Experiencing the Citizen-State Interface

by Nick Charney

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I got a parking ticket this week -- and while it was a simple mistake, rectifying that mistake is almost not worth pursuing. This is one of those stories about the citizen-state interface that we can all sympathize with.

Long story short, last week I had some work done on my car and had a loaner. I have a parking pass for a lot by my work and simply changed my pass to reflect the change in vehicle. No big deal. However, when I got my car back I failed to change the pass back to my actual vehicle so I got a ticket for parking my car in the lot I pay to park it in. Now, mea culpa on not changing it back but the cost of the ticket is almost half the cost of the monthly pass (if I pay early) and more than half the cost if I pay late. So I did what any reasonable person would do and I called the city.

I will say that I was pleased with the wait time (less than 1 minute), however while the person on the other end of the phone was polite, helpful and courteous the solution offered was complete rubbish from a service delivery standpoint. That solution: show up in person to one of the designated sites, get in line, wait, and contest the ticket in person. If I can pay a ticket online, why can't I contest one? The in person requirement in a strong disincentive to contest and an equally strong incentive to pay. Something about this seems amiss, and likely sounds familiar.

That said -- and this ends the 'rant' -- the larger more general question I want to raise is why would governments make it easier to comply (even if erroneously) rather than contest (or correct) a mistake?

Do they not have a duty to ensure that both paths -- across all service offerings -- can be walked just as easily? Shouldn't they be removing barriers that disproportionately benefit the state while leaving those that would more directly benefit the citizen? Isn't good governance is about finding the compromise

After all, if we want people to see the state as more than the common stereotypes portrayed by popular media then we need to continue to improve the citizen-state interface in ways that are demonstrably meaningful to both parties. I suppose this is where user testing comes in. However, the challenge there is that while citizens are constantly user testing the state, the state is infrequently conducting user testing on its citizens.

Is Innovation in Service Delivery a Blind Spot in Canada?

by Nick Charney

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@scott_pm @BlaiseHebert @jessehirsh everyone is looking at policy development an innovative approach might be to ignore it & look elsewhere
— Nicholas Charney (@nickcharney) March 21, 2014

I strongly recommend you read the transcript of Francis Maude's* Oakeshott Memorial Lecture on employee ownership and the future of public services. It was about as balanced a view one could take on civil service reform that I've come across in a long time and puts the public sector reform and innovation rhetoric here in Canada into perspective. Here are a few of my key takeaways:

It may be easy to look across the pond with envy but whenever I read anything out of the UK I am reminded of how everyone here in Canada is so deeply entrenched and wedded to rhetoric that principled discussions seem anathema (See: When did the Public Service Become an Ignoble Profession). If you would permit me my rose coloured glasses for another moment I'd like to take the opportunity to reiterate the 5 principles of UK public service reform (from Maude's speech):

1. openness; 
2. digital by default;
3. a permissive public service culture;
4. tight control from the centre over common activities; and
5. loose control over operations at the periphery

Contrast those with the realities on the ground in this country and you'd likely only find one point where they intersect; I guess I misplaced my glasses.

More importantly, I am astonished that there has been a movement afoot in the UK that has steadily built momentum and has gone otherwise unnoticed in Canada: Public Sector Mutuals. I'll be honest in that Maude's speech is the first I've heard of them. I even asked around and have yet to find someone who is familiar with the model enough to speak to it.

At first brush the very notion of Public Sector Mutuals is fascinating. In essence mutuals seem to grant license to entrepreneurial civil servants to spin out of their current organizations if they think (and can demonstrate) that they can deliver a public service more effectively from outside the civil service than from within it. Mutuals can take a number of forms ranging from social enterprises to for-profit organizations. There is dedicated Mutuals Information Service in the Cabinet Office that provides tailored information suited to the needs of staff (who would want to spin out), commissioners (senior officers who would need to lead the spin out) and suppliers (who could support the spin out). There is also a myriad of decision trees, toolkits, and other supports (including a dedicated £10M development fund). In short not only are they providing the opportunity to spin out, they are providing all the requisite support to do so. It shouldn't be a surprise that the UK has seen the number of mutuals increase tenfold in the last 4 years. There are nearly 100 mutuals in the UK that employ over 35,000 people and deliver £1.5 billion in services all across Britain.

Not to mention, according to Maude, the results are spectacular:

Waste and costs down. Staff satisfaction up. Absenteeism - a key test or morale and productivity – is falling and falling sharply. Business growing.

