Frequently Asked Questions for Gov 2.0: How do we manage the resourcing requirements of engaging online?

Another question I get asked regularly is "How do we manage the resourcing requirements of engaging online?"

This is an interesting 'length of string' question as the resourcing requirements of social media vary dramatically depending on why and how an organisation chooses to use social media. Generally the more engaging your participation the higher the resourcing needs - although even social media listening can soak up resources rapidly.

I consider social media participation as a 'ladder of effort'.

At the lowest end your participation can be limited to a Twitter account or Facebook page, auto-publishing content from your website or media releases. This requires little or no resourcing and, while not a particularly effective approach, can serve as a platform to build on with more engaging content.

Moving upwards, an engaging Facebook page (or similar social network presence) may require several custom posts per week (or day if you are really, really active) and some moderation, responses and management oversight, possibly 10 hours or 1/4 of a person each week. Twitter, when used well, with around 5-10 tweets per day, may require the same or a little less time.

If you step up to participating in forums and blogs or using social networks as customer service channels the resourcing is likely to increase further. This is, however, where leveraging your existing customer service channels becomes essential. If you trust people to answer phones or emails with citizens on the other end, then you should trust them to respond to citizen enquiries online (otherwise you have an internal issue).

I have not seen many examples of agencies giving their customer service teams access to use social media on behalf of their organisation, and there may be challenges in skilling people to engage correctly in more public forums - however au remain hopeful.

If you decide to actively run collaborative exercises online via social media, or create and run communities using social networks and forums, you are likely to need to dedicate substantial resources. However even this can be managed through sharing the load around and operating in a pragmatic fashion. The ATO, for example, has done a great job with its SME forum over the last few years on a limited budget (and with some external support).

Cleverly managed many social media channels can be run efficiently through good planning and piggybacking. For instance, your website is chock-full of pre=approved content that can be reiterated through social media channels. Also, when seeking approvals for media releases, reports, policies or the like, pre-write one or more tweets, posts and social network updates and send them for approval with the document. That way you don't need to re-engage on the same content, providing context and a new proposal.

Keep in mind that, sometimes, you can 'trade-off' resources, potentially retasking people from activities that you are cutting to replace with social media engagement. Also it may be possible to find people willing to spend a few minutes a day, or hours a week, supporting your social media efforts (even if just for the resume boost)

Important things to keep in mind are:

• Live within your means - choose the social media channels and engagement approaches that suit your available resourcing limitations. 
• Don't grow unnecessarily - being bigger and better than anyone else is a common desire (as is the desire to be first), however if it doesn't suit your goals then don't extend yourself beyond your resourcing. 
• Set limits - make it clear to participants the amount of time you will dedicate to a channel. Some might criticise you, but most will appreciate that some engagement is better than none and that time is money.
• Seek resources beyond the usual suspects - Don't simply seek dollars to get things done, see whether you can discover innovative tactics to unlock resources.
• Invest proportionate to your goals - if you do have significant goals for your social media presence, then ensure that your organisation are prepared to invest appropriately. If your goals are larger than your resourcing, something has to give (and typically individuals burn out before organisations do). 
• Develop exit strategies and pull the plug if needed - while it is hard to let channels go, sometimes, if your resources are cut, so must you. It is better to do this in a planned and considered way that preserves reputation and carries forward as much good will as possible.

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Frequently Asked Questions about Gov 2.0: How do we convince risk-averse management to say yes to social media initiatives?

This is the second in my series of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) posts to address some of the 'persistent' questions related to social media and Government 2.0.

The question I am addressing is "How do we convince risk-averse management to say yes to social media initiatives?"

This is one of the most common questions I am asked, particularly by mid-level managers frustrated by resistance to trying new approaches, even where it is clear that existing practice no longer meets their organisation's needs.

It is also a common reason given to me as to why people leave an agency - normally to go to one more willing to consider the use of modern approaches.

(Notably I have never been asked by managers "how do I convince risk-averse staff to say yes to social media initiatives?" - though I have been asked "how do we equip staff unfamiliar with social media with the skills necessary to engage effectively online?")

This challenge with senior management is, in my opinion, partially generational, partially cultural, partially based on priorities and partially rooted in lack of knowledge.

Senior managers have many priorities to consider and often are focused on "managing inwards" rather than "managing outwards", with their priorities being serving a Minister, managing staff and services delivered by an agency and managing the compliance and governance burdens that fall on public agencies.

Their capacity to focus on newer approaches to community engagement and communication is often restricted due to time, often to their direct experience, or the experience of their peers - who are often struggling with the same issues.

Often social media is something they may associate with their children, grand children or what they read in newspapers (usually the horror stories and failures, or 'cute' human interest pieces). They may focus on the 'social' aspects of 'social media' and have not had the time or experience to fully considered how online tools can be used in professional ways.

