Government 2.0 Taskforce draft report – a centralised response to decentralised action

The Government 2.0 Taskforce draft report released earlier this week more than delivers against their terms of reference. They have exceeded expectations. I’m really pleased! There has been international interest in the draft report. From the U.K. Glyn Moody said that the report is  an inspiring document. Those who have been participating in the deliberations are pleased. Stephen Collins put it this way “The release earlier this week of the draft report of the Government 2.0 Taskforce has the potential to be a watershed moment in the management and delivery of government and its services to the people of Australia”.  Nat Boehm is  really impressed, really excited.

So there is much to get enthusiastic about. But as others have indicated, the hard yards lie ahead. Stephen Collins tempered his expectations by raising concerns- quite rightly in my view – about the ongoing momentum once the final report is handed in on 31 December 2009. I agree with Stephen – it would be a shame to lose the momentum achieved so far. Craig Thomler has been open about the challenges ahead in implementing Gov2.0. Indeed, the Taskforce report is right up front in stating that “the greatest barrier to Government 2.0 is cultural” (page ix).

It’s fair to say that the rapid rise of social media and social networking over the last few years has left many people in organisations with business models, management systems and ways of working that are not only difficult to adapt to the networked society of 2009 – they are just too slow to keep up with the ongoing state of flux and change. Just to be clear, that applies to many in the private sector as well as in government.

But these developments that are so challenging for industrial-age institutions and practices are not are fad, they are not ephemeral. It’s what people want.  Indeed, the changes going on are all about the people. Self-expression, connecting with others and sharing are basic social needs. They are not going to go away. The underpinning technologies of broadband infrastructure, protocols and standards have generated innovative applications and services that internet users around the world have embraced like a duck takes to water.

Process wise, there has been a strong congruence in the work of the Taskforce with the philosophy and the practice of openness, transparency and participation. There has been many opportunities for citizens to contribute to the work of the Taskforce. I have been particularly impressed with the high quality of interaction on the  Taskforce blog. Sure, I’ve said some things could have been done better bur really I’m not fussed about that. There is time still to influence the final report by commenting on the draft. The way the Taskforce has worked has been so different to the way that the machinery of government usually works. That is a signal message in itself.

All well and good. But that brings me to my one remaining area of concern. The Taskforce proposes that a lead agency take responsibility for Government 2.0 policy and provide leadership, guidance and support to agencies and public servants. The agency would consult with relevant agencies through a Government 2.0 Steering Group. In other words, form a committee. Now that is classic public service stuff and would almost ensure that the momentum collapses.

However, developments in the networked society will not wait for guidance from a government committee. I’m enough of a realist to know that a lead agency and steering group are likely actions assuming the Government runs with the recommendations. But those actions need not defer ongoing agency progress in adapting to networked ways of working.  Like the revised APSC guidance on the use of social media, which I see as being permissive and encouraging, I say there is scope for the Taskforce to recommend that agencies start taken action now, or go further than they have so far, in leading the transformation to Government 2.0. Such permissive action is entirely consistent with Web 2.0. People do not need permission to express themselves and to be innovative on the Web. So to with government agencies. Sure, it means taking responsibility for actions that are taken. But then, internet users expect other users to take responsibility for their actions online. So let’s get some more action happening here. Sure, agencies can be guided by centralised processes. But in the end, it will be people in the agencies and their networks online – decentralised networks and ways of working – that will be the change agents over time.

Network Literacy

Howard Rheingold has put up the first video in what will hopefully be a series of talks about networked literacy. Drawing on the insights of some eminent people (David Reed, Lawrence Lessig, Manuel Castells, Duncan Watts, Yochai Benkler as well as himself) Rheingold spoke of what I feel is a very important view: that understanding how networks work – in a social and economic sense as well as technically – can influence how much freedom, wealth & participation might be experienced in the 21st century. I agree with that.

