I can’t think of anything more eloquent, or more appropriate, than this poem by the late John Forbes.

Anzac Day

A certain cast to their features marked
the English going into battle, & then, that

glint in the Frenchman's eye meant 'Folks,
clear the room!' The Turks knew death

would take them to a paradise of sex
Islam reserves for its warrior dead

& the Scots had their music. The Germans
worshipped the State & Death, so for them

the Maximschlacht was almost a sacrament.
Recruiting posters made the Irish soldier

look like a saint on a holy card, soppy & pious,
the way the Yanks go on about their dead.

Not so the Australians, unamused, unimpressed
they went over the top like men clocking on,

in this first full-scale industrial war.
Which is why Anzac Day continues to move us,

& grow, despite attempts to make it
a media event (left to them we'd attend

'The Foxtel Dawn Service'). But the March is
proof we got at least one thing right, informal,

straggling & more cheerful than not, it's
like a huge works or 8 Hour Day picnic-

if we still had works, or unions, that is.

John Forbes, 1998

Photo: smcgee

When I started this blog, there were two primary reasons that drove me to the keyboard week in and week out and, after a period of reflection, I have decided that I haven’t been at all successful in the second. And while I am not trying to lead you to an inference about the first, I remain confident that the remedy lies within my own reach.

The first reason was to learn as much about social media in the public sector – in as public and transparent a fashion – as possible. To write about it and to engage with colleagues and peers. Pretty straightforward.

The second, equally important, reason was to provide a forum for colleagues, peers, interested readers et al (you), to interact and experiment with social media. Looking back over the last year and a half, there hasn’t been too much of that. This post is an attempt to change that.

Come on out

Looking through the visitor numbers to the site I have a good idea of the ratio of readers to commenters and while it is reasonable to expect that social sites will generally have a fairly predictable breakdown of active/passive visitors (the 1% rule), for communicators I think we can and should do better.

This is your chance. Stop lurking (even if only for this one post) and come out and introduce yourself. Tell everyone a little about yourself, where you are from, your work and your interests in terms of communications, social media etc. Get social.

If you have other social media profiles, include links to them. Your blog, bookmarks, Twitter or Tumblr accounts, your online feed reader, LinkedIn profile, whatever… Anything that will help all of us connect with others who share what is after all (if you read this blog regularly) a fairly obscure interest.

If you would like to do more than introduce yourself, you are encouraged to submit your thoughts about the blog, especially if it involves suggesting directions or areas of interest for 2008.

Now, don’t be shy: start mingling.

Photo: yewenyi

Once a decade or so, you happen across a piece of communications work that is so audacious in its conception, so consummate in its execution and so dazzling in its strategic vision that there is no response more appropriate than a stunned, slack-jawed silence.

This video has that presence. For me, it is far and away the most compelling content created by public sector communicators in, well, as long as I care to remember. It is the work of the Singapore government’s Media Development Authority and I urge you to take four and a half minutes out of your day to sit back, pump up the volume and gawp.

One further point: I haven’t actually managed to make it to the end of the video, but I am convinced that Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant must be credited as the executive producers…

[RSS readers click through for the video]

On that note, I’ll wish you all a safe break. Transmission will resume in mid-January.

Hat tip: Red

Fellow journalist, and onetime collaborator, New Zealander Nicky Hager describes the book as:

…an outstanding guide to how PR is conducted, the harm it can cause and what journalists and the public can do about it. It’s a book that needed to be written.
Sunday Star Times, 26-8-07

I would qualify Hager’s description; suggesting that it is more properly described as an outstanding guide to how PR can be conducted. That aside, Hager is right. This sort of professional behaviour does need to be exposed and Burton, in terms of his dogged research and unflinching documentation, has done a terrific job.

Unfortunately, like most books that arrive on the market these days, it seems to have avoided the ministrations of an editor en route. The result is 260 pages (not including extensive endnotes) of unremittingly lumpen prose and a cadence as monotonous as the drone of an overladen gooney bird. Burton has an important story to tell, and he approaches it with the grimly stoic resolve of a constipated marathoner.

