Gov 3.0 conference Day 1

My post-conference blogging reports usually provide a summary of the presentations. I report this way so that I have a record of my conference notes in digital form that I can access at any time.

This time, I want to pick up a theme that developed during the course of the day at the Gov. 3.0 conference – how social media can be used in organisational settings to provide positive outcomes.

The two presentations that were of most interest to me were the ones from Mike Handes (IBM) and Jeffrey Levy (Environmental Protection Agency – USA).

Mike’s presentation (I think he used prezi) demonstrated how social media is applicable for both business and government. He gave some examples; the most interesting for me was the use of the IBM Connections in his own workplace and professional life. The product is a more systematic and comprehensive platform to Yammer. The key message was that content revolves around people. Social media in all its different forms allows people to get connected, at varying levels of intensity. Despite all the talk about the semantic web, I still believe it is people who derive meaning from information and turn that into knowledge. Using tools like Yammer and IBM Connections, it is possible to enhance people-to-people contact, facilitate information sharing and problem solving, allow meaningful search, and have these exchanges recorded for others to participate and learn from. Best of all, such systems allow for an organisation’s human and social capital to be effectively utilised. How I wish for a Yammer-style solution to my own workplace staff directory for example, or as a replacement for email-based thematic networks.

One interesting titbit of information from IBM was the observation that every week, 5.3 hours were lost by workers due to inefficient processes. Having completed my own study on information seeking behaviour, I can vouch for the fact that people are losing valuable time and getting frustrated by their inability to locate the right information at the right time.

Jeffrey Levy spoke about the use of web 2.0 as a major form of communication  in times of crisis. Web 2.0 is both immediate and accessible. The example he gave was the Japanese nuclear disaster earlier this year. Naturally, the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) was following developments and what impact the disaster might have on citizens and the environment in the USA. The EPA monitored and sampled radiation data over the USA. There was a daily report of information on the website. In addition, the web page was divided vertically in two – text (news) on the left and data on the right. Most people wanted to know what was going on so the daily news was adequate, but there were others looking for the data.

The data was provided, including a “heat map” of the USA which showed where the greatest number of hits on the EPA page were coming from. Naturally, the west coast of the USA was a flash point, as was the Boston-New York area on the east coast (shades of Three Mile Island?). People could click into the map and get state and localised information. There were also links to Twitter and Facebook.

The EPA created a Facebook page solely for this particular disaster. Information was delivered through this channel. The EPA also responded on Facebook to posts challenging or critical of the EPA message.  It was important for the EPA to maintain credibility and to enhance confidence in the information provided. Facebook posts would be repeated so that the message was regular and relatively immediate to people as they logged into Facebook during the course of a day.

The success of the crisis management communication delivery was in the way the EPA used the different communication channels to broadcast, and respond to, the information needs of the citizenry.

The take-home is that social media can deliver a positive and effective outcome for both your internal and external audiences.

Gov 3.0 Conference 2011

Tomorrow (Thursday 24th November) I will be attending the Gov 3.0 conference in Canberra. The tagline for the conference is “the future of social media and public sector communication”.

I am looking forward to what the speakers have to say, albeit I remain to be convinced that governments in Australia are serious about openness, citizen dialogue, and the full use of social media both inside and outside of Departments.

With respect to openness, the observable evidence in Australia and the United Kingdom seems to suggest that uploading millions of documents onto government websites is the solution. In many cases, there is little (if any) contextualised meaning applied to these documents. Documents written for specific purposes are placed into the public domain without that context being explained. There is still the issue over timeliness and relevance.  And the internal approval mechanisms to authorise (and disallow) the publication of certain government documents on the web can be trying. But really, is the average Joe Citizen in the mood to spend oodles of time scouring government websites to read through public-service-speak documents when all they really want to do is ask a knowledgeable person for an answer? Of course, not. There is therefore a need to consider the real needs of the citizenry beyond the selective publication of government documents on the web by government departments. After all, if publishing government documents is what open government is about, then we may as well ask Julian Assange to project manage the whole government openness agenda.

That is not to say that government documents on the web don’t have a place in providing information to the world. However, selective document availability is not the answer to openness without at least providing the necessary assistance and feedback mechanism for real citizen engagement. If I can download a government report but cannot discuss the meaning of the report with anyone inside government (i.e. the public service), then openness and dialogue are rather hamstrung.

When it comes to dialogue with citizens, the general polity likes to think that spewing forth tweets and answering constituent emails is enough. But the reality is that there is not much conversation and two-way dialogue in these type of exchanges. I remember Neil Postman saying in “Amusing ourselves to Death” that in the US in days of Lincoln and co., political dialogue was much more personal and immediate through public gatherings and political campaigning than what it has become now. Sure, I appreciate the issues of scale and technology, but citizen dialogue remains something that the political machine (and the administrative servants in the Public and Civil Service) are yet to achieve.

