The change has been gradual, but the results have been dramatic.  Over the last twenty years – since the spread of the Internet and the dawn of what has come to be known as the Information Age – the relationship between governments and citizens has changed forever.   Citizens are no longer content to be passive recipients of government services, paying their taxes and expressing their pleasure or displeasure only at the ballot box.  Armed with vast amounts of information and near-instantaneous communications, citizens are seeking not only better service from government, but service that is tailored to their specific needs.  

The early stages of the Information Age – evidenced by personal computers, the Internet and mobile communications – brought us to this point.  Now there are signs from around the world that a new phase of the Information Age – featuring new technologies and more innovative uses of older technologies – is upon us, changing not only the way that governments deliver services, but the essential relationship between governments and citizens themselves.

What we are witnessing today is the shift from e-government to e-governance.  New technologies allow governments to deliver services more efficiently, but the change is deeper than that.  These technologies – ranging from social networking to cloud computing – enable governments to seek advice and counsel directly from citizens, to inform and educate them, and to engage them in the design and processes of governance itself.

Accenture has studied this trend in depth, identifying dozens of cases of governments adopting new strategies (and adapting old ones) to better engage the public, deliver more effective public services and involve citizens in their own governance.  At the same time, we have conducted an ongoing international study – the Global Cities Forum – to hear what citizens believe government should be doing to help improve the quality of their lives. 

These studies have led to the development of what we call the Public Service Value Governance Framework, a model of governance that connects people – as citizens, service users and taxpayers – with those whom they elect to lead them. 

The framework is built around four components:

1.      Outcomes – Governments are focusing on improved social and economic conditions for citizens, such as health, learning and safety, and not merely on the amount of services provided or on efficiency.

2.      Balance – Governments must balance choice and flexibility with fairness and common good, addressing gaps between those who are able to take advantage of service improvements and those who are not.

3.      Engagement – Governments are engaging, educating and enrolling citizens as co-producers of public values by seeking their views and helping them make the best use of government resources.

4.      Accountability—Governments must not only be more transparent about their actions and performance, they must provide accessible means for citizens to remedy problems with government and public services.

In our global research, we have identified many examples of governments at all levels – national, state, provincial and local – that are adapting innovative technologies to put this framework in place.  In Canada, for example, to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public service provision, the Federal Government has launched a government-wide pilot for a new internal collaboration platform called GCpedia, an internal version of the popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia.  The service allows federal employees to post articles as well as comment on and edit articles posted on GCpedia by their peers.  The federal government is using GCpedia to enable informal collaboration between federal employees within and across organizations.  

Tomorrow at GTEC, Greg Parston, the Director of Accenture’s Institute for Public Service Value, will be sharing these research findings on e-Governance. Greg will be speaking on Tuesday October 6^th at 9:15 in Theatre 1.

Governments are looking for ways to leverage Web 2.0 communities and social networking within their organizations, many looking to do so based on their commitment and interest in Microsoft SharePoint.  Based on nine years of experience working in this field, there are a number of principles organizations can apply to successfully deploy communities in social networking.  In this three part series, I will outline 11 principles for social networking on the SharePoint platform, or more generally.

This week, I’m going to tackle the final three principles for government 2.0 –  the importance of design, status updates and follow the data  

Principle #9 – Design Can Make a Big Difference

While in theory, this principle may seem like a no-brainer, it is important when it comes to government 2.0 to keep in mind that small design changes can make a big difference.  Taking the time to understand the positioning of the community, along with how exactly people use different features, is key to the success or failure of a government 2.0 strategy.  For example, a community deployment within the US military made a number of fairly minor design changes, and they were able to dramatically increase the number of views, visits, comments, blogs, bookmarks and question replies with very little growth in the total number of community members.   A small change to the commenting feature resulted in a more than 350% increase in the number of comments being made within the community.

Principle #10 – Status Updates 

Consumer social networking has driven the status update phenomenon, with most services including function so we can see what our friends, family, coworkers and other associates are up to.  While it may seem that the status update is too frivolous or fun for the enterprise, it offers a powerful tool to engage users within communities. 

