How to shut down or redirect an official Ministerial or agency social media account

With the change in Australia's Prime Minister last week, the resignation of a large handful of Ministers, and the announcement of new Ministers this week, we've seen some interesting approaches to shutting down Ministerial Twitter accounts.

Senator Jacinta Collins closed her Ministerial account with two very-matter-of-fact tweets, redirecting people to the new Ministers:

This account is now closed. For Education media, follow @MinShortenMedia and @ParlSecThomson.
— Sen Jacinta Collins (@SenCollinsMedia) July 2, 2013

This account is now closed. For Employment media, please follow @MinOConnorMedia and @KateEllisMP.
— Sen Jacinta Collins (@SenCollinsMedia) July 2, 2013

Senator Conroy, Wayne Swan MP and Peter Garrett MP ended on higher notes, before the new Ministry was announced (therefore not redirecting to new Ministers):

For everyone who's asked 'Why the Dalek?' - farewell from all of us in Team Conroy pic.twitter.com/v05YmLP1We
— Conroy MO (@ConroyMO) June 27, 2013

Thank you Australia for the absolute privilege of being your Treasurer for the past five and a half years
— Wayne Swan (@SwannyQLD) June 26, 2013

Thanks for all the support, no regrets here as I resign as Minister and rejoin my dear family with good things done for our nation. PG
— Peter Garrett AM MP (@PGarrettMP) June 26, 2013

My point in highlighting these tweets is to consider how Ministers and agencies should close down their Twitter or other social media accounts after losing a position (for a Minister) or are 'MOGed' (Machinery of Government) - merged into another agency or disbanded (for an agency or department).

Clearly there's a range of transition or shut down steps that need to be taken in any of these cases and social media can be at the bottom of the list of concerns. However as social channels are increasingly important methods for contacting a Minister or agency, there does need to be some care taken to continue monitoring live accounts and providing appropriate redirection instructions (as Senator Collins has done for her account).

So how should accounts be shutdown or redirected?

Here's some suggested steps:

1. Transfer the account and keep operating it if feasible. Sure a person may have left a position, or an agency's duties may be subsumed into another department, however in many cases the role or responsibility hasn't disappeared entirely.
   
   A social media audience is an asset - companies and agencies pay a great deal of money to access the audiences 'owned' by media outlets and it is not sensible to throw away a Minister or agency's audience just because of a change in personnel.
2. If a position is disappearing or an agency's role is ending, avoid an immediate shutdown or cessation of activity on an account. Yes Ministers can disappear overnight, and agencies can be swallowed up quite quickly, however it takes longer for all members of the community to get the message that a change has occurred.
   
   Abrupt disconnects can also be disrespectful if handled poorly, leaving a community upset and abandoned - just like walking away from a conversation with someone while you or they are in mid-sentence.
   
   Continue monitoring and communicating through the account for at least a few days, and preferably a few weeks to retain the connection with the community and allow a gradual withdrawal and redirection. This will help maintain the relationship during the transition and ensure that the new Minister or agency has a base to build on.
3. Communicate the change actively, not just through tweets and posts, but also in the profile and 'about' information for an account. Tweets and posts appear and disappear in peoples' streams whereas profile information is there continually, ensuring followers and visitors can see the message at anytime.
   
   If continuing to communicate through the account (such as during a handover or to prevent issues around an immediate shutdown), ensure that you periodically communicate the change via tweets and posts as well.
4. Give people somewhere to go. When shutting down an account, provide details of where people should go to continue to follow the topic. For an agency this means directing people to the new agency's social media accounts (if they have them), for a Minister it means (if the same party) directing them to the new Minister's social media accounts, as Senator Collins did in her accounts as illustrated above, or to the department or political party's accounts if the new Minister doesn't have a social presence.
   
   If there's a change in government occurring, it is unlikely that a Minister or their advisors would be very willing to provide the community with a link to their successor however, if the account is personally operated, redirecting to the ex-Minister's personal account or political party's account is an option instead.

In summary, if agencies and Ministers avoid abruptly ending the conversation (abandoning their audience), communicate the change clearly and provide a path for people who wish to continue to follow the topic and have a conversation, changes in social media accounts can be managed quite effectively without losing reputation or respect and avoiding negative consequences or attention.

