Stap isi

23 August 2009

In the (long white) cloud

Jason Ryan is one of those rare people who is both gov insider and hacker. He has a talent for distilling clear and practical advice for government from the miasma of social media commentary. And he could be the script writer for a Google-era antipodean Yes Minister.

His talk at this year’s Local Government Web Network conference was Open Sourcing Government. There were few slides but lots to think about. (To see his notes, click bottom right on the “Ø” character.)

I haven’t had a chance to listen back to the audio and I didn’t take notes but two things stood out for me.

The first was the story of the Student Loans Forum. New Zealand’s tax office is considering changes to the way it collects these loans and wanted to consult with recipients of the service.

Naturally senior managers were concerned with what people might say on the department’s web space. The promise of a ‘moderation SWAT team’ eased these fears. It’s a powerful image – one to borrow! – when countering arguments for comments in business hours only. But clearly these logistics must be considered early when planning an online consultation. From memory the Student Loans Forum moderation team was available 18 hours of every day.

I also liked how the department didn’t over-promise what would be done with contributions.

We would like you to take part in this forum and let us know how the changes will affect you. We’ll keep your comments in mind when we make formal recommendations to government ministers on the detail of the changes.
via Jason Ryan, ‘Consult And Engage’

I understand Bang The Table do something similar. There are difficulties with accepting each and every comment, post and tweet as a formal submission. Often these submissions require detailed personal identification or disclosures that would render the comment process onerous and discourage participation. In some server and software environments, privacy and record keeping obligations may not be adequately met. Using a forum to ‘take the temperature’ of an issue seems fair.

Jason Ryan also talked about risk. He pointed to Nicholas Gruen’s theory of Serial Professional Innovation Negation or SPIN and quoted Malcolm Tucker from The Thick Of It: “are you a lion tamer or are you a pussy?”

Both these works are well worth catching. But I especially liked these comments:

A former State Services Commissioner used to address this point directly and forcefully: never do anything that you would be ashamed of. (That is about judgement). He would go on to say; that aside, public servants should not be afraid of embarrassing themselves (and that speaks directly to our courage).

As it’s something that’s concerned me, I imagine it’s an issue for others. There’s no risk updating the website. Taking council’s information and identity beyond its domain does introduce risk. Even official blogging policies can obfusticate. Maybe the two points in the paragraph above could be the beginning and end of your council’s ‘social media policy’.

He told a story about senior managers’ concern about blogging from within the government. As Manager, Communications & Records Management for the State Services Commission, it was expected that Ryan would have more work to do. But he wasn’t going to write their blog posts (it wouldn’t be a blog then) and with the contributing officer attaching his or her name and image to a post, he had less risk to manage.

In my view, trust employees (civil servants, council officers) to blog or otherwise engage online as themselves and at worst you are expecting them to be competent and at best encouraging them to excel. What’s a resume now without links?

Jason Ryan blogs for The Network of Public Sector Communicators and is @jasonwryan on Twitter.

— b3rn   engagement, lgwn, moderation, risk, web teams   Aug 23, 05:25 PM   #

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