Why Australian councils and other governments need to be very careful using SurveyMonkey & other US-owned online engagement tools

I've had an interesting and robust conversation online in the last day regarding how Australian councils and governments are using overseas services like SurveyMonkey to collect information from citizens and residents.

It's no secret that SurveyMonkey in particular is widely used, with other tools like SurveyGizmo and Wufoo also used by many Australian councils and governments to collect personal information from citizens in consultations.

I think these are great tools - well-made and cost-effective. In the past, I have also encouraged and supported their use.

However every council and agency using them needs to be very careful in doing so.

Many of these tools are owned by US companies, which makes them subject to the Patriot Act and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The Patriot Act, passed in 2001, was designed to fight terrorism in the US and strengthened FISA, originally passed in 1978 , to make it legal for certain US agencies to request data from US companies pertaining to non-US citizens, while prohibiting the company from revealing that the data has been taken.

What this means in practice is that any data collected by an Australian government or council in a US owned services such as SurveyMonkey may be provided to the US government, without informing or requiring the permission of the Australian jurisdiction or the individuals whose personal data is taken.

Whether or not the US government exercises its rights under the Patriot Act and FISA, any Australian government using US-owned online services (regardless of where in the world they are hosted), cannot legally make the guarantees they are required to make under the Australian Privacy Act to control how any personal information they collect on citizens and residents is distributed or used and to only use the data for the purpose for which it was collected.

This poses a major challenge to Australian councils and agencies as they are open to being found in breach of the revised Privacy Act, which now includes million dollar fines for governments that do not comply with it.

I recommend reading the new Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), as provided by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, to get an overview of the impact of the privacy changes, in particular APP 1 (which requires actual privacy documentation from entities), APP 2 and APP 8.

APP 2 outlines the requirement to support anonymous and pseudonymous responses to consultations - meaning that any service or approach (including RSVPs to a physical event) that requires a user's real name may no longer be legally able to be the only channel for consultation responses.

APP 8 is particularly worth reading for how organisations that collect personal data are allowed to share it across jurisdictions. I'll let people read it for themselves and source their own legal interpretation, as it places a large legal question mark over the use of US-owned services due to the Patriot Act and FISA.

Any council using US-owned online engagement tools must decide whether convenience and saving a few dollars is worth the risk - knowing that they are breaking Australian law.

Of course this shouldn't stop councils or agencies from using online engagement services. Provided an online engagement service meets the requirements of the Privacy Act it is fine for an Australian government to use them.

This covers data collection services from companies domiciled in nations which do not have an equivalent to the Patriot Act and FISA - such as the UK, New Zealand and Canada, amongst others.

It also doesn't exclude the use of US-owned services such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter where citizens have directly chosen to sign-up to the service based on its terms of service. The presumption is that citizens will do due diligence and make their own risk assessment regarding whether they are happy to comply with US laws. Where governments have a presence, they are not the direct intermediary for citizens using the service and therefore only need to be mindful of the privacy ramifications of information published on the council or agency's own account pages.

It may also be possible to mitigate legal risks around tools like SurveyMonkey through excluding all personal questions in surveys - although this could be more difficult to defend in some cases as the IP address and other metadata automatically collected by these services may be sufficient to built a connection and identify a respondent.

Or government agency or council could require all respondents to agree explicitly before engaging that they understand that the Australian jurisdiction collecting their data cannot guarantee the safety of that information due to US law - although this could seriously damage the level of actual engagement and trust.


Fortunately, however, when agencies and councils look into the use of online engagement tools they don't need to only look at US or other overseas providers.

There are local providers of online engagement tools, including the company I now lead, Delib Australia.

Local providers are required to meet all Australian laws and, for the most part, host their services locally (as Delib does), removing jurisdictional risk and potentially making them faster to use (as data doesn't have to travel over congested international networks).

That can raise prices a little - hosting in Australia is more expensive than hosting in the US and local providers can't access the same economies of scale or venture funding as US companies.

However it doesn't raise the price that much, when considering the benefits of local support (in Aussie timezones) and greater responsiveness to local government needs.

Speaking with my Delib hat on, as I know Delib's prices best, councils and not-for-profits across Australia can access Delib's combined Citizen Space and Dialogue App services for under $500 per month.

State and federal agencies, who need greater flexibility and control, won't pay much more for Delib's robust, well-tested, online survey and discussion tools, which were co-designed with governments for government use, and comply with Australian privacy, security and accessibility requirements.

Other local providers offer a variety of other online engagement tools and should also be considered.

So when an Australian council or government agency wants to engage online its staff should think very carefully about whether they select a US-based service, or a local provider - considering whether they are willing to trade a little in cost for a great deal in legal risk, loss of control and less support.

