Social media impacts on ICT teams - presentation from the Technology in Government conference

Over the last two days I've been down at the Technology in Government conference - an event I thought went very well, with a great group of speakers (including the UK Government's CIO Liam Maxwell).

I gave a presentation this morning, and chaired the afternoon, for the Connected Government stream and have uploaded my presentation for wider access.

In it I discussed the impact of social media on agency ICT teams and some potential approaches they can take to work with business areas to ensure that agency goals are met with a minimum of intra-agency friction.

Overall my message was that social media must be engaged with, not ignored, in government and agency ICT teams have a role to play.

There's several stances ICT teams can take - whether as a leader, supporter or observer of agency social media efforts and, depending on this stance, they could take on a greater or lesser involvement in the various roles required to implement a successful social media approach.

Social media offers benefits for ICT teams, as it does for other areas of agencies - it is simply up to ICT leadership to either step up and work with business areas in a closer ongoing way, or stay out of the way and allow other areas of an agency to move forward.

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Fantastic article: The more things change: Technology, government and the public sector

Martin Stewart-Weeks, Senior Director, Public Sector, Cisco Consulting Services, has written a fantastic article on the potential for technology to disrupt and create new possibilities for governments and the public sector.

The article discusses how technology is changing the shape and speed of government, as well as many jobs in the public sector, and looks at potential models for reshaping the public service to meet the needs of the 21st Century.

The article was presented at the Australian Government Leaders Network event in July 2013 and, with Martin's permission, I've included a copy below.

It is well worth a read! 

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IAB Australia releases free guide to Best Practice in Content Moderation for social media

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Australia has released a free guide to Best Practice in Content Moderation for social media channels, drawing on the experience of organisations like Quiip and Dialogue Consulting.

The guide, while targeted at the private sector, is quite applicable to the public sector. It references many of the same steps I personally recommend to government agencies and councils (have a content moderation policy, publish it, have an internal moderation plan, create a escalation process for difficult comments and crises) and adds some useful tips and recommendations useful for anyone involved in community management.

The IAB's guide is available from their website at: http://iabaustralia.com.au/en/About_IAB/Media_Releases/2013_-_IAB_Australia_releases_Social_Media_Comment_Moderation_Guidelines.aspx

I've also uploaded it to Scribd and embedded it below for easy access - as the document in their site is in a nonstandard ashx format.

Please note the free guide is copyright to the IAB Australia. I'm simply helping build awareness and ensure it is more widely accessible to people.

The guide would have been well suited for release under a Creative Commons, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 AU) instead.

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Contribute to The Guide for Opening Government

In an example of openness in action, the Transparency and Accountability Initiative (T/AI) is redeveloping The Guide to Opening Government using a collaborative approach.

First developed by the T/AI in 2011 with leading experts, The Guide brought together key practical steps governments can take to achieve openness, supporting civil society organisations and governments to develop and update effective Open Government Action Plans.

The T/AI is now working to update The Guide in a transparent and collaborative manner.

Bringing together expert organisations and participants in the Open Government Partnership, the T/AI is working to update and expand The Guide into a richer online resource with new topic areas and more lessons and updates from ongoing experience.

You can contribute to the new version of The Guide to Opening Government at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16VYWpslkyE0w9tZwIApisQB8zKXtsThtC7kjh9TQPy4/edit?disco=AAAAAGGEkNU# 

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How should governments educate agencies about open data?

Australia now has eight whole-of-jurisdiction open data catalogues at state and federal level, alongside agency-based repositories such as at the ABS and Geosciences Australia.

There's now a recommendation, if not a clear mandate, that agencies release data in some kind of open form - although machine-readable data remains limited and some agencies have attempted to develop their own copyright processes rather than using a pre-existing scheme such as Creative Commons (the standard to by Attorney-Generals several years ago and implemented as default in several jurisdictions).

However the quantity of data released remains low - as does the quality and context around much of the data that has been released. Agencies still resist calls to release data, with some requiring FOI requests to prompt them rather than proactively provide data to the public for reuse.

While a growing group of public servants at both senior and junior levels are becoming more aware of open data, there is often still a low level of awareness about what open data means, why it is important, what agencies have been requested to do and what this means in practice.

This isn't an issue unique to Australia, it is a challenge in every jurisdiction releasing open data around the world - over 300 of them.

Fortunately some jurisdictions have recognised this issue and taken steps to address it.

A great example is the City of Philadelphia in the United States of America.

Philadelphia had been an early entry into the open data space, originally releasing its GIS (Geographic information system) data free to the public in 2001, long before the open data movement gained steam.

However they had lost steam by 2009, with other city, state and national governments moving forward with their own open data sites. As the city was in the midst of the GFC and couldn't afford to develop its own open data presence, it worked with a group of open data advocates and companies, who had an interest in accessing and using the data - particularly with Azavea, a data visualisation company.

The resulting site, OpenDataPhilly, is still a great example of a very usable open data site and the City has used it effectively to expose much of the data it already had made public and build on this with additional data.

However, like other jurisdictions, the City of Philadelphia struck the same issue in terms of many public servants not understanding the value or importance of open data. While I can't speak specifically for the City of Philadelphia's experience, this issue can lead to the gradual decay of open data sites, with few new datasets added, old data not being updated and data that is released not having been collected in ways designed to simplify and reduce the cost of publishing.

As a result, two years after launching OpenDataPhilly, the City's government has released the Open Data Guidebook, designed to provide practical guidance to City of Philadelphia departments and agencies on the release of open data to the public.

Released as a work-in-progress Google Doc and subject to regular updates, the Open Data Guidebook is an excellent guide for any jurisdiction seeking to increase internal awareness and understanding of open data and its value to government and the community.

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