5 Tips For Public Servants Using Social Media

Here are five quick tips on how to manage your social graph as a public servant:

1. Pro-actively disclose

Generally speaking it is good practice to tell your employer (or prospective employer) of any activity that is at the periphery of but related to your official activities. For public servants I think that runs the gamut from blogging about related issues on sites like this one, to sharing links with colleagues on Twitter, or participating in discussion groups on Govloop or LinkedIn.

I am of the opinion that proactive disclosure of online activities is less important when those activities are far removed from your professional life. I doubt the powers that oversee the machinery of government care if in addition to your day job you happen to run a local food, exercise, lolcat blog.

Finally, don't go running to the very top of the organization to disclose your activities, simply disclose them to the closest logical individual up the food chain from yourself.

2. Be careful what you link to

This is where I see the most confusion. I've seen a number of people on Twitter link to their department or agency right under a bio that reads "all views my own".

My advice is to not link to any official government website on any of your social media unless you are acting as an official spokesperson for the organization.

Also, and this one is overlooked often, don't provide a link to your social media (e.g. your Twitter) in your official organizational email footer. The implication is that your use of the service is as official as the position you occupy, your phone number and mailing address, when in fact you cannot conduct official business in that channel (especially with external stakeholders).

The same goes for your avatar, don't use anything with government logos in it (like a photo of your ID badge) it conflates you with the department or agency for whom you work.

3. Have a disclaimer, but don't hide behind it

There was a number of blog posts and Twitter chatter in the last few weeks about the subject of disclaimers. Here's my take: a disclaimer doesn't absolve you from being an idiot. Much like you can't claim ignorance if you break the law an online disclaimer isn't a shield. It doesn't protect you or your employer, it only creates a small modicum of distance between the two by telling people that you are not authorized to act as an official spokesperson for your organization.

4. Excuse yourself from conversations that you feel uncomfortable about

During the last election one of the federal political parties responded to one of my tweets about open data. The conversation quickly turned partisan. My reaction was to simply tweet that given my role and responsibilities as a professional and non-partisan public servant I was unwilling to engage any further; an explanation that was readily accepted by the party in question.

If you are pressed even after you excuse yourself, just stay silent, let anyone watching it play out draw their own conclusions. I

5. Don't bitch about work

Venting may feel good now, and a status update is so easy that its often we get caught up in the moment, but there aren't any private places online where you can complain about your employer.

Good rule of thumb: don't say anything online that you don't have the wherewithal to say in person because you will be held accountable by someone somewhere down the line.

Like mom said, it's always better to be safe than sorry.

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect
[image credit fisserman]

Like Monetizing the Margins: On Creating Public Value around the Public Service

Last week I sat down with Alex, an Epidemiologist (and fellow public servant), and we worked through a redesign of the information systems he and his team use to track infectious diseases that may be threatening Canada. Although to be honest, that was never the intention. We originally met to discuss how (if) tablet computers could help field researchers gather data more efficiently. To get a sense of what Alex is working on, here is youtube video he sent me:

The road we traveled down may have started there, but it quickly got a whole lot bigger. I wanted to, with Alex's permission, share some of the key insights from our discussion.

[Note: after publishing, Alex sent me a note indicating that the work shown in that video was done by Dr. Kamran Khan via the Bio.Diaspora project.]


Can tablets help gather data in the field?

The short and obvious answer is yes; the long and complicated answer is that any mobile device can, but in order to for that to be useful, the rest of the chain needs to support the input from the device. In order to understand what we were talking about I started sketching on my iPad as we spoke. In the end the sketch became incredibly complex so I cleaned them up and broke them out into two sketches (click to enlarge):

After determining whether or not it was viable, our conversation shifted toward more traditionally bureaucratic concerns, namely cost.

How much would this thing cost the government?

We agreed that given the current climate public servants would be put under incredible pressure to be better managers of scarce resources, but we also both agreed that this was not a negative force but rather a force that creates an environment incredibly conducive to creativity and innovation if you know how to create a compelling narrative (read: articulate an argument, back it up with the facts, infuse it with passion, and deliver it with non-partisan conviction).

Where we run into difficulty is when we start to formulate that narrative strictly around cost savings. If there is one thing that I've learned from watching the Open Yale Courses on Game Theory it is that thinking strategically means doing a lot more than a simple uni-stage cost-benefit analysis. Here's a clip from lecture #19 (Subgame perfect equilibrium: matchmaking and strategic investments):

My key takeaway: being more strategic means looking more closely at how behaviour changes.


So how is behaviour changing?

I want to pull in what I've observed from the evolution of successful companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook. More specifically, I want to look at how they generate revenue. For example, Twitter has promoted tweets, Google has ads next to search, and Facebook leverages a users personal data to target advertising with ridiculous precision. These companies have embraced an ethos of delivering strong core services while generating revenue around the periphery; in essence they've monetized the margins.