From a technical perspective, understanding the end-to-end principle is important to know why & how the architecture of the internet was designed so that content can flow from one end point to another without centralised permission or control. Understanding the social drivers behind the formation of human networks and their ability to self-organise  – drivers that go back to ancient human history – is necessary to get a feel for why the internet is such a powerful participative tool. It’s why the web has been so transformative. It’s why we now life in a networked society. Understanding the difference between individual freedoms enabled by the internet vs. institutional control is at the heart of appreciating why the 20th century power elites find the web to be so disruptive, why they now battle for control, and why others strive to maintain internet freedoms. Some see the transformative web as a threat, others see it as an opportunity. Those that achieve network literacy are more likely to see, and to grasp, the opportunities and generate new forms of value.

Understanding any of these social, economic and technical spheres individually is a challenge. Understanding them all – especially in relation to one another – is overwhelmingly the greatest challenge. It’s a challenge that exceeds the capabilities of any one discipline, department, value-chain or service/product line. It’s a challenge that Howard Rheingold appears to have grasped, and I commend him for it.

However, there are others at work on this issue beyound those that Howard is currently drawing from. A couple of weeks prior to viewing Howard’s video, I was pleased to see that danah boyd and co at the Digital Youth Project have released Hanging Out, Messing Around, And Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. They write about youth-driven peer-based learning. They say there is “an opportunity to define, in partnership with youth, the shape of online participation and expression and new networked, institutional structures of peer-based learning”.  In other words, the task is to adapt to the web – to new forms of interconnection and expression – by participating in the process. I now see that these insights are an example of network literacy in action; of seeing where the opportunities are to generate new value.

So I feel that networked literacy is a competency necessary to grasp the opportunities lying ahead. Networked literacy is a competency necessary to gain comparative advantage. But most importantly, networked literacy is necessary to know what to promote and what to safeguard against, in order to make the most of the transformative web.

Will the ABC be all spikes and no hub, or will virtual hubs rule?

Last month I blogged about innovation in media, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) move to develop widgets for users to aggregate ABC content on their social network sites. As I’ve said before, this is a smart move by the ABC. In taking this initiative, the ABC appears to have recognised the reality that social networks are the new hub for news and entertainment.

So it is interesting to contrast this strategy with the ABC’s primary vision to become Australia’s “virtual town square” – a hub for user-generated content. In May 2009, Mark Scott, Managing Director of the ABC, described the virtual town square as “a place where Australians can come to speak and be heard, to listen and learn from one another”. By November 2009, planning had advanced to the point where the ABC is to employ digital media trainers around the country to teach Australians how to upload their own content to the ABC’s website.

What strikes me about the virtual town square idea is that conceptually it is not  a new. Local radio chat shows are a long-standing example of user-generated content in media. The town square idea also rests on media institutions continuing to provide the hub or the space for people to use.  I just wonder how congruent the strategy is with social media has it continues to grow in importance in the everyday lives of Australians.

For when it comes to creating and uploading content, people are already doing this for themselves. The emerging social media hub is a personalised place, one that is open to friends, family, coworkers and other associates in the work place and in the community. The social media hub has user-generated photos and videos, status updates and wall posts for expressing views about whatever is of interest.  It’s a place to join groups of interest and for political activism. It’s a place where users aggregate  news feeds, music and videos from third parties, updates from their other social media sites, and feeds from people they connect with. It’s a place that links data from all over the web. In Australia, that could well mean some content from the ABC. It may well mean that data is collated and shared within user-created and run virtual communities. Users doing it for themselves.

Where might social network site aggregation and sharing go? Steve Rubel has suggested that user preferences for personalised social network sites may mean that the next great media company will not have a website, they will be “all spokes and no hub”. I’d say that is a good call.  With the widget initiative, the ABC is positioning to play in the user-defined media hub space. The corporation is doing that as well as playing host to virtual town squares on its own website. It will be interesting to see how these two plays pan out over the next couple of years.

Future of Social Media…and Media

The online media platforms of broadcasters and newspaper publishers have been integrating social media into their channels for some time now. Integration takes on many forms including offering space for comments, providing web widgets to share articles on the likes of Facebook, Twitter or del.icio.us. Recognising that people carry with them devices that can capture and distribute media in real-time, broadcasters and newspapers encourage people to send them information about events. Professional journalists have blogs and Twitter accounts. Indeed the inter-dependency between media and social media has evolved to the point that some say it is impossible to separate the two.

