63 reasons your agency should have a social media presence

It is 46 years since the internet was first developed (ARPA network), 21 years since the development of the first web browser (aptly named WorldWideWeb) and fifteen years since the launch of the first recognisable social network (SixDegrees.com).

Today half our population actively uses Facebook, and over 60 per cent of Australians use some form of social media.

However some in government are still debating whether social media is a valid channel for them to use, or whether it is simply a 'fad'.

I gave a presentation yesterday at an OPC Web Xchange event on why agencies should use social media an how they could build their social media infrastructure.

As part of my preparation for the event, in about twenty minutes over the weekend, I brainstormed 63 reasons why government agencies should have a social media presence.

Some may not apply to your agency. I may have missed others that do.

However in case you're struggling to justify using social media in your agency, here's my 63 reasons to start you off in thinking about which reasons are most important in your situation.

Note that they are listed alphabetically, not by importance.

1. advertise to your audience 
2. amplify your other communications 
3. attract good staff 
4. be approachable and reachable
5. break down silos 
6. build awareness of conversations already underway 
7. build awareness of services 
8. build community resilience 
9. build ongoing audience 
10. build personal connections 
11. build relevance 
12. build staff experience ahead of more advanced technologies 
13. build website traffic 
14. challenge the community to help solve problems 
15. collaborate with colleagues across agencies and jurisdictions 
16. collaborate with colleagues in your agency 
17. consult your audience 
18. convene supporters 
19. correct misinformation 
20. deliver emergency information 
21. employ agile policy development methodologies 
22. empower the community with information 
23. engage stakeholders 
24. explain to people what you do
25. find best practice overseas
26. find good staff
27. find good vendors 
28. get a heads-up on what will be in traditional media the next day
29. identify community influencers 
30. identify fraud 
31. identify opinion leaders 
32. identify unlawful behaviour 
33. improve accountability 
34. increase transparency 
35. listen to your audience 
36. locate experts 
37. locate stakeholders 
38. maintain engagement between campaigns 
39. market research 
40. organise events 
41. promote events 
42. provide consistent answers to questions 
43. provide customer service 
44. provide information in forms other than text 
45. remain effective in a 24/7 media cycle 
46. run competitions 
47. save money 
48. save time 
49. seek fast feedback on policy ideas 
50. share data 
51. share expertise 
52. share information with colleagues across agencies and jurisdictions 
53. share information with colleagues in your agency 
54. share knowledge nationally and globally
55. share media announcements 
56. source emergency information 
57. streamline processes 
58. support your Minister 
59. target geographically dispersed groups
60. reach an audience who won't talk to you face-to-face or by phone
61. reinvent government processes 
62. tracking audience sentiment 
63. train staff in engagement

And here's a word cloud of the reasons to show the themes that stand out.

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Mapping open data site generations

Over the last three years we've seen an increasing level of sophistication and capabilities in successive generations of open data sites.

To aid governments in their open data journey, I've mapped five generations for the progressive development of open data sites, detailed in the document below.

Please feel free to reuse the information within the bounds of the embedded Creative Commons license.

My next task is to release a view of open data sites around the world mapped against these generations to provide a view as to who is leading and who is lagging in the open data stakes.

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Redesigning government: Does the terminology of government hold it back?

I had an interesting discussion last week with a colleague about the terminology of government.

We talk about politicians as moving the 'levers of power' and departmental restructures as 'machinery of government' (MOG) changes (sometimes used as a verb "we got mogged!")

Lack of progress in bureaucracy is called 'spinning wheels' (which often appears to be what's going on while officers are 'fine-tuning' policy), while government communications is often referred to simply as 'spin'.

So why are these machine-like industrial era metaphors still used to apply to government?

Yes, that's right - industrial era. The term 'machinery of government' is thought to originate from 1861 with John Stuart Mill in Considerations on Representative Government - who argues against the tendency to consider government as a controllable, predictable machine.

I've previously written of the difficulties inherent for a government, structured under 19th Century principles, attempting to use 20th Century technologies to govern in a 21st Century world.

in this respect, if governments are seeking to move forward, surely they need to consider the terminology they use as well.

Let's use the example of another industry, medicine. From the 16th Century doctors began to think of humans and animals as complex machines, first clockwork and then, from the 19th Century, as a powered machine, the heart as a pump, stomach as a factory (with food the fuel), nerves as wires and joints as pistons.

Through the 20th Century this view became more sophisticated as we built a better understanding of how the body operated. New post-industrial technology paradigms were used to help conceptualise and communicate this understanding. The brain was considered as a computer, the nerves as a network and with our face and limbs the 'peripherals' that allowed us to interface with the outside world.