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Is there a place for Agile in policy development?

The Agile software development methodology has changed the way many software companies operate.

The approach replaced production-line sequential and hierarchical 'waterfall' methods of developing code and services (based on the automobile production line), with iterative and responsive processes involving self-organising teams, continuous engagement and the division of bigger goals into short-term objectives - systems more attuned to the iterative modular nature of software.

Many of the top software and online services available today simply would not exist without Agile, or would be considerably less developed, from Microsoft Office to Facebook. Agile is also widely used by IT teams in government agencies, at varying degrees of sophistication and rigour.

Agile is said to increase productivity, reduce risk and improve ROI. However, that said, it isn't for the fainthearted, requiring organisational buy-in, discipline, commitment and a willingness to put customers and stakeholders at the centre of the development process, ahead of ideological or expert beliefs.

The question I have is whether Agile methodologies can be adapted to another process, which is still largely based on hierarchical systems, embedded interests and sequential design - government policy development.

The UK is currently committed to a major step towards an Agile-like policy approach, with a reform process to adapt an 'Open Policymaking' approach.

Detailed in http://my.civilservice.gov.uk, Open Policy mirrors a number of the attributes of Agile methodologies.

The approach intends to shift UK policy processes from being driven by top-down authority and fixed policy teams, towards co-design processes deeply involving stakeholders and managed by flexible policy teams drawn, based on skill, not status, from across government and other sectors.

The UK is even introducing the concept of contestable policy making, whereby the government is making funds available for organisations outside of government to develop policies, which would then be considered and potentially adopted by government as legislation, or integrated into agency-developed policy deliberations.

While open policy doesn't entirely reflect Agile methodologies, it draws from it in an attempt to create a new, more iterative and responsive approach to policy development.

With the UK's reforms still underway it is hard to yet assess whether the move to open policy will bear fruit. Trials of similar approaches (with varying levels of political and public sector commitment) elsewhere in the world are also still in early stages, so it is hard to identify successes - or failures - for open policy processes as yet.

However in an environment more complex and fast changing than ever before in history, open policy making attempts are likely to at minimum provide insights and significant lessons to governments who are prepared to innovate - learnings that could lead to improvements or changes to existing policy development processes.

To my thinking the key to this isn't necessarily the outcome - the key is to innovate in policy making, just as governments are seeking to innovate in other areas. If governments don't constantly try new things, measure the extent of change (improvement or otherwise) and share these learnings, then agencies and public sectors will ossify and undoubtably become fossils in a fast changing world.

To read more on open policymaking, see http://openpolicy.demsoc.org

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Media & PR practitioners no longer control the oxygen valve

A classic ploy by media and PR professionals to kill an unwanted issue has been to 'deny it oxygen' - refusing to comment or engage on the topic publicly, via news media or other channels.

The approach has traditionally worked very effectively for both public sector and commercial communicators. Devoid of any official information, or even denials, many journalists would quickly drop a potential story in favour of topical issues where information was available, in order to meet their tight deadlines.

Only journalists with the time and their editors' permission to conduct an investigation over a significant period of time were able to really pursue matters where organisations denied them oxygen, to uncover inappropriate behaviour, wrong-doing or even simple mistakes.

Communicators in organisations still employ the oxygen deprivation technique - refusing to speak to journalists, issuing bland statements which say nothing newsworthy or simply denying that an incident has taken place.

In some respects the technique has actually become more effective, with a faster news cycle meaning there's fewer and fewer journalists with the time or editorial support to pursue issues down the rabbit hole.

However with the change in the composition of the media - from a primarily high-cost professionalised workforce to essentially anyone with internet access and the ability to create a Facebook page, blog or video - media and PR professionals are beginning to realise that they no longer control the oxygen valve.

Today it only takes a single individual with the attitude or time to take on a large organisation and pierce the veil of silence.

We've seen this occur multiple times, overseas and in Australia, the Lewinsky scandal, the Vodafail initiative, the failure of the UK super-injunction system, the exposure of systematic corruption in the Chinese Communist Party by Weibo users (the equivalent of Twitter).

These are simply the tip of a growing iceberg of examples where people, individually or collectively, are able to find their own sources of oxygen independent to the entities they are investigating.