Media Futurist,Gerd Leonhard, describes the outlook for social networks and social media as an online operating system for individuals, for business and for government – for society generally. Whether you are communicating with people, looking for information or looking for other people or points of interest nearby, whether you are on the mobile web doing some purchasing or banking online, or some citizen journalism, whether your location enables information or advertisements about things of relevance to you to be pushed to your mobile device…you get the picture.

Portable identity tools such as Open ID, Facebook’s Facebook Connect and Google’s Friend Connect allow users to share and aggregate news and information from one web site to another. These developments are regarded as forerunners to technologies that enable portable identities creating (according to a Forrester analysis on the social web) shared social experiences – where socially connected people take their digital identities with them and interact with their social networks over the Web. Those shared experiences are more likely to be contextual situations where their reality is augmented and/or mixed through digital online technologies.

For people entering this space – possibly up to a third of the population over the next five years – content will not be king, nor will their voice calls be mainstays for the telecommunications industry. Content will remain important, but its placement will be contextualised and personalised. It will be relevant to and timely for individuals and their social networks. As Gerd Leonhard says, content will be embodied, packaged and curated in ways that offer value to people. That’s the rationale behind Google’s Social Search – this posting by Mahendra Pasule explains why. I like the terms used by Mahendra too, particularly social relevancy. I feel we will see that term becoming a mantra for social media value-adding strategies.

For more information on value generators see media Futurist Gerd Leonhard’s Future of Social Media presentation delivered at PICNIC ‘09 in Amsterdam back in September 2009. I found the 30 minute video to be time well spent.

The direction that social media/media is heading in is not cross-platform. The operating framework is as a social platform, a shared digital media space. The ‘community hub’ will not be a physical location as such, it will be a socially networked space, where content and services are socially relevant in terms of who and what people are connected to, and their context at the time.

Clay Shirky on the future of newspapers and accountability journalism

Professor Clay Shirky spoke recently at Harvard on internet issues facing newspapers. Click here to view the video or read the transcript. It is very interesting and fascinating stuff, covering newspapers’ shrinking ability to produce accountability journalism. The focus is on the U.S. and the public good role that commercial media – in this case advertising supported newspapers – have played in accountability journalism.

I read the transcript to learn about the role that social media is playing in this…and was not disappointed. Social media disrupts the traditional role that media has played in deciding what information is bundled with the ads. Newspaper web sites by and large have mirrored the print copy of newspapers, assuming that readers would go to the web site just as they picked up a newspaper to read. With social media, that assumption no longer holds. Instead of going to the web site, people go directly to the storey, because someone in their network Twittered about it or put it on Facebook or sent a link in an email. So the audience is being assembled not by the newspaper, but by other members of the audience. Now, that’s true for me too. I spend less time on media web sites and on RSS feeds and more time on Twitter & Facebook because of the quality of information I’m getting through my social network.

There is little doubt that social media is a disruptive force in media and in advertising. Companies born digital are taking on more social dynamics into their business model. Take Google for instance, having just released an experiment with search going social.

Professor Shirky’s presentation goes into the public good generated by the social distribution of news online. The public good comes from republication and reuse on a scale that was not feasible from just hard copy print alone.

People can share or forward commercially produced articles online very easily right now, but for how long is unclear.  If newspapers put news and information behind a pay wall, that would block republication and reuse. But then, as Shirky says, the internet enables non-commercial models for news and information production and distribution, including socially produced material. So whatever newspapers do, they will need to rebalance with these alternatives. But the uncertainty is whether the alternative models will be effective substitutes for accountability journalism. Shirky thinks a transitional problem is looming due to the rapid decline of the newspaper industry (particularly in the U.S.); and the uncertainty about the nature and length of time of the intervening period until the (or whether the) social media ecosystem has evolved to fill the gap, particularly in respect of local journalism.

Morgan Stanley Web 2.0 Summit Presentation

After noting good comments on the Web about Morgan Stanley (MS) Internet analyst, Mary Meeker’s Economy & Internet Trends presentation, I had a look at it. It’s worth a flick through. For those not so interested in financial data, can I suggest you start on slide 28. Main points of interest are:

• Mobile Internet usage is and will be bigger than most think (i.e they agree with Cisco’s forecasts).
• Telcos will face serious challenges in managing incremental traffic.
• The mobile applications development ecosystem has disrupted the walled garden carrier portals.
• Improvements in social networking and mobile computing platforms are fundamentally changing the ways people communicate with each other and ways that developers/advertisers/marketers reach consumers.
• Location information changes everything: where we shop, who we talk to, what we read, what we search for, where we go – they all change once we merge location and the Web.