Getting senior management buy-in for social media often involves educating them past the myths and misunderstandings - it isn't only about Facebook and Twitter, social media channels can be secured and managed, it doesn't mean 'opening the flood gates' to time wasting by staff, it can provide access to stakeholders and citizens who cannot be easily reached through traditional channels, it doesn't replace traditional media but does amplify reach.

Any education process requires a good run-up, so it is worth beginning early to educate senior management by providing case studies and reports on how online media has been used by other agencies, overseas and in Australia, to achieve organizational goals.

In my time in the public service I used to send out semi-regular emails providing information about online initiatives - including providing positive examples and examples where organisations had been challenged (with tips on how they could have avoided issues via good governance or different approaches).

This approach begins to inform and educate senior management, allowing them time to read and consider what their peers are doing and build a level of comfort with a social media approach.

Next I recommend identifying an initiative which could be enhanced through online engagement - preferably a non-core or low priority initiative where there is less potential for embarrassment and therefore more tolerance for perceived risk (not that social media is necessarily more risky, however it is often perceived that way).

At this stage it is worth writing a short business case with clear governance around how online media (rather than 'Social' media) will be employed, clear approval and management guidance and examples of how other agencies have successfully deployed online channels to meet similar goals. Include links to the government's priorities in relation to innovation, FOI and Gov 2.0 (such as the Open Government Declaration).

This provides a formal proposal for senior management to review. Even if they reject it, you will raise the potential in their minds and highlight that you're not attempting to rush into the area, rather are employing a risk-managed process and have done your research.

At this stage ensure you are engaging with your peers across the agency, sending them the same enewsletter of online media initiatives and building their confidence in considering social media in their projects. Having many people suggesting an online component to senior management, not just you, will help senior managers understand that this is an area they need to begin considering seriously - it is a real channel for the agency, not simply one person's flight of fantasy.

Following this approach, at some point your agency will start listening and senior managers will begin accepting, then supporting and then suggesting the exploration of social media in various departmental activities. You may even find them beginning to take credit for social media idea - particularly if the Minister's office notices and supports the approach.

If you find the approach above isn't working, another tactic is to learn what the key gatekeeper enjoys - their sports interests or hobbies. Then find one or two good online groups discussing these topics and drop them an email note about them. Once they learn that their favourite topics are being discussed, in a thoughtful and helpful way, some of the barriers may begin coming down.

A final approach, though often less effective (as cost is rarely the reason given for excluding online), is to demonstrate the cost-savings regarding the use of online channels versus flying people around the country for consultations or paying for TV, radio and newspaper spots.

A single 30-second TV spot can pay for an entire social media campaign - which, in conjunction with the other TV ad spots, amplifies the effectiveness of the campaign. Radio and print, while cheaper, are demonstrably far more niche than online and the cost per contact is much higher than the cost of running a Facebook page or Twitter account.

Finally, if you can't change the minds of your senior managers, you can always vote with your feet, leaving for an organisation more willing to consider social media channels in its overall marketing, communication and engagement mix.

There are many agencies in government who are quite assertively and effectively using social media in their engagement efforts - and have experienced little or no downside in their experiences. Equally there's many corporate employers actively engaging via social media, though there's a mix of willingness and readiness to engage here as well.

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Addressing Frequently Asked Questions on Gov 2.0: Will we receive feedback from a representative sample of the community via online consultation techniques?

I've decided to write a series of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) posts to address some of the 'persistent' questions related to social media and Government 2.0 I get asked.

These are questions I have been asked time and time again by various groups around Australia and overseas during presentations and meetings.

The first question I am addressing is "Will we receive feedback from a representative sample of the community via online consultation techniques?"

This question is at the heart of many doubts about online engagement, based on a belief that only certain people use the Internet, or will engage online, therefore it is risky to use the Internet to communicate with or consult communities.

The secondary doubt has to do with the fear that lobbyists or pressure groups will spam an online consultation with hundreds or thousands of near identical responses.

My answer always starts by turning the question around - using your current (offline) communication and consultation techniques, are you sure you are reaching, engaging with, and receiving feedback from, a representative group from your community?

In many cases traditional communication and consultation techniques are not longer effective at reaching a representational group.

Television is time-shifted, podcasts and MPEGs have replaced radio, newspapers are rarely read from cover to cover, many households no longer have landline phones and community meetings at set times and in set locations only attract those with the time and mobility to attend and are a magnet for lobbyist and pressure groups (with limited attendance by workers, young families, the infirm and disabled).

