Posts
There seems to be a consistent supply of people new to Government 2.0 filtering through the various events I track around Australia.
Whether commercial conferences, 'Masterclasses', government-supported events or university courses - many (though not all) now providing decent '101' or introductory information and case studies on social media use for government and even on open Public Sector Information.
However for people who already employ Government 2.0 techniques, have been involved in designing and implementing social media initiatives and channels, there's really no 'step-up' courses available in Australia to provide the greater depth and expertise these people are looking for.
Essentially, Australia is well supplied with '101' introductory courses to Government 2.0, but there's no '202' or '303' courses - intermediate and advanced training to help people build on their experience.
These more advanced courses would help improve government's effectiveness in social media by moving us to more complex and strategic use of digital channels to meet citizen needs.
There's certainly people around with the experience to run such courses, both from a strategic and implementation perspective. Many are presenting actively at the various '101' events.
I'd welcome any ideas on how to move us forward, keep the introductory courses for those still new to the area, but provided advanced training for those who now need it (at an appropriate cost).
Monday, August 15, 2011
Why is no-one running 'Government 2.0 202' courses? | Tweet |
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Apologies for the hiatus in blogging - life trumps blogging | Tweet |
I'd like to apologise to those reading my blog for effectively taking two weeks off from blogging (although I've been tweeting actively).
Essentially life got in the way, with some tight work deadlines, a death in the family, wedding preparations and a range of other factors.
I am now rebuilding my blogging habit and will keep to my 3-5 posts per week target for the next few months - then take a break during my honeymoon.
Monday, August 01, 2011
QPS Media releases report on their use of social media for disaster management | Tweet |
The Queensland Police Service Media group has released a report on their use of social media in managing disaster situations.
It's a good read, though only scratches the surface of what they achieved or what is possible.
As the document was released only as PDF, I've converted it to HTML 5.0 via Scribd for more widespread access as embedded below.
It will be very interesting to see which government agencies continue to resist the use of social media in future disaster situations. It will provide insights into their cultures and is likely to reflect on them publicly.
It may even be fair to say that it would be courageous of senior public servants in any government across Australia to forbid the use of social media for disaster management in the future.
The original PDF, Queensland Police Service: Disaster management and social media - a case study, is available here.
QPS Social Media Case Study
Thursday, July 28, 2011
What's the oldest active government Twitter account in Australia? | Tweet |
I've done a review of the registration dates for Twitter accounts from agencies at all levels of government in Australia and identified what I believe to be the oldest account.
Established in November 2007, the oldest government Twitter account in Australia is from Narromine, a small local council in Central West NSW.
You'll find them still tweeting regularly at @Narromine
The second oldest was @rfsmajorfires, providing automated updates about major fire risks in NSW since December 2007 and the third was @questacon in May 2008, providing educational and exhibition news.
The full timeline is available as a tab in my Australian governments Twitter accounts spreadsheet.
Chart of the timeline for government agency Twitter registrations by month and a cumulative registration rate is below.
It excludes three suspended accounts (for which I cannot determine registration date).
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Outcomes from ACT Virtual Community Cabinet | Tweet |
I've run the conversation from the ACT Virtual Community Cabinet, held yesterday, through some statistical systems to look at how the event went.
Based on the CoverItLive session I recorded, there were 92 participants using the #ACTvcc hashtag between the beginning and the end of the Virtual Community Cabinet. I excluded conversations outside the period of the Cabinet as not being 'on the official record'.
During the Virtual Community Cabinet there were a total of 299 tweets, an average of 3 tweets per participant and approximately 5 tweets per minute.
The top 13 tweeters accounted for 50% of tweets, and the top 63 for 90% of tweets during the event.
I divided the tweets into the categories below based on the type of content. This is not precise, but gives an approximation of the types of conversations that occurred.
- Question to Cabinet (Such as 'Can the ACT government please fix my road?')
- Directional tweet (Such as 'The event starts now' or retweets without extra content)
- Spurious comment (Such as 'Can we have more penguins?')
- Action request/statement (Such as 'We need more buses')
- Thank you (Such as 'You're doing a great job!')
- Statement (Such as 'Look at what NSW is doing on Health')
- Ministerial answer (Minister answering question 'We are expanding services')
Another 51 tweets (17%) were directional - many alerting people to the start, middle and end of the event, or retweeting Ministerial answers.
Another 28 tweets (9%) were action requests which directly asked or told the government to take a specific step or decision. 33 (11%) of tweets were statements, providing information or a view without any direct question or action request.
There were 18 tweets (6%) expressing thanks for the event or actions of the government.
Finally there were only 19 tweets (6%) that were spurious (sorry to the dolphins, the peacocks and James Scullin).
Was the event a success?
Was the Virtual Community Cabinet a success? I would say yes, for a first attempt.
Looking over the Twitter stream (as I was unable to access Twitter through most of the event), overall my view is that the event was quite chaotic, with no clear format set for questions or for responses.
It was often very difficult to identify who Ministers were responding to and there were some big questions left unanswered. However I reckon the Ministers did quite well to answer 53 questions in the time they had.
A number of people indicated they'd like to see broader social media engagement. While the Cabinet Ministers stated they were on Facebook, the members of the public participating were asking them to use blogs - to post regularly and allow comments.
I think this difference in viewpoints may reflect a difference in social media sophistication between some politicians and some members of the public.
I stand by my previous statement that there were better tools the ACT Cabinet could have employed for this form of community engagement.
However, overall I think the event went OK, most participants left reasonably happy and several asked for further events (though using a broader set of social media tools).
I hope that the ACT government continues developing its social media and Government 2.0 sophistication, tapping into the experiences of other states (such as Victoria and Queensland) and within the Australian government.
View the record
View the ACT Virtual Community Cabinet Google spreadsheet here or the embedded version below.
As it would be easy to modify specific tweets or statistics, I've left it read-only for now.
To understand the colour coding and highlights, view the Legend (link from the bottom bar of the embedded spreadsheet).
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Live ACT Virtual Community Cabinet feed | Tweet |
Below is a live feed of the ACT Virtual Community Cabinet, on from 12.30pm to 1:30pm today, Tuesday 26 July, 2011
By capturing the tweets via CoverItLive they're stored publicly beyond the lifespan for tweets.
UPDATE: Due to load issues with my blog I've removed the CoverItLive replay from this post. My archive of the ACT Virtual Community Cabinet, together my previous liveblogs, are all accessible from http://egovau.coverpage.coveritlive.com/index2.php/option=com_altcaster/task=viewaltcast
ACT Virtual Community Cabinet 12:30pm today (#actvcc) | Tweet |
The ACT government has announced that their first Virtual Community Cabinet will be held today from 12:30 - 1:30pm on the topic of Public Transport, using Twitter as the discussion tool.
To follow the discussion keep an eye on #actvcc, the hashtag for the event.
The ACT Cabinet will be in the Cabinet room, following the Twitter stream on a big screen and tweeting responses via their laptops.
Specific questions can be directed to Cabinet members via their Twitter accounts, such as @KatyGMLA (for the Chief Minister).
I have previously expressed my views on this approach - using a medium suited for light touches and news breaking for deep evidence-based discussion. No-one in the Australian Gov 2.0 arena has been consulted on the use of Twitter this event to my knowledge (or indeed on the timing of the VCC - good for ACT Ministers, but not for the 65% of Commonwealth staff and other ACT residents without access to social media at their workplaces).
I hope I am proven wrong and this event goes well.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Comments from the IPAA NSW 2011 State Conference - Session 3 | Tweet |
Fresh from my session (which was tweeted and filmed - will be up in a few days and Ross Dawson published a great article on James Kleimt's talk "The fabulous case study of Queensland Police on Facebook" and James Dellow has published his slides), I'm in the third session for the IPAA conference, in the room discussing collaboration.
Jo Lawrence from the NSW Department of Family and Community Services is talking about the topic from the perspective of how to build collaboration and co-creation with citizens for service delivery.
