Categories

Lots of great conversations, content, events and more in August.

The big news:

LocalGov2.0 hits 100.  I’ve been collecting social media in local government case studies and publishing them to the LocalGov2.0 blog since January.  I recently added the 100th example and several of these have come from the community of practice.  And I’ve also added a submission form on the blog for new examples.  Keep them coming!

Featured events: CityCamp London – a brilliant 3 day event focusing on the web for city transformation, 8-10 October.   The focus is London, but the ideas are for everywhere.

Through the Knowledge Hub programme we’re planning more events, regional and an online conference.  Tell us what you’d like to see.

The Social Media CoP is on Twitter!

Conversations

Social media and children’s centres - have you seen a good example of social media use to support information, services and benefits take-up among young parents, with Facebook or another tool?  Somewhat related – in that it’s children – is a discussion around safeguarding2.0 – the use of social media to keep professionals in contact.  There’s a funded project around this just waiting for a council partner, so do check it out.

If Foursquare the next big thing? – this debate has run for a month and we still can’t decide.

Making Twitter work

Social media for emergency schemes - there’s been a lot of talk about Twitter – in particular, but social media (e.g. blogs for school closure) in general for emergencies and we certainly saw a lot of good use during the heavy snowfall this year, but does anyone an approach built in officially?

Records management for social media. It won’t be long before this becomes an issue somewhere – and there are some easy solutions for archiving etc – has anyone given any structure thought to this or taken action yet.

Using Yammer or other tools for internal comms

Social media for customer expectation management

Communicating the Knowledge Hub experience and benefits. The Knowledge Hub is the replacement for the communities of practice space, but will be a much more ‘social media’ enabled experience.  Find out how you can get involved.

New Resources

Thank you Preston Council for sharing your social media strategy. We’ve been collecting links in the wiki. Do you have a strategy or policy you can share? Social media training.

What are you doing to support social media training in your council? (A new wiki page has been set up to capture links to the training materials – like this one 23 things added recently.)

From the blogs:

• empowering the public (the mobile phone as an environmental health monitor)
• Are you the lead? (on open data in local gov)….please get in touch?
• Discussing data and what you can do with it – events, links and resources
• Is your organisation’s Facebook presence providing a return?
• Use Social Media to ‘Personify’ your Local Authority
• Report from ScotGovCamp
  Updating PM resource using social media

via cllrandrewwallis.blogspot.com

Most of the examples in my LocalGov2.0 example blog have been about the institutional use of social media or open data in local government. But there are at least as many examples of councillors who are using social media to engage with local people, and I’ve decided that I’m going to start featuring a few here, perhaps aiming for one councillor blog a week.

I’ve been put off this a little bit, not because there aren’t some great examples, but because I lay myself open (slightly and perhaps only in my imagination) to the charge of political bias. Too many Conservative blogs? Too many Labour? Since I take a slightly random approach to featuring stuff, as in- ooh, that looks cool, I’ll grab it – I could easily end up with a run of, say LibDem, blogs without meaning to.

But this blog is primarily for me. It’s my well of examples for training and talks and to include in papers and so forth. I’m just sharing it because I hope it’s useful for others. And I need some councillor examples in the lead up to a series of events. So, councillor blogs it is. I have put in place a Google spreadsheet though to help me keep track of who I’ve featured, what party and what region they’re from so I can try to achieve some balance and so it’s transparent who I’ve featured. And I’ve also added a Google form for people to submit examples of councillor blogs they’d like to see featured. You don’t have to use the form….

Anyway, enough of that. Let’s look at the first blog.

Councillor Andrew Wallis, an Independent from Cornwall County Council and a parish councillor, has the dubious distinction of being first. He’s been going for not quite a year and posts regularly. He uses Google’s Blogger platform, which is completely free – I used it for years and think it’s pretty good. It’s easy to get a decent looking blog up in short time, and Cllr Wallis’s blog looks pretty darn good. Clean and professional, with lots of images.

If I were giving advice for councillor blogs (which I have done), I’d say he ticks almost all the boxes. There are easy to find contact details, links to other his other online profiles (Twitter) and a clear statement of his role at the council. And lots and lots of references to the place he serves. (The only thing he does which is contrary to my loose recommendations is that he has the title cllr in his blog’s web address, which could make things tricky if for some reason he leaves the council but wants to continue blogging. But too late to change easily).

The blog is a mix of reportage on local fun stuff – events which haven’t happened yet and those that have and reflections on council issues – some of them pretty technical, but explained in easy language for the resident who wants to know. He even recently discussed what it means to be Cornish, which I don’t much about, but do know to be thorny. And importantly, he links to other local bloggers. Blogging without linking is speaking into a void.

Last month I gave a presentation to around 100 people at the Department of Innovation regarding the use of social media in Australian government, alongside Todd Wright of Threesides.

With permission Innovation have published the presentations and video over at their Innovation Blog to share the seminar with others across the public service.