Staff engagement surveys bear out the simple truth that service improves and productivity rises when the staff have a stake; when they feel they belong; and that their individual voice and actions count.

Our latest data shows that after an organisation spins out as a mutual absenteeism falls by 20%; staff turnover falls by 16%. Take City Healthcare Partnership based in Hull as an example. 91% of staff said they now feel trusted to do their jobs – and this level of empowerment has had a knock-on effect in the quality of care they give. Since they left the NHS in 2010, there has been a 14% increase in patients who’ve rated their care and support as excellent, and 92% say they would recommend the service to family and friends.

Maude goes on to hammer home the connection between autonomy, employee satisfaction and innovation:

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with better financial reward for public servants. But it’s not the biggest driver of better productivity. It’s the satisfaction people get from putting their ideas into action, and seeing swift results. It’s the sense of pride that it’s their organisation that is delivering the service. That they can make improvements quickly, taking responsibility for making things happen, without new ideas getting bogged down in bureaucratic treacle. Just looking at the Baxendale Awards for Employee Owned Businesses this year, you can see the spinouts dominating the innovation category. So in a mutual, public servants can give effect to their public service ethos with immediate and gratifying speed.

Whenever I visit a mutual – which I do a lot, it’s a drug, it’s addictive - I always ask the same question of staff: “Would you go back to work for the council/health authority/ministry?”

The answer is always “No”. “Why not?” “Because in a mutual we can do things”.

That’s the essence of it. People can see how things can be done better and do it. They can give effect and take responsibility and pride for making things happen. People typically say they are working harder than they were but they are enjoying it more, it’s more rewarding, more fulfilling. That’s why I think the public service mutual is the way of the future.

All of which raises the inevitable question: is innovation in service delivery a blind spot in Canada?

Other related thoughts

While the statement above is my formal conclusion, I have a number of unfinished thoughts on this that merit inclusion:

• Sure, we've turned our attention to policy innovation but if you think about it critically you realize that we've done so to the back drop of losing the monopoly on providing that advice. That makes me skeptical of both our motivation and resolve. Are we interested in innovation or self-preservation? Have we adopted the behaviours or just the nomenclature?
• What do we mean by policy? Do we mean big 'P' Policy in the nation-building and/or public governance sense? Do we mean little 'p' policy in the tweaking the status quo sense? Or do we take policy to simply be a proxy for influence?
• It is commonly known that policy positions in government are regarded as the natural feeder groups for the executive ranks. What effect is this having on everything I've outlined above? Is it a contributing factor? If so, how can it be mitigated?
• I'm sure there are examples of innovation in service delivery in Canada — I recall reading numerous case studies about how Service Canada was well ahead of the curve when it was created, and it has been widely replicated since. I am sure there are others.
• Mutuals jive really well with the ideas of autonomy, mastery and purpose put forward by Dan Pink and also likely relate to the series of posts on faceless bureaucrats.

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*If you aren't familiar with Maude, he is the UK Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General and is generally the Minister in charge of all things civil service for the UK government. We don't have a strict equivalent in Canada choosing instead to divide up similar responsibilities (e.g. public sector reform, industrial relations strategy in the public sector, government transparency, civil service issues, etc) between the the Clerk of the Privy Council (unelected) and the President of the Treasury Board (elected).

What Government Can Learn From Amazon

by Nick Charney

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Or, "the Future of Government Services Online"

While the Government of Canada's forthcoming move towards a single website has been met with skepticism, the move is congruent with the trend and presents some significant downstream opportunities to innovate on the service delivery front.

First, the trend

While this approach was used by the province of Ontario and the City of Calgary (among others) the best example is likely that of gov.uk, which consolidates government information from over 350 departments and agencies and prioritizes search (citizen input) over government organizational structures (hierarchies) and nomenclatures (taxonomies). I'm not really interested in debating the sceptics but rather making the most of what I consider the opportunity.

Second, the opportunity

If you want to understand the magnitude of the opportunity in the consolidation of government websites, then you need look no further than a couple of the core innovations of one of the most successful online business models of the last twenty years: Amazon.

"Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought ..."

What if the Government's website could dynamically serve up complementary information on programs and services the way that Amazon recommends related products?

Citizens who were interested in this information were also interested in ...

Citizens don't care (and likely don't know) which department or business unit is responsible for a given service or program — they only care that they can access that service when they need it.