Social media is also important. There are plenty of politicians using social media – US President Obama and a number of Australian politicians are good examples. But there remains a certain disquiet about social media in the hallowed halls of the Public Service. The main concern is around risk (although there is also a good deal of ignorance about communication in general, let alone via web 2.0 technologies within a Department or with an external audience). The argument goes that social media represents a loss of control, is subject to unknown responses in the public domain, and acts as a diversion to the real work at hand. I’d like to have some sympathy for these concerns because I see some intelligent people using these arguments to say “No” for even the slightest of reasons.

However, there are many risks that can be mitigated against through proper procedures, through establishing organisational trust, and in the recognition that the benefits outweigh the risks. There also needs to be a recognition that organisations need to adapt to a changing world; where stakeholders have different needs and aspirations, than in previous times.

In the corporate world there are also communication risks associated with social media but, for the most part, the corporate world is more willing than the public sector to use social media in positive and interesting ways.

It is therefore of immense interest to me to hear tomorrow and on Friday what the speakers have to say about open government and connectedness; about particpatory discussion and citizen dialogue; about the transformative effects of social media; and about how information, knowledge and learning can flow more effectively in the digital economy than ever before.

In particular, I am keen to hear the experiences from the US about the use of social media and web 3.0 (?) communication channels to distribute information and enhance public engagement with stakeholders. I will also be interested to hear how social media fosters improved communication and participation from both citizens and within the public sector. There is much to learn – I hope that the conference provides those thinking and learning opportunities.

Reflections on Web 3.0 social media conference

I have had a few days now to reflect upon what was presented and discussed at the Web 3.0 social media conference that was held in Sydney last Thursday and Friday.

The key point is that social media cannot be ignored by companies and nor can it be ignored by “marketeers”. “Marketeers” is obviously some cutesy professional term used these days to describe marketing executives or marketing departments; a noun that I find strangely childish and stupid.  But I digress.

For the organisation, social media offers scope, range, and reach to potential customers and clients. Using social media tools such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn allows organisations to communicate using channels that are becoming increasingly popular. 

Mark Higginson from Nielsens reported that growth in the online sector in Australia was strong, even showing a growth in online media use from the 55-plus demographic. Moreover, in the words of Alex Crompton from Aussie (Home Loans), “It’s (social media) where the people are.” In other words, look at where your audience is and work out the best (if not all) the media channels necessary to connect with them. The online space will continue to eat into traditional advertising channel revenue as people spend more time online.

Not surprisingly, the case for social media use was strong. Not only did presenters emphasise the communication and marketing aspects, but many also told us of the importance of “community”, “engagement” and “the social” aspects of the online universe. Online brand reputation and “tribal support” are significant, as both Alex Crompton (Aussie) and Karen Ganschow (Telstra) indicated in their presentations. Products and services can be improved by using social media as a way of listening to customers, and then using the feedback to enhance the customer (and brand) experience - all good commercial sense. Generating online champions who advocate (and even solve problems) on your behalf, is even better!

Nick Love from Fox Interactive Media was confident that the internet in the near future would be totally about “the social”. Nick was so confident , that he forecast that “social” media would become redundant since the social aspects of online use and interaction would become embedded into everything that happens online. Nick referred to the “social web” as a way of explaining how pervasive the shift to social networks was becoming. Mark Higginson from Nielsen wasn’t convinced (and nor was I) that the internet in the future would be totally social, but I think Mark and I would agree that the social aspects of online communication and engagement will continue to grow and become very important.

The three of us would agree, however, that social media has an important “reputation currency” associated with it, something at the heart of authenticity and engagement. It remains to be seen how marketeers will leverage “authenticity” and “engagement” to sell their wares and promote their brands.  Actually, it is already beginning to happen on social media sites such as Youtube where content is becoming monetised (product placement is a classic example).

Karen Stocks from Youtube keenly promoted (financial) success from Youtube celebrity spinoffs and content creators such as Australian Natalie Tran. Youtube offered global reach, attention, and eyeballs for product placement and brand awareness. At the heart of Youtube success was “viral marketing” – some authentic and often accidentally successful Youtube clip that captured “people’s imagination” and took off. One quoted example was the Mentos mints in the bottles of diet coke that literally took off, and with it sales of diet coke to boot! Of course, it’s not all beer and skittles (or mints and coke) for Youtube content creators. Naomi Klein warned us in No Logo that companies prowl for ideas from a range of sources (and these days social media is one of them) for emerging trends and then commercialise without any profit going to the edgy content creators who displayed their ideas first.

Michael Kordehi proved that Microsoft has informed and entertaining speakers with a great presentation on enhancing a richer and deeper personal experience with the web. Michael showed off some of the IT whizz-bangery that he and his team had done for NineMSN’s Grazia magazine. The image quality of the digital fashion shoot photos were enhanced for much finer image detail (something clients wanted from fashion photos online) AND also to enhance the way readers could share these images with their friends. Using your own navigation around the images, you could then save and send it to friends so that they saw the same sequence of images as you did. I think he referred to it as an “e-journey” but I think he’ll need to do more work on that term to make it part of the popular lexicon.

