Rialtas.net - Government 2.0

The UK Government is inviting feedback from the public to help generate ideas and useful applications for public data. They hope this approach will help to improve the way public information is communicated.The Power of Information Taskforce is running a competition on the UK Government’s behalf, and they have a £20,000 prize fund to develop the best ideas to the next level.

To indicate the kind of ideas that they are looking for they give the examples of Fix My Street Website (covered in an earlier Rialtas post),  and another example similar to the concept of ChicagoCrime.org

To show they are serious, the Government is making available gigabytes of new or previously invisible public information especially for people to use in this competition. 

 http://www.showusabetterway.co.uk

From Iain Thomson at Vnunet.com

A survey of 1,000 office staff has found that nearly a third of younger employees would consider quitting their job if Facebook was banned in the workplace.

The survey by IT services firm Telindus found that 39 per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds would consider leaving if they were not allowed to access applications like Facebook and YouTube.

A further 21 per cent indicated that they would feel ‘annoyed’ by such a ban.

The problem is less acute with 25 to 65 year-olds, of whom just 16 per cent would consider leaving and 13 per cent would be annoyed.

Mark Hutchinson, managing director of Telindus, said: “An outright ban on personal internet usage is clearly not the right approach.

“However, the challenge is to achieve the right balance between allowing employees personal internet time without jeopardising the bandwidth required for business applications.

“It is commercially unwise to have a bandwidth free-for-all, especially when you consider that downloading a single half-hour TV show consumes more bandwidth than receiving 200 emails a day for a year.”

Companies are increasingly looking to ban sites like Facebook because they clog up corporate networks and take up employees’ time.

Interestingly, the survey revealed that employees would be supportive of a ban if it made other network functions faster.

Increasingly young net users are using social networking sites and tools to stay connected with their peers and also to manage their ‘knowledge network’, given the nature of today’s highly mobile workforce, where staff move frequently between jobs and between organisations, use of these tools can assist individuals to manage their individual networks and also to manage their ‘personal knowledge’. Some examples of this would be the use of LinkedIn or Facebook to keep in touch with a growing number of personal and professional contacts, or perhaps the use of Del.icio.us to store bookmarks instead of storing bookmarks  within a corporate browser installation. The use of Web 2.o tools helps to ensure that when an individual moves between jobs or between organisations, that they can bring many of their knowledge resources with them.

Preventing access to these tools hampers knowledge workers in their work and increasingly access to these tools will no doubt prove the deciding factor for many net-genners in choosing what kind of organisation they would like to work for. Many smart organisations have already recognised the benefits both in increased morale and increased productivity facilitated by the  availability of various Web 2.0 tools.

Tom Watson MP Minister for Transformational Government, Cabinet Office

Below is an excerpt from the speech he gave at the Tower ‘08 conference on 10th March 2008.

You are all in this room today because you “get it”.

You know that the way that government configures public services is going to change beyond comprehension in years to come and you want to be part of it.

We all of us in this room understand the possibilities of technological advance.

Our challenge is to use it to make a difference to the lives of people we are all here to serve.

I began to understand the change going on in the world when I set up a political blog five years ago.

At the time it was seen as a radical act. People could not believe that I had opened myself up to such scrutiny and occasional daily abuse. I sometimes still wonder about that bit myself.

But the blog broke down the walls between legislators and electors in a way that interested me so I persevered.

Yesterday I read with regret the story of an anonymous civil servant blogger by the name of Civil Serf. Her bluntly written blog about life in Whitehall was taken down, after it came to the attention of the national press. Now, I’m not going to say that we should tear up the civil service code it’s very important that civil servants play by the rules, nor do I agree with everything she says, but surely a truly transformed government would be one in which speaking engagingly about life our public services would be far from newsworthy, and far from career wrecking.

When the MySociety people established the theyworkforyou web site, I began to understand how the old order of things was going to change.

Put simply, I began to understand the power of information.

So let me tell you where I stand.

I believe in the power of mass collaboration.

I believe that as James Surowiecki says ‘the many are smarter than the few’.

I believe that the old hierarchies in which government policy is made and crucially for you in this room the way in which it is delivered - are going to change for ever.

People tell me that we are entering a post-bureaucratic age. I don’t accept that. It?s just old thinking - laissez faire ideas with a new badge.

The future of government is to provide tools for empowerment, not to sit back and hope that laissez-faire adhocracy will suffice.

And as Kevin Kelly says “the bottom is not enough”.

A post bureaucratic age misunderstands the idea of an enabling state, one that moderates collaborative activity for a shared social good.

The collaborative state still requires leaders and enablers, doers and thinkers. It still requires public services but services with boundaries porous to external ideas.

Read the full speech here

http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/?p=1899

Photo By Jrawle from Flickr.

Interesting Series of blog entries and comments debating as to whether Civil Servant Bloggers in the UK should be governed by a set of blogging guidelines or whether adherence to the UK civil service code should be sufficient. This was all prompted by the recent posts of an anonymous blogger ‘Civil Serf’ known only as a 33-year-old civil servant who attacked the civil service for its lack of innovation and also highlighted incompetences regarding some of the UKs ministers. More on this here..

