Use open data from the Victorian Government to improve awareness and literacy for social and safety issues - potentially win $2,500

The Spatial Industries Business Association (SIBA) in conjunction with the Victorian Department of State Development, Business and Innovation (DSDBI), have launched a data competition to identify approaches using Victorian government open data to improve awareness and literacy for social and safety issues.

The competition is open for registration, with entries closing 28 February and winners to be announced at the Connect Expo in Melbourne on 14 March this year.

So what makes this different to past data competitions held by or with Australian governments?

There's a little prize money ($10,000 split across four $2,500 prizes), but more importantly there's the offer of support for the winners to develop their entry over the next year.

The four winners will have an opportunity to consult with the Victorian government to continue development, with mentoring from leading SIBA members.

This is a step in the right direction for open data competitions in Australia - not just giving out prizes for using open data, but helping foster great projects so they can become sustainable and, where appropriate, commercial.

There's been thousands of websites, apps and services created out of open data competitions around the world in the last five years, but only a handful have seen ongoing development and success.

As governments get better at understanding the value proposition for open data, I hope they begin appreciating the need to provide a support system for open data entrepreneurs - who often have little or no traditional start-up field and require additional support to take an open data prototype into a sustainable product.

Start-up incubators, Angel investors and even early stage venture capitalists may also want to look at how they can foster these 'accidental entrepreneurs', whose mindset can be more focused on social good or simply an interesting data challenge, than on profiting from their open data work.

One thing is certain to me - if governments don't learn to be better at fostering the ongoing success of services developed from open data, at some point politicians and senior public servants will begin to see the open data space as an unsuccessful fad. A waste of public sector time and money, littered with the corpses of cool app ideas which never translated into economic returns or improved social outcomes.

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The art of 21st century political protests - and preparing for when it is turned on government agencies and companies

The right for citizens to express political views and to protest (within limits) against specific acts, or inaction, by politicians is one of the fundamental and defining principles of democratic government and has been in place for, well, as long as there's been democracies.

In fact this principle is one which democracies frequently use to differentiate themselves from other governance systems.

However the methods by which this principle is expressed is constantly changing - driven by the creativeness of individuals, changes in social values and the advances of technology.

Why is this so interesting?

Political protests are a fertile ground for innovations that are later applied to other protest movements, against industries, companies, social groups and directly against government agencies.

Protests directed against politicians and their ideologies are often a 'canary in the coalmine' that can be used to inform senior management, communications specialists and social media professionals what they may expect to be directed against their own organisations in the future and give them an opportunity to proactively take steps to mitigate any emerging issues.

This is why it is fascinating to watch the internet become one of the primary channels for political protests, with a range of new twists on old approaches.

We've seen significant use of older forms of protest adapted to the web. Platforms like Change.org have taken petitions and supercharged them by removing the need for collectors to travel widely to collect signatures and becoming the platform not only for the fast and simple act of signing, but for ongoing organisation and communication across issue-based groups to 'maintain the rage'.

Some governments have even adopted online petitions approaches for their own purposes - taking back some influence and control, with the UK and US the best examples.

We've seen a virtual transformation of the physical blockade approach, favoured by activists and unions to deny companies labour, supplies or customers, and also used to prevent or add difficulty to staff and politicians entering political offices.

Online blockades, termed denial of service attacks, are however treated as criminal offenses rather than civil protests in many nations. This position reflects the importance of online commerce and the blurring of lines between activities which could be legitimate protests or criminally motivated activities by individuals or coordinated groups.

The old chestnut of ridicule is, of course, used widely, from parody tweets and videos to reusing the actual words, photos and videos of some politicians against themselves.

Politicians have even used parody as a tool to show their sense of humour and stand up to detractors - my favourite being the deliberate self-parody video of George W Bush at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner, an approach repeated, but not equalled (in my view) by his successors.

We've also seen new forms of parody emerge that could not easily be replicated in the physical world. From sites that allow people to virtually throw a shoe, water bomb or even punch a politician, to browser plugins that transform the words or photos of a politician. 

Use of the Stop Tony Meow plug-in on the
Australian Prime Minister's website

The most recent of these is the Stop Tony Meow plug-in, which automatically replaces photos of the Australian Prime Minister with cats and kittens.

As most communications professionals understand, unless these protests go far 'beyond the pale', make criminal accusations, are relentlessly negative and defamatory, are provably untrue or extend beyond common standards of social decency, often the best approach is to deny them oxygen. They can be ignored or laughed off while respecting the rights of others to hold differing views.

In many cases this 'higher ground' approach will blunt the impact, or even turn the protest in favour of the politician or issue.

In some cases acknowledging or taking actions in response to a protest might be counterproductive - leading to an escalation of protest actions, greater and more organised opposition to an agenda, or leaving a politician looking ridiculous and weak for 'overreacting'.

