Getting people to use Web 2.0 takes more than just having a great new tool – the buzz around social media is key to its success. And while access to GCpedia may be limited to public servants, discussion of it certainly is not. Most of the buzz around GCpedia is positive, but more importantly, a slice of the discussion offers TBS and users some very concrete ways to improve the Wiki in terms of what went right and what needs to change in the deployment of future Web 2.0 tools. That’s why the public service needs to pay attention to what people are saying about GCpedia – especially outside of its walls.

Here are the top 5 things to know about how GCpedia is discussed on the web:

1- Wikipedia’s take on its GC cousin – Oddly enough, the Wikipedia article on GCpedia is an orphan, as “few or no articles link to it.” It is also tagged as a stub – there isn’t much about GCpedia on its closest public analogue. As is Wikipedia’s aim, the language about GCpedia is neutral – so, one has to wonder why TBS hasn’t taken advantage of what is potentially a good, and at least a cheap and easy opportunity to tout the goals of GCpedia. (Who cares about GCpedia outside of the public service? Taxpayers, quite possibly,)

2 – GCpedia will save the public service!  – David Eaves makes the point that GCpedia is an excellent way to capture all of the tacit knowledge that will walk out the door when senior management  retires in droves. Used properly, GCpedia could serve as a wealth of go-to information for those who will advance to mid-level and senior positions. Government departments and agencies need to be willing to endure the temporary pain of dedicating staff to interviewing almost-retirees and posting the findings to GCpedia, to avoid a longer term consequence: losing the collective intelligence getting ready to exit the public service.

3 – GCpedia remains the domain of GCgeeks? – Peter Smith is worried about how well GCpedia lends itself to use by newbies. The level of technical knowledge necessary to using GCpedia is one of the reasons Eaves cites for why soon-to-be-retirees aren’t likely to post what they know themselves. Smith is right – the interface is confusing, and could easily intimidate anyone with techno-trepidation. What is the solution? One is likely more training than what is largely available thus far, especially if TBS is sold on the MediaWiki platform.

4 – Lots of talk on Twitter – Interestingly enough, many public servants have turned to Twitter to talk about GCpedia. This isn’t surprising, just important. Remember that Twitter may well be the easiest real-time resource for anyone who wants to take the pulse of the Web-2.0-crowd’s feeling about GCpedia.

5 – Mostly love, but some concerns, too – Overall, the talk about GCpedia is overwhelmingly positive. And where challenges are discussed on the Web, so are solutions, which gives GCpedia’s owners and users an opportunity to engage in in-depth and strategic discussions about the role of this communication channel. That discussion is vital if GCpedia is going to live up to its potential.

Over the past several months we have used this space to share our thoughts on Gov 2.0 either by profiling the many initiatives NRCan is involved in or by taking you along on a personal rant just to make a point - which some might argue is the sole purpose of blogging.  In the spirit of collaboration, “we” (representing corporate) extended an invitation to a few business leaders at NRCan who are actively using collaborative technologies to engage and interact within their communities.

The following blog posting by Jennifer Hollington, a Director General in the Canadian Forest Service (CFS) and one of NRCan’s most prolific bloggers, elegantly demonstrates how she champions Gov 2.0 at NRCan.  This post first appeared in Café Jen (an NRCan blog) in February 2009.

A few months back, our ADM mentioned an idea for tapping into the knowledge of retired employees. He called it “Friends of the CFS”. It would be a network of retired staff, particularly scientists, whom current staff could contact with questions.

This brought to mind a passage from Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything:

[I]f you’re a retired, unemployed, or aspiring chemist, Procter & Gamble needs your help. The pace of innovation has doubled in its industry in the past five years alone, and now its army of 7,500 researchers is no longer enough to sustain its lead. Rather than hire more researchers, CEO A.G. Lafley instructed business unit leaders to source 50 percent of their new product and service ideas from outside the company. Now you can work for P&G without being on their payroll. Just register on the InnoCentive network where you and ninety thousand other scientists around the world can help solve tough R&D problems for a cash reward. InnoCentive is only one of many revolutionary marketplaces for ideas, inventions, and uniquely qualified minds that can unlock new value in their markets.

