Open government supporters insist that the movement is alive and kicking, but it is fair to say that, if it is a revolution, it is going very slow and is testing the patience of those who are fighting with shrinking budgets and financial sustainability issues in government organizations around the world.

Taking a look at the open government plans published by US federal agencies, and the related dashboard, it is quite apparent that most plans have not been updated since their first version, and there is very little information about progress and what has been accomplished.

Of course there is still a lot enthusiasm elsewhere, and every week there are new jurisdictions joining the race to openness, but how long will that enthusiasm be maintained before open government delivers on its promise?

There is still a chance for open government to prove its value, before being marginalized, and it is to create a clear connection with problems that jurisdiction and agencies need to solve. This implies that open government must be redirected from simply increasing transparency to fighting crime and tax evasion, improving health and education, reducing the cost of government. And that open government experts do no longer limit themselves to enabling the wisdom of the crowd and the creativity of application developers, but take ownership of how open data can and will solve specific problems, and be accountable for those solutions.

But this is a completely different ball game, isn’t it?.

Weeks 1–2: Communities Off Line and On: Why do we form social networks? What forms do social networks take? How do we manage social networks to increase the possibility of positive outcomes?

Weeks 3–4: Information as Online Currency: What is information? How does it function online? How can it be managed in an age where every possible viewpoint is expressed and reinforced online? Can we ever achieve consensus?

Weeks 5–6: From Information to Action: How do we encourage participation through social media?

Weeks 7–12: The Capacities and Limits of Social Media: What can be achieved through social media—with regard to collaboration, transparency, and citizen participation—and what are the limitations and even perils that social media must confront?

Most likely, by the end of this course, attendees will have a fair understanding of potential and challenges of social media. I just wonder whether they will be given the right perspective and the course will be courageous enough to explore the employee-centric view of social media, according to which social media succeed in delivering business value if they deliver personal value to each and every individual who is supposed to be engaged.

One reason for caution is the target audience, which is supposed to be composed by government professionals who

• • Aspire to positions with a heavy social media component;
  • Are given responsibility for an office’s social media strategy, activities, or training,
  • Are new to social media and want a deep and thorough understanding of the tools; and/or

These are profoundly different audiences, which will use social media in very different ways. According to the common wisdom, the former two categories overlap. People who are excited about social media do see its use in communications and citizen engagement. But the most important category is the last one, i.e. everybody else: people who have no aspiration to make a career out of social media, but may find value in using it as personal working tools to become more effective and efficient at what they do (assuming their primary role is not communication).

It would be best to run separate courses, because the first two categories should look at the corporate use of social media, while the latter would focus on employee-centricity, BYO (bring your own) device and/or community. Of course there is some common ground for the basics, but 12 weeks are a too long a time not to make a clear distinction between different audiences.

So, while the initiative deserves much praise, let’s hope that its execution does not fall pray of the conventional corporate-centric approach.

I am sure I am missing great things that happened in many corners of the world, and I could actually make it longer. My choice is based on topics, issues, individuals, jurisdictions that have “animated” my life as an analyst, through multiple interactions, dealing with several questions about them, and agreeing or disagreeing with what they are doing.

As usual, my thanks go to all professionals who, in different roles and capacity, inside or outside government, work relentlessly to help transform the public sector with (or notwithstanding) technology innovation. Their contribution has been essential to help governments around the world face their huge challenges and better prepare to deal with an often uncertain, and certainly even more challenging future.

As usual, the list is in reverse order, from number ten to number one.

10. Vendors trying to help with government clouds

With the US federal and several other governments hugely interested in cloud computing, several vendors have made significant inroads to meet government requirements for security and data sovereignty. Although most vendors tend to overuse the term “cloud” as an umbrella for a number of different services and delivery models, they have been listening more carefully and responding to their government clients’ needs. Examples include the development of specific federal clouds by Google, Microsoft, IBM and more recently Amazon; the issuance of IaaS blanket purchase agreements by GSA; the role of the vendor association Intellect in helping the UK government shape its own cloud strategy. While there is still room for improvement, things seem to be moving in the right direction.