Other professionally presented talks were from Paul Borrod of Facebook and Cliff Rosenberg from LinkedIn, both of whom promoted the social media benefits of their respective services. I already use LinkedIn but I must say that I am a little more inclined to take Facebook  more seriously than I have in the past, based on some improvements to the interface and an assurance to improve privacy.

Marc Lehmann (Saasu.com) talked about the naturally selected web which pretty much was about getting the web to cut through the mess and give you exactly what you want without relying on search. Because we are all still time-poor, we need a more life-like web that relates to our own needs and our own digital identity. Marc thought that today it is not about the web, it’s all about the data. How can we get the data we need and personalise the information to meet our individual demands and save us time?  And Nicholas Gruen, in his presentation on Government 2.0 and web 3.0, also advocated how the provision of (government) data could be used by people in many different ways – the classic example was the Gov 2.0 mashup late last year at which an inventive bunch of people reframed and rearticulated government data into informative and interesting ways. In other words, put the data out there and let the people work out for themselves how they will use it and what meaning they will derive from it.

One of the best presentations from the conference was from Sandy Carter of IBM. Sandy gave some excellent real-life examples of companies using social media for a variety of strategic purposes. The message was clear: before using social media, an organisation must articulate and understand the problem it is trying to solve and then work out how (or if) social media can make a positive difference. In fact, 80% of your time should be about planning and setting out the objectives and the strategy, while the remaining 20% is about the technology and the tools. Much of what Sandy had to say, and in far greater detail, is in her book The new language of marketing 2.0. The book outlines a set of six steps (ANGELS) that provide a useful guide to utilising traditional marketing techniques with what web 2.0 has to offer. And thanks Sandy for the free copy!

There  were other interesting papers that I summarised in my notes but I need not go into detail here. Suffice to say, the conference encouraged thought and good discussion about how social media can be leveraged to improve communication, enhance marketing and customer engagement, and promote new forms of interaction and community among online participants. The conference was very impressive indeed.

The web 3.0 conference 3-4 June 2010

I will be attending the conference in Sydney, Web 3.0 & the future of social media, being held at the Sheraton-on-the-Park Hotel in Elizabeth Street.

I will be interested in hearing a realistic assessment of the future of social media. I will be especially interested in the social media crusaders and what they have to say about business embracing web 2.0 tools and thinking.

It will be interesting to hear how far business has come in accepting social media as a legitimate form of communication and business sttrategy because I am not sure how much the government sector really wants to engage in this space. Naturally, I understand the reluctance for government to fully implement web 2.0 (not sure we’re ready for anything further than that!), but I am still watching to see how Gov 2.0 really translates into practice.

My fear is that Gov 2.0 is more about dumping content onto websites than really engaging in the conversation with the citizenry. I hear Senator Kate Lundy is a real advocate for Gov 2.0 but with such an adversarial political system, I can’t see too much leeway being given for governments to really become transparent and open to detailed scrutiny.

We already have seen the media dump on the government over the funding of a home insulation scheme – a scheme let down by the insulation industry and greedy quick-make-me-rich merchants exploiting a good idea. It must be difficult for even the Gov 2.0 advocates to encourage more openness in government, especially when other members of the government want to censor the internet and treat the technology with such suspicion.

So, I will see what I can discover about the  leading edge private businesses who see the benefits of web 2.0.  I’ll report back after the conference with my notes and responses.

On network culture

One of the interesting things about humans is their interrelationships with other people.  There are historical reasons for this based on family, tribe, and community.  Such groupings were necessary to survive.  In most human societies today, the family unit is still the foundation of people’s relationships.  Friends and the people we socialise and work are also part of the human interrelationship matrix.  And interestingly, people have relationships with characters in books and on television, they have online relationships, and they have virtual relationships in digital spaces such as Second Life.

It should therefore be self-evident that people relationships are significant in nearly all that we do.  In fact, modern humans are truly part of the networked society as a consequence of the internet and World Wide Web.  We have in fact extended the possible reach of our relationships, widened the scale of intensity of relationships (between very weak to very strong); and increased the scalability of our relationships.  So shouldn’t we now recognise the importance and value of the network culture?

In many organisations, relationships are grounded in an “old style” corporate mentality dealing primarily with direct work-based relationships, often hierarchical in form.  In most cases, the network is based on physical proximity.  However, relying only on work-based physical contacts to get one’s work done is not enough these days.  In order to get the right person with the right information at the right time, we need more than just physical proximity.  We need access and immediacy.  We get access and immediacy through our networks, often facilitated through information technology channels.

In a recent blog post by Stefan Lindegaard, called How to create a networking culture, Stefan outlines some ideas for establishing and recognising a network culture within an organisation.  Not surprisingly, this recognition starts at the top. Stefan says: “Leaders [need to] show a genuine and highly visible commitment to networking. Leaders must walk the walk, not just talk the talk. … Leaders should also share examples of their networking experiences whenever possible”.

At the practical working level, Stefan has identified the following: “People [need to be] given time and means to network. Frequent opportunities are provided to help individuals polish their personal networking skills. Not everyone is a natural networker. But almost everyone can become good at it with proper training and encouragement.   Both virtual and face-to-face networking are encouraged and supported. Web 2.0 tools and facilitated networking events maximize the opportunities people have to initiative and build strong relationships”.

Now this all makes very good sense.  Why wouldn’t organisations want to leverage individual and groups’ people networks to get things done more quickly, more efficiently, and more effectively?  Such networks are at the heart of collective intelligence and knowledge management.

Why not use all the network facilitation services available in our modern world, from coffee shops to internet and Web 2.0?  And why should there be any doubt about the value of people networks when we can see how fundamental interrelationships between people have been over time?  Network culture should no longer be revolutionary – it should be accepted organisational practice.

On bad complexity

How many times have you had to do a task and throughout the experience say to yourself, ”there must be an easier way to do this – why do they make it so complex when it should be so simple”?  I often have this very thought when paying a bill or searching for a product on a website – why is it so difficult to get what I want done?  After all, don’t these people want my money?

Web expert, Gerry McGovern, offers an explanation in his recent blog post, Eliminating bad complexity. Gerry is not talking about complexity science but rather how complex an activity or task is.  Does the activity or task have to be that complex if it doesn’t lead to good customer experience?  Gerry makes the distinction between good complexity and bad complexity.   ”Good complexity leads to greater convenience, choice and options. Bad complexity leads to frustration, wasted time and wasted money”.  I can definitiely say that I have often experienced bad complexity.

There are people responsible for providing services, especially on the web, who are not thinking of the customer but are thinking of their own personal agendas.  Tasks and activities are more difficult  than they have to be because the provider wants to do something else than serve the needs of the customer.

And this type of behaviour also occurs within organisations.  Gerry goes on to say: “Many organizations have enemies within. Departments and divisions care only for themselves. They will introduce complexity that makes the organization as a whole more dependent on them. In fact, the way modern organizations are structured rewards bad complexity”.

I often wonder whether organisations really care about good customer experience. 

I appreciate that understanding the customer and their needs is difficult.  Making complex organisations work together to maximise good customer experience is also not easy – but it can be done. Amazon.com is a great example.  Amazon has a simple (and ugly) website that makes it easy for the customer to buy products; usually books in my case.  In addition, Amazon gives me the occasional alert on books I might be interested in based on my searching and buying history; a service that is not intrusive and where I have often found a book that might otherwise have remained unknown to me.  The work behind the scenes at Amazon is probably a complicated and complex set of interactions and behavious but the customer experience is simple and fulfilling.

It seems clear to me that maximising good customer experience should lead to more sales and greater revenue.  However, perhaps increasing revenue is still not enough motivation to change “bad complexity” within organisations or in service provision.  There are obviously other motives in play…motives we see all the time as a customer, at work, in sport, and in politics.

Perhaps it is the customer experience that is “bad complexity”….. well, at least for many organisations.

On Government 2.0 – the presentation

Last Friday afternoon I hosted at AusAID a presentation on “Government 2.0″ by James Dellow from Headshift.  James has advised in the comment section of my previous blog post that the presentation is now up on slideshare. 

The slides are available from here.  In addition, James reminds everyone that the Project 8 materials are available from here and that the slides from the presentation showing the diagrams can be accessed from here. 

The presentation and discussion among 30-40 people who attended the event was really very good.  There is further to go down the Government 2.0 pathway but perhaps we can safely say that the journey has started and is moving down the lane.

 

Just had James Dellow from Headshift speaking at AusAID this afternoon on Government 2.0.  Among the audience were several representatives from other government agencies giving the seminar a real whole-of-government feel.  Government 2.0 is often considered in the light of open government, something I have blogged about before.

James spoke about the Federal Government sponsored Government 2.0 Taskforce final report published at the end of 2009. Key insights included some of the thinking behind the Online Engagement Guidelines and Web 2.0 Toolkit.

Much of the discussion focused, naturally enough for a government-centric audience, on risk.  There remains a considerable concern among some senior executive service that web 2.0 and open government are too risky. The fear largely is about the risk of negative publicity or political sensitivities, but also includes concerns about the technology and giving public servants more authority and responsibility in dealing with the community. In sum, the issues relate to risk, privacy, responsibility, responsiveness, and consistency (quality).

