Stap isi
Local government, the internet & community engagement online
1 January 2010
The hardest working public servant in gov 2.0
With all the buzz at a conceptual (social media, gov 2.0) and brand (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter) level, we sometimes overlook the most important bit. It’s also the most humble.
Hail up the link. Or, hyperlink if you’re feeling 1990s.
The world wide web is predicated on each discrete chunk of data or information having a unique address.
Don’t believe me?
I can reference Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau’s seminal paper WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project published November 12, 1990. But most importantly I can link to it.
The world wide web is designed to be a platform for sharing. We can point to things, and we can point to information about things.
So – URIs, URLs, web addresses. Everybody gets it. Sort of.
15 December 2009
Getafix
The argument in favour of communicating with your constituents beyond your website has been made and won over the last two years. But how to accelerate your organisation’s acceptance of web-based tools for community and collaboration?
We all know the hurdles:
- locked-down PCs and aggressive internet filters and firewalls;
- inadequate resourcing (time, in particular);
- policies that restrict who can speak on behalf of council (outdated now that everyone is a media outlet);
- recordkeeping and privacy requirements that (similarly) date from an era pre-internet; and
- fear – of failure, and success!
How to get over (or around)?
29 September 2009
The twain shall meet
If government is the most interesting new tech startup of 2009 give some credit – especially in local government – to web workers within the institutions themselves. They have mostly been acting on their own initiative (and against the stereotype of the risk averse public servant). They are usually anonymous, but are driving change from below.
Of course the digital activists working outside of government have been crucial. MySociety are the classic example but I’m also thinking of Nick Booth and social media surgeries, Shane McCracken and the CivicSurf project and Will Perrin’s Talk About Local.
Now look what’s happening in England’s second city…
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.
17 August 2009
Putting LGWN09 tweeps on the map
Another string & sticky tape home craft session. See the result. The nice bit is that people can add themselves to the map. Here are the steps taken:
- A Google Docs spreadsheet form collects Twitter name, suburb (optional), city/town and country from those attending the conference
- When submitted, the form populates a Google spreadsheet
- The spreadsheet uses functions to generate latitude, longitude, Twitter URL, Twitter profile image URL and a HTML description for each tweep
- The sheet is set to ‘publish to the web’ as a text file – CSV format – with option ticked to ‘automatically republish when changes are made’
- A Yahoo! Pipe transforms this data into a GeoRSS feed
- The feed gets chucked into Google Maps and you can see which tweeps will be at the conference (and where they’re from)
Those Twitter pics…
… are generated courtesy of the SPIURL web service. It provides a static link to Twitter profile images.
Limitations
- Locations are being dynamically geocoded via Google and returned to the spreadsheet using the ImportData function (refer to Geocoding by Google Spreadsheets). But you’re restricted to 50 of these functions per sheet – so there’s a hard limit on the number of tweeps that can be added.
- More than one tweep may enter “Sydney, Australia” as a location – resulting in multiple markers on the same point, with only one visible and clickable. The sidebar gives access to all tweeps but that’s a consolation prize at best. A random number could probably be added to the tail of each coordinate to push markers slightly apart? Update: truncated the lat/long and added a random number – kinda works but a cluster would be better.
- There is no error checking. “WE Believe in Community”!
30 June 2009
Alright gov
Here are some U.K. L.G. tweeps that are neat.
There’s lots more, this is just my arbitrary list. Special shout out to bashley, not from the U.K. but does speak English.
Twitter profile pics pulled courtesy spiurl
21 June 2009
Coal face gang
Has anyone considered using customer services staff to update the website? They speak to people all the time, know the information people ask for, know how to answer questions. They are a valuable communications tool with a good “general” knowledge of the organisation.
Gecko84, local government web editor, in his blog post CMS control, who does what – a rant inspired by Sarah
I like the idea. Customer service staff – from the front counter to the library’s circulation desk – should be part of a council’s web team.
They’re accomplished referrers, have lots of experience dealing with sensitive items and difficult customers and are aware of the issues that arise when representing council in a public space, so they’re a good fit for social media channels.
When you’re working on an information architecture or considering keywords for search engine optimisation, customer service staff have particular value. They know how constituents ask for information – what words they use, how they frame the question – and what information is in demand. By contrast, senior staff advantage what they think people should be asking. And some are lapsed English speakers, hopelessly lost to organisational jargon.
Finally, if your web services are not satisfying customer requests, customer service staff are the canary in the coalmine.