9. Cloud Security research by the European Network & Information Security Agency

Largely ignored by clients outside Europe (as witnessed by the number of clients who had never heard about it), ENISA’s “Security and Resilience in Governmental Clouds” is one of the few substantial contributions that the European institutions and agencies have provided to the cause of greater use of cloud computing by government organizations. Very thorough, it provides a great list of criteria for anybody who wants to look beyond the surface of compliance issues, and to something a bit more international than what FISMA and FedRAMP give in the US.

8. How Queensland used social media to face the floods in January

This has been mentioned by many as one of the best examples of good government use of social media where this has often associated to riots and revolutions. Several state agencies opened access to social media to their employees, and started using platforms like Twitter and Facebook to reach out to the community affected by massive floods. Some of those uses have been exemplary and have gained the Queensland State Police, amongst others, accolades and awards. This great case also showed us how social media can serve a tactical purpose to face an immediate need, but may be difficult to sustain over time.

7. The many UK strategies

After a pause to let the new coalition government settle, the UK Cabinet Office did issue a Government ICT strategy in March, followed by a shared services vision and then a stream of documents about the implementation of the ICT strategy, covering cloud computing, end-user devices and more. These documents show that the idea of having foundational partners, i.e. IT leaders in large departments, in charge for different parts of the strategy is working. On the downside, though, some leadership changes in the Cabinet office, with executives moving to the private sector, may leave some void at crucial implementation time.

6. Alex Howard: great gov 2.0 blogger

Alex and I are often on the opposite side of the fence when it comes to debating open government. He is an enthusiast, although, being a reporter, he does not like this term. Actually, I mean this in a positive sense, as opposed to my analyst cynicism that makes me look at many open government endeavors as politically motivated, déjà vu, or “me-too”. I have often enjoyed comparing notes with him and certainly like the breadth and depth of his government 2.0 coverage. Probably if he were not working for O’Reilly, he could come to terms with the weaknesses in the “government-as-a-platform” approach: despite this, he is one of the most balanced bloggers I have been reading on this and related themes.

5. The US Federal CIOs: change and continuity

This year has seen the change in federal IT leadership with Vivek Kundra moving to Harvard and Steve Van Roekel taking his place. Vivek has been one of the most controversial and innovative figures in federal IT, dividing experts between enthusiastic supporters and dismissive critics. The former liked his very different approach, driven by transparency and the willingness to push change in various areas. The latter complained about his lack of experience with federal environment and processes and even accused him of caring mostly about self-promotion. Reality, as usual, is in the middle: he certainly was visionary for the federal environment and triggered some significant change; however he did not put enough emphasis on the sustainability of his many initiatives. Steven’s main challenge is to accomplish something that helps build political capital in a re-election year: he is doing so by building upon what Vivek did, rather than immediately looking at something else in order to impose his personal vision.

4. Australia: down under and down to Earth

During 2011 Australia published both its draft ICT strategy and its cloud strategy. While not perfect, these documents are very sensible and do not try to impose blanket approaches to all agencies. This has been much welcome in between a stream of more compulsory measures, from the shared service approach in Canada to Cloud First in the US. It is always refreshing to discuss about these topics with people at AGIMO:I do wish them to keep a stronger drive than what they did with the outcome of the government 2.0 taskforce, which made number 2 in my top ten in 2009 but apparently had little impact so far.

3. GSA: keeping their drive with tighter budgets

The tighter federal budget in 2011 has taken resources away from some of the innovative programs that the US General Services Administration have been leading under the Obama administration. Nevertheless they have kept advancing their agenda on both USA.gov and on cloud computing. On the latter, despite a change in leadership, they have finally published the blanket purchase agreement for IaaS, pushed a call for tender on email services through a GAO protest, progressed the complex FedRAMP initiative, while transitioning themselves to a new cloud-based email service. This is a group of talented and highly-motivated professionals who epitomize the great government employees that made number 1 in my top ten last year.

