2013 update Automating online activities without IT intervention - using web tools to make jobs easier

There's often lots of small - and not so small - activities that communications teams want to carry out online that would make their jobs easier, but aren't really tasks to give to IT teams.

For example, you may wish to update your agency's Facebook and Twitter profile pictures when your logo changes, automatically post your blog posts to LinkedIn and Facebook, be sent an email whenever someone tweets at you or receive an alert whenever your Minister is mentioned in a breaking news story.

This is where it is useful to get familiar with services like IFTTT and Yahoo Pipes.

IFTTT, or "IF This Then That" is a simple logic engine that allow you to string together a trigger  and an action to create a 'recipe' using the format IF [trigger] then [action].

For example, below is a recipe used to automatically tweet new posts on this blog:

A recipe in IFTTT

This sounds very simple, but it can be a very powerful labour saving tool. Each trigger and action can be from different online services, or even physical devices.

A recipe in IFTTT (click to enlarge)

Recipes can be more complex, with various parameters and settings you can configure (for example the recipe above has been configured to append #gov2au to the tweets).

For example, at right is the full page for a recipe that archives your Tweets to a text file in your Dropbox.

Besides connecting the trigger (a new tweet from you) with the action (posting your tweet in Dropbox),  you can choose whether to include retweets and @replies.

You can set the file name where your tweets will be stored and the file path in Dropbox, plus you can set the content that is saved and how it will be formated.

In this case the recipe is set to keep the text of the tweet (the 'Text' in a blue box), followed on a new line by the date it was tweeted ('CreatedAt') and then, on another new line, a permanent link to the tweet ('LinkToTweet'), followed by a line break to separate it from following tweets.

You can add additional 'ingredients' such as Tweet name and User Name - essentially whatever information that Twitter shares for each tweet.

Rather than having to invent and test your own recipes, IFTTT allows people to share their recipes with others, meaning you can often find a useful recipe, rather than having to create one from scratch.

In fact I didn't create either of the recipes I've illustrated, they were already listed.

There's currently over 36,000 recipes to choose from, for the 47 services supported - from calendars, to RSS feeds, to email, to social networks, to blogs and video services, from SMS to physical devices.

All the online services that can be 'triggers' for IFTTT

It is even possible to string together recipes in sequence.

For example, if I wanted to update my profile image in Facebook, Twitter, Blogger and LinkedIn, I can set up a series of recipes such as,

• If [My Facebook profile picture updates] Then [Update my Twitter profile picture to match]
• If [My Twitter profile picture updates] Then [Update my Blogger profile picture to match]
• If [My Blogger profile picture updates] Then [Update my LinkedIn profile picture to match]
• If [My LinkedIn profile picture updates] Then [Update my Facebook profile picture to match]

Using these four recipes, whenever I update one profile picture, they will all update.

Also it's easy to turn recipes on and off - meaning that you can stop them working when necessary (such as if you want to use different profile pictures).

However there's limits to an IF THEN system, which is where a tool like Yahoo Pipes gets interesting.

Yahoo Pipes is a service used to take inputs, such as an RSS or data feed, webpage, spreadsheet or data from a database, manipulate, filter and combine them with other data and then provide an output with no programming knowledge.

This sounds a bit vague, so here's a basic example - say you wanted to aggregate all news related to Victoria released by Australian Government agencies in media releases.

To do this in Yahoo Pipes you'd fetch RSS feeds from the agencies you were interested in, 'sploosh' them together as a single file, filter out any releases that don't mention 'Victoria', then output what is left as an RSS feed.

Building a Yahoo Pipe (click to enlarge)

But that's getting ahead of ourselves a little... To the right is an image depicting how I did this with Yahoo Pipes.

Here's how it works...

First you'll need to go to pipes.yahoo.com and log in with a Yahoo account.

First I created a set of tools to fetch RSS from Australian Government agencies. These are the top five blue boxes. To create each I simply dragged the Fetch feed from the 'sources' section of the left-hand menu onto the main part of the screen and then pasted in each RSS feed URL into the text fields provided (drawing from the RSS list in Australia.gov.au).

Next, to combine these feeds, I used one of the 'operator' function from the left menu named Union. What this does is it allows you to combine separate functions into a single output file. To combine the Fetch feed RSS feeds all I needed to do was click on the bottom circle under each (their output circle) and drag the blue line to a top circle on the Union box (the input circle).

Then I created a Filter, also an 'operator' function and defined the three conditions I wanted to include in my final output - news items with 'Victoria', 'Victorian' or 'Melbourne'. All others get filtered out.  I linked the Filter's input circle to the Union's output circle, then linked the output from the Filter to the Pipe Output.

Then I tested the system worked by clicking on the blue header for each box and viewing their output in the Debugger window at bottom.

When satisfied it worked (and I did have to remove the filter condition 'Vic' as it picked up parts of words such as "service"), I saved my pipe using the top right save button, giving it the name 'Victoria RSS', then ran the pipe and published it at http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=0392f5ec8f7450abbf650056c22f1e5d.

