Public Sector Innovation – A light in the dark?

It is encouraging to see the ways in which the Australian Public Service (APS) is seeking to reinvent itself in light of contemporary ideas and expectations of what government can and should be able to deliver. In fact there is sufficient investigation going on at the moment into the online space that there are even overlaps appearing in terms of work and timeframes between various projects.

Last week I went to the Government 2.0 road show in Perth, which was well attended and which produced some great ideas and innovative debate. I was dubious at first that such a town-hall style meeting would suit a technology debate, but it turned out to be just the right forum and reminded me that this is not all about tools, servers, and hot web design – it is about people, and helping them communicate better with those who really need to hear them. Standing face-to-face with members of the review committee certainly made me  feel involved, and hearing from state public sector colleagues and members of the public was refreshing and invigorating. With people this smart and dedicated out there, I feel sure that things must change for the better, and soon.

That event was part of the ongoing work of the Government 2.0 Taskforce, which has released an issues paper seeking comment on ideas for better government and citizen engagement online. Take a look – there are links to other resources, and lively blog & comment threads to follow (and of course Twitter and Facebook integrations).

Today I have also just started to follow PSI MAC Project (PSInnovate) on Twitter, which is the feed from the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, who are gathering public comment on ways to advance wider APS innovation.

This is a localised version of similar trends being investigated by governments from the UK to South Africa, the US, and also Singapore.

Go to their page here to read their discussion paper, make a submission, join one of several focus groups, or link through to other resources.

Also, following on from last year’s Gershon Review into the Commonwealth government’s use of ICT, the Department of Finance and Deregulation is pushing ahead with it’s recommendations that include a greater focus on delivering value-added projects, enhancing the APS career structure for ICT workers, and dismantling an ICT procurement model that saw hardware and contractor costs blow-out.

Some years ago a public sector worker explained to me how the government struggled to break the ‘hold of the mediocre’ – workers who hid behind bloated processes, misrepresented laws and policies, dragged out union-based bargaining, and manipulated weak managers. It was a bleak picture, and it made me stop and think about if this was an environment within which a meaningful, pro-active career could flourish.

Seeing these recent initiatives as detailed above, I’m reassured that the APS is indeed staffed with some of the brightest and most motivated people in the country who will move processes, democracy, and our economy forward. It can be tough at times, and the pace occasionally glacial, but as is often said:

if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.

Bring on the solutions.

IE6 Must Die

If you are using Internet Explorer 6 to view this site,  I’ll spare you the pop-up code telling you how outdated your browser is, but I must implore you to stop, download a current browser, and do the Internet a favour!

Full details are over on the Mashable site, but in a nutshell you are missing out on content your browser can’t handle (so you suffer), and you are the weakest link in the browser security chain, leading to the spread of hacking tools and more zombie machines (in which case all of us on the net suffer).

It’s a matter of basic hygiene really, and in a world dominated by swine flu paranoia, the time is right to apply the same pedantic cleanliness principles to our on-line habits. 

The Twitter and Digg communities are working hard to spread the word, and this is my contribution. Even if you are not an IE6 user, please give the ‘IE6 No More‘ campaign a plug via your favourite communications channels – it’d be one in the eye for the ever more cynical on-line criminals who prey on the unaware to steal information, bandwidth, or processor time – to the detriment of everyone. 

Perth still the official ‘edge of the Web’

The second Edge of the Web (EOTW) conference is due to run again this year in Perth, from November 4 – 6th.

I mention it here as last year’s was a great conference, which got me introduced to some interesting and innovative people such as speakers  Stephen Collins,  Laurel Papworth, and Suzi Dafnis.

If you are in Perth, you really must go and support this excellent local conference, and if you are interstate you should come over to appreciate that there is in fact a dynamic, innovative ICT industry in the West as well – and being on the edge of both the world and the web is a good thing!

See – public servant blogging can work!

Congratulations to Craig Thomler on his nomination for ‘Top 10 who are changing the world of internet and politics’.

Craig is an Australian Public Servant working for the Department of Human Services and the Child Support Agency, and his blog (at eGov AU) is a mine of useful information on issues of governance and strategy in the online sphere.

It is really great to see a public servant get recognition as being at the forefront of changing the online world – we are after all perhaps some of the best placed people to be aware of the trends and projects that are able to deliver ever-wider democracy to agency activities (in that we see shortcomings first hand, and if we are experienced and pro-active enough we can fix this quickly with relevant skills/products).

