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.

Last week I joined 70 of my GC colleagues at the first Web 2.0 Practioners Conference held at the Canada School of Public Service in Ottawa’s lower town. My first impression of this group of attendees was its level of diversity - age, discipline, department, and opinion about Web 2.0. The latter meaning mostly that while the group was generally unanimous in its appreciation of Web 2.0 for government, participants had many differing opinions about how Web 2.0 should be approached in government, what Web 2.0 tools should be introduced to government employees and the public and when these tools should be implemented.

The first in a series of four, this conference was pulled together in a matter of weeks thanks to the efforts of a small team with a big vision. It was promoted to federal public servants by word of mouth and on GCPedia (the GC “Wikipedia-like site designed to increase collaboration and information sharing amongst federal government employees). In fact most every other conference logistic was handled through GCPedia including planning, registration, agenda, table discussions and community development.

This event was also the first one that I attended with a Twitter board displaying the running Twitter commentary from conference participants and their communities. I have tweeted during other events recently and am fairly comfortable – though far from prolific – in the Twittershpere, but, to see the stream of comments in real time was fascinating and it gave me a whole new appreciation for Twitter and the value of broadcasting a message in 140 characters or less.

Within minutes, tweets were coming in from curious readers not in attendance wondering what this event tagged #w2p was about while others were thanking conference participants for the great tweets. That was my “ah ha” moment.

Might be time for a quick Twitorial:

• Twitter: A free, social networking tool allowing users to stay connected with other relevant users.
• Tweets: Individual posts of 140 characters or less responding to the question – “What are you doing?”
• HashTag: Label used to identify a common subject or theme often incorporating the cross hatch (#)
• Twitter Board: Running commentary of users connected by a common subject or theme.

So here we are, about half of us tweeting away; sharing what we are learning with our Twitter communities. In my case, I have 56 people following me, but if you do the math using that relatively low number of followers, the proceedings of the Web 2.0 Practitioners Conference (according to those tweeting) were broadcast to almost 2,000 people. What’s important to note here is that through this simple social networking tool, I and my colleagues were conversing about something we found noteworthy enough to share with others who find us relevant enough to follow. Yes, we were having a conversation – just like we would have had in the good ole’ days at the water cooler, in the elevator, at the coffee shop. Beauty is, the conversation now takes place in real time and with a greater number of people.

“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.

It’s great to be back on the GTEC.CA blog as we ramp up for the main event in October 2009. What a year it has been for the world of Government 2.0 and enterprise collaboration.  Use of social media and online communities for citizen engagement are now routinely front page news. “Enterprise 2.0” has moved from the fringe of public sector priorities into the mainstream, and early adopter departments and agencies worldwide are showing tangible and measurable success.

But what are organizations really trying to accomplish with a 2.0 strategy? Why is a renewed emphasis on collaboration important to the departmental mission?  Beyond the hype, beyond the fluff – what the real objective?  Ultimately success in the knowledge economy –whether public or private sector – rests on connecting the three fundamental elements of business: People, Processes and Content.  Balancing these three elements is not as easy as it seems. As public sector workplaces became automated in the 1980s and ‘90s, this world of “1.0” meant focus on process and content – the rapid rise of email, of shared network drives, of workflow tools endlessly routing items into inbox task lists: transactional content was pushed and pulled from eyeball to eyeball.  Process and Content? Yep! Got it covered.  People? Err… not so much.

Public sector employees personify contributors to the knowledge economy:  program development, delivery of citizen services, protection of infrastructure and populace, regulation and monitoring to ensure high quality of life for residents.  Information is the lifeblood of public sector activity - and this content comes from people.

When we talk about this new generation of collaboration -  inspired by the tools and practices of the 2.0 phenomenon -  we often hear the term “social”:  social networking, social media, social computing.  Social in this context does not mean leisure, or fun and games, it means people. It means bringing the human voice back into the wired world of the electronic workplace.  Organizations wanting to adopt a 2.0 strategy are seeking a more Social Workplace.  The “Social Workplace” is an ideal expression of Web 2.0 technologies to connect people with their peers and with critical content and information. Culturally, it helps break down hierarchical and administrative barriers to innovation and idea exchange among rank and file employees. Technologically, it introduces simpler content creation and communication tools and uses the Web to bridge geographical and generational gaps.

As Web-based collaboration becomes energized by the introduction of social and rich media, sharing and maintaining quality content can accelerate employee productivity. Where individual knowledge was previously hidden, successful teams are seeing shared information and experiences becoming part of broader organizational culture. Employees who actively share their knowledge emerge as experts, and departments that encourage employees to share their knowledge build stronger peer-to-peer and community networks, accelerating internal productivity gains. Providing a variety of simple, interactive, personalized community tools accessible over the Web or smart phones can achieve measurable positive results in this Social Workplace.  In Part 2 of this discussion, we’ll explore the essential scenarios best served by the Social Workplace:

• Attraction, retention, and better use of talent as part of human capital management
• More transparency in corporate governance and communication
• Enablement of front line staff to respond and serve
• Support for a more virtual enterprise
• Respect and protection of institutional memory

Stay tuned…

As a consultant focused in the Employee and Organization Performance space, I came across an interesting Reuters post linking enhanced productivity in employees who use Facebook and YouTube at work. The article noted a University of Melbourne study that showed people are about 9% more productive when using the Internet for personal reasons while at work.