Why should students have to jump around from departmental website to departmental website in order to get information on student loans, bursaries, skills programs, tax credits, employment prospects, or industry safety standards?

Or someone preparing to travel abroad when looking to secure their passport, notify the high commission, or get travel, health and safety advisories?

Or small business owners when looking for information on hiring subsidies, grants, regulation, temporary foreign workers, or ombudsman or trade-marking/copyright services?

I could go on, invoking other likely personas: new Canadians, Aboriginals, persons with disabilities, job seekers. I think you get the point. The old technological solution to these problems was to create portals. The new one is to consolidate information, overlay great search functionality and build an iterative algorithm behind it that tracks what citizens are looking at in aggregate and use it for the purposes of predictive analysis; to get out ahead of citizens expectations and fill the gap between government services and citizen awareness of those services.

1-click purchase

Moreover, what if citizens could simplify a transaction with government to a single click? Am I eligible for this program, service, or tax credit?

Last year 76% of Canadians filed their taxes securely online. What if the government could use that information to help tailor the delivery of information to citizens? Why don't we simply re-purpose secure file technology and the tax information to help tailor the delivery of information to citizens, allowing them to, with a single click, find out if they are prima facie eligible for a particular program or service. People make more significant privacy trade-offs with private for profit corporations (Facebook, Google, et al) on a daily basis — I doubt they would be unwilling to make it with their government so long as their personal identifiers were respected and protected.

This innovation is completely achievable

I would encourage anyone interested in helping move forward this idea to contact me by email or Twitter; I'm of the view that this needs to move from the theoretical to the practical, and fast.

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

Column: When Social Location Sharing Meets Government Services

I had the opportunity to do some thinking about the future of social media and government a month ago in Vancouver with some very smart people. One of the things that came up (mostly due to our geeky familiarity with the social space were some "you just had to be there tweets" and a communal check-in on Foursquare.

For those of you unfamiliar with Foursquare, it is a social location-sharing service that allows you to check-in to a venue, leave tips for other patrons and unlock badges for your achievements. If you are interested in learning a little more about it, Mashable published a decent piece entitled, 5 Ways Foursquare is Changing the World. I started experimenting with Foursquare mostly because I wanted to see what was happening in the space and to try to understand some of the implications for government as this takes hold as one of the most popular social services on the web.

Where location sharing services like Foursquare and governments collide will most likely be in the area of service delivery. More specifically, Foursquare (or whatever location sharing service rivals it) will be a key social space for any government agency that delivers service via a service center. Some of the more obvious examples that come to mind are Service Canada (federal), the Ministry of Transportation (provincial), or City Hall (Municipal). More specifically, I think that government agencies can effectively use crowd-sourcing to improve their service delivery, and they can do it at little to no cost. In fact, as Eaves rightly pointed out, local governments are already doing this with their emergency response services (911).

Finding Government Services

Right now the search function for Foursquare isn't that great, but as they inevitably look to Google (or perhaps Microsoft) to improve their search function, Foursquare users will start to use it as a means to locate services relative to their location as determined by their mobile device's GPS system. Why would anyone search for an agency on the open web if all they wanted was information on the location of the service centre? Searching the open web means that people are likely to end up on the landing page of the agency, be forced to navigate the clutter of the site, and perhaps even run another text-based search. The benefit of searching within the location-sharing social service is that it separates out all of that extra data when all I want to know is the location of the service centre. Thus I think it will be is already important for agencies with service centres to populate location-sharing platforms with the correct location, hours of operation, URLs, and phone numbers. The last thing governments want or need is to confuse people about their locations, hours of operation or URLs. The way I see it is this as an opportunity to help people find government services.

Crowd-sourcing Crowd Control

One of the interesting things about Foursquare is that it allows you to leave a “tip” for a venue. A tip is essentially a small piece of advice that you can leave for other patrons. Clients can leave tips for other clients that could help with the flow of work within the centre, perhaps even ease wait times. Much like the Ottawa Public Health did with its twitter updates on the availability of location based H1N1 vaccinations, venue tips can let people know what kind of wait time they can expect as a service centre depending on when they are going to be there. I myself recently left a similar tip for the local transit office after being frustrated by a long line one day and not waiting at all the next. If that kind of information was made available, I would be more likely to plan my day around the shortest anticipated wait time at the service center.