Her agency has developed an administrative structure for collaboration to support their reform process.
This has included the introduction of Regional Executive Directors to lead reform in regions, and the implementation of Regional Executive Forums chaired by the Directors to support engagement and conversation.
The agency has also developed a Knowledge and Learning network using social media tools to allow staff to come together, share information on particular practices, facilitate knowledge sharing and promote interactive debate across the Department.
Part of the approach is to reverse the approach used by the agency to be person-focused, rather than the traditional process-focused approach - focusing on individual needs and differences rather than forcing people into a narrow set of boxes.
Some of the challenges the agency is facing is aligning the 'walk with the talk' within bureaucracy, shifting entrenched values and practices and addressing the expectations of clients.
Jo says that if you reframe a cross-agency problem into a pitch - the benefits to specific agencies - it becomes easier to get them to engage and participate, even 'own' the problem.
She says that the traditional approach of having a central agency coordinate the involvement of other agencies to address client problems is evolving into a more decentralised approach where any agency might take the lead.
She says this can be very hard to achieve, but is well worth the journey.
Next up is Paul Ronalds from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Paul is talking about 'wicked problems' - those that involve enormous complexity and require significant involvement by a range of players to address effectively.
He says that non-government organisations are becoming very significant players in resolving these problems and have by some quarters been called 'the new superpower' (though he doesn't feel they are at that level).
Paul says there are cultural barriers in government around engaging community organisations and corporations to participate in public policy issues - including deep seated beliefs that they have limited skills in this area.
He also says there can be limited (NGO and corporate) stakeholder engagement skills in government, as well as political barriers and the challenges of a top-down hierarchy that can make it more difficult for government agencies to participate in genuine collaboration.
Now up is Monica Barone, Chief Executive Officer of the City of Sydney, talking about the challenges of achieving collaboration and policy alignment across city, state and federal levels.
She says that the challenges of urbanisation are best addressed by urban policy developed collaboratively by all levels of government.
She says that some solutions must be delivered 'in place' and requires a public sector that works collaboratively - local government holds much of the data needed to facilitate services delivered by other levels.
Monica is talking about the Sustainable Sydney 2030 ongoing consultation and ways they've built on this, such as the Matching grants program.
Monica is going through the policy areas which could benefit from policy alignment by all levels of government in Australia - including bike use, housing targets and greenhouse gas reduction plans. She is demonstrating the waterfall charts used to plan the progressive targets and goals in Sydney and discussing how to broaden the policy approach based on collaboration by all levels of government.
She is showing a fantastic 3D graphical model of the energy use across the City of Sydney, based on floor space and (confidential) electricity use. It clearly demonstrates the high and low areas of use in a geospatial sense, evidence very useful in policy formation.
We're now onto the Q&A session - then I'm back to the airport for the flight home.
Comments from the IPAA NSW 2011 State Conference - Session 1 | Tweet |
I am spending the day at the Institute of Public Administration Australia's (IPAA) NSW State Conference, which is themed "The future course of modern government".
There's a packed room and a great speaker lineup, featuring commentators such as Ross Dawson and Martin Stewart-Weeks, leading (past) public servants such as Peter Shergold and the Premier of NSW, Barry O'Farrell.
I am participating in a panel discussion (straight after the Premier) along with James Kleimt of the Queensland Police Force Media team, Paula Bray from the Powerhouse Museum and James Dellow of Headshift.
Due to a late plane I arrived slightly late, catching the end of Ross Dawson's presentation, however a few points still stood out for me - citizens expect more from the public service and the public service has access to the tools to deliver, as long as we understand that governance is not only about controlling risk, but also about innovation and improving delivery while managing risk.
Ross provided examples such as the US intelligence Services' Intellopedia and the New Zealand police wiki Act - highlighting that the tools a modern government needs to employ are available and already in widespread use. The challenge for agencies is to normalize their use, find better ways to use technology to enable public service and combine 'play' with work.
Ross also highlighted that today's young people have an incredible array of technology at home - should they expect less in the office? As school leavers are increasingly normalized into, and expect access to technology to enable them to be more efficient, public services much provide the tools required to enable them to work effectively - which also brings productivity gains to government.
Now speaking is Christian Bason, the Director of MindLab in Denmark, speaking to us live via video from the US. He agrees that society is in the midst of a 'perfect storm' of technology that needs to be understand and adopted by organisations if they wish to remain relevant and effective in a fast changing world.
Christian is giving an example of a hospital in Scandinavia, where a gourmet chef noticed that the hospital was throwing out large quantities of food that was not eaten by patients. When he put himself in the position of patients he realized the food was unattractive, portions were too large and it was provided at set times regardless of patient hunger levels.
He tried introducing a new menu, with smaller portions, more attractive and nutritious food and better presentation at more flexible times.
He found that food costs declined by 30% - mainly use to less waste. He also instituted a study on the impact of nutritious food on patient stay times in hospital, which found that the average stay time was reduced by a day by providing more nutritious food presented in a way that people would eat willingly.
Christian sees this example as how public servants can put themselves in the shoes of citizens - looking at the outcomes, rather than the processes - in order to deliver better outcomes for society.
He says that by integrating citizens into the policy and service delivery process and by placing public servants in the shoes of citizens, much better outcomes can be achieved.
Christian says we need to move from public management to new public processes, creating solutions with people, not for them.
He advocates design-driven processes, employing new modes of qualitative knowledge, with a broader scope of people.
Christian says that "co-creation can enable co-production". Public servants can no longer create solutions as 'experts', we need to integrate the wisdom of citizens, leveraging their own skills and resources. He calls this employing "professional empathy", embedding ourselves in the experiences of citizens to avoid creating 'expert systems' which negatively impact on citizens or counter the effectiveness of programs (such as health systems where the amount of paperwork and stress increases patient sickness).
Christian asks "how do we rehearse what the future may look like?" saying we need to analyse needs better and consider the design of our services, integrating a broader range of skills and experience, creating and testing prototypes in partnership with citizens to identify unintended benefits and negative consequences.
Christian asks whether dissatisfaction should be the new status quo for public sector ethos. Dissatisfaction drives innovation and change in a way no other approach can do.
Peter Achterstraat, NSW Auditor-General, is now saying that public servants must create their own luck, using professional empathy and innovation to improve policies and services.
He is now introducing Peter Shergold to provide the third keynote address of the morning (no questions allowed so far).
Peter says that for the last three years he has been a liberated public servant, less constrained on what he can publicly say, however he remains committed to the values of the public service.
He says he is excited about the capability of social media to reinvent egovernment and the benefits of co-creation and co-production to reinvigorate public participation in democracy.
However Peter says that today he wants to talk about the historic values and traditions of public service that must be maintained into the future, to be "the boring old tart".
For example, by "non-partisan" doesn't mean that public servants should be non-political, it means that the public service must be able to serve consecutive governments without fear or favour. As public servants it is important to have an interest in politics and the political processes, however that should not remove the capability to offer confidential, robust, frank and fearless advice or carry out the decisions of the parliament.
Peter says it is crucial that the parliament make the decisions and the public service carry out their policies with commitment - even where public servants may consider the government as being "courageous".
Peter says that the public service needs to get serious about merit - it is not simply an outcome. He says he has lost count of the times in the Commonwealth public service that selection criteria has discriminated against people in the community or private sector as it was virtually incomprehensible to them.
He says there are four core values he believes the public service should embody.
Integrity (honesty, consistency, impartiality and acting in the public interest). Honesty to the system and consistency that delivers appropriate outcomes rather than turning the public service into a 19th century industrial machine - including flexibility in the system for particular geographic and demographic needs. He says that with impartiality we must remain responsive to community needs and when acting in the public interest, bearing in mind that it is the elected government who decides what is in the public interest (advised by public servants), not the public service directly.
Trust (respectful, empathic, compassionate, collaborative).
Respectful and empathetic towards citizens and collaboration "across the extending range of actors that are now involved in the delivery of government", not simply with other agencies.
Service (quality-focused, citizen-centric, innovative, flexible).
Peter is absolutely of the view that it is better for a government to have no new policy at all than for a government to announce new policies and have the public service fail to deliver it on time and on budget. He says that the public service, by failing to be quality-focused, damages its own reputation and that of government - leading to issues in the future. Peter days that citizens are not customers, representing a profound difference in approach. "Yes we deliver with people's rights, but they come with responsibilities. Yes we deliver people benefits, but they come with obligations".
Peter says that often the Commonwealth would deliver pilot programs, pilot not due to the goal of evaluating approaches and expanding successful trials, but due to lack of funds for a full delivery. He says we need to be serious about pilots.
Accountability (responsibility, transparency, confidentiality)
Peter says that transparency is vital and more transparency is needed. He says that the information collected by government with public money should be licensed under creative commons and be available to the public.
However he says the decision on what is to be released should be decided by parliament (in a broad sense). The public service requires confidentiality to deliver frank and fearless advice to government.
in his final thoughts on the NSW public service, Peter says we need to address the vertical rigidities in government hierarchy. We must give greater power to people who hold more junior positions in the public service.
He also says that incresingly public servants will work with others to deliver public service and the public servants must develop facilitation skills to be successful.
In the end, Peter says, we will know the NSW public service will be successful when it is known worldwide for attracting the best people and delivering effective outcomes within the core values of public service.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Guest post: Are Australian politicians really comfortable with Gov 2.0 and social media? | Tweet |
Steve Davies posted a very interesting piece on OzLoop last week, which with his permission I've posted below.
The original, including comments from one of Australia's Senators, is available at http://apsozloop.ning.com/profiles/blogs/are-australian-politicians
Are Australian politicians really comfortable with Gov 2.0 and social media?
I thought a lot about this post. On the one hand it is political, on the other it is about how the community and politicians talk and listen to each other. The essence of Gov 2.0 if you will.
So my focus in this post is on the dynamic we have all witnessed. The politics and issues associated with the example I use - climate change and the proposed carbon tax - are being chased around the back garden by my dogs. That should keep both those elements in check.
The contrast between members of the Australian Government and the United States Government could not be more stark.
In the United States we see Townhall @ The White House. In Australia we see a very traditional and controlling approach over Climate Change and, more specifically, the proposed introduction of the carbon tax. If ever there was a case for early discussion and engagement with the whole community using social media the carbon tax was it.
Instead, what we see is a flurry of political activity and committee work, a poor flow of information and, of course, the media making a lot of commentary. Sitting somewhere in the middle of all this activity is the community.
What is challenging, however, is that if the essence of Gov 2.0 is talking and listening then it seems pretty clear that we have to ask questions about the behaviour of our politicians.
We all know there are politicians who are passionate advocates of Gov 2.0. However, the fact that we see nothing like the Townhall @ the White House and see such a traditional approach to the question of climate change and the proposed climate tax is a clear indication that most of our politicians (and their advisors), are locked into a set of behaviours that are, well, very Gov 1.0.
While it is the job of politicians to be political over questions of policy and direction, the time may now be with us when our politicians need to be un-political about when and how they talk and listen to the community. So the bottom line is that for Gov 2.0 to really work the quality of the talking and listening needs to improve between members of the community, public service and politicians.
For many of our politicians that probably means a changing professional practices and habits built up over years. So no, at present many of our politicians are not comfortable with Gov 2.0 and social media.
Wouldn't it be nice to actually sit down over coffee with a few and explore how to improve the quality of listening and talking and take it from there. The vast majority are great face-to-face. Just like the rest of us.
Check out Expert Labs.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
What type of rubbish service should we expect from government? | Tweet |
A couple of weeks ago I had one of the most traumatic experiences a citizen can have with government, the type that can shake one's faith with the system to the core...
My garbage wasn't collected on schedule.
Just like any other week I put out my garbage and recycling bins on Wednesday night.
On Thursday morning, when going out to collect my bins, I found to my horror that while my recycling had been collected, my garbage bin, alone of all the bins on the street, remained full of rubbish.
Naturally I did what any other 21st century citizen would do - I completed the form on the Canberra Connect website for reporting incidents and making complaints.
The website emailed me a nice little receipt:
Your correspondence has been received by the ACT Government and referred to the relevant business unit for action and/or response.
Your reference number is: #xxxxxx-xxxxxx
You should expect a response within 10 working days.
A response to a simple, and fairly standard, online request within ten working days...
Being the optimistic type, I left my bin out in the hope that the garbage collectors would be notified and return for it over the next few days.
Six days later, on the following Wednesday (garbage night again) I received the following email reply:
Dear Craig,
I am so sorry about the delay.
When you bin has not been collected please call Cleanaway on 62601547 and they will arrange a collection ASAP.
I hope this helps.
The email was almost totally useless in resolving the present issue. My garbage was meant to be out that night anyway, and was collected as normal the following morning.
Is this the type of rubbish response we should expect from government?
Promising a response to an online form within ten days. Responding in six days. Certainly the ACT government significantly exceeded their performance requirement!
However best practice for email responses is closer to two hours than ten days. Even this is very slow compared to the response timeframe normally allowed for telephone calls.
Realistically shouldn't government agencies be aiming for timeframes significantly better than ten days for emails and online forms?
Shouldn't they use the benefits of digital automation to build databases of standard responses to common questions, which would allow new questions to be analysed and responded to with little or no human intervention?
It does make me wonder. Can government agencies expect to successfully introduce advanced Government 2.0 practices - featuring extensive and robust real-time and near-real time interactions with citizens - when they've not yet mastered the art of responding to email or online forms in reasonable timeframes?
Monday, July 11, 2011
Building an innovation framework in a government agency | Tweet |
As such, with the release of the Public Sector Innovation Toolkit, I thought I'd share an approach to managing innovation in a government agency.
While I developed it a couple of years ago and have pushed it up through 'suggestions' channels in a number of workplaces, I have yet to receive any feedback from senior management in any agency or have the system see the light of day.
Maybe it's that bad :)
However, I thought someone might be able to use aspects of it, so here it is.
Innovation framework for public sector agencies
The 'secret' of innovation
The secret to innovation is that there is no secret. Virtually every individual is innovative and engages in innovation on a regular basis.
What is a challenge, however, is effectively distributing innovations - communicating them beyond an individual, small team, branch or agency.
While government agencies have well-developed channels for communicating official matters, many are still developing system for the formal exchange and normalisation of new ideas (such as change management networks).
This lack of rigorous systems is also often reflected in the level of sharing of research, policies, templates and best practice approaches within (and between) agencies - all of which often happen informally where formal channels are weak.
To strengthen the practice of innovation in government agencies, it is necessary to strengthen the formal structures for assessing, distributing, reporting and rewarding innovation. This aids a cultural shift towards the support of innovative thinking as it becomes thinking that is valued, measured and rewarded by the organisation.
A formal framework for innovation assessment and advocacy
Most organisations require senior support to move innovation from being a clandestine pursuit by teams on the outer edges of agency systems to being part of the systems themselves.
This starts with executive sponsorship, supported by a review and recommendation framework (to qualify and promote good innovations) and a network designed to funnel innovations into the formal system for review, acceptance and propagation.
I see the following bodies and appointments as critical:
- Executive Innovation Champion (Dep Sec/FAS level), empowered to support, advocate for and resource appropriate innovations across the Department.
- Innovation Review Committee (EL2/AS/FAS level), able to review innovations from the perspectives of areas of the business (Finance, HR, Procurement, Communications, IT, Policy, etc) and to recommend to the Executive which innovations should receive support and sponsorship.
- Innovation Mentors (EL1/EL2/AS level), equipped to support and empower junior staff to develop their innovative ideas to a level where they are pilotable/executable. This group will require some training in change management and approaches to innovation. Organisations such as ASIX (www.asix.org.au) can support this type of requirement.