2. Women in IT: leading with grace

I have written in the past about how women get social media better than men do, and how I have had the pleasure to meet great female IT-savvy politicians and IT executives. The list goes on and on. Behind many of the successful achievements that I have been tracking there is a woman. People like Linda Cureton (NASA CIO and author of the excellent “The Leadership Muse”), Ann Steward (Australian federal CIO), Mechthild Rohen (Head of eGovernment program at the European Commission), Claudia de Andrade de Wit (CIO of the City of Amsterdam), Stela Mocan (Director of the eGovernment Center in Moldova) and many many others are all great examples: we’d better watch out!

1. New Zealand: the best social media guidelines so far

Analysts can’t help find little drawbacks even in the best product or strategy. That’s why I was so happy to find the social media guidelines from the New Zealand government: this is close to an almost perfect document (of course it’s not, analysts are impossible to please) and certainly one that I recommend to many to read. It is a great blend of common sense and actionable advice, and can be easily tailored to different contexts. The authors said they were heavily inspired by a document prepared by people in the UK government: however it does not look like the UK published one yet, so, while some kudos go to the unknown British employees who inspired this, the merit is all for our distant friends in the Pacific.

Thank you all for reading my blog through 2011. Let me wish you, your families and friends a Happy New Year.

10. Vendors trying to help

To watch in 2012

- SSC Canada

- FedRAMP impact

I do not think either of them is wrong.

Hana underlines a well-known problem with some open government endeavors, which is the lack of focus. Sometimes people confuses the means with the end, and application contests deliver technically interesting results that turn into a modest citizen uptake.

On the other hand, Alex highlights that by embedding sustainability as a key concept in an open government plan (as Chicago did in his opinion), it is easier to achieve successful use of open data that sticks, rather waning after the initial excitement.

I tend to err on the side of cynicism when it comes to open government. It may be the case that, like in other great examples of use of social media in government, its value will become evident when facing a major crisis, an emergency or a problem that cannot be solved otherwise. But, lacking any of that (which would be a blessing) we certainly need to take it out of the hands of enthusiastic pioneers, application developers and “open anything” geeks, and turn it into a tool that the average government managers can understand and utilize. This implies that open government may have to become more inward-looking, aimed at solving internal and bureaucratic problems rather than making citizen happy and saving lives.  As I have been saying for quite some time now, selfishness may be the best way to make open government stick.

This is still much less than the $34 million originally planned for 2011, but it could have been worse. This money funds projects like Data.gov, USAspending.gov and the IT Dashboard, all highly visible transparency initiatives that have been launched early by the Obama administration.

While transparency advocates may insist that this is not enough, I would argue that it is time for open government to prove its value also through demonstrable cost savings that would strengthen the case – and provide cash – to pursue this noble but potentially expensive endeavor. We all agree that transparency is a key principle, but when government organizations are challenged in their ability to meet statutory obligations (like a shutdown or deep financial cuts would), then openness needs to contribute to make government sustainable.

Last week I had two refreshing conversations with agencies at federal and state levels that are taking a hard look at how to evolve their open government plans. In both cases there is an imperative to connect open government to mission effectiveness and efficiency, probably with a stronger accent on the latter than on the former, given the current fiscal climate.

I am convinced that open government is a very powerful tool to solve many of the problems that public administrations are facing and will face going forward. Leveraging data and information in many different ways will be key not only to improve service quality and transparency, but also to make those services sustainable under tighter budgetary circumstances. Improving employees’ effectiveness and efficiency as well as engaging citizens to help in service delivery or compliance work are the new frontiers for open government.

Therefore, besides maintaining or improving central funds, it is key that agencies see open government as an indispensible weaponry for their day-to-day operations, rather than a nice-to-have complement to their mission-critical processes..

My first reaction was to stress the importance of being where people are and of structuring the content in smaller, easy-to-consume chunks that would attract the interest of people and drive them to participate. We discussed about the trade off in engagement effectiveness between providing content and streaming meetings on their web site, as opposed to using YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

After a while they told me that they were not really after citizen engagement, but after citizen access. This is a very important distinction. Access means giving people who have an interest in participating an easier way to access content and provide input and comments. Engagement means also reaching out to people who would not normally participate, making a conscious effort to make government content easy to understand and consume, and creating better alignment between what people are looking for or are passionate about, and the way to deliver content.