Combined with the smart directions being taken in the post-Gershon review era, the national broadband network (whatever form that might eventually take), and our reasonable weathering of the global economic slump, Australia should be looking forward to a future at the forefront of innovation in the e-government space.

People like Craig can only help by getting us there even faster – thanks and, again, well done!

Woolworth’s dodgy in-store advertising

I noticed for the second week running a couple of dodgy advertising tricks being pulled by Woolworth’s in Perth.

The first is the pretentious ‘confectionary-free checkout’ signs posted at every other conveyer belt (complete with images of happy, Caucasian children staring up adoringly at their middle class parents – tug those heart strings!).

And what sits directly below this parent-friendly signage? Several rows of high-sugar, high-price, and high-caffeine rich soft drinks! So what are Woolies up to – trying to save our kids from a fate worse than a slow, obesity-related death, or are they in fact replacing a wrapper of chocolate with a container of dissolved sugar that will pile the kilos on twice as fast (and make them twice as much profit into the bargain)?

Secondly, I was in the liquor section and noticed a whole row of fluttering ‘value’ labels bouncing on those little strips of plastic like wagging fingers – almost begging me to stroll up and grab a bargain.

But upon lifting one of these ‘value’ labels, advertising a bottle of wine at $13.99, I noted the original price of the bottle, which was… can you guess???? – yep, $13.99!

Not a single cent off – just a cheap trick designed to push the buttons of unwary shoppers who are seeking to save a few dollars here and there, and who rely on some truth and honesty in the labeling practices of manufacturers and the supermarket to guide them along the way.

Times may be tough, but I think there is no excuse for such low tactics from a retailer who controls so much of the Australian marketplace, and whom families rely on for a modicum of honesty.

So have you noticed any other sneaky tricks being used by retailers out there? Comment and let me know…

Twitter’s moral limit?

The Iranian election may well have exposed the two extremes of usefulness and moral integrity not only of the Internet, but of Twitter in particular.

There can be no doubt that Iranians have made great use of the combined web/mobile phone network to organise protests and distribute raw news footage, and these technologies have been central to the authorities’ considered response to the ongoing crisis.

Early in the affair it was widely reported that Twitter had postponed certain upgrades so there would be no service interruption to the organisers of the bush-fire like protests taking place across the country. Unwittingly, the Twitter admins became the guardians of a fragile, almost premature democracy movement that was gasping for the oxygen of publicity and effective communications. About a week ago you could tell a Twitter user from 20 paces -  they were the ones walking around with faintly self-satisfied grins all day long… confident that their last 140 characters really had changed the world.

While initially the effect was sustaining to the protesters, it could do little to halt the relentless screw that the authorities tightened in the following days – the expulsion of foreign journalists, the Orwellian surveillance of the Nokia Siemens phone network using the ‘Monitoring Centre’ (a government back-door into every mobile phone in the country, helpfully sold to Iran Telecom by Nokia itself in 2008 (gotta love the free market)), and the unshackling of the Basij militia all turned the tide inexorable against the pro-democracy movement.

The waves of that tide broke bloody-red on the dusty streets of Tehran this weekend with the summary execution of at least 10 people, most infamously the appalling up-close video death of ‘Neda’, a shockingly young and beautiful Iranian girl shown dying in the arms of her agonized father.

The horror of the moment defies explanation – it is intrusive and gory, war-pornography at its worst.

To respond to it therefore within a soulless Tweet of 140 characters seems trite, an arbitrary offense to the gravity of the event and the final, human emotions of Neda and her family, friends, and community.

Within 24 hours this brave woman’s death was reduced to the status of  a Twitter hash-tag and a cheap slogan – ‘The Angel of Iran’. Already her image has been reconstituted by a myriad of contradictory, even pointless causes that seek to somehow legitimise themselves in her reflected publicity – just as Twitter sought to legitimise itself in the unpleasant afterbirth of the Iranian election.

While Twitter has been quite useful, sometimes funny, and certainly pointless in the year or more I have been using it, it has never felt quite this… tainted.

For organising democracy movements, for contextualising appalling acts of violence, and for paying meaningful respects to the dead, it is simply the wrong tool for the job.

Public sector staff have blogging rights too…

The case of the UK of the police officer who was disciplined for maintaining an anonymous blog has dark overtones for all public sector employees (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/lancashire/8104649.stm).

