British vote 'yes' to egovernment

A study of 4,000 UK adults has found that 42 percent had used the internet to access information about government or local council services, or completed a government form or process online in the last year.

This shot up to 55 percent amongst adults with home internet access.

The study, conducted by OfCom also indicated that,

More than 70 per cent of those we surveyed online (and 60 per cent of the general population) said the web had made it easier to engage in citizen participation activities, such as contacting an MP or signing a petition.

But despite an increase in web-based activities, many people still want to keep traditional methods of contact.

For example, 33 per cent of those we surveyed online would rather deal with someone face to face, such as when contacting their MP.

However in areas of 'multiple deprivation', where people are more likely to be experiencing poverty, low employment, high crime, poor health and less access to services,

More than 70 per cent in those areas were also unaware of online citizen participation opportunities, almost half did not sufficiently trust the internet for these activities and 40 per cent said they lacked confidence to participate in citizen activities online.

In other people, poor and less educated people (who presumably also have less access to the internet) are less likely to realise the benefits they can receive from egovernment, trust the internet or be confident online participants.

These findings suggest that alongside education and employment access improvements, improving access to internet services can improve participation in egovernment - which makes sense to me.

They also suggest, in my view, that the internet is a great supplement and mechanism for expanding participation, but doesn't replace the need for face-to-face and phone services.

Finally the findings also suggested to me that, at least in the UK, the digital divide may still be a very wide one indeed, hence their initiative to roll out 100Mb broadband as a basic service alongside electricity, sewage and water supply.

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Judging the personal risk to privacy when participating in social networking

A group of students from Penn State University have developed a methodology for assessing the personal risk to privacy when participating in online social media.

It's an interesting attempt to quantify objectively the risks for individuals and could be a useful starting point for government departments to help their staff understand the impacts of their choices.

You'll find the system, termed SNAPR (Social Networking Action & Privacy Risk Methodology) online here.

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US Business.gov launches small business community

The US business.gov website has launched an online community for small business owners, providing a place where they can discuss business-related issues across a range of topics.

While there is a slant towards topics related to business engagement with government - from registration processes through to how to successfully do business with government, the topics are far broader as US small businesses discuss the current business environment, their planning processes and procurement strategies.

I see this as a very valuable public good for a government to provide for small businesses. A government can provide a fair and effectively moderated environment, without commercial bias. This supports smaller businesses in expanding their network of contacts, building their knowledge and sharing experiences to reinforce the individual commitments of owners to success.

Besides the benefits in helping small business to grow, thereby employing more people and expanding the economic basis of a country, there are benefits to a government in having a close finger on the pulse of one of the largest contributors to national economic growth.

Rather than relying on business 'interest groups' and peak bodies, who may on occasion not fully represent the diverse interests of their members, a government can form a broader view of the outlook of businesses, gauging sentiment and identifying blockers to growth which could be addressed in legislation or policy.

It also provides access to a group able to critique proposed policies and initiatives, to help fine-tune them to deliver greater value - therefore greater return on investments from the public purse.

The benefits above to business (or communities) and to governments is not limited to this particular segment of the community.

Online communities form around interests - from child care to transport - and can be tapped into or facilitated by government to inform and support policy creation, service delivery, communications and consultations. Effectively they are 'aggregators' which can be used to both build discussion and to improve awareness of services.

They can also provide a 'blackberry' for politicians to keep touch with their constituents where otherwise they may become isolated from market concerns due to workload and minding.

Note that it is not easy to build a community from scratch and often government is best served in participating with existing communities rather than trying to create its own, however there are circumstances where government is best placed as the facilitator rather than simply as an involved party.

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Delivery of a website 'realignment'

Last year I posted about redesigning sites to put customers at the centre of the universe.

At the time we were reviewing my agency's primary site based on usability research and surveys. Through these our customers had indicated that the site was perceived as about us rather than about them (the tools and information they wanted to access quickly).

I'm pleased to say that, after working through a redesign process to align the site more closely with agency goals and styles and some tough decisions on specific content to feature, the new design is now live, largely reflecting the original wireframe concept.

I think we managed to meet the rules I set for my team,

• put customer needs first
  
• use less words
  
• minimise disruption
  
• lift the look
  

You can view the site at www.csa.gov.au.

Feedback is welcome.

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The power of raw government data

In the US President Obama's newly appointed (and first) Federal Government CIO Vivek Kundra has committed to finding new ways to make government data open and accessible.

The Computer World article, First federal CIO wants to 'democratize' U.S. government data, discusses how,

In a conference call with reporters, Kundra said he plans to create a Web site called Data.gov that would "democratize" the federal government's vast information resources, making them accessible in open formats and in feeds for developers.

He also said he hopes to use emerging technologies like cloud computing to cut the need for expensive contractors who often end up "on the payroll indefinitely."

These are not idle words from a political appointee - Kundra, who I have mentioned previously, is well-known amongst egovernment practitioners around the world for his innovative work in pushing the boundaries of egovernment as the District of Columbia's CTO.

Politicians often have reservations about releasing raw data, despite being collected using public funds, due to perceived concerns that the data might be used to politically damage their reputations.

Similarly government departments often restrict the release of raw data due to concerns over how it may be reused or misused.

In Australia we even go to the extent of copyrighting government data. In the US most data, publications and other tools created by their Federal government are copyright free.

However with the US's moves the debate will soon shift to the disadvantages of not allowing free access to most raw government data.

As history has recorded, countries that remove barriers to the free flow of ideas and information develop faster, are economically more successful and their people enjoy higher standards of living.

Fostering innovation directly leads to national success.

So in a world where some countries make data freely available, how do other nations continue to compete?

To draw an analogy from the publishing world, Wikipedia disrupted the business model for Encyclopedia Britannica. By providing free 'crowd-sourced' information of greater depth and about the same accuracy as a highly expensive product, Britannica has been struggling to survive for years.

After trialing a number of different protective business models to sustain its existence, but protect its data, Encyclopedia Britannica has finally adopted one that might work - it has opened its articles up to 'crowd-sourcing', accepting suggestions which are then reviewed and acted on by its professional editors - a step towards openness. Visit the Britannica blog to learn how to suggest changes to the encyclopedia.

In other words, you cannot beat openness with secrecy - the only way to remain successful is to step towards openness yourself.

This really isn't news. Many have talked about the need for greater openness of government data before. I've even mentioned it myself once or twice.

To finish, I thought I'd flag this recent talk given by Tim Berners-Lee (the father of the world wide web) at TED on the need for open data. It has some points worth reflecting on.

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eGovernment interoperability is a cultural, not a technical issue

This post from Oliver Bell's OSRIN blog, eGovernment Interoperability Frameworks, time for a rethink?, served to crystalise thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head for awhile.

Oliver contends that most of the technical standards for interoperability via the internet have been resolved, with commercial and citizen usage of the internet built on these standards over the last ten years or more.

He argues that the primary issues remaining are around the cultural willingness for different parts of government and different governments to work together and with the commercial sector to deliver interoperable services online.

While I am not an IT architect by training (in fact I come from a business stream), my formal education and twenty years of working experience have taught me a fair amount about how to connect systems together to achieve outcomes (not always IT systems).

In my experience there are no insurmountable engineering issues - you can always find a way to exchange data in a meaningful way using the right translators and formats.

However sometimes the engineering issues appear to be insurmountable because of entrenched interests and policies - human rather than technical issues.

These often arise, in both commercial and public sectors, out of procedure-driven cultures, political struggles, poor communication, lack of knowledge, pride or prejudice.