- Innovation Network (all levels) of people interested in innovative practice – can be an informal network, but requires a convenor with the support and resourcing to organise speakers and regular events for discussing and evaluating different innovative ideas from across the public sector, private sector and corporate world. Can link as an affiliate to the Public Sector Innovation Network. The Convenor should be on the Innovation Review Committee to link the network back to the formal process.
Agencies should devise and adopt some form of innovation process which acts as a funnel to encourage staff to:
- conceptualise (ideation) new ways of working,
- develop innovations in a structured manner, identifying the benefits and savings,
- review them thoughtfully with peer support (identifying and mitigating risks),
- develop a pilot implementation to test them, and
- work through a formal review process which may lead to adoption.
This process could be based on similar processes adopted elsewhere, and on suggestions from the MAC Innovation products, using a template system for each stage from ideation, development, risk assessment, business case, peer review, pilot test, implementation and change management.
Agencies should also prepare innovation toolkits to provide innovators with the support necessary to critically review their innovative ideas – and discard all that are unworkable before significant resourcing is spent on them. Again this can be based on similar processes adopted elsewhere, and on the Public Sector Innovation Toolkit.
An ideation review and prioritisation system should also be developed or adopted that provides significant transparency through the process.
It should supports a visible progression of ideas and the capability for all staff to access, suggest ideas and contribute to existing ideas (supporting a peer review process). The system should then allow reporting back as ideas are rejected, reformed, implemented or partially implemented.
Several US Departments have developed these types of systems for staff and some information is available on them, although they are not publicly visible, such as the Department of Homeland Security’s IdeaFactory (www.whitehouse.gov/open/innovations/IdeaFactory) and the Department of Health and Human Services’ IdeaLab (www.whitehouse.gov/open/innovations/idealab).
The most visible ideation systems are public-facing, such as IdeaStorm from Dell (www.ideastorm.com) and Starbucks’ My Starbucks Idea (www.starbucks.com/coffeehouse/community/mystarbucksidea).
DAFF’s i-Gen system is an example of an agency system designed to manage this process. While it is quite manual (and there's lots of potential to automate parts of the system), it has achieved the most important goal. It works.
Of course, it would be even more beneficial if an agency developing an automated ideation system would share it with other agencies - leveraging the knowledge and experience and supporting cross-agency innovation.
Culture
Innovation flourishes in cultures which commensurately reward success and counsel (but do not ‘criminalise’) failures.
Given government departments already have governance processes to manage and mitigate potential failures (risks), agencies should investigate appropriate rewards for innovations based on their effective impact on agency costs and activities.
As cash rewards are difficult to issue in the APS, and demonstrably are not the most valued reward approach for many staff, alternatives such as recognition and training opportunities should be explored.
Concepts such as personal notes, innovations awards, opportunities to spend time with senior personnel (i.e. lunch with the CEO/Secretary or presenting the innovation to the executive) and similar recognition approaches have been used effectively in other organisations.
An appropriate selection of these could be adopted in any government agency through the innovation bodies suggested above - after consulting with staff to gain a view on the reward approaches which would most motivate them.
In fact, carrying out this staff consultation could be done using the same ideation system the agency intends to use (which breeds familiarity and comfort with the system and is a good example of 'eating one’s own dog food').
Resourcing
My view is that there needs to be a team allocated to managing the innovation system and encouraging cultural behaviour changes, just as there’s specific teams tasked with Procurement, Legal, FOI or other matters which impact on most staff.
The DAFF i-Gen system requires 1.5 full-time equivalent staff to manage. Note this is a partially manual process with a significant level of active internal advocacy.
I would contend that an agency would need to employ one full-time staff member (EL1 level), within a supportive team with a broad innovation objective. The individual would need to have strong experience in advocacy and change management.
There would also need to be appropriate funding and support to put the ideation system in place and manage the secretariat of the committees. With all of this in place I believe an agency can ramp up an effective innovation agenda in 1-2 years.
Agencies that adopted a more fragmented approach - asking existing staff to set aside time to design/manage and maintain an innovation agenda and system - would take much longer to achieve buy-in, embed in an organisation and see positive outcomes.
Saturday, July 09, 2011
The world needs new forms of journalism and news distribution | Tweet |
While this post is a little outside the usual topics I cover in this blog, I thought it touched on enough to publish it. Also it is so long that The Drum may not publish it as a comment on their article Murdoch kills paper, bodycount continues - and note that if it is published, I am not the only one that uses that particular username either. Other comments at The Drum or other news sources under the same username may not reflect my views and comments.
As I am a former paid journalist and author and a card carrying member of the Media and Arts Alliance (my card says 'journalist' as their membership system doesn't yet support the term 'blogger') I reckon that I have as much right to comment on this topic as anyone else.
I have also made a few edits that I could not do in the system for The Drum, so it is not quite the same as my article comment. Call it journalistic license.
The world needs new forms of journalism and news distribution.
Past models, such as small independent papers in each geographic region and, more recently, large international centralized machines with a focus on revenue not facts, do not work in an age where every individual can report and distribute to a global audience.
What must be preserved is the goal of journalism, to inform and enlighten people about the important events shaping their futures. Not the formats - news 'papers', 'radio' 'stations' or 'television' 'channels' or the funding system - advertising.
Where advertising is focused on influencing people through half-truths, opinion and spin, bright colours and sounds, sitting it alongside responsible, factually-based reporting of news is particularly dangerous. In my view the dominance of advertising and the gradual degradation of factual 'news' into 'infotainment' has a lot to do with the difficulties of placing facts and spin side by side on a daily basis.
News collectors and distributors in the future need to have a commitment to truth.
They need to be able to get their content to a global audience. Use relevant channels.
Licenses for spectrum or for citywide news distribution are dead. Cross-media laws are dead. I watch more television on newspaper sites than on television channels.
Governments have (and continue to) push media laws and licensing schemes which attempt to avoid anyone gaining too much power across mediums. This brings them enormous revenue and gives them implicit control over who may criticize them (too negative and we revoke your 'license', then the facts you distribute are suddenly illegally distributed and you can be prosecuted for distributing them).
Governments need to change this position. Separate the functions of the infrastructure (bandwidth and broadband) and the news gatherers and distributors (journalists).
The public merely needs to do what it is already doing - voting with its feet.
Regardless of the efforts of media moguls to increase their global reach and build news empires to control the messages people receive, or the efforts of government to manage and message messages to reflect what they wish believed, people now have the means to bypass the massive journo-political machine and source their news from anywhere at any time via the web.
The reality is that media organisations, as they exist today, are zombies - dead but still walking from their momentum, in search of new brains.
Governments, particularly repressive ones, are resorting to more and more drastic means to control their populations' access to the true free media - the Internet. Today they shut down services or cut the Internet to prevent the truth from spreading. Tomorrow they might ban universal literacy to limit the number of people who can read or think. They will also fail to contain journalistic freedom - which involves the freedom for any individual at any time anywhere in the world to report and analyze the events and happening of today and distribute it to anyone else in the world.
Journalism has ceased to exist as a profession of the type typified by lawyers, doctors and engineers. Today 'professional journalism' is literally defined by whether you are paid to write news for distribution to others. It does not represent a critical set of skills, a body of study or work or even a quality level that is met and must be maintained. in fact more degree-qualified journalists work on what journalists often consider 'the dark side' - corporate or public communications, spinning messages to journalists rather than reporting news.
All the claims of journalists that they perform an important function of interpreting current events for the common person is simply a way of saying 'we are smarter and more articulate than you - you cannot understand your world without our intervention'. That kind of arrogance in an age of almost universal literacy and high school education, simply because paid journalists have more time to read and write news, is both ludicrous and affronting to 'common people'.
Journalists need a better way of defining their profession if it is to remain one (potentially based on the quality of their writing and thinking and their independence from commercial concerns).
Media is an amazing mess at the moment, and has an enormous transformation ahead. The question is whether governments, media organisations and journalists will write and carry out this transformation, or it will occur regardless, dragging them reluctantly into a new world that none of them would choose.
Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Governments remain a long way away from citizen-centricity | Tweet |
Queensland's Office of the Information Commissioner recently released a new guideline, Accessing Government Information. A step-by-step guide for the general public (PDF).
This is a commendable publication, providing a plain English guide to the rights of consumers and explaining to citizens how to go about framing and asking for government information.
However...
Having guides for citizens on accessing government information, while useful, represents the old world rather than the new.
Employing Government 2.0 approaches we should reverse this approach. Rather than government telling citizens how to navigate agency processes to access public information, the public should be telling government how information should be presented to them.
The community should write the guidelines and have agencies follow them, rather than the current position where agencies act as the authoritative bodies and citizens the applicants.
Unfortunately I think governments remain a long way away from the goal of being citizen-centric. Particularly where it relates to public data.
Monday, July 04, 2011
Should government agencies embrace co-production for policy and services? | Tweet |
Ovum has published an interesting article by Steve Hodgkinson on Co-production: the new face of public services.
In the article Hodgkinson concludes that,
Agencies now need to nurture and embrace co-production by design, or risk either failing to harness this new resource or being left behind like old-style monopolists in an increasingly dynamic and competitive public services market.
What do you think, do government agencies need to integrate the wisdom of crowds in the design of public policy and services?
Or do agencies need to focus on developing their own internal design capabilities, using tried and true engagement, consultation and test processes to fine tune public policies and services to community needs?
Friday, July 01, 2011
UK central government spending data released on data.gov.uk | Tweet |
data.gov.uk has dramatically revised its layout (for the better!) and recently released 557 datasets (1.8 million entries) representing all UK government spending over 25,000 pounds under the section Open Spending.
This represents a new milestone in open data releases around the world and provide a new range of insights into the financial decisions of the UK government.
Gov 2.0 Canberra lunch with Margaret Manning on 'beyond social media' - 13 July 2011 | Tweet |
July's Gov 2.0 Canberra lunch will feature a presentation by Margaret Manning, global CEO and co-founder of Reading Room, a digital communications agency with offices in London, Manchester, Australia and Singapore.
Margaret will be speaking about what comes beyond social media.
Full details are below.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Twitter for newsrooms - useful for government media professionals | Tweet |
If you're not watching the #gov2au hashtag, you might be interested in the latest support information from Twitter - how to use the service effectively for newsrooms.
Twitter for Newsrooms provides information on using Twitter to search for news sources and breaking news, how to tweet effectively and engage an audience, branding, publishing via Twitter and support information.
It contains a range of examples of how media professionals and organisations are using Twitter for news-gathering, filtering and distribution.
I recommend passing on the link to your media people and Ministerial media advisors.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Public Sector Innovation Toolkit released | Tweet |
The website is part of the APS-wide innovation agenda, designed to help public servants develop and apply innovative solutions.
Published under a Creative Commons Attribution license, the Innovation Toolkit is being used to,
As a living resource I expect to see the toolkit growing and maturing based on the feedback of its users as a world-class tool for public servants.
- provide information about the innovation process, tools and approaches that can support innovation in public sector organisations
- provide updates on developments in APS innovation
- provide links to relevant information and research
- discuss issues relating to public sector innovation
- ask for input
- highlight examples of innovation in the public sector.
Are telephones a natural medium for internet natives? | Tweet |
I wanted to share this interesting post discussing the challenges faced by people used to online communications technologies when attempting to use old technologies like the telephone.
Technology’s Child: Why 21st-Century Teens Can’t Talk On the Phone discusses how phones conversations are "both too slow and too fast" and don't provide mechanisms for thinking about and carefully editing what is said.
Will telephone ettiquette become a victim of the internet revolution, replaced by new skills?
Time will tell.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
European Union requires websites to make users 'opt-in' to website cookies | Tweet |
Cookies are small text files that websites store on a user's computer in order to reduce the need for users to enter information again and again. They are used in ecommerce sites to 'remember' what is in your shopping trolley, in social media sites to remember that you're logged in, to personalise content or advertisements based on your preferences and by many sites to provide anonymous website reports.
It is estimated that around 92% of websites use cookies. In fact it is hard to imagine the modern web without them.
However in 2009 the European Union decided as part of a 2009 amendment to their Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive that even though all modern web browsers allow users to choose to accept or refuse cookies, cookies may pose a privacy threat to individuals.
While the Directive doesn't explain why they may pose a threat, it states that cookies can be a useful tool and,
their use should be allowed on condition that users are provided with clear and precise information in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC about the purposes of cookies or similar devices so as to ensure that users are made aware of information being placed on the terminal equipment they are using. Users should have the opportunity to refuse to have a cookie or similar device stored on their terminal equipment.
In other words, when cookies are used for a legitimate purpose (though 'legitimate' is not clearly defined in the Directive), they can be used by websites provided that users are provided with an up-front method to view what each cookie is for and 'opt-out' of each cookie.
This directive was to be interpreted into law by European states by May 2011. So far only three countries have complied, Denmark, Estonia and the United Kingdom. The UK has also given webmasters twelve months to introduce appropriate opt-out controls on their websites, recognising the impact of their law. Other countries in the EU will introduce their cookie laws soon.
So OK, European websites using cookies now must have an opt-out provision for UK, Denmark and Estonian users and soon for all Europeans in the EU.
So where is the sting in the tail?
Firstly, these laws may apply to all websites that are viewable in European countries, as existing European privacy laws already require. This would mean that Google, Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites hosted in the UK, Asia or anywhere else in the world would need to change how they functioned due to European-only laws.
Under this interpretation (yet to be tested in court), all (hundred million plus) websites, whether ecommerce, news, information or government would have to comply.
That includes Australian government websites using cookies, including any using Google Analytics, 'share' tools, shopping carts or otherwise using cookies to store (even non-identifiable) information on users - even for a single session.
There is an alternative. Non-European websites could simply block Europeans from viewing their sites and therefore would not need to comply with the European law. That would present a very interesting geographic freedom-of-information ban, as well as damaging the businesses of many organisations and governments who want Europeans to access their websites.
The second concern is around how the opt-in approach to cookies must work.
There's no clear approach in the Directive and plenty of confusion on how the opt-in control should work. The suggested approaches in the UK are to use pop-ups (which most modern browsers automatically block) or to use an 'accordion' that appears at the top of all webpages, as is used by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) - the ugly block of text at the top of the website.
A more humorous implementation of a pop-up opt-in control is used on David Naylor's website - read the text.
The BBC has introduced an opt-in approach that accidentally managed to break the law while implementing it - by using a cookie to hide the message asking you to opt-in for cookies. Oops - they needed to have an opt-in for that too.
The third issue with this European directive is the impact on useful things websites do. It will become much harder to personalise content for users or report on websites. Indeed the impact of people opting out of cookies, therefore rendering all cookie-based reporting significantly more inaccurate, is already being tracked. The ICO's website has itself seen a 90% fall in recorded (tracked) traffic. This indicates that the ICO will no longer know what site users are doing and cannot as effectively optimise and improve their website. Magnify this across millions of websites.
For those who wish to learn more about European Cookie Laws, check out the short video below or read the The definitive guide to the Cookie law.
And, as always, I'd appreciate your thoughts - particularly on the questions below.
Has Europe become the Cookie Monster? Or is this a reasonable and appropriate step to improve user privacy?
Should Europe have the right to impose laws in their jurisdiction on the rest of the world? If not, should the rest of the world stop Europeans visiting our sites?
Monday, June 27, 2011
Turning open government petitions into policies in Latvia, using online banking to authenticate citizens | Tweet |
However thanks to Francis Irving, who posted an account in the My Society email list in the UK, forwarded to the OpenAustralia Community list in Australia, here's a very interesting mini case-study on one initiative in Latvia.
In this case the initiative was created outside of government, however has become part of their parliamentary and law-making process.
It involves using online banking accounts to identify users, in partnership with the major local banks. This is an approach I've not seen used anywhere else in the world.
It is a well-structured open government initiative and one that I think Australia could do well to model similar activities on.
I've quoted Francis' email below. To learn more, join the OpenAustralia Community list.
Francis Irving (posted 24/6/2011):
I just met Kristofs Blaus, who spent a year researching petition / online initiative projects across the world. i.e. things where citizens propose and vote on new laws.
He launched ManaBalss.lv (Eurosay.com) in Latvia two weeks ago. Already two laws are going into force entirely because of the site.
Six things you ought to know about it:
An article in English about it, but rare. Nobody has heard of this thing yet. Except you for being smart enough to be on this list ;) http://bnn-news.com/latvia%E2%80%99s-society-enormous-power-30587
- 2 days after launch, the president of Latvia promoted an initiative on the site because 20,000 people had signed it. It is to open the owners of offshore companies. Within 1 week of launch (i.e. last week!) it was passed in to law. http://eurosay.com/atveram-of-orus/show
You can watch for future ones being signed into law on this page: http://eurosay.com/initiatives/signed
(What self respecting e-democracy site doesn't have a specific, high profile page, just showing things it has got passed into law!)
- Within 2 weeks, a second initiative got enough support that both major groups in Parliament now support it (it'll become law after the recess in September). It's a meta-law - it makes the platform itself mandatory, so if any petition gets 10,000 authorised signatures, then the creator gets 5 minutes in Parliament to present it.
http://eurosay.com/atveram-saeimu-/show
- There is a workflow process for making sure the initiatives that get through are sensible (rather than tabloidy stuff that tends to be popular on the UK's no. 10 petition site)
- You write an original draft
- Comments by skilled volunteers tell you what is wrong with it.
- You can fix it up.
- Then you gather support. You get a URL. The initiative doesn't appear in an index on the site, you have to promote it yourself.
- When you get 100 people (they're going to up it to 1000 due to popularity)
- Some real volunteer lawyers make it into a proper, viable legal text in a PDF on the initiative page.
- It goes on the public site, where large numbers of people can back it.
- That process ensures that:
- It is a real proposal rather than aspirational
- It can regulated by legislation
- Technical details, such as if it requies a constitutional change it is written in the right form
- It's social. The GroupOn/PledgeBank nature of gathering support, and then later the petition nature of getting people to back finalised initiatives, both encourage spread. It links to your Facebook/Twitter so the initiatives can have a montage
- To ensure it can't be gamed, you authenticate yourself to the site using your online bank account (via your social security numebr). It launched (undemocratically!) with just one bank, but the others were then deseparate to be added.
- The site is now wildly popular. It trends all the time on Latvian Twitter. Politicians fall over themselves to back it. The media love it, as articles they publish about it get traffic from the site.
Notably the two people who made it are businessmen rather than programmers. The coding was done by staff at Kristofs's company.
Kristofs Blaus - business strategy, inventing new products
Jānis Erts - marketing (he made this fake metorite http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8326483.stm)
Obviously, the above formulae is easy to critique in the UK. But I'm not really interested in that kind of stop energy.
What is extraordinary is that the right combination done in the right way can be wildly successful. That is almost certainly true here.
If anyone on the list wants to help Kristofs do that, please email me privately.
Francis
Sunday, June 26, 2011
How much risk is really attached to cybercrime and hacking? | Tweet |
As a follow-up to my post last week Familiarity trumps understanding (dealing with Neophobiacs), John Sheridan has made me aware of a Sydney Morning Herald article by Chris Berg on One hack of a crime wave, or so they say.
The article argues that while claims have been made that online hacking and cybercrime industries are up to the size of Germany's economy (US$3 trillion per year), these are often made by consultants and, as a Microsoft report discovered, "the bulk of what we know comes from tiny surveys. The authors found at least 75 per cent of losses were extrapolated from just one or two unverified, cases."
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Familiarity trumps understanding (dealing with Neophobiacs) | Tweet |
Arthur C. Clarke, a famous science fiction and futurist once said,
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
I believe we reached that point quite some time ago in our civilisation. While most people watch television, drive cars, use electrical appliances, fly in jet aircraft, use computers and surf the internet, few understand how any of these technologies actually work, or the science that sits behind them.
In some cases many in society actively deny or denounce the science behind their everyday tools while still partaking of its benefits. They simply don't recognise or understand the disconnect.
Over in the Gov 2.0 Australia Group, Stefan Willoughby recently stated, in reference to Eventbrite and other online tools,
I just don't understand why it is so hard to convince people that these tools are valuable and not nearly as risky as they think.
Many of us working in the online space have encountered similar attitudes over the last 10-15 years, often from otherwise highly intelligent people.
I can't legitimately call this behaviour 'risk-aversion'. Those refusing to consider the use of online tools or expressing concern over the 'risks' often have little or no understanding of whether there are any risks (and of what magnitude), or whether the risks of these tools are less than the risks of the tools they are using now.
It is simply a 'fear of things new to me', without any intellectual consideration of the relative risks and benefits. This is a known phobia, Neophobia - the irrational fear of anything new.
I've thought about this issue a great deal over the years and tried a number of tactics to educate people on the uses and actual risks of online tools.
After 16 years I've come to the conclusion that explaining how online tools work simply isn't the right way to overcome irrational fears in most cases.
People don't really want to understand how the tools of our civilisation function - they just want to feel confident that they work consistently and in known ways.
In other words, familiarity trumps understanding.
To begin experimenting with a technology many people simply want assurance that 'others like me' have used it previously in a similar manner safety and successfully. Their comfort with its use then grows the more they use the tool themselves and the less new it feels.
They don't really care about the science or machinery under the hood.
Therefore as internet professionals our task isn't to share knowledge on the mechanics of online tools. It is to build a sense of comfort and familiarity with the medium.
This doesn't mean we shouldn't use evidence, explain how online tools differ and can be used for different goals or effectively identify and mitigate the real risks. This remains very, very important in familiarising people with the online world.
However we should spend less time on the technical details, explaining the machinery of how information is transmitted over the internet, how servers secure data, or how dynamic and static web pages are written and published. These things 'just work'.
Instead we need to focus on helping people use the tools themselves, provide examples of use by others and demonstrate practically how risks are managed and mitigated. Support people in understanding and trusting that each time they push a particular button a consistent result will occur.
Once people are familiar with a particular online tool and no longer consider it new it becomes much easier to move on to an accurate benefit and risk assessment and move organisations forward. Even if they don't really understand how it all works.
Friday, June 24, 2011
ACT (finally) outlines open government plan | Tweet |
I am writing this piece as a resident in the ACT, with shades of my Gov 2.0 advocacy cap. And I should say, as a partially disappointed resident.
The ACT Chief Minister, Katy Gallagher, has finally laid out the ACT Government's vision for open government.
It's about time. The ACT has been a tailender at the State and Territory level for quite some time in the open government space, with occasional sparks of excitement quickly fading back into embers.
However rather than an auspicious start focusing on the benefits of openness to citizens and the Territory, Gallagher's media release focuses on political benefit.
"The plans outlined in a Ministerial Statement to the Assembly today, are set to make the ACT Cabinet the most open in the nation"The most open cabinet in the nation... Not the most open government, or even the most effectively and sustainably open government.
I commend the step the ACT government is taking to establish an "open government website" - although a three month timeframe, if the website is starting now, leaves little room to build something meaningful or matching citizen expectations. I hope that the developers can pull off a miracle and develop something of substance, however I feel for them and the timeline they've been given.
I get worried at the announcement of a "commitment to hold a Virtual Community Cabinet on Twitter next month".
Twitter is not an effective mechanism for this type of endeavour. I would prefer to see a liveblog, supported by moderation, through a tool with strong archival and management mechanisms and on a more broadly used medium - such as CoverItLive.
And the step to "release a weekly report on key issues discussed and decisions taken by the Cabinet, starting in the first week in July" is a classic Gov 1.0 tactic transferred online.
The government could have been doing this type of informing at any time using other mediums - newsprint, radio or even television. Placing a transcript or list of topics and decisions online doesn't add much and certainly isn't in the spirit of Gov 2.0.
ACT has the highest concentration of Government 2.0 talent in Australia - with many Commonwealth agencies now launching and successfully managing these initiatives.
We should be the most advanced open government jurisdiction in Australia.
However this announcement by the Chief Minister doesn't support this view.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Empowering citizens to lead public governance reforms in developing and developed nations | Tweet |
One of the assumptions often applied to government funding for aid and governance reform programs is that the funding must be granted to established corporations, NGOs or not-for-profits that have hierarchies, governance structures, offices and methodologies for achieving outcomes.
It only makes sense - when investing government money into development activities there needs to be ways to mitigate risks and ensure accountability.
Surely a well-established organisation, with structural integrity and processes, must be well-equipped to manage and deliver change outcomes.
A ten-year research study from the Development Research Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability (Citizenship DRC), has found that the assumption that an established organisation is better equipped to deliver governance reform is just that - an assumption.
As reported by Nick Benequista in the website of the Institute of Development Studies, the Citizenship DRC's report, Blurring the Boundaries: Citizenship Action Across States and Societies (PDF):
"argues that "the 'good governance' agenda that has persisted in international development since the early 1990s is itself due for a citizen-led upheaval."
Benequista's article, How a citizen-led approach can transform aid to governance, points to over 150 cases highlighted on the Citizenship DRC website where bottom-up citizen-led initiatives have been effective in achieving governance change in different countries, circumstances and on different issues.
Perhaps this is an area we need to explore more of in Government 2.0.
How can we rebalance the relationship between governments and citizens through development funding to achieve better outcomes.
Is giving money to established organisations the best approach, or do governments need to listen more directly to citizens and listen less to intermediaries.
With the emerging knowledge and experience in this area around the world it will be interesting to see whether Australian governments are willing - or able - to reframe their approach to development.
To finish with Benequista's words,
The good governance agenda of the 1990s has already overstayed its usefulness. The question now is whether what comes next will finally give citizens the role they have been demanding.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Could the fear of adopting social media be due to a fear of death? | Tweet |
He provided an interesting view on how people identify for or against certain policies and worldviews, how bad humans are at accessing risks, and illustrated how it was possible to for someone to move from a position of 'this is new and different' to 'It will kill me' in less than ten steps.
He discussed how this type of powerful fear can dramatically influence how willing people are to consider new ideas, accept change or adopt new approaches, as well as how it distorts risk management processes, greatly exaggerating the risks of the 'new and different' and underrating the risks of the 'tried and true'.
One of his points was that the resistance to the use of social media may be due to a fear of death.
Here's an example of how a typical thought process for a senior official in a government agency might go...
- Social media channels are new and different
- I don't understand these channels well enough to understand the risks and pitfalls
- As I don't understand the risks and pitfalls, I could make mistakes, or allow mistakes to be made
- Mistakes could embarrass or diminish the reputation of the agency or the Minister
- If the agency or Minister are negatively impacted by use of social media in my area, I will be held responsible
- If I am held responsible for a social media mistake I will lose the respect of my manager and confidence of my agency and Minister
- If I lose the respect and confidence of my manager, agency and Minister, I could lose my job
- If I lose my job I could lose my house, family and friends
- If I am left homeless and friendless, I am likely to die.
- Therefore, if I use or allow the use of social media channels I am likely to die.
What do you think - is this a far-fetched or realistic explanation for fear of social media?
And what is really at the root of this fear?
By the way - I also presented at the forum (not on as dramatic a topic) and you can see my presentation on Slideshare here.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Ignoring social media is a 'strategic error of the most basic nature' - Chief of US Naval Operations Adm | Tweet |
In the US the military has been an active adopter of social media, with online channels seen as a critical theatre of influence. Most members of the US armed forces (with a few necessary exceptions) are encouraged and guided on how to communicate, collaborate and represent their nation and US forces in a effective manner through social media channels.
The article reported that,
"When you empower your workforce to be communicators, you must understand that you won't always agree with what they say or perhaps how they say it. You can certainly set reasonable boundaries--we tell our Sailors not to disclose classified information, and we expect everyone to treat everyone else with dignity and respect. But you can't dictate everything your people say," said Roughead.
The article also touched on the challenges of integrating social media into a hierarchical organisation,
Roughead said leaders must help the workforce navigate the blurring line between professional and personal, set policies that strike a balance between accountability and empowerment, and guard against the temptation of "making it about you," and not the organization.
It will be very interesting to see what the current review of social media use in Australia's armed forces says in comparison - and how they execute.
Delib's downunder digital democracy documentary deliberations definitely defining | Tweet |
Delib's Chris Quigly has released the edited Australian digital democracy mini-documentary that he recorded earlier this year with a number of Government 2.0 leaders (plus myself) across Australia.
The nine minute mini-documentary provides an interesting perspective on Gov 2.0 approaches and trends in Australia. It also provides a defining view from the outside - how people in other countries might view what is happening in Australia.
I have not embedded the video below as it is worth reading Chris' post about the mini-documentary for context.
I cannot wait for the blooper reel! (well OK I can)
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Dutch Civil Servant 2.0 books now available in English | Tweet |
I've admired and followed the work of Davied, a Dutch Civil Servant, for several years now. Davied has been using the internet for about as long as I have and (at least in my opinion) is one of the leading thinkers regarding Government 2.0 in Europe.
Davied was named Dutch Information Professional of the Year in 2009 and voted second most influential person in local Dutch government in 2010.He participates broadly in global discussions on Government 2.0 through sites such as Govloop and is active on Twitter as @Davied in both Dutch and English. Davied also runs the 6,500 member Civil Servant 2.0 network in The Netherlands and is an active proponent for Pleio, a free open-source system for governments to rapidly roll out Government 2.0 initiatives.
Over 25,000 copies of Davied's two books have been circulated in The Netherlands and Belgium. Now they are in English, I expect to see this increase rapidly.
To paraphrase Davied's blog post Dutch Civil Servant 2.0 books translated in English,
The book "Civil Servant 2.0" (originally released in Dutch in 2008) explains the significance of web 2.0 for government in terms of its internal organisation, its relationship with the public, and the working methods of the civil servant. It also contains a lot of examples from the Netherlands.
"Civil Servant 2.0 beta" (2009), is an extension of Davied's first book, providing a practical interpretation of the concepts expressed in the first book, and contains action points and ideas for government organisations to develop their own strategies for government 2.0.
I regard both books a must-read for Government 2.0 practitioners and would-be practitioners in Australia.
Download Civil Servant 2.0 and Civil Servant 2.0 Beta for free
Friday, June 10, 2011
AGIMO launches Government 2.0 Register for Commonwealth government | Tweet |
I've been a bit behind on blogging in the last two weeks due to my new job, however expect to get back into the flow next week.
In the meantime, this week has seen the important announcement of the Government 2.0 Register from AGIMO, which attempts to collect all of the Australian Government's social media initiatives into a single place.
The Register makes it much easier for agencies to compare and contrast executions, learn by others' innovation and build business cases for their own activities (where decision-makers are unaware of how much is actually going on).
While any list of this type is almost certainly going to miss a few initiatives, AGIMO has done an excellent job of identifying what is going on and is supporting user updating - meaning that agencies can self-report activities (or third parties can report for them).
Given the struggle I've had at time maintaining lists of Australian Gov 2.0 initiatives - as many agencies don't announce their public activities as publicly as they could - I'm very happy to see AGIMO taking on this challenge with their much greater resources and as they're actually paid to know what's going on so they can advise people effectively.
It is vital for Australian Governments to have internal self-knowledge of what their various agencies are doing, and sharing, collaborating and borrowing from the successes of others.
Otherwise we'd constantly be reinventing the wheel and waste public money hand over fist.