So what does this have to do with public service?

While bureaucracies may not be revenue-generating in the strictest sense, we do generate public value. It stands to reason that we could adopt a similar approach to value-generation as successful businesses are currently using to approach revenue generation. For government, and here is the crux of my argument, we need to look at the margins of our core public services and find new and creative ways to create public value. To an extent, some of us may already do this but I have a feeling it isn't part of how we generally understand or approach public service.


So what does it look like?

In the models shown above, I'm tempted to say that we could create significant public value by simply opening the data set to the public. But realistically, the lack of public engagement to date around open data generally leads me to believe that publishing data without support activities around it is insufficient.

A more conducive approach to creating public value around core public services is to look at the specific niche opportunities for value-creation. In this case, what assets does the service make use of, who would be interested in those assets, and how do we partner with them in order to maximize the co-creation of public value. In other words, how do we do more with less (an undoubtedly popular adage for our times)?

So what are the assets in Alex's area of expertise? Well data is clearly one asset, but there is also the breadth of expertise along the supply chain of the institution’s work.

Who would be most interested in those assets? Academic institutions with a strong focus on public health are an obvious one, but so are public administration and management programs.

How do we partner with them in order to maximize the co-creation of public value? Offer a series of three pre-packaged partnership agreements (so as to avoid one-off negotiations) similar to online services (e.g. tiered systems of "free", "premium" and "pro"). Here is quick back-of-the-napkin example of the type of thinking I'm talking about:

Free

• 5 internships in data analysis (y hours)

Premium (contribution of x dollars)

• 5 internships in data analysis (2y hours)
• 5 in public administration/policy (2y hours)
• Access to public health data for given number of students/classes

Pro (contribution of 2x dollars)

• 5 internships in data analysis (3y hours)
• 5 in public administration/policy (3y hours)
• Full access to public health data for academic institution
• Guided tour of facilities / ride-alongs with field researchers
• Guest lectures by field experts/researchers
• Exclusive partnership with local health authorities to study any government action in real time

Everything listed above, regardless of tier, creates some sort of public value while decreasing the overall cost of providing the core service (through either financial or in kind contributions). It is by no means exhaustive; if anything it is but a small tip of the iceberg. From where I sit, emerging public sector leaders facing demographic challenges and budgetary constraints are going to need to get more creative, and to my mind, there is no better way to do that than to look at opportunities to create public value at the margins of our work and seize them.

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.casubscribe/connect

How old government data could give rise to new service delivery models

I recently spent some time researching the proactive disclosure of federal grants and contributions in Canada; here are some of my key findings about how the data is presented:

• Each department publishes their own G&C data (i.e. there is no single repository)
• The actual path to the endpoint data varies considerably across the landscape
• Despite it being varied, the path generally follows the form of: Proactive Disclosure Overview -} List of Quarters-} List of all G&Cs Issued -} Detailed G&C data
• End point data is presented uniformly in an HTML table across the entire domain
• Variables include: Recipient Name, Location (City, Province), Date (YYYY-MM-DD), Value ($123,456.78), Purpose (free text), and Comments (free text, often blank)
• In addition to the data in the table, the quarter and issuing department can be collected from the webpage itself
• All data exists in both official languages
• All of the data is already in the public domain

From Data to a Dataset

While disclosure is clearly important, it may no longer be sufficient. There is a clear appetite within the zeitgeist for not only data points that can be observed, but data sets that can be worked with. What I think I've stumbled upon is a core challenge that those at the forefront of open data have no doubt already encountered, namely: how do we assemble public information that is already available into something that is more useful. In other words, how do we meet the demands of today's civil society?

To be honest I didn't have the answer (or the expertise), so I started to consult broadly with the developer community, looking for a technological solution. I showed them a map of the data and articulated the goal of a single unified dataset. What I found was that the geographic dispersion of the data coupled with its sheer volume makes unification a challenge. Furthermore, while they all agree that unification is possible, they all also agree that that there is a human intelligence component in the collection, that a good AI would reduce but not eliminate that component, and that even small changes to or inconsistencies across the landscape could mean hours of recalibrating the program that assembles the data.

After numerous conversations with experts in the field, I've come to the conclusion that it may in fact be far easier (and more cost effective) to amend the way the government publishes the data to the web than it would be to try to assemble it from how it currently publishes it to the web. What I am less certain of, is the best way for the organization to go about doing that. My gut reaction is that we could reduce the work burden significantly by moving away from publishing a separate webpage for every grant or contribution awarded (current model) and publish a single comma-separated value (CSV) file from which that information could not only be gleaned, but mashed up and republished. My assumption is that publishing a singular feed at the department level wouldn't entail too much additional work given that the data must be consolidated for quarterly publication. In other words, someone inside the organization already has all the data flow to or through them before it hits the web.

After data consolidation at the departmental level, departments could simply syndicate their data set to the newly minted data.gc.ca data portal where they could be assembled into a single government-wide data set, which, in my opinion, is where things get much more interesting.

Is opening the data sufficient?

When governments provide data to citizens, does it also have a responsibility to ensure data literacy and provide tools through which shared data can be used by the citizenry? I've spoken to people on both sides of the fence and the question is not easily answered. Naysayers are quick to cite the costs of providing tools and managing ongoing support as justification of their position. Whereas proponents are quick to steer the conversation to vulnerable stakeholder populations whom aren't likely to have the expertise required to do anything with the data provided.

In its most basic form, government agencies have long relied on private business (e.g. search engines like Google) to ensure that people can find their data. However in a world where government data is not just read, but mashed up, analyzed and republished, search could be seen as falling short. More broadly we find that departments like Statistics Canada have long offered data online manipulation via their CANSIM tables, which allow interested parties to create a modicum of specificity from large datasets at a cost. (Conversely? Similarly?) Other departments, such as Human Resources and Skills Development Canada offers free data-centric services like the Working in Canada Tool.

Two very different mandates, approaches and uses of public data; yet both are reliant on the ever-expanding space between government data and citizens.

My position (in case you are wondering) is to completely bypass the two arguments above by highlighting the importance of understanding how government data is being used. Simply publishing raw data in a CSV file and making it available for download off a departmental website means that there is absolutely no sure way to tell how it was used, modified or redistributed; there is also no way to ensure that any applications built on the data are using the most recent versions of that data. This makes engagement around the data difficult, hinders the government’s ability to improve future data offerings, and could lead to unintentional public misinformation via third party developers. If government agencies want to engage citizenry around data offerings, and mitigate misinformation risks they need to make it easy to link, embed, email, share and socialize their data into devices, machines, programs and websites because this is where the truly transformational opportunities will be.

Case in point, a new model for Grants and Contributions

I want to walk you through a hypothetical, albeit entirely possible, alternative service delivery model using the Grants and Contributions example.

Imagine for a minute that I am (as a private citizen) interested in community development in a northern community and am seeking government assistance. I hop on the department's website, dive into their G&C data offering and start to poke around. Imagine that the interface allows me to plug in some demographic details about the community within which I live as well as to input some details about the project I want to undertake (e.g. community infrastructure). Now imagine that the system returns all of the community infrastructure grants awarded by the government to communities that share similar demography to that of my own community. That data set is suddenly incredibly useful. It provides me with the names of applicants, their geographical locations, and project overviews. Armed with this information I could reach out to them, learn from them, and build a better application.

Now, imagine that I am the public servant on the receiving end of that application. I'm more likely to be reviewing an application that has some rigour behind it. Furthermore if it includes evidence garnered from the data set, I can easily verify the validity of the supporting documentation by diving into the dataset myself or using it to locate the richer case files that are produced internally through the process.

In the end this could save citizens time and money, it would bolster evidence-based decision making by the government agency, and could form deeper connections between grant recipients by making it easier for them to connect to one another to share information about the process.

Why this is so important

To date the open data landscape has been largely defined by app competitions and hackathons, and while these things are good for the ecosystem, they can't sustain it alone. This is precisely why I think we need to start thinking more aggressively about how old government data could give rise to new service delivery models.

Originally published by Nick Charney at cpsrenewal.ca

On Fearless Advice and Loyal Implementation

I traveled across British Columbia last month, visiting a series of three Employment Insurance (EI) processing plants, to deliver talks about engagement and career development. I met a lot of dedicated public servants, made new friends, and learned more about front-line service delivery than many Ottawa-based policy wonks do this early in their career.

I've been thinking a lot about the sessions and the conversations that emerged at the three different sites and here is where my mind has settled ...

Regardless of what you were hired to do - be it providing traditional policy advice in the National Capital Region, or "crushing" EI claims for Canadians in a processing plant in Kamloops - your role as a public servant is to deliver "fearless advice and loyal implementation". What I've found is that there is a divide, real or imagined, between those of us in Ottawa who were hired to deliver "fearless advice" and those of us in the regions who are expected to "loyally implement". This isn't ubiquitous, but was my general impression. It is an impression that was hammered home when someone asked me why Ottawa couldn't just fix the culture in the regional office, as if some sort of Deputy decree could change their specific working conditions. What struck me most about the comment wasn't the idea that culture could somehow be made by decree, but rather the underlying sense of helplessness, as if culture couldn't be affected by those who are actually mired in it.

I think the problem is that we have collectively misinterpreted the significance and underestimated the opportunities we have to effect our work culture and sub-cultures, regardless of where we work or what we work on. We mistakenly think of fearless advice as something that only the people at the very top of the organization do; something that is reserved for private meetings between Deputies and their Ministers. In fact, I think that speaking truth to power (fearless advice and loyal implementation) more often means pushing against the small "p" office politics and the small "c" culture of the bureaucracy. In other words, fearless advice isn't reserved for ministerial briefings, but rather happens in the hallways, over cubicle walls, and in the lunch rooms among peers.

