Last week NRCan gave a presentation to the Conference Board of Canada on the role of social media in risk management. The presentation took the usual form: we discussed our experiences in managing the risk of social media implementation, focused on how to address quality of content on wikis, and how to guide and inform employees on the acceptable use of new and open technologies.

What was different about this particular presentation was the inclusion of a few slides on how social media could be used to contribute to – and in fact reinforce – risk management activities. We had an audience interested in all aspects of risk management, and as good presenters we looked at our own NRCan Wiki, our blogs and other tools to find good examples to illustrate how social media could help reduce risks – or at least serve as a way to identify risks earlier.

Joe the security guy
Take one of our IT security guys for example – let’s call him Joe . He’s a well-respected and knowledgeable NRCan employee, whose work concerns protecting corporate systems and ensuring that we’re kept well informed on any potential risks. Joe wrote a blog entry about the dangers of Twitter. It was a good, well thought out entry that generated a discussion amongst employees. Some employees were concerned that this attention to potential risk could slow things down, and the issue was discussed from a diverse variety of perspectives.

How does this support better risk management? The first thing to note is that Joe posted his blog entry voluntarily – not because he was asked or because there had been a problem, but because he saw something on the horizon and took the initiative to address it by starting a discussion with his fellow employees. This discussion took place before the Department had officially identified Twitter as a tool being used by employees, and long before it had indentified the need to provide relevant policies and guidelines.

Now that the need has arisen, the policy does not need to start from square one. There is already a base of research and opinion to be found in the discussion sparked by Joe’s blog entry. Joe has created a living repository for information and knowledge that could play a valuable role in building a risk management approach, a repository fuelled by the experiences of NRCan employees. Now policies can be built not only on theoretical implementation plans, but also on how real employees have chosen to make use of social media tools.

This is the power of social media: to build on the wisdom of crowds. In the social media forum, the latest concepts are discussed by people that have an interest in the topic, no matter whether they have an official role in the file or not. With social media, a body of valuable knowledge and experience can grow organically, fuelled by the passion and interest of real people, including those who may not have been reached through traditional lines of communication.

We must not only recognize the value but also make use of the discussions and analyses that are generated through the knowledge skunkworks of social media. Taking this inclusive and proactive approach will help us anticipate new trends and build corporate knowledge, not only for managing risk but also for any other subject matter or mandate.

While not the mainstream, despite what advocates would like to think, web2.0 technologies are occupying more and more of government workers’ attention!  The potential of these tools to help in communicating and sharing knowledge with colleagues, and in engaging partners and citizens across the firewall has gotten a large number of us enthusiastic and passionate about their use, and has prompted some executives to exclaim “there is no going back”.   At the same time there is an emerging question as to whether the knowledge created in these technologies is valued and captured as a government asset.

Knowledge management and Web2.0

Knowledge management types are generally interested in social media, seeing them and often describing them as knowledge management tools.  There are a few good reasons for this. 

First of all Web2.0 tools are open and allow for broad participation and contribution.   Government departments can tap into the collective knowledge and intelligence of their workers on a much larger scale and share knowledge, whether its forestry scientists mashing up maps to plot boreal forest research or GCpedia users ‘crowdsourcing’  an issue of common interest. 

Second, and I think more fundamentally Web2.0 tools aim at capturing thoughts, considerations, decisions and points of view as they evolve and change.  A good example is a wiki page on a new policy that not only contains the policy itself but also the discussion page which records the background discussion and exchange of ideas.  Extend this out and there may be Twitter feeds and blogs that provide ongoing input and commentary on the same policy.    

Taken collectively not only do you have the final result but also a rich source of information containing considerations, discussion, debate and decision, in other words the stuff of knowledge management.  Contrast that with traditional office tools that are focused on the creation of final documents and not on valuing the in-between or ‘transitory’ versions.  While knowledge managers may be one of the biggest beneficiaries of Web2.0 tools there is a significant challenge:

There is a little recognition given to the value of web2.0-created information and knowledge - few recognize, for instance, that a Twitter feed or a blog post would be considered a knowledge resource that needs to be preserved and managed as would any other record or document.  There are cases already of groups and individuals using the new tools and approaches to create communities and generate knowledge only at the end of the process to find that the results have not be considered as assets to be integrated into the government knowledge and information repositories.

Instances particularly worth noting are those where tools have been used to conduct conferences and internal consultations and at the end of the process it is not clear that the information and knowledge has been preserved.  In fact, in a few cases where external services have been used, rights to access this information may have been lost when the service is no longer under license.

While the government is taking steps to recognize the value of knowledge created through Web2.0 such as new policy instruments like the Government of Canada’s Directive on Recordkeeping, there is mindset that has to change.  What we should do first and foremost is recognize that we ARE creating valuable knowledge resources via these technologies and take steps to ensure that the resources be preserved as part of the government of Canada’s historical record.    

I recently presented on NRCan’s wiki experience at a conference. It went well, but it was challenging. The attendees were just beginning to come to grips with technologies that NRcan has been ’storming and forming..then storming some more’ around for two years. So I ended up getting questions like ’What did you base you business case on?’ ‘What were the identified business needs you were trying to address?’ etc.

What makes these questions challenging to answer is that with the initial pathfinder rollout of these tools at NRCan we didn’t have an explicit business case nor did we have a detailed project plan. What we did have though, were strategic and high level views that we needed to collaborate and share our information and knowledge more effectively. Senior managers were becoming frustrated with information they knew existed but could not easily find. NRCan employees were working in their sector silos with no way of sharing their information let alone collaborating to create it. With these strategic business needs in mind (more of a vision really), we engaged a community of “frustrated but willing to experiment with new tools” employees and we launched the tools and watched what happened.

This approach did generate discussion as it always does alternatively being called “ technology push” or putting the cart before the horse. Our response to this was, as always focused on a two key aspects. The first is that the social media tools we are looking at for the most part allow us to do this. They are simple and viral and they cost very little to implement so the traditional requirements for upfront business needs definition to control risk and guide investment are not as important. In fact, in my opinion it would take more time to write a proposal and business case than to just put something out there and see what happens.

More importantly though social media are fundamentally new technologies and the best way to understand their business value is to get them into the hands of the users as soon as possible and have them tell you through the use of the tools. To a large degree this is what has happened with the NRCan Wiki. Most of the innovative uses of the wiki have come from the employees experimenting, coming up with good ideas and having the freedom to implement them. They have not come from a clearly articulated business needs analysis or business case done in advance.

In fact, determining business needs in advance of having a tool in hand may actually lead to status quo approaches and tools. There is the famous Henry Ford saying about the introduction of the Model T I first heard at an nGenera conference last year. The quote goes something like “if I had asked people what they wanted in a car they would have said faster horses”. We social media folks usually deploy this quote to highlight the weakness of focusing too much on responding to people’s perceptions of their existing business needs as a determinant of technology solution since people invariably define their needs in terms of improving the way they are already doing things, not how things could be done in a fundamentally new way.

This is not to say that business cases and business needs analysis are not necessary or valuable. In fact we DID do a business case for collaborative technologies and we HAVE analyzed the business uses of our wiki and other tools. The big difference here is that we did it at the same time we launched pathfinder versions of the tools. And, the primary source of information on business need and value for the business case was what emerged and continues to emerge out of the tools. So to put it into a few phrases we knew what basic IM issues we needed to address, we got going with the tools then trusted to the wisdom of our users to more clearly define the business need - then we completed our paperwork.  

In 2006, it was decided that traditional IM approaches were not working at NRCan. The information explosion was continuing, our information resources were treated as isolated repositories, and most fundamentally there was no broad-based IM culture in the Department. Despite the fact that NRCan had an award-winning IM Awareness program, most employees did not understand. They did not understand the value of IM, nor did they understand its relevance – and what’s more, most employees lacked the competencies to administer the (admittedly complex) set of IM processes. Information Management needed to be rethought, and a new approach needed to be taken.

Beginning with a new vision, NRCan focused its attention on building a single, coherent and integrated knowledge base. More important was establishing a single gateway, through which all information sources could be accessible. From documents to databases and from intranets to blogs, all sites needed to be integrated and made broadly accessible.

Because of their potential to impact the way we capture, share, and manage knowledge, collaborative technologies quickly formed the central pillar of our IM strategy. Employees are motivated to classify and manage their information using these tools, and can do so effectively. This is a dream that seemed unattainable in the world of shared drives.

