“There is something in the air, and it is nothing less than the digital artefacts of over one billion people and computers networked together collectively producing over 2,000 gigabytes of new information per second. While most of our classrooms were built under the assumption that information is scarce and hard to find, nearly the entire body of human knowledge now flows through and around these rooms in one form or another, ready to be accessed by laptops, cellphones, and iPods. Classrooms built to re-enforce the top-down authoritative knowledge of the teacher are now enveloped by a cloud of ubiquitous digital information where knowledge is made, not found, and authority is continuously negotiated through discussion and participation.”

Michael Wesch, “A Vision of Students Today (and what Teachers Must Do),” Encyclopedia Britannica blog, Oct. 21, 2008

If this is the state of university classrooms today, imagine what the workplace will look like tomorrow?

I came across Michael Wesch on YouTube about 2 years ago while I was researching collaborative technologies online for a presentation I was preparing. It was shortly after we revised our policy on acceptable use of electronic networks at NRCan. The debate about blocking employee access to social media tools like YouTube, FaceBook, Second Life and others was a heated one and pretty much divided right down the centre. I can’t recall what tipped the scales, but suffice it to say, the “nays” squeaked by and NRCan employees were not denied their right to learn, research, collaborate, investigate and network social networking tools. Phew! Without access at work who knows how many hours we’d be spending at home tracking users trends, collecting stats and finding cool videos and images online to embed in presentations or share with each other to fuel innovative thinking.

Many of my colleagues across all levels of government bemoan the fact that they are restricted access to social media tools altogether. In certain management circles I hear terms such as “disruptive”, “time-wasting” and a misuse of government resources – both people time and bandwidth” – used to describe these tools. Since when is learning on the job a waste of time?

I am attending a meeting this week with a community of my GC colleagues to share ideas on how government can effectively use YouTube for public outreach. Only problem is, YouTube cannot be accessed by the host department so we’ll be swapping our video stories via DVDs and memory sticks. Seems to me, universal access to a common platform like YouTube would make meetings like this more efficient and productive.

Are social media tools disrupting the classrooms and workplaces of the nation? According to Wikipedia, a disruptive technology is an innovation that improves a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically by being lower priced or designed for a different set of consumers.

In fact, Web 2.0 technologies become disruptive when they are forced into existing infrastructures. It is not until we integrate them into our processes and normalize their use will they truly transform the workplace. The students of Mr. Wesch’s class understand this concept. These students routinely mobilize entire communities in 140 characters or less (thanks to Twitter) while in the class room. They are improving their corners of the world in unexpected ways through innovation and collective decision making.

Is this behaviour too disruptive for government? Do we really want to discourage broad knowledge sharing and community development? Is it too soon for government to open up dialogues, relinquish some control and have a little more faith?

From someone who remembers the early days of the internet and the needless paranoia that ensued in the workplace – I say, open it up. Trust employees. They are already abiding by a code of conduct and working within the confines of policies and guidelines designed to protect them and the information they create.

And those students in Michael Wesch’s class? They are rapidly joining the workforce, and expect to have these tools at their disposal. They are not in the minority. All students graduating this year are not only fluent in these tools but have fully integrated these tools into their lives. They don’t know how to work any other way and the public service needs to be ready for them.

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.  

At NRCan we are in the second year of our Web 2.0 implementation. Depending on who you speak with in the department, Web 2.0 is the best thing since sliced bread, and is enabling employees to work more collaboratively than ever before – or, you might be met with indifference and a dismissive wave of the hand informing you that Web 2.0 technology has no place government and is just a passing fad.

Given that over half of all NRCan employees are actively using internal tools like the Wiki, blogs, discussion forums, polling software, social networking tools and, many are using FaceBook, YouTube and Twitter externally to share knowledge and mobilize communities, I would say with confidence that Web 2.0 is much more than a passing fad at NRCan.  By their nature alone, Web 2.0 tools are designed to be shared, used interactively and simultaneously.  They are about bringing people together, enabling interaction and building upon interests and expertise.  They are also immediate and easy to use. 

Why then, after almost two years do we not have 100% of NRCan employees fully exploiting our suite of Web 2.0 tools?

It’s all about change. 

As the “chief engagement officer” of Web 2.0 at NRCan (self titled to satisfy my long-standing desire to be CEO), I am always looking for interesting, new ways to engage employees.  My goal is to get them as excited as I am about changing the way government works.  I want to get them thinking about information differently – to get them experimenting with the tools and discovering for themselves the power they have to really make a difference in the department…in government. 

When we launched our Wiki with a departmental Hawaiian Luau and delivered an innovative podcast message from our Deputy Minister, we ensured that every single NRCan employee knew about the Wiki.  We have continued our quirky award recognitions, extensive Wiki training sessions and barn raisings, Web 2.0 orientations and we never miss an opportunity to promote the Wiki and other tools.  We celebrate many successes. 

Early adopters have embraced Web 2.0 and have become evangelical about using the tools to change the way they work.  Their enthusiasm is infectious.  The challenge now is finding ways to support and encourage those employees that aren’t quite so sure about Web 2.0.

My research tells me not to worry.  Not to get hung up on achieving a 100% take up rate.  The risk in putting too much emphasis on engaging those who are truly unwilling or afraid to change the way they work is in losing the support and trust of lead users. 

Engagement is a key enabler for culture change.   It increases awareness and builds community, confidence and trust.  By continuing to profile the innovation, creativity and bold approaches of champion users, we can demonstrate the value of Web 2.0 in government – the power it has to simplify administrative processes, to improve collaboration and to enable the integration of knowledge.   It is through consistent, innovative, fun, bold, risky, thoughtful and ongoing engagement that true culture change will begin to take root.