Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Who owns government websites?

I have a very strong view on who owns a government agency's website - it's operated by the agency on behalf of the public.

The teams who look after the code, functionality, design and content are custodians and gatekeepers who ensure that the website;

  • works (is online 24/7)
  • meets all required standards
  • uses appropriate current tools and approaches to maximise its effectiveness
  • is attractive and interesting, and, most importantly,
  • meets the needs of the agency's audiences
However I've found in practice, and not just in government, that collective ownership is a hard concept for many to grasp.

Over the years I've heard many individuals make statements such as (actual quotes);
  • Public sector Senior IT manager: It's my code
  • Private sector Marketing VP: The website is a communications tool, I own it
I know that humans love to own stuff - it's the basis of our consumer society.

Ownership is also important for peoples' careers - often people judge their own success by what they 'own' (or control) professionally - staff, resources and businesses.

Irregardless of which area or executive manages or funds a website, who writes the content or cuts the code, if it doesn't meet the needs of the organisation's customers - does it have any value at all?

As professionals, don't we have an obligation to consider the big picture?

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Social media in government - the five stages of acceptance

My experience in both the public and private sectors has been that organisations often face enormous resistance against the introduction of social media channels for staff.

Given how new social media tools are, this, in my view, reflects similar resistance to other new innovations, such as the introduction of:

  • phones on every desk (staff could waste time and money making personal / long distance calls),
  • desktop computers (may not deliver any real benefits to the organisation and would be hard to manage - why would an organisation needs more than one computer?),
  • email (staff could distribute confidential and/or inappropriate material), and
  • universal internet access (staff could waste time and access inappropriate material).
In each case the benefits have vastly outweighed the risks or downsides, and there have been a variety of approaches available to ensure staff made appropriate use of these tools - from codes of conduct to filtering and reporting tools - even the approach of placing greater trust in staff.

In thinking about the adoption patterns for all of these technologies, I see behaviour reflecting the model of the five stages of grief.

Based on this I've come up with the five stages of acceptance for social media detailed below.

Let me know how well these fit the experience of your organisation.

Stage 1: Ignorance

"We need a collaboration tool - let's build one"


Organisations begin with no knowledge of online social media - particularly at senior levels. When they need new communication, engagement and/or collaboration tools they design and develop them, or buy from a major IT vendor.


Stage 2: Denial

"That would never work here", "We're already investing in a solution that will be better"

When the organisation discovers online social media tools, either the value of the tools is denied, or decision makers (particularly in IT) do not believe that a free public system could be as good as their quadrillion-dollar homemade or off-the-shelf solution.

Potential security issues, system incompatibilities, staff misuse of resources and time wasting are commonly raised as reasons why external social media tools won't deliver what an organisation needs.


Stage 3: Bargaining

"We should own this tool because it relates to our area", "We'll need budget for it"

Once the organisation accepts the value in social media tools, bargaining for ownership begins;
  • IT calculates that social media tools are technology-based, delivered via IT infrastructure,
  • HR points out that social media connects people and builds positive workplaces,
  • The Communications group tells everyone that social media is about communication,
  • Strategy, finance and/or efficiency teams strategise that social media is a channel management and efficiency tool.

Stage 4: Depression

"We need a strict usage policy", "No you can't use it that way, someone might...."


By this stage no-one who really wanted to use social media is happy with the organisation's solution for how the tools will be introduced and managed.

Complex usage policies are developed that restrict effective usage in the name of risk mitigation and the tools begin to be used in a basic and haphazard way that meets the rules.


Stage 5: Acceptance

"It's there - use it however you like"

One the social media tools have been in place for sometime and there have been no major issues or breaches, groups in the organisation loosen their grip on how the tools may be used and their true value begins emerging.

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Tuesday, July 01, 2008

In action: Training.gov.au Project Blog

This is a fantastic example of how blogs and other Web 2.0 tools can be used to support government initiatives and help reduce project costs.

First I should note that I know Nathanael Boehm, one of the members of the project team. He's an early adopter of web technologies, with a great deal of experience in social media and user design areas.

What is Training.gov.au?

In the words of the project blog:

Training.gov.au is the name of the new system that the Australian, State and
Territory Governments are developing to ensure people can get the information
they need to make informed decisions about training.


What are they using?

To manage the development of training.gov.au the project team are using an open-source blogging product to provide an online communications and collaboration space for the various stakeholders involved.

The Training.gov.au Project Blog is very clean, simple to use and flexible. It currently contains some information on the project objectives, governance and deliverables and has been set up to also manage the project timetable and provide a central communications platform for the project.

It's very easy - and cheap - to set up this type of system and it has surprised me how little these types of tools have been used by government in Australia to support the management of complex projects with multiple stakeholders.

I'm going to keep a close eye on the development of the project blog - and on the project itself - and, with the agreeance of the project team, may provide a post-mortem of how well the blog worked to facilitate project governance, communication and cost management.

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How do you rate your agency online?

How do you rate your agency in the online world?

I currently use a lot of different tools to build a picture of how our agency is doing, but I have not yet unified these into a simple set of metrics that tells me how we're doing.

Tools I use to rate my agency online include:

Site metrics

  • Webtrends for site performance and detailed analysis (unique visitors, visits, page views, time on page)
  • Hitwise for benchmarking and demographics (Ranking vs National Government sites/all sites, site demographics, Mosaic, search trends, upstream/downstream sites)
  • Google analytics for reality checks (traffic trends, search trends, browser/resolution)

Search metrics


  • FunnelBack site search engine reports (site searches, unsuccessful searches within the site, best bets)
  • Hitwise (top terms, unsuccessful searches, other destinations)
  • Google trends (search trends, top terms, site comparison, hot terms)

Customer metrics


  • Technorati for blog posts (mentions, tone)
  • Summarize for Twitter mentions (mentions, tone)
  • Wikipedia entry status (accuracy and interest)
  • Alexa (views)
  • Manual forum checks (checking of mentions and tone across a selection of forums)

Media metrics


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Here comes the (egovernment) New Zealanders!

New Zealand is a beautiful place to visit and I have fond memories of my last trip there.

It also happens to be one of the most happening places in eGovernment, at least in this part of the world.

In fact I feel a little disappointed in Australia's progress at the national level compared to the achievements of our nearest neighbour.

For instance, in New Zealand public officials are regularly blogging to share information across the government sector, such as in the Thorndon bubble and Eye of the Fish.

The Network of Public Sector Communicators in NZ also has the Network of Public Sector Communicators Blog to support and aid the discussion.

The NZ State Department runs not one but two official blogs, In Development and Research e-Labs, demonstrating central commitment to the online medium.

The Department also conduct their review of government Web Standards using a wiki, as well as their Guide to Online Participation (Australia doesn't have one of these yet for public sector employees).

In Australia these types of collaborative developments could be easily facilitated via the existing Govdex service (though in my view Mediawiki - as used in NZ - is a lighter, faster and more flexible solution).

New Zealand also uses the online channel for government initiatives, such as their Police Act wiki, when the public was able to provide input into the review of the NZ Police Act through a wiki. This was passed as an act of NZ Parliament as the Wiki Policing Act 2008.

Worst of all, New Zealand beat Australia in the Fullcodepress competition last year in front of a global audience.

I wonder if they have any jobs going?


For more of our neighbour's online initiatives, see this list of eGovernment initiatives in progress in New Zealand.

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