All Posts – Page 17

September 24, 2011

The Rise and Fall of Public Sector Youth Groups

I’ve spent a lot of time around departmental youth groups since joining the public service; I’ve launched them, provided informal advice to chairs, and spoken at national conferences. My general observation is that public sector youth groups are forged out of a deep sense of frustration that plagues many new public servants. It is a frustration born out of over-promising during intake, under-delivering after the hire is made, and otherwise muddling through the logistical details of the on-boarding process (e.g. office space, ID badge, computer login credentials that often aren’t ready; managers with no time or materials to brief you with; and no clear articulation of duties in relation to mandate). Back in 2008, I interviewed a new hire who put it thusly:

“Despite coming in really pumped from the recruitment process, the first week on the job was very slow. My manager was away and the rest of the team generally kept to themselves. I spent the first week eating lunch alone.”

To be fair, I doubt everyone’s experience is terrible, however I would say that my own initial experience and many of the stories others have shared with me of theirs confirms the sentiment of the text cited above.

September 24, 2011

Launching the Open Technology Foundation with Dr Terry Cutler

On Wednesday the 14th September, we launched the Open Technology Foundation with the organisation’s new Chair, Dr Terry Cutler.

The Open Technology Foundation has been a couple of years in the making, and is an initiative about supporting the use of open technologies, methods and standards across governments. They have participation at federal and state level in Australia, as well as interest from governments overseas.

I think the OTF could be a really useful resource for Australian Governments at a federal, state and local level, not only with their use of ICT, but for the sort of cross-jurisdictional collaboration that will be vital in implementing the Gov 2.0 and open government agenda.

September 24, 2011

Leadership Evolves Because People Change

Leadership evolves because people change, but the principles remain the same, early in my career I was taught 10 basic principles of leadership.. while the words have changed over the years to reflect contemporary language and changing culture.. but these still hold true.

Know your job
Know your strengths and limitations always seek self-improvement
Lead by example and be consistent
Make sure your team knows your intent and then lead them to the goal
Know your people and take care of them before yourself
Develop the leadership potential in your people
Make sound and timely decisions
Train your people as a team and challenge them to their fullest potential
Keep your people informed, provide clear vision and make your orders understood

We practiced Social Networking in a way back then, in the form of “O” groups, gathering everyone into a circle, passing on the days directions, accepting feedback and re-explaining the mission until everyone understood the intent and goal. Leadership then, as now was about people and communication and that is why I’m a SM advocate, it too is about people and communication. No matter where you are or who you are with, if you practiced these simple tenets you will be the leader… online or face to face it’s that simple (and that hard).

September 24, 2011

Musings of a GCPEDIAC: What makes a great sysop?

It’s been a great year for GCPEDIA so far. I only wish I had more time to engage with it personally. As you can see from the lapse between this post and my previous writings about my favourite wiki (or indeed, any blogging at all), I’ve been busy.

But the wiki has chugged along just fine without me. More users every month and increasingly more complex documents are making the Recent Changes log fly by faster than ever… so much so that I felt compelled to add a bit of code to the wiki to highlight the sysop names in the activity log, just to make sure that there were enough staff online to help the users. (For the record: no problems there.).

One of my very favourite collaborators, Jesse Good, returned to the fold back in January after finishing school, and promptly turned the wiki on its side with his simultaneous injections of content, culture, and fun. Meanwhile, another of my long-time favourite users, Catharine Au, was finally goaded into accepting a position as a sysop after humbly refusing it before, much to my disappointment.

September 21, 2011

“Social Production” as a Market Strategy

“Social production” is defined as the result of “the coordinated creative energy of large numbers of people (usually with the aid of the Internet) into large, meaningful projects, mostly without traditional hierarchical organization.” (Wikipedia.org)

Given that definition, can social production build stronger market economies? Will we create compelling financial incentives and rewards with more social cooperation?

“Social production” was cognitively described by Yochai Benkler in the Wealth of Networks. We often think of market and social production as mutually exclusive. We mentally pit financial outcomes against egalitarian “free” outcomes. A good example is the open source versus traditional software licensing debates currently playing out in the Gov 2.0 movement in Washington D.C.

September 6, 2011

Improving Engagement by Understanding People

I’ve been studying and/or working in government and technology (“gov20) since 2007. My original interest in the field was around improving the efficiency and effectiveness of governance. The idea was that if we had better data and information about our work, engaged with the people our policies were designed to impact, and used the best technologies to manage the process, that we could create better government. I still carry this fundamental believe, and over the last few years have had the privilege of working on a variety of different technology and engagement projects with nonprofits and government institutions as well as studying how the best practices in the field from an academic perspective.

Much of the work to date has focused on pushing the use of technology to further engagement, improve the delivery of services and information, and help organizations meet their goals and missions.

In my experience, it is important to think about several layers when designing gov/tech/engagement projects:

July 30, 2011

Social Media in the Middle East and North Africa: Why Now? What’s Next?

Last month I went back to the Kennedy School to speak at the Plenary panel of the HKS reunion weekend. The panel was called “Revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa: Why Now? What’s Next?” The panel was moderated by Xenia Dormandy, Senior Fellow at Chatham House (MPP 2000), and featured Tarek Masoud, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and Razzaq al-Saiedi, Senior Researcher, Physicians for Human Rights (MPA 2009))

I was invited to provide some perspective on the role that social media has / is playing. I was happy that the panel was so diverse; the focus was not on social media, but rather on the socio-economic and political factors at play, which was quite refreshing to someone embedded in online media.

The panel video is now available in case you want to watch it.

May 31, 2011

Accessing Australia: The Challenges of Digitisation

Senator Lundy gave a speech at the “HASS on the Hill” conference as part of a session on Accessing Australia: the challenges of digitisation. HASS on the Hill is an event coordinated by the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) for the humanities, arts and social sciences sector to communicate with government and policy makers.

Senator Lundy spoke at the event on behalf of Minister for the Arts, Simon Crean, and the speech below was a collaborative effort between our offices.

Speech Notes

It was not so long ago, in December 2008, that the newest national cultural institution – the National Portrait Gallery – opened its doors.
From the very start it was a resounding success, with visitor numbers far exceeding initial projections.

The eagerness with which Australians embraced this cultural institution says a great deal about the importance we place on our cultural collections and our access to them.

The new National Portrait Gallery sits within Canberra’s cultural precinct. As much as I would like to encourage as many visitors to Canberra as possible, realistically, not everyone is going to have that opportunity.

That opportunity lies elsewhere. That opportunity lies in the digitisation of our national treasures.

May 18, 2011

We First is a community of brands and consumers using social technology to create shared prosperity and positive change

What is We First?

We First is a new way of looking at the world authored by Simon Mainwaring. It’s a personal and professional response to a sea of fears that surround us everyday.

May 6, 2011

“Open government” – Public discussion of bills of the Government of Russian Federation

The trend of public online panel discussions is continuing its development. The relevantPresident’s decree has been released in February. Now media reports that on 1st of June the discussion system of legislative initiatives is going to be launched on the government.ru website – the program name is “Open Government”. Every citizen can be involved in legislative system via electronic voting.

The first bill under discussion will be “The bill on the basics of healthcare of Russian citizens”. The discussions are going to be coordinated by the Public Opinion Foundation. The biggest problem with national discussions is when they are not moderated the main thread will be buried under unnecessary noise.

All of the bills that could have social response are going to be submitted on online discussion.

Earlier, the Presidental Police Act was discussed at the similar special platform.

The “Open government program” could be useful in the elections season, so the opposition could not use unpopular initiatives for counter-agitation.