Of course there are also many times when politicians should take note of these protests - where there is a clear groundswell of views on a particular matter, or the politician can satisfy the wishes of a group without compromising their agenda or other interests. Protests are legitimate and are a valid way to influence policy in a democracy after all.


So why should government agencies, companies and other groups take note of these protest activities?

Because, inevitably, some or most of these techniques will be turned on them and their interests.

It is important for all organisations to keep a watching brief on the evolving art of 21st century political protests and how politicians respond (or do not respond) to different techniques.

Being aware of the forms that protests can now take helps senior managers and communications professionals to proactively prepare their systems and processes to mitigate or blunt the potential impact of new approaches.

It helps them to prepare and select appropriate responses and thereby mitigate much of the risk and cost their organisations might face when these protest techniques are turned against them.

So keep an eye on how political protests evolve in the next few years, it may help you reduce stress, reputational or economic damage or even help preserve your organisation intact, should your organisation face similar forms of protest in the future.

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How Cancer Research UK is using mobile gaming to conduct medical research

Recently the World Health Organisation announced that cancer had overtaken heart disease as the number one killer of Australians, as well as being the number one killer of people globally.

The WHO had another message as well. That cancer was a largely preventable disease.

Humans have lots of medical data about cancer. With millions of cases each year there's a vast amount of data available to researchers that can help them understand how to prevent and treat the disease.

Much of this data needs to be analysed by the human eye as computers are not flexible or sophisticated enough to recognise the patterns that humans can detect.

This is where the bottleneck occurs. Lots of data, but few paid researchers.

To address this issue Cancer Research UK, a charity focused on cancer research, held a GameJam in March 2013 in London hoping to come up with game concepts that would help analyse cancer data.

Within 48 hours they had 9 working games and 12 game prototypes, different approaches combining cancer data analysis with fun and replayability.



Over the last year the charity has been working with a game developer to refine several of these games to the level where they could be publicly released.

Now, Cancer Research UK has just launched the first free mobile game (for Android and iOS) that has players analysing cancer data while they're having fun.

Named Genes in Space, players must map their way through subspace then fly the route in a custom spaceship, collecting a fictional substance called Element Alpha and dodging or blowing up asteroids on the way. The more Element Alpha they collect, the more money they make, allowing them to further customise their ship.

Meanwhile cancer researchers harvest the data created by players at two points, when they map their route and when they fly it. The subspace that players map is real genetic data, and while Element Alpha is fictional, what players are actually collecting is data that helps researchers make sense of the genetic structure.

I've long been a fan of combining data with gameplay. We need to make research and science fun to lead more people into the area. If people think they're simply playing a game rather than doing science, that's fine too.

I hope that one day soon we'll see an Grade A game developer take an interest in this area and set out to integrate elements of science data research into a high quality game.

However to get here, we'll also need to see research institutes and governments, who hold the data, interested in pursuing new ways to analyse data, rather than relying on a few expensive researchers.

Until that happens, I guess we'll have to be satisfied playing Genes in Space.

Or Cellslider, or FoldIt...

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Social media doesn't threaten people, people threaten people

It feels bizarre to me to use an argument popularised by pro-gun lobbyists to counter claims of the risks of social media, however there's some very real parallels worth considering about when agencies and corporations debate the risks of social media.

Yesterday there was a story in the Brisbane Times about a man who was arrested for making death threats against the Queensland Premier and his family.

How did he make these threats? In person at an event or rally? Via a rock through his home's window? Via postal mail to his electoral office? Via a mobile call to the Premier?

No, it was via social media, using a Facebook account.

On Twitter I've seen multiple claims that this demonstrates one of the risks of social media. Based on past form I expect the news media to pick up on this over the next few days and wail about how dangerous social media is as it enables disgruntled or mentally unstable citizens to make threats hiding behind a cloak of anonymity.

Well sorry, this actually isn't a risk of 'social media'. It's a risk every public figure in history has faced.

People threaten people. People say nasty things, photoshop images, make ranty videos about all the people they hate. People sign epetitions, write pleas for mercy, fight about 'left' and 'right' and often ignore facts and evidence which contradicts their values and beliefs.

In a world without social media, which those of us old enough can recall, people did exactly the same things they do not with social media. They made death threats, they character assassinated their rivals, they spread rumours and they gawked at sideshows.

They did these things via older technologies, phone, mail, at public gatherings, on radio and TV - even in books.

In other words - social media doesn't threaten, abuse, belittle, bully, lobby or otherwise behave in anti-social ways. People do.

This isn't to say that social media hasn't contributed to negative behaviours by humans. The internet and social media has given far more people a public platform and global distribution than has ever before been possible in human history.

Communications are far faster and harder to contain, resembling a pandemic for which humans have no immunity. A single comment can become a movement. A single photo can become a cyberwar, a single slap can lead to the overthrow of governments.

The internet has contributed to these issues and the concerns that many organisations have when engaging online, however the risk remains the same it has for all of human history - the risk of bad behaviour by individuals and groups.