Today media and communications professionals no longer control the oxygen valve. Individuals can share and reflect on information and rumours online through communities, gaining the oxygen and support they need from peers. They can quickly co-ordinate efforts to learn more, interrogate data and quickly and cheaply collate diverse reports into a single picture of wrongdoing.

I don't think this trend is fully understood yet in Australia's public sector. I still talk to communications and media professionals working in Australian government agencies or Ministerial offices who still believe they control the oxygen valve - they can make any story go away by refusing to engage.

Well yes - sometimes they still can do this, where the matter is of low interest or importance. However increasingly they can no longer shut off the oxygen flow.

Media professionals, wherever they work, need to recognise the new reality. A person with an internet connection, social media and search tools, can put together a volunteer coalition of supporters, or piece together a jigsaw of innocuous information into an incriminating picture.

The tools of journalism are no longer simply in the hands of a limited number of professional journalists, who recognise that their long-term interests are sometimes served by co-operating in keeping a story quiet, so that they will continue to get access to key people, information and leaks.

Today citizens are journalists - they are documenting the events in their lives and the lives of people around them. They act in their own short-term interests, rather than in the interests of a publication and while every story and issue won't gain traction, enough will.

Any media, PR or other communications professional who believes that they still have the ability to shut down almost any conversation, turning off the oxygen valve, is both deluding themselves and potentially damaging the organisation they work for.

Instead communicators need to consider new approaches - engaging with social media to manage issues, rather than simply trying to shut them down. They need to build a new balance in communications, learn techniques from customer service professionals to help them address concerns, rather than simply try to bluff their way through a crisis.

Over the next few years it will become obvious which organisations have learnt new ways to engage with a more active communities and customers, and very, very obvious which organisations have not.

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What would a federal Coalition government mean for Government 2.0 in Australia?

A month ago (20 May) I sent an email to Malcolm Turnbull, Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband, in my capacity as a Government 2.0 commentator, asking a range of questions about how a Coalition Government, if elected later this year, would approach Government 2.0 and federal agency use of social media in official engagement (the questions from my email are included at the end of this post).

Despite a quick exchange on Twitter several weeks ago, I've received no response to my email, or even an acknowledgement of receipt.

Some might say this isn't really a high profile issue for Australia - it's not like the economy, live exports, asylum seekers, climate change or education in terms of priority for the community.

Of course, the reality is more complex - Gov 2.0 crosses most government policy and focus areas, as a way of enabling better government, improving citizen engagement, improving transparency and accountability.

Therefore, at least in my view, a government's position on Gov 2.0 is fundamental to their approach on most policy areas - whether they engage the community effectively, are transparent, accountable and influential or whether a government is more concerned about control, shutting down sources of information and limiting public engagement.

As we've seen in successive state elections across Australia, a change of government can have a significant impact on the approach and substance of online engagement by agencies, due more to the experience and views of incoming Ministers and their advisers, rather than due to ideological differences around openness and transparency.

Victoria, NSW and Queensland in particular 'held their breath' for some time after a change in political leadership, although several of these states are now forging ahead with new initiatives.

Federally we've seen the Liberal party be cautious in how it approaches social media and online engagement, and the National party is even more so.

While some elected members of both Coalition parties use social media quite well, the actual parties themselves have, on occasion, expressed concern over the risk of prominent party member saying something online that paints a target on themselves - with the Sydney Morning Herald reporting in December 2012 that the Liberal party had slapped 'a social media gag on MPs'.

This was illustrated this week as the President of the Cessnock Hunter Young Liberals branch was suspended over Twitter comments.

Despite, or perhaps because of, this caution, the Financial Review recently reported that the Liberal Party now led Labor on the use of social media, however the real question for me is how will the Coalition's caution or capability in social media translate into their policy position for agencies.

Will the Coalition support and progress - even improve - the current initiatives underway across government, to release more data and encourage appropriate use of social media channels by agencies for communication, consultation and engagement purposes?

Will it embrace and take a global leadership role in Government 2.0, forging its own path, with clear executive support and commitment?

Or will an incoming Coalition Government put on hold or even shut down existing Gov 2.0 initiatives, including sites like data.gov.au, govspace.gov.au and transcribe.naa.gov.au?