The second part to this post is about crowdsourcing in government.
We generally take this to mean offering constituents an opportunity to innovate solutions or frameworks. But over the last year – as social media has matured and mainstreamed – more and more council employees are using these tools to discuss issues in their workplace.
It may be born of frustration but the motivation for these blogs or Twitter streams is usually positive – to affect change.
This is incredibly valuable for managers – if they choose to listen!
15 June 2009
WE Believe in Community 09
Over the last few years, I’ve been able to make a case for attending the Web Directions conference in Sydney. Training is rarely inspiring, unless you’re listening to people like Doug Bowman, Joe Clark, John Allsopp, Cameron Adams, Jeremy Keith or Andy Clarke.
But government has its own challenges. It can’t cut corners or take risks like private or business startups (not necessarily a bad thing) and it doesn’t have the benefit of a neutral (at worst) or evangelist (at best) constituency with which to work. So last year’s LG Web Network conference was fantastic.
Prior to the network, supported by the LGSA, I wasn’t unique in having little or no contact with fellow local government web workers in NSW. Professional groups in this field favour IT managers and administrators. Kudos to the prime movers, Diana Mounter, LGSA Design and Development Coordinator, and Reem Abdelaty, LOC&L Program Director.
Registrations are now open for this year’s conference in August.
I’m looking forward to hearing Jason Ryan of the N.Z. State Services Commission on Government 2.0 without the bullshit (my words) and attending the sessions on WCAG and digital recordkeeping. But most of all, talking with LG web people. (And it’d be great if more library people joined the network.)
Register now at WE Believe in Community 09.
10 May 2009
Let's get chartered
I like to bang on about the importance of web teams in councils – and have suggested that informal working groups be formed in advance of managerial recognition or organisational change.
Paul Canning suggests how we might achieve formal recognition:
One solution to the myriad of problems I see in how government webbies operate and the environment in which they operate, on which I have been working, is to establish professional status through a new organisation.
[W]eb skills are both new and unique. IT doesn’t have them, Comms don’t have them – only webbies do but they are unrecognised. Raising recognition must happen alongside raising standards. Simply put, a way must be found for webbies who know what they are talking about to have a real voice.
He points to the U.S. Federal Web Managers Council as an exemplar. (See also Three Pieces Make A Whole Better Online Government.) I look forward with interest to the U.K. initiative.
Update: Paul’s follow-up post with useful presentation.
29 April 2009
Web workers of the world, unite
You think the Conroy filter is bad? Most municipal employees work under a far more restrictive regime… the ICT department!
OK, so that’s a deliberately provocative statement. Anyone with network experience will acknowledge the need to maintain the privacy of our information, the security of our systems and the efficient use of our bandwidth. ICT managers and staff have been deeply scarred by spam, phishing, viruses, worms and… naive users.
But it’s getting so our work environment is a real challenge to our effective use of web technologies.
[twitter user] you have flash? lucky girl – my Council-issued PC has NO flash installed and it’s locked off to me – YAY! and I manage our web…
The key is management – not the ICT department – taking responsibility for the use (and abuse) of network resources.
There is a feeling that staff will waste time. That can be argued – Social networking on company time increases productivity – apparently.
More damaging… put in blocks and staff will route around them. Using web-based email, for example, to send and receive council information… that will not be recorded or monitored by the corporate systems in-place.
This article – 50 Small Hurdles to Online Engagement in Government – is the best I’ve seen on the subject because it sweats the small stuff.
Clear the majority of those, and you have a Great Leap Forward.
Update, 4 May 2009: Dave Briggs has set up a wiki to share learning on how to clear these hurdles. Good one Dave.
10 April 2009
Form follows function
For those keen on web teams, check out the neatly-presented findings from the survey for people who make websites 2008.
As we did in 2007, A List Apart and you teamed up to shed light on precisely who creates websites. Where do we live? What kind of work do we do? What are our job titles? How well or how poorly are we paid? How satisfied are we, and where do we see ourselves going?
There’s some interesting data on job titles – and remuneration.
Designers, Web Designers, Web Producers, and Webmasters appear to earn significantly less than the sample as a whole. Art Directors, Creative Directors, Information Architects, Interface Designers, Marketers, Usability Experts, and Web Directors earn significantly more!
The bigger earners are specialised trades and management. (And marketers – less said the better.) In local government, I think you would find that people dealing directly with digital engagement fall in the first camp. Another argument for improving job titles, position descriptions and organisational structures to reflect that reality.