Tom Watson posted these suggestions on his own blog last Tuesday (11 March 08).

1. Write as yourself
2. Own your own content
3. Be nice
4. Keep secrets
5. No anonymous comments
6. Remember the civil service code
7. Got a problem? Talk to your boss
8. Stop it if we say so
9. Be the authority in your specialist field – provide worthwhile information
10. Think about consequences
11. Media interest? Tell your boss
12. Correct your own mistakes

Matt Wardman then continues the debate on his own Blog.

The Civil Service Code

The CSC is based on values not specifics, and as a result is both rather good and rather flexible. It seems to me that any blogging code should be based on a similar expectation and assumption of trust and professionalism - and should therefore be phrased in similar terms, rather than at a level of “do not use anonymous comments” (which are fine anyway if properly policed and can be beneficial - for example in a discussion of forced marriage).

The meat of the Civil Service Code covers, among other things:

* Integrity
* Honesty
* Objectivity
* Impartiality
* Political Impartiality

and I prefer those concepts, rather than a great fluff of detailed prescriptions and explanatory notes - whether brief or not. Civil Servants are grown-ups; treat them as such.

So my 10 recommended guidelines are in the next section.
The Blogging Code

1. 99.9% of Civil Servants are sensible and professional people of integrity.
2. Civil Serf is an exception in not behaving professionally.
3. Exception control for the 0.1% in this case should be by disciplinary action of the 0.1% under the Civil Service Code, not by creating guidelines for the 99.9%.
4. Blogging guidelines are only an unnecessary result of a need to be seen to take dynamic action.
5. A multiplication of guidelines like rabbits will only serve to generate more boundary quarrels, and waste more time in argument about whether the letter of the guidelines has been breached or not.
6. And then there will have to be a review of the guidelines to identify the weak points.
7. And a policy commission to evaluate the results.
8. And then there will be even more guidelines.
9. And they will have to be put under version control, and distributed to all the Intranets etc etc etc … sod it … go to 5 and continue in circles.
10. In summary - Ockham’s Razor just shredded the guidelines. Or the need for them. Just follow the Civil Service Code.

Required Action

Mr Milliband (or whoever) needs to issue a two sentence policy reminder:

You may write about your work on your blog, but must do so in accordance with the Civil Service Code, the “personal use of office computers” policy, and local policy. Discuss any specifics or questions with your line manager in the usual way.

Job done. Back to work.

And finally (unfortunately?) it seems that Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, is to set out new guidance to civil servants to cover blogging and online social networks following the demise of the “Civil Serf” blogger, The UK Times has learnt…

Sir Gus will shortly issue guidelines to tell officials whether they can start up blogs or use social networking websites such as Facebook and YouTube, and even if they can change details on Wikipedia.

A Cabinet Office spokesman denied that the move was directly linked with the Civil Serf blogger, believed to work for the Department for Work and Pensions, who has embarrassed Westminster with her revelations about officials and ministers.

Read the coverage on Times online.

Interesting post by Jason Ryan on PSnetwork.org on the need for Public sector organisations (in New Zealand) to increase the rate at which they are adapting to changing cultural and technological conditions.

“The problem, as such, is not that public sector organizations are not adapting to the change; the fact that there is so much interest in understanding social media is a good indication they are. The problem is the rate at which they are adapting, and the consequences of that lag.

Change management

Public sector managers should all be conversant and comfortable with change. To narrow the strategy gap, what needs to happen is for senior managers to recognize that social media are a symptom of a wider cultural change, and to begin revising their strategies accordingly. Agencies should begin to consult, communicate and involve staff in the process now, because if the gap widens too much, our people will —literally— leave us behind.

As I noted at the outset, this doesn’t require any specialized management knowledge or technical skill; it is just another expression of the (hopefully commonplace) need to constantly manage change. What it does require, however, is a sense of urgency, a willingness to engage and a focus that is on people, rather than technology.

Read the full post here:
http://www.psnetwork.org.nz/blog/2008/02/24/early-adopters/

A new (free) report by the New Local Government Network in the UK arguing that e-petitions could become an effective tool in creating a constant dialogue between communities and their elected representatives, helping to maintain a conversation in between elections and engaging voters, particularly young people.

The paper identifies four key advantages for councils to introduce e-petitioning:

* To widen participation to include those who appear to be more disengaged:
the young and the those who are less well-off;
* To establish methods of ongoing engagement that give people the ability to voice their opinions with methods accessible to them and the ability to see the impact this has;
* To ensure methods of accountability and direct dialogue with representatives;
* To provide methods by which information is readily available and accessible.

It also argues that e-petitioning should become a formal mechanism within the local authority “Community Call For Action”, which allows local residents to raise concerns about persistent or serious problems in their area and which local councillors have a duty to respond to.