Solve these cultural and human issues, allocate some funds and the engineering issues around interoperability largely go away.

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The Google in Government Symposium - notes from the day

On Wednesday 18 March I attended the Google in Government Symposium, hosted by Hedloc.

I had planned to liveblog the day, as I liveblogged the recent Politics and Technology forum, however due to a lack of available wi-fi (the National Convention Centre still charges $40 for six hours access - which I was not personally willing to pay), I resorted to taking notes on PC, which I've provided below in an edited form.

I also twittered the event as a personal stream-of-consciousness record and thanks to the dozen or so people who asked questions of the presenters through me or discussed the event with me on Twitter.

The record of the Twitter conversation can be found here, or under the hashtag #cggov - note that the records are in reverse chronological order, so go to the last result to start at the start of the day.

The text below is an edited version of my personal notes from the day. It does not represent the views of any other individual or organisation. Any errors or omissions are mine.

Google in Government notes transcript

Google Enterprise Overview
Presenter: Paul Slakey - Director Americas and APAC, Google

• Google is the world's largest search engine – 63% market share
• It has 21,000 staff 50% technical/engineering
• Its 2008 revenue was $21B and profit was $5B (that's $1M revenue per staff member)
• Has more than 90 offices globally
• Products available in 117 interface languages across 157 international domains

Google Enterprise

• 40% of world's information is behind firewalls
• 10 of 15 US cabinet agency websites use Google search as their search tool
• Washington DC is rolling Google search out to 86 agencies

Google Search Appliance

• Plugs into most data storage

Google Maps/Earth

• APIs for showing your data on Google's maps on your website
• Premier level provides Enterprise support, features, no ads
  

Google Apps

• Messaging, collaboration, security, compliance
• Totally run from the web, no IT install hassles (just firewall access)
• No delay in spam/virus filtering, run from cloud
• 10 million active users, including some large enterprises
• Security and ownership of information is an interesting area
• Claims that Google is one of the most secure environments on the planet – what happens to access to data if a foreign power cuts international data links or legislates that they have the right to view all data?
  

Destination Innovation
Presenter: Alan Noble - Engineering Director, Australia & New Zealand, Google

• Internet has transformed in last ten years from static print world imitation to dynamic, complex, application-rich environment
• Openness meant we could innovate unimpeded
  

His view of the two major trends for innovation

• Open Source
• Open Data

Google is a big supporter of open standards, Open Social Alliance and Open Handset Alliance

Google is very interested in having governments make public data available online on same basis to all organisations and citizens - and has made submission in this vein in the current consultation process.

Some examples of openness

• Make public transportation much more accessible to masses via Google transit (as Adelaide and Perth have done)
• Victoria fires google map, indicating extent and severity of fires, using a real-time fire feed. This reduced load (and cost) for Government servers by shifting it to Google's map servers.

Two technologies changing the face of the web

• APIs (Google maps originally launched with no API and was reverse engineered by clever programmers – Google hired them)
• Gadgets/widgets – over 100,000 websites now syndicating gadgets, billions of pageviews per week – no one organisation could do this.

Four trends on the web

• Open social – about knowledge sharing via collaboration applications, not simply for social engagement
• Geospatial
• Openly available digital information – greater information sharing, environmental benefits, shipping bits not products
• The cloud – software as a service meets utility software – scalable and elastic – will finally make the computer invisible

Destination Search
Presenter: Richard Suhr - Head of Google Enterprise, ANZ & South East Asia, Google

Search challenges for Gov Agencies

• Search is the starting point to the world's information.
• Too much information, hard to organise
• Google has unique position – spent ten years figuring out how to make search work for consumers
• Why is it so much harder to find information in enterprises, than in private life?
  

New US president has made search front-and-centre

Singaporean government came to Google and said they wanted a better search system across all of their government departments. Google took one search appliance – runs all search for all of government. Operates 4 million pages, 300 different search experiences (in agencies)

Quick stats from Google

• When navigation fails, 50% of users turn to search
• 71% use keyword searches to find products and services
• 90% of consumers said they used site search to access self-service content
• 85% of site searches don't return what the user sought
• 80% of visitors abandon a site if search functionality is poor
• 22% of site searches return no results
  
  
• 29% of CEOs/CIOs said it is difficult to find information to make company-wide decisions, 40% of senior managers reported the same
• Knowledge workers spend more than 25% of their time searching for information to do their jobs – and when they find it it is often wrong
  
  
• As much as 10% of a company's salary costs are wasted on unproductive searches
  

Customer (and staff) view

• Speed - If it's not fast, I won't use it
• Relevance - If I don't find it first time, I will go elsewhere

Google's trends...

• Focus on 'answers' not 'results'
• Building connectors (native support for over 100 connections)
• Multimedia search done right
• Compliance and archiving search
• Federated search (hook search together across different systems)

Technical Overview and Case Studies
ATO website – people can now find information on the website, users gravitating to search as the first path for navigation, rather than menus – huge increase in search.

Presenter: Aaren Tebbutt - Account Manager, HEDLOC

• Can integrate search across platforms, delivering a search across websites, file servers and databases.
• Supports unlimited collections across subsets of content
• Can suggest best bets and search narrowing terms
• Secure results are not presented to unauthenticated users

DEEWR

• Wanted faster and more relevant result for their document management repository
• Integrated security – presented results that were 'search only' – could not see a snippet or have a link
• Can use metadata to refine search – and display metadata in results

Extras

• OneBox module – can get results from applications and database systems, sent back as XML and integrated into search results. Used to integrate contacts information into a single set of search results. Also works for maps and other content.
• Search as you type function – suggest results as people type

Destination Geospatial
Presenter: Mickey Kataria - Google maps Product Manager, Google

Mission: 'Organise the world's geographical information and make it universally accessible and useful'

• Google maps is no. 1 most trafficked mapping website (including in Australia, US, UK, NZ)
• Acquired Maps from an Australian product in 2004, integrated with 'Keyhole' for Google Earth – another company acquired by Google.
• Google Maps APO – embed a fully customisable, interactive (or static) map into any webpage
  

Features

• Street View
• Driving Directions
• Geocoding
• Static Maps
• Javascript or Flash versions of interactive maps

Maps API - Premier version

• Contract/SLA
• Support
• Opt-in options for ads
• HTTPS support
• Advanced geocoding
• Larger static maps
• Usable internally (within a firewall)

Maplets

• Share your data back into google maps, for example,
  Australian Electorate map for Federal election
  UK Metropolitan police crime map – http://maps.met.police.uk

Mobile

• Maps on phone, static maps API, Javascript maps API
• Map Kit – native API for iPhone

User-generated content

• MyMaps – create your own map (plotting points, sharing, collaboratively editing)
• MapMaker – create maps where they don't exist
• Editing listings – add a business, move a location

Google Earth
Presenter: Brian Atwood - Google Earth Enterprise Product Manager

• More robust and full-featured than maps
• Government a major GID user, Google earth provides a single interface to aggregate all this data
• Two components,
  1. All data goes into Google Earth Fusion Software – processes and blends it together
  2. Processed data goes to Google Earth Server which allows viewing of data in a 3D or 2D format
• Visual clearing house for data, viewable by those who are given access
• Fast, easy-to-use and low cost
• Works with and is complementary to existing GIS systems
  

Examples:

• DC GIS – crime and other data
• New York Dept of Transport – travel, accident and crisis info
• Department of Homeland Security Earth – iCAV – crisis info, hurricanes, floods, etc
• US Forest Service – GPS tracking of planes in real-time
  

Case study - Virtual Alabama

• Needed an 'affordable, scalable, maintainable' system to visualise state asset imagery and infrastructure data

• Initiative started by Governor in 2005
  
  
• Video – Virtual Alabama 'common operating picture for state of Alabama', full case study is on Youtube (will add link later)

Goals

• Common operating picture and situational awareness (everyone sees same data)
• Right people have right data at right time
• Increase efficiencies in data usage, reduce costs
• Very easy to use
• Able to handle terabytes of data quickly

Implementation

• Began project in June 2006, Initial release in August 2006, all 67 counties by Nov 2007
• 550 Agencies now using it
• 2,100 total users + growing

Case study - Energy Australia
Presenter: Lawrence Bolton, Manager Community Liaison and Infrastructure

In his area

• 4,500 substations
• 5,000 distribution centres
• 11,000 distributors
• Need load monitoring to prevent substations getting overloaded
• Huge infrastructure program over next 5 years $8B to replace aging equipment
  

Wanted a way to 'see' or 'visualise' data

Google Earth is being rolled out in pilot as the visualisation platform for their GIS data, using layers and rich information.