Think of it in terms of the long tail:




Let me end by saying this: regardless of where you work, or what your role is, your responsibility is to articulate an argument, back it up with the facts, infuse it with passion, and deliver it with non-partisan conviction, wherever you see the opportunity to do so.

Gov 2.0: Policy, Public Servants and Citizens in the Age of Social Media on Feb 10

Join us for a fantastic learning and networking opportunity with current and future public servants on the theme of Government 2.0.!

This event was created because we wanted to facilitate linkages between w2p and graduate students of public administration. Many of them will be joining our ranks in the coming years, so this is a great opportunity to introduce a new generation to the idea of Gov 2.0.

It's also a great opportunity for us to get fresh perspectives on the Gov. 2.0. issues we grapple with daily!


Come share, learn and mingle over beers with other public servants on the cusp of the Gov 2.0. revolution, public admin students gearing up for a career in the digital age, and non-governmental experts in facilitating online and offline dialogue between citizens and policy-makers.

Speakers include myself, Ryan Androsoff and Hannah McKinnon (location/logistical details can be found on the RSVP links below)

You can RSVP via Twitter or via Facebook.

Think IDEO, but for government

This entry may be last before the new year, and to be honest, has been a long time coming. You see, I've got this thought in my head and it seems to have taken up residence. I'm not sure how much you know about me, or how much you care to know, but I've spent the last four years in the public sector. I could bore you with all of the details but let's just say that I've experienced both the best and the worst this sector has to offer.

My initial experience was so abhorrent that I've made it my mission to try to make it better for others; I look to my father for inspiration and to my children for lessons in collaboration. I like to think that I have helped inspire public servants to be courageous, to rethink old mental models, and to alert them to the art of the possible.

I've met many great people, inspiring thinkers and doers, and for that I am incredibly fortunate. Many think I am living the dream, that I am one of the few who have come as close as you possibly can to an entrepreneur in the public sector.

There was a time when I agreed with them, but that time has passed.


We are ready for so much more

I was on the bus on my way to work yesterday and overheard three public servants speaking. One of them was talking about her son who was working as a student two days a week for a federal agency. He was doing so well that they wanted to bridge him in full time, only he didn't want that. In fact, "It is the last thing he wants, he is looking for something where he can be entrepreneurial."

It's not surprising, despite the best efforts of some of our best and brightest, even the most well-intentioned attempt at public sector innovation is suffocated by the traditionally bureaucratic: committees, policies, and briefing notes.

Perhaps it’s time for a complete redesign.


Or at least I am

I want to spend the next leg of my professional career working on all facets of public sector redesign. I've said before that:

Never before has technology allowed us to paint such a clear picture of what is informing decision-making, policy, and program delivery. Embracing a more open ethos and grabbing hold of enabling technology will do more for our public services than we could possibly imagine. It starts with a simple switch: connecting what we used to write in the margins of our paper based notebooks on the web.

In short, I want to focus on designing and implementing open systems for the public sector in virtual, intellectual and physical space. I want to help ensure that the most innovative ideas, practices and people are no longer lost, ignored or marginalized.

I have ideas on how this can be done both within existing public sector organizations, and as a private firm. I'm open to discussing this with anyone who gets me even one inch closer to being able to pull this together.

Think IDEO, but for government.

This column was originally published to cpsrenewal.ca by Nick Charney.

Equip Leaders to Lead

Below you will find a 5 slide deck that I have embedded if you want to scroll through it for context, I have also broken each slide out as an image below with a few comments. The underlying point that I am trying to make is that senior leaders in the public sector deal with an incredibly complex and nuanced information and influence system that operates around them and that, in order to make the best possible decisions, they need to be properly equipped with business intelligence aggregation devices.

Public Sector Orgs

View more presentations from Nicholas Charney.

Step by Step
Essentially the bureaucratic hierarchy is quite simple: it's a pyramid where outputs flow up for decisions, and direction flows down.
The external environment is far more organic. Stakeholders don't always interface with the government effectively because they aren't necessarily designed to do so.
However, strict bureaucratic hierarchy is somewhat of a myth when we consider it in relation to external stimuli. Public servants at all levels within the organization consume (interact) with the outside world is some way, shape, or form. Thus the external environment influences both the production cycle and the direction of the public sector organization in ways I think we truly do not yet understand; ways that are far more profound then the media scrums of our political masters and the infamous Globe and Mail test.
What I find fascinating is that all of the public sector organizations operate in much the same context, yet largely remain in their own silos.
But, given an increasingly complex policy environment and cost-cutting, you think we would be actively investing in ways to improve co-production, co-consumption, and co-direction. After three and a half years in government, I can say with authority that true interdepartmental coordination is always the most difficult thing to achieve. We have difficulty identifying the leads, who should be at what tables, what work has or is being duplicated, etc. I had prepared a full two-page introduction to this premise but have scrapped all of it in favour of one simple sentence:

In order to lead effectively in the environment outlined above, senior leaders need a tool that delivers them real time business intelligence to inform decision-making.


