Citizens’ views on Govt 2.0

July 6, 2008 – 4:58 pm

Liverpool St Station - a Flickr image by victoriapeckhamColin McKay posted earlier this week about a fascinating piece of research published by the Canadian government. The paper, New Technologies and GC Communications [Word], is the first phase (the qualitative) of a survey into Canadians views on their government’s use of Web 2.0 technologies.

There are a couple of points that the survey throws up that illustrate some of the issues that we are facing here in New Zealand. Working on the assumption that there would not be too much difference between the views of the Canadians in the focus groups and their Kiwi counterparts (an assumption based on the fact that, reading the survey, the comments seem for the most part to be eminently sensible), there are some valuable insights to be gained.

Pace

The first point, and one that brings warmth to my cardigan wearing breast, is that there is no need to be bleeding edge with this stuff:

[G]overnment should proceed, if not cautiously, at least thoughtfully in the implementation of these technologies. Concretely, this involves preceding on a case-by-case basis when deciding which application to use and for what purpose. [...] the GC should not adopt Web 2.0 applications simply to look ‘cool’ or modern, but rather should adopt specific applications to address specific communications or service requirements. (My emphasis)

That means no gratuitous or ill-conceived attempts to deploy social media solutions for the sake of it. It also means that, from a planning point of view, these implementations are driven by business and communications objectives – not technology ones.

Supply

At the same time as framing the need for implementations that are part of a planned approach, participants in the focus groups did provide a strong mandate for government agencies to adopt social media.

There was a widespread perception that the GC must foster awareness of its use of these new applications among the population. This was a theme that recurred at various parts of the discussion, and was seen to be essential to their use.

This desire to see government introduce these tools was based on a number of reasons. Two that stood out for me, given one of the themes that I have been belaboring here, were inevitability:

[G]overnment cannot ignore these applications because they are more and more prevalent. [...]In short, there is a technological imperative at work, and one that will force the government to respond and/or adapt. (My emphasis)

and the opportunity to support more and richer engagement with our publics:

[A] recurring theme throughout the discussions was the perception that [Web 2.0] adoption represents an opportunity to transform the ‘face’ of the Government of Canada, to make it more approachable, less remote, and more responsive to Canadians. [...]Conversely, if it does not adopt these types of applications, the GC risks being seen as more out-of-touch than it is already perceived to be.

Audience

The risk that, in avoiding or being too slow to understand these tools, government’s can damage their reputations is a real one. The negative impact of this inability to adapt sufficiently nimbly to new technologies will manifest itself initially – and critically – with employees.

A related point and one of the most interesting observations is included as part of the final miscellaneous communications issues. The authors note that, of the sub group of participants classified as ‘Internet users,’ nearly all of them think that public servants should be able to use these tools as part of their work;

There was general agreement that public servants should be able to access these sites to understand how they work, as well as their potential strengths and weaknesses as communications vehicles if the government is considering using them.

If public servants can’t access these sites, can’t learn how social media work by observing how the public use them, then there is precious little chance of, when they need to be able to deploy one of these tools, of them getting it right.

Conclusion

If this paper is any guide, the second phase of the project, the quantitative survey, promises to yield a rich array of insights about citizens’ expectations of governments use of social media.

What would be really interesting, however, would be some data on views about how these tools might be implemented inside government, because that is where, for me, the real value for much of this lies.

Without the people and knowledge management practices that can be achieved through the smart use of social media, governments will struggle to attract and retain the type of public servants that could use these tools to effectively engage with citizens. The question is: how long will it take us to reach that point. And, more tellingly, where will everyone else be by the time we get there?

Photo: victoriapeckham

By Jason Ryan | Posted in Communications | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (10)

Open sourcing government

June 8, 2008 – 2:01 pm

Open - a Flickr image by kool skatcatIn April last year, I published a post on what I considered to be the 5 principles for Govt 2.0, one of which was open source government. This week, some academics form Princeton University have published a paper, still in draft, with the wonderful – if only slightly melodramatic – title, Government Data and the Invisible Hand, that considers this very issue.

To recap, the concept of open sourcing government is essentially about allowing third parties (citizens, companies, non-profits, etc.,) direct access via APIs to government data, so:

that individuals, communities and businesses are able to interact with government web applications in ways that are useful to them.
5 principles for Govt 2.0

The UK Cabinet Office released a report in June last year that looked at what this would mean for their public management system. The economic impact alone, as the report makes clear, had the potential to make a significant contribution:

2006 figures from the Office of Fair Trading that estimate that improved availability of information to re-users could double the direct market value of public sector information to £1.1 billion per year.
The value of government information

The Princeton paper authors, however, seem to be going some way further, calling for the US federal government to reduce the role it plays in presenting online information to citizens. The authors argue that the key role for federal agencies should be opening up their data, rather than building websites that provide a platform (and by inference, not a particularly good one) and a filter for people to access the information.

Their premise is an attractive one. That government

should focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that “exposes” the underlying data. [... The Government should] require that federal websites themselves use the same open systems for accessing the underlying data as they make available to the public at large.
Government Data and the Invisible Hand, p1.

Effectively, this means that government agencies could focus their attention (and taxpayer dollars) on the quality and accessibility of the information, and not on the presentation level. It’s a compelling proposition, particularly when you consider the current state of the namespace (in any jurisdiction, really).

The authors argue that the market, in the form of these third parties developing applications that reuse the government data, will drive economies of innovation and accessibility that are beyond anything that government itself could hope to provide. They list some of these advanced features:

It is worth pointing out that some of these advanced features are already part of the namespace here; albeit with mixed success. Advanced search, RSS feeds, and wikis are all essential elements of the .govt.nz space.

There are a couple of concerns that I have. The authors acknowledge that in some case there will be no private actor willing to step forward and create a compelling website based on the data. The notion that government makes all information accessible, irrespective of it’s apparent value, is a fundamental one. Abrogating that responsibility to third parties seems fraught with potential to disadvantage some sections of the community. Mike W leaves a comprehensive comment to this effect on Ed Felten’s blog (one of the authors of the paper).

As an aside, ensuring that people can access a government data set via a visualization (like EveryBlock, for example) using a screenreader can be done, but it is hard work…

More of a concern, however, is the notion that we can either continue to try to build usable websites or simply outsource innovation in the namespace. I don’t see, as the authors apparently do, that the two are mutually exclusive. Indeed, there is an argument that government should retain and build more capability for innovation, rather than adopt practices that would encourage this sort of activity to atrophy.

Those concerns aside, however, what the authors of the paper are proposing is both an effective and efficient approach to transformed government. We should be seriously considering the same here in New Zealand.

Photo: kool_skatcat

By Jason Ryan | Posted in Technology, Web standards | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (12)

The future of communications

May 11, 2008 – 4:13 pm

Ladder for Booker T Washington - a Flickr image by krystal.pritchettFor the last couple of months I have been focusing on (what I hope has been) a less technical and more strategic approach to public sector communications; with a particular emphasis on using change management as the context for understanding what social media and govt 2.0 mean for our agencies.

This has been motivated partly by the belief that we won’t be able to effectively adapt to the changing external environment without articulating a sound business case to senior managers – in a language that they relate to and respect. The second consideration has been the desire to promote the communications function as a strategic, rather than tactical or reactive, one.

Late last year the Arthur W. Page society issued a report on the evolution of corporate communications, The Authentic Enterprise [PDF 421 KB], that zeroes in on exactly these issues. And while it is written for the private sector, it has any number of valuable insights for public sector communicators.

The report is divided into two parts. The first looks at the changing environment for corporate communications, citing three factors as being central to the challenges for businesses:

  • the emergence of a new digital information commons;
  • the reality of a global economy; and
  • the appearance and empowerment of myriad new stakeholders.
    The Authentic Enterprise, p.6

The second part of the report looks at the evolving profession. In order to succeed and thrive in this new environment, the authors suggest that the communications practitioner will need to develop not only new skills, but a new approach to the role. Including the advice that:

We must shift from changing perceptions to changing realities. In a world of radical transparency, 21st century communications functions must lead in shaping behavior – inside and out – to make the company’s values a reality. (p.16)

Their point about shaping behaviour is a signal one. How do we, as communicators, shape those desired behaviours? I would argue that it is through a change process. Clearly articulating the future state (as well as, in the language of the report, the enduring values that will power the transformation), engaging with our publics through the change to monitor and evaluate progress and to fine-tune tactics, and continuing to cultivate support in the wider authorizing environment for the change.

In this scenario, what quickly becomes apparent is that in order for us to manage the change while still effectively discharging our accountabilites, we must have engaged and empowered staff. They are the most critical of all our publics.

This is borne out in the second part of the report where 31 CEOs were surveyed about their perceptions and expectations of communications chiefs. Emerging strongly from this section is the view that internal communications are now regarded by the CEO as, if not more important than, at least on par with external communications.

The weight of the job between external and internal communications has shifted. And I think internal communications is just more important than it ever used to be. (p. 42)

Before, PR was mostly generating stories, but today a big part of the job is enlisting your own employees and associates to buy into and help drive the strategy of the company. (p. 47, my emphasis)

In the public sector, this translates to driving employee engagement and communicating the values of the Code of Conduct. It also reinforces the notion that, in terms of introducing social media into out communications planning, we should be implementing it for internal audiences first.

In fact, this view gives rise to the best quote in the paper, one that senior public sector managers should cut out and paste on to their office walls:

It is in the corporation’s best interests to empower more and more of its workforce with new collaborative tools, training, know-how – and trust – so they can responsibly and strategically interact with the external world. (p. 29)

If you don’t trust your staff to act responsibly, you will quickly find yourself with a disengaged workforce and, as a result, fundamentally incapable of responding to the challenges that the authors identify in the report.

This is a valuable report for anyone interested in understanding how we might conceive a strategic approach to the changes in the operating environment of the public management system. For public sector communicators, however, I would rate it as essential reading.

Photo: krystal.pritchett

By Jason Ryan | Posted in Communications, Public affairs | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Social media & change management

April 28, 2008 – 3:00 pm

Time for Change - a Flickr image by David ReeceReading and responding to the comments left on the last couple of posts had me returning to a question that I have wrestled with periodically over the last year or two: how do you convince senior management of the need to begin planning for online engagement? One tactic that occurred to me is to use the language of public sector managers; that the issue of social media is one of change management.

Change management is often most closely associated in the public sector with machinery of government changes or internal departmental restructuring. However, it can just as easily be required as a result of changes in the external environment. It could be new legislation, a crisis of some sort, or it may be – as is the case with social media – a social and cultural change.

The transformation of New Zealand’s public management system is, for example, essentially a change management programme for the State Services:

Organizational Change Management is a structured approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state. Organizational Change Management is characterized by a shift in behaviors and attitudes in people to adopt and embrace the future state.
Wikipedia

Public sector agencies coming to terms with the impact of social media on their staff, their policies and their external and internal engagement programmes can similarly be thought of in these terms; shifting behaviours and attitudes to this future state.

The change

According to the Wikipedia article, going by the comments on this blog and the discussions I have with most of you, it would not be unfair to characterize most of the public sector in the ‘unfreezing’ state:

It involve(s) overcoming inertia and dismantling the existing “mindset”. Defense mechanisms have to be bypassed.

One expression of this change is the various guerilla activities that are happening in the social media space. These vary from Ministry Facebook groups through to full-blown (and successful) implementations.

Another indicator that I have discussed before is the changing nature of the media landscape, and in particular the emergence of Google as the largest, most profitable and practically omnipresent player in this space.

The plan

How do we manage the change? Simple. It is about moving from the current state to a future state, in a structured, organized way.

Naturally, you will need a strategy. Essentially, this will be a plan that assists your organization take the manageable, moderated steps necessary to evolve over a period of years into a model Govt 2.0 agency.

Begin with an audit. Develop as comprehensive a picture as possible of all of the social media touchpoints in your agency. Does your agency have a Wikipedia page? A del.icio.us account? YouTube channel? Who in your agency is already blogging? Are there people already commenting and engaging in fora (even if not necessarily relevant to your business)?

Find a champion. Every change management programme needs a senior manager as a sponsor. Try and avoid the CIO for this role as it may reinforce the misconception that this is just about technology — its not, it’s about behavioural change.

Agree on the future state. Make sure that everyone from the sponsor down has a clear conception of where you are going, and the steps that you will take to get there. The reality for most public sector agencies is that this will be a modest vision…

Measure your inputs, outputs and outcomes. This will enable you to accurately report progress towards the future state and to tweak your plan accordingly.

Seize opportunities to bind the change into other organizational initiatives. Use an internal blog in concert with your employee engagement programme; launch a wiki as a knowledge base for staff inductions; podcast your staff talks. By including social media in your people and organizational development activities, you are effectively building capability for the future state.

Conclusion

Pitching the integration of social media into your agency’s internal and external engagement and communications programmes as a change management strategy won’t guarantee you traction with senior management (see the quote above about inertia and defense mechanisms). It doesn’t hurt, however, to have these conversations in a language that managers are comfortable with and connects more purposefully with the organizational goals – rather than focusing on the technology or the tools.

Photo: David Reece

By Jason Ryan | Posted in social media | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (8)

Lest We Forget

April 25, 2008 – 10:07 am

Poppy and Cloudy Sky - a Flickr image by smcgeeANZAC day is the one public holiday that, for me, conjures a sense of what could almost pass for reverence.

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

By Jason Ryan | Posted in Editorial | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Rate your agency

April 13, 2008 – 8:10 pm

Scorecard - a Flickr image by J.McPhersonAs we approach the end of the financial year, public servants (with varying degrees of apprehension) start to turn their minds to their performance reviews. And while typically this is when you demonstrate your unswerving devotion to the cause and highlight the prodigious efforts you have been making throughout the year, it is also an opportune moment to take stock of how well your agency is positioned to support your professional needs.

I have posted before about the seismic change that social media is bringing about for the public sector. As communicators, more than most other staff, we need to be able to track the impact of this change and begin to experiment and engage in order to provide our managers with the advice they need to remain abreast of developments or, in a perfect world, capitalize on this changing environment.

Are you getting the support and the tools you need to do your job well now and to grow and develop professionally? Or are you stuck in a backwater where managers are dismissive of the impact of this change and are determined to continue to pursue a course that was first plotted in the late ’90’s?

Unsure? Here’s how you can tell.

Internet access

Do you have unrestricted access to the Internet? No blocking of social media sites?

What about the ability to download files to your local machine? Do you have a bandwidth limit that means you have to prioritize your podcasts? Or is your internet traffic one-way only?

What about the ability to FTP files to a remote server?

Do you have a configurable web browser like Firefox, or are you stuck with Internet Explorer (I call IE7 ‘the pendulum,’ because it spends most of the time hanging…)?

RSS

If you haven’t got your head around this yet, then it should be at the top of your priority list. Being able to source, process and file an enormous quantity of fresh content from news sites, blogs and search engines is a basic competency for a communicator.

Do you have access to an online feed reader or aggregator, like Google Reader, Pageflakes or Bloglines?

Or have you installed a desktop client, like the free and brilliant NetNewsWire?

Mobility

Do you have a mobile device that allows you to access the Internet? What about reading your RSS feeds on the commute to work in the morning? Can you visit your agency website in a meeting and retrieve relevant documents quickly and easily? That last one is probably unfair, as we know it is not the technology that is the problem…

Conclusion

If you found yourself nodding smugly as you read through this post then you are obviously working in the public sector somewhere, but probably not here in New Zealand. If you were running at around 50%, then you are way ahead of the curve and you should probably contact me so I can hand over responsibility for this blog.

If, on the other hand, at the end of that list you realized that your agency is in the social media equivalent of the dark ages, then you have two choices:

  1. start agitating for change
  2. embrace the 21st Century

The clock is ticking. What are you going to do?

Photo: J.McPherson

By Jason Ryan | Posted in Communications, Technology, social media | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (5)

Mobility and agility

April 6, 2008 – 8:30 pm

Strategy - a Flickr image by WaponiThis post began as a review of how well government websites are doing making their content available to mobile devices. I had looked at this in February last year, and had hoped that over those 12 months we might have seen an improvement. These hopes proved, as you might guess, somewhat optimistic. This exercise did, however, raise an important question: why is the .govt.nz domain so underdeveloped?

Despite the evidence and regular predictions about the central role that mobile devices will play in the future of the web, public sector agencies (most of them anyway) have yet to recognize this and build or adapt their existing sites to accomodate these users.

One obvious reason is that public sector agencies’ investment cycles are a lot longer than twelve months and that we will start to see mobile-friendly sites developed increasingly over then next 36 months. That may be the case, but it points at what I believe is the fundamental problem with the .govt.nz domain space: that the management of government websites is mostly considered to be a technical function.

These are not, however, technical issues. The technology has been developed, is already widely used and understood. It is a question of business managers understanding how they can use these tools to better achieve their outcomes.

One possibility

Let me give you an example. We know that the telephone is New Zealander’s preferred means of interacting with government. We also know that it is the channel that causes the most grief for customers (and hence materially impacts upon the agency’s customer satisfaction ratings).

Yet how many government websites offer real-time interaction via the web, using instant messaging, for example? None that I am aware of (happy to be contradicted, point to examples in the comments).

Think about the advantages. You still have people in the ‘holding pattern,’ waiting to interact with a human being, but staff can see the nature of the query/complaint and make a judgement about moving it up or down in the queue.

You can also track contact drop outs against the logged query/complaint and garner much more data about the effectiveness of the interactions, because it can all be stored and – more importantly, given the volume of data we are talking about, searched.

Now to really add public value, you could have the customer service representative tag the data as it is entered during the exchange, for example applying microformats to describe attributes like location and time, which would effectively create a rich dataset for the agency — and for any enterprising third parties, much like Adrian Holovaty’s EveryBlock.

The solution

The first couple of aspects of the scenario above are pedestrian in both conception and execution. The notion of introducing semantics to the process has the potential to transform the agency’s interaction with its publics.

As I suggested above, the lack of coordinated and strategic development of the namespace is because what are essentially communications issues are decided by technologists.

A small part of the solution is wresting back control of the way our agencies interact with their publics; the greater challenge is to understand the technology sufficiently to effectively engage with management and the technologists in these discussions. Otherwise we will be doomed to keep arriving just in time for the ribbon cutting…

Photo: Waponi

By Jason Ryan | Posted in Communications, Technology, Web standards | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (9)

Social media metrics

March 24, 2008 – 8:55 pm

Tape Measure - a Flickr image by PPDIGITALLast week, while looking at the effectiveness of microformatting government media releases, the vexed issue of metrics reared it’s head. Vexed, because it is an ongoing issue for communicators, public sector and otherwise, to collate and report communcations metrics; even more so for the newer social media tools.

The sense of dissatisfaction I felt with my inability to quantify the benefits of a semantic media release and a series of discussions that I have had with colleagues over the last couple of weeks about reporting and metrics triggered some initial thoughts on this issue. There is also a heightened interest in measuring social media around the blogosphere, John Johansen’s post on social media metrics metaphors over the weekend is a good example.

The framework

In arriving at a workable solution for social media metrics the first point that occurred to me is that we shouldn’t overlook the fact that these metrics are only a small part of the picture. Ideally, what you measure and report against is your total strategy, not just the social media element(s).

The strategy would be assessed against achievement of the outputs in your Statement of Intent. The SOI provides the basic framework for the reporting, this can be further broken down into inputs, outputs and outcomes – and metrics established for each of these categories.

The mechanics of this process are self-evident. Social media inputs, for example, are relatively straightforward: time spent writing content, moderating and interacting with commenters and others, numbers of posts, pages created, or podcast episodes.

Outputs can be similarly reported as comments, subscribers, saves to del.icio.us or diggs, pingbacks, the degree to which your content goes viral (remember, we are talking about government here, so let’s not get too excited…).

Obviously, these metrics will also depend upon where you are in your social media maturity cycle. To borrow the MAIL acronym from David Jones, your inputs and outputs will vary according to whether you are monitoring, interacting or leading. You should always be analyzing…

Outcomes

Proving a causal link between a policy input and an outcome is not something that can be taken for granted. Extending that causal chain to the communications contribution to a business strategy is frequently an even more difficult and tenuous exercise.

How, then, do we approach the more demanding task of determining what outcomes can be reasonably attributed to a subset of that communications strategy, social media activities? One solution is to ensure that you build in solid evaluative criteria from the outset, and link these to the outputs in the SOI.

Measuring the impact of social media initiatives on your organization’s ability to successfully engage with its publics is unlikely to be restricted to a single input or output – it will be multi-dimensional. Ensure that you have a matrix of criteria; aggregation will present a more compelling case.

Photo: PPDIGITAL

By Jason Ryan | Posted in social media | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (7)

Government social media release [gamma]

March 16, 2008 – 7:47 pm

SSC blog screenshotJust over I year ago I posted the first government social media release, using an in-development microformat, hRelease. Since then, I have issued 7 more releases using this format (you can see them all on the e-government site). During the course of that year the markup has evolved as I worked with the hRelease working group, ably led by Shannon Whitley, to move the proposed standard up to draft status.

This week saw another incremental shift as I published the first of these social media releases (SMR) with commenting enabled. Most of you will no doubt be wondering why I have buried the lead (SSC has a blog?), but I figure that there are plenty of other capable people to spread the word.

In any event, IABC has now taken up the leadership of the Social Media Release and, as I will continue to contribute a public sector perspective to the process, I thought that it might be helpful to share some observations about the the impact for SSC of issuing semantic media releases over the past 12 months.

How effective is it?

Naturally, it depends upon where you draw the bottom line: media pick-up, comments, saves to social sites, there are any number of valid approaches to the issue. In most of these cases, however, these releases would have to be judged abject failures.

Another way of making the same point: at the launch I was chatting with a journalist, and I asked him if there was any value in the SMR for him. He stared blankly back. Figuring that I was talking passed him, I tried a more practical tack. Was he finding the del.icio.us links helpful? The reply? What’s delicious?.

Now that doesn’t mean that the del.icio.us links are a waste of time. There are currently six people who have at least a passing interest in what is being bookmarked, it just so happens that none of them work in the local media…

On the other hand, a couple of hours after the portal launch SMR went out, I issued this traditional release about changes to the ICT branch. The result? See for yourself.

Is it worth the candle?

Marking up your releases semantically does impose an overhead. Is that a justified use of resource? I would argue yes. Journalists here may be slow to pick up on the new format, but with every release, you are making an investment in the future capability of the namespace.

If all government news releases were marked up using this format, the newzealand.govt.nz search tool could return search results for all news items restricted to a certain geographic area, or about specific topics, within timeframes etc. These results could in turn be parsed into news feeds for local or topic specific sites (including those outside the .govt.nz domain), thus creating far more public value than an individual agency release buried on its site.

Another point that I have made in the past is that public sector communicators can’t afford to think of metrics solely in terms of media. They are a primary audience, but we have a responsibility to ensure that these news releases are discoverable and accessible by the widest possible constituency.

Conclusion

Whether or not hRelease makes it to a draft microformat stage is really an academic issue for me. I will continue to mark up the releases as semantically as possible and to argue for others to do the same. Yes, you should cover the basics and write sharp, factual and informative news releases. The question you should also be asking yourself is, why don’t I spend at least as much time ensuring that the release is as well crafted semantically as it is grammatically. That just is the reality of communicating in the age of the Internet.

By Jason Ryan | Posted in Web standards, social media | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Public sector wikis

March 2, 2008 – 5:00 pm

The wisdom of crowds?Chris Wilson posted an interesting article on Slate last week, The Wisdom of the Chaperones, that uses some interesting data on Wikipedia and Digg contributors to look critically at the notion of the wisdom of the crowd.

Essentially, Wilson points out that these social sites are not built and maintained by the masses, rather they are the product of the dedicated minority.

In reality, a small number of people are running the show. According to researchers in Palo Alto, 1 percent of Wikipedia users are responsible for about half of the site’s edits. The site also deploys bots—supervised by a special caste of devoted users—that help standardize format, prevent vandalism, and root out folks who flood the site with obscenities. This is not the wisdom of the crowd. This is the wisdom of the chaperones.
Chris Wilson

Unlike Wilson, I have no problem with the flimsy veneer of democracy being peeled back from these sites, as I am not particularly interested in the ideology of social media; but the reality of maintaining Wikipedia does provide some salient lessons for public sector organizations seeking to implement these content management systems.

Resourcing

The first point that these findings suggest is that while the wiki will cost (virtually) nothing to set up, it does require dedicated resource to make it a success. This would be in the form of staff whose statements of accountability include curatorial responsibility for the content, and software that supports them in this role.

Some of the tasks that they might be entrusted with range from flagging redundancies, locking pages and migrating content into other wikis or the enterprise document management system, archiving superseded content, through to jointly managing the taxonomic structure of the site.

Without these sorts of controls, particularly over an extended period of time, you run the risk of, at best, the quality and discoverability of the content will inevitably degrade, and the worst case is that you breach the Public Records Act.

Documentation

Just because it is a social media project, doesn’t mean that you can avoid your due diligence. Terms of Reference spelling out the objectives, governance and – most importantly – your content management strategy. That’s right: what are you going to do down the track with this thing? Is it a case of just install and leave it for the next generation to deal with? Or assess after 18 months, migrate everything useful into another platform and archive the lot?

The other, perhaps equally important, benefit of documentation is that you can share it. If your agency does start experimenting with wikis, then it would helpful for your peers if as much of what you did, learned and, if necessary, bungled could be made available, so we avoid the costs of multiple agencies figuring this out for themselves.

One other point about the paperwork: in terms of selling the project to senior management, having robust documentation will get you a lot further than a Govt 2.0 elevator pitch. If that documentation includes another agency’s post-implementation review and/or final assessment of their project, you are making it as easy as practicable for them to agree.

Conclusion

Providing clarity for your organization about what the wiki will (and won’t) be used for, who will be responsible for managing it to success and how they will be supported in that role, should be a methodical and deliberate process.

If we expect to see these tools become part of the standard enterprise suite for public sector agencies in the immediate future, then we need to manage their initial implementations with particular care and attention to detail — and resist the temptation built into the utility of the product to just fire them up and hope for the best.

By Jason Ryan | Posted in Technology, social media | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (8)