They also consider whether they wish to support Australian or US businesses, Australian jobs or US venture capitalists.

The choice shouldn't be too hard, even on a tiny engagement budget.

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Has Australia reached 'peak open' in government?

The Open Government Summit in London saw well over 1,000 representatives from over 60 governments and 30 civic organisations meet last week to discuss the progress the Open Government Partnership (OGP) has made in opening up governments to greater scrutiny.

Attendees included heads of state, Ministers and high level officials while Australia, which is not yet a formal member of the OGP (expected to join April 2014), was represented by the Australian Government Chief Technology Officer, John Sheridan.

Indonesia was appointed co-Chair of the OGP - an interesting development given the current asylum seeker 'discussion' between Australia and Indonesia's governments.

One topic that seems to have caused much frustration for delegates was been whether we have reached a level of 'peak open'.

This represents a level where the openness possible using 21st Century technologies meets the unwillingness of entrenched 20th Century government and political institutions to change.

Symptoms include a mistaken focus on egovernment (online service delivery) as 'open government', the release of trivial opendata, while important data remains hidden or even governments using social media engagement to conceal the lack of actual openness or capability for citizens to engage productively with governments in transparent ways.

Another symptom has been the revelations of secret spying by governments on citizens - which may reshape relationships between the US and Europe and between Australia and its neighbours.

Similar signs are visible in Australia. Whilst Australian governments have remained publicly committed to openness and transparency, there's no common agreement on what these terms mean. How open is open? How transparent should governments be?

There's signs that a number of governments in Australia are drawing back from certain aspects of openness, particularly in the political sphere. A number of government social media accounts have fallen silent, or shifted to one-way broadcast, following the last federal election. We've seen the commitment to ongoing release of open data decline in many jurisdictions (after an initial burst) and we've seen little in the way of political leadership for openness, with many signals that politicians prefer controlling information over releasing it.

I've watched open government groups become increasingly frustrated and concerned at Australia's lack of forward motion. Where we see other nations moving forward, Australia appears to be, at best, trading water.

Even Australia's Information Commissioner, John McMillan, appears to have diplomatically suggested that Australia was far more proactive on Gov 2.0 in 2009-2010 than it is now.

John McMillan @OAICgov: Aus was v. proactive on #opengov #gov2au w/ strong leadership support in 2009/10, suggests less so now #nswODF
— Allison Hornery (@allisonhornery) November 10, 2013

The Gartner Hype Cycle is a good model to consider in this regard, and has been used similarly to explain the expectations for, crash and subsequent rise in social media use in government.

Garner Hype Cycle: http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hype-cycle.jsp

Based on the cycle, Australia could be characterised as rising towards the 'Peak of Inflated Expectations' since the Gov 2.0 Taskforce in 2009 (the 'Technology Trigger' that initiated high level public engagement by the Australian Government with Gov 2.0).

The current 'coming together' of open government activists and advocates that I've seen in the last few months, with their concerns over whether Australia is truly progressing in the area - or drawing back - is a characteristic of a shift to the 'Trough of Disillusionment'.

Of course this is only an illustrative model, and may not relate precisely to what is occurring in Australia, or around the world, however if it is it implies there is a great deal of positive change waiting to occur with the 'Slope of Enlightenment', once the Trough has been cleared.

Personally I hope this is the case. Australia can withstand a little less openness in government, which will held the public and media appreciate the value of open and broaden the support for openness in the future.

Right now 'open' doesn't win votes for a particular party and, as such, is largely a nice-to-have beyond the minimum required scrutiny inbuilt into the Westminster system.

If we proceed deeper into the Trough, with a more closed and uncommunicative government, Australians might learn to more broadly recognise the importance and value of openness.

This could turn it into an electorally significant topic, leading to greater political engagement and leadership with openness.

So has Australia, or indeed the world, reached peak open?

In the short-term perhaps.

However the benefits of open government have started to be realised and both media and citizens around the world have been learning that openness reduces corruption, improves accountability and provides economic benefits to nations who are willing to bear the cost of occasionally embarrassing institutions and politicians.

In the long-run I believe that we'll see open government continue to grow and blossom, with both citizens and governments receiving the benefits of more authentic engagement and broader participation in decision-making.

The challenge to public servants and open government advocates alike remains the same - how do you ensure that openness doesn't become a fad, but instead becomes part of the bedrock of our governance and political system, 'inverting the triangle' from a presumption of closed, to a presumption of openness.

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The Government Data Landscape in Australia - extended

The Gov 2.0 team in the Australian Government CTO's office in Finance recently released a great list and mindmap of the Government Data Landscape in Australia. This included many of the policy and practical data initiatives across Australian governments.