Business Intelligence Aggregation Device

Senior leaders, meet what could easily be your new best friend, flipboard.



The concept behind Flipboard, the personal magazine, is incredibly powerful for any organization looking to make better use of its business intelligence.

That being said, I think this application has the potential to be transformative in the public sector. Information moves so slowly through the bureaucracy that it undermines even the most valiant efforts at being proactive. Forget about Flipboard connecting you to content you care about, think about its potential to connect senior leaders to the business intelligence they need in order to lead effectively.


A Huge Opportunity for Innovation

I don't see a reason why we shouldn't investigate how to implement this type of solution behind an organizational firewall. Simply replace Flipboard's Twitter and Facebook aggregations and “Retweet” and “Like” buttons with business intelligence and actionable items.

1. Production: a synopsis of what’s being written by employees (briefing notes, policy papers, correspondence, communication plans, etc), sortable by level or business line.
2. Direction: request in-person briefings with subject matter experts, send delegates to meetings, approve documents for publication, etc.
3. Consumption: get a feel for what external sources are influencing decision-making and knowledge asset production within the organization
4. Co-Production / Consumption / Direction: Share and act across organization boundaries when it makes sense.
   

This type of approach provides a far greater depth and breadth of information than the status quo of briefing binders, red dockets for signing and often out of date telephone directories stapled to cubicle walls.

If we truly want our leaders to lead, we need to equip them to do so. Whenever I look at new pieces of technology and assess their potential value to organizations I find myself reflecting on a statement made by Clay Shirky:

"These tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring. It isn't when the shiny new tools show up that their uses start permeating society. It's when everybody is able to take them for granted. Because now that media is increasingly social, innovation can happen anywhere that people can take for granted the idea that we're all in this together."

That is why I am really interested in this particular idea.

Introducing the equivalent to the "Enterprise Flipboard" into existing organizational structures doesn't erode hierarchies or undermine authority structures. It simply makes better use of existing (but currently opaque) business processes and the social systems that surround them. Back to Shirky's point, "Enterprise Flipboard" really isn't all that interesting technologically; being able to leverage tools like this for data aggregation and decision-making should be the norm; and so should the idea that everyone in the organization is in this together.

If you are interested in discussing developing the equivalent to an "Enterprise Flipboard", let me know, I'm interested in discussing it more.

Gov 2.0 Expo Highlights

I was fortunate enough to end up at the Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington DC. First of all, if you are ever in DC stay at the DC Guest House. Big thanks to Laurel Ruma at O'Reilly for turning me on to the place.

Second, the Expo was on the whole, pretty awesome. There were some slick show and tells, a lot of energy, and thought provoking discussions. I also (finally!) got to meet the great people behind Govloop: Steve Resler, Andrew Krzmarzick, Megan Price and of course Attia "the intern" Nasar; not to mention a whole slew of others.


Slick Show and Tells

By far my two most informative show and tell sessions were:

• Open Government Ninja 101: Skills, Strategies, and Stealth
• A Human Driven Data-centric Approach to Accountability: Analyzing Data to Prevent Fraud, Waste and Abuse in Stimulus Spending

(follow the links above for more info)


Energetic Gov 2.0

By far the most energetic session at the Expo was Kathy Sierra's "Creating Passionate Users".



I also really enjoyed Fred Dust's Building a Culture of Experimentation. It was an elegant discussion that focused in on the need to start with people - something that is often lost along the way. (Sorry no video, it was a break out session)


Thought Provocation

Jay Parkinson's "Healthcare Needs a Redesign" was absolutely amazing, it made me want to do the exact same thing for citizen services.

Anil Dash's "Innovation and Participation: Embracing the Civic Web was great too. The main premise is that your social network is your own personal think tank. Worth a watch.

Finally, Jeff Jonas' "Spear Phishing the Masses: When Open Data is Dark" was probably my favorite talk at the entire expo just because of the informative content. Warning, don't show this talk to your CIO.

Column: Google: Friend or Foe of #Gov20?

[Warning, long post ahead ...]

Like any writer, I try to explain the general context around which I am writing and conclude with an argument based on that explanation. This article started getting away from me in terms of its length so I decided to flip the model on its head. In the interests of keeping your attention I am going to come out and state my argument at the beginning and then explain just how I got there.


Stating it bluntly ...

If Google were truly a friend of #gov20 it would be pursuing innovative ways to ensure that citizens can quickly access the most relevant government information when they search for it. Maybe they already are, but if they are, I don't see it.

I have sat through a couple of Google pitches in the last few months during which Google sales reps have tried to convince government agencies that purchasing Google Adwords is the best way to ensure that departments and agencies are found when people are making related search queries on Google.