By default, when you engage people, those most likely to respond are the people who are engaged and outspoken - regardless of the channels you use. There is bias in all engagement towards interested, articulate extraverts over uninterested introverts, even if those uninterested introverts are your intended audience.

In short, if your current engagement or consultation techniques are not representative, and you are prepared to invest in them, why hold online to a higher standard before considering it as a viable channel?

Regarding the risk of hijacking and astroturfing of online consultations by lobbyists, pressure groups, businesses or savvy individuals, my response is also to turn the question around - isn't this already an issue offline? How do you know that lobbyists or businesses have not paid people to show up at a community consultation, or apply for focus groups, in order to tilt the outcome their way?

If anything, appropriate online consultation channels can help minimise the influence of lobbyists, both by opening up responding to a much broader range of people and by allowing technical detection of large numbers of similar responses from a single, or a few sources. Holding an online consultation alongside your offline engagement can help uncover a more balanced view from the community and highlight areas that may not be raised in offline consultation means.


This brings me to my main point when answering this question - online doesn't necessarily replace what you are already doing, it supplements and extends your existing channels.

You are better able to reach a representational spread by using more techniques rather than discounting any particular channel because it may not be representative in itself.

Spread is key. Use different techniques and mediums to target different sub-audiences, your outcomes will be far more likely to be representational.

Therefore online is an important set of channels to use. It is lower cost than face-to-face, however offers far greater reach. It delinks consultations and other engagement from geographic and time constraints and allows your audience to digest and reflect in their own time, leading to better outcomes.

For example, rather than showing up at 4:30pm for a 90 minute town hall meeting, and getting at most five minutes to present their view, people are able to read or view the material online at their leisure, come back to the parts they wish to reread and them think about their response. While responding they are able to reference other material, reread their comments and edit or extend them without immediate time limits. They are even able to reflect on the comments of others and build on or extend them to add value to new ideas. 

So don't aim to reach a representative sample of your audience through online alone, use it alongside other techniques to form a full picture. Use different channels and techniques to attract different viewpoints and modes of response and bring the different views together to form a representative picture of your audience.

However whatever you do, don't neglect online. If your audience are internet users (as 95% of Australians are) and if they are engaging through social media (as over 60% of Australians are), excluding online will seriously constrict your ability to obtain a representative sample.

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My University - a great site (except for mobile users)

I like the MyUniversity website - it's clean, useful and mostly simple.

However, when using it the other day I found one extremely major flaw. It's not mobile friendly.

I recently reported that 47% of internet connections in Australia were now via mobile devices. This was based on an ABS report from the December quarter of 2011.

In other words, if your website isn't usable on a mobile device you are potentially only servicing 53% of the market.

On that basis there's a strong requirement for all organisations, including government agencies, to develop their sites to function effectively on mobile platforms.

At this point it's worth talking about how and why I had issues.

My son is at a point where he's beginning to think about life after school and wants to know the options he has available, so I went on an exploratory trip into MyUniversity to see what was available in his areas of interest before taking him through it.

So I first went to the course search tool, to look for appropriate courses and entered in the topic he was interested in (it looks like below).

Initial course search screen in the MyUniversity website on iPad

I got to the provider search tool and tried to use it - clicking on the box only works if, on a mobile device, you click precisely on the small '0 items' text in the middle. However this wasn't the main issue (though te size of the clickable area is a secondary issue, and why are universities called 'items'?)

When I clicked on the text the list of options, as below appeared.

Clicked on '0 items' in left-hand box in the course search screen

I then selected QLD universities and a tick appeared (as below) - all good so far...

Clicked on 'QLD universities' in left-hand box

However this is where the trouble started. I selected 'Done' and the selection box disappeared.

The main window, however, still showed '0 items' (as below). But had't I just selected an item? Very confusing for users.

I checked several times by reclicking '0 items' and each time the selection box told me that yes I had chosen QLD universities.

So I decided OK, this is bad, but I will trust the system has remembered my choice despite not providing any cue to tell me this.

(BTW I had to ignore the text cue under the box 'Hold the CTRL key to select multiple items' as this doesn't apply on mobile devices)

After clicking 'Done', the left box reverts to '0 items'

So next was the task of transferring my selection to the right-hand box (an entirely meaningless step) before a search could be performed.

So I clicked on the 'Add' button.

And nothing changed....

Both the left-hand and right-hand boxes continued stating '0 items'.

I clicked it several times, just in case I had done it wrong (a usual user reaction when they receive no indication that their action has been received and acted on).

Then I did click on the (too small) '0 items' text in the right-hand box and the following selection box appeared.

So my selection DID get transferred.

Clicked on '0 item's in the right-hand box of the screen

I then selected 'QLD universities' AGAIN in this selection window. The second time I had to select it (as below).