I'd love to see other Departments sharing material of this kind (on a variety of topics) on a regular basis, where there's no confidentiality or commercial concerns. It reduces duplication of effort, spreads knowledge and can lead to money savings for the government.eGov AU Craig Thomler's personal eGovernment thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective

Bang The Table has released an excellent video piece on their moderation system (titled 24/7 moderation), including a part where Matt Crozier (one of their founders) says that independent moderation can be very important for government organisations in order to avoid risks of claims of censorship when they must remove some comments from a forum, blog or other online discussion device.


This part of the video does raise a good question - when should government agencies employ independent (external) moderation and when should they use their own staff.

Matt makes the point that where trust is fractured between a government agency and its constituents there can be increased risks of accusations of bias or censorship if the agency is seen to be doing the moderation. He suggests that an independent moderator could be seen to be less biased and that it removed perceptions that government officials may be moderating a little more than they should.

I think these are good points, which can apply in circumstances where a neutral moderator is both feasible and advantageous.

There are also circumstances where an authentic voice from an agency is required - where officials need to be actively engaging as participants and be seen to be moderating the discussion.

This is particularly important when engagement is occurring through a government-run website, rather than through a separately established or third-party vehicle. Otherwise there can be issues around whether an agency is really seen to be committed or is just engaging in a token effort. Also nuances can be lost where an independent moderator doesn't understand the subject matter at sufficient depth to carry the conversation, particularly in consultations.

Agencies need to weigh up the risks and benefits for each engagement activity, as well as assess them over time as needs change. Where possible I recommend that long-term partnerships with a trusted moderator work better than tendering for a new moderator for each separate engagement as this allows an external party to build an understanding of your guidelines and the subtleties of what may be considered inappropriate comments, rather than having to re-educate each time.

Where staff are moderating they need support as their decisions impact on the integrity and public perception of your organisation. For starters they should have clear moderation guidelines and examples, possibly borrowed and reworked from the experiences of other agencies.

It helps if they have a good understanding of any Information Privacy Principles relevant to their jurisdiction and training in conflict resolution or other engagement-type interactions. It really really helps if they also have prior experience at moderation or participation in online forums and similar mediums which involve moderation activity.eGov AU Craig Thomler's personal eGovernment thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective

Helpful links I’ve spotted on the web over the past couple of weeks, these are mainly focused on how to make social media work for you, with a bit here and there on culture change inside organisations with a tech emphasis.

• 10 Rules for Radicals via @countculture – video on how to make change happen in organisations (tags: presentation intrapreneurs)
• Tweet Cred: How To Gain Respect On Twitter | Bit Rebels Actually a really good summary of how to behave on Twitter. Only missing the REALLY explicit instructions to make yourself followable. 1. Have a profile pic 2. Have a link – even if it’s to your linked in profile 3. Have a bio – one that indicates a little bit about what your content stream may contain on an average day (tags: twitter socialmedia respect tips)
• Sarah Lay » Blog Archive » Only ever seen in the right place Sarah explains a bit about Facebook Places (currently only available in the US) and how to switch it off.

• Older Adults Nearly Double Social Media Presence [STATS] (tags: socialmedia statistics older.people)

• HOW TO: Handle an Employee’s Controversial Online Behavior pretty good exposition of how to address online behaviour (tags: socialmedia management business policy guidelines online social reputation)
• The March Of Twitter: Analysis of How And Where Twitter Spread (tags: twitter just-for-fun)
• Timesavers to Manage Your Social Media Presence – BusinessWeek (tags: socialmedia tips)

• Digital Image: Looking After Your Online Reputation – adCenter Blog – Microsoft Advertising Community (tags: reputation online socialmedia nicole+thomas)
• Add your Social Media central US registration site for social media accounts in the US (tags: socialmedia local state central)

• Social Media Myths: 5 Roadblocks to Discovery – General News Nice one – with a particular emphasis on measurement (tags: socialmedia government roi)
• {grow} » Case study: Why every company needs a social media policy Oh great…my home town (or anyway the neighbouring county) features again (tags: socialmedia policy knoxville tennessee education youngpeople friday_funday)

• The power of networks for social change | Public | Public In his essay published by the RSA, economist professor Paul Ormerod argues that the failure to understand “network effects” partly explains the economic crisis and ineffectiveness of policies in delivering change. (tags: nudge behaviour.change behavioural.economics networks RSA)
• Most popular recent tweets Favstar – a kinda cool service which lets you see which of your tweets have been most favourited. (tags: twitter+hack twitter)
• 10 Tips For Aspiring Community Managers (tags: community socialmedia tips communitymanager marketing media management social CoP)
• Is Facebook suitable for govt transactions? | Articles | FutureGov – Transforming Government | Education | Healthcare Will citizens soon be able to transact directly with government on social media? In interviews with FutureGov, officials in Indonesia, Australia and Singapore say that despite data security concerns, some government transactions on Facebook or Twitter will very soon be possible.