So how should organisations manage the real risk - of 'bad eggs' ruining engagement for everyone, of activists and lobbyists hijacking a cause or of commercial interests using their dollars to inflate their influence?

By making the engagement guidelines clear and transparent, clarifying the scope of the engagement and actively managing the community the risk of disruptive or destructive people can be managed, whatever the medium of engagement being used.

So in conclusion, social media doesn't threaten, bully, discredit or otherwise hurt people. People do.

Social media is an accelerant and amplifier, but humans load it with content and pull the trigger.

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It's all about recovery - tech disruption and government

My post yesterday on Has Gov 2.0 in Australia got too boring too fast? (thanks @sandihlogan for the title correction) attracted some good debate on Twitter and in comments, including from @chieftech who said:

@sherro58 @grmsn @craigthomler rather that asking if #gov2au has got boring, ask if gov in AU has been disrupted by tech. I'd say a little
— chieftech (@chieftech) January 30, 2014

Disruption, or the 'throwing into confusion', is a common occurrence in times of major social or technological change.

The discovery of agriculture disrupted man's nomadic lifestyle around 22,000 years ago - dramatically changing the shape of human society, how we lived, worshipped and organised ourselves.

When humans learnt to smelt iron, roughly 3,500 years ago society was again disrupted, with more advanced civilisations able to outfight and outproduce their bronze-dependent neighbours, causing larger cities and states to form and leading to greater productivity and more time for creative thought.

Gunpowder and then handguns changed society again in fundamental ways, ushering in the end of castle fortresses, making warfare far more bloody and deadly. Incidentally Genghis Khan, known for his horse archers, may have used gunpowder bombs fired from Chinese catapults in his wars.

Further disruptions occurred with the printing press, oil drilling, tanks, computers, television, nuclear weapons, satellites, and the internet - amongst thousands of other technologies. Each time societies had to adapt how they operated, governments rose and fell, the balance of power between states shifted.

In other words disruption is normal. Society is constantly adapting to new technologies, rejecting some, embracing some and tolerating the others.

Governments have never been immune to this disruption. They also have had to constantly adapt their approach as technologies changed. We've seen time and time again how more technologically advanced civilisations have colonised, absorbed or destroyed less technologically advanced ones - and, on a few occasions, have seen civilisations falter when they advanced their technology too far too fast and it became out-of-step with social values, or caused unintentional harmful side-effects.

So has the Australian government been disrupted by technology - yes, many times even in our short 113 years as a nation.

Is there anything special about how technology is disrupting government right now? Anything that makes it different to how major technologies disrupted our government in the past?

Well yes and no. Certainly the speed of technological change has increased, which means that government has less time to understand the impacts and consequences of new technologies before deciding how and when to adopt them.

Also 'now' is the time when we are alive. Watching change occur is very different to reading about how changed occurred in the past. It's always more visceral to live through change then to observe it remotely through another person's eyes.

But also no - disruption is disruption. While the type of disruption may change or the speed increase, the potential range of responses remains limited.

In my view societies and governments only have four options when facing disruptive change - embrace, accept, absorb or oppose.

They can embrace the change, adopting it enthusiastically and quickly, throwing out old ways for the new.

They can accept it, adopting it in a more piecemeal 'as needed' way, without any resistance or dissent.

They can ignore the changes, passively rejecting them by clinging to 'traditional' ways, but gradually absorbing them over time into their traditions and making subtle adjustments to maintain the semblance of the status quo.

Or they can actively oppose the changes, actively seeking to suppress them through laws and actions - successfully or otherwise.

This leads to what I feel is a far more interesting question. How will our governments cope with, or recover, from the present round of disruptive change?

Answering this question will also answer the question of which nations will dominate the 21st Century. Governments that embrace new media and Gov 2.0, adapting themselves into the new forms necessary to thrive within empowered societies, will have a strategic advantage over governments who lag or refuse to use them.

We're already seeing this in the adopting of broadband around the world. Nations with faster broadband will have a significant economic edge over their slower and less connected neighbours. Similarly governments that are more connected and able to tap more brains for ideas, more citizens to undertake small civic acts, will be far more economically and socially acceptable than nations that restrict use of these channels to small elite, or stifle discussion through laws and censorship.

Of course there are risks with embracing disruptive changes - moving too far too fast can uncover new issues that societies don't yet have the experience to solve. However in many cases the governments that uncover these issues first may also resolve them first, sometimes putting them even further ahead of other nations.

So the really interesting question for me is how are Australia's governments doing at coping with the disruptiveness of Government 2.0, the impact of social media on public debate, of open data on accountability and economics, of citizen activism on state leadership?

Which of our governments are embracing these changes, which are accepting them and which are resisting, or actively legislating against them?

The answer to this question will tell Australians which states will be the most successful in the next twenty years and whether Australia as a nation will remain one of the wealthiest, safest and most successful in the world, or be overtaken by more nimble peers.

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