What's the digital communication capability of Australian governments?

On the back of the UK Government's second whole-of-government communications plan, the UK Government has been undertaking a Digital Communication Capability review asking (in simple terms), how is digital communication and engagement done, and how could it be improved?



The Review has involved consultation with Communications Directors, digital engagement specialists and senior executives across the UK Government and was led by a team of three independent reviewers with a deep knowledge of digital communications.



The review is still in the closing stages (final due in November), however has been an extremely transparent process, with all comments available online and the draft report already released for final feedback (similar to the process the Australian Gov 2.0 Taskforce used in 2009, but has been rarely used since in Australian government).



Many of the top-line findings would resonate with Australian public sector digital communications professionals, with the headline finding being:

Pockets of good practice notwithstanding, the headline finding is that digital communication in government is developing in silos and not in the mainstream. The consequence is that it is being outpaced by the best of the commercial and NGO worlds. Too much is broadcast and does not seek to engage. And, crucially, it is still treated by many in departmental leadership positions as a specialist area where the risks usually outweigh the benefits.

Underneath this, the review found that there wasn't a natural home for digital within departments - with placement in existing areas such as media relations leading to a biased approach which didn't serve all agency needs.



It also found that;

• departments were not realising economies of scale, with different agencies separately purchasing the same or different social media management and analytics tools, 


• communication focused far too much on informing rather than conversations, 


• objectives were based on easily measurable quantitive scores (such as followers or tweets) rather than on changing outcomes,


• there was an over-reliance on 'build it and they will come' approaches, 


• there was a shortage of skills - exacerbated by a lack of confidence and judgement, 


• there were limitations on access to social media due to IT security considerations - which may be valid but were poorly explained and understood, and


• there was a lack of trust and overriding pre-occupation with risk.

Unfortunately there's been none of this type of work done in a systemic way in Australia - despite it being possible to take an approach (such as the UK one) and repeat it across every state, territory and the federal government to provide a comparable model (then do a cut-down version for local governments).



This is similar to where I started with the Digital Innovation Review I conducted in Victoria (no other states or territories have been interested in a similar review as yet though).



I'd like to help. Any takers in government?

eGov AU

Craig Thomler's personal Gov 2.0 and eGovernment thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective

Online challenges arrive in Australian government

With psychedelic splendour, the ACT government has become the first Australian jurisdiction to launch a serious whole-of-government online challenges site.



Through the Digital Canberra Challenge website, the ACT is now asking "Canberra's brightest minds" to help improve government services.



The first round contains two challenges, to improve the process of event approvals and to make it easier to book a government service (such as a driving test).



The process is a little vague, however the two finalists for the round (one per challenge) can receive up to $5,000 of expenses reimbursed (on presentation of valid invoices) and the winner of the competition (over a number of rounds) will receive $12,500 - with the runner up receiving $7,500.



To participate individuals must be Canberra-based, teams must have at least one ACT resident and organisations must be both ACT-based and have less than 20 people.



It's a good attempt, though in my view the complexity of the criteria to enter, the way prizes are awarded and the actual psychedelic website itself risk overwhelming the actual goal, to involve residents in improving the delivery of government services.



That said, the goal is fantastic and all kudos to the ACT Government for making a start in this area. I hope that after the process they consider making this approach a standard one for involving residents, reflecting the success of challenge.gov in the US.

eGov AU

Craig Thomler's personal Gov 2.0 and eGovernment thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective

Watch ABC 7:30 ACT tonight for a piece on Social Media and the APS

There should be an interesting piece on ABC 7:30 tonight in the ACT looking at the relationship between the Australian Public Service and the use of social media by public servants.



I was interviewed from Brisbane for the piece and know of several other ex public servants who were also interviewed or consulted.



There's also an interesting opinion piece on the topic today in ITNews by Steve Davies which is worth a read, The Government's push towards a silent state.



There are a number of people I know of concerned over the consequences now emerging of the 2012 changes to the APSC guidance on social media use by public servants, particularly combined with the line that appears to be being taken by the current Australian Government.



The longer-term implications are still unclear, however it is apparent that significant tension remains between the rights and responsibilities of public servants when it comes to their requirement to be perceived to carry out their work duties in an apolitical way versus their ability to participate in the community as an Australian citizen, with all the political freedoms this entails.



As governments move towards greater community engagement, but place increasing strictures on how public servants can participate in these engagements, where an opinion or concern may be interpreted politically, we're likely to see more cases of public servants being forced to choose between their career and their personal rights and more opportunities for unscrupulous managers to interpret vague public sector policies in ways which can be interpreted as harassment and bullying.



I see this as a rising cost to the public sector, as well as leading to greater reluctance on the part of public servants to participate in public discussions in meaningful ways, both on their own behalf and on behalf of the governments they serve.



Fortunately this trend isn't being repeated in other countries - from the UK to New Zealand public servants are being welcomed into community discussions both as individual contributors and on behalf of agencies - so in a few years the impact of the different approaches should be starkly apparent.

eGov AU

Craig Thomler's personal Gov 2.0 and eGovernment thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective

Can government policy, reports and consultation documents be communicated through animated infographics?

Government reports are often dry - really, really, really dry.



They are also often wordy, complex, long and, due to these properties, largely incomprehensible to the broader community.



Government policy and consultation documents can suffer from similar conditions. They are often quite complex, long and structured in ways that make sense to career bureaucrats but not necessarily to the general public.



Many agencies also dislike this and make all kinds of efforts to provide summaries, to simplify language, use images and charts and use other techniques to spice up these often long and complex government documents.



However at their core, they generally remain documents, words on paper that would be familiar to the scholars of Middle-Ages Europe, to the Ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians and to the many dynasties of the Chinese over the last six thousand years - although they may now be distributed by electronic as well as physical means.



Surely modern society can devise better ways to communicate complex information than relying on an approach that is now around six thousand years old.



And we have - by drawing from techniques that are much older and more resilient in human cultures. Pictures, dance and song.



Now I don't expect governments to communicate their reports, policies and consultation materials entirely through the use of the performing arts. Not all our politicians or public servants are as accomplished singers as, say Chris Emerson, who can be viewed below communicating about government budget reporting and the Charter of Budget Honesty in song with his band Emmo and the Wipeouts on an episode of The Hamster Decides.









However with multimedia and the use of infographics it is now possible to communicate government information in far more engaging and understandable ways than ever before.



This is being done by some agencies already. The Department of Planning and Community Development in Melbourne made a series of animated infographics to communicate material from their consultation, PlanMelbourne (which I've been privileged to work on through Delib Australia).









The use is not yet widespread, with most government reports, consultation documents, policies and other material still released as words on paper - however what if it was.



What if governments mandated that agencies were required to follow a visual first approach for all materials they released to the public, only using words on paper as a secondary technique?



Could agencies rise to the challenge, communicating their material far more succinctly in visual form - a five minute video rather than a 200 page single-spaced, small-type report?



Not possible? Material too complex and long? Too many statistics to cover?



Maybe the examples below might shift a few opinions.



The first example is from the creator of PHD Comics, Jorge Cham. As an internationally renown animator Jorge asked students to describe their thesis in two minutes.



Jorge chose the best descriptions and turned them into animated infographics, such as the one below from Adam Crymble on Big Data and Old History.







Second is an example from Peter Liddicoat, a materials scientist at the University of Sydney and the winner of the Chemistry category in the 'Dance your PHD' competition.



Peter's PHD was on the topic 'Evolution of nanostructural architecture in 700 series aluminium alloys during strengthening by age-hardening and severe plastic deformation' - a wonderfully complex and obscure topic that doesn't seem to naturally lend itself to dance, but somehow works.









What I think these example demonstrate is that there are alternatives ways for government to communicate complex material. They no longer must rely on words on paper.



Certainly bureaucrats can argue that word on paper are easy for them to produce, that they satisfy a substantial proportion of the community and they have a long track record - that 6,000 years of history I mentioned earlier.



They can also argue that there's no silver bullet for communication, no technique that will satisfy 100% of the audience, and that is perfectly true.



However while governments may consider words on paper the default position, the lowest common denominator way of making information available to the public, I think they are often used as an excuse to be lazy and unengaging.



Paper make the lives of public servants and politicians easier. Paper documents are relatively cheap and fast to write, review, approve and distribute - none of which is a benefit to the intended audience and community or improves the outcomes of a consultation.



Mark Twain once said, “I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”



For governments words on paper are their long letters - the approach easiest for them, rather than for the recipient, their community or audience.



Agencies can now do better - using images, animations and video to communicate relegating words on paper to a back-up role.



I challenge them to try.

eGov AU

Craig Thomler's personal Gov 2.0 and eGovernment thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective

Opening up information and creating connections triggers ideas and innovation

I wanted to bring attention to a fantastic post in Wired today, which looks at how the explosion in writing is changing how humans think and learn, and how the connections being made by greater openness and improved communication are triggering ideas and innovation.



The post, Why even the worst bloggers are making us smarter, is worth sharing across your organisations and particularly with senior management as it provides an evidence-based view on why open is better than closed and provides insights into several of the transformations happening in modern society.



As the post points out, the internet has led to the greatest explosion in human expression (largely through writing) in human history - and people aren't simply writing for themselves, they are writing for an audience, no matter how small.



When writing becomes public, thinking becomes public and connections take over. Connections lead to innovation and innovation leads to improvements.



This encapsulates precisely why we need more public engagement from public servants, more explanations of policy decision-making approaches and more opportunities for wider audiences to consider, debate, refute and improve on the ideas developed in policy black boxes.



A broader and ongoing discussion is messier, but leads to more innovation and improvement. It can bust myths and debunk ideologically driven views which run contrary to evidence.



If governments are serious about improving themselves and supporting communities to improve lifestyles and dignity, they need to demonstrate this through greater openness and engagement, not more rules.

eGov AU

Craig Thomler's personal Gov 2.0 and eGovernment thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective