Yammer study from QLD government department

I've been fortunate enough to have a QLD government department share with me the results of a survey they held following a large scale Yammer trial.

They have also allowed me to share the (anonymised) results more widely (see below).

The survey responses paint an interesting picture as to why and how public servants would choose to use this type of social networking service within an agency. It reinforces for me that this type of service may fill a collaboration and knowledge sharing gap for agencies that some may not even realise they have.

Hopefully the survey results will help other agencies to decide on intranet social media tools in an evidence-based and informed manner, noting that there are already about 13,000 Australian public servants using Yammer - and an unknown number are using similar tools (such as Presently).

On with the survey results...

Use the tabs at the bottom of the embedded sheet (below) to move between questions, or go directly to the spreadsheet at: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ap1exl80wB8OdDV5TlFibHlGYTlldkFxdW5BUWc0RHc&hl=en



By the way, here's a couple of other case studies, one from Australian government, provided as comments to one of my earlier posts by James Dellow of Headshift (who makes the point that if government wishes to be social on the outside it needs to be social on the inside):

• National Library of Australia
• CPA Australia

And, from Social Media Today, Extensive List of over 40 e2.0 Micro-Blogging Case Studies and Resources from around the world.

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ABS launches CodePlay competition for tertiary students

The ABS has launched the CodePlay initiative as a Gov 2.0 approach to help drive collaboration between students, developers and national and international statistical agencies.

The competition challenges Australian tertiary students to help the ABS design the next generation of open-data tools to help people access, view and use statistical information.

While I'm not sure why the ABS believes that all the great ideas will come from university students - why not include everyone - this is a strong initiative and should produce a very interesting outcome.

To learn more, visit the CodePlay website or their twitter account at @ABSCodePlay.

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How workplaces can use social media

Commoncraft, one of my favourite instructional video developers, has created a new video on Social Media and the Workplace.

In about four minutes it provides an excellent summary of how social media can be used to address reputation issues, provide customer service and otherwise support organisations in a managed and safe manner.

Unfortunately the video isn't embeddable yet, so you'll have to click over to the Commoncraft website to view it.

View social media and the workplace.

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Which Commonwealth agencies use which social media tools?

Based on information I've collected over the last year, and using the data collected via the Vic Government, I have prepared a Google Spreadsheet designed to identify who in the Commonwealth Government is using which social media channels in their activities.

It is fairly basic at this stage;

• it is only Commonwealth for now (sorry to the state and local government guys - I will be building the same system for you soon);
• it doesn't look at how many of each channel your agency runs;
• it doesn't link to the channels;
• it doesn't link to agency websites;
• it may miss some smaller offices and agencies (I sourced the data from Australia.gov.au, so it should be fairly accurate, but it is hard to be sure, given the frequent changes and that not everyone might inform AGIMO of them).
• there are no contact details for the teams managing the channels.

The sheet also looks at engagement via third-party channels and at whether or not staff are allowed to access social media channels from within.

I need your help filling it out and expanding it into a useful tool for helping agencies identify which of their colleagues are actively using these channels on an official basis.

All contributions are anonymous - please circulate it to your peers. The more data we have, the more useful it becomes.

To give a taste of the spreadsheet - the stats are below.

Click on the link below, choose edit and then 'External social media' to add your data.

You can go to the full spreadsheet at: https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=0Ap1exl80wB8OdENTTHE1VkJmZURzaGRPUHV4ZW1teGc&output=html

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Should government policy be discussed in social media?

There's a fantastic series of articles being published over at FutureGov Asia-Pacific at the moment, introducing some very interesting perspectives on social media and government.

One asks, Should policy be debated in social media?, providing perspectives from senior leaders in different jurisdictions across the region.

There is a fair amount of diversity in the viewpoints, however the overall consensus appears to be that it should.

Several of those asked to comment pointed out that it is happening anyway - regardless of what governments may wish.

It is my view that we're past the point where government agencies and politicians have the luxury to choose where and how they form their policy. They can no longer fall back on government-controlled due process.

The crowd is now in command. Australians have many ways to make their views known, and are doing so on the matters of most concern to them.

Government agencies ignore active discussions at their own and at their ministers' peril. If they don't consider the views being expressed through social media channels - even when they are not being expressed through a government social media channel - there is the potential for them to damage their own credibility and reputation and even to call the APS and Government into disrepute.

The most recent example has been the Australian Government's approach to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Regardless of whether people support the actions of Wikileaks, there's been enormous public support for Australia to treat him 'fairly', providing appropriate consular support for him whilst under arrest in the UK.

For example, the Open letter: To Julia Gillard, re Julian Assange, hosted at ABC The Drum, has attracted over 4,600 comments (predominantly in support) alongside the more than 180 people directly signing the letter.

There have been large numbers of comments on other articles, blog posts, forum discussions, videos and tweets about the Wikileaks situation, with the same general viewpoint. The poll at the SMH (Should government agencies take more action to stop WikiLeaks operating?) is trending in the same way.

These comments have not been made directly to the Australian Government through channels and processes it had established for this purpose. There's certainly been no direct 'public consultation' on Wikileaks to help the Government consider its policy.

We've now seen public assurances from several senior Ministers that Julian Assange will, and is, receiving consular support, as would any other Australian in a difficult situation overseas.


This should be a wake-up call for all Australian public servants and politicians.

Ministers and agencies can still choose whether and how they hold a defined consultation around a given policy proposal. However Australians won't necessarily only make their views known when and through these processes, they will use social media - in spades.

Ignore them at your own risk.

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