Case Study - Australian Federal Police
Presenter: James Harris - Team Leader Geospatial services, Information Services Australian Federal Police

• Over 50 GIS Apps
• Most in specialist hands
• Silos of data and solutions
• Little or no succession plan
• It was a 'cottage industry'
  

Audited systems:

• Found 30 GE Pro Installations
• 300+ GE installations - potential licensing issues, Google gave them an amnesty to fix
• Dec 08, over 1,000,000 hits on maps.google.com.au per month – increasing 400% or 800% per year
  

Selected Google Earth via a tender process, and are implementing an internal version so no-one external is aware of when the Federal Police have interest in a location. Initially using 8 terabytes of storage – with multiple globes.

Initial role out in April to testers, full rollout in June.

Looking to roll out maps, live feeds, custom build tools, link into corporate databases in future.


Case Study - NT Land Information Systems
Presenter: Phillip Rudd - Director NT Land Information Systems

Geospatial useful for key questions

• Where did it happen?
• What else is around there?
• Is there a pattern over time/space?

Uses Google Earth alongside other tools (complex system - but it works well).

Department was gathering lots of map data, but could not effectively do much with it.

Originally deployed solution in production in 2006.

Emergency Management – 239 registered users
Land Information – open to all users (potentially 9,500 desktops) actual 1,619 logins

'We all think in pictures, not in words'

Uses:

• Counter terrorism and Emergency management
• Spatial Searching
• Automated mapping

Destination Apps and Security
Presenter: Paul Slakey - Director Americas and APAC, Google

Why are users unhappy?

• better tools at home than at work

Stats on current IT management

• IT organisations spend 80% of their budget on Maintenance
• 68% of organisations experience 6+ data leaks every year
• 60% of the average agency's Intellectual Property is trapped in email
  

Forrester report Jan 2009 – should your email live in the cloud?

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What form should a government blog take?

There's an excellent and very active discussion over at Adriel Hampton's blog regarding, Templating a Government 2.0 Blog.

The discussion ranges beyond the pure technical and moderation challenges of establishing a blog (which are very easy to overcome) and into the mindset of government.

In fact my view of the discussion is that setting up and running a blog is easy - changing government's approach to support blogging is the tough part.

Fortunately there are now many excellent examples of well-established government blogs so it is clearly possible to change government mindsets.

As a side issue, per Phillip Sheldrake's post at Marcoms professionals, Continuous engagement... the death of market research, it is important to differentiate between a blog and market research, or as is very clearly stated in a post over at Online Consultation, Market research is not community engagement.

Blogs are designed to continually engage and live for a sustained period of time. Market research generally takes place periodically, occurring over shorter periods.

So you're establishing a 'blog' simply to ask questions for a limited period, you should clearly consider its goals and whether you're simply using a blog-like format for market research, or are actually created an ongoing dialogue with your audience - a blog.

The difference in goals may influence your approach in order to maximise the effectiveness of the medium, and avoid audience confusion when audience expectations may not be met.

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What does the future look like?

Microsoft have developed a Future Visions series to provide some insight into where technology is headed, and how it will help people.

If you are looking to anticipate the needs of your customers, rather than simply play catch-up, the series provides some very thought provoking ideas.

Here is the montage video, exploring different concepts in brief. Below I've placed links to the full videos on each topic.



And in case you think this technology is still a long way off, read this article from the Inquisitor, If You Want the Future, Look to the Hackers. It talks about companies placing working brainjacks into people's heads, and how to create a Minority Report-style interface using your Nintendo Wii.

The others videos in the Microsoft Future Vision series are:

• Retail
• Home
• Banking
• Healthcare

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Is your department tribalising?

The Tribalisation of Business is holding its second annual survey on social media use within organisations.

If you run communities or leverage social media as part of your business you can participate in the 2009 survey here.

Sponsored by Deloittes, Beeline labs and the Society for New Communications Research, the 2008 survey had some very interesting findings around the management and cost of online communities.

For example the 2008 survey had the following major takeaways,

#1: Communities are about Delivering Game-Changing Results

• Communities can increase revenue per customer dramatically, i.e., 50%
• Communities will increase product introduction success ratios
• Communities amplify everything you do- increasing effectiveness and decreasing costs

#2: The Rise of the CMO 2.0?

• Communities should be an important part of the CMO’s toolset (but for many large companies - there is an under-investment and scale problem)
• Companies should evolve the role of the CMO into Chief Community Officer (but that will require drastic changes in attitude and approach to marketing)
• If done properly, communities will transform the way marketing works (reduced costs, improved effectiveness, new opportunities)

#3: The Need for New Management Thinking

• Mismatch between community goals and associated investments
• Major gaps between Community Goals and what is being measured
• Communities have yet to combine with major talent initiatives
• Communities will transform most business processes

#3.5: The Worst Practices Enjoy Wide Adoption

• The “build it and they will come” fallacy
• The “let’s keep it small so it doesn’t move the needle” phenomenon
• The “not invented here” syndrome

Also the survey found that,

• Marketing, Research, Sales and/or PR departments ran the organisation's online community in 60% of cases. IT ran the community only 6% of the time and Customer Service only 2% of the time,
  
  
• most communities (71%) were managed by one or fewer full-time staff, with another 13% managed by 2-5 staff,
  
  
• the annual operating budget for 58% of communities was under US$50,000 and between US$50,000 and $200,000 for another 24% of communities,
  
  
• the majority of organisations (85%) learnt about online community through participating in online communities or reading blogs - attending conferences was used for learning by 53% of organisations and the media by 51% of organisations, Consultants and agencies were only used by 28% of organisations and Analysts by 26%,
  
  
• the biggest obstacle to success (51%) was getting people to engage, the second biggest was having enough time to manage the community at 44% and attracting people to the community was third at 35%.
  

More interesting graphs from the 2008 survey are listed here.


So my takeaways?

• Online communities are about community, not technology - don't give IT control,
• there's not a large investment to start,
• you should participate online to learn about online communities - don't rely on consultants and agencies to build your internal understanding,
• you have to work the community - don't rely on the community building itself,
• tap into existing communities where possible, it's faster, cheaper, easier and more effective than re-inventing the wheel.

But if you're reading my blog you've already figured these out already - correct?

It's the people who are not reading blogs who need the education!

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Less online hurdles = more egovernment customers

The complexity of screens and the registration and sign-in processes for some Australian egovernment (online) services disturbs me.

