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How we can win the #nocleanfeed argument

Stephen Collins — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:14:08 +0000

This afternoon, Jason Langenauer posted a well-argued piece with respect to the issues he sees in the national discussion we’re having over the imposition of the Labor government’s Internet filter. Initially, I thought it was a good piece. It’s clear, makes sense, sensible. But Jason is wrong on several points.

First, I should point out that this is my personal view, formed after lengthy discussion with well known anti-filter proponent, Mark Newton; someone whose view and ability to argue a point I respect a great deal. It’s not a view that represents my role as a board member of Electronic Frontiers Australia, though it is a view I’m trying to influence that group with. Given EFA is a democracy, I may get voted down.

: Image by trib via Flickr

The #nocleanfeed movement is killing itself. But it’s not confusion that’s doing it as Jason and others have said. Anyone with even passing familiarity with the campaign has no confusion whatsoever about what it means. None.

Asserting that we (the #nocleanfeed movement) have somehow dug ourselves an inescapable hole by using that term is false.

Sure, I wouldn’t use #nocleanfeed to try to explain it to someone unfamiliar with the arguments, but that’s Communications 101; you use the language and understandings of your audience to talk to them. You don’t confuse them and fail to engage with them by using your language.

On the other hand, as pointed out to me by Mark, using filter is probably a bad choice. Filters are good. They remove impurities so we can drink clean water and other such important things. At the very least we should use the term “filter” (air-quotes very intentional).

EFA have just launched the Open Internet campaign. As someone who participated in the discussions that brought it about, I strongly support it and the message it sends. But we’re using filter everywhere. Why not call a spade a bloody great bulldozer and use the term censorship? That’s what we’re talking about, after all.

So here’s my view.

We’re smart, and we have all the tools we need to make this a fait accompli. Yet we dance around, playing nice, wording statements carefully and not calling out fools strongly when we see them.

Over two years into this campaign and Senator Stephen Conroy has been utterly unable to successfully frame this issue the way he wants – as a battle against child pornography. Not only do even those casually familiar with the issue know that the filter will fail to stop child porn, but they also know that it’s the wrong fight altogether; child porn is distributed via methods that Internet censorship can’t ever handle, at least with current technology.

We know that the argument that being anti-censorship is ipso facto to be pro child porn is rubbish. Senator Conroy has been called on this often enough that he’s largely given up on it.

We all know that fighting child porn is far better fought by adequately funding the Australian Federal Police and their high-tech crime unit to do the job they know how to do very well. Give them more resources and they can likely do it better again. I’ve met some of them, they’re incredibly dedicated and they believe in what they do.

And this week, the mainstream media and the public got 100 per cent sucked in by the idiots at Anonymous and their ridiculous Project Titstorm. Anyone with half a brain will accept that this action was completely unacceptable. It stopped government delivering important services to the public and did the anti-censorship argument no favors whatsoever by risking re-framing the debate in anti-censorship = pro-porn terms. To that I say an unqualified NO WAY!

On Monday evening on the ABC’s Q&A, Melinda Tankard-Reist managed to unequivocally demonstrate that she had zero understanding of this issue when she sought to conflate Anon’s attacks with child porn. She looked less informed on the Internet and censorship issues than did Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce, who, in a moment of infrequent clarity noted that kiddie porn perpetrators ought to be locked up. Yes, Senator! Though this may be the one and only time I ever agree with you.

The #nocleanfeed movement, its meaning and its ability to creep (hopefully pretty quickly, it’s an election year after all) into the greater public consciousness couldn’t be in a better position. And here’s why.

Those who understand the argument are eloquent. Let’s help others understand by explaining to every person we know just what a damn fool idea the whole thing is and why. It’s not that hard. I’ve written about it enough, and others more eloquent than me have too. Use their words, and mine, to help you.

The government, overall, is in something of an unclear mess over a great deal of its Communications portfolio, not least because there’s at least one Senator, in Kate Lundy, whose public opposition to the Internet censorship policy must be having an effect by now.

Every time Senator Conroy speaks about the issue, he makes less sense and dances around more than last time. He is rapidly losing authority because he can’t argue cogently about the censorship policy. I suspect he just wishes it would go away, but he’s argued so long and hard for it, that he has no face saving way out.

And, should Anon ever decide to play with the big kids rather than confining themselves to the sandpit where they can fling mud pies, they have the potential to be a powerful force. They are certainly smart enough, if misguided. Any blacklist will get leaked almost weekly. The update frequency on Wikileaks (currently not publishing as they try to fund raise – maybe you could donate?) will go through the roof!

The only real problem we face in the #nocleanfeed argument is our good manners. When we’ve couched something badly, we take the beating. When we argue well, we let the opposing forces argue against us and take the beating. It leaves us without a strong position and no driving story. Nobody really knows what we stand for. As Mr Newtown eloquently pointed out to me, “[like the US] everyone knows exactly what the American right wing claims to stand for, but nobody knows jack about what the
lefties represent.” Same with the #nocleanfeed lobby and to a relatively significant extent, the EFA.

