The latest video communicating social media policy to public servants - Social Media Man

The Queensland Government recently introduced a new approach to communicate departmental social media policy to staff, a light and humorous video featuring 'Social Media Man'.

It's the latest in a line of video-based tools used to communicate social media policy to public servants in Australia, following some great work from Victoria.

The first, in March 2011, was the Victorian Department of Justice's Social Media Policy.

This video (embedded below) took a solid and dependable approach, providing a top-level view of the Department's (then new) Social Media Policy.

This video became the 'go-to' standard for government agencies across the country and was seen globally as an effective example of how agencies could leverage social channels and particularly video to better communicate with their own staff.

The video has been adapted and reused by a number of agencies and councils around the country, including the federal Department of Human Services.

(My company, Delib Australia, has the code for the video and has repurposed and redeveloped it for councils. We'd be happy to do this for you too.)

After several years of hiatus, the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) took the bar higher earlier this year with the release in April of their Social Media Policy video.



Using a cartoon-drawing style, this video supported the release of the DPC's social media policy, which is also available on their website at dpc.vic.gov.au/index.php/resources/communication/social-media

The latest entrant in the mix, hot on the heels of Victoria's DPC, is the Queensland Government's 'Social Media Man'.

A mild-manner public servant otherwise known as 'Garry', Social Media Man gives staff at DNRM, DTESB, DAFF & DEWS an overview of their obligations under their social media policy.

The video is available at Youtube: youtube.com/watch?v=HaYlcZur5_E&feature=player_embedded

Note this may not be publicly visible for long, given that Queensland government has chosen to prevent embedding or sharing by other sites (as evidenced by broken links from Business Insider and Mumbrella).

This is a real shame as it is, in my view, a great approach - balancing humour with a clear message.

UPDATE 1 Sept 2014: the video is now embeddable, so you can view it below.



It is my view that public sector social media policies should be public. This helps send a clear message to the community that they can trust the public service to act appropriately and not politically on social channels, building trust and respect.

There's also the consideration that governments, such as Queensland, have adopted Creative Commons as a standard licensing approach - so appropriate sharing of this type of material should not be prevented.

In lieu of being able to embed the video, here's stills of Social Media Man in action.

It will be interesting to see which governments in Australia can take this further - potentially even stepping beyond the use of videos to promote social media policy to promote other OH&S and security policies within agencies. There's a lot of scope for video that's not yet been realised.

Finally I think it is worth noting that the Queensland public service, per this video, is told to not criticise their own policy areas or department, but can engage more broadly in political expression regarding other government policies - that's currently denied Australian Public Servants by the Australian Public Service Commission's guidelines on social media use.

In my view Queensland has got their social media guidance right.

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Giving the community an opportunity to understand and reshape the Australian Government budget for 2014-15

While common practice in many countries overseas, there's still limited authentic consultation on government budgets undertaken in Australia - and I think we're poorer for it.

Involving the community in setting budget priorities and educating them on how a budget is developed goes a long way towards building understanding and (very importantly) trust in public institutions and politicians.

Even if these processes are only used for informational or even political ends, such as Strong Choices in Queensland, they at least give the public visibility into the challenges that governments contend with.

Of course budget processes are far more valuable when they give people authentic opportunities to influence government decisions, but one step at a time.

With so little public consultation undertaken around the Australian Government's budget for 2014-15, I've worked with Fairfax Media this year to give the Australian public an opportunity to understand how it is constructed and provide their views.

Via my company Delib Australia, we've modelled budget revenues and expenditures in Budget Simulator and made this available via the Sydney Morning Herald's site.

The Australian Budget Simulator is open until the end of next week, at which point we'll be tallying up the feedback and presenting it to the Australian Government for review.

It's not likely to change any decisions, but at least it will help inform the discussion.

To share your views via the Australian Budget Simulator, visit: www.smh.com.au/business/federal-budget-2014/budgetsimulator/

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Keep an eye out for Australia's open budget

We've now suffered through most of the fun and games of budget leaking season this year, with the 2014-15 Australian Government budget now in its final 'straight'.

There were a variety of balloons floated, claims and counterclaims touted, promises apparently broken (or not, depending on who you listen to) and all the usual suspects wheeling out to give us their authoritarian views on how budget changes would break or make Australia.

This year it has even been capped off by images of the Finance Minister and Treasurer enjoying a relaxing cigar as their departmental teams work frantically behind the scenes to get the final planks of the budget in place.

In other words, it's been largely business as usual for the Australian Government budget process - following the same pattern that's been followed for thirty or more years.

There have, of course, been some changes.

The communications channels used to inform people about the budget have shifted slightly (though not as much as they could), and the community has become far more visible in its budget consultations through the widespread adoption of online social channels - though politicians and traditional media have remain largely one-way broadcasters, rather than embracing the opportunity to engage.

Some government agencies have also adapted their strategies for informing the public - using social media to broadcast their budget statements and to engage online in so far as to correct misunderstandings and address myths and beliefs which are not supported by budget papers.

In the last few years Australia even stepped to the world leading position of releasing much of the budget papers under creative commons licensing (now the standard copyright for the Australian Government) - with this stimulating the creation of new ways to view the budget, such as The OpenBudget and BudgetAus.

These services are still relatively new and have suffered from the inaccessibility of the PDF documents used to publish the reusable budget data - meaning the creators of these tools had to scrape PDFs for data, manually type or check every figure, to get a realistic budget view.


However this year, in another world first, the Australian Government budget is set to be largely released in spreadsheet formats.