Personally, I don’t see the risks as being too different from that facing the private sector – just replace the government Minister with a company CEO and you get the same sort of concerns.  The challenge is how to mitigate risk and yet get the benefits from using web 2.0 applications and thinking to provide a better public service; one more in tune with the community and what the community needs from government agencies.

In addition, the challenge is also in asking where does the leadership for Government 2.0 come from?  Is it from the politicians, the senior executive service, the communications unit, or IT?

I will get the Slideshare link of James soon and post for the presentation slides to be available.

All in all, a very good seminar and thank you, James!

 As part of the Taskforce’s consultation process, they commissioned the creation of Online Engagement Guidelines and a Web 2.0 Toolkit. This was designed to provide guidance to government agencies using web 2.0 tools and provided a recommendation for a toolkit of web 2.0 technologies that agencies can use based on principles of shared services and re-use.

On web content publishing

The World Wide Web is an amazing place.  There are literally billions of pages of web sites and documents out there to be found.  And of those billions, if not trillions, of web pages and documents out there, only a miniscule proportion of that content will be of any use to you.  That’s because the content is unbounded – anyone can put up a web page or a document onto the World Wide Web.

But intranets are different.  An intranet is a bounded web environment, usually within an organisational context.  The intranet is a major information and communication platform for an organisation.  As such, an intranet needs to be considered as a significant organisational resource and treated with a great deal of respect.

Respected web content expert, Gerry McGovern, writes about information content and information quality on the intranet: ” [look at] the web ‘management’ approach called distributed publishing. The theory was: buy the tool, train people to use it and watch them go. What happened? Each division or department that the publishing tool was distributed to sought to publish to the website with the absolute minimum resource input. If ever there was a disastrous non-strategy it is distributed publishing. It led to website junkyards full of vanity publishing and out of date garbage … We need to seriously raise the standard. Anybody can put up a document. It requires precious little skill to write boring, vain, unreadable, organization-centric content”.

Writing and publishing for an organisation’s intranet requires a number of important skills – skills that cannot be obtained by a quick one hour lesson in uploading documents into a content management system!  The decentralised approach has generally failed because these skills have not been developed in the administrators responsible for the content decisions and content uploads of their intranet.  Moreover, little training or advice has been provided to these people about the difference between web content and print content publishing – there is a big difference!

A centralised and specialised intranet/internet publishing team is probably the best way to go to ensure quality and effective control over content.  However, there is a problem here.  A centralised web team is often removed from the important happenings within the organisation that warrant good content publishing.  And given the small size of many intranet teams, they don’t have the time to search and edit and publish the content themselves.  They do rely on content generation from outside the intranet team.  There is thus a potential schism between content and control. 

And of course, there is also some cost cutting thinking from senior management in having a small intranet team and relying on decentralised intranet content administrators.  This is usually the result of senior management having no idea about intranet content and intrant publishing, and certainly a lack of respect to what an intranet can do for the organisation.

One practical option is to provide decentralised administrators with proper training (or even at the recruitment stage) about web content management and web publishing.  The administrators need to be part of the intranet “team” and they need to know that web content publishing is about solving problems for people within the organisation; not boosting egos.  The decentralised system can work if there is sufficient effort put into recruitment, training and ongoing support for these people about web content management.  This is actually no different to what should happen throughout the organisation to ensure quality and effective workforce participation.

On flickr and development agencies

There’s an interesting blog post from Timo at the Red Cross about the use of Flickr to showcase the international development and humanitarian work done by that agency (thanks Nadejda on KM4dev for the tip).  The Red Cross Flickr stream is really a terrific site and well worth a visit.  Where I work, AusAID has a Flickr site too.

Timo’s blog post cites eight lessons learned from the experience of using Flickr:

1. know your audience
2. newsworthiness beats quality
3. less is more
4. understand what you want to achieve
5. use Flickr groups
6. appreciate the work of others
7. need to give solid attention to Flickr to maintain traffic
8. be careful with creative commons licensing

What is missing, and Timo alludes to this in his blog post, is that Flickr needs better integration with other applications. Timo suggests that Flickr needs to better integrate with Facebook, for example.  In addition, I think we also need to work out how better to use Flickr to tell the stories behind the photos.  I still feel that the images, words and tags are not enough to really give me a strong sense of place and story.  There is greater potential for education and learning beyond just the images themselves, albeit I know how powerful images can be in their own right.

It would be great to be able to link the photos to a short podcast, perhaps a narrative fragment from one of the image subjects, to really give stronger context to the individual images.  Not sure if this is possible, but I am certain narrative would add to the user-experience.

On open government

This evening I discovered the text of a speech by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown on working smarter in government (i.e. the civil service).  Now working smarter, and leveraging what organisation’s already do more effectively,  are at the heart of good knowledge management.  The speech is much broader than simply having the civil service become more efficient – Brown outlines a vision for open government and engagement with the citizenry.  Interestingly, what Brown says about government and public engagement sounds very similar to the sentiments expressed in the Engage Report that I blogged about in my previous blog post.