You can also see the output RSS feed at: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=0392f5ec8f7450abbf650056c22f1e5d&_render=rss

Note that pipes don't have to be published, you can keep them private. You can also publish their outputs as RSS feeds or as a web service (using JSON) for input into a different system. You can even get the results as a web badge for your site, by email, phone or as PHP for websites.

An IFTTT recipe built from the Yahoo Pipe above
(click to enlarge)

Alternatively you can even combine them with IFTTT - for example creating a recipe that sends you an email every time an Australian Government agency mentions Victoria in an media release.

In fact I created this recipe (in about 30 seconds) to demonstrate how easy it was. You can see it to the right, or go and access it at IFTTT at the recipe link: http://ifttt.com/recipes/43242

So that's how easy it now is to automate actions, or activities, online - with no IT skills, in a short time.

There's lots of simple, and complex, tasks that can be automated easily and quickly with a little creativity and imagination.

You can also go back and modify or turn your recipes and pipes on and off when needed, you can share them with others in your team or across agencies quickly and easily.

Have you a task you'd like to automate? 

• Finding mentions of your Department on Twitter or Facebok
• Tracking mentions of your program in the media releases of other agencies
• Archiving all your Tweets and Facebook statuses
• Receiving an SMS alert when the weather forecast is for rain (so you take your umbrella)
• Posting your Facebook updates, Blog posts and media releases automatically on Twitter spread throughout the day (using Buffer)

The sky's the limit!

2013 update Guest post: Public engagement: more customer service than comms

Today I'm featuring a guest post from Pia Waugh, former IT Advisor to Senator Lundy, convenor of the recent Canberra GovCamp and GovHack and one of the luminaries of the Australian Gov 2.0 scene.

As she plans to continue to update this post, for the latest version visit her blog at http://pipka.org/public-engagement-more-customer-service-than-comms/

Public engagement: more customer service than comms

I’ve been involved in online communities for many years. I’ve seen and been in projects that span every possible traditional barrier to collaboration (location, culture, language, politics, religion, gender, etc, etc). This experience combined with my time in government has given me some useful insights about the key elements that make for a constructive online community.

What I came to learn was the art and craft of community development and management. This skill is common in the technology world, particularly in large successful open source projects where projects either evolve to have good social infrastructure or they fail. There are of course a few exceptions to the rule where bad behaviour is part of the culture of a project, but by and large, a project that is socially inclusive and that empowers individuals to contribute meaningfully will do better than one that is not.

It turns out these skills are not as widespread as I expected. This is problematic as we are now seeing a horde of “social media experts” who often give shallow and unsustainable advice to government and companies alike, advice that is not rooted in the principles of community engagement.

The fact is that social media tools are part of a broader story. A story that sees “traditional” communications turned upside down. The skills to best navigate this space and have a meaningful outcome are not based in the outdated premise that a media office is the single source of communications due to the media being the primary mechanism to get information out to the general public. There will continue to be, I believe, a part for the media to play (we could all use professional analysis and unbiased news coverage, please). However, as governments in particular, we will have a far more meaningful and mutually beneficial relationship with citizens where we genuinely and directly engage with them on matters of policy, service delivery, democratic participation and ways that government can facilitate public and private innovation.

You might be lucky and have some media people who have adapted well to the new world order, but any social media strategy limited to the media office will have limitations in delivery that starts to chafe after a while.

It is when you get your customer service and policy people engaged online that you will start to see genuine engagement, genuine community building and the possibility to leverage crowdsourcing. It is when you start to get people skilled in community engagement involved to work alongside your media people and in collaboration with the broader organisation that you will be able to best identify sustainable and constructive ways your organisation can apply social media, or indeed, whatever comes next.

Below are some vital skills I would recommend you identify, hire or upskill in your organisation. Outsourcing can be useful but ideally, to do this stuff well, you need the skills within your organisation. Your own people who know the domain space and can engage with imprimatur on behalf of your organisation.

I’ll continue to build this post up as I have time, and would love your feedback

Herding Cats

In my time in online communities I came to understand the subtleties in what we in the geek world refer to as “herding cats”. That is, working with a large number of individuals who have each their own itch to scratch, skills, interests and indeed, vices. Individuals who have a lot to contribute and are motivated for myriad reasons to get involved.

I learnt how to get the best out of people by creating a compelling narrative, having a meaningful goal, uniting people over what we have in common rather than squabbling over what is different.

Herding cats is about genuinely wanting people to get involved, recognising you can’t “control” the conversation or outcomes, but you can encourage a constructive dialogue. Herding cats ends up being about leadership, building respect, being an active part of a live conversation, setting and encouraging a constructive tone, managing community expectations and being a constant presence that people can turn to and rely upon. Cat herding is about building community.

Finally, herding cats is about managing trolls in a constructive way. Sometimes trolls are just passionate people who have been burnt and feel frustrated. They can sometimes become your greatest contributors because they often care about the topic. If you always engage with trolls in a helpful and constructive way, you won’t miss the opportunities to connect with those who genuinely have something meaningful to contribute.