• Why should brands bother with Twitter? This table says why | Social Media Today Why Twitter is worth your time, it’s not how many people are on it, but who. And the who is content CREATORS, curators and commentators. (tags: socialmedia socialnetworking content)

• Privacy Not a Problem for Savvy Millennials – eMarketer Attitudes and uses of social media – survey results. A pretty good understanding out there of the privacy tradeoff. As someone who grew up in a small town, where I had a lot of relatives, I think I have a lower expectation of privacy anyway. When I crashed a car at 16, my mother knew about it before I phoned her (which I did before I left the scene). (tags: privacy attitudes socialnetworking survey)
• Why social media projects fail – a European perspective Mainly looking at corporate marketing projects – but clearly some lessons for the public sector, too (tags: socialmedia advertising analysis corporate social-media statistics casestudies europe)

• Why Social Media Monitoring Tools Are About to Get Smarter (tags: socialmedia monitoring analytics tools metrics semantic social measurement analysis tracking)
• brian hoadley – Digital helps Government reduce costs… really? (tags: efficiency gov2.0)
• Is your organisation’s Facebook presence providing a return? | Sectorshare Tips for maximising the value of your FB page presence (tags: facebook ROI)

• Research findings and recommendations for Councils by Michele Ide-Smith Michele Ide-Smith presents findings of her research on councils and engagement via social media – and posts some very clear recommendations. Excellent stuff. (tags: research Michele+Ide-Smith localgovernment gov2.0 socialmedia engagement consultation policy communications monitoring)

I've been reading up on the gaming of the Time.com 100 Poll in 2009, where vote rigging saw the founder of 4Chan elevated to the top position and the order of names in the poll manipulated to spell out 'MARBLECAKE ALSO THE GAME' (see the video below).

While there are often legitimate reasons to create online polls or voting tools, it is very important to be aware of the potential pitfalls if measures aren't in place to minimise the risk of inappropriate voting - people 'gaming', defrauding or hacking individual polls.

Often people aren't aware of how easy it can be to game voting and it is important to weigh up what you're doing and put the right level of protection in place.

One of the simplest form of voting fraud can involve users with multiple computers and web browsers, who may be able to vote once per each - then vote again after clearing their browser cache of cookies. This is possible in the polls featured in many popular newspaper websites.

If an email address is required to vote, as is employed in more sophisticated voting systems, users with multiple accounts can sign-up and vote many times - particularly where they own domains and can create thousands of email addresses at a time. This can be monitored and partially mitigated by looking at voting patterns over time and checking the email addresses for similarity and veracity.

When polls check IP addresses they are harder to 'game', however there are still technical approaches some people can use to change IP addresses - or use botnetworks (all with different IPs) to vote on your behalf. This, however, can become quite technically complex and requires significantly more resources.

Finally, if the poll system's security is not assured, someone may hack the actual voting system and introduce biases that influence the outcome - from changing the order in which options to vote on are displayed, counting some votes as more than a single vote, or more obviously just manipulating the total votes through changing the register of votes.

There are way of checking polls to minimise fraud, using technology to check IP addresses, combining this with email address verification or linking to other services such as Facebook where people are unlikely to control more than a single account. There are also CAPTCHA-based means to screen out most automated voting (though adding a hurdle to fast voting) and even more complex automation techniques to analyse voting patterns in real-time and flag, check or disallow some votes based on their origin.

Depending on the poll different levels of mitigation may be needed. Basically the greater the reward for receiving the most votes in a poll, or the greater the controversy over the subject, the greater the likelihood that gaming or fraud will occur, and the greater the mitigation required.

Online voting in elections - such as used by Estonia - tends to employ far more sophisticated techniques to verify votes. These are much more effective, however tend to cost quite a bit (at present) to implement.

So if you're running a fairly simple and low cost online poll it may be best to use it simply as an indication, or to back it up with a human step (selecting a winner from the top ten publicly voted entries) which mitigates a lot of the risk of vote rigging.

eGov AU Craig Thomler's personal eGovernment thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective

The government for the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) has just launched a consultation asking for the community's views on what the city should be like in twenty years time.

The Canberra 2030 consultation has gone some way to integrate Web 2.0 tools. It allows residents to submit ideas and vote on the ideas of others (up or down) and has a 'discussion forum' - although this is pre-moderated and not structured in a standard forum mode, which is likely to constrain the discussion somewhat.

There's a Twitter account and a Flickr account and also a video up at YouTube - although this doesn't appear to have been embedded in the Canberra 2030 site itself.

Despite a few basic usability issues and a little of a 'tickbox' approach, the site represents a real attempt to consult Canberrans in a more interactive way and it is worth a look.

Plus if you're an ACT resident you could win an iPad.

eGov AU Craig Thomler's personal eGovernment thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective

via rbkc.gov.uk

Kensington and Chelsea have joined the growing number of councils that are exposing their expenditure data. Although there are only 20ish so far, that number is getting bigger all the time, so much so that I’ve made the decision that I’m no longer going to feature councils that just publish expenditure data in this blog. You have to be doing something a little bit different. RBKC is doing that.

Yesterday I featured them in a post about what format expenditure data should be published in – advocating for the time being both CSV and PDF – and if you have to choose only one, go with CSV. (XML even better, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves).

RBKC are publishing expenditure data in both pdf and csv, but they’re also placing the expenditure data in context. Not only does it sit alongside information about senior officer salary details and members allowances, but this rather nifty visualisation of their overall budget as well as making links to information on how the council manages money and its performance.

You can see the list of councils publishing open data in this Google spreadsheet. This spreadsheet is noteworthy on its own. It’s a collaborative effort between CLG, LG Group and Chris Taggart of Openly Local, and is now the master list – avoiding duplication of collation.

January is only a heart beat away and with the rapidly advancing requirement to publish expenditure data (and contracts) online. Many councils are already making a start at publishing the information.  You can see the Openly Local data scoreboard, CLG is also keeping track and the LG Group is in the process of identifying all the expenditure data leads at every council and surveying them on their plans to publish and progress to date (So if you’re the lead and we haven’t been in touch, or you’re leading on another open data aspect – please let us know.  You can find out more about the Transparency support work in the offing in the Local Open Data Community of Practice.)

All this is showing that a number of councils are already taking great strides in publishing expenditure data.  But not all efforts are equal.  Some councils are sharing the data in a CSV file format and some in PDF and some in both.   CSV is better, but both is even better and meets the criteria of data not just being published, but done so in a reusable format.

And reusable really means machine readable. As this cut from Armchair Auditor’s scoreboard shows. (Apologies in advance as this is out of date and shown here for illustration purposes).  If you’re only publishing in PDF, then it’s not machine readable.

Updated to add: And there’s now a Google Spreadsheet as well – which is being maintained in cooperation between the LG Group, CLG and Openly Local, which clearly indicates where data is located and if it’s machine readable.   This is a brilliant little addition to the scene which avoids duplication of work.

What is CSV and why it is important.

CSV stands for comma separated values, because the values in the output file are separated by commas (I bet you could see that coming). It’s an old and widely accepted file format and often used for sharing database contents between different types of software.  Most databases and spreadsheets can import and export data in CSV – it’s a kind of lingua franca of the databases.

If you were only going to have a look at a council expenditure file once and then just pass on by, there wouldn’t be any reason for CSV.  But by publishing in CSV, and importing into something as common as Excel, you can start to see a picture building around expenditure, over time, across different suppliers and different services.  And even a casual viewer of council expenditure may wish to sort fields or add up types of expenditure which is only possible if they can manipulate the data.

OK, so that’s just for one council.  Now just imagine that we have some voluntary standards about how the data is published (here’s a possible up for consultation – discussing what you should publish rather than just how – in the Local Open Data Community) Then we can start to build a bigger picture of council expenditure which is useful not just for transparency but for the sector itself, as an efficiency and benchmarking tool. For example, we could find out how much was spent on services e.g. grittting or park maintenance or school maintenance between different local authorities.

PDF is not evil

I won’t point to the original post, but there was a bit of kerfuffle recently when a  councillor asked a question in a blog’s comment section about why data couldn’t just be published in a PDF.  It was genuine question which was handled very sensibly by some and others laughed up their sleeve a little.  There’s no getting around it, data activists can view PDF as inappropriate at best and obstructionist at worst.

But PDF has its place. It stands for portable document format.  And basically this means you can kinda freeze your document and when you send it to another computer or printer everything still looks nice – the pages break in the same place and all your bolds are still bold. It easier to read for some and is a breeze to print, too.  But it’s not machine readable, and that’s really important if we’re to get more use of the data as citizens or as the local government sector.

If the data is “locked down” in a PDF, then it can’t be used for wider comparison or to build up an overall picture – and that’s not really transparent.

And, of course, putting information in a PDF doesn’t mean it’s really locked down. PDF won’t stop people from trying to export your data into a more machine readable format. But the process of doing that isn’t perfect and can lead to the introduction of error.  If you’re going to be hanged (or lauded) over your expenditure, it may as well be the correct data.

How you can publish it on your website

The GLA publish their expenditure data, for example, as both CSV and PDF and publish the two file types side by side. Others are following suit.  Kensington and Chelsea haven’t been at it as long (so there’s only one month of data right now), but as well as sharing expenditure data, they’re placing the data in context with a visualisation of their overall budgets.

More about expenditure data

There’s a lot more to consider than just file format.  Which is why the LG Group and key partners, LeGSB, CIPFA and SOCITM are working together to help councils publish expenditure data simply and easily and so that we can get the most out of it together.