In the commercial world I lived by a simple rule of thumb, on average each hurdle I erected between a customer and their goal reduced the overall number of customers who reached their goal by 30%.

To visually demonstate,

Hurdles 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Customers 1,000,000 700,000 490,000 343,000 240,100 168,070 117,649 82,354 57,648 40,354 28,248

Percentage using 100% 70% 49% 34% 24% 17% 12% 8% 6% 4% 3%

This mean that if I started with one million customers and had ten hurdles, only 28,248 of them (3%) would be willing and able to jump all of them to use the service.

If I cut this to six hurdles, this would increase usage to 117,649 customers (12%) - or four times as many - a 400% increase in usage!

If I could cut it to only three hurdles, that would raise the number of customers able to use the service to 490,000 customers (49%) or another three times as many - 300% increase from the six hurdles figure or a massive 1,700% increase from ten hurdles.

In other words, removing hurdles can dramatically increase usage. While in reality it is never as linear as this, remove the right hurdles and the number of customers using an online service will soar.

When engaging customers online we already have built-in hurdles people have to meet to use and interact with our egovernment services:

• Access to a computer
• An internet connection
• Comfort with using the above
• Mandatory registration processes (even for simple transactions)

However there are often additional hurdles that organisations erect such as,

• No sales pitch for services - explaining by video/animation and audio how a service works and what benefits it provides customers
• Difficult-to-find services and registration/sign-on links
• Overly complex registration/sign-on processes
• Unnecessary information collection - to the extent of asking customers information they are unlikely to have access to
• Badly written service, security and privacy information
• Poorly constructed workflows with unnecessary or out-of-order steps and no clarity on where the customer is in the process (how many steps remain)
• Error messages in bureaucratic or tech-speak that dead-end the customer (no way forward)
  
• A lack of appropriate acknowledgement when steps or transactions are correctly completed
• Forcing customers to switch channels in the middle of a process without warning or when tasks could be completed entirely online
• A requirement for complex and non-intuitive password and usernames
• Difficult password and username retrieval processes (if a service is used less than weekly, most customers will forget their password at some point)
• A lack of tutorials, contextual help or step-ups to live online interactions with customer service officers (such as Avatar-based agent interactions, or actual staff interactions via text chat, voice chat or video chat)
• Services that require the use of plug-ins, older web browsers or are not friendly towards mobile devices

There are approaches to reduce or negate many of these hurdles already implemented in the commercial sector.

Most of these can be adopted by government without compromising security or privacy and all lead to greater usage and satisfaction with online services.

Some of these 'hurdle-repellents' include:

• Upfront video demonstrating what the service does (the benefit) and how it works (ease of use)
• Larger and more prominent registration/sign-on) buttons, with less clutter on pages to distract customers
• Use of plain english in all instructions and error messages, generally in informal language
• Extra large form fields (12pt or larger) for easier reading
• Simpler workflows with less steps and clear progression bars explaining the next step
• Customer-defined usernames and passwords (or use of email address as username), with visual aids to maximise security (such as password strength indicators)
• Secret questions (some user-defined) to provide a second line of support for customers who forget their passwords
• Clear and simple 'forgotten password' processes which do not require customers to switch channels (to call)
• Contextual help integrated into every screen
• Video or text and graphics tutorials for each workflow - clearly accessible within the workflow and before a user authenticates (double as sales tools)
• Live online help, potentially with co-browsing (where the customer service officer can see what the customer is seeing)

There are other commonly used approaches to reducing the hurdles for your customers when using egovernment services. Try out some commercial sites and you'll quickly gather more ideas.

So why reduce the hurdles for customers - potentially at a cost to the government?
The benefits for the government agency include faster outcomes, lower cost transactions and greater customer satisfaction. There's a side benefit of more timely and accurate reporting as online transactions can be easier to capture and report on than those over a counter or phone.

The benefits for customers include less stress when transacting (therefore more likelihood they will keep using the same approach) and faster outcomes.

The downside? Government will need to invest more in our online infrastructure to make it easier and faster for customers.

I reckon that trade-off is well worth it.

So what is your agency doing to remove online transaction hurdles for customers?

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Australia ranked lucky 13th in egovernment - down from 7th position in 2008

The Waseda university in Japan has released its 2009 Waseda University International e-Government Ranking, the fifth consecutive report on how 34 leading countries are progressing in their egovernment activities.

Australia managed to reach 13th position, down from 7th in 2008. In fact Australia experienced the second greatest year-on-year fall in ranking of any country (only Hong Kong did worse).

Australia ranked 6th in 2007, 8th in 2006 and 6th in 2005.

The top ten for 2009 included Singapore (who beat the US into the top position for the first time in the ranking's history), USA, Sweden, UK, Japan, Korea, Canada, Taiwan, Finland, Germany, Italy and Norway.

We did beat New Zealand, who came in at 19th place (down from 15th last year).

The ranking found that network preparedness was a requirement for success, with countries with more mature (and faster) networks being more effective at launching and maintaining egovernment initiatives.

It also found that usability was a key factor in the adoption of egovernment services and that more countries were treating this as a key priority.

Other factors included a shift towards a central online portal for nations and the support and scope of the whole-of-government CIO in terms of egovernment initiatives.

Web 2.0 adoption was also highlighted as a factor, particularly in the success of Asian countries - who now hold 4 of the top 10 positions in the ranking.

Australia scored in the top ten for two areas of egovernment, Interface Function and
Applications and e-Gov Promotion. We did not reach the top ten for the other three areas, Management Optimization, National Portal or CIO in Government.

A press release with details of the ranking is available at www.giti.waseda.ac.jp/GITS/news/download/e-Government_Ranking2009_en.pdf.

A press release for last year's ranking is available at www.obi.giti.waseda.ac.jp/e_gov/2008-02_World_e-Gov_Ranking.pdf

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Making government data available online for mashups - US moving to legislate

The US government has taken the first holistic step towards making federal data available online in bulk.

This would allow the public to reuse the data, mash it up with other sources and repackage it online in innovative ways - potentially uncovering relationships and new uses that were never conceived of by the government.

Reported in Threat Level in the article, An API for Federal Legislation? Congress Wants Your Opinion, the first step calls for a feasibility study to assess the cost of making data publicly available in bulk.

The step is being enshrined in the new Omnibus Appropriations Bill, which is already in the process of being passed.

In the words of the sponsor for the feasibility study,

“In our web 2.0 world, we can empower the public by providing them with raw data that they can remix and reuse in new and innovative ways," says Honda, who is vice chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on the Legislative Branch. "With these tools, the public can collaborate on projects that can help legislators to create better policies to address the pressing challenges facing our nation.”

The Australian government has a great deal of data which could similarly be freed up to work for the common good of the nation, but access to it varies by department and there are no common standards for how it should be made public.

Perhaps we also need a centralised legislative approach to move towards greater and more consistent access.

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Should rail timetables be restricted under government copyright?

NSW has been the scene of an interesting series of events over the last week regarding the right of iPhone developers to republish NSW Rail timetables in their applications.

Covered in the Sydney Morning Herald articles, CityRail puts brakes on iPhone timetable app and How RailCorp's derailing commuter 'apps', last week it emerged that NSW Rail had threatened four developers with legal action for repackaged NSW rail timetables into applications for iPhones, breaching copyright.

The reason for the legal action given to the SMH was,

"RailCorp's primary concern is that our customers receive accurate, up-to-date timetable information," a spokeswoman said in a statement.

Next the NSW Premier stepped in and as covered in the article, Rees orders RailCorp to talk to iPhone app makers, releasing the news publicly initially via his PremierofNSW Twitter account.