Within a social learning community, setting the status update to what are you learning provides a relatively simple, yet robust way to communicate with and engage others in the community.  Status updates are particularly interesting as they have proven very effective within consumer social networking sites and now users are comfortable with communicating in this manner.  They provide an easy way to engage users that may be hesitant to participate as the approach closely mirrors something they are likely doing on a personal level.  As these users visit the site to do status updates they are apt to become engaged in other activities over time.

Principle #11 – Follow the Data

In the enterprise there are multiple technology products and solutions to support a wide variety of essential business process needs.  Government 2.0 applications are not intended to replace these approaches but to take their data and make them relevant to a broader audience and contextualize them with the wisdom of the crowds.  One example is at the Defense Acquisition University in the United States where they produce guidance for military acquisitions.  In this context, producing documents are highly structured and require multiple levels of sign-off before the document is complete.  In this case they use SharePoint for document routing.  However, at inflection points in the process and at the end, this document needs to be disseminated and used by a broad community in a Web 2.0 style context.  The key is to make it easy for data in these workflow driven systems like SharePoint to become visible and usable by a broad enterprise audience.

Government 2.0 offers organizations a new and tangible way to drive business results using proven technologies and approaches from social networking.   Applying the above principles can enable organizations across the public and private sector to make Government 2.0 and communities a success.

Governments are looking for ways to leverage Web 2.0 communities and social networking within their organizations, many looking to do so based on their commitment and interest in Microsoft SharePoint.  Based on nine years of experience working in this field, there are a number of principles organizations can apply to successfully deploy communities in social networking.  In this three part series, I will outline 11 principles for social networking on the SharePoint platform, or more generally.

This week, I’m going to tackle the four more principles for government 2.0 –  the importance of design, status updates and follow the data  

Principle #5: Nurture Content Addiction

Successful sites are those active enough to maintain the attention of even the busiest people.  Novelty and change are one big reason for people to keep coming back.   The ongoing success of FaceBook and Twitter illustrate how “content addiction” creates a reason for visitors to continually engage with the site.

From an enterprise perspective, this “content addiction” can be achieved by applying the practice of content aggregation across the social learning community.  Aggregating content across all topics and areas provides pulse on the project, or even the entire organization.  Social filters are key to making this information meaningful to users.   A good public example of this Digg.com. 

Personalized aggregation, which continues to grow in popularity, is another important strategy where users collect all the feeds from topics or colleagues to see in one location.  This Facebook or Twitter style aggregation when applied within the government provides a broad view introducing users to new information, while the personalized view trims down the information.  An important piece of content production is revealing both implicit content [content as revealed user activity such as ‘Ted marked document X as helpful’] and explicit content [content that is added by typing].  

Principle #6 – Use Play and Gaming

Enterprise learning professionals are increasingly relying on play and gaming as a key element of corporate training and development programs.   They are doing so with good reason, as play and gaming are engaging in a very deep way.  For those people who are into gaming, their games and communities are very consuming, and keep them coming back.  A good example of this is the popularity of online gaming communities such as World of Warcraft or the interactive components of gaming consoles like Xbox Live.

These same principles can be applied to social learning applications.  Taking the principles of gaming and applying them to a training scenario offers a very compelling and engaging way for enterprises to keep users active within a community. 

For example, the Army relies heavily on play and learning in its MilSpace community in helping members develop critical decision making skills.  Users watch a real-life scenario on video and are asked what they would do in a similar situation.  When respondents answer, they can then see others’ responses as well as how the real-life person decided and what happened in the end.

Principle #7 – Keep Users Connected

Social and web 2.0 approaches rely on continual participation.  Continual personalized hooks and calls to action keep people coming back and keep people addicted.  The trick is to let the application do the work.  Think of the emails that you may receive from Linked In (Someone has added you to their LinkedIn Network) or FaceBook (Bob has sent you a new message on FaceBook). 

Traditionally, within the community setting, a newsletter or similar tool was used to engage users on a weekly, biweekly or monthly basis.  Applying the successful approach from social networking of continual updates throughout each day encourages ongoing interaction with the community, which keeps users both connected and engaged.