Faced with the challenge of harmonizing these new systems with our traditional, subject-based methods, NRCan adopted a multi-faceted classification approach. At the heart of this new classification structure is the recognition that the tools have changed. Traditional IM classification methods were trapped in a paper-bound, physical world. With new search engine technologies we could explore simplified approaches that are easier for our communities to use – and easier to use means more readily accepted. Operating on a search engine base makes matters easier. Just look at Google! Social classification systems now motivate more employees to take a role in classifying information, both broadening and diversifying the spectrum of IM. For instance, NRCan’s wiki pages are categorized extensively by NRCan employees, largely because they know that by applying a category to the content they create, they are immediately sharing their information with the whole department. They do not see information categorized and then lost in the deeper levels of a shared drive never to be seen again.

Modernizing records management to inhabit the electronic rather than the paper world has become a key pillar in the new IM. The work around e-records and retention is charting a course away from the paper mountain and towards the true root cause of the department’s information explosion: the electronic mountain. For every paper record created in the last 15 years, there is at least one electronic correlate. At NRCan, this is now taken as a fundamental principle.

Underlying the new world of IM is a fundamental recognition. By empowering our employees through an organizing vision that everyone understands, by simplifying the classification structures and by providing collaborative tools, we are making information and knowledge broadly accessible in shared environments to the whole department. At NRCan, an IM culture is emerging in ways that have not been seen before.

Some of the most interesting challenges facing the Federal Public Service can be found in the growing communities of public servants using external social media tools. You don’t have to look too far to see that public servants are actively using Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – and not just as private citizens. If you look at any one of these tools, you will find broad and vibrant communities of public servants: citizens debating, discussing and meeting to talk about things they are passionate about – and often it is their work.

On the surface, this social phenomenon offers significant opportunities for government institutions struggling with public service renewal. What better way to harness the passion and inventiveness of employees than to give them the tools and the freedom to engage outside the bureaucratic firewall? And it takes only a small step further to see the deeper benefits, the potential to engage with stakeholders and citizens. Imagine the creation of policies and the design of programs in a world where employees are able to discuss, debate, and capture ideas from thousands or even hundreds of thousands of citizens.

The traditional approach is often unidirectional: good communications plans are designed simply to get the message out. Interaction and input from citizens is limited to the channels of surveys, focus groups or portal Web sites. Focusing on official and unidirectional channels is still effective in many contexts, but how long will this remain the case? In short, will traditional methods be sufficient to engage citizens of the next generation, when already they are furiously debating and discussing issues they care about, on their own terms and using their own tools?

Asking these communities to come to us to provide their input is like asking loud and boisterous partygoers to leave their party and come over to your house for tea. Reception will be much better if you just go over and listen – and ask important questions. The idea of an open government bureaucracy that engages citizens at all levels has some very obvious challenges, such as the impact on traditional decision making, privacy, and accountability. I think that the most important challenge can be found in how the core values of the public servant (neutrality, anonymity, fairness and most importantly supporting elected officials) interact with the values engendered in social media (openness, equality, and community). At one time, the political affiliations and opinions of a public servant were only discussed privately. But in today’s world of YouTube and Twitter, where what was once private is increasingly – and willingly – made public, the idea of anonymity goes out the window.

The bottom line is that public servants are a part of an increasingly interconnected, open and accountable world. And frankly, governments need to develop guidance for them, because public servants have already been using social media for quite some time, trying to make Canada a better place. And we must support them.

Afterthought 

You might be wondering why I am treating the broad use of these tools as a fait accompli. We could simply build internal systems or mandate that public servants don’t use external tools except through very controlled channels. We are already setting up internal tools, and they will have an impact. But I don’t believe they can replace the true value of external systems. Also, employees have great latitude to discuss their work interests as private citizens. In doing so, they are generating a wealth of information and knowledge that could be lost to the organization, if the split between private and public servant personas is institutionalized. Accepting the use of external social media tools embraces a public servant as a whole person, and embraces all they have the power to contribute.

(Thx 2 blog pixies)

Blogs are one of the more interesting of the Web 2.0 tools to emerge at NRCan.  Blogs were one of the first collaborative technologies, along with the wiki, to be made widely available to employees.  Any employee who wanted a blog could get one.  There was a significant uptake on new blogs in the beginning.  Then they began to languish; outside of our brave band of librarians and their library blog, no one was posting to the blogs they had requested and no one was responding to them.  Interestingly enough, they were hardly being used for almost a year, until they started springing up again only recently. 

Why did this re-emergence of blogging appear?  The answer is that the NRCan use of blogs reflected more about the cultural change in communicating than about their effectiveness.  As there was no blog culture at NRCan, many of those employees who requested blogs, posted once, and when they didn’t get scads of responses, they never posted again.  However, I also think the early ones died because no one had a business use identified for them, or at the very least, people didn’t see really good examples of how to use them in a government department.   