Even if government contracting rules got in the way of the full implementation of P&G’s crowd sourcing approach in the public service, the idea of being able to take advantage of the skills, knowledge and experience of retired scientists and professionals is appealing.

So, as I sat typing up this post, I wondered whether I could find examples of how the GC is reaching out beyond its borders to engage bright minds in addressing their challenges. I’m not talking public opinion research, in which the government seeks input on a particular topic for a certain period of time. I’m talking about an ongoing relationship with the general public or a particular constituency for the purpose of collaboration.

I found quite a few examples of how various government departments and agencies are using Web 2.0 technologies, such as Twitter, RSS feeds, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. You can find a list of them at the Government 2.0 Best Practices Wiki, started by consultant Mike Kujawaski. Though the technologies are new and their application in the Canadian government even newer, this wasn’t what I was looking for. I wanted to find stories where government was interacting with people outside their organization.

The most impressive example I found of citizen engagement was Governor General Michaëlle Jean’s Citizen Voices Web site, featuring a blog (bloGG), including video installments (videobloGGs), and a forum.  Some blog entries carry her by-line while others are written by staff in her Office. On her September 3, 2008 post A New Season on Citizen Voices; she ends with this statement:

“To understand, we must listen. To act, we must include.”
The first comment to this post was made on September 30. The next one came almost 2 months later, on December 1 and began:

“This may not be the most appropriate means by which to contact you about our current parliamentary debacle. However, it is a means of contact - I apologize if it is totally inappropriate.”

What follows is quite amazing: more than 100 comments in the span of one week, centered on the political issues of proroguing Parliament.

Equally amazing is the Forums section of the site, enabling citizens to launch their own debates, rather than comment in response to an official post. Within a category called the Citizens Forum on the political situation, one person started a post entitled: “Devastated by your decision”, saying: “I had faith in our Governor General to see the wider view of these political matters. I am devastated by the decision to suspend parliament.” You have to admire the Governor General for embracing true citizen engagement, even when that engagement involves public criticism of her on her own site.

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has a public blog, written by a group of staffers in the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. The blog’s mission is to increase contact between the Office and Canadians interested in privacy issues. Readers can make comments on blogs posts, which — based on my quick review of the site — generates responses from the staffers or other readers.

The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, a GC crown corporation, set up Workscape, a discussion board on occupational health and safety. To date, almost 450 members have created just over 200 posts.

Some sites to support discussions among public servants are unofficial, residing outside the GC domain. One such site is Common Look and Feel .ca. Its stated purpose is “a community space where those who work for and on GC Web projects can come together to share, learn and create.” The site is designed to help members learn how to incorporate new technologies and social media into their sites, while complying with GC Web standards.

But after several hours of searching, I couldn’t find much more than this. Which leads me to my question: are you aware of examples within the GC where departments have reached out to former employees or the public to tap into their knowledge?

Earlier this week, a fascinating and very useful guide to Twitter for Government was published by Neil Williams, head of corporate digital channels at the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The blog post and full 20 page report linked here:   Digital Engagement Blog. 

While specific to ‘official’ department use of this Twitter, even seasoned Twitter users can learn something new about using this increasingly popular micro-blogging communication service.

Four key topics are covered:

1.       Objectives and Metrics – why to use it and how to assess value

2.       Risks and Mitigation – how contain potential risks to reputation

3.       Channel proposition and management – how to populate and use it

4.       Promotional plan – how to promote the presence and increase its reach

The document also includes a very useful glossary, providing a great overview of social media and Twitter terms.

What struck me as interesting?

·         Twitter is being incorporated as part of a larger strategy of the UK government to better engage citizens. It provides a low-barrier to entry allowing people to interact with their public institutions and let them experience live coverage of events when they cannot attend in person.

·         The policy offers clear communication on what constitutes inappropriate content, the importance of ‘light’ but effective procedural controls and guidelines for Twitter users, and how to proactively avoid potential ‘hacks’, misrepresentation or vandalism of content.