See also an earlier post on Downing Street’s E-Petitions site. (Open Source software available)

Link

Lots of organisations are starting to clamp down on Internet usage within the organisation. It should be remembered however, that heavy handed IT security policies can demoralise and demotivate staff. The old adage, ‘treat people like children and they will behave like children’ comes to mind.

I know some people whom have had experience working in organisations where very strict internet access policies were implemented and where staff that would have formerly chosen to work late or perhaps whom would have worked through lunch if they could have just checked their personal email or priced a holiday or booked a ticket on ticketmaster etc.. instead went home. And not only went home in order to book their ticket or check their mail, but now also went home because their loyalty to the organisation was diminished and their motivation to work harder reduced.

Many young internet users are growing up using social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo and Facebook, they are messaging each other with messenger or Gmail chat, they are talking and video conferencing with Skype or perhaps even ‘meeting’ in Second Life. Very soon many of these young ‘net-genners’ will be in the work force and will expect to be able to communicate with Government and with business using the tools with which they grew up. If these tools and technologies are not available to government employees they will not be able to communicate effectively with their customers, the public. Similarly as ‘net-genners’ have grown up communicating through these ‘Web 2.0′ tools they are not likely to find working for a government organisation appealing if that organisation prohibits all of the technologies that constitute the infrastructure of ‘net-genners’ social and professional communications.

In addition to this many employees now already have broadband Internet access on their mobile phones and as laptops get cheaper (a brand new laptop in Ireland can be purchased for about 330 Euro at the moment) many employees will soon have an always-on internet enabled device available to them. An organisation today trying to restrict access to the internet is akin to King Canute commanding the tide not to come in. Rather than restrict, it would be wiser for organisations to create practical and realistic policies that enhance people’s working lives and make their jobs and communications easier and better.

For a practical starting point see the Irish Data Commissioners website:

Use of the Computer Network, E-Mail and Internet.

Private use of the Internet in the workplace and the monitoring of private emails pose certain challenges. A workplace policy should be in place in an open and transparent manner to provide that:

• A balance is required between the legitimate rights of employers and the personal privacy rights of employees
• Any monitoring activity should be transparent to workers
• Employers should consider whether they would obtain the same results with traditional measures of supervision
• Monitoring should be fair and proportionate with prevention being more important than detection.

The Data Commissioner’s Website lists their own policy in addition to providing guidelines on data protection and privacy on an organisations network.

I Just came across this document on the Data Protection Commissioners website. Its a projected vision of public surveillance in the near future, a dsytopian one as far as individual privacy is concerned. Thought provoking and worth a read.
A Report on the Surveillance SocietyFor the Information Commissioner, by the Surveillance Studies Network
Public Discussion Document September 2006

The essence of the paper is that we are ’sleepwalking into a surveillance society’

The surveillance society has come about almost without us realising..

It is the sum total of many different technological changes, many policy decisions, and many social developments. Some of it is essential for providing the services we need: health, benefits, education. Some of it is more questionable. Some of it may be unjustified, intrusive and oppressive. People may have many different opinions. But in fact most people know very little about the surveillance society: it is seen as the stuff of science fiction, not everyday life. So there has been very little public debate about surveillance. The surveillance industry is already massive and (especially since 9/11) is growing much faster than other industries : the global industry is estimated to be worth almost $1 trillion US dollars, covering a massive range of goods and services from military equipment through high street CCTV to smart cards. The surveillance society has come about often slowly, subtly and imperceptibly and by the unforeseen combination of many small paths into one bigger road. It is a road whose direction we urgently need to discuss and debate. Read on

The Data Commissioner’s website is an extremely valuable resource for data controllers, perhaps you are one?

I was hoping to have had a chance to finish reading this report before I posted it but decided to post it now in case anyone find it useful. It a report commissioned by the Australian QLD government entitled, ‘Legal Aspects of Web 2.0 Activities: Management of Legal Risk Associated with Use of YouTube, MySpace and Second Life’. The report was created by researchers Jessica Coates, Nic Suzor and Dr Anne Fitzgerald.

As Web 2.0 technologies proliferate, an increasing number of Australians, especially young Australians, are relying
primarily on information and communication technologies to engage and interact with each other and the world. If governments are to have meaningful interaction with young people, it is therefore important for them to explore
the potential of these communication platforms. But legal considerations must be taken into account when strategising how best to make use of emerging technologies.

The report identifies the practical legal risks associated with activities conducted in online participatory spaces. Encompassing Copyright, Privacy, Defamation, Breach of Confidence and other areas of law, the report outlines the main considerations that arise when engaging in the online environment. It also examines the popular social networking platforms YouTube, MySpace and Second Life in detail, analysing legal issues specific to their Terms of Use and functionality.

Link to report

The National Disability Authority have for several years now, provided some excellent online resources for those designing websites, software and other IT related hardware and services. All government related IT projects should be created with accessibility in mind but it is important too that those creating solutions in the private sector adhere to these guidelines. Accessibility and access to information for all is the basis of an inclusive society. This site is a fantastic resource.

Link