My contention is that buying Google Adwords is neither innovative nor the right approach. Given that you can already segment Google search (by country, images, video, maps, news, books, blogs, etc.) how hard would it be to add an option for government services?

Google already tracks your IP address, there is no reason that it couldn't easily provide options based on your geographical location. In addition to all of the existing options for search segmentation, Google should provide me with the following ones:

• Federal government services;
• Provincial government services (or in my case Ontario Government Services);
• Municipal government services (or in my case City of Ottawa Services); and
• All government services.

Here is a quick mock up of what this could look like:



And if that is too much to ask, embed it in a sub menu system like the other segmentation options. When writing this, Mike, like any good editor, asked me a couple of tough questions. His underlying point: Google doesn’t have any obligation to provide this type of service. It is a private profit-making company. Findability of government services on the web should be primarily the responsibility of the government.

I don’t disagree. The question is how do you motivate a company like Google to do something like this? Simple, you show them the benefit. The more obvious one is that it keeps Google in front in terms of its search application. If you knew it could locate government services better than other search applications, where would you turn when you need that information? The less obvious one is that if Google adopted this model it could sell Google Adwords on the results pages of the government services search. This could create entirely new revenue streams because it would be the closest any corporation could get to physically advertising on government websites.


How I got there ...

Ok, now that you have the kernel of the argument I am making, I can provide some context. Over the past 6 months or so I have sat in on two meetings between public servants and Google representatives. Firstly, please don't take my commentary below to be an official position of a public servant working for a given department because it isn't. Truth be told, I wield neither the decision-making authority nor the budget required to engage or disengage in professional arrangements with Google. My position is strictly informed by my digital citizenry and what I know of the web and government services in a general sense.

Second, please don't take this column as Google hating. I don't hate Google; I just think they aren't living up to my expectations of what a good corporate citizen looks like in one very specific way. Perhaps my expectations have been ill-formed based on all the good things I've heard about the company, the good things I've written about the company, the books I've read about the company and how Google has completely penetrated my online experience.

Off the top of my head, Google is my default homepage on all six of my points of contact with the web (2 desktops, 2 laptops, 2 mobile devices), it’s the only search application I use, it’s my email client, my chat client, my calendar client and home to all 4 of my blogs (now defunct, current professional, current personal and a work in progress). I use Google alerts, Google Reader, Feedburner and Google Analytics (no I don't rock Chrome, I still use Firefox). If for some reason Google went the way of the dinosaur my online experience would fundamentally change. In short, I rely on Google. Furthermore, I think it is worth noting that I haven't paid a cent for any of the services Google has provided, and for that I am truly grateful. Consider this my official thanks to Google.

Given my reliance on Google – a reliance that is likely quite prevalent among my contemporaries – my position is a hard one to take. I want to like Google (and I do); look at all they have done for me and what they continue to do for others.

I recently read both "Trust Agents" and "What Would Google Do?". I actually read them right after one another, literally putting one down and picking up the other. The conclusion I came to was that Google is essentially what Brogan calls "Agent Zero". On the web, everything points back to Google in some way, shape or form. We may have six degrees of separation (or Kevin Bacon) but we have far fewer degrees of separation when it comes to Google. Truth be told it is Google's very mastery of the web that is exactly what has me worried.

Google has earned their place in our information society and I don't begrudge them for it. What I begrudge is being told by sales reps that in order to ensure that citizens can find information on government services they need to buy Google Adwords.

Now, I am sure this was never the explicit intention of the sales pitch, and I do understand that Google needs to make money (remember all the stuff they just give away). That's just how I read the situation. I'll explain the pitch in greater detail below and let you judge for yourself.


The Pitch ...

Unsurprisingly the Google reps opened with data. The data showed that:

• Canadian citizens are digital citizens;
• the majority of Canadians use search engines (like Google) to find information about government; and thus
• findability on the web through search is paramount

On the face of it, I don't disagree, but because all of the data they use in their presentation is proprietary, I can't run the numbers myself. In my opinion, if Google wants the audience to make their case to their agency then they should hand us the data instead of just flashing it on a slide.

On the heels of the data comes the not-so-soft sell: examples of searches where one would expect to see government programs listed in the top 5 or 6 results but where no government information was found. There are however some interesting caveats worth noting.

The first is that they used screen captures as opposed to searching in real time. Obviously this means that they get to pick and choose which examples to show. Moreover, they weren't date- or time-stamped. In other words the slide content was stale. In my opinion a more effective way to deliver the message would be to ask someone in the audience what program they work for and run a live search about that particular program. I myself have done it many times, it’s a little trick I picked up from a consultant friend of mine.

The second is that they didn't actually click the "pages from Canada” option on the static examples that they presented. Which, to my mind, most Canadians seeking Canadian government services would click, I certainly do.