• Jonathan Evans has a starter for ten on the standard fields: “Expenditure Data: What Should I publish” including how it can be presented in CSV file.
• Gesche Schmid has added some draft guidance on open data (licenses) which has already engendered some debate.
• Ian Carbutt has shared an overview of the LG transparency programme, including what else is to come.

And there’s more to come.

Lisa Howdin, who now works with me, has been compiling a set of guidelines and information around how to develop, write, manage and moderate social media tools in Government in the form of a wiki.

She's looking for contributions from people across Australian government who are working in this area and have learnings they can add.

If you've had experience operating a government social media channel, please consider sharing your ideas in this wiki so all of your peers across government can benefit.

If you're new to the area, the Handbook, whilst still in development, already has lots of useful information that might be useful to you.

Visit the Unofficial Australian Government Social Media Handbook at: http://government20bestpractices.pbworks.com/Unofficial-Aus-Govt-Social-Media-HandbookeGov AU Craig Thomler's personal eGovernment thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective

Some of you may be aware of the Mercury 10 national counter-terrorism exercise currently being held in Australia, involving a variety of government bodies.

While this type of scenario is only one of potentially many different types of crises or disasters that could occur, natural disasters, pandemics, rocks from space, and so on, it does raise the question for me, how is Australia using social media and open source technologies in crisis management.

We've seen quite intensive use of social media in situations such as the Haiti earthquake, Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Mumbai terrorist attacks and the swine flu pandemic last year.

Across the world authorities are realising how valuable social media can be to help them quickly get information out to the public, to collect information on the extent of a disaster and help prioritise relief efforts.

They are also beginning to realise how dangerous it can be to not engage online, leaving rumours and misinformation to spread even faster and more virulently than was previously possible. A good example was during the Mumbai terrorist attacks when a rumour that the Indian government was asking for all live tweeting from Mumbai to stop in order to avoid giving the terrorists information about police movements.

However the really interesting developments in disaster management are happening outside of government. Software engineers and disaster management specialists have spent the last few years developing better tools for addressing crisis situations - often without any support from the authorities responsible for managing emergencies.

Two of these platforms are Ushahidi and Sahana.

Both of these platforms are open source, free-to-use web-based platforms designed to be highly resilient during disaster situations and flexible to the needs of both developing and developed nations.

Ushahidi, developed to report on violence during the 2008 Kenya election, has been deployed more than 20 times around the world to address situations such as violence in Gaza, the impact of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Chile and Haiti's emergency responses to their respective earthquake, track crime levels in Atlanta, medical supply levels in pharmacies across Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia and track the swine flu pandemic.

The system allows reports by mobile phone SMS and MMS and via the internet to be aggregated into a real-time map, then used to identify priority areas for relief efforts or activities. While the system can be deployed simply for reporting by authorities, it has proven to be strongest where citizens have been able to report incidents directly, allowing emergency authorities to respond with a more complete picture of events.

Ushahidi is entirely free to reuse and can be deployed within a few hours.

The group behind the service are currently working on a second service, Swift River, designed to help manage the flood of online information about a disaster in the first few hours and help both emergency services and the public distinguish between rumour and fact. While Swift River won't be launched until the end of August, a video discussing how it will work is available online.

Sahana is another free open source system developed to assist in disaster management. A a web based collaboration tool, it is designed to help manage common coordination problems, such as locating missing persons, managing volunteers and aid and coordinating efforts between a variety of aid groups, government and those impacted by the disaster.

It was originally developed in 2004 by Sri Lankan developers to support the response to the December 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami and was deployed by the Sri Lanka government to support disaster recovery efforts. A second phase, funded through Sweden, saw Sahana expanded into a more generic disaster management tool with global application.

Sahana was designed to cope with many of the infrastructure issues that frequently occur during disasters, such as intermittent power, loss of network connectivity and the need to deploy the service on low-end hardware and systems. In fact Sahana can be transported on and operated from a USB stick and is extremely flexible and easy to customise, reflecting the need to adapt quickly to the individual nature of every disaster.

Sahana is in use for the Pakistan floods at the moment and it was also used for the Haiti earthquake - discussed in this case study (PDF). It has also been used in the Phillipines, the US, Peru, China, Indonesia and Pakistan for a range of disaster management needs.

There are other open source tools available for disaster management purposes. It is also possible to rapidly build a custom system for a specific need using free and low cost tools such as Wordpress (for content management), Google Maps (for geospatial representations), YouTube (for video), Flickr (for images), Slideshare and Scribd (for presentations and documents), Twitter (for real-time updates), WidgetBox (for embeddable widgets), Facebook (for group coordination), Wufoo (for forms) and services such as Yahoo Pipes to integrate and process information and news feeds.

In most cases the time required to put together these types of custom systems is significantly less than that required to have systems developed within high-end content management systems - as are normally deployed for normal business needs by government agencies.