I hope we'll see similar initiatives outside of Gov 2.0 as well, enabled by Gov 2.0 platforms. Such as agency recruitment sites, research activities and reports, procurement practices, financial systems, organisational policies (starting with social media policies) and other areas where government agencies can share information in ways which improves collective knowledge and skills, reduces redundant work and saves money.
Who knows - maybe in the future new agencies will simply be able to pick from a 'shopping list' of best practice policies and approaches across government!
I'll keep updating my Twitter list with all the additional accounts AGIMO has identified, and with a bunch of others I've found - when I have spare time to do so.
Monday, June 06, 2011
Talking about Twitter | Tweet |
They attempt to analyse and 'place' Twitter on the spectrum of human communication - discussing whether the service is more like text or like speech.
They also discuss the potential impacts of Twitter and other digital mediums on our brain chemistry and behaviour (which, incidentally, are affected by everything we do and learn).
I personally believe the best analogy to Twitter is thinking, not speech or text.
Twitter involves millions of individuals sharing small pieces of data at irregular intervals. Taken together they form a mechanical stream of consciousness, layers of data, thoughts and experiences, most of it occurring outside of the conscious level of Twitter users (who don't follow these accounts or simply aren't looking at Twitter at the right time).
Many tweets - pieces of data - simply flow through the system and disappear, much like random thoughts.
However some contain data with interesting information pieces, such as news stories and events. These trigger some individual to click through to the full article in a webpage or video - a 'memory'.
At other times Tweets form into conversations, between individuals or groups - frequently under a hashtag. While many of these conversations end unresolved, some build new knowledge on existing information or otherwise generate new ideas, leading to a further cascade of realisations.
The goal of all of these tweets is not necessarily to be lasting monuments to human achievement, or even to be relevant to most Twitter users. Some are signposts to more comprehensive content, memory markers for the web, others are processes of rationalisation, realisation or decision-making, or instant reports and analysis on 'now'.
If humans developed mechanical telepathy and connected several hundred million people together I believe the flow of content would not be dissimilar to the flow of information and dross across Twitter.
In fact, if we invented mechanical telepathy, Twitter might be a excellent medium for the transition of ephemeral and fast changing thoughts, using tools like hashtags to tie together sequences.
I've attached links to the pieces John and Kerry brought to my attention below, together with several student views on Twitter and several interesting infographics:
- The Twitter Trap
- Why Twitter’s Oral Culture Irritates Bill Keller (and why this is an important issue)
- Is Twitter writing, or is it speech? Why we need a new paradigm for our social media platforms
- Jarvis: News articles sometimes a ‘luxury’ for stories already covered live
Thoughts about Twitter from several students in the Advanced Broadcast Journalism course at the University of Canberra:
- My Time in the Twittersphere
A Semester in the Twittersphere: Academic blog post - The Twitter Revolution
Thursday, June 02, 2011
Coping with the challenges of two-speed government agencies | Tweet |
A second issue arose on Twitter related to a response by @QPSMedia to a question. The QLD Police Media Unit stated publicly that Grubb had been interviewed but not arrested.
Unfortunately this was untrue at the time. Grubb had been placed under arrest. @QLDMedia corrected their statement as soon as they were made aware of the changed situation (and took a little flak over their correction for "being too informal" - but that's the value of Twitter, short, fast and personable).
My understanding in this case is that the Queensland Police Media Unit had checked and obtained high level clearance for the original 'interview' tweet. As far as they had known the original information was correct at the time of tweeting.
I'm not about to criticise @QPSMedia for providing information they believe is correct at the time and then amend as soon as the error is recognised - that's actually very good practice. Frankly, considering the Queensland Police is a 24-hour organisation with 15,000 staff and over 5.2 million interactions with the public each year, it is unreasonable to assume that every interaction will be perfect.
Even if you could effect a communications accuracy rate of 99.999% (with humans mind you, not machines) this would still leave room for one mistake each week (52 per year).
What this particular situation does highlight for me is a major challenge for government agencies as they begin adopting social media. They are becoming two-speed organisations.
The small teams in agencies that manage online channels and engage via social media are developing the culture, systems and processes to support rapid, open and less formal communication. They have, or are becoming, attuned to how to communicate effectively online and often provide broader advice and support to other teams in using these channels.
However the areas that haven't embedded social media in their toolkit - the much larger 'rumps' of these agencies - are still operating on pre-internet systems and timeframes. Their focus isn't speed, but quality and diligence. They seek to ensure that information is triple checked before it is announced and that policies and communications are carefully deliberated and crafted to be precisely accurate in every particular.
This means that whenever there is a need to respond quickly to public needs in a crisis or event, the social media team is ready and able to rise to the challenge (as @QPSMedia did in the Brisbane floods). However they may still struggle to source relevant, accurate and timely information from the rest of their organisation (as did @QPSMedia in the example I first provided).
This may create communications and engagement breakdowns or slowdowns, leave agency social media teams looking ineffective or evasive and damage their ability to manage online relationships and incidents in effective ways.
These slowdowns may ultimately impact on the overall reputations of agencies, leaving them looking slow or ineffectual.
So how do we manage these two-speed government organisations?
In the long-term we might see agencies capable of operating at internet speeds, with systems and processes that allow them to manage their data flow and quality needs while also meeting the public's desire for fast information.
In the short-term, as our organisations evolve, it is critical to consider bridging tactics to allow agencies to operate at both speeds - deliberative and internet.
These tactics can include preformatting messages wherever possible. For Twitter a former staff member in my team termed these 'Tweetplates', which could be pre-approved by management and then reused without additional approval requirements.
Material or entire websites that aren't time sensitive can be prepared, reviewed and approved ahead of time, then used as needed in crisis (such as a list of hospital locations or standard emergency instructions). They should be reviewed periodically to keep them up-to-date.
It is also possible to use delaying tactics - to a point. Rather than answering a question immediately it is acceptable to acknowledge the question, indicate that you're working on an answer and that you will provide the answer as soon as possible. Of course it remains necessary to actually answer the question when you said you would.
Are there other tactics I've missed? Add them in the comments below.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Where's the carrot for accessibility? | Tweet |
Possibly the hottest topic for Australian government web managers this year is 'accessibility', following on from the release of the Web Accessibility National Transition Strategy by AGIMO (the Australian Government Information Management Office).
The strategy confirmed the Australian Government's adoption of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2 (WCAG 2.0) from the World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the premier global standards setting organisation for the Internet, as well as the mandatory timeframe for accessibility compliance by government agencies.
In speaking to people within agencies who are not directly in web areas, but who are commissioning, funding and filling websites with content, for the most part I have found they were unaware of the government's accessibility requirements. A regular question was, "is this a new requirement?" and when told that accessibility requirements had been around for more than ten years and the Disability Discrimination Act since 1992, the reactions varied from surprise to anger - that they'd never been told before.
There's also uncertainty and some anxiety about meeting the requirements, which still look like black magic to those new to the topic. Is an accessible PDF good enough? How do we know if it is a decorative or meaningful image? Can we use Facebook if it isn't accessible? How do we add closed captions or transcripts to unscripted user-generated videos? Do we have to convert all PDF submissions to consultations into HTML? Are we funded for accessibility?
Agencies are coming to understand the need for accessibility, and the risks. However where's the carrots?
At the moment there's no real kudos for agencies that meet accessibility requirements. No recognition for complying, public mention of best practice examples or awards for high achievement.
Of course it could be argued that meeting the accessibility requirements is a given and no-one should be rewarded for complying with legal requirements they need to meet.
However humans are complex creatures and respond both to punishments and rewards. Public servants need acknowledgement for good work as much, if not more, than they require chastisement for bad.
I would like to see more opportunities to recognize the agencies who are best at meeting their accessibility obligations as well as mechanisms to identify and name the worst.
Do you agree - should there be acknowledgements for good accessibility practice?
Or is it a given that all agencies should meet without reward?
