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

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

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

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

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

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

So far, most Canadian government departments and agencies are concentrating on Web 2.0 for internal collaboration.  In our department, the decision to keep the scope of Web 2.0 solely to internal use was an easy one, as we felt it was important to ‘walk before we run’.  However, now that we have spent the last 18 months introducing  Web 2.0 technology to the department and the community is getting comfortable with Web 2.0 concepts, it is time to ask ourselves if we are ready to use Web 2.0 concepts for external collaboration.  Are we ready to advance to the next level of Government 2.0?

Many government organizations are still leery of the risk of open information sharing and collaborative authorship for internal use, while some, who have embraced new technologies and new ways of working, have accepted that the risks are small and are far outweighed by the benefits.  However, are the risks for external use different?  Perhaps, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t explore where Web 2.0 does make sense for Government.  

There are some obvious quick wins….the use of YouTube for video to broadcast messages to a wide audience, blogs for information sharing and feedback, the use of networking sites such as Twitter and FaceBook to assist with recruitment.  But, what about the use of wikis…how big is the risk of engaging in active dialogue in online media, or even more, inviting the contributions of all Canadians to help set priorities and develop solutions?  Web 2.0 provides a way to bring people to the table that otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to be there.   It gives the platform to not only find and retrieve information, but also invites their contribution and their feedback.  It not only allows them to share ideas and opinions with government, but also with each other.  Imagine the power of that level of engagement.  

By trying this out in some small chunks, we will be able to assess both the value and the risk of new approaches and address any challenges as we meet them.   Just as was done for internal Web 2.0, this will allow us to ‘walk before we run’ for external engagement.  But the time is now…..so let’s start walking! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

As we delve further into Web 2.0, in government and industry alike, we are seeing the power of the community, the eagerness to collaborate and the excitement brought on by new ways of working.  We see employees eager to share their knowledge, expertise, and energy on work that falls outside of their typical boundaries.  In turn, we should be able to leverage the power of communities coming together to produce results faster and better than ever before.  Sounds perfect!  But, there is a challenge…..

We find that our organizational structures and management policies are not always conducive to supporting these new ways of working.  We are faced with managers worrying about employees ‘wasting time’ on new technology or doing work that falls outside of their defined roles and responsibilities.  Our compensation systems reward people, well defined teams and concrete deliverables.  Management hierarchies have leadership positions defined and accountable for results.  These structures and policies were put in place to create well-managed and high-performing organizations.  But, how does this formal, hierarchical structure leverage and compensate the power of communities?  What needs to change?  This is the management challenge we face….. 

 Gary Hamel, ranked as one of the world’s most influential business thinkers, and according to Fortune magazine “the world’s leading expert on business strategy”, writes about this dichotomy in his book The Future of Management.  Two quotes from the book resonate with me as I watch Web 2.0 take hold at Natural Resources Canada.   

“The web has evolved faster than anything human beings have ever created—largely, because it is not a hierarchy. The web is all periphery and no center. In that sense, it is a direct affront to the organizational model that has predominated since the beginnings of human history. No wonder managers feel a little queasy when they venture into the far reaches of cyberspace, like space travelers who’ve arrived on a planet where up is down and down is up.”

“How do you discover radically better ways of leading, organizing and managing? The short answer: You look far beyond the boundaries of today’s “best practice.” You look someplace weird, someplace unexpected. To glimpse the future of management, you must search out the “positive deviants,” organizations and social systems that defy the norms of conventional practice.”

The current approach creates conflict….and in order to resolve it we will need to be flexible, creative and open minded to accepting new ways of managing work, and also to rewarding and compensating employees in new ways.  This could range from compensation and classification through to delegation of work.   Perhaps the best model would be to create a community of managers and employees equally contributing to challenging the status quo.

Feeling queasy yet?  Don’t worry.  The feeling will pass once we all start to embrace change and all the opportunities it brings with it.   

You can think about it….

You can talk about it…..

You can worry about it ….

Or, to borrow from Nike, you can just DO IT!

In our work environments, we sometimes fall into patterns of complacency…we find it easier to follow the traditional approaches laid in front of us even when we know there might be a better way.  It would just take too much time and effort to get buy-in to change…..or would it? 

What if a community got together to do it?  All it takes is one person to get it started, to bring together individuals with a shared interest…and it is amazing to watch it take off from there. Web 2.0 allows us to leverage the power of the community through collaborative approaches to work such as crowdsourcing.    

Making change happen means you need to take action, and sometimes that means taking some very bold steps and accepting a certain degree of risk.  You have to have confidence in your idea, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to know all the answers, because your community can (and will) help you.  Believe in the wisdom of crowds.  Like-minded people, are coming together in communities and building on each others’ ideas.  This makes a good idea a truly great one that is representative of a broader community..

Don’t be afraid to challenge traditional approaches.  “What is the worst that can happen?”  Unless the risk is significant, (and be really firm about defining significant) continue on.  Find your advocates…and perhaps not in the traditional sense of organizational hierarchy or governance.  Instead, seek out those who share your vision, and have the same passion for change….and the same sense of urgency to make change happen.   It is these three factors, vision, passion and urgency , that are, in my opinion, keys to success and what will give you the confidence to be bold and to accept risk.  When viewed as competencies, we see these factors as strong leadership qualities…..when shared among a community, this gives you something phenomenal! 

 Although still in its infancy, government departments are starting to exploit the power of communities.  It is fascinating to be part of it.   

Is Web 2.0 changing the way government organizations are working together internally, as organizations?  Is Web 2.0 causing us to think more about the contribution we, as employees, can make to our organizations?  Is Web 2.0 breaking down some traditional silos and stimulating us to work outside of typical work structures?  In my opinion, the answers are obvious:  Yes!  Yes!  And yes!

Web 2.0 has started a revolution….an evolution and a new way of working together, sharing information, contributing knowledge and respecting the active participation of a wide range of users.  This is the genesis of Government 2.0. 

At Natural Resources Canada, we are in the midst of such a revolution.   We began with some simple exploration into a few ‘collaborative tools’.  But, we quickly discovered the power of collaboration and Web 2.0 technology.  From then on we were hooked and we were excited.  As we shared our stories with others, we discovered that the excitement was contagious…not because we simply talked about it or gave demos, but because this technology is immediate and accessible. 

When we started our journey into Gov 2.0, we knew we wanted to try out a lot of ‘really cool stuff’.  We also knew we needed to demonstrate value to NRCan employees.  Our focus was on two major deliverables:  a departmental Wiki and a Business Case for implementing Collaborative Technology.  Our Wiki 101 pilot, (101 users in 101 days) was established to assess how a wiki could enable the creation of rich, integrated content amongst government employees (after all, a Wiki is only as good as the content it holds).  We also wanted to build some support and identify lead users.  The pilot exceeded our expectations.  Employees were asking to take part, they wanted to help each other out, and communities of employees with common interests were emerging.

In October, 2007 we launched our Wiki to all the employees of NRCan and three months later, the Business Case was approved.  Since then, our wiki continues to evolve and grow and, we continue to introduce additional tools. 

Has the transition to Gov 2.0 at NRCan been easy?  No.  It has been hard work.  Has it been worthwhile?  Absolutely!  Our bold approach has enabled renewal in the department.   It is supporting new ways of working and increasing the level of collaborating amongst employees.  It is changing the culture of work at NRCan. 

We were thrilled to be invited as contributors to this blog to stimulate dialogue on topics such as culture change, social technologies, innovative approaches, GC collaboration, rules of engagement and many others.  Through this dialogue we will exchange ideas, thoughts and opinions; share best practices; and talk about the challenges, risks and our changing role.  Most importantly, we will learn from each other in an open and collaborative environment.  In the spirit of Government 2.0, let’s start collaborating……. 

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.