any direction from AIIA or Salesforce.

VIDEO


TRANSCRIPT
Pia: So I’m here with Vivek Kundra, he’s here in Australia touring around and talking to a lot of people and I just thought I’d take the opportunity to ask him a couple of questions for the Gov 2.0 community peeps out there, around Australia.

So, hi, welcome to Australia.

Vivek: Thanks for chatting with me, I appreciate it.

Pia: Yeah, that’s cool. Can you just give us a bit of an overview about your ideas on driving tech innovation in government. What you see to be the core things you need to do?

Vivek: Well obviously it always starts with the people and one of the most important things that needs to happen in government, around the world, is they need to be able to hire the right kind of people to drive innovation and be change agents. You can’t legislate and you can’t essentially mandate innovation itself so it starts with that.

Secondly I think you need need bold leadership. If you look at what President Obama did, he made technology a central part of how his administration was going to achieve some of the policy objectives that he had set out.

And the third, you need to be able to distrupt the status quo by making sure that you have a culture that celebrates failure. That doesn’t actually go out there and punish those that are at the bleeding edge.

Pia: And, I mean, if you’ve got that leadership  at the top level and you’ve got your, you’ll always have your enthusiastic geeks at the grassroots level, how do you drive that change in that rather large middle level?

Vivek: I should think it’s easier if you have a number of people on the front lines. The geeks kinda banding together trying to find a new way. But you’ve got to be able to make sure is that the middle management, unfortunately a lot of times you have people who are incentivised by the number of dollars that they manage and the number of years they’ve been in the job and that’s where from a political leadership perspective it’s very very important to make sure that you’re reaching out and embracing those that are on the front lines that understand the issues and understand the innovation that must be driven, and frankly reward those managers that are going to support, encourage and embrace that notion and that culture and those people.

At the same time the reality is, and we don’t talk about this often, we also have to be able to make the hard choices. If there are managers or people that are getting in the way, the Dr No’s, they are basically in deleriction of their duty. And what I mean by that is that’s not what the people of a country expect of their government. They’re basically putting their personal interests over the interests of the people.

Pia: OK, and finally ‘cos we don’t have a lot of time, what are your observations and thoughts about what is happening in Australia and some of the opportunities and challenges for Australia? Seeing you’re here and seeing what’s going on.

Vivek: Well I’m actually very excited. I think it’s amazing country with an entrepreneurial culture, to the number of meetings I’ve had and meeting people like you who are doing some amazing work in the public sector, whether it’s been public participation, fundamentally rethinking what a modern democracy looks like.

I’ve also seen some of the really really bold steps that are being taken to invest in strategic infrastructure. So the National Broadband Network is one example. You look at what’s happening as far as the government’s concerned. You’re seeing some of these technologies come into the goveernment.

But the fear I have is that you want to make sure you continue on that trajectory. It’s very easy for those people in the government who want to preserve the status quo to win out. And I think there is an epic battle going on between the past and the future. And it’s really really important that, from a policy perspective, that there are appropriate incentives for those who are architecting the future, to be the ones that are driving the country.

Pia: And do you think that epic battle presents a bit of a power shift from small groups of people to the broader community to engage…

Vivek: Well absolutely, it’s clear. We see it every day, whether it’s in Australia or anywhere else in the world. Therre is this shift in power from a few government officials behind closed doors to the masses, it’s real. And technologies that didn’t exist before exist today that have made this possible in terms of the very structures that are needed.

So the ability for anyone with a front row seat to their government with a mobile device. That’s amazing! We don’t think about it, we take it for granted, but now every citizen can be a co-creator. Every citizen can be a watchdog and hold their government accountable. Every citizen can actually go out there and be part of the digital public square and that is what I think is super exciting about the time we are living in.

Pia: Yep, sure. Well thank you very much.

Vivek: Thank you.

Pia: And I look forward to next time you come to Australia.

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The perils of legislating channels (and the issue of website filters)

The Australian Parliament House recently released their new website - a major step-up from the previous site.

However in reading an article about it on ZDNet I discovered that the APH had, in the process, decided to block an entire top-level domain (.info) from view by the Parliament and the thousands of people working at Parliament House in order to prevent access to potentially malicious websites.

I haven't been a fan of the internet filtering systems used in government. At varying times I have seen the websites of all the major Australian political parties blocked, preventing access to their media releases, blog posts and announcements - often vital information for public servants writing policy or briefs.

These filters can be quite indiscriminate and are often controlled by commercial parties outside government. That's right, commercial entities, often foreign owned, can be broadly controlling what is allowable for Australian public servants to view online. This could affect government information inputs and potentially influence policy decisions. This is a situation that leaves me vaguely uncomfortable.

Some of the individual categories of content blocked can be equally problematic. For example many filters block access to generally to 'blogs', which may include the Australian Public Service Commission's blog-based consultation of public servants last year, 'video sites', including, for Immigration, their own YouTube channel, social networks (including those used by citizens to discuss specific policies) and, in a range of other cases, 'political' content from citizens and stakeholder groups that could otherwise be influential in the development and implementation of good policy.

One of the biggest issues I have personally found is that you don't know what you don't know. Could a blocked site be vitally important for the decision you need to make? You cannot assess this if you can't look at it.

Some systems allow specific blocking by group of employee - which sounds useful and often is (for example when I worked at ActewAGL I was one of the few allowed to view adult (soft porn) sites, needed in my role of preparing website schedules and analysing the competition for the adult channel TransACT displayed). However when implemented poorly staff may not be able to access the information their managers direct them to use.

In certain cases public servants may be required to use their personal devices to rapidly access critical content blocked by these filters. This is one reason why, for the last four years, I have carried my own Internet-connected device with me while working in government agencies. It makes me more productive in meetings and in preparing business cases when I can access and refer to critical material immediately, rather than not being able to even see if a site may be valuable or not and then waiting for a site to be unblocked so I can access it on a work PC.

It can be time consuming and, in some cases, impossible to request opening sites up. In many cases public servants can ask for specific exceptions, however when you have 48 hours to finish a minute to your Minister in response to public stakeholder or citizen comments on an important piece of proposed legislation, it can be impossible to do the job properly. Identifying which sites you need to see, receiving senior approval, requesting and having IT teams or filtering companies make access available, can take weeks, or even months.

This damages the ability for departments to do their jobs for the government and the public and, quite frankly, delegitimizes those citizens and stakeholders who choose to use forums, blogs, Facebook, YouTube and similar social tools or sites to discuss their views.

Blocking an entire top level domain, as in the APH case, comes with additional risks.

A little known fact is that Australian legislation requires the use of info.au for the Quitnow website, an ongoing major component of the Australian Government's campaign to reduce the instance of smoking.

Quitnow.info.au is advertised on all material for the quit campaign, including on all cigarette packets in Australia.

Now in practice the Department operating this site automatically forwards anyone who types 'Quitnow.info.au' to 'Quitnow.gov.au', so it is not noticeable to citizens. However this is a technical translation (if x go to y) - the domain that citizens see on advertising material still says Quitnow.info.au

If .info.au domains, as well as .info domains, were automatically blocked by the APH (I don't know if this is the case), anyone who tried to go to Quitnow.info.au would arrive at a "you cannot access this site" page and not be forwarded to the Quitnow.gov.au site.

Fortunately the APH does allow staff to request access to specific sites (apparently at least 60 have been opened up to access) and I don't have specific information on whether the APH blocked .info.au sites alongside .info sites, so this specific problem may not exist. However it does demonstrate the risks of blocking entire top level domain groups.

Personally I don't think legislation should specify domains or specific communication channels, in most cases. Technology changes too fast and governments don't want to be caught spending exorbitant funds in supporting defunct channels after the community moves on.

For example, the tabling of documents in parliament should not specifically require a paper copy to be presented and there should be no legislation that requires that a citizen present their claims or complaints via a particular device - postal, phone, fax or web.

Equally governments should not be constrained by legislation to communicating with citizens via postal mail, email, fax or a specific form of written communication (as some legislation does now).

The information transmission and reception mechanisms should simply need to meet levels of modern usage and veracity.

This would prevent agencies from having to spend large amounts of money on preserving and using old technologies where communities have moved on and reduce the time and cost of updating legislation to meet community needs.

Is there a downside of not specifying channels (such as that Quitnow.info.au domain) in legislation? I don't think so. Specification, where required, can happen at the policy level, making it easier and more cost-effective to review and change when the environment changes.

This would remove any potential embarrassments, such as if a government agency does block staff access from an entire domain group (such as .info.au) and accidentally block access to its own legislated websites.

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What's the value of your social media followers?

Social media followers and fans are not particularly good metric for judging the success or ROI of a social media campaign and I'd advise strongly against measuring success through these numbers alone.

However as businesses attach a commercial value to their mailing and email lists, as a corporate asset, I thought it would still be interesting to look at what might be the value of a social media following.

While it may not be legal to sell such an asset, it can contain value in providing a cheap way to reach part of your audience quickly and conveniently. In fact, I have railed before about organisations who pour money into building a social media following for a campaign, then throw their investment away by closing it down or neglecting it - just as they are used to doing in traditional media when renting eyeballs.

So as a starting point for calculations of social media value I put together a little spreadsheet on Google to allow you to calculate a value based on several key social media networks and blogs. It uses research figures that have been calculated to average out the value of an individual follower or fan.

Just plug in your numbers in the boxes provided and see what you get.

Feel free to extend the spreadsheet as well.

If you cannot edit the embedded sheet below, try this link.

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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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