We need to switch our approach. Argue hard. Point out the fault in the opposition argument. In public. In strong terms. Cut their legs out from under them.

Jason thinks there’s no strong, consistent framework for couching #nocleanfeed arguments. He’s wrong. Here it is, and it’s so simple your Luddite family members can understand:

there’s no serious Internet content problem to solve – you just can’t inadvertently stumble on RC or child porn on the Internet
even if it was, nobody wants the government to solve it – if they did, free filtering software would be incredibly popular
even if they did, this solution won’t work – we’ve seen the trial results and the extensive analysis which points out the flaws
even if it did, it’s too expensive, unreliable, performance-sapping,
scope-creeping – ouch, ouch, ouch and no way
even if it was perfect, it’ll be administered by governments ill-equipped to do so – we’ve seen several policy and program stumbles lately, do we want one over this?
even if it was administered perfectly, the blacklist will leak – and leak, and leak, and leak, giving infinite publicity to exactly the content the government wants to suppress (you’ve heard of the Streisand Effect, right?)
there is no possibility that the blacklist won’t leak – it already has and it will again

There’s your framework. Work those arguments. Expand them. Point out the risks of Nanny Stating. The disconnect between the government and the electorate.

Sounds like a strong movement with a great argument to present to me.

Focussing on the voice of the customer

Stephen Collins — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 03:41:56 +0000

When we’re designing products, applications and services, we always bang on about how important it is to consider the customer, or user (I’m going to use those terms interchangeably in this post). But just how much do we really consider them? And how often do we compromise in favor of some product or business limitation?

While I realise (abundantly so) that we can probably never create the perfect product or service, I’d like to argue in this post that the primary consideration we need to focus on as user experience designers, service designers, marketers or whatever, is the voice and view of the customer.

I don’t think it happens nearly enough, nor well enough. And, truth be told, I’m as guilty as anyone of this.

Let me set the scene.

You’re designing, or redesigning your product or service or your web site or your bricks and mortar store (or doing it for a client). You’ve been given the imprimatur to “focus on the customer” and you start sketching out what you believe is the ideal experience.

You focus on flow. On creating delight in the user’s mind. On achieving the desired outcome with the least inconvenience, fastest path and fewest number of hurdles you can. You ensure any limitations of the business or technology or infrastructure are hidden with helpful smoke and mirrors so the customer gets the job done.

Then you present your design to the project team, or key stakeholders, or someone else with a vested interest and it all goes to crap. You hear things like:

the legacy systems don’t work that way
the price is wrong because you haven’t factored in the development costs or costs imposed by some other factor
the order of fields in the form is wrong because the way the code will be written is easier if it’s this other way
you haven’t considered factor X which is the primary business concern of a particular stakeholder business unit

And there are any number of others.

But where’s the voice of the customer in all of this?

Of course, in any project you need to balance the business requirements against what’s actually deliverable to the customer or user. But I’d argue that at no point in the project should business requirements outweigh or force a compromise in the experience you deliver to the customer. You should never expose your problems, limitations or issues with the business to the user or customer. If you do, you’ve failed in delivering the best experience.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that those issues don’t exist and that you don’t consider them very carefully. But you don’t expose them to customers. You use whatever smoke and mirrors you can. You do clever things under the hood. Or you even change the business to remove the problem so it’s no longer a problem at all.

Here are a few real and virtual world examples I’ve come across lately to show what I’m talking about:

banks increasing interest rates outside or in excess of official increases because the GFC has made their part of the business (trading and moving money around) more expensive
justification for a higher-priced product than competitors because the R&D, innovation and rollout costs had to be offset somewhere
a request to change the order of fields of a web form because it would be a hassle to code and pass messages to legacy systems in the order that was best for customers
an inability to deliver a new web-based product to customer expectations because of an unwillingness in the business to adapt or change old practices

While these are all valid business concerns, and absolutely need to be addressed, they need to be addressed and resolved on the business side of a project. They are issues that should never be exposed to the customer. Not least because as customers, we just don’t care what your business issues are.

So, here’s a quick list of voice of the customer concerns you should ask yourself every time you encounter an objection to delivering to customer expectations:

am I exposing a business concern to the customer?
am I delivering the product, service, whatever at the best possible price that’s competitive with the alternatives?
am I making it as easy as possible for the customer?
if there’s a barrier or process I’m exposing, does passing it offer the customer a tangible benefit?

Your thoughts?

Do these people have no idea? – the folly of the Internet Filter

Stephen Collins — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:31:47 +0000

This afternoon, Senator Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy made the announcement so many of us had been dreading – that the Federal government would be going ahead with its plans to filter Australian Internet access and unnecessarily protect us from nasties we neither want nor need to be protected from.

It represents imposition of Nanny State government of the worst sort. Arguably, it places us alongside extreme and totalitarian states such as Iran, China and North Korea in the level of control placed upon Australians’ Internet access.

It would appear that vested interests, dominated by appeasement of fringe Senators such as Steve Fielding and their constituencies in the moral and religious right have wielded their increasing power and brought about the policy position they have been pushing for, as on first reading, the report doesn’t provide compelling enough numbers to justify moving forward and, as we’ve seen many times in the media, community support for this policy is not widespread.