For instance, citizens who want to access the council meeting but cannot due to distance, want to have access to preparatory papers, the ability to comment and submit questions, and real-time streaming of the actual meeting, with some ability to participate as appropriate. This is access.

But citizens who have limited interest in what the council does, or just don’t know, will not connect to the streamed session, nor will they look at the agenda or the minutes. But they may be contributing to one of the items in the agenda if that item was delivered in a way and on a channel that is most natural to them. This is engagement.

Providing access implies using enterprise technology on the government web site. Ensuring engagement may be achieved with consumer technology. However the client is convinced that the latter would be more expensive, requiring resources to understand where and how to deliver content, not to mention the records management nightmare, as tools are not mature and there is a fair amount of manual work involved.

So the impression is that limiting the effort to “granting access” and forgetting about “engagement” would be cheaper and easier to manage.

But is it? If citizens or the executive leadership calls for “better access”, this can mean a lot of different things, ranging from streaming video, to having more online services, to having open data, and so forth. It is likely that any effort done to increase access will be seen by some groups as insufficient or not in line with their expectations.

And even if one has a very clear view of “access” priorities and can prioritize investments accordingly, are we sure that everybody has the same interpretation of the boundaries between access and engagement? If the new access captures only – say – 10 or 20% of the population, but others do not engage, is this enough? Of course one can always say that the channel is there for people to access, but won’t somebody ask what is being done to engage the remaining 80%?

Reality is that engagement is inevitable. The question is whether and how rapidly it can be turned from a cost into a benefit. After all, citizens can provide a very effective platform for governments to operate and innovate.

• Social Media in Government: High Level Guidance, targeted to organizations that “are trying to decide if they should use social media in a communications, community engagement, or a policy consultation context”; and
• Social Media in Government: Hand-On Toolbox, targeted to practitioners “who are setting up social media profiles and using the tools on a daily basis”.

As those who happen to read my posts on this topic probably know, I am always quite critical with governments as they come out with social media policies and guidelines that are full of good intention but usually fail to meet the intended goal of stimulating its use by erring too much on the side of risk management and institutional presence.

These documents are different, almost a breath of fresh air. They provide very down-to.earth, actionable decision frameworks that give both communications professionals (i.e. those who are in the business of managing the official face of their agency on social media) and any other member of the staff, including managers, enough information to formulate their own decisions about whether and how to venture into social media.

Both guidelines do not speak to organizations, but target individuals, be they public affair officers or line managers or employees in whatever capacity. They focus on principles that are valid for any role, and stimulate a thought process that leads to determine whether and how the use of social media is worthwhile in one’s own role.

There are a few shortcomings, such as the lack of a clear upfront distinction between organizational, professional and personal roles,  too long a business case template, and insufficient mention of the tactical and temporary nature of most social media engagements. But they do not detract from the overall value of these guidelines.

These are must-reads for any public sector organization that is struggling with social media.

Here are a few highlights about each of the documents.

High-Level Guidance

In the first document, I love the passive-active-engaged approach.

Your organization doesn’t have to jump in boots and all on the first day. You can start with a passive involvement and move through to becoming more active and finally fully engaged with the audiences you have identified.

Passive: One of the first things your organization can do in social media is simply to listen. What’s being said about you? […]

Active: Once you’ve listened for a while and understand the tone and concerns of a social media community, you can begin becoming more active. You can post links to information to help people answer questions they have, or you can actively correct an inaccuracy on a blog, forum or a wiki […]

Engaged: Finally, your organization can become fully engaged. You can set up a group on a social networking site and regularly introduce content for discussion, or you can establish a Twitter profile and begin contributing and actively posting and answering questions.

This looks so reasonable and yet it is not what most guidelines say, as they try to urge organizations to establish a presence even without any clear understanding of their audience’s expectations.

When describing the “active” phase, the guidelines offer another pearl:

This sort of activity can be done in ‘other people’s houses’ – that is, in the blogs, forums and wikis that others have established.

This is what I have been telling clients for quite some time. People who feel passionate about something and have already established a forum for discussion want you to join them on their turf and to play according to their terms.

The document expands the three phases above into five activities: monitor, signpost or support, respond, discuss and debate, and suggests objectives, benefits, risks and risk management techniques for each of these activities.