I’d like to see this survey widen its scope to ask respondents what they’re responsible for within their job. Managing communities, for example, might form part of any number of job titles. In fact 26% of respondents listed ‘other’ for job title.
(See Steph Gray’s Defining the roles within digital engagement for an attempt to better define and describe what we do beyond front- and back-end coding and design.)
There’s also data to argue for unfiltered access to the internet – and recognition of the network as a crucial part of professional development:
Self-study (read websites and books, trial and error) is how most people stay current (70% or better of the respondents). Formal training (conferences or in-house training), trails far behind (approximately one third of respondents). This result is consistent with the 2007 findings.
3 April 2009
What I'd like .gov.au to do
The push for a Gov 2.0 barcamp in Canberra got me thinking. What would I – web monkey number 54-46 – want out of it?
Thinking big picture advocacy, I reckon Jason Ryan covers it neatly in 5 Principles For Govt 2.0 – written 2 years ago!
But for a positive and immediate impact on my day to day work, here’s what I’d like to see from above.
Mandate open access to the internet for all employees of government at all levels
Set guidelines, monitor and enforce. But don’t tie one arm behind our backs. Security, bandwidth and (alleged) time issues are easily trumped by gains in knowledge, inhouse expertise and productivity.
Lead with policy on how government employees and elected representatives interact with constituents and each other online
We have draft protocols for public servants – and guidance from existing codes. But there’s a need to look at these again in the light of blurring personal and professional identities online.
Recognise web teams and those working in this new space
Engagement ain’t gonna come from IT or PR people. Give us our own classification – and more money! And require library professionals to play some of this role.
Provide clear and simple guidance on licensing data for reuse
By this I mean a Creative Commons or government-specific licence. The Queensland Government have a Licensing Framework that probably required considerable research and legal input. I’d like to see NSW local government working together to produce something similar. Especially for map and planning data.
Set up an authentication system at some level
We can have blogs, forums and white-label social networks up online in the twinkling of an eye. But you quickly run into the problem of requiring your constituents to register multiple times for different services. A whole-of-government online ID service might be as popular as a national identity card but … openID? Can’t see that working as-is. But state and federal governments have money, smart people and the ability to engineer or contribute to an acceptable, distributed solution that we can implement at local level. (I’ll get my coat.)
Give us basic spatial information via a simple API
It’s all about maps and location-aware services. I could do a bunch of stuff right now but I can’t resolve a street address to a latitude and longitude without accessing a commercial service. Give us an inexpensive, clearly licensed method to map our information to properties and other geographic points. Ideally each agency’s work makes the network smarter and more useful. Also I would prefer to be going down the OpenStreetMap path – not Google Maps.
But from the bottom up, just let us get on with it.
The Barcamps (and BBQs) should aim to foster strong, active networks of web workers across government.
4 January 2009
The importance of web teams
In 2007, Jeffrey Zeldman said let there be web divisions.
[A]lmost no one who makes websites works in their company or organization’s web division. That’s because almost no company or organization has a web division. And that void on the org chart is one reason we have so many bloated, unusable failures where we should be producing great user experiences.
The call remains pertinent, especially in local government where the extraordinary possibilities of digital information and communication technologies are often reduced to “website” with a single person in an essentially administrative role tasked with maintaining that presence.
The ability to innovate or communicate is limited by IT’s control over infrastructure and systems, senior staff’s patchy understanding of the opportunities available and a deeply conservative approach to managing information and risk.
The officer maintaining the web presence is often isolated and frustrated.
I think we can also build on Zeldman’s manifesto and extend membership of local government web teams not just to coders, designers and writers (dare to dream) but to the people who will represent your organisation on, say, blogs or Twitter – the social media spokesperson.
As Councils offer such a wide range of services across all sectors of the community, I’d say you could probably do with at least two or more of these voices.
They might come from IT or communications. But they might also be front desk customer service staff or librarians. Remember that libraries are often open on Saturdays and Sundays, and both front desk staff and librarians are accomplished referrers.
A good web team will not only build and deploy, they will
- respond and refer promptly and appropriately
- build community online through participation and moderation
- evangelise web-based communication in your organisation
We may be a few years off having web divisions but my suggestion doesn’t include hiring more people or creating new positions. It’s about writing the web into existing work plans and requiring supervisors to make the time and space available to those officers to participate online.
So, local government managers, find the people who are comfortable with communication online. Give them the guidance and authority to converse with your constituents. And formally recognise the web team in your organisation.
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