The third is that they discussed earlier in the day how rapidly mobile is growing in Canada but didn't address how paid listings interact with their mobile search. Search on their mobile site either doesn't list paid results or doesn't differentiate between paid results and non paid results, both of which are problematic albeit for different reasons (more on that some other time).

The fourth is the potential bidding war that could arise between departments who are working on a joint initiative. If two or more agencies partner on something and want to ensure that their site is found when people search for that something they could wind up driving up the price of the related Adwords to get the same information to the same people. While one would hope that the departments would work together and coordinate their efforts, the opposite is not unheard of. A possible result is that agencies expend greater resources to achieve the same result, while Google's profit margins increase.


Fact checking ...

Given the above, I had a bit of an issue accepting the facts as they were being presented and ended up pulling out my blackberry and searching the same terms on Google that the reps were presenting in their slides. What I found was that their examples were by and large incorrect. Again, I'm not trying to say that they were altered only that they were dated.


Led me to the question ...

All of this led me to the question of whether or not Google – in this particular instance – is a friend or foe of #gov20. I personally question a corporation who wants government to pay to ensure that citizens can find their services on the web. In my opinion a good corporate citizen in the digital era should be worrying about connecting citizens with timely and accurate information about government services when those services are being sought after, not when someone is searching for a term that may or may not be related to those services. The more responsible approach is the one I mocked up above.

Given everything I outlined above, what's your take? How can Google best position itself as a friend of Government 2.0? Should it even bother trying? Is it already trying?

Update: I was on Gov20Radio

Hey Everybody,

I am finally back in Ottawa after a week on the road. The road trip culminated in a guest spot on Gov20Radio with Adriel Hampton. The segment was entitled "Breaking the Boundaries of the Public Service".

We discussed my role in the Canadian Public Service, this blog (and some of its more popular posts), the Gov20 hype cycle, and Govloop North.

Feel free to have a listen and let me know what you think.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving.

Cheers.

PointBlank: Featuring Nick Charney (oh wait that's me!)

Hi All,

I just wanted to let you know that I was humbled last week to be named one of the 25 must-follow #gov20 (government 2.0) heroes on Twitter by GovFresh.

I was subsequently featured in GovFresh (or if you prefer, the interview is also available at Govloop). In the interview I answer four questions:

1. What was your path to Gov 2.0?
2. What area of government offers the biggest opportunity for improvement via Web 2.0 tools?
3. What's the killer app that will make Gov 2.0 the norm instead of the exception?
4. What part of Gov 2.0 most excites you?

Please go and have a read, and leave a comment (here or there) or fire me off an email/tweet with your reactions.

Cheers, and as usual, thanks so much for taking the time to stop by this space.

Signal-to-Noise: How I do Research on Government 2.0 Using Social Media

Just to be clear, this is not an abstract example. While I employ this methodology for a number of communities and topics, the one I will use as an illustration here is what is generally referred to as "Government 2.0". Also, you may notice that this is in some respects similar to the popular post I penned earlier: How I use Twitter to be a Better Public Servant. This post focuses more closely on my methodology, which I have since refined.


Problem: Signal-to-Noise

For the uninitiated, signal–to-noise ratio is essentially the level of a desired signal (in this case valuable information) to the level of background noise (valueless or value-neutral information).

When discussing social media, I often run into people who look at it and see a whole lot of content varying in usability and wonder how in the hell they are going to manage it without getting overwhelmed. In short, their question is: how do you get to what you want and filter out what you don't?


Solution: What You'll Need

My methodology for filtering out the noise relies on two things:

1. An active community creating, linking, rating, responding, sharing and tagging content; and
2. Knowing what tag(s) is/are being used by that community.

It also requires 5 tools, all of which allow me to manipulate and/or read RSS feeds. They are:

1. Search Twitter
2. Yahoo Pipes
3. Firefox
4. Post Rank (an extension for Firefox)
5. Google Reader

I will try to keep this explanation as clear possible and supplement it with supporting graphics whenever possible. But before I get into the technical explanation, I want to share this little hand drawn process map that will hopefully pique your interest, simplify the model, and illustrate how I start with approximately 250 items of unknown importance (re: Government 2.0) and whittle them down to 3 items over a single day.





Step 1 (Install Firefox, PostRank extension and set up a Google Reader Account)

If you don't already use Firefox, then you will need to install it for this to work. [Hint: here is a valid reason to get it installed at work.] You will also need to install the PostRank add-on for Google Reader. Then either sign in to your existing Google account or create one.


Step 2 (Search Twitter)

Now you will need to use search.twitter.com to create your initial RSS feeds.

Benefits of searching Twitter:

1. Results are real time (i.e. what people are talking about right now);
2. You don’t need a twitter account to do it; and
   
3. You only need to set up your search once and then grab the RSS feed from it.

In order to set up your searches, click the advanced search option on the main page, and configure your search as follows:

1. Must contain "#gov20" (no quotes) [Hashtag denotes that content is relevant to Government 2.0];
2. Must contain a link [I want the full article, not a 140 character tweet about the article]; and
   
3. Must contain either "RT" or "via" (no quotes) [Syntax for retweeting, a social measure of value which indicates that someone has decided to re-disseminate that link within their own network].