There is a very clear association between the code of conduct and the use of social media.

…the Code of Conduct for your individual agency apply to staff participation online as a public servant. Staff should participate in the same way as they would with other media or public forums such as speaking at conferences…

Once more, this is so obvious and yet I have not seem many guidelines that state this in such a simple manner. The document add some interesting perspectives, such as:

If you are participating in social media on behalf of your agency, disclose your position as a representative of your agency unless there are exceptional circumstances, such as a potential threat to personal security. Never give out personal details like home address and phone numbers

If you’re using social media in a personal capacity, you should not identify your employer when doing so would bring your employer into disrepute

Always make sure that you are clear as to whether you are participating in an official or a personal capacity. Be aware that participating online may attract media interest in you as an individual, so proceed with care regardless of what capacity you are acting in

This is much welcomed common sense, treating employees like adult and responsible people, and giving the the tools they need to make their decision. And, when in doubt, “take advice from your manager or legal team”.

Hands-on Toolbox

At first sight the document may look too prescriptive, as it looks at different types of social media (social networks, media-sharing sites, blogs, wikis and forums) and for each types looks at strengths and weaknesses. But it uses a very interesting approach to describing how to find relevant media, how to assess their relevance, how to participate in different roles (contributor, moderator, user), and how to track them. There are loads of useful nuggets that help prospective users understand how to approach social media, how to get the most out of it as well as how to understand when to pull the plug.

I found quite a few similarities between this approach (as well as the passive-active-engaged above), and the one we described in a note published back in 2008 (login required), where we introduced an approach to engagement based on six phases (seek, observe, complement, involve, assess and leverage, which make the acronym SOCIAL).

There are also good sections on reporting, records management, and measurement. These areas are still work in progress for many, and the guidelines recognize this:

Evaluating the effectiveness of a social media component in a strategy is an emerging art. For web metrics, it took time to evolve into commonly understood measures that could inform decision making. Social media is going through the same process

The guidelines suggest quantitative and qualitative measures, but do not pretend they can offer the ultimate solution. As they say in the introduction, they are “not meant to be read from start to finish, but rather to be used as a reference when facing specific issues or using specific tools”.

Assuming that this document is the only one that departments and employees will have to deal with when using web 2.0 for external purposes, I have to confess that I am rather disappointed.

There is a good reading of the guidelines by David Eaves, and I share most of his points. The problem with the guidelines is that they try to address different uses (and that’s why maybe we should not expect any further guideline on this topic), and in doing so they miss almost entirely the main value of web 2.0 tools, which comes from their use by individual employees and not by organizations.

Very early on the (rather long) document states very clearly the need for governance and oversight:

Departments should designate a senior official accountable and responsible for the coordination of all Web 2.0 activities as well as an appropriate governance structure. It is recommended that the Head of Communications be the designated official. This designate should collaborate with departmental personnel who have expertise in using and executing Web 2.0 initiatives, as well as with representatives from the following fields in their governance structure: information management, information technology, communications, official languages, the Federal Identity Program, legal services, access to information and privacy, security, values and ethics, programs and services, human resources, the user community, as well as the Senior Departmental Official as established by the Standard on Web Accessibility

and it continues dealing with the communication policy aspects of web 2.0, covering planning and design, rules of engagement with the public (e.g. comment moderation), evaluation and measurement (aptly focused on outcomes, but not really providing much guidance as how to create the connection between web 2.0 and outcomes).

Only after this, the document touches upon the use by employees, making the important distinction between official, professional and personal use.

The official use is nothing else than what the previous part of the guidelines is about. Things become interesting with the “professional networking and personal” use. Pulling them together makes a lot of sense, because the distinction between the two is quite thin and – more importantly – is controlled by the individual and not by the organization. Advice in this part of the guidelines is quite appropriate, reminding staff that the ethical code always applies, suggesting not to use official email address for personal use, and more.

However, the guidelines do not say anything about how employees may be leveraging web 2.0 tools to be more effective and efficient at doing their job. In fact, while the guidelines state at the very beginning that

Government of Canada departments are encouraged to use Web 2.0 tools and services as an efficient and effective additional channel to interact with the public.

they do not say whether individual employees are encouraged to do the same. Further, still in the section on individual use, the guidelines recite

Departments are encouraged to provide training to assist personnel in understanding their obligations when using Web 2.0 tools and services in any capacity, under both the Values and Ethics Code for the Public Service as a term and condition of employment, as well as the rights and legal obligations for personnel subject to Part 7 (political activities) of the Public Service Employment Act (PSEA).

Fulfillment of these obligations is expected at all times as follows:

• Public servants owe a duty of loyalty to the Government of Canada;
• Do no harm to the reputation of your employer;
• Maintain integrity and impartiality; and
• Uphold the tradition of political neutrality of the Public Service.

An explanation of what, if any, employment consequences exist when contravening these obligations should be explicitly provided.

So it is all about obligations and risks, and there is nothing about how to encourage, assess, reward the use of web 2.0 tool to improve individual contributions to department’s outcomes.

Finally, back to the departmental use, the document suggests that

An overall departmental strategy (and policies, where required) for using Web 2.0 tools and services should be developed

Whereas developing policies makes sense (possibly rebalancing the risk and the benefit side of the equation, since these guidelines are certainly skewed toward the former), a web 2.0 strategy is a fallacy for the vast majority of government organizations. These tools can be used tactically to deal with unexpected events, or as tools supporting a business strategy or a communication strategy. But they remain means to an end and not an end in themselves.

I suspect that the change in orientation has to do with change of leadership. Marj Akerley, the innovative IT executive who led one of the earliest and most successful wiki deployments in the history of government when she was CIO at Natural Resources Canada, and then appointed to lead the web 2.0 activities at the Treasury Board, left this summer to become CIO of the Ministry of Justice. It appears that since then, web 2.0 have been characterized by the urge for centralization and control that characterized the ambitious plan to centralize IT services across the Canadian federal government.

There is a clear and present danger that this wind of centralization and control will turn the Canadian government from a leader to a follower in IT-driven transformation. The jury is still out on whether this will be eventually compensated by the expected efficiency gains.

As I did last time, I found some of her views about that quite refreshing, if compared to what many gov 2.0 and cloud enthusiast keep stating. In particular, as we chatted about the arguably diminished impetus around gov 2.0 after the change of government, she agreed that, while the lack of a specific cabinet member dealing with IT is a factor, the very nature of gov 2.0 requires it to be geared toward the solution of particular problems rather than pursued as a desirable platform. Openness has great value in itself, but needs to be proven on a case by case basis, and that’s not been the case yet, at least in a demonstrably sustainable fashion.

Kate also showed a down-to-Earth appreciation of cloud computing hype and opportunities, proving once again that she is an incredibly switched on politician.

It is quite clear that, while the political drive on open government and gov 2.0 remains important, the ball is now in the departments’ and agencies’ hands to use these as essential means to achieve outcomes and solve problems, rather than a desirable attribute that gets discarded as soon as tougher and more urgent priorities emerge.

The relatively predictable budgetary situation for the Australian government, which is tightening its belt to achieve a surplus but is not imposing any draconian cut to agencies and programs, could be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it may still have room for funding innovation, and a curse because it may not offer those opportunities for radical thinking driven by the lack of any other traditional solution to problems.

There seems to be a trend with government IT executives who spend a fair amount of their time pushing for change, and then leave somebody else in charge of that change. In the case of Vivek, the change has happened well into the second half of the term, when there is relatively little time left to deliver on some of the objectives in ways that generate political capital for the re-election campaign. But Bill’s departure has happened at a still early stage of the Cameron government, and very shortly after publishing the strategic implementation plan including the much-anticipated cloud strategy.

It is quite possible that the skills required to trigger change and to lead change are different, although I would argue that – at a whole of government level – a blend of clout and negotiation abilities is required at both stages. Most likely, these are personal decisions motivated by the desire to leverage early accomplishments. But they can also be read as a lack of confidence in the achievability of what they have planned.

Are we going to see more relays between visionary government CIOs and IT executives, and execution-oriented ones? And if so how are either going to be held accountable, as they can always say it was the other person’s fault?