The reaction on Twitter, a place that politicians are now listening to, is singularly passionate. As I write, WhatTheHashtag has recorded in excess of 6000 tweets in just a few hours and the tag is the #4 trending topic overall. It’ll be swamped when the Americans wake, unless we all tell our American friends who can then laugh at the stupidity of the entire exercise.

This issue is the #1 reason I stood for and am now on the Board of Electronic Frontiers Australia. I am passionately against the foolish policy position that this represents and am keen to hear from any reader who wishes to email me or comment here. I’ll make sure your views are taken to Parliament House in Canberra and given to the right people.

There are any number or already well-discussed reasons why this plan is folly – expense, ease of circumvention, lack of widespread public support, lack of transparency and adequate governance in the blocking process. There are any number of far less controversial measures the government could undertake that would satisfy both sides of the argument on ‘Net filtering. Let’s start with opt-in filtering for both homes and ISP’s as noted by Internode tech and outspoken anti-filter campaigner Mark Newton. There’d be little outcry if this was the policy executed. People could choose to filter on their PCs at home, or if that was too challenging, choose to use an ISP that offered a filtered feed. Everyone ends up happy as those who don’t want filtering get to have unfiltered connections too.

The arguments that are pro the filter are incredibly spurious and usually couched in “it’s for the children” terms. We’re supposedly going to protect them from ‘Net nasties and the burgeoning ranks of pedophiles waiting to pounce on them online.

Bollocks.

My 12 year old daughter uses a completely unfiltered Internet connection. She also has root access to the network at home and to the computer she uses. Yet she’s never encountered any of the problems Senator Conroy and the likes of Senator Fielding seem to believe are rampant – no nasties, viruses, stalkers or any other undesirable in several years of using the Internet unfiltered and mostly unsupervised. And you know why? Good rules and decent parenting (well, certainly the first and hopefully the second).

Yes, there are risks to being online, They’re remarkably similar to the risks you face in meatspace. Here’s a handy list of things to try to effectively protect your kids online in case you’re confused at this point:

Make sure the computer your kids use is in a public, well-trafficked part of the house
Educate yourself as a parent so that you have as much knowledge or more than your kids about the risks of being online
Establish reasonable expectations for their Internet use in terms of time online, acceptable standards of behavior in terms of online activity and what the real risks are (they’re much smaller in my view than the government, Federal Police and parts of the media would have you believe)
Teach them strategies to deal with undesirable content encountered online
Live up to the expectations you set for your kids in terms of your own Internet use
Impose penalties for breaches of the rules you set and stick to them

It’s my desperate hope that this foolish policy and the legislation necessary to make it happen are defeated in Caucus. If not, it’ll be one of the few times I’ll support a vote the Liberals take in the Senate when they vote against it.

Others have written their own thoughts over this important matter:

Téa Brennan, who makes an impassioned pleas for sense and proper parenting
Craig Wilson, who speculates the intelligent folk of the Australian blogosphere might just bring the government down
Crikey’s Possum Comitatus, who examines the possible electoral fallout
Will Briggs, a pastor in Tasmania whose faith-based views contrast strongly with others such as Senator Fielding
Gary Sauer-Thompson, on his well-regarded blog, Public Opinion
Jeff Waugh, well known Open Source and Software Freedom proponent
technology educator, Dean Groom
Chris Chesher from the Digital Cultures program at University of Sydney

If you’d like to do something effective, email and write (on paper) to your member and Senators and let them know how unhappy you are about this decision. If you’d like some guidance, EFA’s No Clean Feed campaign is a good place to start. You should also take a look at EFA’s response to today’s announcement.

Much promise, many miles to travel – my thoughts on the Government 2.0 Taskforce draft report

Stephen Collins — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:18:37 +0000

The release earlier this week of the draft report of the Government 2.0 Taskforce has the potential to be a watershed moment in the management and delivery of government and its services to the people of Australia.

I find it more than a little interesting that after not much more than passing interest in the Taskforce’s work from anything except the Australian technology media, the mainstream media has now picked up the story and seems fascinated. It’s also more than a touch humorous that the report from Australia’s leading financial newspaper, the Australian Financial Review, had to be copy-pasted into a post at the Taskforce blog because of the AFR’s ridiculous and reader-unfriendly paywall.

Others, both in the public sector and external to it have voiced the view that the report is well written, addresses all the right issues and suggests a number of well-considered approaches to the problems of reforming government and the work it does. I couldn’t agree more. While there are the odd overly bureaucratic turn of phrase or suggestion in the report, they are forgiveable. This is after all, a report for government about government business – it must speak to its target in language it understands and is comfortable with. How else can encouragement of needed change occur if not in the language of those you seek to change?

I’ve engaged several times with members of the Taskforce and at event they’ve run as a part of their work. I’ve been more than impressed overall with the way the majority of the members have gone about their business and particularly in the way they have sought to walk the talk on the types of practices, behaviors and business they are working on.

