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There are a variety of ways to simply and cost-effectively offer customer support online and, given that it's not yet common in the Australian public sector, I thought I'd quickly outline my own thinking on the case for and against offering this type of service.
In this post I'll focus on text chat - the simplest mechanism for live customer engagement online.
There are also more complex approaches, including asynchronous voice chat, synchronous voice chat, video-conferencing, co-browsing and virtual presence. I believe that an organisation needs to come to terms with basic text chat before exploring these options.
What is text chat?
Text chat refers to the ability to send and receive text between individuals via the internet. In context of customer support, this approach commonly involves accessing a chat window within or as a pop-up out of an organisation's website.
Within the window the participants can type in their questions, comments and responses, review them and then send them to the other person in real-time.
This is different to email in that the exchange is real-time and is fully visible to both parties at all times.
Who uses text chat?
USA.gov, the main US government portal, uses a Java custom-built web text chat tool with set opening hours and a decent privacy policy regarding use.
The Utah and Virginia state governments makes good use of text-based chat, via a third-party service named Livehelper. This is a footprint free, low cost approach well suited to initial steps into the channel. Also using the tool is the US National Cancer Institute.
In Australia, there are few governments agencies using text chat at this time for customer or public engagement, with the National Library being a standout - supporting cobrowsing via a third party service, Questionpoint produced by the US Library of Congress and the Online Computer Library Center.
Others include the National Cervical Cancer Screening Program and the State Library of Victoria.
The Queensland government used to provide an online chat service for community consultation via Generate, using IRC (Internet Relay Chat), however discontinued this in 2004. A good presentation on the service, Ministers Online (PDF), is available from AGIMO.
Several government bodies, such as NSW Health, use it within elearning sessions and some, such as the NT Department of Employment, Education and Training, make it available for supporting remotely located students and teachers, however do not make it publicly available.
Benefits of text chat
There are a number of benefits in the use of text chat, both for customers and an organisation.
For organisations,
For customers,
Disadvantages and risks
Reasons to not introduce text chat
In brief
Text chatting can be a more efficient use of customer service operative time while simultaneously supporting more flexible information sharing than phone-based communication.
It does not replace phone use, instead supplements it by providing an alternative customers can choose to use to engage an agency. It can be managed through existing call centres and generally through phone and written correspondence policy and be easily run as a pilot before a more complete implementation.
Due to chat logging, both the organisation and the customer can have an accurate record of the contact. This can be stored with the official customer record for later reference in a way that is difficult to achieve with phone based communication.
The primary risks are around security and staff written communications ability - both of which can be managed.
Security can be addressed through appropriate communication of the risks to customers, allowing them to choose whether they wish to engage in this manner, similar to the warnings at the start of phone conversations "This call may be recorded". As chat doesn't replace other engagement channels, customers are not disadvantaged if they do not wish to use it.
Staff's ability to manage the channel can be addressed through training, selecting staff already competent at written customer communications and by placing appropriate guidelines in place (as commonly exist for phone or written correspondence).
Thursday, October 09, 2008
The case for offering live customer support online | Tweet |
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Do your customers expect you to be online? | Tweet |
The 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study in the US, has found that 93 percent of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media, while 85 percent believe a company should not only be present but also interact with its customers via social media.
With 60 percent of Americans now reportedly using online social networks, this means that more than 50 percent of the US population believes that the organisations they engage with require a social media presence.
Extrapolating this to Australia, which generally runs a few years behind the US, there's strong reasons to look seriously at engaging via social media channels.
It is estimated that almost half of all Australians use online social media (Neilsen). As such I'd expect that at least a third of Australians would similarly want to find Australian organisations represented at social media sites and around a quarter expect to engage them online.
As Australian Anthill's Brad Howarth suggests in the article, Not just for kids - social networks just grew up, If social networking isn’t part of your marketing strategy, the only person’s time you’re wasting is your own.
Here's a couple of other interesting findings from Cone's report on how organisations are expected by their customers to engage,
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
50 ideas on using Twitter for organisations | Tweet |
Following from my post this morning on Telstra's use of Twitter, Chris Brogan wrote an excellent piece last month on how organisations can use Twitter to better engage their customers titled, 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business.
For me (as it was for Chris) the number one reason or idea for using this type of tool is for listening to your constituency. Hearing what real people are saying about your organisation, services and topic area provides an ongoing temperature of public opinion.
Another key reason in my view is for building an organisation's online reputation.
Most communicators understand that their organisation's public reputation shapes how people engage with them, thereby influencing their capacity to send messages out to their customers as well as their capacity to provide effective customer service.
However in my view few Australian organisations (particularly in the public sector) have as yet grasped how important it is to establish a sound online reputation. Assuming that their past reputation will carry over only goes so far, and it can rapidly be damaged through inept online engagement (or no online engagement at all!)
Laurel Papworth explains this well in her article, Twitter: Reputation Management in Social Networks.
She uses the diagram (illustrated below) to explain the stages in development from creating an online profile (not simply a 'corporate' website!!) to building reputation and trust-based relationships.
Incidentally, the power of Twitter to allow customers to self-organise rapidly is demonstrated in one of the most recent posts in Laurel's blog, Twitter Agency - crowd sourced consultancy.
Telstra does Twitter | Tweet |
Telstra recently took up 'tweeting' as a channel for providing customer service.
Discussed via their Nowwearetalking site, there's been a lot of initial feedback on the approach taken.
Telstra has also linked to some of the broader online commentary in their post.
This step helps legitimise Twitter and microblogging as a customer service option for Australian organisations.
It also provides insights for other organisations so they can learn from both Telstra's missteps and successes.
I'm watching carefully to see how Telstra's foray into microblogging goes. The channel has been used successfully in the US.
When executed well I believe it has customer service and marketing/PR benefits in some, but not all, service delivery areas.
Look for me at the Sydney conference, Advancing Intranet Management in the Public Sector | Tweet |
I am co-presenting the first presentation on Wednesday at the Ark Group's Advancing Intranet Management in the Public Sector conference in Sydney.
My colleague and I will be discussing how our agency's intranet was used to support staff through the recent major reform of the Australian Child Support Scheme and the cultural shifts through the Building a Better CSA program.
If you're attending the conference, please come and say hello at some point.
Monday, October 06, 2008
Storytelling as a blogging style | Tweet |
There are many different approaches to writing a blog post.
The Lost Art of Blogging provides an example of one of the more effective in The Homeric way of blogging : storytelling.
Humans respond strongly to stories and there is no reason why this technique should be less useful in official communications than in personal ones.
After all, the most effective business cases tell a story, as do many excellent advertisements.
Selecting a blogging style | Tweet |
This is a useful presentation on different styles of blogging and how frequently they should be used.
I am unsure how the author determined the appropriate frequency of different types of blog posts, however it does provide some ideas of approaches to content.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Australian history on show - on Flickr | Tweet |
Thank goodness that another Australian institute has taken the step to start placing a pictorial history of Australia up in Flickr.
As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald in the article, Australian history gets Flickr treatment, the State Library of NSW has begun loading its photo collection into the online image library.
It can require a great deal of hard work and organisation to get archives into a viable state to place online (as the Powerhouse museum has already done so well).
The benefit is that a priceless visual history of Australia becomes visible to all Australians, rather than requiring people to travel to the photos to see them (such an antiquated notion!).
Eventually it may be possible to aggregate all the individual collections into a national view of Australia's past in a way never before achievable. Then through user-based tagging, comments and search, different pathways through the images can be used to tell different stories, bringing the past back to live via the people who lived through it.
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Stop focusing on the fold | Tweet |
Research since 1997 has indicated that the 'fold' in webpages (the bottom of the first visible screen of a webpage) is no longer a hard barrier for people.
However the myth of the fold still persists in many web designs.
Boxes and arrows has hosted an excellent article by Milissa Tarquini, Blasting the Myth of the Fold.
In the article Milissa provides a clear call to web designers to move beyond the fold-based design of the past and recognise that, provided the site's purpose is clear in the first visible screen, placing important content below the fold does not make it unfindable for web users.
She compares the clickthrough rates of items of a number of AOL pages, finding that in many cases links below the fold receive as many, and sometimes more, clicks than items at the top of the page that are supposedly more visible.
One of the interesting findings reported is that due to different browser resolutions and rendering engines, there is little consistency in where the fold occurs in web pages anyway. The most common fold line is experienced by only 10% of web users as variations in PC screens and browsers means that the fold appears differently to different site visitors.
Milissa's advice is to instead provide visual cues and compelling content to encourage users to scroll through your page, thereby no longer forcing designers to cram in all the important content into the first screen that appears.
Friday, October 03, 2008
How secure is a password? | Tweet |
Following my security theme today, I've never seen much value in passwords as strong security measures - they need to be easy to remember for the user, and therefore rely on common letter and number patterns of relevance to the user, which inevitably become easier to break.
People need to remember passwords for many different services. I count at least 50 passwords I personally use on a monthly basis including phone, ATM and online.
This makes it tempting for people to,
A five second Google search threw up a large number of articles decrying the weakness of passwords as a security method.
One I found interesting was How I'd hack your weak passwords, which provides details on the mistakes people make when creating passwords, and points out that when people use the same password across multiple sites the password is only as good as the weakest site's security.
So what's the alternative?
Given that passwords are not a strong security measure as they rely on the user to select secure passwords, the only real alternatives are to,
Given that most people are unwilling to spend extra money on a PC attachment to allow biometrics scans (though, like seat belts in cars or fire alarms in houses, they could be mandated by government and rolled out with new PCs over time) and issuing physical tokens is a costly exercise (and prone to physical theft), the most viable short-term option is to improve how we communicate with our customers.
I think that we could do a better job of educating people on how to create and manage large numbers of secure passwords, and addressing this area would by itself save significant costs in terms of fraud prevention and personal loss - not to mention password reset calls to call centres.
In the longer-run, I see a strong case for mandating biometric scanners on PCs.
What do you think?
Recruitment in the age of Second Life | Tweet |
Missouri's state government is struggling to manage the need to competitively attract and hire IT professionals in the face of a wave of baby boomer retirements.
Their solution, as detailed in the NextGov article, Cat's in the Bag!, has been to explore new (and cheap) ways to reach young professionals - even when they come dressed as a cat with a red bowtie to the first job interview.
The CIO of Missouri has been holding virtual career fairs using Second Life.
As discussed in the article, it's important to seek new employees where they congregate and feel comfortable, rather than solely relying on techniques that worked in the past, but do not reflect the cultural bent of highly qualified applicants today.Seeking technologists and trolling for employees with disabilities in virtual worlds makes sense. Techies are well represented there due to their curiosity about new computer frontiers. And the disabled, especially those with physical handicaps, often are attracted to worlds where those problems no longer hinder them.
For an investment of only a few hundred dollars per year in virtual worlds his ROI is excellent - and the little cat with the red bowtie, the avatar of a recent computer engineering graduate, now has a job at Missouri's Department of Natural Resources.
The opportunity cost for other organisations not yet using digital aid recruitment tools is only likely to grow over time.
Biographical secret questions weakening as security measures | Tweet |
Due to the rise of online social networks and informational sites, secret questions based on biographical information are losing strength as a supplementary to password-based security.
As discussed in a Time article, Those Crazy Internet Security Questions, as more information on individuals becomes easily available - either provided by them directly or via government, corporate and collaborative online databases - the secureness of personal questions diminish.
The article provides a ten second case study on how easy it is to get the biographical information of a prominent person from their wikipedia entry and online postal database.
Speech transcripts, videos, blog posts, social network profiles, news sites and genealogical websites can also provide significantly more information quickly and cheaply.
It's slightly more difficult to get information on an 'unknown' person - but many are doing hackers the favour of providing their own biographical information online - as well as adding to the available information on their family and friends.
This raises a need to steer secret questions away from purely biographical information, or seek stronger alternatives.
So what was your mother's maiden name again?
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Building a better Vic whole-of-government intranet | Tweet |
Yesterday (Wednesday) I was privileged to attend a think tank in Melbourne discussing the future of the Victorian Government's whole-of-government intranet, CentralStation.
Being the only state government in Australia I am aware of with such a tool, I was surprised to learn that it had been originally created in 1996. To my knowledge that makes it one of the earliest whole-of-government initiatives in the world supporting public servants across state departments, authorities, local government and other public bodies to collaborate and share information more effectively for the benefit of citizens.
