WARNING: This post covers a fair bit of ground, and not always in a direct way. Bear with me.
My colleague, Andrew Boyd has made a good stab at defining the nature of Government 2.0:
- that information is available from where it is needed regardless of source.
- that processes are transparent wherever possible.
- that mass participation in policy development is not only possible but becomes practical, and eventually expected.
He does so in the context of recent statements by Gary Nairn, Special Minister of State. Minister Nairn’s speech, delivered at the Australian CeBIT Conference last week, covered a number of areas including:
- government blogging as a way to encourage debate and boost discussion around policy formation;
- the increasing delivery of government services online (one in five people conduct person-to-government business online), and;
- the increasing use of the australia.gov.au portal as the one-stop entry point into those online services.
This all bodes extremely well for the sorts of services offered to government (and business) clients by acidlabs – particularly in the context of the work I do in increasing awareness of and assisting clients in the implementation of social computing technologies as a tool to facilitate knowledge management and knowledge workers. It’s frankly the case that a great many workers are today by and large knowledge workers, and indeed, knowledge worker 2.0 style workers, even if culturally, the organisations they work for aren’t quite ready to deal with that reality. Thus the work I do.
Andrew’s post was triggered by Matthew Hodgson’s latest missive on the whys of blogging. I agree wholeheartedly with Matthew. For the three of us, and many of our other colleagues who blog, the driving force is to get thoughts and ideas out of our already overcrowded heads (information overload).
Information overload is something that knowledge workers everywhere are trying to deal with in increasing numbers. The volume, range of sources and type of information they are having to manage on a daily basis is so overwhelming that they are simply exactly that. Overwhelmed.
Strong, modern knowledge management strategy, implemented in such way as to support management and facilitate the work of knowledge workers is critical, and something that presently, many business in both the public and private sector struggle to do. So much so that a few statistics from the LexisNexis seminar I attended this morning are worth repeating here:
- managers spend up to two hours each day searching for information;
- more than 50 per cent of information found is of no value;
- 59 per cent miss information they need due to poor distribution;
- 42 per cent accidentally use the wrong information at least once a week;
- 53 per cent find less than half the information they do get is of value;
- 45 per cent found obtaining information about other parts of their business is difficult;
- only 31 per cent found obtaining competitor information to be difficult;
- 57 per cent indicated that having to multi-source information is difficult, requiring on average, three sources;
- 40 per cent indicated that other parts of their business were unwilling to share information;
- 36 per cent found that too much information made finding the right piece of data a lengthy task.[1]
This is remarkable stuff. What it indicates is two very significant things. First, that management decisions are being made badly due to the complexities of finding and analysing information and second, that the approaches to information, that is, knowledge, distribution in business are largely at fault. That’s not to say that it’s the fault of the knowledge managers and knowledge workers. Far from it. But, as I say above, the sheer volume of information dealt with on a daily basis is overloading workers.
There are a number of strategies business can adopt in order to begin to deal more effectively with information overload and the inability of their knowledge workers to deal with the load. I would suggest that adopting and supporting, from the top down, the use of social computing technologies such as wikis to which all staff can contribute in an unrestricted way, corporate blogs from the CEO to the junior staff and RSS syndication (both in-and outbound) of information such as news are all valid approaches. Generally this sort of implementation is discussed in terms of Enterprise 2.0.
In light of Minister Nairn’s statements, emerging information about the damage inadequate knowledge management is doing to policy- and decision-making and the benefits that can be gained from adoption of social computing, I’d like to think that we’re approaching a tipping point where rather than having to convince businesses that they should even consider Enterprise 2.0 tools, very soon, I’ll be talking to business about Enterprse 2.0 implementations.
- LexisNexis (2007, 4 January). Managers say the majority of information obtained for their work is useless Accenture survey finds.
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Hi Steve,
great post
One incredibly minor correction – Andrew’s post certainly grew out of discussions that have taken place in the past between Matt, yourself, and himself, but the observations on Government 2.0 around Gary Nairn’s speech grew out of attending Gary Nairn’s address (and others) last Wednesday at CeBIT’s eGovernment conference. I have a post in preparation on it – still waiting on a response from head of CSIRO ICT, Ross Wilkinson, on his views on Knowledge Worker 2.0
Best regards, Andrew
The statistics you’ve quoted from the LexisNexis are fairly common and, unfortunately, used within government by ‘old school knowledge managers’ – the librarians and records folk – to promote the need for good recordkeeping practices.
Like I told the National Archives some 7 years ago, it’s not about managing records. Until government understands that it needs ways to support its business with knowledge and information processes, that don’t just equate to records, agencies will continue to have this problem.
That doesn’t mean it’s just about finding an RK or an IM system – it’s about supporting knowledge workers with the tools they need to locate, process and share knowledge and information. Something that I’ve been enjoying reading on your blog about.
Long live KM! Long live social computing! Let’s see whether we can see an evolution toward government 2.0 as a result!
M
@Andrew – I stand happily corrected. Shame I missed CeBIT. Seems like there was some worthwhile stuff going on.
@Matthew – I didn’t imagine the stats were awfully new, although they are a new iteration. The quoted Accenture study was completed in 2006.
I think we’re all preaching to the choir a little as we get thoughts out of our heads and into our blogs. We need to be reaching a larger audience of knowledge workers and their leaders. We know it’s not about recordkeeping (although it’s a factor). We know it’s about tools and facilitation. We need to be talking to knowledge workers and their leaders about the fact.
As an example, yesterdays session was full of records and library people. Many of whom seemed either overwhelmed by or unaware of RSS – at least judging by the lack of input from the audience. No managers or leaders there being exposed to possibilities.
Gary Nairn seems to be moving in the right direction, Maybe we’ll see a boost in awareness this year?
I found some other information this morning on user segmentation in the social web sphere and blogged about it:
http://magia3e.wordpress.com/2007/05/11/the-taxonomy-of-social-computing/
There’s many a lesson for government 1.0 evolving to 2.0 – so they don’t just end up saying ‘I want a blog’ and learn that social computing is more than just the technology.
M