In most cases these third party services are also cheaper, more scalable and have greater network resilience and peak usage capability - reflecting their need to cater for millions of simultaneous users, more than most government sites are engineered to handle.

So while some governments appear to be relying on traditional means of communications in disasters - brochures or media releases at carefully timed intervals - it is inevitable that communities will self-organise, create their own tools and deploy them with great speed.

Today's challenge for governments is to use social media and online tools to improve their own disaster management capability, organise the flood of information and provide better outcomes - deploying disaster management systems or throwing together custom solutions in a matter of hours rather than months.eGov AU Craig Thomler's personal eGovernment thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective

Hurrah! I just published my 100th example of social media use in local government. I’ve been collecting examples of social media use in local government for probably a year and a half.  I published a slide deck of examples using slide share last year.  And although it got tons of views showing that people wanted information like this, it’s not easy to update.

So since January, I’ve been sharing examples of social media and open data use in local government – as I come across them – through a blogging service called posterous.  Here it is.   I like it because it has a neat little button I can install on my browser – click – and I can slurp images or text right into my post.  I collect examples across any kind of social media platform or tool or application of open data, and from anywhere in the world but it has to be local government.  I also include examples of state, province or regional government and occasionally other public services, too – but central gov examples are strictly verboten.

Social collation

It seems to me that single-issue blogs are actually a pretty good way of collating content around good practice.  And social media or web-based practice is clearly really well suited for this, but I think you could use it for anything. (Here’s Jon Harvey’s innovation and improvement focused blog Small Creative Ideas, for example) The benefit of doing it in a blog, and particularly through a service like Posterous or Tumblr is that it’s got a nice easy interface, (you can even email stuff in).  You can tag items to categorise them, (e.g. Flickr or data or West Midlands) and others can be updated as you add stuff through RSS or email update.

Promotion

And posterous lets me automatically cross-post my content onto other platforms – for example this WordPress blog (though I’ve only just started doing that in the last month – and I’m still viewing it as a bit of an experiment). Unfortunately, I can’t cross-post into my Communities of Practice blog – but I have added the blog’s contents to the Social Media Community of Practice by adding its RSS feed to the community news feeds and I’ve just added it to the customised search of external websites in the CoP, too (you can choose to search across external sites from the search box within the community).

I also use HootSuite a multi-account social media management tool, to pick up the feed from the blog to post to my Twitter account and the twitter stream of the community of practice. I could auto-post to twitter directly from Posterous, but by using HootSuite, it’s delayed slightly which gives me a chance to make sure the links work or I haven’t made a disastrous spelling mistake.

Even in the early days, it was quite helpful in sharing examples for Local by Social and Connected Councillors and it’s helped me when I prepare for talks, etc.  So just as personal tool, it’s definitely been a success.  But I hope that it’s a valuable resource for others, too and that it’s been helpful to the folks who’ve had their examples featured.  It certainly seems reasonably popular (you can see page views on individual posts – and these range from a couple hundred to well over a thousand).

Where I get the examples

Some come from word of mouth, some I get from the social media CoP, some come from GovLoop (the sort of US equivalent of CoP).  I pick up some from my RSS feedreader (I use Google Reader), but I definitely pick up a lot from Twitter.  Since I’m working with the LG Group transparency programme, too – I’m also arranging for colleagues to share examples of innovative use with me to help us celebrate emerging practice.   Usually, when I see stuff I blog it straight away – as I usually am just providing a link and a couple paragraphs at most – so it doesn’t take me much time.

But if I’ve already done an example recently and I spot a new one, I bookmark it with the delicious tag socialgov.  If you have an example, I’d love to hear about it – drop me a line at ingrid.koehler AT local.gov.uk or tag it socialgov if you use delicious or even better Tweet me!

Why not case studies?

Case studies are great, but they’re a bit retrospective, so not so good for capturing emerging practice or innovation in its early stages.  But an example blog offers no such promise, it’s just examples.  Sometimes I do feature case studies when I find them.   And an example blog gives me the opportunity to catalogue those ideas which might make good case studies later.

via flickr.com

It seems like we’re miles away from an election right now, but the next local polling in England might just be the social media election we didn’t quite get in May.

Stephanie Noble describes a local election in Newark, New Jersey and the role that social media played in getting an ‘underfunded’, underdog candidate a place on the city council. Since she’s a social media consultant, we probably need to take it all with a teeny grain of salt and there are certainly questions I would ask about ROI of certain tools.

However, she does describe a whole array of social media tools including the first use I’ve heard of Foursquare (a location based game) in a local campaign. I doubt Foursquare would work in the UK, but since it began in New York it may have greater penetration in a city just across the river. She describes how they measured penetration of messages using link-shortening service (bit.ly) and includes certain measures of success on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube.