The intranet has been redeveloped several times and currently has a dual focus, providing both whole-of-government content and collaboration tools.
The event was attended by around 30 representatives from state agencies. It was also attended by an invited five person expert panel of experienced online professionals from the Vic private and educational sectors and from the non-Vic public sector (such as myself) to provide an external perspective on the initiatives Victoria is considering.
I think the event went well, with some excellent contributions from the group and several 'ah ha!' moments.
My views from the day on the approach were as follows,
A whole-of-government intranet,
From reflecting on the day, my impression is that whole-of-government intranets are useful tools for aggregating and distributing services and information across government bodies, such as,
I wish the CentralStation team at the Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development (DIIRD) all the best in taking the outcomes of the think tank forward in the next generation of Victoria's whole-of-government intranet.
I would also suggest that other jurisdictions could learn a great deal from Victoria's experience in operating their whole-of-government intranet for the last 12 years.
The internet has made us all influencers | Tweet |
Reflecting Forrester's Groundswell report, Universal McCann has released a study detailing how the internet has turned all customers (citizens) into influencers.
Titled INTERNET USERS, THE NEW INFLUENCERS - When did we start trusting strangers? (PDF), the study included around 17,000 internet users from 29 countries, finding that enmasse customers have moved from being passive consumers of products and services to active participants in their creation and evolution.
This has been characterised by three trends,
- the rise in social networks,
- the importance of digital friends, and
- the proliferation of influencer channels.
This has led towards the 'democratisation' of influence online - making every internet user both a potential creator of content and influencer of others.
The study found that organisations needed to reach out to internet users, becoming,
- transparent and honest,
- participate in the conversations,
- encourage customers to share their opinions, and
- approach and collaborate with new content creators.
A slideshow is available as below...
Key findings included,
- 44% of people surveyed have a blog (compared to 28% in 2006),
- 57.5% have a page on a social network (compared to 27% in 2006),
- 42% download video clips (compared to 10% in 2006),
- 34% of users share their opinions about music, and
- 55% share their photos online
Internet users do not rely on brands to inform themselves.
- While 69% visit brands’ official websites,
- 82% prefer to search for information on a search engine
- 55% prefer to read people’s comments on personal profiles on social networks like Facebook.
The preferred methods for exchanging information about a product were,
- via instant messaging (44.5%),
- via email (42.4%),
- followed by blogs (30.4%), and
- social networks (27.6%).
346 million people are reading blogs (state of the Blogosphere 2008) | Tweet |
Technorati has released its report, State of the Blogosphere / 2008, providing a view on the growth and application of blogs as a medium.
The report can be summed up in the statement "blogging is here to stay".
Notable to me in the report was that the fifth top topic and sixth most used tag was 'politics', and most of the other top twenty topics and tags were areas in which government has a significant influence and role.
While 12% of bloggers reported that they did so officially for their organisations, there was no breakdown between public or private organisations.
My assumption, based on my own observances, would be that the share of public sector bloggers would be highest in the US and Europe (where guidelines are in place and there is political and senior civil service support for blogging) and lowest in Australia (where guidelines are not yet in place).
Given the level of blog discourse already occurring on topics related to government services, perhaps Australian agencies need to more closely consider blogging as a communication and interaction tool.
Report highlights
- Technorati has indexed more that 122 million blogs since 2002,
- Bloggers are creating almost one million blog posts per day,
- Four in five bloggers post reviews of products or brands that they love (or hate),
- One-third of bloggers have been approached by companies to be brand advocates,
- 95% of the Top 100 US newspapers have journalist blogs (if you can't beat them, join them),
- 50% of bloggers receive more than 1,000 unique visitors per month, with 18% receiving more than 10,000,
- The more active a blog is, the greater its visibility and traffic, and
- Two-thirds of bloggers do so under their real identity.
Blogger demographics
- 36% of bloggers are aged 25-34 and 27% are 35-44. 23% are 45 or older,
- Two-thirds are male,
- 44% are parents,
- 70% have undergraduate degrees or higher, and
- 40% have incomes in excess of US$75,000 per year.
Blog types
- 79% of bloggers post on personal matters (topics of personal interest not associated with their work)
- 46% post on professional topics (about their industry and profession but not in an official capacity for their employer) - such as this blog
- 12% post on corporate topics (blog for their employer in an official capacity)
Top blog topics
- 54% blog about personal/lifestyle areas
- 46% blog about technology
- 42% blog about news
- 35% blog about politics
Benefits of professional/corporate blogging
- 54% say they have received increased professional recognition (better known in their industry),
- 26% have used their blog as a resume/reference in job seeking,
- 16% have more executive visibility within their organisation,
- 11% got promoted as a result of their blogging,
- 2% were fired or put on probation as a result of something they blogged about.
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Intranets Live online media channel launched | Tweet |
IBF has launched Intranets Live, a monthly 'online media channel' featuring interviews and commentary on intranets and intranet topics from around the world.
While it is useful to access a monthly podcast on what is occurring around the world in the intranet area, the price tag for this option would require careful consideration by intranet managers.
One (government) portal to rule them all... | Tweet |
Uganda has become the latest nation to announce that it is following a centralised government portal strategy, launching a statewide web portal managed by their Ministry of ICT.
This reflects the approach taken in many other nations, including Australia (www.australia.gov.au and www.business.gov.au) to provide a central face to government online, to a greater or lessor degree.
Given the enthusiasm for this approach in the virtual world, are we likely to see a similar approach to government shopfronts, phone and paper-based transactions reflected at federal level over time?
We've certainly seen some state-based jurisdictions move to single shopfronts - at least in smaller jurisdictions.
However if this isn't the strategy in these channels, what is the rationale for providing different messages in different mediums?
Doesn't it weaken the argument for citizens to not need to know which agency they are dealing with?
- A single central port of call online
- Department/Agency-based offices and paper correspondence
- Service-based phone numbers
What's your view?
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Cut costs by expanding your intranet | Tweet |
Cost cutting is a fact of life across public and private sectors.
At some point every few years (or every year in some cases) organisations decide that the most effective way to improve productivity or profits is to reduce expenditures.
Intranets are a common target of cost cutting, either by delaying improvements to infrastructure, cancelling new functionality, reducing author training or cutting intranet staff numbers.