Eric Schonfeld’s posting on TechCrunch is also worth a read. Worth noting in particular is that “She [Meeker] singles out the mobile industry as the one where both the most opportunity will be found and disruptions will occur over the next five years. Moreover, she suggests that the U.S. is poised to lead the transition in mobile to a Web-centric model. (I totally agree). Interestingly, she points to the introduction of the first Android phone by T-Mobile, not the launch of the iPhone, as the key inflection point for the coming era of the mobile web.”

While I agree that the mobile ecosystem in the U.S is moving to a Web-central model, I am not sure that the U.S. can claim leadership in that transition. For example, Japan is about eight years ahead of the rest of the world in mobile commerce (slide 48).  Australia is also a witnessing a similar transition to a mobile Web era, particularly in the way people communicate with each other.

Innovation in media

Business model innovation

Ever heard of Sonos? Based in the USA, Sonos & their partners provide the means to stream or download music from around the world, as well as hooking up to your own music stored on your computer. Using peer-to-peer mesh wireless networks, you can have music distributed to multiple rooms in your house. Currently available in North America and Europe, if you have Sonos you can access over 25,000 Internet radio stations, make up your own personalised radio station through an online service (eg. Last.fm) create your own playlists and access millions of songs online through online music service provider Rhapsody. Radio broadcasters with online channels can be accessed too – the platform provides another global channel for international players such as the BBC. Users can search by title, artist or genre. An obvious attraction is in not having to buy a CD again while having access to so much more choice.

Sonos seems to be a good example of a 21st century Internet business model. Sonos has an internationalised, horizontal business model providing technology coupled with content aggregation through partnerships and distributed over the top of broadband Internet infrastructure. Rhapsody too is a horizontal business player with web services open to third party developers. The consumer gets unbelievable choice. It’s legit. Professionals get paid – in fact given the potentially large customer base, profits from Sonos plays could be very lucrative. I understand that each time a subscriber listens to a song, the copyright holder gets US 1 cent. My understanding is that Sonos (and Rhapsody) revenue is from an ad-free subscription service. At about $12 US per month the cost seems reasonable.

Now, music online has been disruptive factor in the music industry for many years, but innovative plays keep coming. I feel that video and newspaper online business models could follow with Sonos-like business models too. As an avid consumer of news and information online, I would be happy to pay a subscription to an online aggregator so that I can access news and information from any device and from anywhere I am.

Innovative strategy

Mark Scott, Managing Director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), has a posting called Media after Empire on Unleashed. It’s a very good read. But what I am particularly excited about is news that the ABC is creating widgets so that people can take ABC content and share it through their own social networks. Nice. As I’ve said before, social networks are a hub for news, information and communication for many people and I see no reason why that can’t go further to provide tailored entertainment to suit the preferences of individuals and their network of friends online.

There’s a lot about the ABC’s strategic thinking and emerging transformational strategies in Mr Scott’s posting. The ABC is striving to remain of relevance. Apparently the ABC is contemplating what life would be like for them in a world where viewers have 5,000 TV channels to choose from. Although Mr Scott says he does not have a pathway through to “…a more vibrant future for old media organisations”…and he knows of no one that does…he quite rightly observed that “the paths to the future are made not found [and there are] no solutions to be found in legacy thinking”.

Mr Scott comes across as a quite cynical of the News Corp strategy to figure out ways to make hay through charging for content…while staying in control. The strategy has parallels with the fall of Rome… or at least that is Mark Scott’s view.

Here is what firstdogonmoon though of it -

The return of social capital, part 1

Henry Jenkin’s blog of his interview with S. Craig Watkins resonated with my own passion about the role that social media is playing in restoring social capital in everyday lives. I will post a few blogs on this and related topics over the next few weeks. In future postings I’ll also be expressing my views on the role sociology has in gaining a better understanding and clarity about all of this.

