National Audit Office invites the public to contribute to departmental audits

In what I believe is a global first, Australia's National Audit Office (ANAO) has launched a pilot program inviting members of the public to contribute to selected audits in progress, aimed at promoting closer citizen engagement in the audit process.

The system allows the public to provide contributions related to the efficient and effective implementation of government programs, policies, projects or activities—including whether the intended benefits are achieved.

Contributions can be provided via an online form, mail or in a document (MS Word or PDF) and will be kept confidential except for defined purposes (a legal requirement under sections 36 and 37 of the Auditor-General Act 1997).

This confidentiality may allow public servants - who often know a lot about how programs operate in practice - to contribute in ways that protect them from retribution in the office.

The pilot program will run until early 2013 and the ability to contribute is limited to certain audits (at least for now). However this is a great start and a huge step forward for one of our most important institutions.

The seven audits currently open for public contributions are listed in this page: http://www.anao.gov.au/Publications/Contribute-to-an-Audit-in-Progress

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What if we let ordinary citizens represent Australia on social media for tourism purposes?

Tourism Australia, state and territory tourism agencies and many regions and cities are now using social media to promote their location (their brand) to potential tourists.

Using the traditional approach, these accounts are managed by professionals employed by agencies and tourism bodies, communicating with official approved messages.

However other countries have begun to explore the potential of expanding social media engagement to put the public in control, allowing individual citizens to curate official tourism social media accounts for a 'rotation' - a week or two for each person.

The best example of this is from Sweden, where the tourist board’s official @Sweden Twitter account has been given to a different citizen each week to curate and tweet from since December 2011.

The account has, at times, attracted some controversy, however it appears the Swedish Government is mature enough to manage this in an adult fashion and their citizens continue to tweet about topics ranging from the weather to body parts to politics (including mention of Australian politics). Any controversial tweets also haven't dampened interest in the account, which has over 66,000 followers.

The citizens who operate the account (termed 'curators') are selected by an official panel and given guidance before being set loose, however tweets are not reviewed or approved by officials.

The account is supported by a website (http://curatorsofsweden.com/) explaining how @Sweden works, providing details of curators and a video (embedded below) with a Q&A with former curators.


Another example of an official account run by citizens, is the US state of Vermont's @ThisisVT, which follows a similar model of a week per curator, selected through a nomination process by a panel (to manage risk).

The account was launched in late July 2012 and now has almost 2,500 followers. It is also supported by a website, www.thisisvt.com, to promote Vermont to tourists from across the US and elsewhere.


These initiatives are building the brand identity of nations and states by presenting citizen perspectives, rather than an institution's carefully packaged messaging.

Essentially the curators are brand ambassadors, providing a human face and personality for potential tourists to bond with.

This isn't in itself a revolutionary concept. Many jurisdictions use brand ambassadors - though normally choose internationally known actors or sports people. However the approach through social media is new, rather than picking celebrities (and their price tags), normal citizens are selected to provide realistic faces for these brands.

Would this 'everyperson' approach be accepted in Australia?

Actually a similar approach already has won awards and enormous praise. The Queensland 'Best job in the world' campaign' selected an individual from over 34,000 entries to visit the state as a working tourist, reporting their experiences to the world via video and blogging.

Of course the 'Best job' campaign selected a single ambassador, whereas @Sweden and @ThisisVT select a new ambassador each week, so provide greater diversity but less celebrity. However I expect we'll see more of this (far lower cost) rotation approach.

Even if Australian governments remain too fearful of having citizens represent the nation, state or region to the world, it is already happening.

These 'Rotation Curation' social media accounts are already appearing, outside government control, with over 30 projects around the world.

There are already at least two unofficial Australian accounts, @WeAreAustralia and @IndigenousX (specifically for Indigenous tweeters), hosting a range of citizen views.

Many other 'unofficial' accounts are listed in Wikipedia, with notable accounts such as:

• @TweetWeekSyria (Syria)
• @JustaCypriot (Cyprus)
• @WeAreFilipinos (Phillipines)
• @HellofrmSG (Singapore)
• @ireland (Ireland)
• @CuratorsMexico (Mexico)
• @Bristol52 (Bristol, UK)
• @IamBremen (Bremen, Germany)
• @BasquesAbroad (by Basques, global account)

So would Australian jurisdictions allow Australian citizens to curate and communicate from an official account without approval?

Are tourism authorities - and other government agencies - ready to trust their own citizens?

I hope so, given the examples already out there.

I wonder which government will be first to break through the fear barrier and give it a try - even if only for a few months.

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What's the effective lifespan of a link shared via social media?

When you share a link on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or other social media channels, how long will it continue to receive attention?

I've just been told about a study that Bit.ly (a leading URL shortening service) did on this topic a year ago. The study, You just shared a link. How long will people pay attention? used a selection of 1,000 popular links shared via bit.ly in social media channels to research how long they would receive attention (clicks) from other social media users.

Firstly bit.ly looked at the 'half-life' of links shared through popular social media services, how long it took for them to receive 50% of the clicks they would receive.

Graph of the 'half-life' (time taken to reach 50% of clicks)
of links through various social media services.

They found that links distributed through Twitter, on average, had a half-life of 2.8 hours, while Facebook distributed links ad one of 3.2 hours. Direct emails (such as email newsletters) had a half-life of 3.4 hours, so all quite short and similar.

However links distributed via YouTube had a half-life of 7.4 hours, reflecting that it is not an 'always-on' service like the other channels, and meaning that when tracking responses it is important to recognise that it can take longer for YouTube to reach an audience - which doesn't necessarily mean it is less effective.

On average the half-life (except for YouTube) was 3 hours and in general links lost attention almost completely within 16 hours.

I've also been told that within 24 hours most links have received 99% of the clicks they will ever receive, and within 48 hours this reaches 99.9%.

So how is this useful information for government?

Firstly if you're sharing information through these social media channels, be prepared for a load on your servers. If there's an emergency or a sudden announcement of broad public interest, your website will receive most of its traffic from social media sharing of the link in the first three hours - starting seconds after you send out the message.

if your servers and bandwidth are restricted and slow to respond to increasing loads, you might need to reconsider your hosting and architecture - or provide emergency information through a more resilient and scalable platform (such as a Google Blogspot blog or other cloud-hosted service).

Secondly, if information is being shared about your organisation via links on social media, you don't have long to identify the trend and respond before it escalates.

If, for example, someone tweeted a link to a picture from an asylum seeker mobile phone which appeared to show an Australian navy vessel firing on them, it wouldn't be long before this was accessed by thousands, tens of thousands, even millions of people.

If the photo was a known fake and your agency needed to respond, you'd have to approve and distribute the message within that first few hours window to have an impact on the trend.

The era of multi-day approval processes has gone. Whatever the scenario, your agency needs to be ready to react and respond within a few hours at most.

How do you get there with an agency who still spends weeks approving a media release?

My post on Coping with the challenges of two-speed government agencies offers some ideas to start with - build systems that allow you to respond quickly by cutting repetition and 'fat' from approval processes and clear up the gray areas as to who can approve what types of content.

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Don't forget to register for October's Canberra Gov 2.0 lunchtime thingy

On the 18th of October is the next Canberra Gov 2.0 lunchtime thingy, with a focus on open data, data visualisation and new approaches to policy development through policy visualisation.

As usual we have two fantastic speakers:

Pia Waugh, an open government and open data ninja working with the ACT government as an Open Government Policy Advisor, will provide a report on her trip to the global OKFestival, a thousand-person conference focused on open government, open data and data analaysis/visualisation in Helsinki.

Evan Hill, the Methodology and Infographics Manager within the Strategy and Delivery Division of PM&C will be discussing policy visualisation and the newly launched APS Policy Visualisation Network.

For more information, or to register, go here.

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Update: 77% of Australian federal parliamentarians are now on social media

I've updated my listing of Australian federal parliamentarians on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social networks, and have found that 77% of them now have a social media presence - up from 72% in June 2012.

What I'd like to talk about today are some of the interesting breakdowns in the figures.

There's a substantial divide between Senators and members of the House of Representatives, with MPs far more likely to use social media channels than Senators - particularly Facebook, where there is a 30% difference (39.47% of Senators compared to 69.33% of Reps).

This makes sense, given that MPs represent an electorate and have significant needs to connect with their constituents, whereas Senators, who represent states, generally do not campaign in a similar way.

Social network	Senate	House of Representatives
Facebook	39.47%	69.33%
Twitter	59.21%	68.67%

Unlike the broader Australian population, Twitter is the network of choice for parliamentarians - perhaps because it requires substantially less curation and moderation than Facebook.

Social network	Online Australians	Federal parliamentarians
Facebook	98%	59.29%
Twitter	14%	65.49%

Liberal and Labor members are both reasonably likely to use social media, with the Liberals ahead of Labor on 79.57% compared to 73.53%.

The Greens are the highest users of social media, with 100% of their federal parliamentarians using some form of social network. This offers their party opportunities to amplify their messages in ways difficult for smaller parties to do using traditional media.

The Nationals, in contrast, only have 69.23% of their parliamentarians using social media. While this may reflect the demographic composition of their electorates, which are more remote and statistically less likely to use online channels, in my view they are missing opportunities to connect to constituents who are online and allow more time to travel to remote constituents who are not.

75% of the independents (including the DLP and Katter's party) are using social media (with Tony Windsor the lone hold-out). Again, much the same reasons as for the Nationals may apply, and my views are the same.

Social network	Liberals	Labor	Greens	Nationals	Independents
Any network	79.57%	73.53%	100.00%	69.23%	75.00%
Facebook	51.61%	46.08%	60.00%	23.08%	25.00%
Twitter	54.84%	49.02%	60.00%	38.46%	25.00%

(Note that as my spreadsheet is broader than Facebook and Twitter the percentages above for these networks are a little lower than the total.)

Asides from the party and house differences, there's a small, but statistically significant male/female divide, with female parliamentarians more likely to be socially engaged online than males. Given that statistically more women use Facebook and Twitter in Australia than men, this is reflective of the general population.

Social network	Male parliamentarians	Female parliamentarians
Facebook	57.76%	63.08%
Twitter	63.35%	70.77%

Even more notable is the age breakdown. The older the parliamentarian, the much less likely they are to use social networks.

Birth years	Any social network	By the numbers
1940-49	64.71%	11 of 17 parliamentarians
1950-59	61.76%	42 of 68 parliamentarians
1960-69	81.97%	50 of 61 parliamentarians
1970+	100.00%	32 of 32 parliamentarians

This becomes telling when considering that older parliamentarians are far more likely to hold Ministerial or other senior posts, and therefore be decision-makers regarding which channels they are comfortable for their departments to use.


There's clearly some way to go before all parliamentarians are using social networks to connect with constituents.  However there is definitely light at the end of the tunnel, with almost 80% of parliamentarians now using social networks.

I expect that by this time next year, around the time of the next federal election this will jump at least another 10%, and by the end of 2014 all Australian federal parliamentarians will be using social networks, in some way, to engage their constituents.

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