Undoubtedly an argument can be made that organizations are already looking at service times and trying to address them. They could however do a better job at proactively communicating those wait times out to users. Communicating wait times at service centres in an official capacity takes resources, having users do it for you does not. Overall, crowd sourcing some of the crowd control could reduce wait times, reduce the stress on staff, and increase client satisfaction due to friendlier and timelier service.

Crowd sourcing Employee Performance

Again relying on the tip feature, people could provide meaningful feedback about the public servants who helped (or didn't help) them while in the service centre. This is where most people cringe, expecting to be hammered over the head with negative comments about the service they received. Negative comments should be expected and when appropriate should be considered as action items. If one of the people working in the centre receives complaints daily about their performance, than perhaps their performance should be dealt with, that is nothing new. What is new is that the barrier to providing that feedback may be decreasing. For example, leaving a tip on Foursquare is a lot easier than asking to speak with the manager. Again, receiving feedback is nothing new but in low-barrier systems, feedback becomes abundant and if we are paying attention to the long tail than we have far more to gain from this interaction than to fear from it. I am far more fearful of decreased relevancy due to lack of feedback than I am of the volume of feedback itself.

With respect to positive feedback, tips that applaud service are invaluable to managers. It motivates staff, and can breed healthy competition among employees. In a previous life I worked in service-based environments (hotels and an NHL hockey franchise) where we competed ferociously to see who would get the most positive feedback via our customer comment system while our clients benefited from our hyper-attentive service. I think this model could work much the same way within government agencies. It provides a nice carrot for performance where there are little external or systematic incentives for high-quality client service.

Furthermore meaningful feedback is more than just the complaints and/or praise directed at service providers. Opening up this channel for location specific feedback could mean a whole set of interesting recommendations about actual observable and measurable variables. Initiatives like My Starbucks Idea come to mind. What if an expert in interior design comes through and, given their background, realizes that a simple tweak to the seating arrangement could mean increased capacity or better traffic flow through the centre. Their expertise would cost nothing and could be easily captured if the expert was so inclined to share it.

Rewarding Citizen Engagement

One of the challenges I see is encouraging people to check-in to government service centers (no one wants to be the "Mayor" of the Employment Insurance Office) and soliciting meaningful feedback on an ongoing basis. I think this is where one of the other core components of Foursquare comes in - badges. Users earn badges based on their check-ins. These range from things like "I'm on a Boat" (for checking into a venue tagged Boat) to "Gym Rat" (for 10 check-ins over a 30-day period in venues tagged "gym"). I think that agencies could partner with Foursquare to create badges for those people who have checked-in to their service centers. This requires some creativity but I can see badges like, "Served" with a federal/provincial/municipal logo on it, and the subtitle "You were proudly served by X agency" being at least somewhat popular. And as Foursquare expands its service offering I think it will move into a space where it also provides badges for people leaving tips. I think that this will happen as people realize that the real social value of the platform is not just letting people know where they are but what they think about where they are.

In this type of environment, government agencies could work together and reward users with incremental badges based on the amount of tips left for government service centres. These "Digitally Engaged Citizen" badges would serve as a badge of honor to those who are attempting to help government deliver its services better and is very much in alignment with the whole government 2.0 movement.

The Tip of the Iceberg

I consider hypothesizing about things that may be coming down the pipe is incredibly interesting. I also think it is the first step in starting to achieve these things in a real sense. If you know of any government service delivery centres that are thinking about these types of initiatives please let me know. I would love to follow up with them.

cpsrenewal.ca Weekly Column: A Common Sense Case for Using Twitter to Engage Citizens

Over the weekend I tweeted a link to a twitter update that I got via an RSS feed I have in place to monitor twitter chatter regarding my department. In it @graceeechen said:

EVERY FEMALE Service Canada phone representative I spoke w/ was the biggest condescending b****! but the MALE ones are SO incredibly nice!

[Note that @graceeechen's updates are not protected and appear in the public timeline, hence I have no problem with linking to the information.]

When I tweeted the link, I noted that this is why Government departments should be monitoring twitter chatter. My tweet sparked a conversation where others voiced their disagreement given the flavour of the tweet in question, and I admit my initial reaction was similar: this tweet is hardly the model for meaningful feedback. It is hard to see value in it for four reasons:

1. 140 Characters is most likely insufficient to address the issue in a meaningful way.
2. It is easy for a reader to infer that @graceeechen is generally dissatisfied with service she receives from female client representatives regardless of service provider.
3. The way @graceeechen expresses her opinion has very little immediate value to the service provider against which she is complaining (Service Canada in this case)
4. @graceeechen's tweet seems to offer very little promise of value down the line; i.e. it doesn't look like an opportunity to engage without risking deterioration.