This trend changed around eight months ago with “The Daily Reed”, an energy-related information sharing blog.  It was shortly followed by many more blogs. What was interesting and so promising about these blogs was that they became key channels for communications and information sharing for the workgroups.  They weren’t “text book” blogs laying out an individual’s point of view. They were used to share news and links to new studies or new projects, and the occasional staff member retirement party.  In a lot of ways these early blogs began replacing email as a primary daily information sharing tool.  Other blog types are beginning to emerge, including blogs for project reporting, blogs that express personal points of view on any number of topics, and blogs furthering the growth of communities of practice.

Blogs are becoming a viable tool because there is a community of users that has taken them up.  We have learned how to incorporate and use them in our work - in other words, there is an emergent blogging culture at NRCan. 

So how do we make this happen?  We didn’t, and that is the key.  While it is true that we made the tool available it’s what we didn’t do that I think made all the difference.   We didn’t impose restrictions on who could have a blog or how blogs were to be used.  There was no allocation of blogs by organizational unit or span of responsibility.   There was no editorial or moderator control imposed, no third party vetting of contents.  We didn’t even restrict what bloggers could talk about (outside of saying in our blogging policy that bloggers should follow acceptable use guardrails).

Other lessons have been learned from our more successful bloggers.  Blogging takes an ongoing commitment, and they need to be updated regularly in order to build and maintain a following.  Bloggers don’t blog in isolation.  They often are responding to other bloggers and they refer to their blogs frequently.  Bloggers also should classify their posts using tags and categories in order to improve their profile and searchability.   Bloggers blog in the language of choice, although in some cases they translate or provide synopses where the blog is part of a consultation or official communications channel.      

Finally, one of the reasons that NRCan blogs are now successful is that we didn’t shut down the blog tool because it looked like blogs were a lost cause.  Ultimately we trusted that if the employees of NRCan were given the freedom to experiment with the technology, they would find a use for blogs on their own and develop innovative and unanticipated uses for the tool.   I have to say it’s nice when things work out the way you expected, even when you didn’t expect, or anticipate, the ways they are evolving.  

Now that we have the internal NRCan Resource Wiki hitting its stride, a growing and active blog culture, and a vibrant video community of practice, where does NRCan go from here?  Do we add new technologies such as professional networking in order to provide even more ways for employees to collaborate and share knowledge?  Do we explore the potential of crowd sourcing to tap into the wisdom of our community?   Do we begin to turn outwards in order to engage citizens and clients in new ways?

The answer is all of the above.  However, we believe that underlying the implementation of collaborative technologies is a foundational need to integrate them with our traditional tools in order to create a comprehensive knowledge base for the whole department.  In other words, our priority these days is to mashup all our sources of knowledge. 

The reasons for this are obvious.  Collaborative technologies are increasingly being used by employees to discuss issues and share ideas, to provide status updates on key files, and to capture considerations and decisions around our projects and initiatives.  At the same time we continue to create studies, reports and datasets using our traditional tools such as word processing and document management systems and databases.  By bringing together new and traditional sources via an integrated knowledge base we can create synergies and provide a more comprehensive and complete picture of the work we do. 

Imagine being able to easily access all the sources of information on ‘climate change’ at NRCan.  You would find a wiki page describing the topic and current status of activities, scientific and policy studies present and past, blog discussions on the latest policy developments, videos of our scientists talking about their findings and a network of expertise with responsibilities in this area, all of this and more from a single point of access. This is what we are aiming for by mashing it all up.

 In order to achieve this objective NRCan has articulated two basic principles: 

1) Information and knowledge should be openly available.  That means putting information and knowledge into shared spaces so that they can be accessed by everyone;

 2) A common and basic level of information classification should be applied to all our sources of knowledge to enable better integration and improve findability.

Most importantly, we are also rolling out an enterprise search engine to search across all these knowledge sources.  Currently it searches wikis, blogs, discussion forums, the intranet and our departmental phone directory.  Over the next few months we will extend the search to content and document management spaces, our growing catalogue of videos and eventually to our legacy shared drives.  All of this taken together will lay the foundation for NRCan to make its information and knowledge broadly accessible, first to our employees, but potential beyond to other government departments and to Canadian citizens.   Now that’s a mashup!