Government 2.0 Camp – Wikis
Government 2.0 Club – Open Source Software for Gov 2.0
Government 2.0 Camp – Geo-Data Catalogue
Government 2.0 Camp – Pillars of Strategy
(Because I could not get an Internet signal during this presentation, I took notes and have posted them below. The post is in the format of a live feed of comments and information rather than a typical blog post.)
The Pillars of Strategy to Consider When Implementing Social Media:
• Policy
• Content
• Channel Integration
• Strategy
• Experimenting
• Legal/Political/compliance
• Leadership
• Stakeholders
• Applications
• Technology
• Listening
• Audience – knowing who
• Empowering
• Acting
• Respect
• Budget
• Two way conversations (TSA has case studies on collaboration with their stakeholders)
These pillars were decided upon based on the following input:
• 1.5M Federal regulations
• What is social government? Sounds like a misnomer but there are a lot of ideas out there on the net about this. Is there a way to define what is the space of social media and government?
• What are you trying to get at it? Engagment?
• There is a lot we can do to distribute relevant and good information.
• This needs to be successful and useful.
• The Myth of Digital Democracy – book.
• Collective action – example of how people gamed the Obama town hall and just wanted to talk about “weed.â€
• There has to be an authoritative source.
• How to listen or how to define the value.
• Do most people not understand that this is more interactive? Do people understand they can get online and engage with government? The difference between 1.0 and 2.0.
• Who is using it? There has to be other channels to get the other information. Twitter is a little bit to the left. Echo chambers. How do you engage those who are exclusive of social media?
• Multiple avenues to engage – public forums, traditional media, Web sites. Social media is only one avenue, not the only one. But it is important to be part of it and use it as one of the avenues.
• We need to tie Social media together with the other avenues.
• Example used of regulations.gov is only voluntary participation by agencies.
• Information gets stuck in agencies in the middle. If leadership really wants it but doesn’t have access does this represent an opportunity of how to implement social media?
• Bureaucracy is sometimes needed for some agencies to allow for decision making. A hierarchy always exists – there is always one person who finally makes the decision. This is the leadership element to ultimate government decision making.
• Challenge is trying to take it all in at once. Myriad of possibilities and opportunities. Look at your external audience and how they use media then look at your internal group. Then look at how they consume media. We are still using the telegraph process to issue press releases. Strategically plan your external and your internal channels and try not to do it all at once.
• What is our degree of comfort with allowing citizens to change regulations and policy?
• Can apply social media in many ways to change government: how to optimize interagency processes, in the past many would never have left their mark because they were buried in the structure. Change the relationship to stakeholders.
• Creation of policy is also a target to hit using social media. Use the tools to help you develop policy. You have a hierarchy of decision making and you have a process. But our society is in a transitional period. You can exclude a large segment if you are not careful. Don’t lose sight that your customer might not be comfortable with the tools. But is this their problem?
• Integrate all the channels. Determine task then how we are going to accomplish that. Identify the multiple channels to use. A lot of times the message is not well coordinated between all the channels.
• Try it and see what happens. But concern remains about the legal ramifications. When did it become not acceptable to fail?
Lose the Politician
While I don’t normally like to touch too strongly on politics in any article or blog I write, I saw something today on the GovLoop site (posted by Andrew Krzmarzick) that is so potentially life-changing, you need to see it. This very short video presents a thought-provoking and powerful message about how government is and could be structured. I leave it for you to draw your own conclusions and ideas:
Who’s Leading the Charge to Web 2.0?
Today I read a recently released white paper, Government 2.0: Building Communities with Web 2.0 and Social Networking. Overall, I thought the paper did a good job summarizing much of the ongoing, online discussions and research on this topic. However, I sensed an underlying attitude that concerned me as a government employee. This unspoken, read-between-the-lines belief by the author was finally put to words in the conclusion when he stated: “Ultimately CIOs must decide for themselves if Web 2.0 technology makes sense for their community and if this is the time to invest in it.”
Now, I don’t know about the rest of you working in government, but I can’t begin to tell you how many times our city attorney has lectured me that we are only employed to give advice; it it the job of the elected officials to make the final decisions. I realize we are left to make some decisions on a daily basis without having to run to the mayor or city manager each time, so I take his comment as meaning the “big” decisions. As the city engineer, I can make recommendations about what roads need to be repaired, but in the end, the mayor and the aldermen make the final choice. And I make the repairs based on their decision.
So making the statement that ultimately it will be up to the CIO to decide if his community should embrace Web 2.0 is like saying it is up to our city attorney to decide if he should begin legal proceedings to condemn and demolish someone’s home that doesn’t meet local ordinances. All of us would think that is ridiculous. Those types of community-wide decisions that have the chance to impact our citizens and expend funds must be made by the elected officials. CIOs can recommend and present implementation of Web 2.0, but ultimately, the elected officials will be the ones to accept or deny its use.
The role of the CIO is something I have been thinking about for some time and even more so since meeting Bill Greeves, Director of Information Technology for Roanoke County, Virginia. He and I co-founded the MuniGov 2.0 group to serve as a resource for local government folks looking at Web 2.0 implementation. Not one of the members of this group, who are primarily people working in the information technology or computer fields, have ever expressed an attitude or opinion similar to that put forth by this report. In fact, all have viewed their role in this as a professional who has recognized the need to develop the skills necessary to face the future Web 2.0-related demands of their agency. They all have approached implementation of Web 2.0 as that of a person who will most likely lead the charge, but primarily as a facilitator, collaborator, and mentor to others in their workforce.
Their approach has restored an image I had of that profession that was obviously undeserving but brought about by years of hearing others in government complain about the IT department. The complaints I have heard are that IT prevents them from being able to do their work by restricting access to programs. Talking with Bill about this, I realize that IT has an important responsibility to protect the security of the network, and most likely, these restrictions have been set in place by IT to accomplish that task. But Bill takes a very practical approach to this by indicating that while security is vital, that goal should not keep an IT professional from working with others in the agency to investigate implementing needed software. (See his article on this – published by the same entity that published the report above – addressing this topic from an IT professional’s perspective: Can’t We All Just Get Along?)
As we move into the future and acceptance of Web 2.0, I do believe that IT professionals will be moved out of the basement (as so humorously depicted in the British television show, the IT Crowd) and take a well-deserved place on the upper floors. And I believe that instead of complaining about how IT keeps everyone from being able to do what they want to do, people need to realize how much IT does to make sure they can keep working. We need to “friend an IT person,” find out what their job really entails, and realize that as computers increase in importance, it will be these folks who most likely will be leading the charge. But the charge will not be successful if they do not obtain the trust and buy-in from other departments (and comments like those in this report do not facilitate that type of cooperation with people who already look upon the IT department with distrust and consternation). And no one will be charging at all without the green light from elected officials.