I've blogged previously about the need for government to make it easier to reuse publicly released government information.

Why copyright material that is made available online anyway? if the aim is to simply prevent out-of-context use or commercial reselling, there are options like Creative Commons available.

Indeed the ABS has taken steps in this direction, beginning to publish most website content under a Creative Commons license.

I envisage timetables as an appropriate type of information to be offered as a web service or RSS feed. This would allow NSW Rail full control over the accuracy of the information while allowing other websites and mobile applications to integrate it into their offerings. The public can then vote with their feet as to which version of the information they prefer, and how much they are willing to pay for it.

Much the same type of service is already offered by the Bureau of Meteorology - and the success of OzWeather on the iPhone is a testament to the successful integration of information possible when there's a web-savvy government agency and a developer who finds a way to add value to the raw data.

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Practical benefits of online media for government

Some of the practical benefits for government of online social media are beginning to emerge from various jurisdictions around the world. One that has particularly struck me as very positive is the use of online media by Washington DC to convince felons to voluntarily turn themselves in.

Written about in Using Social Media to Improve Public Safety - DC’s Fugitive Safe Surrender Prompts 530 Offenders with Warrants to Voluntarily Surrender in a Church (Doc) (and also available in the DC Public Safety Blog blog), the paper details how many fugitives wanted to turn themselves in, but had difficulty trusting police and the legal system to treat them fairly.

While the DC Safe Surrender program was in operation to allow fugitives to turn themselves in at a place of worship, thereby creating a more comfortable experience and a greater sense that they would get a fair go, there were fugitives who still were unsure of how they would be received and, frankly, thought it was simply a scam.

So Washington DC employed an integrated media strategy, using television and radio advertisements to drive fugitives and their friends and families (who often did the research for them) to the DC Safe Surrender website where the program could be clearly explained.

To add faces and personal experiences, the website featured videos of fugitives who had surrendered speaking about their decision and how they felt.

The website not only supported fugitives in making the hard decision to trust the legal authorities, but also convinced the media and other institutions to support the program.

By building the sense of trust and transparency the site has led to a large number of people surrendering and allowing their cases to be heard, reducing the workload on enforcement agencies and also the possibility of those on the run of re-offending simply to stay out of the clutches of a legal system they didn't trust.

That's the power of the online channel. To allow individuals to share their experiences in a one-to-one fashion, establishing a level of trust that is hard for an institution to match.

Once this trust is established it can be referred or inferred from the individual back to an institution, allowing institutions to build their level of trust with individuals.

This isn't a new approach for the commercial sector - it's known as word of mouth advertising. It has been shown many times that the trust built out of personal relationships is much more powerful than trust in 'traditional' advertising.

Could your agency improve its outcomes by improving the level of trust and respect your customers have in it?

If so, online may offer you approaches to build this trust in a more cost-effective and interpersonal way than the old 'print-radio-TV-outdoor' mix of advertising options.

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PDFs can be accessible!

I've previously applauded the efforts of the Human Rights Commissioner to draw attention to government websites who provide inaccessible content via WebWatch.

Even where an agency's overall site may be designed according to accessibility guidelines, when certain key information is presented only in PDF format, this information can be inaccessible.

However I've also been a little cautious of the 'PDF is bad' approach.

The PDF format can be made accessible. If you use Adobe's software to generate PDFs there are a set of tools for ensuring documents are accessible, including the ability to assess the accessibility, tag images with alternate text and set the reading order for content.

Correct formatting of the original document (such as the use of standard heading levels) also goes a long way to improving accessibility, as does some thought around colour contrasts and use of text rather than graphics of text. These approaches apply as much for PDF as they do for HTML content.

So I'm pleased to see that Stap Isi has posted about several presentations where people have been explaining to public servants how to create accessible PDF documents in the article, My name is b3rn and I make PDFs.

I don't think government is likely to abandon PDF any time soon, so ensuring that public servants are trained to generate accessible PDFs is crucial.

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Over 100 UK councils wild for Twitter

Over in the UK councils are being to adopt micro-blogging in a major way, with over 100 councils now using Twitter to make announcments and have two way conversations with their constituencies.

The UK council association has published an article, Councils turn to new media, which discusses the uses councils are making of the service - addressing complaints and informing citizens of issues.

A demonstration of this interaction is discussed in a post on The blog of the IDeA Strategy and Development Unit, Turn a frown upside down: councillors, Twitter and “customer” interaction.

In case you want to see who in UK councils are tweeting formally, visit Cllr Tweeps.

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Thoughts from the web

I've been too busy and tired this week to really commit to putting much content into eGovAU - which doesn't mean I'm not listening and thinking about what is happening in the wider egovernment world.

So instead of a regular post I thought I'd share some thoughts that have particularly stuck with me this week.

It's Time for Governance - The need to senior level whole-of-government guidance in the egovernment space.

The Second Revolution: Why the UK Government Beats the US Government on the Web - What the UK government is doing well, and the US isn't.

Beginners Guide to Government 2.0 -- Some Suggestions from a Practitioner - to maximise your egovernment efforts, hire people from the private sector who have used the internet for more than ten years and can both execute as well as strategise.

Twitter and Widgets and Blogs, Oh My - the tools US state governments are now using as part of their basic 'toolkit' for citizen communication, engagement and consultation.

Aussie councillors AWOL from Twitter - A discussion of how of the roughly 6,600 councillors in Australia, only around 12 are using Twitter, compared to the number in the UK, where government is a more mature internet user.

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Making laws align with egovernment

I've come across some interesting situations recently where technology is far in advance of legal frameworks, placing governments in a position where agencies may be breaking - or at least bending - laws by using certain online tools.

Twitter is a case in point. The technology was invented after the Spam Act was passed and it is not actually email, however it does permit the sending of advertising messages out to thousands or even millions of people. How is this covered? Personally I'm not sure, however I'd hazard a guess that legal opinions will probably vary.

Another example is the use of services such as YouTube, Facebook and other social media tools. All come with terms of use attached which may in some cases contravene government legal requirements.

This hasn't yet become a pressing issue in Australia and the use of YouTube in particular has become quite widespread across government, with at least 20 agencies using it to host and distribute video.

In the US there's also a great deal of use of YouTube by local state and federal agencies.

In this case federal agencies have been in a legally gray area. While they are only answerable to federal law, YouTube's terms of service specify that its users are liable to the applicable state libel laws.

Also of concern is that in the US anything the government publishes is in the public domain and freely available for reuse (unlike in Australia where agencies generally attach copyright to their work). YouTube's terms also specify that the user posting the video is responsible for the video - which is not the approach the US government takes.

As in most situations, where new technology meets old laws it's the laws and how they are interpreted that changes. In this case the US federal government is negotiating with YouTube to change the conditions to legitimise its use of the channel.

This has been discussed quite broadly in Nextgov, particularly in the article Feds and YouTube close to reaching a deal to post video.

I wonder how Australian government agencies will handle the inevitable conflicts between laws and society in the online world - particularly when dealing with services often created, owned and managed out of overseas jurisdictions.

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Hansard Society telling UK MPs to engage online

A report has been co-published by the Hansard society and Microsoft discussing how UK Members of Parliament are using the internet and providing strategies on how they can better use the internet to engage with their constituencies and with interest groups.

It's been highlighted already in the Victorian eGovernment Resource Centre, and discussed widely in UK government blogging circles.

Entitled MPs online: Connecting with Constituents, according to Kable, the report found that while 92% of MPs used email and 83% had a website, only 23% used social media and 11% blogged.

The report urged MPs to,

develop strategies for online media that include assessing the target audience, whether the site is interactive and what resources are needed. It also says they should develop a clear policy for the use of email, publicise it on their websites, and provide automatic responses to senders.

Among the other recommendations are that they
- create links from websites to social networking pages and vice versa;
- ensure people referencing material provide a link to the source;
- make better use of community created digital media, including websites;
- support third party projects that promote democratic engagement; and
- connect their online and offline communications strategies.

It also urges the parliamentary authorities to review the access to its digital archives and consider the licensing and re-use of the content.

All of these are good sense in my view and reflect the same approach that government needs to take in Australia.

The report also highlighted that the internet is still being considered a one-way broadcast medium by MPs rather than as a two-way channel,

Andy Williamson, director of the eDemocracy programme at the Hansard Society and author of the report, commented: "MPs are transmitting and not receiving. They use the internet as a tool for campaigning and for organising their supporters, rather than opening up two-way communication with constituents."

Essentially this report reflects the comments made by Joe Trippi at yesterday's Politics and Technology forum.

As both US and UK commentators are saying the same things about what government and MPs need to be doing online, perhaps we'll see more local movement towards embracing the online channel across government.

A PDF copy of the report is available at the Hansard Society's website.

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Politics and Technology forum liveblog

This is my first go at liveblogging so bear with me.

A more professional liveblog of this event is on over at Stilgherrian's blog.



Here's a picture of the panel

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Government and the social life of brands - how to benefit from interacting with customers through social media

Everyone knows what brands are, 'products' that have been strongly linked to a specific (brand) name, lifestyle, belief or emotional attachment in order to establish their relative value to consumers.

As defined by David Ogilvy, a brand is:

The intangible sum of a product's attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it's advertised.

Brands can be established around tangible and intangible goods and services, organisations or people - think Aston Martin, Coca-cola, David Beckham and Kevin Rudd.

Kevin Rudd? Yes I believe that government also has brands. Organisations such as Centrelink, ATO and Medicare, products such as e-Tax and people such as the Prime Minister all exhibit the traits of brands and can be marketed and promoted in that manner.

This makes it relevant to consider the latest report on the social life of brands from Ogilvy International, Can brands have a social life? How brands in Asia can benefit from interacting with customers through social media (PDF).

This report, discussed through their Open Room blog, looks at how social media is being used across Asia to accelerate and reshape the dialogue between citizens and between citizens and brands (including government).

In each of the twelve countries featured (China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam) the experience is slightly different in flavour, however the overall them and trend is the same.

This theme reflects the same experience in western countries such as the US, UK and Australia.

To pull out a few important themes considered in the report,

• Consumer opinion counts more than ever
• Social media is a pivotal part of the consumer's digital ecosystem
• The Y-Generation live their lives in social media and if you’re not talking to them,
• someone else will
• Social media is all about managing 'influencers', creating a dialogue with the most important influencers and having them spread the word for you
• Letting go of the brand is a reality of social media and it’s critical that the brand’s senior management fully understand the implications, and are willing to take the risk as well as commit resource
• Social media success has to be embedded in honesty and trust by playing to the brand’s core values and ideals. No falsifications
• Brands that disclose conflicts of interest, are responsive to questions, and permit negative as well as positive discussion are most likely to get accepted.
• Brands need to be willing to contribute to be accepted in social media. Even to go as far as contributing unconditionally.

It is interesting to watch organisations struggle to accept and adopt some of the mindset shifts embodied in the themes above as they take their first steps into online participation.

Truth, honesty, openness and collaboration are all values that are highly regarded but are often difficult for organisations to embody.

I think the real dilemma many organisations, particularly in the public sector, need to first address is how to reshape their own culture and values to allow them to fruitfully engage online.

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NSW government launches Anzac Day blog

The NSW Board of Studies has launched the 2009 Premier's ANZAC Memorial Scholarship students blog.

The blog features personal accounts by senior high school students selected to go to Gallipoli to participate in ANZAC Day commemoration activities.

The blog is a very personal way of connecting students with Australia's past, supporting the scholarship goal of ensuring that the Gallipoli story remains a living part of Australian history.

Although the trip is not for a couple of months, the blog is already worth reading to understand how young people are using the online medium to connect with their peers and help define their own feelings and experiences.

More information on the initiative is available at AnzacDay.gov.au.

Speaking with the people who created the blog, it was set-up in around 5 minutes using the free Wordpress service - demonstrating that the challenges governments face around blogging are more tightly linked to policy and resourcing than to technology costs and timeframes.

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Government-related initiative tops Fast Company's "The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies" list for 2009

It's uncommon (at least in Australia) to see a government-related initiative promoted as a leader in innovation.

It's even rarer to see publications such as Fast Company, with its focus on the most innovative companies in the world, feature government-related initiatives.

However this year Fast Company's profile of "The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies" is topped by a government-related initiative. One which,

took a skinny kid with a funny name and turned him into the most powerful new national brand in a generation.

This reflects my view that the government could be one of the largest beneficiaries of the online channel. The internet allows government to have real conversations with citizens on an unprecended scale - participatory democracy in a way that has not been possible since communities grew too large to fit within a single town hall meeting.

To quote Fast Company,

Barack Obama's presidential-campaign team relied on technology -- what was known internally as the "triple O," or Obama's online operation -- to connect with voters better, faster, and more cheaply than ever before. The team has become the envy of marketers both in and out of politics for proving, among other things, just how effective digital initiatives can be.

More information can be gleaned from Stilgherrian's live blog of the Media 09 event, which featured Ben Self (a founder of the company BlueStateDigital who provided Obama's online community infrastructure) providing insights into how it was done.

Digital initiatives tick many boxes for government - in my view even more boxes than they tick for commercial organisations.

There are the cost, speed and reach benefits - the ability to contact, engage and solicit views from more people than ever before in a matter of hours or days at very low cost.

There is also the benefit of being able to speak with your own voice, making statements and holding conversations outside the moderation, influence and slant of media gatekeepers.

These benefits reach across all organisations, politicians and other individuals using the internet.

For government there are additional benefits in understanding the ongoing mood of a community and proactively creating and amending legislation and policy to better meet current citizen needs.

It is also possible to receive feedback on existing initiatives and develop collaborative policy and programs to help the finetuning process often necessary after legislation is introduced.

Finally, the internet allows government to mobilise a population behind a given cause or initiative, such as has occurred around the Victorian bushfires. For this crisis, for the first time ever, I've seen people 'retweeting' (forwarding) messages sent out via the KevinRuddPM Twitter account.

Of course there are hurdles that need to be considered - the need to be transparent (to a point), and the need to engage in a human-centric manner, rather than as a media statement robot.

These last two factors can be stumbling blocks for government. Transparency involves willingly admitting mistakes and committing to doing better. Speaking with a human voice requires a willingness to allow government representatives to do more than copy and paste the words of existing media releases - to inject their own style into communications.

These are both possible and in many cases already supported in other channels, such as radio talkback and live television. However often the internet is treated more as a long lead time press channel than as a real-time multimedia one.

For Australia to remain a leading nation in the world, I believe our governments need to overcome these hurdles, demonstrating innovative approaches to engagement and governance as we're now seeing in nations from the US to Estonia.

Time and citizen feedback will tell if we manage to do so in a meaningful way.