Each paradigm helped the doctors of the time to build a conceptual framework on which to view and understand the body and address its ills. Each was a partial model of what was really occurring, but was sufficient (based on the knowledge at the time) to provide a foundation for decision-making and treatment.

Government is still using industrial era terms and concepts, 150 years after Mill's book.

Our understanding of government and society has changed. our technology has changed. The outcomes that government is expected to deliver has changed.

Does industrial-era terminology still provide the right models for government? Are politicians still 'pulling the levers of power', or negotiating equitable solutions in partnership with other organisations and communities?

Should departmental changes be considered 'machinery' - moving parts from one department to another,  like moving parts from one machine to another, or considered within a context of matrix governance, where departments do not exist and public officials work across silos and functional in ad hoc teams to meet specific objectives and goals?

Can we conceptualise a 21st Century model of government using 19th Century terminology, or do the words, and the shape they lead our thoughts into, limit government to outdated modes?

To use a final industrial-era phrase, how do we 'break the mould' for government, unleashing new forms of governance that suit modern society?

What modern day terminology should and could we use to reshape our own models of government and describe a new collaborative, open, governance web suited to modern day society?

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Can foreign digital gatekeepers unduly influence democracy?

One of the perils of the digital age, as traditional media goes digital or goes downhill and more and more people rely on the internet for their daily news, is that countries such as Australia are losing 'editorial' control over what news is promoted as the 'top stories' each day or what links appear at the top of search results.

Most of Australia's most trafficked websites are not Australian-owned and run. Some do not even have a legal entity or physical presence in the country, making it extremely difficult for Australian interests to get any kind of traction in decision-making processes or ensure that Australian values and perspectives are reflected.

Even more worrying, we've already begun to see digital 'gatekeepers' - the largest and most influential websites - begin to impose conditions which may distort elections or inappropriately influence democratic processes.

Let me give you an example. You're probably aware that Google is the most trafficked website in Australia, followed by Facebook. In fact for the week of 8 September 2012, Experian Hitwise reported that Google Australia received 149.5 million visits from Australians, and Facebook received 96.8 million visits. These were followed by Youtube at 47 million, Windows Live Mail at 23 million and Google.com which received 21.7 million Australian visits.

The top locally operated website, NineMSN received only 20 million visits. Yahoo7 received only 11 million visits from Australians.

In fact, if you add Google's top 10 sites (218.2 million visits) and Facebook, the total visits these two organisations receive from Australians, each week, is about 315 million. That's ten times the combined weekly traffic of NineMSN and Yahoo7 at 31 million.

With that level of traffic, being refused the right to advertise in Google or Facebook could have serious repercussions for a brand. In some cases it could destroy companies.

So what could it do to democracy?

What would happen if Google and/or Facebook decided, for whatever reason, to reject all the advertising from a particular political party in Australia, banning ads for that party in their sites during an election?

Well, actually, we don't need to speculate about this scenario. It's already happened.

Some of you might be aware that during the last Commonwealth election that Google refused to run any advertising for one of Australia's legal political parties - the Sex Party.

Following this, Google again refused to run any Sex Party ads during the recent Victorian byelection.

Facebook joined in by rejecting Sex Party ads during the recent Sydney City Council election.

Now whether you support or oppose the Sex Party's views, they are a legitimate Australian political party and field legitimate candidates in elections. However both Facebook and Google decided, citing different reasons, that they would not accept any advertising from the Sex Party during election campaigns.

Facebook said its reason was that the Sex Party was "promoting adult products or services".

Google claimed that the Sex Party was being deceptive by having a "donate" button on its site which "breached its rules which prevent solicitation of donations by a website that did not display tax exempt status.". 

When it was pointed out that the Greens, Family First and Labor all did the same thing, Google stuck to their guns. Even when the Sex Party adjusted their site's content to include the tax exempt status, Google continued to refuse to run ads - contrary to their own policies. Only when the Sex Party went to the media did Google relent, on the eve of the election when the opportunity to influence votes had been lost.

In this case the party was a minor one and potentially the events didn't change the outcome, although the Sex Party has taken Google to court over the matter alleging unlawful interference in the election.

This example highlight a risk democracy is facing. 

When 'media' providers control such a large chunk of the online market, when these are domiciled overseas in state that wish to influence Australian politics, and when they can thumb their noses at local concerns without significant legal or financial cost, democracy has a problem.

It doesn't have to be a full-out blocking of ads or comments - as happened in the example above. Instead it could be more subtle techniques. 

Such as placing ads lower down on the page than their competing parties, thereby reducing the probability of a click, it could involve adjusting search results to keep certain ideas at the top, or the bottom. It could even involve 'reporting errors' which would convince people that they'd received the impressions they'd paid for when they hadn't.

There's many other subtle ways to influence behaviour online, and you can be assured that companies like Google and Facebook have built a strong understanding of how to do this. It is their bread and butter and they are testing, trialling and learning more all the time.

So can digital gatekeepers unduly influence the outcomes of democracy processes? 

I think yes. And, intentionally or not, the big players have already demonstrated that they are capable of taking this step. 

But maybe not quite yet, while nations still have robust national media and competing theatres for ideas.

In the future we are likely to see the balance of power unfold in new ways, and learn through practice whether democracy will survive technology intact, enhanced or destroyed.

However it is already clear that democracy will not survive unchanged.

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RightClick 2012 round-up

I attended and keynoted RightClick 2012 yesterday in Perth and wanted to share my notes, which I presented as a round-up at the event, as well as my presentation.

It was a good event, with an excellent turn-out of WA public servants. From the feedback I overheard, the attendees were pretty happy with the event.

After giving my presentation on Shiny New Toys (why humans love them and what this means for rational decision-making), I took notes on the other presentations - as well as tweeting some of the highlights, as did others via the hashtag #rightclick.

Below my presentation is a copy of my notes....

Notes from the event
As the keynote speaker I started by telling the audience that humans weren't naturally rational thinkers - which might not have been the best way to open an event!

However I also explained how we can use processes to recognise and compensate for the risk of impulsive or otherwise non-rational decisions, employing methodologies such as POST (People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology) from Forrester Research.

In the next presentation, Tracey from Australia Post told us that we already have enough technology to last a lifetime. The question is - how do we use it in more meaningful ways?

She talked about Australia Post's 'Launch and Learn' process, where they don't spend excessive time on complex business plans, launch fast, iterate quickly and kill solutions where they don't resonate with customers, rather than allowing them to live on, draining resources.

Brady, also from Australia Post, then told the audience that they are now thinking screens, not platforms such as 'web' or 'mobile'.


He talked about the huge cost-efficiencies of online, how Australia Post was able to handle 50 million online contacts with an investment of less than $1 in staff, whereas their contact centre costs $50 million to service 5 million contacts.

Brady also talked about how agencies need to unleash the social media talent already within them, hiring where necessary to buttress skills and capabilities and get senior buy-in, the higher the better!

Next, Meg from Archives in State Records talked about her role and the challenges facing archivists in taking 25 year old records and preserving them for ever in accessible formats.

She explained the importance of archives, and how data from them had been used to prevent a man from being deported (through finding his primary school records) and where data was not provided to archives it cost a great deal more for an infrastructure project, which had to dig up the building to find the power conduits when there was no record of their location.

She reminded agencies that it was their responsibility to keep their data for the 25 years before it was handed to Archives, and that metadata was important, particularly for digital information that it is difficult to see inside.

Meg told the audience that it is possible, and not to painful, to archive social media channels - with Archives WA using backupify, downloading and storing the data every week.

David from Ernst and Young then challenged the audience to think BIG - about big data.

He said it can inform and support government policy and service delivery.

David outlined how we need to rethink how we collect, store and analyse big data, and said that while humans had created 2.75 zetabytes of data in our history up until now, we were likely to double this in the next two years.

Next Peter from the State Library brought the audience back into the physical world - at least most of the way - with 'books and bytes'. He detailed how people want access NOW and how while the library was attracting 1.5 million visitors each year through the door, it was receiving a million online, and was almost as much a virtual organisation as a 'bricks and mortar' one.

Peter discussed the YES Enquiry system, which is capturing customer questions and staff responses, allowing them to be reused and to keep answers consistent over time.

He advised the audience to let staff use the technology early, so they are familiar with it, and reminded that it was critical to train staff on new systems BEFORE they went live so that they could help customers effectively. Otherwise customers might lose faith in staff and the organisation, and staff would themselves feel disempowered and demotivated.

Peter recommended that all systems be built with a feedback system, so your customers can comment and help you improve over time. Peter also discussed how the library was now in competition globally against other libraries, however that digital was their future.

Finally, Colin Murphy, the WA Auditor-General, reported on the latest round of testing of WA agency firewalls. He said that agencies had hardened their outer firewalls, but haven't done much work to address internal defensive layers.

He recommended more risk management, appropriate configuration and testing and regular software updates.

Colin said that they've flagged the cloud for future reviews and reminded the audience that they need to be mindful of security frameworks to use it well.

Colin also said that he was hopeful that agencies were now on an upwards trend regarding the security of their systems, with more than half above the 'red line' used to test security.

He recommended that agencies don't shy away from 'Shiny New Things' where they offered value for organisations, but that instead they ensure that they understand the risks and implications for security and take appropriate mitigations as required.

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