In some cases these decisions are justified, however with intranets often lacking high-level representation and sponsorship, there are cases where these cuts have serious negative impacts on the entire organisation.
So are there ways to position an intranet to avoid damaging cost cuts, and even increase the budget to the area in order to generate savings elsewhere?
I believe there are - and ways to make the intranet a central tool in a cost savings approach.
It may seem counter-intuitive to some, but I often advocate increasing intranet funding during cost cutting exercises as a lower cost channel for engaging staff and sharing information.
However for this to get traction, there are some preventative steps I believe an intranet manager needs to take to position the intranet,
1) Quantify and promote usage and satisfaction with the intranet
The value of an intranet is largely measured on the amount of use it receives by staff. This measure is, however, often more driven by perception than by actual numbers.
This is because senior leadership is generally the group least likely to make extensive use of an intranet - they have staff to make use of it on their behalf. However this group may (mistakenly) believe that intranet usage reflects their own personal use of the channel.
Quantifying and promoting the actual levels of intranet usage and satisfaction (and what functions staff are using) helps senior management understand the true value of the channel to the organisation beyond their personal experience. This leads to according it a higher priority within organisational planning.
During cost cutting this knowledge can shift the discussion from the potential savings in cutting back on intranet services to the increased cost of shifting to less efficient (and more expensive) communications and information sharing channels.
2) Identify a senior-level sponsor
Given that an intranet can benefit all parts of an organisation, provided the intranet's benefits and usage are quantitified and promoted, it becomes easier to identify a senior-level sponsor.
The most useful sponsor (for an intranet manager) is the senior executive with most to gain from an effective intranet - normally from a group with a significant need to share information or communicate in the most efficient way possible.
It is also important that the sponsor's area is regarded as business critical by the organisation, thereby ensuring they are well listened to in senior meetings.
3) Take appropriate steps to increase intranet awareness and usage
This should be an ongoing activity for all intranet managers.
Find out what tools or information would aid staff, make them available via the intranet and promote their availability.
This progressively grows an intranet's presence within an organisation while providing cost-savings as people aggregate towards the channel rather than using less efficient ways of accessing the tools and information they need in their roles.
4) Identify business processes the intranet can perform more cost-effectively than via other channels
This is the 'meat' in the cost-cutting sandwich. Before, or during, cost-cutting initiatives, it is important to identify productivity gains and business process efficiencies that can be moved by shifting functions to the intranet channel from other channels.
Start by building a list of potential efficiencies based on areas of savings including;
With the above preventative measures in place, the next time your organisation needs to cut costs your intranet can be positioned as a tool to support cost savings rather than as a service to be trimmed.
Also see:
Blog post discussed in podcast report | Tweet |
I've posted earlier about how the Holz and Hobson report picked up on one of my posts and decided to use it as the central topic of one of their radio shows.
The show was held a little over a week ago, and I realised I'd not yet linked to it in eGovAU, so here it is.
FIR Call-In Show #7: The employee communications-intranet connection
The show can be downloaded or listened to online.
Greater transparency in government - the US theme for 2008 | Tweet |
The most exciting change I'm seeing in US politics at the moment is the degree of top level support and enthusiasm for transparency in government.
Nextgov has published an article, Obama says he would use IT to open government, which details the strategies the Democrat nominee for President says he will mandate for the US Federal Government to increase their accountability to the public, reducing waste and improving openness.In the plan, Obama says he "will require his appointees who lead the executive branch departments and rulemaking agencies to conduct the significant business of the agency in public, so that any citizen can see in person or watch on the Internet as the agencies debate and deliberate the issues that affect American society. Videos of meetings will be archived on the Web, and the transcript will be available to the public. Obama will also require his appointees to commit to employ all the technological tools available to allow average citizens not just to observe, but to participate and be heard on the issues that affect their daily lives. Obama will require Cabinet officials to have periodic 21st century fireside chats, restore meaning to the Freedom of Information Act, and conduct regulatory agency business in public."
Obama has indicated that he will push the use of blogs, wikis, social networking and other strategies to create a government more connected with constituents.
The full plan is available at Government Executive.
It's both an ambitious plan and an exciting experiment in the government arena. If Obama gets the opportunity to execute, it will be interesting to see the consequences of more open government both in the US's domestic market and in international relations.
Virtual government conferences - when will they start in Australia? | Tweet |
I find conferences a very useful avenue for networking with other egovernment and online channel professionals. I often get ideas or insights that I can share across my team and agency - and implement in our sites.
However the attendance cost continues to rise. Sadly both the commitment in time and price means that I've been cutting back to a few selected courses each year.
I've partially offset the price factor by speaking at events (giving a 40 minute presentation to attend a 2 day $3,000 conference is equivalent to an 'hourly rate' of $4,500).
However this still leaves travel and accomodation costs and the time required to participate (which I can never get back).
A solution I'm seeing more of around the world is to hold virtual conferences - such as the Cognos Virtual Government Forum being held using INXPO's platform.
There are options for similar events via platforms such as Second Life and Webex, as well as ways to use free tools to achieve a similar end.
While these events have a lower networking factor than a face-to-face event (though it can still occur), they provide a similar presentation experience - with the capacity to pick and choose between canned or live presentations and engage in chat-based Q&A sessions or panels.
You do not need to leave your desk, and can tune out for other priorities, then catch-up again at your leisure.
So given the large size and low population density of Australia, when are we likely to see some locally run virtual conferences?
Friday, September 26, 2008
Australian Human Rights commission launches site to name and shame government agencies failing accessibility measures | Tweet |
Further to my post, Australian Human Rights Commission prepared to name and shame government publishers failing online accessibility, the Human Rights Commission has now launched a website that lists government agencies failing to meet their legal obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992.
The site, named Webwatch is visible in the Human Right Commission's site.
The media release announcing the site's launch, WebWatch launched amid moves to improve website accessibility, also made reference to a motion passed by the Senate regarding accessibility of information which helps underscore the importance of making government information accessible online.The Senate yesterday agreed to the following motion, put by Tasmania’s Senator Stephen Parry at the request of Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Community Services, Senator Cory Bernardi:
That the Senate:
(a) notes the difficulties experienced by people with a disability, particularly people with vision impairment, in accessing some formats of Senate documents online; and
(b) calls on the Government and the Department of the Senate to ensure all Hansard and Senate committee documents are made accessible via the Internet to people with a disability as soon as they become public.