This is a living list and should be expected to grow and change over time, so I've taken the data and transposed it into Google Spreadsheet, to makes it easier to amend and update and easier for people to filter, sort, integrate into sites or apps and analyse.

I also addressed a few linking issues (which I have noted in the spreadsheet) as well as addressed the accessibility issue of using the word '(link)' as the hyperlink (an unfortunate side-effect of exporting data from MindMeister).

I've opened up the spreadsheet for people to edit, so the community can help expand this list in an actively collaborative way.

Note this is based on Finance's blog post of 26 October 2013, so depending on how and when they update the list, the spreadsheet may be behind or ahead in currency at any time. There's also no guarantee that the Department will refer to or reference this spreadsheet.

However it should remain a useful centralised and community editable list of government data policies and initiatives across Australia.

The editable government data landscape spreadsheet can be accessed at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ap1exl80wB8OdC1jdXFsQTh4R2ZHWDI2SFBxdjVxY2c&usp=sharing

I've also embedded the spreadsheet below.

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Australia's great leap forward in digital diplomacy

In the UK the Foreign Office states, in regards social media, that "The FCO encourages all staff to make full use of the opportunities offered by social media to help deliver FCO objectives", and "we do expect social media to be a core part of the toolkit of a modern diplomat."

In the US the current Secretary of State, John Kerry, has said "Of course there’s no such thing any more as effective diplomacy that doesn’t put a sophisticated use of technology at the center of all we’re doing to help advance our foreign policy objectives, bridge gaps between people across the globe, and engage with people around the world and right here at home," and "The term digital diplomacy is almost redundant — it’s just diplomacy, period."

Many other nations have taken similar steps to introduce digital channels, particularly social media, into their diplomatic suite.

Australia, until recently, was regarded as a laggard in digital diplomacy. I've heard us described on forums for diplomatic staff as highly conservative and as potentially damaging our diplomatic efforts through taking an excessively risk-averse approach to using social media in diplomacy.

Fortunately this has changed over the last year, with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) having become far more active in digital channels to promote the values and character of Australia.


Under the auspices of DFAT, Australia now operates over 60 social media accounts for digital diplomatic ends, including 22 Twitter, 30 Facebook, three each for YouTube and Flickr, a blog and China-specific accounts on the Sina Microblog, Sina Blog and Youku (a YouTube equivalent).

I've briefly analysed these accounts, which you can view at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ap1exl80wB8OdDF6YTVKZWt1MGh5UEIwaFVZZ19pTEE&usp=sharing

DFAT's social media accounts now cover around 60 countries and, while most were established in 2012 or 2013, they are already growing Australia's digital diplomatic reach and influence.

Countries covered by DFAT social media accounts at 4 November 2013


While Australia still lags powerhouses like the UK, which has over 240 international Twitter accounts alone and the US, which now has over 300 Facebook page and is tweeting in over 11 languages, we've definitely established ourselves in the second tier of countries engaged in digital diplomacy.

We're roughly equivalent to countries like Ireland, or Canada, both of which have just over 30 Twitter accounts and between 60 and 80 social media accounts overall in use for diplomatic purposes.

This is a sold start - although it has occurred without a broad and public discussion of how to most effectively use social media in diplomacy, as in countries such as the USA and Canada.

Hopefully as DFAT builds its skill base and guidance, we'll see less broadcast and more engagement by embassies and ambassadors online - more public conversation that leads to real and valuable diplomatic and economic outcomes from these channels.

After all, with civilian populations and governments alike increasingly engaging each other on social media, being absent online excludes an agency or government from important conversations and allows others without Australia's best interests at heart to fill the gap.

Below is my consolidated list of DFAT's social media accounts, drawn from DFAT's media page and current at 4 November 2013.

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Social media policies from across Australian governments

I've been compiling a list of social media policies released by government agencies and councils across Australia as a central resource bank for organisations who are either still in the process of creating their policies, or are interested in reviewing and improving them.

Thus far I've identified just over 70 policies - a small number considering Australia has over 550 councils, 100 state departments and 18 federal departments, plus all of the independent agencies and statutory bodies across the nation.

This is even smaller when considering that I took a broad view and included policies written for the public as well as those written for agency staff or as models for other agencies to adopt.

Based on previous research I conducted in 2012 (which will be repeated next year), many Australian Government agencies claimed to have or be developing a social media policy, but hadn't considered whether to publish it as yet.

I consider staff social media policies as one of the standard documents that agencies should disclose proactively, and it will be interesting to see when I ask them next year whether agencies feel the same way about this.

Anyway, below's the spreadsheet of social media policies - please comment if you have more to add (I'm not ready to open it up to general editing as yet).

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