The main thrust of this posting is to contrast the destructive role that TV has played in regard to social capital, with the role that social media is playing in generating social capital.

To begin with allow me to clarity what I mean when using the term ’social capital’. I’m sure there are any number of interpretations but for me what get’s my juices flowing is the quality and ease of connections that bind people and communities together. I’m referring to the ability of people to connect with others, to share things and to express themselves. The social glue that’s forged is based on mutual trust and reciprocity.

While the 20th century was an age of transformative technological and economic change and a  rise in corporate institutional power over people in developed and developing countries, it was also a time of a great winding back of the social ties that bind friends and families together. Now, there are a whole bunch of factors behind that such as suburbanisation and geo-physical division between home and work, household and family and play and civic activities; both parents in the workforce; the diaspora associated with globalisation and the relative ease and low cost of travel… and the role of the media. With the separation of home from work and shopping and so on, there have been far fewer opportunities for neighborliness, the forging of mutual trust and reciprocity that comes from regular social interaction. Social dislocation lies behind some of the feelings of distrust and loose relationships between employees and employers and in the political process and the everyday lives of people. There other factors too but that’s enough to paint the picture.

The role that media has played in the weakening of social capital has been through reducing people to passive, socially isolated consumers of content. Watkins spoke of sociologist Robert Putnam’s findings about TV watching, in particular that it “comes at the expense of nearly every social activity outside the home, resulting in the erosion of social capital”. That is not always the case of course. Major sporting events televised live are often shared with groups of people. But the isolating nature of TV that I refer to makes up the bulk of viewing time.

And so to the clarity that Watkins brings to understanding what attracts so many people to computer and mobile screens in the 21st century. A common perception among digital immigrants is that time spent with small digital screens is unsocial. Watkins found that time on digital screens is “first and foremost a social activity”.  Instead of “screen time” being a social dislocation, computing screen time is, increasingly, time to connect with others, share things and to express yourself. Time spent connecting via a mobile or social network site is time spent in expression and sharing. Time spent on mobiles and online is time spend creating, shaping and influencing content.

Watkins suggest that “…if network TV is to have a meaningful future it will have to permit its audience to not only access content across multiple platforms but also encourage audiences to shape and influence content, too”. The operative action here is being permissive.  That means letting go of control and going with the flow. Letting go of control brings new challenges to maintain the relationship…like forging mutual trust and reciprocity. TV must go social to survive. I suspect there are similar challenges for other 20th century institutions.

Trapped girls call for help on Facebook

Interesting news item from yesterday – two girls from Adelaide who were trapped in a drain called for help by updating their status on Facebook using a mobile phone. Some say this one comes in the category “you could not make this up”‘. Others – like Don Tapscott – would probable say this comes under “digital natives think differently”.

Now, as I understand, the two girls (aged 10 & 12) opted to seek out help from their social network instead of going straight to the authorities (eg. phoning ‘000′) because they wanted to avoid getting into trouble with their parents. Still, there are some important messages here, this one from Laurel Papworth:

“Incredibly important today is understanding how social networking protects our children. There is stuff they can’t tell a parent or a teacher or the police but they can’t bottle up any more. So they tell their friends, they tell people they play online games with, they write anonymously on websites full of emo-angst and they tell forum moderators and game GMs, who understand and ‘get them’. Expect to see lots more “we should’ve seen it coming” from adults waking up to teens pushing out warnings on online communities. It keeps them safe in the absence of an understanding adult”.

From my perspective – and drawing on Don Tapscott’s knowledge of these things – the girls had trust in their social network, more trust than in dealing with authority figures. Seems to me like another indicator of the central role that social network services play in the lives of digital natives.

Looking at this from anther perspective, Facebook, MySpace and Bebo all have age restrictions that limit access to those aged 13 or 14 and above. Such policies no doubt reflect the concerns that many have about social network site risks. Thing is, the reality is different. According to a UK study reported in August 2008, age restrictions do not stop many children from participating. A spokesperson for the UK research outfit said that “Children are at the vanguard of the social networking phenomenon, using sites such as Facebook and Bebo in the same way other generations used the telephone”.  True for Australia too. The ACMA’s Click and connect: Young Australians’ use of online social media 02:Quantitative research report found that:

• the internet is a regular part of everyday lives of children and young people aged eight to 17 years
• both frequency and length of use increase with age
• young people of high school age (12 to 17) years used the internet on average 6.3 days per week for an average of 2.9 hours per day
• the use of social networking services increases dramatically between the ages of eight to 17.