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How can we do better? Mobile web is just like desktop web from 1998 - Nielsen

Jakob Nielsen, often considered one of the world's leading thinkers on usability, has discussed the mobile web in his latest Alertbox monthly update, equalling the state of mobile websites today as similar to the state of the desktop internet in 1998.

I tend to agree that for many organisations this is the case, with Nielsen's comments all hitting close to the mark - abysmal success rates in users achieving their goals, pages requiring too long to download and featuring too much bloat, code crashes and excessive scrolling.

I've blogged previously about the need for government to begin more seriously considering and positioning for the importance of mobile sites. The growth of larger screen (and touchscreen) smartphones has finally turned mobile devices into an acceptable platform for web browsing.

A major point Nielsen raised was that many mobile sites are still being designed like desktop sites, just as in 1998 when websites were being designed like print brochures (ala brochureware).

This is a trend I've discussed previously - each new medium is first defined in terms of the paradigm of the last.

For instance, when television was introduced, programs were first structured like radio shows, and further back when movies were introduced they were structured like stage shows. The initial radio programs often consisted of an announcer reading the local newspaper on air.

It takes some time for society to begin to understand the true value of a medium and look on it as a new and distinct form, rather than as an extension of an older form.

This causes me to reflect on what the mobile medium will eventually become. Defining it in terms of a 'mobile internet' may be too limiting, too caught in the desktop internet paradigm.

Mobile devices have their own characteristics, strengths and weaknesses. For a government organisation - or any organisation to use these to best advantage, they must look at the specifics of the platform, not simply port their website to mobile (as they ported their publications to online).

Some of the obvious strengths of mobile include;
geo-location - it knows where you are
interaction time - people interact with mobile devices 24/7, whereas desktops require a conscious action
voice integration - voice communications can be embedded easily into the platform
photo and video capture - people can take photos and video anywhere, all the time

Some of the obvious disadvantages include;
Small screen size - makes displaying complex information more difficult
Short interactions - people make many more interactions with mobile devices, but most are only a few minutes in duration. Try concentrating on a mobile screen for an hour
reception quality - can vary enormously, making some online-only applications less usable
small keyboards - makes sustained typing more difficult
Many different platforms - there's less uniformity of screen size and internet capability (including cost of access) than on desktops, where there are a few dominant players

When developing a mobile site taking these factors into consideration will help your organisation develop more than a simple mobile port of your website, but a custom experience that helps people complete the different types of tasks they wish to complete on a mobile device.

So when you get your senior management across the line on having a mobile version of your website, ensure you also take them on the journey to understand that a simple reformat of existing content, navigation and functionality probably will not deliver the best result for your customers and stakeholders.

There's an opportunity to step beyond the desktop paradigm and deliver a mobile experience with real value. I challenge you to take it!

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Moving government community engagement into the digital age

Crispin Butteriss from BangTheTable has released his presentation from the recent International Association for Public Participation Australasia (IAP2) event in South Australa.

It's well worth a review.

IAP2 South Australia - Bang the Table Presentation

View more presentations from BangtheTable. (tags: bangthetable online)

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ATO launches credit card payment trial

The ATO has begun a two month trial of allowing the use of credit cards to make payments of all tax liabilities (up to $10,000 in value) via the government easypay site.

Details of the trial are on the ATO website.

When looking at egovernment, supporting credit cards payments is one of the few ways in which the government can directly support online payments within its own websites. BPAY and other similar online financial transactions are generally facilitated through a bank's website as a direct transfer from a citizen's account.

I'm encouraged that this trial has begun as it supports the case for other agencies to use the same approach for payments of fees and dues to governments - other than purchases of goods and services.

Over in New Zealand it is already possible to pay child support via credit card.

Increasingly credit cards are seen as being a viable payment alternative for government with less of the social stigma initially attached to supporting a high interest cost financial tool. The introduction of debit credit cards has helped this along and I'd expect to see the growth in their use continue.

The use of credit cards has been on the radar for a long time. Searching the Tax Office website, the Ledlin report, conducted in 2003, recommended the consideration of credit card payments,

‘We recommend consideration be given to a survey of Taxpayers on possible use of Credit Cards to pay tax. It is our belief that Credit Card payment would be embraced by many Taxpayers – it also has the added advantage of the ATO being paid in a prompt manner and the taxpayer then having the option of paying a financial institution over a period of time (which is the function of a financial institution and not the ATO).’

ATO response: agreed in principle.

I reckon the ATO has picked a good time to begin its trial.

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US government uses online social media to manage salmonella outbreak

Online social media is becoming an important tool for governments to engage citizens during emergencies to rapidly disseminate information.

in fact it is even beginning to be credited with saving lives during health crises.

According to Nextgov,

Federal health agencies relied heavily on social media to inform the public about the recent outbreak of salmonella tainted peanut butter, possibly reducing the number of death and injuries caused by the illness, according to federal health officials.

Officials with Health and Human Services Department and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said social media helped them spread the word that peanut butter recall. The agencies used widgets, blogs, Twitter, podcasts, mobile alerts and online videos to warn the public that peanut butter manufactured by Peanut Corp. of America for institutional use and for additives in other products such as snacks may be tainted with salmonella. Eight people died and 500 were sickened by the infected peanut butter.

"The response has been really amazing," said Janice Nall, director of the division of eHealth marketing at CDC, on the public's reaction to her agency's social media campaign. "We look at social media as additional channels to reach people where they are."

The article, Agencies used social media to manage salmonella outbreak, goes on to say that agencies were surprised with the response, with the widget, designed for use in websites, blogs, Facebooks and MySpace, was accessed 1.4 million times in nine days.

We've begun to see similar use of tools such as Twitter and widgets in Australia at state government level, and hopefully the success of these tools will see greater use across all Australian governments.

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Wellington city government begins online consultation for long-term plan

Wellington city in New Zealand is preparing for its next ten year plan (2009-2019) and has launched a website, Wellington long-term plan, to facilitate citizen involvement in the planning process.

The site features an ideas market-based discussion area allowing citizens to suggest ideas, then vote on different suggestions to provide their vision and priorities for the city's future, as well as a budget simulator where you can try your hand at balancing the trade-offs a city government needs to make when allocating funds.

There's also various documents and other information provided to inform citizens on different planning topics and a great introduction by the Mayor (below).

A side benefit, through the budget tool, is to better educate citizens in the hard choices necessary in government. After you've attempted to balance the budget and read about the consequences of the choices, it provides citizens with a clearer view of why the government makes certain decisions. This can help when selling a revised budget to citizens (they even make the budget comments by citizens available online).

Now if you consider that the main tools used to deliver this site are available online freely or at a very low cost (ideas market, budget simulator, youtube and poll tool), even factoring in overall website integration, moderation and the need to guide people to the site via other media and promotional channels, this is an extremely cost-effective form of consultation for government at any level.

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Integrating online media into a persistent channel

There's been a lot of 'bitsa' initiatives in Australia around the online channel as both the private and public sector come to terms with the new online options to support communication, collaboration, consultation and engagement.

However it's been rare to see effective integrated use of online channels in a co-ordinated fashion to support ongoing initiatives.

I'm not quite sure why this is so - perhaps the newness of the channels and relative inexperience of local online practitioners, the process of piloting new approaches in organisations (one step at a time) or the need to overcome resistance and achieve buy-in across various groups and management levels.

I think this change in thinking is just beginning to take root. Rather than simply posting a video, creating a short-term blog or taking steps into online conversations through forums, I am seeing more initiatives making use of a diverse set of online tools in a more consistently integrated fashion.