The effect on the reader (well, this one) was like being frogmarched through Dante’s Eighth Circle of Hell; instructive, but not much fun.

All that aside, what does emerge with an intense clarity is the perfidy, the hypocrisy and gall of the PR people involved in the cases Burton covers. From multinationals and think tanks to the PR agencies spruiking pharmaceuticals, junk food and tobacco; all are exposed as duplicitous, venal and obviously unfamiliar with either the concept or the reality of ethical behaviour.

For a public affairs professional, this is a depressing read. About the only consolation is the fact that, with some notable Australian Federal Government examples, public sector communicators have escaped Burton’s attentions. I would like to think that is because the behaviors Burton is detailing are anathema to the majority of public servants, both here and in Australia.

One area where I felt the book could have been stronger was on social media. There have been enough well documented examples of similarly egregious new media strategies in the last couple of years to suggest fertile ground for Burton. He does mention Trevor Cook and Paull Young’s anti-astroturfing campaign, but doesn’t pursue the implications of new technology on ‘black hat’ PR with the same zeal.

Irrespective of the book’s shortcomings, I would still recommend it to public sector communicators. Setting aside your views about the ethical famework of these specific strategies, the bigger picture of the relationship between PR and the media that Burton describes is an important one for us to be mindful of; it is, after all, the environment we all work in.

And what a day it promises to be. Taking place under the watchful eye of a Kiwi icon, it has attracted a formidable array of talent keen to get together and share their knowledge, experience and enthusiasm.

There is still a month to get involved, so visit the wiki and see how you can participate. Just remember, the T-shirts alone will be well worth the price of admission (which is nothing. zero. nada. it is free).

And it is not just for geeks. Yes, there will be technical presentations, but there will be plenty of people there who are just as interested in content, knowledge management, the Internet and the full range of miscellany in between.

Public sector communicators would be well advised to have at least a basic understanding of the principles of Govt 2.0, and this BarCamp should be an ideal introduction. Plus, you will get to hang out with a bunch of smart, energised and generous people: what better way to spend a Saturday?

The details

BarCamp Wellington: Fronde, 3 Queens Wharf, Wellington

[RSS readers click through for the video]

By way of some background, you may want to read more about Sam Kekovich. (The conspiracy theorists amongst you might notice more than a passing resemblance (both physical and moral) between Sam and his eponym on the Muppets…)

The page includes a transcript of the rant, one of the highlights for me is:

Do you think the diggers in the trenches were fighting for tofu sausages? No. They were thinking of grabbing a lamb chop off the barbie with their bare fingers, sustaining third degree burns, then sticking their hands into a relieving esky to fish out a cold one.

Perhaps that qualifies as a nod to the diggers?

Lest We Forget.

Before we get to the report itself, by way of an introduction: if you are not entirely sure what this whole Web 2.0 thing is, then you should probably have a look at this seminal article by Tim O’Reilly, What Is Web 2.0.

Back to the Gartner report. The opening sentence summarizes the nature of the analysts’ thinking and conclusions:

Web 2.0 will affect several industries, but none will feel such a pervasive impact as government.

I would argue that the first half of the sentence is already looking anachronistic (Web 2.0 is not just affecting industries now, it is driving them) and, given this, the second half doesn’t necessarily augur all that well for governments.

Why not? Because most governments are still trying to come to terms with Web 1.0, let alone adapt to the rapidly changing expectations of citizens who are experiencing seismic shifts in personalisation, data control and accessibility in their dealings with Web 2.0 businesses.

And this ‘expectation gap’ will manifest inside agencies as much as it will in their dealings with citizens. I have already posted about the importance of agencies evolving into the sorts of workplaces that match younger generations cultural expectations, but I can’t stress how important this is.

Governments, like every other employer, are desperate to attract and retain quality staff and ensuring that employees work in an environment that is socially and technologically similar to their existing experience of the world is critical. You wouldn’t expect a young public servant to work without a phone, why would you expect them to work in an environment where they can’t IM, blog or collaborate with colleagues on a wiki?