Clicked on 'QLD universities' in the right-hand box

Then I clicked 'Done' and found myself back at the initial screen - with '0 items' in both the left-hand and right-hand boxes (as below).

'QLD universities' now appears in the right-hand area

Sigh.

So I then chanced fate and clicked search - and the course selector worked as intended - finding me QLD universities with the selected course.

However let's recap the issues:

1. Selection areas too small
2. Lack of visual cues for user actions
3. Need to repeat actions which could be performed once to achieve the same objective
4. Poor labelling of fields
5. Generally clumsy interface poorly designed for mobile use
6. No consideration of the differences in how web browsers may treat fields across versions and platforms
7. Clearly no cross-platform user testing

All-in-all, a very poor interface for mobile users.

Just in case I was unique in having this issue, I put my iPad in front of five other smart, university-educated adults and two teenagers considering university and asked them to complete a task to find a set of courses for a particular topic across universities in two states.

None of them were able to complete the task in under ten minutes using the MyUniversity interface, and only one (of the adults - the teens lost interest and went to Google) stayed with it and finally managed to get the search results they wanted - after receiving eight error messages (because they hadn't clicked in the right-hand box and selected the universities they wanted a second time).

Usability is important. A multi-million dollar project can fail if there isn't sufficient attention paid to the user interface.


Of course there may be an argument that a particular site has low usage by mobile users and therefore development dollars should be invested elsewhere. This sounds perfectly legitimate.

However this perspective raises some serious questions:

1. Are the agency's figures correct? Many mobile browsers report as standard web browsers, so it's not always clear when a web browser is in use on a mobile device.
2. Is the mobile usage low because the site's audience don't use mobile devices, or because the site is unusable on mobile platforms? Perhaps the poor mobile design is why mobile users shun it - which then reflects in low mobile statistics and an argument by the organisation to not support mobile, ad infinitum....
3. Isn't it irrelevant whether mobile usage is low? Government agencies are required to provide services accessible to all citizens, not just ones who happen to use desktop and laptop computers. Surely it's not that hard or expensive, in most cases, to ensure your interface is usable on mobile devices - millions of other website do it with little or no investment using inbuilt features in modern content management systems. An argument that you use an old CMS is not easily supportable, particularly when new systems cost very little to purchase or implement (depending on the level of customisation).
4. Even if it's too expensive or difficult to justify building an interface which is both desktop and mobile compatible in the first place, aren't there accessibility requirements which websites (particularly government sites) must meet? If a website isn't mobile compatible it may also not be accessible on a desktop computer to users with some forms of accessibility needs.

I hope that the agency responsible for My University does consider what it can do to become more mobile friendly. It's not really a hard fit, just change one step in a process and the problem would be resolved.

Then their site would be useful to 100% of Australian internet users, not to only 53% of them.

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Governments need to ensure their websites work for modern users

I went to the Australian Business Register site (www.abr.gov.au) this afternoon to set up an ABN (Australian Business Number) for a company.

This is a very common step, taken by hundreds, if not thousands, of Australians every week.

However I immediately hit a speed bump.

The site's online ABN registration process threw up an error message (image below) stating:

Browser not supported

The Australian Business Register currently supports the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer 5.0 and above
• Netscape 6.0 and above

You should update your browser version before you continue using the Australian Business Register. If you believe your current browser is suitable to use, please continue.

Refer to Technical Information for details on how to configure for your browser for the Australian Business Register.

This was confusing and offputting as I was using Firefox 11.0 - one of the most modern web browsers available.

Fortunately I had Internet Explorer 9 on my system and gave this a try - no error screen appeared.

Now if you read far enough into the error message it does state that 'If you believe your current browser is suitable to use, please continue.' - however I was in a hurry at the time and, like many users, didn't read the error message all the way through.

The error message visible at the Australian Business Register site,
together with the 'About' information window for the web browser in use

Regardless of whether this translates into a user error, I believe that there is an obligation on government agencies to ensure their websites are accessible and usable in modern web browsers without unnecessary and confusing error screens.

Essentially, when I have Firefox 11.0, I don't expect to receive an error stating I need 'Internet Explorer 5.0 and above' or 'Netscape 6.0 and above' - as my web browser is "above" both and, in fact neither of those web browsers have been current for more than 10 years!

For such an important and common business process as registering an ABN the responsible agency needs to take a little more care in its online delivery of services.

Otherwise their online services will damage trust and respect in the government's ability to deliver and cause customers to migrate to what are slower and (for agencies) higher cost channels.

I'll bring this issue to the attention of the responsible agency, the Australian Tax Office, and check back in six months to see if anything has changed.

For all other government agencies out there, please check that your public online systems aren't needlessly damaging your credibility in this way. Please make sure your websites work for modern users!

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