In particular, Brown says: “We will ensure that people can get access to the information they need to engage in dialogue with public service professionals; and in doing so reduce bureaucratic burdens. This will drive improvements in public services, making them more personal and cost-effective, whilst at the same time strengthening democratic deliberation and giving frontline workers and voluntary organisations the freedom to innovate and respond to new demands in new ways. We are determined to be among the first governments in the world to open up public information in a way that is far more accessible to the general public … In this way people will no longer be passive recipients of services but, through dialogue and engagement, active participants – shaping, controlling and determining what is best for them.”

I applaud the sentiments expressed in this speech by Gordon Brown.  Similarly, the Engage Report in Australia says: “Engagement is the central theme of this report. It deals with the connection of people to information so that knowledge assets can be re-used to create new and often unexpected value. It deals as well with the growing opportunities for more effective collaboration with citizens in different dimensions of government – policy development, regulatory reform, program and service design”.

Yet I still have that nagging concern that public-government engagement is not what it appears.  Sure, I understand the desire to publish government content (in greater volume no doubt, but hopefully in a form that is of most value to the public).  I applaud the use of web 2.0 tools to facilitate some form of public feedback or dialogue.  I certainly understand the view that the public has a right to be informed and that government needs to become more accountable.  These are all good things and are very big steps for government to be actively pursuing.  Yet, how much of all of this is just an enormous content dump, and how much of it will be real engagement – engagement where citizens actively become involved with the workings and decsions of government departments and agencies?

Web 2.0 requires a different way of thinking.  There is more emphasis on distributed intelligence and networks rather than centralised control systems and fixed hierarchies.  Web 2.0 is not about control, but more interested in the dialogue and “the conversation”. Web 2.0 tools and applications are interactive and immediate.  And most importantly, web 2.0 thinking is the thinking of the new world environment of the 21st century so there is no excuse not to partake of the best that web 2.0 can offer.  It’s simply evolutionary organisational dynamics.

Brown in his speech goes on to say: “But if the purpose of our reforms is not only to be more efficient, but to meet future challenges and re-engineer our public services from good to great, Whitehall has to let go – and empower staff and the public to shape provision in meeting local needs and priorities” (my bold and italics).  This cultural change will not be easy.  The same issue was identified in Australia in the Engage Report – that there is a strong cultural and operational tendency within government to withhold information.  There are many reasons, some of which are spurious and others that have some legitimacy. Traditional control-based organisations in government will need to change if open government is to become a reality. But there are realistic concerns around privacy, political risk, and copyright – challenges all of which can be overcome I must say.

The challenge for open government and increasing citizen engagement with government is not the web 2.0 tools which are readily available.  The challenge is how to foster a culture of openness and collaboration in government agencies.  In addition, there may be significant resource issues around content management and web sites, records management systems, information management, and knowledge management.  The classic organisational problem, “we don’t know what we don’t know”, is no longer now just a knowledge management problem; it’s now a government-wide problem that must be overcome before open government can be effective.  However, the fundamental success factor for open government will be people-based – trust and organisational culture being pivotal.

The vision for open government espoused by UK PM Gordon Brown and in the Engage Report for Australia are commendable.  They are optimistic and challenging.  But they also offer opportunities for knowledge management to become a significant and active stakeholder in the way in which open government might unfold.  I certainly hope so.

On engaging government with web 2.0

The draft report Engage: getting on with government 2.0 has just been released.  The report is 159 pages long so it’s a fairly hefty piece of work looking at how government can better engage with the Australian public.

The sentiments within the report are good.  Open government is a nice idea but it remains to be seen whether open means “just ajar” or whether the door is really left open.  I am still to see how open government works within a political system that is essentially both protective of information and adversarial politically.  Perhaps there are some lessons from the UK government experience.  From what I hear, open government over there has caused a massive tsunami of useless information being made available at considerable expense.

Engagement is a nice idea too.  Government needs to better hear from, and collaborate with, the public.  There needs to be improved transparency and a more informed conversation between the public and government.  Online engagement will certainly be assisted if Australia ever manages to get a decent and affordable  telecommunications system.  The great Australian broadband initiative is still to come online.

One key message is for better engagement between the public and public servants. However, I sense from the report that what this engagement really means is that government departments increase information on websites to gargantuan proportions and, somehow, this plethora of “government information” is actually what people want.  Using my content management experience, I can tell you that what people use the internet for is to complete a particular task, or find out some information to complete a task, not just a casual trawl through government documents for the fun of it!

The report does talk about the web 2.0 tools and suggests that they can be used to facilitate greater engagement and interaction between the public and government.  The trouble is, for these tools to be effective they have to be placed within an information architecture and organisational culture that is not currently the norm, and in some cases completely opposed to openness and innovation.  Such conservative long-held public service cultural norms will not easily be dismantled and this will certainly limit the effectiveness of web 2.0 tools.  The tools won’t be the problem, but the operational architecture and hierarchical workforce structure of government will be inhibitors.