I have been doing a lot of thinking around how to implement an integrated department or agency level online channel, integrating various tools from blogs, forums, wikis, video and podcasts through to idea markets, social networks, virtual worlds and micro-blogs (plus new media as they become available and grow in usage - such as mobile platforms).

The aim is to create an ongoing conversational channel with citizens and stakeholders rather than a short-term promotional 'flash-in-the-pan'. This would become an established engagement channel for an agency, facilitating long-lasting customer relationships.

This channel would sit alongside and support existing channels such as face-to-face, other media avenues and various stakeholder and citizen groups to enable an agency or department to research, test, review and deliver initiatives and campaigns while receiving constant intelligence from the public to help it understand and maintain appropriate alignment with community values and needs.

This is the 'end-game', so to speak, that I've been interested in achieving since joining the public sector - making government agencies more accessible and responsive to the community they serve while ensuring appropriate transparency and accountability is maintained.

I'm interested in chatting with anyone who has been thinking in a similar vein, or has implemented such a system. Please drop me a line.

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Vic government releases Facebook/Myspace widget for bushfire support

Capitalising on the huge Australian audience on Facebook (over 4 million people) and MySpace, the Victorian government has bolstered its online response to the Victorian bushfires by developing a widget that provides news and updates while encouraging donations.

The widget is available from the Premier's website and is also in Vic Premier's own Facebook profile. It is down the page in the left-hand column.

For those of you who use social media, you can install the Facebook application from http://bit.ly/4mGlr4 and the MySpace application from http://tinyurl.com/c4s6v3.

The widget was developed using SproutBuilder, a (currently free) tool for creating widgets.

Just in case you were wondering how long it takes or how hard it is to build these widgets, Dave Fletcher has posted in his Government and Technology Weblog, v. 2.0 that he built a widget as a practice for an eGovernment Product Management Council meeting. Using SproutBuilder for the first time, it took him about 15-20 minutes. These widgets can be embedded on any website or leading social media site, such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, Blogger and Typepad.

The Vic government is also using YouTube, Twitter and blog-like comments pages via the Vic Premier's site to help engage and communicate with people in relation to the bushfires.

I hope that other governments across Australia will learn from these examples and do more themselves to better engage people via their most preferred channel for interacting with government.

After all, in these cost-conscious times, it's also the most cost-effective channel for getting direct messages to the public.

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Journalists leaping onto Twitter - should government?

The micro-blogging platform Twitter was the breakthrough social media tool for journalists in 2008. It became a pipeline for breaking news for both professional reporters and citizen journalists, with the massacre in Mumbai, the Hudson River plane crash and Obama's inauguration highlighting its effectiveness as a source of live, user-generated online content.

The statement above, from a recent article published in MediaShift, How Journalism Students Used Twitter to Report on Australian Elections, highlights how rapidly Twitter has become a relevant and important tool for media and citizens to tell stories and share news.

The story provides a good case study on how Twitter can be used by journalists (albeit from an educational standpoint) and leaves me with one main question.

If Twitter is increasingly important as a tool for news dissemination and citizen engagement, should government be making a solid commitment to the platform?

We do have government 'twitterers' in Australia already. On the political level Malcolm Turnbull, Kevin Rudd's office and the Greens are all twittering.

At a Department/Agency level, the Training.gov.au project twitters, as does Mosman council and QLD government's SharemyStory.

It has also been used to share information during the Victorian bushfires by CFA - which I avidly followed during a trip back from Sydney where Twitter on my phone was my only media option.

However these initial toes dipped into Twitter pale alongside the uses the US and UK are now putting Twitter to in government circles.

So how should government determine if it should make greater use of Twitter (and in what ways?

I'm a fan of the hands-on approach. I recommend that you set yourself up with a Twitter account, find a few interesting people from one of the many top twitterers lists out there, then listen to them using the service.

Don't simply use it once then leave, that's like turning on a TV for five minutes, only catching ads and walking away with the impression that all television is advertising. Instead use it for several weeks, or even several months, particularly during a major news event. You will gain an appreciation for the benefits and downsides of Twitter - without having to necessarily start 'twittering' yourself.

What will it cost you? A bit of time and in return you'll be able to properly assess the value of the system and become the strategic expert on the topic for your agency.

Surely that's worth the investment of a few hours.

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How well do Australian government sites meet WCAG 2.0? - still some way to go states new report

While I've not yet seen an official statement confirming whether Australian government will support the second version of the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0), there has been a report released by UsabilityOne reviewing 12 Federal Government websites against the guidelines.

The Accessibility Industry Report found a number of issues across the sites that would need to be addressed for them to be WCAG 2.0 compatible.

To quote UsabilityOne,

None of the websites audited adhere to all criteria in the latest accessibility guidelines.

Have you looked into making your site compliance with WCAG 2.0?

Or are you waiting for the official government position?

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UK government's HM Revenue & Customs service now collecting opinions online alongside tax

The UK government's HM Revenue & Customs service (roughly equivalent to the ATO) has launched an online consultation site seeking public input into its proposed charter.

Named Have your say the site asks citizens to answer questions around the proposed charter and provide their views of what it contains and should contain.

It's a fairly basic consultation process that could be supported through many survey tools, however it is equally very powerful in inviting citizens to directly comment on policy before it becomes enshrined in law.

Over in the US the new President has also instituted a mandatory public review stage for most legislation, making it available online for public scrutiny and comment before it is considered by the Senate.

These steps represent the scope of the shift the internet can provide democracies, taking representative democracy back to the people via direct policy consultation.

Naturally not all citizens choose to comment, however the process can add an additional level of realism to government legislation, ensuring a higher consultation bar than has been possible using paper-based communications tools.

I'm looking forward to posting about the first Australian initiative of this type - so if anyone know of one, please drop me a line.

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BarCamp Canberra coming up - 28 March

The second BarCamp Canberra has been confirmed for 28 March, to be held at the ANU.

In case you're not familiar with the concept (quoting from the official site),

A BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants. Here is a quote from the wikipedia description:
'BarCamp is an international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols.'

BarCamps are a global phenomenon, regularly held in at least a dozen countries, from the US to India to New Zealand.

The UK has previously held a very successful Government-only BarCamp and, due to the nature of Canberra, many attendees of the previous Canberra BarCamp last year worked within or in areas related to government.

BarCamps are not-for-profit and cost nothing to attend.

More information is available at the official BarCamp Canberra site or at the Facebook group.

Podcasts of previous presentations are available online at http://barcampcanberra.org/blog/podcasts/

Note that I am personally on the committee coordinating the event and will be presenting on the day.

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What would you do? Balancing intranet needs across corporate and local objectives

James Robertson of Step Two Designs has published an interesting scenario regarding how a mid-sized government agency can meet global needs (corporate communications, top-level strategy, culture), while also meeting varying local needs.

He's opened the floor for ideas on how to most effectively support the needs of both management and staff.

Judging by the comments so far, this isn't a unique challenge. A number of Departments and agencies are wrestling with similar scenarios and the tensions between top-down and bottom-up needs.

Take a look over at Tackling the global-local challenge?



Type rest of the post here

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Government 2.0: The Rise of the Goverati

The US has had a watershed year for government and political use of the internet.

The Obama campaign has triggered a series of initiatives both at public sector and political levels by demonstrating that millions of people are willing and able to engage and mobilise online.

Now the US is beginning to talk about the rise of the new breed of public servants and political players. Those that are web and social media savvy and looking to use the online channel for the benefit of citizens.

This is covered in a new post in ReadWriteWeb, Government 2.0: The Rise of the Goverati.

I'm keeping a close eye on this trend.

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