Yet, I was (and still am) compelled to move beyond my initial reaction. I am compelled because:

1. 140 characters may be insufficient in a single iteration, but nothing limits the exchange of tweets or the suggestion of moving the discussion from twitter to a different medium
2. It is easy to overlook the fact that @graceeechen was very satisfied with the service she received from the male client representatives at Service Canada.
3. The lack of context around the complaint renders me unable to judge what exactly happened in her interactions with Service Canada.

Let’s for a minute consider a hypothetical situation:

What if @graceeechen was asking for information about Nobody's Perfect and felt discriminated against?

According to Service Canada's website, Nobody's Perfect is a program delivered by the Public Health Agency that aims to help "parents who are young, single, socially or geographically isolated or who have low income or limited formal education".

What if what she thought was "condescending" is actually some part of a larger pattern, which is to say that maybe other people have had similar complaints when trying to access the same information.

Again, this is just hypothetical, but unfortunately, if we don't engage, we will never know.

If you think that my hypothetical above is reaching then consider this: as it stands right now, there is nothing in that tweet stream except @graceeechen's initial complaint.

Luckily, for Service Canada, she is a relatively new Twitter user and has only 30 followers. Unfortunately for Service Canada, 30 people who have all chosen to subscribe to her updates, have been notified of her disdain for the service she received. Arguably the comment from someone they know is far more valuable to them then any Service Canada commercial, no matter how clever. (Note that I wanted to link to the commercial, but Service Canada doesn't have a youtube presence.)

One bad experience, quickly passed along to 30 other people. Technology like Twitter is accelerating the speed at which word of mouth travels. When word travels this quickly, it places greater importance replying promptly.

So let’s consider what might have happened if someone from Service Canada jumped in, apologized, asked her to substantiate her complaint and to identify something that would have made her experience with Service Canada a better one (in 140 or less):

@graceeechen Sorry your experience with Service Canada fell short of your expectations; we are looking to improve service. Any suggestions?

Now there are a whole spectrum of possibilities that could arise out of this invitation to dialogue with the government, but in their simplest form they would look something like:

1. @graceeechen engages and provides value
2. @graceeechen ignores the tweet and moves on
3. @graceeechen responds with inflammatory remarks

If she responds and engages in dialogue, Service Canada gets direct feedback while conveying the message to @graceeechen's 30 followers that Service Canada is interested in improving its service delivery because they will all get the @graceeechen updates directed at say, @ServiceCanada (btw that twitter id is already taken by twitter squatter).

If she ignores the tweet and moves on, it still shows up in the search results and shows anyone listening that Service Canada did its due diligence by following up.

If @graceeechen decides to take the gloves off and be confrontational, Service Canada doesn't look any worse for the wear. In fact, I would argue that if @graceeechen chooses this course of action it actually undermines the legitimacy of her initial complaint, and Service Canada looks better off for actually having tried to engage her as a citizen. If things become uncivil, all Service Canada has to do is withdraw from the exchange. Anyone looking at the timeline will understand what happened and attribute blame accordingly.

Ultimately, I think that whatever course of action @graceeechen chooses is irrelevant. The true value comes from reshaping the relationship between government-as-provider and citizen-as-consumer into a relationship where both the citizen and government are working together to constantly build and deliver better services. Leveraging twitter will allow public servants to create another feedback channel - and yes there is a whole host of issues around that (but that is another post, try reading this in the meantime). These relationships can only be reshaped by bringing citizens into the conversation, or in this case taking the conversation right to the citizen.

Other Opportunities Lost?

Finally, here are a couple of other quick little tweets that show that in fact people are talking about our departments right now. But before you read those, remember that 3 citizens, using less then 420 characters combined, reached a total of 277 people in about 1/1000th of the time it took me to pull this column together.

1. Why is HRSDC soooo hard to get through? Too much text, very little useful info. Could be condensed into 5 pages with LINKS and Phone numbers by WriterWriter (179 followers).
2. At Service Canada. I must say, they're very friendly by AngelCastaneda (74 Followers).
3. Why can't the service canada office get it right?! by Shine2U (24 followers).