But as of December 31, everything changes. The Taskforce disappears and in some way, shape or form, the work of the Taskforce becomes business as usual in some part of the byzantine machine that is the federal government. All that enthusiasm, interest, and modeling of the way things could and should be potentially goes dead in the water on 1 January.

I think this is an incredible risk. If the momentum that has been created becomes a part of some busy (albeit probably enthusiastic) bureaucrat’s work, handed to them to manage in addition to the mountain of work they already have, what happens? Does the work continue? Who remains to prod and poke, generating action, when people like Nicholas Gruen, who has been an outspoken agitator throughout the lifetime of the Taskforce, are no longer there?

Without a determined agitator and without rapid and decisive action on the part of the government, any outcomes from the Taskforce’s report risk being implemented by committee in some yet to be determined time frame. We risk ending up with a camel rather than the sleek, agile quarterhorse we have should the report be actioned in the way it recommends.

Should that happen, the greatest risk becomes inaction and apathy. If that occurs it will be a terrible waste and a great shame. I hope it is very much not the case.

What remains to be seen, and will undoubtedly be the most complex hurdle for all of this will be the hobby horse I’ve been riding throughout this journey – cultural change. Without a willingness to and action on cultural change in the public sector and at the legislative level, many of the recommendations will come to naught. Without explicit and powerful support from above (all the way to the Prime Minister) and all through APS management from Secretaries and agency heads down to EL1s (and equivalent), and the necessary support and education throughout the ranks, change will be terribly hard.

Even with the changes to the APSC guidance on public servant involvement online, FOI reform, and the dropping of control and filtering I am beginning to hear about, all of these things and the recommendations of the Taskforce will be incredibly hard to make happen without the cultural change, support and education that will lead to good execution of the recommendations and the attendant policy and practice reform.

I believe the willingness and capacity to make this all happen in the best possible way is there, I just hope that it all doesn’t get swallowed up by bureaucracy and people so busy they can’t make things happen. Making sure this is the case will be the hardest thing the government and public sector has to do on 1 January.

Social media strategy should be a long bet

Stephen Collins — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:45:07 +0000

This post is being published in Marketing Magazine’s 2009 Media Guide. I’m not sure when or if MM are publishing it online.

Over the years, I’ve probably dedicated somewhere in the low-mid six figures in words to the subjects that interest me:

user experience
social media
web strategy
knowledge work and the people that do it

Most of that writing has pointed to or discussed aspects of these things and how I believe they can work together to increase the potential for any business to be more successful. As I’ve done so, it seems a number of people have chosen to take notice, even when I’ve railed against the apparent obsession in the marketing industry with using social media, in particular, to try to sell stuff. I stand by my words, even in the face of some well-argued counter opinion.

So, what am I talking about then?

What I’m talking about, is really caring about an investment in your strategic approach to all of those factors – user experience, social media, web strategy and knowledge work – over at least 12 months, and preferably longer, anything up to five years (and occasionally more). I’m talking about embedding these things into your business culture and taking a long bet on their value as a success factor over time.

Too often, and increasingly, I’m seeing those new (where new is less than several years) to the game get all hot and bothered over the “faster, faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death” approach many, including much of the marketing industry, are taking to social media. It’s all about selling, and Twitter Boot Camps, and short term, non-strategic approaches.

Breathe in… And out… Pause for a moment and look out to the horizon. Try to (metaphorically speaking) peer over it. There. Doesn’t that feel better?

If this, do it now, do it fast approach is your model for getting clients involved in social media it is doomed to failure. Sure, it might work for this campaign, or that one. But over time? Not a hope.

Sure, the world moves fast these days. We all know that. But businesses still require strategy over time, and measurement of the inputs and outcomes of that strategy. You can’t measure that success based on three month campaigns.

So, what do I propose? Here’s a short list to start chewing on. Some of it consists of things to do, others are about my view of the world.

Social media isn’t new, but you’re probably new to social media – Make an effort to understand some history. Learn about how the things you’re doing now on social networks have existed in society, and inside the walls of organisations long before you ever knew about them – knowledge work, collaboration, communities, sharing, mentoring, nurturing.
Strategy is a multi-part thing combining business, technology and community – All of these things must be in balance before they will work together properly. An imbalance will hurt your business, your client, your technology or your community.
Don’t try to sell as the first thing you do – That community part of your strategy, the people you used to be able to call users, or customers? They don’t like it. And they will let others know. As much as we slam the door on salesmen on the street, we will slam the door in your online face too if what you bring to the table is pressure to sell to us.
What happens to your campaign and its community in a year? – If the campaign you’re about to launch is successful, someone (perhaps many someones) are going to get emotionally invested in it. What plans do you have for them? How are you going to support that emotional investment over time?
Users aren’t – Nor are they customers, or eyeballs, or click throughs, or viewers, or whatever other term you choose to try to tack onto them. They are human beings. They are excitable, fallible, ingenious, dumb, clever, and everything else all at once. Treat them like humans and they’ll respect you for it. Treat them like a demographic or a metric and they won’t.
Who else might benefit from your strategy? – Have a think about this. What if another business unit, or another business altogether, or a friend, or someone on the other side of the world could benefit from what you’re building? What additional benefit in terms of social capital, in whuffie, might you get if you shared your ideas rather than sticking them like Rapunzel in some impenetrable tower?
It’s not about you – As much as you, your employer and your mates might consider you a genius, you’re probably not. Somebody has in all likelihood pitched your idea to their boss or client already. If you’re putting together a strategy, take a look around to see who’s succeeded and failed before you. Pick over the bones, gather the best ideas and mash them up to build something of real value for your client or business, not something to highlight your CV (if the idea is good, it’ll end up there anyway).