·         “Tone of Voice” must be considered and articulated to ensure consistency especially when the account is managed by a team (great tip for any public or private sector corporate social media outreach)

·         Content should be varied, have a human touch, be timely, credible and inclusive.  The report’s tips on frequency, ‘re-tweeting’, use of hashtags (ie, metadata for Twitter updates),  hyperlink shortening tools, how to balance humour and fun – these pointers demonstrate houghtfulness and a good understanding of how to build and maintain a solid list of followers.

·         UK is thinking longer term – including how Twitter may evolve one day into a new source of intake for Ministerial Correspondence systems – and whether these departmental professionals should begin monitoring and responding to Twitter enquiries.

The fundamental missing piece to this otherwise excellent guideline is articulated very well by Gartner’s  Andrea DiMaio in an earlier blog post. What’s not covered is:  “whether and how individual government employees should use it to better fulfill their tasks”.  In other words, while it is a good guideline to create an institutional presence, it is thin on how and why the people working for that institution can or should use social media channels as part of their job.  Perhaps there will be a part 2?

Welcome to Government 2.0!

The hot topic this week in the social media world is all about content management. Yes, enterprise content management.  For the GTEC readers who haven’t been following the latest news, popular social network/communication company Twitter was the target of some malicious activity this week, with some sensitive corporate documents stolen and circulated to several bloggers.  ( Click here for a real-time news round-up) Individual Twitter employees were targeted and the early explanation is that some passwords were compromised. Some bloggers chose to publish the stolen/leaked information, others did not.  The sources of the documents were apparently varied: online ‘cloud’ document authoring and storage platforms, mobile accounts, email addresses, and others.

My post this week isn’t directed at Twitter specifically, nor the individual online/mobile applications that were compromised. But I do question how an organization – whether public or private sector – could risk their sensitive corporate information on any platform not equipped with at least the basics of what we call ECM – document management, records management, retention rules, access controls and audit trails.

What Were They Thinking?

Financial projections, business plans, human resource information and resumes, customer communication:  these are the content types now surfacing for public and competitor scrutiny.  Organizations who view such information as competitive advantage, as strategic to growth, as evidence of trust with their staff or customers need to walk the talk and make the efforts to protect it appropriately. Access control lists to restrict sensitive data to only certain employees or groups; disposal schedules to safely destroy content that is no longer serving a specific business or regulatory purpose but could only embarrass; audit trails and activity history to know when/where/how content was accessed and by whom: this is content management “101”.  The day we get too caught up in the hip and cool world of web 2.0 and cloud applications that neglect and ignore the basics, is the day the utterly preventable backlash begins, and the progress we’ve made over the last few years towards a more open knowledge sharing culture evaporates.

My advice? Use Twitter, but don’t be like Twitter.  Use social media and collaborative tools to share information that is appropriate to share and where sharing benefits your organization, your team and you.  But content that needs protection? That is only your business? That is subject to privacy laws or regulatory scrutiny? That can only harm your organization, your team and you if wrongly shared? Invest in the extra effort to put on the security blanket. The culture of sharing, of knowledge exchange, of openness has its place, but it needs to be balanced with an overall information governance strategy; one that protects organizational interests , intellectual property, and the privacy of its staff, customers, shareholders and partners. 

Last week, AIIM, the non-profit association dedicated to nurturing, growing and supporting the ECM (Enterprise Content Management) community published its state of the market survey findings. The 30 page PDF can be downloaded here: Link to AIIM.org download (free - registration required).

Of the nearly 800 survey respondents to the May 2009 survey, 19% were from public sector – the largest single industry vertical. National governments as well as provincial, state and local were included here. 67% of the participants were from North America (no breakout of Canada vs. USA). The IT sector, finance and insurance were the next 2 largest responding, at 15% and 12% respectively (Survey Demographics on page 20).

The points that that caught my attention:

What a difference a year makes:

In 2008, over 40% of the survey participants had “no clear understanding” of Enterprise 2.0, or what it could do. In 2009, only 17% chose that response. And in 2008, 44% considered Enterprise 2.0 to be important/very important to their business goals, rising to 54% in 2009.

Age matters – sometimes…

Not a big surprise that the 18-30 demographic is more willing to open up their personal details to an mixed business and leisure social network, 32%, in fact. Less open are the over 45 crowd, where only 12% see a mixed network of value.

But – Not a big difference across the generations when asked “I can do a much better job at work making use of professional networking on the web”. And everyone has the worry that “there is so much out there I could read, I get ‘information overload’”.

2.0 content is our looming ATIP/FOI/e-Discovery nightmare

This is the part that scares me: the ‘newer’ online tools were the least likely it is to be covered by usage policies or records management retention rules. Here is a wake up call to government and regulated private sector to look carefully at this next generation content explosion. While 50% of companies have email records management rules, less than 10% have figured out what to do with wikis, forums, text messaging, chat rooms, social network groups or Twitter. RM 101 = the format shouldn’t matter… the content purpose should.

Still lots of room for education and awareness

2.0 technologies and social media aren’t new anymore, but real adoption for business purpose is still in early adoption phases. Organizations need to pay attention to where and how their content is being created and shared, and ensure we’re not ramping up for nasty surprises in the future.

The time to develop safe social media practices is now. Encourage innovation, better collaboration, fuel the social workplace… but not at the expense of good information management fundamentals.

This week my team and I are at the premier Enterprise 2.0 Conference, in Boston as part of the launch of our new Open Text Social Media product.

One of the ½ day workshops was led by Mr. Dion Hinchcliffe, noted Enterprise 2.0 consultant/analyst/blogger and author of some of the most well known E 2.0 Frameworks such as SLATES and FLATNESSES (see links for more information on these very useful constructs).

One of the key topics he addressed today was how to fund and plan for a 2.0 deployment inside an enterprise – public or private sector. Where should an organization expect to spend its resources – both financial and human costs?

In Hinchcliffe’s experience, the breakdown often follows this pattern:

• Tools = 15%

This includes the cost of acquiring, and often customizing the tools to suit particular organizational needs. Cost of course can vary widely, depending on the tool selected, whether existing licenses can be used, or net new product introduced. But bottom line, this is often the smallest single outlay to consider

• Customization and Integration = 25%

The degree to which a tool must be customized to meet specific user experience needs, or perhaps tie into other key business applications to meet upfront requirements often will exceed the initial software license cost. Again, highly variable depending on complexity, number of integrations, and suitability of the initial software tool to meet the bulk of the requirements

• Community Management = 25%

This is the key ongoing cost consideration – once the software acquisition and required integrations are completed, ongoing community facilitation, moderation, internal awareness education, coaching and mentorship is essential to be successful and meet user engagement targets. Don’t neglect investing in people to make this successful. Communities and 2.0 adoption are not short term campaigns – they require commitment and promotion to succeed.

• IT Support = 15%

Ensure the system functions smoothly, has appropriately resourced infrastructure to meet expected load and up-time commitments

• Project and Change Management = 20%

Next generation collaboration and communication tools will be embraced easily by some people, not by others. Invest in creating clear objectives, coaching, measure success and correct things that don’t work. Ensure senior management is supportive of the objectives and have them lead by example. Cultural and behavioural change – as with any project that changes work habits and computing tools are bound to encounter roadblocks and challenges ; human nature is to resist change.

Bottom line? Don’t starve the change management, education, internal marketing and ongoing community support requirements. Success with 2.0 is much more than software deployment. It’s about engagement, better knowledge sharing, better support for the increasingly virtual work teams and extended networks we need to do our jobs.

This week I’d like to open up discussion about what we see south of the border. Open Text as a Canadian headquartered, but globally-focused provider of Enterprise Content Management applications gets to hear and see firsthand what public sector around the world is doing with 2.0 and the collaborative culture this phenomenon brings.

One of my colleagues, Debra Lavoy, inspires and engages me. She’s an active participant in the Government 2.0 community inside the beltway in Washington DC.  She’s become a popular contributor to transparency workshops and is an active and thought-provoking blogger on issues that resonate well here in Canada too.