Plenty of room for thought here, not only about what digital natives do now that is so different, but what implications lie ahead for institutions and social interaction.

Future of Influence and more on Government 2.0

You may recall that I’ve posted a number of times on rise of ‘new influencers’ in social media. So the seminar on The Future of Influence held last Tuesday was not to be missed. Held in San Francisco and Sydney simultaneously (linked via Skype Video) there was a lively bunch of speakers, panellists and audience interaction. I’m putting up my notes from the summit in this posting along with some info about social media and influence that came my way subsequently. I’ve also drawn on the Twitter hashtag #foi09 used for the seminar as another reference in putting this posting together.

The event used to called The Future of Media, with the name change reflecting where marketing and content business interest now lies…or perhaps should lie. Interestingly, the name change resulted in a down-shift in participation in Sydney and an uplift in San Francisco, an outcome that Ross Dawson put down to “things needing to be successful overseas before they are accepted in Australia”.   Interesting indeed. That sentiment is consistent with what Duncan Riley (editor of Inquistor) has said about Australia being about five years behind the USA in the use of social media.

Anyway, here are some messages that came out of the seminar:

• another reminder of the importance of digital media literacy: find good info online (good as in credible, accurate and believable) by looking into what others say about the author or the posting, how many people have bookmarked the item, how many people liked the posting; and for building personal learning networks online
• the community is becoming more influenced by itself than by “leaders” or top-down, push media
• moving away from push media and replacing audience measurement with measuring influence, advertisers are particularly interested in the ability to inspire action.  Advertisers need to define what behaviour they want to influence and measure that, and be actively engaged in what the community is saying in social media
• Government interest in social media is in what can be done to move their policies and ideas. Politics is providing a learning ground for the effectiveness of social media influence that will in turn influence what business does in social media([and I would add in government agencies)
• effective engagement in social media is about understanding the target community context and the people in the community, and that requires skills and abilities in sociology and psychology
• broadcasters are becoming more reliant on receiving content from social media (eg. Twitter & YouTube) and re-distributing it relative to generating and distributing their own content
• charging for online content is likely to shift more attention to social media, public media and sponsored media
• developments in the semantic web and social media content aggregation will drive moe personalisation of media (that combine/integrate professional and social content)
• tools to search with on social media include: Google Alert, Google Trends, Google Blogs, Facebook Lexicon, Tweetfeel, TwitterCounter, theDailyInfluence, SocialMention, Wotnews and Technorati.
• techniques to gauge how influential people are include the size of their social graph, follower/friends counts and activity levels and blog post comments.

Being a social media summit there has been a lot put out about the event already. Examples are from Ross Dawson, Mick Liubinskas and Xavier Vespa.

In some developments over the course of today, TechCrunch posted about identifying the most influential and connected Twitter users. The article has some more data on the amazing speed in Twitter take-up over the last few months. The Web Ecology Project published a report  called Analysing Influence on Twitter where influence on Twitter is defined as “the potential of an action of a user to initiate a further action by another user”.  Actions include retweets, replies, mentions and attributions. On the basis of new methodology applied by The Web Ecology Project, mashable is more influential than CNN, but news outlets (regardless of follower count) influence large amounts of followers to republish their content to other users.

Finally, I met a number of interesting people at the summit, including Tim Martin. Tim is the director of 2 Sticks Digital Marketing, a Melbourne-based consultancy providing advise on online community building and engagement and other things. Have a look around Two Sticks web site to get a feel for digital marketing in practice.

Government 2.0

There was a publicsphere event held in Sydney today, see #nswsphere on Twitter. I viewed Premier Rees presentation over the live video stream hosted by the NSW Parliament. Premier Rees announced a new information sharing policy initiative as part of the NSW Government’s commitment to fostering an ‘Open Government’. One particularly interesting observation from the Premier was that one of the main challenges in achieving greater openness in government is to overcome the culture of secrecy and control in government agencies. Again, interesting indeed.