The online engagement strategy using public servants is also interesting.  I think this aspect will involve some major organisational cultural shifts, especially at senior levels of the public service.  Engaging online with public servants  has some pretty important ramifications. 

To start with, public servants work for the Minister first and the workplace culture is still one of protectiveness rather than openness. I’d love to see a truly open and innovative public service but I am not confident that one will emerge quickly enough to really make true public engagement count.  The notion of a public service that offers fearless and frank advice, let alone responds that way to the public, remains elusive in the current Australian political domain.

Furthermore,  there needs to be better funding of public servant agencies to allow people to allocate time to engage and respond to the public.  It’s all very well to say that government information is a public resource, but it’s people in the public service who have to find the time to provide appropriate information, and actually find and deliver the necessary information.  One only has to experience the intricacies of obtaining assistance through Centrelink, Veterans Affairs, and Health to know how difficult and time-consuming obtaining the right information can be.

There is likely to be a significant resource issue here since the technology alone will not be sufficient to really provide true levels of public-government engagement.  Perhaps the web 2.0 technologies, and some traditional web 1.0 technologies, will help governments provide a platform for engagement.  But these are only platforms.  This is why I fear that government websites will become massive dumping grounds for information rather than true portals of public-government engagement.  Plonk a trillion words and documents on a website and bingo – engagement!  It really doesn’t sound like a pathway for successful engagement to me.

There is also the issue about understanding what is required and who has the ability and capacity to find it.  As any librarian knows, the “reference interview” is sometimes difficult in any one-to-one encounter, let alone online.  In many public service agencies, these type of informal information requests come to a “library” or some “library-like function” because libraries are traditionally staffed by people whose experience is understanding the reference question and finding the resources best suited in answering the question.  Unfortunately, there is a perception in some quarters that libraries are not needed, or are not key players, within government departments.  Oddly, there are no additional resources elsewhere in government departments to undertake this kind of work, let alone by people skilled in finding, reviewing, and making quality judgements on.  Once again, I fear engagement only goes as far as a website crammed to the gunwales with information….and then sinking slowly under the weight.  Still, there might be opportunities for content managers and librarians in this area of government engagement.

The draft report also makes recommendations about privacy, security, and the “Commonwealth Record”.  Well folks, I gotta say, that many government agencies don’t have a complete understanding or proper record of the historical and current information within its own walls.  Unless there is significant investment in electronic document and records management, there can be no guarantee that government  information will be input onto a database within the organisation, let alone found and made available at the appropriate level of security and with accurate version control.  Records management and knowledge management need far greater attention in government than is currently the case.

I truly hope that the Australian government is open to many of the recommendations in the report, especially the important issues of openness and citizen engagement.  The job won’t be easy but I can say with confidence that there are plenty of information professionals – librarians, content managers, information architects, knowledge managers, records managers, information specialists, and web editors - that are keen to make the report’s message a reality if only government would give them the responsibility, the authority and resources to make it actually happen.

On sailing ships and dodos

Dave Snowden told a good story at a knowledge management conference a couple of years ago about the sailing ship.  In the early 19th century, mighty sailing ships with giant masts and sails were the dominant form of sea transport in the modern world at that time.  Along came ships constructed of iron and powered by motorised engines which were more efficient (they could power along whether the wind blew or not) and became more reliable and versatile shipping vessels.  The sailing ship industry responded with even bigger ships with more masts and more giant sails but in the end the sailing ships were doomed by a new technology that made sea transport more efficient and effective.  Perhaps the sailing ship may make a return in an oil-depleted and global greenhouse environment in the 21st century but that’s another story…

And that poor old bird, the dodo, was no match for the slaughter by humans, and by invading pigs plundering their nests and territory.  Alas, they were unable to adapt to the ravages brought upon them in such a short space of time and they became extinct.

Which brings me to this article in the Sydney Morning Herald about a conference in India at which the media moguls of the 21st century are battling to stay in the game in a world enriched and informed via the World Wide Web.  The World Newspaper Congress is hearing from embattled media moguls about how unfair the internet is making the news and information business since they haven’t been clever enough to work out a successful business model for the changed world media environment.

Like the 19th century sailing ship industry, the newspaper moguls are desperate to keep alive a form of business that is actually being surpassed by more modern and disruptive technologies. The internet and social networking are changing the way content is published, consumed, and valued.  Content on the internet is more immediate, more personal, more varied, and more versatile compared to traditional newspaper publishing.  Not only that, but people these days do not have to rely on newspapers for their dose of worldly information since much of the information out there on the internet is provided by people for free and can be accessed for free! Even newspapers and television news programs seek out these stories from ordinary folk who witness events first hand or who have some other form of newsworthy story.