Will it instruct agencies to reduce resourcing social media channels such as youtube.com/user/ImmiTV and facebook.com/FamiliesInAustralia, redirecting funds to traditional media?

Will the Coalition withdraw Australia from the Open Government Partnership (which we hadn't joined when I wrote my email below), as Russia recently did?

We simply don't yet know.

My email:

Dear Mr Turnbull,

I am Australia's leading blogger on egovernment and Government 2.0. My blog is syndicated on five continents and I speak frequently about Government 2.0 with Commonwealth agencies and state governments, as well as presenting at conferences here and overseas about the Australian Government's adoption of digital channels.

Given the increasing emphasis on open data, online public engagement and the use of social media by Commonwealth agencies, I would like to understand and report in my blog on the Coalition's Government 2.0 position and policies ahead of the next Federal election.

Please note this is not about IT spending, which often focuses on internal systems, neither is it about websites, which are still largely used in government for outbound communication.

It is about how government brings citizens inside the tent on decision making and improves transparency to deliver better governance, outcomes and efficiencies. 

I've included a number of questions below, and would appreciate any further information you can provide regarding the Coalition's policies in this area.

I understand these areas might not be considered as being within your portfolio and appreciate if you need to consult other Shadow Ministers.

I am also able to speak with you personally if that would be an easier way for you to respond. I am based in Canberra and could meet with you in a future sitting week.

1. What is the Coalition's position on openness and transparency in government?
   
   
2. The Labor Government, under Kevin Rudd, made a Declaration of Open Government (http://agimo.gov.au/2010/07/16/declaration-of-open-government/), via then Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner. 
   Does the Coalition, if it wins government, intend to endorse, amend, replace or rescind this Declaration of Open Government?
   
   
3. In the latest Open Knowledge Foundation's Open Government Data Census, the Australian Government is ranked 4th behind the UK, US and Norway (http://census.okfn.org/country/). 
   Does the Coalition intend to take steps to improve the Australian Government's ranking in the Data Census should it be elected?
   
   
4. The current Labor Government has not yet made a firm commitment to join the Open Government Partnership (www.opengovpartnership.org/), despite being invited to join in 2011 as a founding member. 58 countries are now members, with Australia increasingly conspicuous by its absence (http://www.itnews.com.au/News/295243,australia-reserves-open-government-decision.aspx). 
   What is the Coalition's position regarding Australian membership of the Open Government Partnership and will the Coalition take immediate steps should it be elected to government?
   
   
5. In 2009 the Labor government released a beta open data site, which has subsequently been replaced with a more advanced site (http://data.gov.au/). The site has a very limited subset of data, frequently in non-reusable formats, and there is no clear mandate from the Prime Minister on government release of data, as there is in the UK, US, New Zealand, Singapore, in Queensland and NSW,  amongst over 50 other federal and state jurisdictions. 
   Would a Coalition government mandate that Commonwealth agencies release the majority of their data (where personal privacy, commercial confidence and national security are not a consideration) in machine-readable formats, as Premier Campbell Newman mandated last year in Queensland and President Obama recently mandated in the US?
   
   
6. The current Labor Government has been criticised for not mandating Government 2.0 at a Prime Ministerial level or appointing a Minister to be responsible for overseeing the Australian Public Service to improve their openness and transparency and adopt Government 2.0 tools. Whereas the Queensland Premier Campbell Newman directly spoke on the matter and appointed Ray Stevens to the position of Assistant Minister for eGovernment to oversee the Queensland Government's move towards open data. 
   Would a Coalition Government appoint a Minister, Assistant Minister or Parliamentary Secretary for eGovernment or Government 2.0 to lead this area across government?
   
   
7. The Australian Public Service is increasingly adopting social media as a business as usual channel for monitoring, communicating with and engaging companies, stakeholder groups and the community, however in the last APS report only 36% of APS had access to social media, there was no requirement for agencies to have social media policies or strategies and there were no formal training programs in place to ensure that the Australian Public Service had the skills to effectively engage via social media.
   While I have seen excellent social media engagement by the APS, I have also seen very poor engagement - most often from agencies which ban social media access to staff.
   Would a Coalition Government take any steps to ensure that the APS was adequately trained and equipped to take best advantage of social media?