But how is this about long bets?

Well, it’s this. While I’ve misappropriated the term, “long bet” for this piece (long bets are actually about much longer term thinking and outcomes than one to five years – they’re worth reading about), I want you to consider the possibilities if you took the four things I mentioned at the start of this piece – user experience, social media, web strategy and knowledge work – and built your strategy for the work you’re doing, whether it’s for a client or your own business, with them in mind, over at least a year. What benefits could you realise? Who could get involved? What additional opportunities for innovation or ideation (is that really a word?) might arise?

Caring about the people who are going to experience your campaign, or strategy, or product, or whatever, counts for a lot. It wins you points. People will talk about you. Treat them well and that will talk about you more. Treat them well over a long time and they will talk about you a lot more.

Everyone reading this is probably a member of a social network of some description. It’s in social networks, whether they are real life at the football or the pub or online on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or the internal social network in your business, that they’ll do that talking. And those places are their turf. You need to play by their rules. Page takeovers, intrusive ads and shouty salesmen just annoy people. And sooner or later, they’ll shut you out or invoke Gilmore’s Law on you.

Karma can be great, or it can suck. Depends on the flavor. Share some of the knowledge you build and the things you’ve learned around and you’ll get less of the sucky kind.

And please, whatever you do, think strategically. Think about the long view.

Culture in the New Order

Stephen Collins — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:39:20 +0000

NOTE: The article below is my contribution to the Centre for Policy Development’s Insight: Upgrading Democracy, which consists of several pieces from well-known thinkers and doers in the Government 2.0 sector and was CPD’s submission to the Government 2.0 Taskforce. It is republished here because I like to keep everything in one place.

‘There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.’

— Niccolo Machiavelli,The Prince (1532)

One of the biggest hurdles for the public sector and legislators tasked with fulfilling the promise of Government 2.0 will be the cultural change involved.

Culture change is tough in any organisation, let alone in huge, distributed, diverse and largely conservative organisations such as federal and state public services. Yet it is this change that will be the -or-break factor in the transformation that the Government 2.0 Taskforce will advise the Federal government on and that other levels of government (and other governments across the world) are also seeking to .

Change is an uncertain thing. How do we convince others of the need for the change? How will we be successful? How do we define success? How do we measure that success when we don’t even know where the journey of change might take us? And how do we go about making change happen despite this uncertainty?

The Government 2.0 Taskforce is moving ahead fairly well in defining the issue for its audience and incorporating input from the Gov 2.0 community of interest. There are some significant issues that the Taskforce will need to address when it delivers its report:

a lack of a cohesive ‘whole of government’ approach at any level of government
a view of accountability that inadequately rewards those responsible for success and innovation
inadequate trust and permission models across public sector management
a need to shift to openness as a default, including removing the reticence to participate and obstruction of participation
a negatively-coloured perception of risk

Of course, these issues are not problems for all individuals, nor even their agencies, in the Australian public sector. They are, however, representative of the public sector generally, based on my experience as a public servant and my time working with the public sector as an outsider.

In New Zealand, the US and the UK, the public sector has been equipped with well-publicised rules of engagement for workers that permit them to actively engage with the public in online communities. These rules are ably backed up by existing codes of behavior that govern overall public sector employee conduct. In Australia, such rules exist, but the weight attached to them, their currency, the level of publicity and explicit, high-profile support for them from either Ministers or the most senior levels of the public service is largely missing or unclear.

No wonder both individuals and agencies are largely confused or indeed, oblivious, to what the position is on the engagement of public servants online.

Other nations have appointed both Ministers for Digital Engagement and, in the case of both the US and the UK, senior public servants whose ambits include digital engagement. In the US, we have seen the young, vibrant and demonstrably engaged, Vivek Kundra, the United States Chief Information Officer, driving change from the top. In the UK, Andrew Stott is the Director of Digital Engagement, and is also leading the way, connecting directly with the public and public servants. These people understand the online environment and its importance to the advancement of the Government 2.0 agenda, and also visibly live and breathe the culture it requires.

In this country, we have neither a Minister nor a senior public servant with carriage of digital engagement as a specific responsibility. Some Ministers even seem at cross-purposes. The Internet censorship agenda being advanced by Senator Stephen Conroy, is in fact anathema to the Government 2.0 model. Yet Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner is strong in his support for a reform agenda that can hardly be enhanced by a filtered and potentially slower Internet.

In my time as a public servant, and in my experience since, the model of accountability that we see in the public sector is largely tied to responsibility for action and carriage of blame should something go wrong. Again, this is not true of the entire public sector, but it does represent the perception you get from the whole.

Taskforce member, Martin Stewart-Weeks of Cisco noted recently that, ‘We need a theory of “accountability 2.0″ to match the instincts and values of gov2. Any ideas?’

My response to Martin argued that it was not just accountability that was needed, but also new models of authorship, trust and permission. In order to achieve the cultural change needed with the least possible resistance, several things must happen.

First, I believe a mandate to implement these reforms and to behave and implement in the required way is needed from the highest levels. The Prime Minister and the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet should be the ones that deliver this mandate to the Australian Public Service (APS), to remove any possible doubt about whether agencies and individual public servants are acting in accordance with the wishes of the elected government. They should be supported by the APS Commissioner, the Finance Minister in his capacity as the Minister responsible for the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) and the Special Minister of State.

And, second, the sometimes closed culture of the public sector must be shifted to one in which:

the creators of innovative programs and thinking are identified for their good work, publicly and often
openness and publication of material is the default (it should be noted that the FOI reform agenda of the current government is moving this way)
all public servants are explicitly and implicitly permitted to engage with the public online (and offline) where they have the necessary expertise to do so, and
public servants are trusted by their senior executive and Ministers to not just do their job but to do it in the public eye and in concert with an engaged, contributing public.

An example of the need for this is alive and kicking now in the work of the Government 2.0 Taskforce. As noted by Matthew Landauer of OpenAustralia, just one of the public servant members of the Taskforce has seen fit to engage via the online channels the Taskforce is using, whereas almost all of the non-public servant members of the same have engaged in some way. This is unfortunate.

There is an active Australian Government 2.0 community on Google Groups. Yet, very few of the many public servants who participate there do so officially. Many of them have explicitly stated that they are unsure or afraid of the consequences of doing so. They use personal email addresses and are sometimes reticent to discuss not only what agencies they work for but what projects they are involved in. That this approach is viewed as necessary by so many is disappointing.

Third, and finally, there needs to be a change in the negative perception of risk in the public sector.

It is not often that you encounter a public servant whose perception of risk encompasses risk as an opportunity to innovate. You more often encounter a fearful perception of risk that imagines how an adverse outcome might be difficult to explain for the member of the Senior Executive who will be questioned in Senate Estimates. You can hardly blame public servants for being risk-averse in these circumstances – so the circumstances must change.

All these changes must be supported by relevant and ongoing education and mentoring to ensure that the public sector is equipped with the skills to manage this transformation with the greatest opportunity for success.

I’m under no illusion that the change needed in the public sector at all levels of government will be easy. So, what to do? I do not have all or even many of the answers. But I have many ideas. As do others. It is when these ideas are allowed to come forward, treated seriously and acted on equally seriously that we will have the most opportunity to bring about this much needed change.

So, public sector, let’s act. Let’s “take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things”.

Government 2.0 Camp Australia

Stephen Collins — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 11:32:55 +0000

Just this weekend, a major event took place in Washington DC – Government 2.0 Camp. It brought together 500 thinkers and doers who seek to engage and transform government in such a way as to make the executive and legislature more open and responsive, more engaged with the public and to ensure that the public, public servants and politicians at all levels are more able to collaborate and engage with each other to make the business of government better in every way.

At the same time, in Canberra, we held our second ever BarCamp. We even had a Federal Senator along in the form of Kate Lundy! More than one talk was about the need to transform government in this way.

BarCamp, the US event and our discussions were the catalyst for the creation of Government 2.0 Camp Australia. At the moment, it’s nothing more than (an already active) Google Group, but we’ll have a web site up this week some time.

So what’s it all about? Well, let’s start with a definition adapted from Government 2.0: Using Technology to Improve Education, Cut Red Tape, Reduce Gridlock, and Enhance Democracy by William Eggers:

“Unhyped and therefore unnoticed, a cultural and technological change is altering the behavior and mission of city halls, statehouses, schools, and federal agencies across the world. From transportation to education to elections to law enforcement (or, as we’re now referring to it, “homeland security”), this cultural revolution, aided by technology is transforming government and politics, slashing bureaucracies; improving services; producing innovative solutions to some of our world’s thorniest problems; changing the terms of the Left/Right political debate; and offering ordinary people access to a degree of information and individual influence until recently accessible only to the most powerful citizens, finally redeeming the original vision for our democracies, and transforming life and society in the process.”

Government 2.0 Camp Australia, to be held in Canberra, the national capital (soon, but we don’t yet know when or where), will be a BarCamp-styled unconference welcoming ideas and opinions from across society at all levels – the public, the executive and our politicians.

Join the Google Group to ensure you keep up to date on progress of Government 2.0 Camp Australia. And tell anyone you think might be interested – point them here or the group.

acidlabs in NETT magazine

Stephen Collins — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:18:31 +0000

Recently, I was interviewed by Josh Mehlman (@vealmince), editor of NETT, the Australian magazine aimed at small businesses bringing their work and offerings online. The interview was focussed on Australia’s online economy (although the issues have relevance pretty much everywhere).

NETT have just published the article online as a sneak preview piece for the upcoming newsstand issue. In it, my views on NETT’s questions, alongside those of (the real) Stephen Conroy, Senator Nick Minchin, Ian Birks of AIIA and Rob Fitzpatrick of NICTA are presented.

It’s interesting to compare the views of someone like me – a one-man business embedded in the online industry – with those of politicians and industry bodies. We share some views, but our approaches differ – sometimes a little sometimes a great deal. I got a little ranty in the last question, but I still like my answer to the problem of whether there’s adequate investment in online:

If any Australian government really cared about online technology, we’d have massive investment in infrastructure, people and technology. Instead, we have the joke that is the Education Revolution – which is neither educational nor revolutionary. The mindset is backward. The policy is backward. The implementation is backward.
If the Government were really forward looking, this program would equip kids with tools that weren’t crippled and filtered. They’d also be teaching things like the need for change in copyright, Creative Commons, creativity, big thinking and entrepreneurship. Things that will equip our graduates for productive careers. None of this is happening and it’s frankly criminal and negligent.

So why is it so hard to remake Australia into the clever country?

A Digital Perspective

Stephen Collins — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:00:13 +0000

Jye Smith very kindly asked me to contribute to his A Digital Perspective series, where he’s been asking some very smart folks in the Australian digital industry to talk about what they do and where they see the world moving. I’m humbled to have been asked and consider the voices already published to be some of the leading thinkers in Australia on the subject.

Describe what you do (in your own words).

It’s probably best described as strategic communications advice. It’s a bit of all of:

future-gazing
a lot of research, writing and investigation into clients’ business and how they communicate – both internally an across the wall to their clients, customers and stakeholders
a lot of talking and listening around that research – best approaches, what to do and not to do
a touch of marketing
a big spoonful of evangelism and mentoring
risk analysis and risk mitigation
engaging people while working with clients and making sure they are able to keep them engaged after I’m gone

Best digital memory of 2008 (site, campaign, movement, person, etc.)?

The Obama campaign’s use of social media. It so completely got how to use social media as a grassroots tool to get people activated that I completely believe that it was a major contributing factor to his election win.

What’s the best lesson the industry could learn?

It seems to me that a lot of clients are now asking for social media inclusion in their marketing and advertising campaigns. Or asking how it could be used inside their organisations to improve collaboration and innovation opportunities. Or last, how it might be better used as a way to communicate effectively with clients, customers and other stakeholders.

I think this is a great thing, but I’m more than a little worried that some of the advice being given (and I believe it’s being given with clients’ best interests at heart) isn’t as well-informed as it could be. It’s not enough if you’re a consultant or a part of a marcoms agency and you toss in a little “we could also do some blogging” into the mix. In fact, it’s a very big risk.

I’ve mentioned this to a few people, and I’ll say it again. There are probably a good half-dozen people who might be considered social media experts in Australia. At least our peers here and overseas think so. People like Laurel Papworth, Trevor Cook, Lee Hopkins, me, are, as far as I know, all more than willing to help agencies, consultancies and their clients build a deeper understanding of how social tools and the organizations they are working with might go together.

We’ve only got to look at the two failed social media efforts in 2008 that NAB was involved in, and the great strides Telstra and their BigPond brand have made to see the two ends of the advice spectrum.

NAB continued to take bad advice and execute badly, and was pretty belligerent about it. On the other hand, Telstra really opened its mind and talked to several people who know a great deal about social media. I was lucky enough to be one of them, amongst others who I respect a great deal – I don’t know whether they want me to name them here as some of them are working in agencies and gave advice outside their normal jobs. Off the back of those conversations, people on the ground at Telstra made substantive changes in the way the brand engages through social media.

Telstra’s willingness to listen and act is an incredible breath of fresh air in Australian businesses, where many brands don’t yet adequately (or at all) use social media tools as an engagement platform. The changes at Telstra are in no small part due to the efforts of guys like Mike Hickinbotham, who really believe in what they are doing. Telstra senior management on the other hand, couldn’t be doing worse damage to the brand if they were trying.

What’s emerging for 2009?

It appears to me that financial crisis or not, a number of organisations have now made the leap to understanding enough about social media to believe it’s not a waste of time and might have some real business benefit to them. Obviously, I agree. I’d say to them “go try lots of things. Toss out the ones that don’t work for you and work harder on the ones that do. Mostly, get good advice, do good research and solve real problems.”

There are a bunch of really good thinkers and doers emerging in Community Management. People like Scott Drummond come to mind. Keep an eye on what they have to say.

Belt-tightening. We all need to continue to prove our value, no matter what we do.

What will be big in 2013?

This will be interesting to look back at!

As the mobile experience improves and the sheer volume of global users on mobile platforms outstrips those of us with keyboards and monitors, the mobile experience of hyperconnectedness will improve to the point where we won’t necessarily need a desktop computer.

The Right Stuff – attraction, engagement, retention in a hyperconnected world

Stephen Collins — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:16:07 +0000

An interesting question popped up on one of my LinkedIn groups this morning:

“Anyone else finding it hard to recruit at the moment?”

I don’t often answer in LinkedIn groups, finding that I want to add infrequent value rather than be a chatterbox. But this question got me to thinking, particularly thinking back over a number of conversations, blog posts and media I’ve seen in the past couple of years. Nothing about what I’ve said here is new, but it’s probably coherent in one place for the fist time. Here’s where that thinking went.

Image via Wikipedia

Despite the economic downturn across pretty much every sector, I’m of the opinion that most of the really good potential candidates are in jobs and holding on to them. Passive candidates are the only way any of us are going to find the stellar staff we’re going to want to ride the current upheaval out.

So, if you are recruiting at the moment, this raises several questions:

how do we find those candidates?
how do we identify that they have the right stuff?
how do we get them to come on board?
how do we keep them once they are here?
how do we make sure we leverage what’s in their heads and use their skills to best advantage?

I could answer each of these in turn, but that’s not my style. So let’s just jump in.

Finding the right person for the job, even in times of plenty, is always fraught with risk. What if you make the wrong hiring choice? What if the person doesn’t “fit”. Will they enhance the company’s reputation.

Why don’t you use the right tools?

In today’s hyperconnected world, it’s trivially easy to both locate the best people for the job you have on offer and do some prescreening on any candidate worth hiring. Here’s where my thinking goes on this subject:

if they are really passionate about what they do, they should have a blog where they talk about it. If not, why not?
is their work history and recommendations from others available online in some form? Are they on LinkedIn, for example? If not, why not?
have they published papers or presented at conferences that establish them as something of a leader in their field? If not, why not?
do they participate in one or more communities of interest around their subjects of expertise? In other words do they give something back to the community they are a part of? If not, why not?

I think these questions are valid for any industry and for any role (except perhaps the covert intelligence community, and even then, that barrier is breaking down).

I think it’s incumbent upon anyone recruiting at the moment to change their tactics. Most recruiting agencies are out; they rarely find the superstars as they are focussed on turnover and candidate placement rather than identification of great talent. That said, there’s at least one Australian agency that is a notable exception.

Turning again to hyperconnectedness, who do you know? We’re all profoundly interconnected today; we must know someone who’s lost their job, or who might be looking or who knows someone. Leverage your social networks and the whuffie I dearly hope you’re generating and handing out to find the right person. In the best possible way, use the networks, people and the tools you have at your disposal.

Here’s a concrete example. I have a client for whom sometime in the next few months, I need to recruit a high quality Community Manager to take on the management of their social media engagement inside and outside the wall. I know of several people who fit the bill (as I should – social media advice is my bread and butter) but they are all in steady permanent roles. I’ll be approaching them, but I expect a number of “no thanks” responses. Even with a “no thanks”, those responses might lead me to find others who could be the required rockstar. I could get just the right referral because I spend time amongst my community – online and in real life – and know them. Hopefully some of them even quite like me

The notion of having The Right Stuff (an analogy to the Tom Wolfe book) is an interesting one. I’ve spent a lot of years working in and around the public sector and while many people there are very good at what they do, I’d say I met less than 20 people in my years who I considered real superstars. It’s not that the probably thousands of others weren’t latently capable of being such, but that their environment failed to capitalise on engaging them in fulfilling, meaningful work. This very factor is something I consider a core failing in many workplaces. Check out the video below, which I’ve linked to before.

Whether your organisation treats them like it or not, your people are by far your most important asset. Not your clients and customers. Not your shareholders. Not the Board of Directors. Your people. The ones who come in every day and give you their time.

Now there’s a radical thought. Your staff giving you their time. As opposed to the favor you’re doing them by employing them. Wrong.

We need to alter our focus to ensure we’re providing engaging, fulfilling places to work. Where the work done has real meaning and staff are empowered to make their own decisions and get on with the job. Presence-based work practices are the stuff of the Industrial Revolution. Eight hours a day is a demonstrably false measure of efficiency and effectiveness. We need to rethink our approach and revolutionise our businesses to focus on nothing but quality output. The reputations we generate as a consequence will help attract the right people – staff, clients, customers all.

Equally, we need to understand that our staff are on loan, particularly the good ones. We don’t own them or their personal brands. We only have them until we stop giving them engaging things to do. We should be prepared to let the reputations of our people and the new people we can attract act as a positive influence on the brands of our businesses. We should learn from our superstars and let them be free with how they do their jobs and get on.

And once we’ve managed to attract and engage these superstars. To give them meaningful work. What next?

What’s next is the revolution that some of us have known about for a few years now, but that others are only just getting to – Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0. Of course, the tools are not the answer in and of themselves, but they are potentially a huge benefit.

So, look around.

What problems that your organisation has might you be solving with the implmentation of some great collaboration tools that will make the jobs of your people easier. That will make them more productive. That could well save you real dollars in customer support, in knowledge management, in the discovery of unidentified talents and passion amongst your staff.

In the current market, the ability of any business to attract, engage and retain the best staff requires a significant change in recruiting tactics, workplace style and ongoing business approaches.

Are you ready for that change? Are you making it? Do you even know how?

Do you have The Right Stuff?

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