What do job seekers think about your department? | Tweet |
Just as organisations can use social network sites to judge the relative merits of potential staff (per my post Locating and learning about future public employees), websites are allowing people to judge the relative merits of potential employers.
How does your department rate?
There's no doubt that people research potential employers online, and in a 'seller's market' for skilled labour it's critical for employers to put their best foot forward.
There are some fantastic job seeker/careers sections in organisational websites - with IBM, Microsoft and Intel having always stood out for me as offering exceptionally good information for job seekers - not surprising given the calibre of the people they wish to attract.
My agency is progressively improving its job section for a similar reason. There's a limited pool of talented people and we need to present them with good reasons as to why they should choose us over other organisations - whether public or private.
Some of the features I consider important in a jobs section include;
- Complete job information - everything a job seeker needs to apply online
- Support tools to make it easier to apply for jobs - particularly for those who are not good at expressing themselves on paper (but shine in interviews) or are unfamiliar with the documentation required by your organisation (such as public sector selection criteria)
- Explanation of the process and timeframes for recruitment (so they don't take another job when they've heard nothing for four weeks) - even better is to provide a 'package delivery' model whereby they can log in to see where their job application is up to in your process at any time (like Fed Express and DHL)
- Information helping employees to understand your organisation's purpose and goals
- Details on why your organisation is a good place to work (pay is rarely the top reason!)
- Social aspects of your organisation - how do the strangers you employ become part of your organisational family
- Developmental opportunities, training and challenges
- Community initiatives - how does your organisation participate with the broader community and 'give back' effort, time and support
- Information (profiles) on your locations (what it's like to work in particular offices)
- Support for people who may be relocating (particularly for Canberra or country town locations)
- Profiles of different career tracks and jobs in your organisation, based on people doing those roles and why they like them
- Career selector tools which support people in finding the jobs in your organisation which best match their disposition and skills (such as at DEEWR's Jobjuice site)
It's also important to consider factors beyond your own website.
Job seekers are influenced by their peers, by news and community sites, social networking sites, online encyclopedias, by recruitment websites and by specialist employer rating sites such as Glassdoor (discussed in the Sydney Morning Herald article, In good company).
Personally I keep a eye out on highly influential sites for Australians, such as LinkedIn, Wikipedia and Facebook, as well as the job sites and popular forums discussing child support topics.
I also monitor where people go when entering and exiting our websites, which provides an indication of other sites which may influence job seeker preferences.
What does your organisation do online to help attract the best applicants?
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Participative budget edemocracy initiative in Brazil provides insights into the future | Tweet |
Brought to my attention by a reader, the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte, capital of the state of Minas Gerais, has begun using evoting to support it's participatory budget setting process.
Documented in the research report, e-Participatory Budgeting: e-Democracy from theory to success? (PDF), the experience is a very interesting example of the use of evoting in increasing direct democratic participation by the public.
Belo Horizonte is a city of 2.3 million people and 1.7 million voters.
It has used a participatory budget setting process since 1993 to prioritise spending across a range of public works, with the budget directly allocated by voters growing to US$43. This works on the basis of voting in each of the city's districts for specific works within that district.
In 2006, the city launched a Digital Participatory Budgeting (e-PB) involving a fund of US$11 million in addition to the existing participatory budget.
The e-PB allowed registered voters to exclusively vote online for one out of four potential public works for each of the nine districts of the city.
Based on the research report,According to the administration, the launching of the initiative had three main drivers: i) to modernize its PB through the use of ICTs; ii) to increase citizens’ participation in the PB process and iii) to broaden the scope of public works that are submitted to voting.
The approach seems to have worked. While the traditional PB approach attracted around 1.5 percent of voter participation, the e-PB attracted close to 10%, greatly increasing the direct democratic involvement of citizens with the running of the city. It also allowed the PB process to consider public works of interest to all city citizens, rather than those only of interest to the inhabitants of a specific district.
As part of the e-voting process the city adinistration's website featured a forum where citizens could discuss the potential public works initiatives in a moderated environment.
The voting process took place over 42 days with voters able to vote separately for each district's public works - allowing them to vote up to nine times, once per district.
The security of the vote was managed by using unique voter IDs, termed electoral title numbers, which Brazil issues as part of a compulsory identification document to all voters.
Public voting points were established at 187 points across the city to avoid disenfranchising people without internet access. A mobile internet bus was also used, moving from place to place to between areas with the lowest internet access and those with the highest voter concentration (city centre).
While the IT involved in the initiative was significant, the research paper points out that significant factors in the success of the initiative were the communications campaign and ability for voters to interact online to discuss the public works.
The e-PB attracted 503,266 votes by 172,938 voters, or 9.98% of eligible voters.
While this might seem low by Australia's compulsory voting standards, it was seven times greater than the number of participants in the traditional participatory budgeting process, which only received 1.46% of voter participation in the same year.
Interestingly, the research report found that there was no correlation between socio-economic status and propensity to vote, meaning that the e-PB was not weighted towards more highly educated or richer voters (who are more likely to be internet users).
Also a minimum of 30% of votes were recorded from outside the city's limits. Given that only citizens of the city were eligible to vote, the research report found that the internet approach provided an effective avenue for residents who were not present in the city at the time to vote.
The research report has a lot of additional information on the IT systems and communications approaches used, as well as the use of the online forum.
It is an excellent read for any administration looking at introducing a level of electronic voting, either for offices or for policy or budget measures.
Red tape reduction via smarter online forms | Tweet |
There's a lot of activity in the online forms space across Australian government at present and it is proving to be an area of real cost savings and environmental benefits for public sector organisations at all levels.
Business.gov.au has supported a centralised whole-of-government approach to business focused forms for several years now and its forms section has grown significantly, particularly in the last twelve months, as agencies have recognised the potential, geared up and invested in the area.
This has been recognised in an Australia article looking at initiatives by councils, Online forms cut council red tape.
The AGOSP (Australian Government Online Services Portal) initiative at AGIMO is also implementing a forms capacity, via business.gov.au, for citizen forms, and this offers significant benefits for any agencies looking to leap into the realm of 'smart forms' - online forms that can be prepopulated or adjust in response to customer answers and then send the data back in a secure format (as email or directly into agency systems).
If you're an Australian public sector organisation at any level who needs to collect data from customers, it's worth checking this out and viewing the presentation given by Anthony Steve of business.gov.au.
Intranet Innovation Award winners for 2008 announced | Tweet |
The Intranet Innovation Award winners for 2008 have been announced, and their details, together with an executive summary (PDF) containing two case studies of award winners is available at Step Two's website.
The case studies feature an example of collaborative information sharing via a wiki used by staff of one organisation to track competitors and an innovative intranet people finder that improves staff networking and discovery by combining elements of both Twitter and Facebook.
I was inspired by both of the case studies, but a little disappointed to see only one government site mentioned in the awards this year - the Department of Human Services (South Australia) was commended for their CEO blog.
I hope there will be a greater public sector presence next year.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Locating and learning about future public employees using social networks | Tweet |
I am a reasonably active LinkedIn user (view my profile here).
It's one of my professional networking tools for keeping track of 'people of interest' to me - from business contacts to potential employees and employers.
It, and similar social and professional networks, are also useful recruiting tools for managers and HR professionals seeking to find or screen job applicants.
This isn't news to US HR teams. A recent survey by Careerbuilders.com, as reported in Reuters, found that 22 percent of hiring managers screened applicants via social networks.
From the article, One in five bosses screen applicants' Web lives: poll, of the managers screening applicants, 24 percent found information that solidified their decision to hire, while 34 percent found information that made them drop the candidate from the short list.
I also tend to Google people before making short-listing or hiring decisions (or when hearing about or meeting them professionally). It helps me build context and understanding and it draws on publicly available information (provided by the person in question), so there are no privacy considerations.
In terms of the full hiring process, for HR professionals and managers the online channel doesn't replace resumes, selection criteria and interviews, but it can certainly supplement this process by adding depth.
And for anyone seeking a new job, it is worth reviewing what you've said about yourself online - to ensure that you are representing yourself professionally.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Tapping into the return of the innovative individual | Tweet |
One of the primary changes resulting from the growth of the internet has been to place professional media tools and distribution capabilities in the hands of individuals.
Any individual with access to a computer and internet connection can create and distribute prose, poetry, commentary, software or services to millions at little cost. Add a microphone and they can conduct talkback or share original music and ass a low-cost digital camera with video capacity and they can also share photos and video.
As detailed in Paul Budde's article, The rebirth of the innovative individual, this is a return to the individual creativity stifled by 'big media' through the 20th century.
The private sector in Australia has already begun effectively tapping into this media change - but how about the public sector?
Car, computer and shampoo companies have supported customer-created television commercials. Prominent political bloggers have been invited to political rallies and 'mummy bloggers' courted by large consumer goods companies. Online musicians have hit the top of the charts and been 'discovered' and online programmers have contributed solutions to major corporate software solutions.
We've even seen other media, newspapers, radio and television channels add the capability for individuals to break stories and provide video and audio coverage used around the world.
On the public front, in other jurisdictions we've seen some government efforts to tap into this space, from the New Zealand police wiki Act (an Act of Parliament written by the public via a wiki) to the UK cash prizes for mashups (where the government is rewarding the best applications built using government information).
In Australia I have not seen any developments on this scale.
Certainly we have a few mechanisms to listen to citizens via different online consultation channels, but listening isn't the same as collaborating.
I am not aware of any major initiatives in Australia where government is saying to the public, We don't know how to achieve the best outcomes in this area, so if anyone has a good idea put it forward and we'll both reward and use the best of them?
This can be challenging step for any organisation used to be the source of answers, rather than the facilitator of solutions.
However, as the private sector is discovering, the new approach delivers excellent outcomes.
I'm hopeful that within a few years we will also see Australian governments using collaborative approaches to write legislation, generate program ideas, produce creative and develop (online) applications and systems.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Can government collaborate in online service development? | Tweet |
I have participated in the beta testing of software for over 20 years now - it's a great way to get an early look at new developments and to have a level of influence over the development process as a customer (in one case I was even hired as the lead designer on a subsequent product).
Lately I've been participating in a number of private betas for online applications. One of these has just gone into public beta (SlideRocket - an online presentation solution designed to compete with PowerPoint). In this case the developer has made their full issues and fix list available publicly and there is quite an active community helping them improve the application, such as through their User Voice section.
This has made me think about how government develops online services for public use - what prevents us from considering collaborative development in this way?
There are obvious upsides and downsides to a public beta approach for any organisation.
On the minus side, it exposes the service early, meaning that government doesn't have as much time to determine the message for the release and providing detractors with an early opportunity to attack.
It also puts a lower quality solution 'out there', providing opportunities for the public to draw a negative view of the service due to its less than fully developed state. This can make it harder to draw people back when it is more fully developed.
Thirdly, putting a public beta out provides malicious elements more opportunity to find security holes and cause damage.
On the upside, a public beta provides for a much more rigorous level of scrutiny by the public and experts before the service is finally release. This allows issues to be identified and addressed and improves the usability, functionality and stability of the service. It also comes at a lower price tag than running 5,000 focus groups around the country (and internationally).
It also allows several bites at the cherry for government announcements. Firstly comes an announcement on the public beta, positioned as an opportunity for the broader community to test, reflect and comment on the service. Then comes the release announcement, where the government can launch the service - more confident it will hit the mark.
On balance I believe the downsides can be mitigated through careful communications management, whereas the upsides provide enormous efficiency benefits around the consultation area.
It does require a change in project management approach - unforeseen bugs and feature issues will be raised through the public beta process and need to be managed adequately.
I'd also suggest that there would need to be less focus on date/cost and more on adequate service quality to meet customer needs.
I believe this is a broader focus change needed in IT development anyway. I am quite concerned by large projects defined around delivery dates rather than meeting the appropriate level of solution performance for customers.
I wonder which of my upcoming projects is appropriate for consideration in a public beta... I can think of several immediate options.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Gershon recommends procurement integration | Tweet |
The first public comments from the government on the Gershon Report are beginning to emerge, with The Australian reporting on Thursday, Tanner targets agency wastage in bid to save $1bn.