Is everyone familiar with a site called SlideShare.com?  If not, it’s worth some exploration. Think of it as PowerPoint heaven.  People and organizations can share their key slides, with notes and talking points that they want to broadcast. 

Two of Debra’s decks I want to highlight here are posted on Slideshare.

The first is “Social Workplace for Government 2.0”: http://www.slideshare.net/dllavoy/social-workplace-for-govt-20 .  Three key points?

·         Social Media tools make connections that drive collaboration and knowledge management

·         Culture is more important that technology

·         New technologies are pleasant to use, so people use them

All of these key points highlight the new world of opportunity that Web 2.0 brings to the immense information management challenges public sector professionals face.  Simpler tools can foster better connections, leading to a more cooperative and efficient working culture.

Next key point Lavoy makes – Collaboration is not one size fits all.  She argues there are three main types of collaboration that have different motivations and offer different types of success.  These three types are:

·         Creative

·         Connective

·         Compounding

The second slide deck does a deeper dive into the concepts of these 3 ‘C’s:  in “Social Media at Work” , specific scenarios and examples are explored.

Creative Collaboration

·         Means Innovation. Finding new solutions when and learning how to meet new challenges. Incorporate new insights and brainstorming across a team to develop, vet and test ideas.

Connective Collaboration

·         Means awareness and agility: spreading critical information quickly in even in complex and dynamic situations

Compounding Collaboration

·         Means finding the right person at the right time. Grassroots knowledge management and expert locator to get to the right information and ensure that critical gut instinct we call tacit knowledge can be shared.

Take a look at the slides I’ve linked to and let me know what you think. Maybe I can get Debra to come up for GTEC in October, and we can continue the conversation further.

A bright sunny day last week, and like every sun-starved Canadian in the spring, I could not resist an unscheduled walk at lunch time to enjoy the fresh air and rejuvenating warmth. But… I’m one of those pale, freckled types… who burns and never tans. As I navigated the gravel in the office parking lot, I was glad that as part of a regular morning ritual I had put sunscreen on before makeup.

What does this have to do with Government 2.0 or Collaboration, one might ask?

It struck me on that walk that preventive protective measures made great sense – especially to mitigate that risk that comes early in the season, before any tolerance to the sun has had a chance to build up over the summer. Isn’t this preventive layer needed for our departments and public sector employees making that first enthusiastic venture out into the bright light of world of Social Media?

A few months ago on my regular blog, “Candy and Aspirin”, I drew the analogy of The Sun, The Cave and the “a-ha” Moment to describe that moment of understanding and clarity one gets when the potential and possibilities of 2.0 technologies and practices are first grasped. Using the allegory of Plato’s “Cave”, the sun represents that bright light of true knowledge – that sense of truth and enlightenment that comes with discovery of the reality outside of our narrow inward-focused perspectives.

But the realization made on that walk last week was about the potential for a new and energized person or department to ‘get burned’ in the excitement of those first days engaging in social media or online collaboration. The opportunity to be open, engaged with peers or constituents, brings with it tremendous rewards – but also the risks: risks of being too exposed, of getting a little burned, of regretting the rush into openness.
Government departments looking to become more externally engaged need to be diligent and look closely at education and awareness for the individual public sector employees tasked with this outbound social networking or collaborative web communication. Very clear guidelines, boundaries and appropriate use policies are absolutely essential as the first building block to a social media strategy. Nothing can be more detrimental and bring a shadow over a move towards transparency than repercussions over inaccurate disclosure, inappropriate commentary or poor representation of the department’s mandate.

Policies and guidelines need not be perceived as barriers to transparency or a hindrance to better engagement. Think of them as your department’s Digital Sunscreen. Don’t let your valued and trusted internal experts get burned.

Want to learn more about the Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and how it relates to the world of 2.0 in just 2 minutes? Click this YouTube link and find out.

At GTEC 2008, I presented a seminar called “Managing Corporate Memory in Public Sector”.  The well-attended session explored the pending shift in workforce demographics as the Boomer generation approaches retirement age. Sectors at most risk included government, utilities, engineering, transportation and manufacturing. I sought to explore how IT and IM professionals could play a strategic role as our workplace transforms and to minimize risk of information and knowledge loss.

Though this is no longer a new topic challenging public sector management, the situation continues to grow in urgency and awareness.  Over the weekend, I noticed that Gartner Research VP, Jeffrey Mann, had twittered about a recent spike in his customer inquiries precisely on this topic.  He “tweeted”:  “three of this morning’s 4 calls are on knowledge management (two on capturing experience of retiring employees) who says KM is dead?”. Whether we call it knowledge management, corporate memory preservation, succession planning… whether the project is led by IM/RM, Human Resources or IT…  regardless of the tools we use to capture the intrinsic knowledge held in the brains of our most senior valued employees – we know it must be done. Public Sector is a knowledge-economy enterprise. Information, policies, and programs:  services are delivered to the citizens, residents, businesses within our jurisdiction to provide a stable infrastructure for social, commercial and political activities.  To not pay attention to prospect of losing mentorship, best practices, and institutional culture is to do a disservice to the investment we’ve made in cultivating depth and breadth of public sector experience.

We all have our “keep me up at night” moments. Mine is a story told to me at the annual ARMA Conference in 2006.  I was conducting a workshop on this topic of “Managing Corporate Memory” and a woman from an academic institution came up to me, very pleased to see the research I had done on the topic. As part of her Records Management responsibility, she was tasked with capturing the legacy paper and physical records of the scientists and engineers who retired from her institution. She told me the story of a scientist who upon his departure handed to her a large box of ore samples. He said to her very intently, “make sure you hang on to these… they are very very important”. And so she took them. And put them on a shelf, documented with the date and location and name of the scientist who left them behind.  She looked at me rather sadly, and admitted that she had no idea what those rocks meant, or WHY they were so important. There was no corporate memory preservation mandate to ensure the samples got to a new researcher who could continue the work. So to this day, they sit on a dark shelf.

Was the cure for cancer in that box of rocks? Did they tell us something about our world that could make our lives better? We may never know.

To learn more about this topic of Managing Corporate Memory, click here to listen to a recorded educational seminar we hosted earlier this year. Any comments or feedback welcomed.

Last week I had the very good fortune to share a panel discussion with Mr. David Tallan – one of the drivers behind the Stewardship & Web Portfolio initiative, in the Office of the Corporate Chief Strategist for the Ontario Provincial Ministry of Government Services.  The topic is was I’ve been working on for the last two years: “What Do Records and Information Managers Need to Know About Web 2.0”?  We’d collaborated in advance – I’d overview the industry trends and emerging best practices for 2.0 adoption in public sector and highlight the risks and rewards, then David would then turn the topic specifically to how the Ontario government was piloting, prototyping and exploring new forms of inter-departmental collaboration as well as new forms of 2.0-inspired citizen engagement and communication.

But what struck me as we were getting set up and settled into the conference room was the buzz in the audience.  People were already talking, debating and sharing their current projects: what was worrying them, what new approaches they wanted to explore.  I turned to David and said, “we have to talk fast, this room needs lots of time for questions and discussion at the end”…

Clearly public sector is on the leading edge of this new generation of collaboration. Tangible business problems were raised and discussed among the panelists and with other participants in the room.  How can newer, simpler forms of web-collaboration tools – such as wikis, maybe community workspaces – be used to handle knowledge management and corporate memory preservation challenges? How can we better measure the consumption rates and usage patterns of communications published through blogs?  And how to public sector information professionals walk the fine and often-changing line of using external social networks for program awareness, public relations, citizen engagement when their access to such sites are often limited from their work computers?

The topic of corporate memory preservation inside government as the demographic shift slide towards that long-projected retirement bubble is one I’ve been researching for several years.  A significant factor in how information and content management systems can be used to mitigate long term risk of the loss of electronic culture and work product.

An extremely valuable discussion with a full room of public sector professionals wanting to learn more about new social media tools to better fulfill their citizen service mandates…  looking forward to more of this type of interactive discussion in October in Ottawa.