Principle #8 – It’s a Service

A major difference of intranet communities versus social media or social networking sites is that users come to the communities because they want something.  Users are likely looking for information or need a solution to a specific problem. As such, the organization needs to keep in mind that the community is a service and the community’s goal is to provide the best possible service to users.  For example, if you include questions and answers as part of your community, you need to ensure that people are successful by treating it as a true service.  Mechanisms need to be in place to ensure that unanswered questions are addressed, questions are routed to the right people, and new answerers are enlisted.  That many questions get answers, how many are “good” answers, and how long it takes for users to find answers.

Watch this video by Andrew Chambers on how service is important for communities at the Federal Reserve Bank and Northern Lights.

Check back next week for the final three principles for communities and social networking  as part of Government 2.0.

Governments are looking for ways to leverage Web 2.0 communities and social networking within their organizations, many looking to do so based on their commitment and interest in Microsoft SharePoint.  Based on nine years of experience working in this field, there are a number of principles organizations can apply to successfully deploy communities in social networking.  In this three part series, I will outline 11 principles for social networking on the SharePoint platform, or more generally.

This week, I’m going to examine four principles for government 2.0 – simplicity, crowdsource relevance, appropriate calls to action and measurement matters.

Principle #1 – Simplicity

Call this the Google lesson.  The popularity of sites like Google and Twitter are based on the simplicity of their interfaces, and a clear path for participation.  Even new users can quickly and easily comprehend the steps they need to take.   To increase adoption of government 2.0, organizations need to ensure that they practice simplicity and not make things overly complicated.  A clean user interface, with a specific path for participation from the first visit engages users instead of intimidating them. Furthermore, it is important to understand that much of simplicity is about layering; you can achieve the same outcome in terms of activity or desired activities by just not showing everything up front.

Principle #2 – Crowdsource Relevance

Most social networking sites and communities have so much content, that it can be overwhelming to  users.   These sites, to varying degrees, make use of crowdsourcing, where users essentially do the work of “classifying” the information.  For enterprises, crowdsourcing is a powerful tool that enables the organization to take mountains of information and connect users with only the best and most relevant content. 

Just a few examples of crowdsourcing in action include when users bookmark information (which is an implicit endorsement), users mark something as helpful, users visit something (implies popularity), users tag or classify something (when you upload the content) which provides important meta-data.  Crowdsourcing, when used in conjunction with social filtering, becomes a powerful tool for government 2.0 initiatives as the information is classified and aggregated for users, enabling them to get the most valuable information fast, sorting information by what their peers find most valuable.

Principle #3 – Appropriate Calls to Action

The unique value of government 2.0 is engaging the voice of community members, but in the beginning it can be difficult to get people talking within a community.  There may be a lot of lurkers, but not a whole lot of people participating. Often, new users aren’t clear on what actions they could be taking – whether it be uploading a video or making a comment on a piece of content — so they end up doing nothing.  To get users participating from the inception of the community, and new users engaged from the day they join, there needs to be appropriate calls to action throughout the community.

A strong example of appropriate calls to action are found within FaceBook.  With each user`s status updates, there is the opportunity for their friends to indicate that they like the item, or to comment on that item.  It is clear to users what steps they can take with that content to participate, and this principle offers an immense amount of value to enterprises as they work to build thriving communities.

Principle #4 – Measurement Matters

To truly ensure the success of your government 2.0 initiatives, metrics need to be clearly defined and measured on an ongoing basis. Metrics are central to being able to plan and strategize efforts and activities in a project. This enables users and community managers to have tangible metrics so they can know what is working/what is not, who is participating/who is not,  and setting targets for growth of the project.  

Social networking sites are driven by metrics, numbers of friends, followers and so on.  Enterprises need to take these metrics much deeper to identify short, medium and long term goals, manage and nurture top contributors and determine what is most successful within the community.   A project without substantiated ROI is not a project for long, so measuring items like page information and overall community information can make a critical difference in the adoption and success of the community.

Watch this video by Andrew Chambers of Northern Lights (and formerly of the US Federal Reserve Bank) on how measurement matters in communities.

Next week I’ll tackle four more principles for communities and social networking  as part of Government 2.0.

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.

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!

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.