This strikes me as one of the shortcomings of the Gartner paper: there is no consideration of how Web 2.0 technologies will influence the internal processes and cultures of agencies. I would expect that internally driven change was just as significant a contributor to transformed government as changing citizen expectations.

Gartner go on to predict (I believe, accurately) that mashups will provide government with opportunities to operate more efficiently and effectively:

(Examples of mashups) requires governments to rethink the way they make their data and services accessible to external consumers, be they constituents or intermediaries.

This is the real crux of the implementation of Web 2.0 for government: who owns the data? And how do we manage it? I started to cover this when I wrote about microformats, and their potential for government. By making the data available for syndication and reuse, we are essentially saying to people “this is authoritative, go out and use it in ways that will make it valuable for you.” This could mean mashing up geo data with contact details (hCards) and agency address (adr) to provide a map of agency contacts that would be updated in realtime as the respective agencies updated their websites.

As Tim O’Reilly observed in Wired this week:

A lot of people still think, “Oh, it’s about social networking. It’s about blogging. It’s about wikis.” I think it’s about the data that’s created by those mechanisms, and the businesses that that data will make possible.

And the more of that data that is structured, the more that is semantic, the greater the payload of value that government will be able to deliver; both in terms of increased efficiencies and effectiveness, and in terms of opportunities for businesses and communities.

Of course, this requires a fundamental change in the way agencies view the data that they collect and maintain. It amounts to, in many ways, the open sourcing of government. Is that a step that we are ready (or able) to take? Will we have a choice?

The Gartner paper acknowledges this as a risk, stating:

As far as re-intermediation — which is where greatest potential benefit of Web 2.0 may lie — regulatory, privacy and data issues and politics must be considered. Much data that could produce benefits is not sharable. Different jurisdictions are struggling with how to produce the requisite policy/legal changes.

What does this mean for communicators?

The vanguard of Web 2.0 in government is social media. And as communicators we are at the front and center of managing this change process. Understanding social media, and successfully implementing it in your agency, is an important step towards Web 2.0, and it is one that will largely rest upon your shoulders.

We may be only taking the first, tentative steps towards Govt 2.0, but our publics will increasingly expect more personalisation, more responsive and agile government. Our fellow public servants will increasingly expect a work environment that reflects their interests, their networks and ways of communicating with their colleagues and peers. And all of this represents a tremendous opportunity for us to reinvent the way that government serves the people. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

I don’t pretend to know anything about the governance arrangements of the swedish state broadcaster, so I can’t comment with any authority on that situation. However, I think it is useful to use this case as a lens to look at what is happening, or would happen here.

There are already a number of public servants blogging (see details of the seminar the Network ran last year), and we are only going to see that number increase in the coming months and years.

So, could a similar thing happen here? I don’t just think it could, I am sure that it will. As we move to adapt to any new technology, there will be inevitable behavioural impacts. The potential of social media to radically alter the status quo should not be lost on communicators. How does your organisation’s media policy deal with the fact that any employee can now publish comment about their employer? Does your organisation have a policy on blogging, or on commenting in public fora by employees?

In 2005, the State Services Commissioner said this:

A more recent online development is the rising number of weblogs (or “blogs”). Blogs range in scope from individual diaries to being part of political campaigns or a company’s business. They range in scale from the writings of one occasional author to the collaboration of numbers of writers. Many weblogs allow visitors to leave public comments.

I am concerned about the potential risks blogs can pose. The existing principles of the Public Service Code of Conduct still apply in this very modern medium and State servants should still be very careful that they do not bring the Public Service into disrepute through their private activities.

SSC 2005 Annual Report, my emphasis.

This guidance is pretty clear and straightforward, but it still relies heavily on the judgement of the individual — and there, dear reader, lies the rub. People will make mistakes. They will hit ‘Publish’ without clearly thinking through the implications of the post (god knows, I do…). They may even be completely unaware of their obligations to their employer and the code, particularly if there is no explicit policy about engaging in social media.

How do we manage this?

As public sector communicators, we need to be aware of these issues and we need to ensure that they are understood by the rest of the organisation’s management. If people within your organisation are blogging (and you really should know who they are), talk to them about their blogs, the scope of their involvement in other social media and try to get a feeling for how they see the boundaries to their self-expression.

Experiment in social media. Read and comment on blogs, get involved in communities and conversations so that you become familiar with the environment, the mores and the technology. In order to be able to advise senior management on this stuff, you have to know how it works.

Trial it. Set up a blog as part of an internal communications programme. Think about podcasts as a potential channel for your internal comms. Try using a wiki for your next collaborative initiative. If the channel is strictly internal it will give you (and management) the confidence to see how it works and to identify the benefits and the risks specific to your business.

Acknowledge that it is inevitable. Include social media in your comms strategies even if, at this stage, it is only a part of your environmental scanning. Think about it in terms of the benefits around engagement, and the risks associated with relinquishing control over some of your agency’s communications.

It is also worth thinking about in terms of how you attract and retain excellent state servants. What will the brightest graduates who enter your agency and are networked with their peers through these media think when they sit down in front of their dumb terminal, effectively cut-off from their social networks?

Then last week Savaia got in touch to suggest a regular meeting for members interested in internal communications. So here it is: micronetworks.

The idea is relatively simple. The Network will provide the administrative infrastructure, all you have to do is register your interest in participating in one (or more) of the micronetworks. We will set up emailing lists for each of them, something like subject@psnetwork for example, and then people who have registered for that group will be able to communicate with colleagues who share an interest in that topic. I can also set up a web page that lists the members of each group (password protected) and their agencies – if that will help.

So, to get the ball rolling, here are a couple of suggestions for potential micronetworks:

1. Internal communications
2. Social media (web-based communications)
3. Social marketing
4. Crisis communication

If you have other suggestions, please add them in the comments. If you want to join a micronetwork, fire me an email. Once we reach a critical mass, I will set up the mail groups and the web page and let you know where you can find all this good stuff.

I think it would also be helpful to have someone volunteer to coordinate each of the micronetworks, so I will put my hand up for Social media. Anyone else keen to take on a micronetwork?

1. A ‘best of’ 2006 type thing, incorporating the highlights of the year from a comms perspective
2. Predictions for 2007 and what new technologies and approaches will bring
3. An ‘awards’ type post, where I handed out spuriously named gongs for various acts of infamy
4. None of the above

You will be pleased to note that I have (I think) avoided the clichéd options and gone for the merely hackneyed. But more of that later. First, an announcement.

Strategic Crisis Communications

Once we had waded through the feedback for comms@06, it became apparent that you wanted more professional development opportunities that offered intensive, interactive learning. So, we have organised the first of the Network workshops for 2007, a one-day session on Crisis Comms.

In order that you get the most out of the day, we are limiting numbers to 20. This will mean that you get to engage with the presenters and discuss issues relevant to your agency or experience. Registrations open in the middle of January, so I would urge you to register early to avoid missing out. More details available on the Network site.

Christmas & PR

As promised, option 4 for your amusement. A joke I was told at the first PR Christmas party I attended as a young tacker, pretty much straight out of Uni.

Many years ago, the BBC called up the then Prime Minister a couple of days before Christmas and asked him what it was that he would like to receive for Christmas.

Being reasonably media-savvy and a long term denizen of Whitehall, the PM recognized immediately the pitfalls around the question. After some deliberation, he gave what he thought to be a modest and suitably unassuming and very British answer. Pleased with his guile, he hung up.

On Christmas day, after enjoying lunch with his extended family, he gathered them around the wireless to listen to the broadcast.

“Finally, we asked a number of prominent people,” the announcer began after the news, “what they wanted for Christmas. The American ambassador said that he wanted to see an end to famine in Africa, the Russian ambassador said that he hoped for world peace, and the British Prime Minister wanted a nice pipe and his slippers by the fire.”

Back in January

Regular transmission will begin again in the middle of January. Have a safe break.