In the end, her candidate won by just 11 votes. A squeaker! In hotly contested races, social media may just provide the edge.

via danslee.wordpress.com

Dan Slee has blogged about how Walsall Council has used Flickr and its local community to spruce up its web pages. He has step by step information about what they did and what kind of things you need to consider as well as other helpful links.

If you’re proud of your area and proud of your local people, this is a great way to show that.

Flickr is an online image sharing website, that is as much about social networking around images as it is an image repository. Just about every area I’ve ever looked for already has a Flickr group dedicated to sharing images about that place.

I've been speaking with a few lawyers and solicitors lately regarding the risks of various social media initiatives and tools.

Today, over lunch, it struck me that lawyers rarely - if ever - speak about the legal benefits of social media, the ways in which the use of social media can provide better outcomes for organisation, in a legal sense, than 'traditional' approaches to listening, communication, consultation and engagement.

So I've made a stab below at identifying some of the legal benefits of social media - please feel free to add your own, or debate my views, in comments.


Identifying potential legal risks early
The first legal benefit is the capability to monitor social media to identify any emerging concerns or issues that could lead to future legal risks for an organisation.

People often speak openly online about their concerns and frustrations. A trend of similar issues can represent an emerging issue with a policy, system or service delivery function that could eventuate as a court case or even a class action.

Social media provides an avenue to identify these trending issues quickly and gives organisations an opportunity to address them before they 'blow up' into the media and legal action.


Audit trails
One of the major benefits of the online channel is the capability to capture and track user behaviour - particularly when a user is registered and signs into a service. This can provide legal benefits through a clear audit trail of an individual's online activities to either verify their story, or prove it untrue.

Where an individual claims to not have viewed particular material, or to not have agreed to certain terms and conditions, a digital trail can provide veracity - for example when signing up to a particular online service, changing contact details or revealing personal information.

I have seen cases in government where an individual has claimed that their online account had been fraudulently modified by another party however, through auditing the digital records, it became possible to prove that it was a relative authorised to use the account who had made the changes, preventing any type of legal action against the agency providing the service.

In a case unrelated to government, recently an iPhone log was used to prove that an individual was being falsely accused of rape and in other cases email records and the logs from websites have been used to prove or disprove an individual's involvement in particular matters.

Where government employs social media tools for activities such as stakeholder or community engagement or consultation and some form of log-in or other way to recognise users (such as through a Facebook or Twitter identity) is in use, it becomes much harder for individuals to falsely claim that they were unaware of certain information or otherwise prove statements that could lead to agency legal liability.


Accessibility
The internet can be a cost-effective way to provide documents and discussions during a consultation process in an accessible manner, avoiding the legal risk of breaching the Disabilities Act.

Rather than holding a consultation by mail, where mailed submissions are scanned in and either not provided online at all, or presented as images - totally inaccessible to screen readers - government can hold online consultations where every submission is typed directly into the consultation site.

These submissions can be reviewed and published online in a manner accessible to all internet users. They can also be printed (maybe in braille) or read out by a machine over a phone line for non-users.

This use of the internet for consultations is a very cost-effective way for organisations to meet their obligations under the Disabilities Act and avoid legal action for providing submissions in a non-accessible manner.


Inclusion (equalising access)
Using the internet in engagement activities, alongside other approaches, allows a much broader range of people to participate - minimising the legal risks of decisions where some audiences claim they were not consulted.

Often those who work nights, have day jobs, young children, are physically less mobile, geographically distant or otherwise have commitments are less able to participate in face-to-face discussion with a government agency or its representatives.

Where these people are affected by the outcomes of a face-to-face engagement process these people could feel excluded and unheard. In some situations, could lead to legal action against certain policies or decisions.

By using the internet alongside other approaches within an engagement process - via a forum, blog, facebook page, or similar means - a government agency can ensure that audiences unable to attend a physical event are heard and their views considered.

This increases their feeling of inclusion and lessens the risk of developing poor policy, reducing the risk of policy failures which could lead to legal action.


So there you are - four legal benefits from using social media that can reduce an organisation's legal risks (versus not using social media).

Can you think of any others?eGov AU Craig Thomler's personal eGovernment thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective

The LG Group recently wrote to heads of comms, policy/performance and finance to explain a little bit about the LG Transparency programme and  to identify local authority leads for open data.   So if you’re the lead (or know someone who is), be sure to get in touch.  You can see the full text of the letter in the Local Open Data CoP.

Sign up now to be notified when FREE tickets become available for CityCamp London.

Another OpenGov and data event – not quite free (only £10) 18-19 November in London – it talks about localgov data, but there are no localgov types on the organiser list.  Hmmm. Anyway, I’ve bought a ticket.

Find out about Open Data and the Knowledge Hub and get involved.