- allowing public servants to spend more time being customer-focused through spending less time grappling with inconsistent and/or low usability internal systems,
- through reductions in frustration and workplace stress (which impact service quality),
- through easier hiring and transferring of staff who need to adapt to fewer systems in job changes, and
- better information flows within and between agencies to cut delays.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Why you should pay attention to intranet search logs | Tweet |
My team keeps a close eye on what people search for in our intranet.
It helps us identify patterns in staff behaviour and better support their needs.
In browsing for other online information, I came across a case study from 2006 about a government agency which provides a similar picture of the value of paying attention to intranet search logs.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Improving an intranet staff directory | Tweet |
My team has been throwing around approaches for improving our internal agency staff directory on the intranet to make it more of a knowledge resource for staff.
As this is the most used tool in our intranet (people need to contact other people), improving the service contributes measurably to our staff's capacity to collaborate and discover the information necessary in their roles.
The more we can streamline people discovery, the more time we can save staff.
Thus far discussions have focused on our own experiences across a number of online staff directories over the years.
For my contribution to the discussion, from my experience over a twenty year span, the first staff directories were based on the paper phone directories used before intranets were common - alphabetical lists of names, titles, teams and phone numbers, divided by region or area.
These lists - and intranet directories - were useful in finding a known person, were you could identify their name and area.
However they had more difficulty in locating unknown people - subject matter experts - as area and team names did not always reflect their activities and without knowing who to contact it was hard to find an appropriate name.
Also traditional staff directories are only name, number and rank - they do not provide details on skills, relationships or communities, which help link people collaborate more effectively.
Therefore I've described three cases I want our future staff directory to cover.
1) Locating details for known people
2) Locating experts
3) Engaging networks of knowledge
As part of these cases, we're considering Facebook and LinkedIn style features, such as,
Involvement in all of these areas would be optional, allowing staff to better self-manage their privacy. However, as in any situation involving information sharing, you get greater value when you share than when you silo knowledge.
Over time this approach lends itself to integration with collaboration tools, forums, wikis, groups and blogs, as well as team-based tools such as group calendars and mailing lists.
We've been looking online for reference material on the topic of staff directories, drawing on the experiences of a number of private sector organisations who have implemented similar types of directories.
A couple of the resources we've found useful include,
I'm very interested in the experiences of other government and private sector organisations in this space - so drop me a comment if you have suggestions to add.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
A glimpse at the future of the semantic web | Tweet |
Fresh+New, a blog written by Seb Chan from the Powerhouse Museum, has brought to my attention Aza Raskin’s Ubiquity, a very interested look at the possible web of the future, using semantic browsers to provide a more connected experience.
More details are in Seb's post, More powerful browsers - Mozilla Labs Ubiquity, or on Aza's blog.
Below is the video introducing Ubiquity.
Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.
US Air Force planning to create its first virtual air base | Tweet |
According to the NextGov article Air Force opens bidding for virtual air base, the US Air Force is preparing to launch a virtual air base where airmen will attend courses in a 3D virtual world.
Simulators have long been used in training pilots and astronauts, due to the fatal consequences of mistakes by novices. This air base takes it a step further, with the Air Force looking to support up to 75 simultaneous users in a geospatially accurate real-time training environment.
As described in the NextGov article,The service initially hopes to create two furnished virtual classrooms that can stream audio and video, and to allow users to design their own avatars in uniform with a variety of physical attributes and appropriate rank. The synthetic base also must include buildings, vegetation, signage, roads, security, a flight line with planes and the ability to exchange documents, photographs and video. Once it buys the software and training, the Air Force expects delivery within two weeks.
The system, termed MyBase, is seen as a key component in the Air Force's future training programs. Here's a video from them explaining more...
This type of learning environment is adaptable to many different functions - including virtual seminars and roadshows, collaborative meetings, presentations, media events, group-based activities and real-time or time-delayed course training. Several universities in the US have already made courses available via 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life.
In Australia we've seen some exploration of these technologies by the Victorian state government in its Melbourne Laneways project for public consumption.
My view is that some of the more immediate benefits for the public sector are in internal use of such environments by geographically diverse agencies to create learning and collaborative environments.
In fact the ATO has demonstrated such an environment already in its ATO Showcase as one of the innovations they are exploring for future roll-out.
For public use of these environments today by government the equity issue needs to be well considered.
Personally I've always felt that gradual degradation is an appropriate approach, providing a virtual 3D environment for broadband users, degrading to voice and powerpoint for 'thin' broadband and dial-up users, down to distributed multimedia for computer users without internet connections and to hardcopy or physical meetings for those without computers.
The other consideration is the proportion of the audience falling into each of these groups, and if this has not been established I'd be very cautious about providing more advanced options.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
When too much public information is public | Tweet |
Related to my previous post, AZcentral reports that, Death notices removed from county Web site.
Privacy concerns and identity-theft fears prompted Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell to halt public viewing of death certificates on the agency's Web site.
"There is so much personal information on them: a mother's maiden name, what they died from," Purcell said, adding that her office has been fielding complaints for years about the office's practice of posting death-certificate images. The office quietly took them down last month.
These are legitimate concerns - there are situations when exposing publicly collected and held information in a more easy to access and harder to control manner is not to the public's benefit.
The question government continues to grapple with is where to draw this line.
How public is public information? | Tweet |
Over in California a controversy over the level of public access to public information flared up where the The Bee newspaper in Sacremento published a searchable online database of public sector officials and their salaries.
...everything we know about records management is wrong. Sure, that's hyperbole, but Barton [Founder of Glassdoor, now publishing salary information on the web] isn't exaggerating when he claims, "People's appetite for this information ... is effectively infinite." Once again, the Internet will show us what happens when public records are actually public.
Monday, September 15, 2008
The growth of e-health in Australia | Tweet |
Futuregov has an excellent article, An Australia quest for e-health discussing progress in the Australian e-health scene.
It is good to see that there is a clear understanding of the need for a national approach - tying states into one consistent system, rather than individually building separate systems in each state at additional cost.
In the geospatial area, WA and QLD have launched state-centric systems, with other states considering their own systems. This has taken place while AGIMO plans a national geospatial system within the AGOSP program. They share the same standards, however I'm not clear on whether they have shared technologies and costs.
Tools for user experience design - card sorting | Tweet |
In the last few years I've witnessed the rise and rise of design and particularly usability/user experience design as a professional area.
In the mid-90s, when I was conducting wireframe-based user testing, observing user behaviour in applications and asking users which functionality was most important to them before building websites, there was low awareness in Australia of the value of usability and correspondingly few people working specifically in the area.
Today, alongside the increase in the number of usability consultants we've seen the arrival of online tools that assist web teams in conducting their own testing.
Card sorting
- The card sorting topic at the Society for Technical Communication's website is one of the best central resources for card sorting information
- Card sorting: a definitive guide is also a fantastic resource from Donna Maurer and Todd Warfel.
- The Eurostar Card sorting Case Study (also by Donna Maurer) is a fantastic example of a card sorting process
- Websort - www.websort.net
- Optimalsort - www.optimalsort.com
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Australian Human Rights Commission prepared to name and shame government publishers failing online accessibility | Tweet |
On Friday the Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Graeme Innes, at the Australian Human Rights Commission released a media statement, Climate change secretariat excludes people with disabilities, indicating the Commmision was prepared to 'out' government publishers who did not meet Australia's mandatory accessibility requirements for online material.
“I recently said that, if things did not start to improve, the Australian Human Rights Commission would have to start naming government publishers that are not taking the effort to make their documents sufficiently accessible for people with disability,” said Commissioner Innes.
In recent weeks there have been several accessibility-related media stories in Australia which have helped emphasise the importance of accessibility, not simply as a tickbox for web design, but as a baseline requirement for government material - published online or in other forms.
In this particular case the Human Rights Commission was targeting a specific document released originally only in PDF format. All that was being requested was that it be also published in another format as well (such as HTML) to improve accessibility.
"The Garnaut Review Supplementary Draft Report, Targets and trajectories, was released a week ago, but many people with disabilities still can't access it because it is still only available in pdf format", said Commissioner Innes. "These sort of documents should be published in RTF or HTML as well as pdf so that they can be read by all Australians."
For the record, I had a quick look at the Garnet Climate Change Review website and most of their documents are available in HTML as well as PDF.
It is possible to make modern PDF documents accessible, using the accessibility features in Adobe Acrobat Professional 7 or later. This requires an understanding of the tool and some time for larger documents - a straight PDF conversion of such documents from another format (such as Microsoft Word) generally doesn't meet Australia's legislated accessibility requirements.
Why is achieving accessibility so hard?
Given that PDFs can be made accessible, why does accessibility seem so elusive?
In my experience, across both private and public sector, I've found that generally that the webmasters, content publishers, designers and developers have a clear understanding of their obligations under Australia's mandatory accessibility requirements. They also generally understand and have access to the processes required to achieve it - although sometimes funding and timeframes are very tight.
Outside the web area it is often a different story. Generally most people across the rest of the organisation are less aware of the requirements. This can include document authors, communicators and senior executives.
There's no blame attached to this - accessibility isn't a large part of their jobs. These staff rely on the organisation's web specialists and graphic designers to tell them what they must do and assist them in meeting the requirements.
In fact this media release is a good tool to use in this education process.
Friday, September 12, 2008
A compelling reason to ensure government website and intranet information is current | Tweet |
On Monday this week United Airlines in the US experienced a 75% drop in their share price (from $12.30 to $3.00 per share).
This was due to a 6-year old news story on a newspaper website that was accidentally tagged as current and distributed across the US financial press through Bloomberg's online News Service.
The story has received widespread US coverage, such as this report in Wired, Six-Year-Old News Story Causes United Airlines Stock to Plummet.
An accident some would say - but a very disruptive one. The stock price rebounded when the error was uncovered, but only to $10.19 by the end of Monday. That's a 20% loss in investor money (much more for investors who had sold in a panic) because of old news. The longer term damage will include a loss of reputation and trust in the news provider.
What's the learnings for government - or for any organisation?
One of my takeaways is that it is critical that your website and intranet content remains current. Out-of-date information can lead to financial loss for customers as well as media and political pain for organisations.
It has always disturbed me how poor most organisations are at maintaining current information in their websites.
Senior executives get extremely concerned if staff are providing out-of-date information to telephone or face-to-face customers on a one-to-one basis.
No reputable media team would release material to media outlets that they knew was out-of-date.
Printed publications are regularly assessed to ensure that they provide the right information. If they don't, and the mistake is critical, they are recalled, pulped and replaced quickly - costing tens or hundred of thousands of dollars to do so.
However organisational websites often remain dank swamps of old and inaccurate information.
This is despite their ability to be publicly accessed enmasse and have the information they contain trusted and acted on by any customer, citizen, media representative, community group, corporation, public agency, Minister or Head of State in the world with internet access. That's over 90% of Australians and over 1 billion people who can access your website information at home, office or public location.
Intranets are not much better. Your staff rely on having access to the correct information to make the correct decisions. Mistakes can have serious impacts on peoples' lives, on the organisation's reputation and on peoples' careers.
Organisations place enormous attention on training customer-facing staff - the intranet is a critical tool for the between times, for managing ongoing job training and information dissemination that is difficult and expensive to deliver on a periodical basis.
In the communications stakes an organisation's website and intranet are, in my view, the most important tools for presenting accurate and timely information to outsiders and to insiders.
No organisation can afford to rely on having the media publish releases, or fund a dedicated team of face-to-face communicators in every office to answer staff questions.
We rely on digital tools to communicate outwards (and increasingly to collaborate inwards). So let's use them appropriately, rather than half-ticking boxes and creating a larger and more dangerous mess.
Outsiders and insiders alike rely on an organisation's website and intranet for a clear picture of its activities, intentions and approach. People judge an organisation's commitment to openness and honesty from what they see as well as what they hear.
So if an organisation's website is evasively written, shallow or out-of-date, that's the message customers and media take-away, act on and react to. Silence breeds contempt.
Yes it is hard work to keep organisational websites and intranets up-to-date and it requires significant awareness, engagement, support and appropriate resourcing across an organisation.
Business areas need to be aware of where (and when) their material is available and be held accountable for maintaining it.
Executives must appreciate the importance of communication as a concept and specifically of the online channel as a delivery tool for communications - and collaboration, but that's a different story.
This doesn't require just a change in processes or business rules. It is a cultural shift in mindset - a challenging change for many people and possibly a generational one.
But it's one we must make, and the pain caused by not changing continues to grow with time.