Of course, the newspapers are indeed part of the problem.  Over the past twenty years (at least) newspaper proprietors have dumbed down journalism and investigative reporting so much that newspaper content is hardly superior to much of the informed news and information provided by ordinary people. In fact, it is ordinary people who actually have something interesting to say, without the caveat of having to say something that will generate advertising revenue or hanker for the bouquets from supporting ideologues.

Reading newspapers these days is like reading a bevy of opinion pieces; the opinions being no more informed or relevant than that of bloggers and social networkers.  Instead of lifting quality and gaining some comparative advantage this way, newspapers have taken the easy route and proffered a multitude of opinion, loose reporting and drivel that can be easily replicated anywhere. 

At the same time, newspapers continue to search for more “eyeballs” to convince advertisers that newspapers are still relevant.  Newspapers still want to be found on the internet to capture these “eyeballs”, yet they want to determine and control the method and channels of being found. They want to use the 21st century technology but only in the manner of their 20th century world view of dominance and control of the news. Even advertisers are shifting their world view.  Advertisers are increasingly using new methods of messaging and advertising utilising the new communication mediums available via the internet, social networking, and other forms of communication channels.

At least the newspaper industry hasn’t had it as bad as the dodo. The dodo had relatively little time to adjust to the ravages of invading species before they finally met their final and irrevocable end. Newspapers have had plenty of time, and had plenty of warning about the competitive content available via a host of alternative sources.

Newspaper organisations are like the 19th century sailing ships trying to battle their way forward using their existing tired techniques and old-century attitudes, and failing to confront the new realities of a brave new world.  Like those 19th century sailing ships, newspapers as they exist today will die off and be replaced by a more efficient and effective form of  news communication that does not rely on old thinking and old technologies.

Newspaper moguls can whine all they like but they need to accept the new communication realities and make the necessary adjustments, or go the way of the sailing ship and eventually, the dodo.

On advertising and web 2.0 for knowledge management

Just received my latest UTS Alumni email newsletter.  I completed two postgraduate degrees from UTS.   I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the The Fred Hollows Foundation won the world’s best not-for-profit television advertisement at the International Fundraising Congress in the Netherlands.  Readers may recall that I did a nine month contract with The Fred Hollows Foundation before coming to AusAID earlier this year.

The full excerpt from the UTS alumni newsletter is here:

Fred Hollows’ ad voted best in the world

An advertisement featuring the late Professor Fred Hollows has been named the world’s best not-for-profit television ad at the International Fundraising Congress in the Netherlands. Heading up the advertising campaign was BA Communication (Hons) graduate Joe Boughton-Dent, The Fred Hollows Foundation’s Communications and Community Engagement Manager.

“The 90-second advertisement started out as a YouTube clip… It got a great response and was viewed over 50,000 times, so we knew people were interested in Fred and what he achieved,” says Boughton-Dent.

“People really respond to a positive message that one person can have a real impact,” he says. “This award shows that Fred Hollow’s message is as powerful today as it was when he passed away in 1993.”

The other finalists in the best not-for-profit advertising category included Action Aid, RSPCA and Operation Smile.

The award-winning Fred Hollows ad has been aired on Australian television since June this year. To view it, [visit the clip on] YouTube.”

The knowledge management take from this success is that YouTube clips can make a difference. I firmly believe that such clips are an excellent way of getting important organisational messages and information across, whether internal or external to an organisation.

There really is no excuse for organisations NOT to consider YouTube and other web 2.0 technologies as a legitimate part of the knowledge management and communication armoury. Importantly, web 2.0 technologies like YouTube and audio podcasts should be key considerations for effective knowledge and information management within an organisation’s strategic and functional  information architecture.

On Information Online, London

Firstly, apologies for the late posting since mid-November. I am actually overseas (on holidays) at the moment for a few weeks and didn’t get around to updating the blog!

Nevertheless, I refocused some attention on information and knowledge management at the Information Online Conference in London today. The keynote speaker was Clay Shirky and he had some good things to say about the web 2.0 world. I have plenty of notes (as usual) that I will decipher for a future blog posting.

It was good to catch up with Euan Semple, David Wilcox and Ed Mitchell at the conference. I hope to catch up with David Gurteen tomorrow evening at a knowledge cafe hosted by Deloitte here in London.

One interesting thing I heard about today was a platform developed by Elsevier called 2Collab that provides user-generated profiles of individuals and links within the scientific community. I see a lot of potential in this system for organisational collaboration. It is interesting to hear how traditional publishers are responding to the internet and web 2.0 applications.

Hopefully, I will have a full report on the conference next week when I return to Australia. However, since I am flying Thai Airways there could still be problems with returning home given the problems at the airport in and around Bangkok. I will be speaking with Thai Airways tomorrow to hear how they will get me home!

Until next week then…