Other data links that caught my eye last week…

• Open Data Principles Discussion Draft – OpenCongress Wiki (tags: data data.gov US opendata)
• Surrey Heath’s spending data online soon « Lightwater Councillor Tim Dodds blogs on open expenditure data for his council. He’s been blogging on this issue for a while, only just picked this up. Cool.
• What You Need To Know About Data Portability
• Local government expenditure over £500 – Local government – Communities and Local Government listing of councils and links to a DirectGov search function to see if your council has done it
• How data will improve health care
• No more crime blogging -  one of my councillors has been blogging and mapping crime data – now he’s been asked to stop.

via flickr.com

As far as I can tell, Aberdeen City Council is the first Scottish council to release open data. They’ve released councillors’ allowances and leisure facilities as machine readable data. (CSV) A good place to start. The first is about democracy and transparency and the second kind of data release leads to the development of cool online things that help people have fun.

Congrats to them!

(More info and help from other practitioners in the Local Open Data Community of Practice)

(via Ian Watt, @watty62)

via flickr.com

I’ve just seen in the Social Media Community of Practice that folks from four separate local authorities are collaborating on guidance on social media for the public sector in a wiki.

They’re only just starting off, but there’s already a fair bit of content there. Their primary focus is libraries, but there’s a lot there for all concerned.

Here’s what Helen Leech from Surrey County Council has said:

Four authorities are working together on a course aimed at raising staff awareness of social media, and confidence in handling public enquiries about it. You can see it at 23things.wetpaint.com.

It is written for library staff, but since it consists of introductions to things like Twitter and Facebook it can be used by anybody. It is, of course, free.

What a brilliant example of collaboration. No point in doing this separately four times over or for that matter the many times over that every council will be interested in.

by jef safi on Flickr

I’ve spent the last five days in day-long development meetings for the Knowledge Hub. The Knowledge Hub can be mostly simply described as a replacement for the Communities of Practice platform, but actually it has much more ambitious scope in terms of sharing and distributing knowledge and data. So our intention is that you could use it as you might use CoP today, but that you’ll find it a much richer environment and we hope that you’ll use it for much, much more.

One of the things we really wanted to do was develop the Knowledge Hub using an agile approach. But I’m not sure any of us really knew what that meant, at least not in detail. I sure didn’t.  We only knew that we didn’t want the same approach we’d used before. Endless specification and then getting something that maybe was a bit of a surprise (good or bad) and perhaps getting what we’d asked for (to the letter) but not what we really needed or what we had intended.

Agile software development

Since I come from a performance management background – it’s easiest to explain agile in that way. Instead of specifying tight targets on process which can lead to some unpleasant unintended consequences, agile at this stage is about creating stories about outcomes without specifying the solution. It’s about describing what the experience will be like for the user in outline form. No more than can fit on a notecard – in fact, we’re using notecards – with stuff like this on it:

• A registered user will be able to make connections to colleagues and contacts.
• A registered user will be able to see 2nd degree connections.
• A community facilitator will be able to visibly promote content contributed by users.

These statements still seem pretty abstract. But behind each of these statements is a conversation – sometimes a debate and occasionally an argument. And more importantly behind each of these are tests for success and a promise of further discussion. Throughout this we’re gaining a lot more understanding between the development team and the client team.

Right now, we’re just describing the stories, but soon we’ll be prioritising these stories. Much of the prioritisation will be based on the outcomes for users, but some of the prioritisation will be based on how long it will take or how difficult it will be to achieve that story. So a story that takes a lot of developer time to achieve, but doesn’t really provide that much usefulness will come very low on the list (and might even drop off).

Useful for user stories

In describing these stories, I’ve found a couple of things really helpful.  My own experience (and that of others’ in the room) of using the CoP or other collaborative technologies to work with local government practitioners.  I’ve also found a workshop we held with practitioners at the beginning of the summer and this uservoice page a helpful resources.  And this book User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development has been really helpful, too.  Sounds a bit dreary – but it’s actually quite a good read.

Get involved

If you’d like to stay informed or get involved in the Knowledge Hub, please join us in the Knowledge Hub community of practice.

As covered in The Australian's article, Australian Bureau of Statistics embraces world of blogs and wikis, the ABS has implemented an internal collaboration platform supporting blogs, wikis and collaborative documents.

The article reports that 30% of staff have begun using the wiki and blog functions. If reported correctly this reflects a huge demand for internal digital collaboration within the Bureau and bodes well for the implementation of similar platforms in other government agencies.

Given that the platform is said to simplify the management of collaboratively written and edited documents, removing the load from email and enabling better version control, there are significant long-term knowledge management and internal efficiencies that could be realised by the ABS.

I've often wondered why government agencies have been so slow to move away from desktop-based word processing towards wiki-style collaborative documents (with appropriate security and version control). Admittedly there are transition costs - both ICT and training - however the savings in not having incorrect versions sent around as large email attachments and the time saved by not having to compile edits from numerous people back into a single document are quite large.eGov AU Craig Thomler's personal eGovernment thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective