Register now for November's Canberra Gov 2.0 lunchtime event

It took a little while to pull together, but November's Canberra Gov 2.0 lunchtime event is now open for registration at: gov20november2012.eventbrite.com

With a focus on mobile app development and digital accessibility, the event is being held in DEEWR's Theatre at 50 Marcus Clarke Road from midday - 1pm on Friday, 16th November.

That means there's only two weeks to register, so get in fast!

More about the speakers:

Jake MacMullin is an independent iOS & mobile specialist. He creates iPhone and iPad apps for clients and provides training and mentoring to organisations seeking to develop in-house expertise. He developed the ABC's iview app for iPhone and iPad, now used by millions of people.

Jake is developing an iPad app to allow people to explore the National Library's digital collection of sheet music. After discovering the dataset on data.gov.au Jake developed a proof-of-concept app and realised it might be something the National Library would be interested in. In this presentation Jake will describe how he's now working with the National Library to turn this proof-of-concept in to an actual product.

Gian Wild is the Founder and Director of AccessibilityOz (www.accessibilityoz.com.au), a consultancy that supports local, state and federal Government agencies in the accessibility area.

She has worked in the accessibility industry since 1998, working on the first AAA accessible web site in Australia (Disability Information Victoria) and ran the accessibility consultancy PurpleTop from 2000 to 2005, building the accessibility tool, PurpleCop.

Gian was a Member of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group from May 2000 to August 2006, involved in writing the WCAG 2.0 specification. She is also a highly regarded presenter and trainer on accessibility and has twice been the Accessibility Judge for FullCodePress (www.fullcodepress.com) and is the Accessibility Judge for the Australian Web Awards (www.webawards.com.au).

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Enterprise social networking - the latest infographic

I thought this infographic from the US on enterprise social networking from Tibbr, released in July 2012, was worth sharing.

Particularly notable was how high an adopter of these types of tools was government ('Public Administration') at 74%, which closely reflects the share of Australian Government agencies I've tracked as now using social media officially (73%).

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Integrating LinkedIn into your agency's social media activity

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have become the staple platforms for commercial and public sector social media engagement in Australia - driven by the level of activity on those sites by Australians.

However LinkedIn, while used personally by many in business and government roles (around 16% of online Australians - over three million people), has lagged behind in its official use, particularly by government agencies.

LinkedIn, it is fair to say, is a curious beast in social media terms. Rather than being a place where people gather socially to chat and build friendships, it is a business networking site for discussing work-related issues and sharing useful resources.

Conversations on LinkedIn are frequently quite detailed, involve case studies and examples, tend to be more fact-based and involve less emotion and opinion than is seen on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

While lurking is possible, LinkedIn's real value is in the meeting of professional minds on complex issues, making it far less 'fun' to use, but far more valuable to power users.

I have used LinkedIn for professional purposes for years, building a large network of people I wish to maintain contact with, using it for finding staff, researching organisations and locating particular expertise. I contribute less frequently to groups in LinkedIn, but find several are sources of great knowledge on specific topics.

For agencies the case for LinkedIn use is different to the case for other online tools as LinkedIn is less effective as a communications platform, but can be quite valuable as a recruitment, contact management and stakeholder management tool or as a source of knowledge and expertise across many professional topics.

I believe this difference in purpose has held its use back in government as LinkedIn is less often used by communication teams and more often used by engagement and HR teams - who have been slower to adopt online channels in their every day work.

However, with over three million users, LinkedIn is now becoming important for locating and assessing staff and stakeholders and needs consideration within agency recruitment and engagement strategies. Through an organisation's LinkedIn profile agencies are able to tell potential staff what they do and offer, provide access to careers and information on their key goals and services or products.

By having an organisation page, individuals working at an agency can also link themselves to it - which provides the organisation with a view of which of their current staff are active on LinkedIn and also provides a way to keep an eye on alumni for prospective hiring back or approaching for expertise and knowledge of past events.

Of course, with organisations across Australia, or internationally, sometimes having the same name, registering your organisation with LinkedIn is also important to 'own' it before someone else registers it (if they haven't already). I recall having an interesting experience back at the Child Support Agency where staff in Australia were being accidentally associated with the UK's Child Support Agency before I could establish the Australian listing in LinkedIn.

For certain agencies (IP Australia, Austrade and the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education, for example), LinkedIn also offers opportunities to build business connections and lead or participate in appropriate topic groups in far more cost-effective ways that traditional 'round table' engagements.

So who is using LinkedIn right now in government and how?

Unfortunately the use of LinkedIn by agency isn't yet tracked by government social media lists, nationally, in Victoria, NSW, QLD or WA.

However, some agencies have begun using it, such as the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, FAHCSIA and the Department of Education, Employment, and Workplace Relations which have provided a profile, but no jobs or 'products'.

The Department of Health and Ageing has gone slightly further, listing key campaigns and the Brisbane City Council uses LinkedIn to advertise jobs.

However the government agency most effectively using LinkedIn in Australia that I've come across is  Queensland Health, which has customised its landing page to offer news and updates, lists jobs and provides plenty of supporting information on joining the organisation.

This last example shows what is possible with LinkedIn to attract quality recruits and draw back experienced alumni.

Groups, which are not linked to organisational profiles, also provide ways to connect and engage stakeholders. The most notable one I'm aware of in Australian Government is AusGoal, used to discuss the open access and licensing framework being put in place for commonwealth and state governments and share relevant information from around the world.

It is possible that there are many other government groups on LinkedIn, hidden behind passwords and only accessible to a selected few, as well as the many unofficial government groups publicly listed which government staff already belong to (such as the Online Communicators Forum).

In either case these organisational profiles and groups may offer benefits to agencies beyond the use of social networks for broad public engagement. The real challenge within agencies is to rethink the management and purpose of social media - from communication and engagement with large communities, to also include the use of social networks, such as LinkedIn, in more narrow, focused and specific interactions beyond the communications sphere.

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Why do agencies struggle with FOI and open data so much?

The linked email conversation (in a blog post), Freedom of Information Request for Classification Data, provides an interesting insight into the struggles government agencies are having with FOI and open data and with the difficulties applicants are having accessing data which should be available in reusable formats.

In this case information which is publicly available and searchable has been made less accessible by an agency in their site (breaking a site scraper). Then after the developer asks the agency for access to the data under FOI the agency (after several delays) offers to make it available for $4,000.

As far as can be determined from the information provided, the process for releasing the data - which is already in a database - simply requires a single SQL command.

The appearance is that the agency is being badly let down by its IT systems or staff - or that it is unwilling to provide the data.

Either situation is a sad reflection on the agency and on the commitment of the government to openness.

I'll keep tracking this request - as are also a number of people in the open data space - to see how it is resolved, and how long it takes to do so.

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Remembering to say thank you to citizens

Every day thousands of citizens donate their time and energy online to help government agencies across Australia.

They respond to feedback surveys on websites, provide submissions to consultations, share agency updates on Twitter and Facebook, participate in government-run online groups, provide tips and case studies to help government campaigns help others, create blog posts, websites and pages supporting government activities and even develop apps that add value to government data.

Much of this is done out of passion and interest in supporting the community, not for direct financial or personal benefit.

So wouldn't it be nice for agencies to sometimes say 'thank you' to the citizens that support public servants to do their jobs serving the government of the day and community?

I know several institutions that have learnt the art of saying 'thanks'.

There's appreciation of the efforts of teams in government operated hackathons, the Victorian State Library has invited its largest online supporters to 'meet the team' events at the Library to recognise their selfless activities and the National Library has recognised the largest contributors to Trove in several ways.

However there's many agencies who still forget the simple art of saying thank you to people outside their own walls.

Whether it is physical get-togethers, certificates or letters signed by the Minister or Secretary, a personal email from the online team, public recognition online in a Facebook group or some other method, saying thank you is one of the most important, and human, gestures that can be made to create a positive lasting relationship.

My wife and I will always treasure this simple thank you from the WSPCA last year.

The NAB has taken another route with the video below.

So think about it. When was the last time your agency thanked citizens for giving up their valuable time  to help your agency? What can you do more of to recognise their support, and encourage more of it in the future?

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