A team of public servants in Finance and Treasury is aggregating all the budget numbers from a range of agencies and releasing it in an aggregated way that is easy for others to reuse.

This is a huge step forward and opens the gate to a range of community and media visualisations of the budget at a far lower commitment of effort than was possible in previous years.

So keep an eye out in the coming days for some of the budget projects that are created using this open data.

I'll try to list them in this blog in the days following the budget's release.

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The thin Gov 2.0 silver lining in the Commission of Audit report

Amongst the "crazy brave to politically suicidal" recommendations in the National Commission of Audit report, there are three recommendations for Government 2.0 and eGovernment initiatives that should bring a glow to the heart of digital enthusiasts and pragmatists.

Recommendation 61: Data says that the Australian Government should improve its data management and analytics capability, also improving the timely access to data as well as its general availability for reuse.

The recommendation makes a strong mention of open data and its ability to drive transparency and accountability within government, as well as business opportunities and social improvements.

It does, however, stop short of a strong position on opening up data. While it does recommend requiring agencies to maximise their own use of data, having the ABS and Chief Statistician develop a 'data strategy' for government and ask that agencies extend and accelerate "the publication of anonymised administrative data", it doesn't reach as far as US and UK position on ensuring data is appropriately repackaged for reuse when released, or that data beyond "administrative" is also released.

One thing the Commission of Audit did not mention in this recommendation was Australian membership of the Open Government Partnership - which the government says is currently "under re-evaluation". This is a no-brainer if the government is serious about transparency and accountability (which I know many currently doubt), and having the Australian Government confirm it was joining the OGP would support a commitment to implement this recommendation, if the government so intended.


Recommendation 62: e-Government states that the Australian Government should adopt a digital-by-default approach to citizen and business engagement, going beyond the current policy ambition (for services having 50,0000 or more transactions per year) and turning the approach to digital on its head, from opt-in, to opt-out. 

This could change the entire cultural outlook of government, leading agencies to design services for digital first and having other channels as secondary, rather than the current flawed model of taking existing paper processes and converting them to digital without transforming the services to be digitally native.

The current approach has largely led to digital services that are difficult to access, use and often seem illogical to role - prompting increased calls to service centres to understand processes, rather than reducing calls by providing online services easier to use than paper forms.

The recommended approach instead mirrors the current UK strategy of transforming services to be easier to use online than via other channels, thereby supporting a 'pull' effect whereby people choose digital because it is easier and faster to provide the outcomes required.

In fact this attention is required if the 'opt-out' strategy is to work. If the government simply forced people to use digital channels to engage by government without totally redesigning both customer-facing and back-end systems for a digital-by-default world, it would create significant pain and additional cost for citizens, businesses and public servants on an ongoing basis as systems failed to provide the experience that modern consumers expect from digital channels.

This recommendation also suggested the creation of a Chief Digital Officer for government, to be positioned in the Department of Communication, who would lead the approach, with the oversight of a Senior Minister as a Digital Champion (presumably the Communications Minister). This again largely mirrors the UK approach, although makes no mention of how the Officer would be resourced and supported to be effective in the role.

Given the resourcing committed to the Government Digital Service in the UK, it would be disappointing and counterproductive to see any Chief Digital Officer receive proportionately less resourcing to take on this type of role to transform the Australian Government.

There is also a big question mark over whether the Department of Communication would have the right levers and influence to lead a whole-of-government transformation of this type. Over the last six years we've witnessed a number of occasions where agencies with a policy bent were given service delivery obligations and failed to carry them out due to a mindset and skills mismatch. There's several good reports from the National Audit Office highlighting this issue and providing recommendations on a better way to structure these processes.


Recommendation 63: Cloud computing says that the Australian Government should take a cloud-first approach for "for all low risk, generic information and communication technology services".

This is a good step, however may require some rationalisation of ASD and AG requirements around cloud-computing to manage the administrative requirement for two Minister sign-off of most cloud-computing requests (a practice a number of agencies still appear ignorant of or are ignoring).

The second part of the recommendation, to establish a cloud-provider panel, is also a good step. The DCAAS panel is already in place, however there is room to grow.

However there does need to be some balance in that 'cloud' is merely a method of hosting software and storing data - many types of digital services can be delivered in a 'cloud' manner, or utilising some other form of (in-house, dedicated, virtual) hosting approach. Cloud gives no indication as to the type of service, so any cloud panel could end up as a hotch-potch of different services that can also be accessed through other panels and providers when delivered in different ways.

This could lead to confusion or the cloud panel becoming the 'every digital service' panel - which may not be as manageable or useful to agencies.


While I have no real issues with any of these recommendations, the fact they are included in the National Commission of Audit gives me some concern.

Given the Audit recommendations are already creating a strong backlash, despite no indication from the government on which will be accepted, I believe there is a risk that the eGovernment and Gov 2.0 recommendations, despite being steps forward, may get tarred with a negative brush simply by being included in the document.

I hope that the government can successfully navigate the communication jungle to implement them appropriately, and I expect we'll see whether this is the case over the next few weeks.

If it is not, this would become a lost opportunity for digital government in Australia, and we might not see further political leadership in the area for several years, despite the hard efforts of a number of public servants.

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Time to enter the Step Two Intranet Innovation Awards for 2014

Step Two has just launched the 2014 Intranet Innovation Awards, the premier global awards for intranet teams.

Drawing on the best intranet work from around the world, the Intranet Innovation Awards are an opportunity for organisations to showcase their best intranet work.

Winning teams can also leverage an award into more support within their own organisations.

For more information, and to enter, visit steptwo.com.au/iia/enter

Entry is open until 6 June 2014.

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