There is a body of opinion in the public sector that somehow commenting via blogs or online is inherently wrong – that it somehow circumvents a strong and true hierarchy in place within government departments. 

This is clearly not the case, as evidenced by the speed with which many departments and individual politicians have embraced various new media to engage with the citizenry, and also to disseminate information (both official and proposed). In Australia interim guidelines have been issued by the Australian Public Service Commission, which in essence state the obvious:

APS employees are entitled as citizens to do so (blog etc…), but they must avoid comment that might be interpreted as an official statement on behalf of their agency or that compromises perceptions of the employee’s ability to do his/her job in an unbiased or professional manner

This really is no different from any individual out there – if you pretend to be a company representative (or any fake ‘official’ person), then you are clearly misrepresenting yourself, and can mislead readers. If you go online and publicly challenge workplace decisions or belittle colleagues then, yes,  you are being ‘unprofessional’.

But the police blog did not breech this rule – it was anonymous, factual, and not a misrepresentation of the author or the events he witnessed. It might have contained opinion and individual interpretation, but that is the point – the author is ENTITLED to those views as a private citizen – this is the whole idea of democracy.

Of course if you go online and make bad jokes, brag, or make an idiot of yourself then you will lose respect at work – but that’s just as  likely to be the behaviour of someone who would piss people off  anyway in meetings, during lunch breaks, or just being themselves around others – all part of the rich (and yes, annoying/frustrating) tapestry of human relations where we are all randomly dumped together in the workplace.

To ban this type of online authoring is a step towards censorship that governments have no right to take – it is a step towards censoring phone calls, SMS’s, web browsing, and letters (why not – who knows WHAT you are saying…?). Before you know it, we end up with the Great Firewall of China (soon to extend to Australia maybe?)

The concept of whistle-blowing is essential to maintain a healthy, accountable public sector. While online public forums are not the place for formal and detailed complaints, the occasional frustrations and contradictions that public service inevitably throws up should be made clear for all to see (it could even make for a good comedy show at times… ). It will lead to a wider appreciation of the daily balancing act public servants encounter, and hopefully lead to greater debate about why such things are that way in the first place. To clamp down on this is to claim that the public service is an infallible dictatorship, whose every word should be adhered to and never questioned. That would be as unhealthy in the UK or Australia as it is in North Korea and Iran (and as we can see from that country, it’s not an approach that has ultimate longevity). 

What do you think – was it right to take down the blog?

What’s good about you?

I’m reading a book at the moment that got me thinking (worth the money then)…

In ‘The Greatness Guide’, the author (Robin Sharma) offers the top half-dozen things he does that might help others develop in some way, and it made me think – I MUST be doing something like these myself, or else how do I get on in life at all?

As an exercise I recommend doing this yourself – look at what you do, and take some credit for once! There is no way you would be where you are in life today without developing some pretty effective coping strategies, so why not share them around.

For my part, I think mine would be as follows:

• Never stay still. Keep looking for the next project, job, or challenge. This keeps me edgy, and planning for an ‘uncertain’ future, forcing me to learn new things just in case they are useful down the track!
• Ask stupid questions. Be the person in the room that says, “Sorry, but your going to have to speak to me like I’m a 5 year old, because that doesn’t make sense…”. This makes the other person work harder to re-think their explanation, and it gives you another chance to re-listen.
• Ask for help. Ask the people around you for their solution to your problems. At first they look at you and think “Hell, you’re the manager, YOU work it out”, but when you explain that they can take on the projects that stem from this analysis, or that they may be acting in your job on your next holidays, it becomes in their interest to get involved. And the more views and proposals you get, the fuller and more effective the solution becomes (as long as you have surrounded yourself with great people). You never know it all.
• Read as many bit and pieces as you can – always carry a book in your bag, just in case you get left waiting somewhere and have 10 minutes to kill. Also keep a highlighter pen handy – don’t be afraid to scrawl across passages, make notes in the margin, or tear a page out to pin on your wall (as long as you own the book!).
• Dream. You have to be a fantasist, an idealist, a dreamer. Otherwise the people who huff and tisk away in the background will get to you, and you’ll pull back from commitment. If you believe it can, should, and will happen, then it has a tendency to work out for you.

Comment on this to share your own advice. It might help other’s cope with a situation they face tomorrow.