In today’s widely accessible, internet-based collaborative environments, one could question the ability for employees to maintain focus on their day-to-day activities. To this point, I have seen countless private and public sector examples where tools such as Instant Messenger apps or community collaboration sites were locked down or blocked.

With the entrance of a new generation in our workforce comes the increased adoption of on-line social networking and collaboration tools. Taking away the ability of this generation to work and interact within these environments limits channels for enhanced connections both personally and professionally. 

I’d be considered a Generation X employee, joining the workforce around about the time when email became mainstream. When I joined Accenture in the mid-90’s, voicemail was the chosen vehicle for broadcasting Corporate messaging to our global workforce. Email quickly followed as the channel of choice for connecting employees, which was made possible through laptop enablement (note: I recall the strong policy and leadership messaging that email was to be strictly used for business purposes). We then brought the intranet online and provided the ability for employees to share knowledge, messaging and ideas via websites and collaboration rooms.

Thinking back to the technology we used when I joined, I’m fairly certain that in 1995 I used to get 2 voicemails per hour (which admittedly a number of them were from friends lining up plans for the weekend or suggesting menu items for dinner).  These days I’m getting about 2 voicemails per month, and most of my networking is via email, some of which are understandably social (and “unproductive”) in nature.

I can’t speak to the vehicle of choice for staying connected before this technology stuff. However I can only speculate from newspaper cartoons and TV shows like Madmen (set in the 60’s) that there was a time where the water cooler was the collaboration tool of choice for work and non-work related topics. People stayed connected and engaged with colleagues and friends. They shared ideas, topics of interest, lined up dinner plans, arranged socials and followed up on work projects. Out of interest, check out Wikipedia where it can be duly noted that the water cooler is called out as a social networking tool.

I have to wonder, how much productivity was actually lost by keeping the water flowing? Were employees who had daily water cooler social interactions more or less productive than desk-chained colleagues? Seeing as how I have yet to come across an example of a water cooler “lock-down”,  I can only un-scientifically speculate, backed with some methodological research thanks to University of Melbourne, that social networking technology is in fact a useful tool to maintaining a more productive workforce.

Gartner’s recent scolding wasn’t enough. Public sector organizations that are dragging their feet on Web 2.0 applications and practices have caught another slap upside the head, courtesy of a British study which suggests that it’s really all about power.

Just weeks after the heavyweights at Gartner drew “a gloomy picture of current adoption and plans for Web 2.0 in government” around the world, the Society of IT Management has concluded that the British public sector in particular is excessively cautious on the social networking front. And author Chris Head thinks he knows why:

“Web 2.0 challenges the very roots of the public sector ethos,” he says. “As if the retreat from paternalism and recognition of the citizen as a customer were not enough, Web 2.0 provides the facilities to put citizens in control. This turns public sector thinking upside-down. It means marketing services, not rationing them. It means being proactive, and not responding defensively to criticism.”

That’s basically a brief on behalf of the digital democracy side of e-government, focusing the potential of technology not simply as a neat way to deliver government services but as a way to reinvigorate everything from public consultations to, no doubt, elections.

With government trying to figure out how to deploy the tools and applications of social networking – the likes of Facebook, wikis and such – it’s at least interesting to stumble across a suggestion that social networking itself could turn out to be just another fad.

A survey of 13,000 people in 17 countries by the research firm Synovate (www.synovate.com) found that fully 58 per cent of them were unfamiliar with social networking.

Plus: More than a third – 36 per cent – were losing interest in online social networking. That included 47 per cent of Canadians polled.

Steve Garton of Synovate acknowledged the universal truth that social networking is by and large keeping youth on board. But overall, he said, “It turns out social networking is not taking over the world. Well, not yet anyway.”

In the short term, the findings merely suggest that “not everyone is pokable,” as e-Marketer put it. At a higher level, though, they also point to a plain requirement for more research by the public sector on the potential of social networking applications: Can they become part of the fabric of routine community consultation, as some e-government apostles preach, or will they merely become a series of behind-the-scenes intranets for assorted tech types?

You will no doubt be familiar with the breathless tone to much popular discussion of various social media tools. They’re everything from “transformational” to “revolutionary” and beyond, everywhere from Big Business to Big Government..

There is of course something to that. Wikis are routinely fuelling all manner of leading-edge tech development in most orders of government, and communications managers everywhere are trying to figure out to use these applications to engage their various communities.

Still, a little perspective is in order. Facebook, for example – the best known of today’s social networking brands – has clear roots in Usenet, which attracted hundreds of thousands to cyberspace before flame wars scorched that good earth.

As for the popular deployment of wiki projects, U.S. writer J. Davidson Frame, an astute writer on technology in a public sector setting, finds origins everywhere from ancient Athens to the Oxford English Dictionary. (It was propelled by Wikipedia-like contributions from thousands of volunteers – 3.5 million contributions, as a matter of fact).

Frame notes those and other parallels for the U.S. newsletter NextGov and then takes it up a notch:

“When thinking about introducing social networking concepts into government, perhaps the most interesting question is: How far can we go in this direction? Obviously, we face Constitutional constraints on how we govern the USA. But this shouldn’t stop us from raising intriguing thought questions: Can self-regulating social networks replace Congress and the President? In creating regulations, does it make sense to develop them in the same way that Wikipedia entries are created? Should policies be created by communities of interest comprised of people who are most heavily affected by them?

“Given the growing force of social networks, it is time to start – in the words of Herman Kahn – thinking about the unthinkable.”

Transformational indeed, you could say.