(Note - I worked in roles leading online/social media initiatives within the APS from 2006 to 2012, and currently advise and train agencies in effective social media use)

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Do government agencies and councils deliberately make it harder for citizens to engage?

I've been watching a great TEDx talk by Dave Meslin on citizen engagement, which asks the question - if governments want to be open and engaging, why do they make it so hard for citizens to engage?

He raises a very good point, and demonstrates it very clearly in the video (below).



This is one of the areas I've struggled with for years.

Some of the processes governments and councils put in place around citizen engagement are designed to address political considerations, such as minimising the advertising spend (so government is not seen to promote itself too much), or address agency resourcing or timing limits, such as having extremely short engagement processes or 'hiding' consultations deep in a website so they receive only a few responses to analyse.

There's also cases where the people managing the consultation don't really understand the audience they are consulting. They may use specialist terminology, language or documents so long and complex they are impenetrable to the average Australian (who has an 8th grade reading level - that of a 14-15 year old), let alone the 46% of Australians who were considered functionally illiterate just a few years ago.

As an example, I recall an Australian council development proposal just a few years ago that was 385 pages long, provided via a sub-page in their website (with a limited number of printed copies) where people were expected to provide feedback within two weeks, responding via email.

Most Australians couldn't finish a 385 page novel in two weeks (given the amount of time per day they'd have available to read), let alone a complex planning document - even if they could find it in the council's website in time.

Response methods are equally an issue.

Holding a community forum or town hall meeting is still a popular way of consulting, and suits people who have the time and the interest to dedicate several hours to travel to and attend such an event in order to speak for a few minutes for or against a proposal. However many are increasingly dominated by retirees, the unemployed or students - who have the time to attend.

Professionals, people with young families, shift workers and tradies often don't have the time available when councils and agencies wish to hold these events.

Email-based online consultation, which is still the predominant way Australian governments ask for feedback via the internet, is dangerous in a number of ways. Emails may be blocked due to large document attachments or misclassified as spam and lost (as has happened on several occasions in the last few years - almost costing Ministers their jobs).

The generic form of responses received through emails may not suit the complexity of the consultation process. An email response to, for example, that 385 page document, may be very difficult to match against the key topics and themes, requiring a lot of time for a council or agency to analyse.

Then there's the cost and complexity of publishing responses. One of my pet hates while working in government online communications was the policy area who came to us and said, "we've just held a consultation and received 500 email responses - could you publish them in the website within two days please."

The resourcing required to publish email responses - even without considering the accessibility and privacy considerations - was immense, and was never budgeted for by the policy area.


These issues reflect on what I feel is the key issue with citizen engagement - not the common view that citizens are disengaged, but the challenge to governments to adapt their engagement approaches to provide the right environment and information for citizens to get involved and respond.

While governments tout their openness and transparency, how they are adopting a 'citizen-centric' focus and employing techniques like crowdsourcing and co-design to involve communities in decision-making, are they making the necessary changes in their own processes, approaches and people to ensure that citizen engagement is actually inclusion and effective?

In my view there's a long way to go - in Australia and in similar nations around the world - to retrain public servants, politicians and even the media, to put citizens at the centre of engagement.

It's not simply about engaging more or using online. It is about rewriting community engagement guidelines, redeveloping consultation procedures and revisiting political concerns to ensure that citizen engagement is indeed about engaging citizens, and not simply about ticking a procedural box in a government process.

For citizens to be central in engagement, perhaps governments and councils should be approaching citizens to involve them in codesigning their engagement processes.

Perhaps groups of citizens should be commissioned (at a small fee for their time) oversee or audit agency and council engagements, to provide advise and suggestions on how specific processes could be improved, or consultation materials adjusted to suit the audience being targeted.

Perhaps governments should even crowdsource the development of major consultation processes. Before asking citizens 'do you want....' they should ask 'how should we engage you on do you want....' for each major engagement.

Whatever the approaches taken, one thing is clear. If governments and councils want citizens to feel more engaged, they need to start by changing the way they engage.

Repeatedly using the same approaches to citizen engagement as have been used in the past is unlikely to deliver improved outcomes.

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