This search is configured to capture only links being retweeted (RT or via) on twitter about Government 2.0 (#gov20). Therefore, this first step removes any of the chatter that doesn't contain links and any content that hasn’t been deemed worthy of re-disseminating by people on Twitter.

However, within the wider Government 2.0 community, there are multiple hashtags being used, including :

1. #opengov
2. #opendata
3. #govloop
4. #gov20

So if you want to capture everything within that community, then you are forced to repeat the process, substituting the hashtag [Note: it is possible to set this up as a single feed, but separate feeds are more manageable.].


Step 3 (Yahoo Pipes)

Yahoo Pipes is a free web-based program that allows users to manipulate RSS feeds and re-syndicate them afterwards. It can be overwhelming at first, and I am still by no means an expert, but I am achieving my desired results using it.

I start by importing the four RSS feeds from the searches we ran in Step 1. Yahoo Pipes combines all four feeds into a single feed. If you look at that feed closely you will see that there is some duplication. This duplication occurs when people tag content with two (or more) of the hashtags I searched for and when a tweet is retweeted multiple times by different users. In order to deal with the duplication I have configured Yahoo Pipes to analyze the content of each feed item. I then apply a filter that removes any non-unique item from the feed based on the results of that analysis.

An important caveat is that Yahoo Pipes removes the duplicates in order of occurrence, which means that if the content analysis module determines that something has been retweeted 5 times, it keeps the original retweet while removing the others. The importance of this will become apparent later when we discuss the application of PostRank filters.

Here are a couple of screenshots of the Government 2.0 pipe I am running. The first shows the starting point of the pipe prior to applying the filter. As you can see it indicates 60 items in the feed (look bottom right).



Here is the second screenshot which indicates that after we apply the filter. The pipe is down to 33 items (again, bottom right).


Step 4 (Google Reader and PostRank)

Now that you are rolling with Firefox, login to Google Reader and add the feed you created in Yahoo Pipes.

Now if you look near the top of the page you will see a drop down filter option that allows you to filter the content within your reader using Post Rank (the add-on you installed earlier).

PostRank allows you to filter items by the community's level of engagement with the content: it measures other content being created as a response to this content (e.g. blog posts, comments, retweets, clicks, etc). In short, it gives you a social measure of the popularity of each item in the feed based solely on how and how often people are interacting with the content itself. This is why the Yahoo Pipes filtering process is important, keeping the first retweets (chronologically) allows PostRank to give an accurate measure of the susequent retweets, click throughs, etc.

[Note: This is an awesome extension that can do a lot more for you then just this. I use PostRank daily to determine which posts I should read and which I can probably skip. (More details can be found here).]

Finally here is a screenshot showing the application of the "Best" setting to my original feed in Google Reader.





Notice anything interesting? There are only 3 items there. This process started out with approximately 250 items of unknown importance ended with 3 items of high importance, which is clearly much more manageable than 250, especially when we remember that we are talking per day here.


Three Usual Objections

Despite showing how effective the filter is in terms of whittling down the number of items I have to decide to read or not (because yes, even with all this I still decide whether or not to read them), people remain skeptical.

Three questions frequently come up whenever I explain it:

Q1: What if you miss something?

A1: Fair question, but no one is catching everything no matter what their methodology. Besides, where am I more likely to miss something? At the beginning when I am dealing with approximately 250 items, or at the end when I am dealing with 3?

Q2: How can you be sure what you are reading is important?

A2: Because the methodology is designed to deliver what people in the community are reading and reacting to; the fact that they are reading and reacting to it is what makes it significant. In other words, if it isn’t being read already, then I would argue that it probably isn't required reading.

Q3: Can you give a concrete example of something you found that was of value that you might not have found otherwise?

A3: This example is from the field of knowledge management where I employ the same methodology, but I cite it because it was the best find to date. I came across a knowledge management conference in Copenhagen, which I would otherwise have never known to look for. The best part about that conference was that they made all 250 of the discussion papers presented at the conference available on their website. I skimmed the abstracts and downloaded all of the papers that discussed the confluence of information communications technologies, knowledge management, and communities of practice. I walked away with over 25 papers that were either already peer reviewed, or in the process of. You want to talk about a learning opportunity?


Conclusion

I apologize if this was a little too technical. I tried my best to keep it simple and in plain language. Like I said, a lot of people have been asking me details about this so I figured this was the best venue to share it. I think it does a good job articulating how you can use social media to do research, which is not often the focus of social media discussions within government.

If you have any questions about or suggestions on how to improve, my methodology please let me know: I’d be happy to elaborate if required, and am always looking for better ways to improve my signal to noise ratio.

Cheers,