Community and Topic Research

You need to know the communities of interest. The thought leaders, where they are having their discussions, what one-to-many points (technical, social, events) can you tap into to encourage participation and to get your finger on the pulse of what the community really thinks. Community research is about knowing a little about the history and context of the communities involved, about the right (and wrong) language, about if and how they have engaged before and getting the information you need to build a community of interest.

Topic research means your community engagement person needs to know enough about the domain area to be able to engage intelligently with communities of interest. Your organisation is effectively represented by these people so you need them to be smart, informed, genuine, socially and emotionally intelligent, “customer service” oriented and able to say when they don’t know, but be able to follow it up.

Collaboration & Co-design

This skillset is about intuitively trying to include others in a process. Trying to connect the dots on communities, perspectives, skills and interests to draw people from industry, academia and any other relevant groups into the co-design of your project. By getting knowledgable, clever and connected people in the tent, you achieve both a better plan and a community of (possible influential) people who will hopefully want to see your initiative succeed. Co-design isn’t just about creating something and asking people’s opinion, but engaging them in the process of developing the idea in the first place.

A little thanks goes a long way. By publicly recognising the efforts of contributors you also encourage them to continue to contribute but whatever you are engaging on needs to be meaningful, and have tangible outcomes people can see and get behind.

Real outcomes of your online engagement are key in managing public expectations.

Monitoring, Analysis & Feedback Mechanisms

It is vital that you have internally the skills to monitor what is happening online, analyse both the content generated and the context around the content created (the community, individuals, location, related news, basically all the metadata that helps you understand what the data means).

By constantly monitoring and analysing, you should be able to identify iterative improvements to your online engagement strategy, your project, policy or “product”. Most people focus on one of these three (usually the latest toy with pretty but meaningless graphs spruiked by some slick salesperson), but it is by turning the data into knowledge and finally into actions or iterative improvements that you will be able to respond in a timely and appropriate manner to new opportunities and challenges.

2013 update Transforming public engagement though social media (almost live from Singapore)

This morning I presented at the Reading Room Digital Conversations forum to a group of Singaporean government officials on the topic of Transforming public engagement through social media.

I talked through how connected Australia had become, and pointed out that the goals of public engagement have not really changed (using the IAP2 model to illustrate), only our tools.

My presentation then went through a range of different engagement examples across the IAP2 spectrum, from Inform to Empower, and then pointed out that governments weren't necessarily the driving force behind Gov 2.0 - illustrating several Gov 2.0 initiatives created outside of government.

I concluded with Zombies (as all good presentations do) - demonstrating how governments can be more playful without being unprofessional, using popular culture and memes to stimulate public engagement with hard to reach audiences.

I've embedded my presentation below - enjoy!

View more presentations from Craig Thomler.

2013 update Selecting the right tool for the job of online citizen engagement

This report was brought to my attention by Sandy Heierbacher in the Online Engagement Group at LinkedIn, and I thought it well worth sharing more widely.

Also blogged about by Sandy at the US National Coalition for Deliberation and Democracy (NCDD), in the post The Promise and Problems of Online Deliberation, the report provides a look at how online tools can be used in citizen deliberation, with recommendations on which tools to use when.

The report is available from: http://kettering.org/publications/the-promise-and-problems-of-online-deliberation/

There's even a supporting infographic as below:

| 2013 Popular What the Facebook ruling from the Advertising Standards Board (that comments are ads) means for agencies

There's been a lot of commentary this week in the media around the decision by the Australian Advertising Board (ASB) to rule that the comments of fans published on an brand's Facebook page are actually advertisements and must comply with industry self-regulation and consumer protection laws.

In face the ruling states that Facebook, and other social media tools, are advertising platforms - which may come as a surprise to long-term users of these services.

The ASB ruling is available as a PDF here. It involved Smirnoff Vodka and stated that content (comments and photos specifically) appearing on the company’s brand Facebook page constituted advertising, regardless of whether the company or members of the public posted it.

That's right - the ASB ruling states that all user comments in social media may be advertising.

The basis for this ruling was a recent legal decision:

The view that brands are responsible for consumer created content on their social media  pages has been supported by a recent decision of an Australian Federal Court (Australian  Competition and Consumer Commission v Allergy Pathway Pty Ltd (No 2) [2011] FCA 74)1  that a health company was responsible for Facebook and Twitter comments by fans on its  account in defiance of a court order that the company not make misleading claims about its  allergy treatments  The Federal Court concluded that Allergy Pathway was responsible for third-party comments where it knew of them and made a  decision not to remove them from its Facebook page 

Therefore as Smirnoff had the technical capability to moderate user comments on its Facebook page, it had an obligation to do so. If it did not moderate user comments which made untrue claims about the company or its brands (as well as sexist, racist or otherwise unlawful statements) it was guilty of false advertising.

The apparent consequence of the ruling, for organisations who participate in the ASB's self-regulation scheme, is that they are now required to moderate all comments by individuals on their brand and corporate Facebook pages, other social networks, blogs, wikis, forums and social media channels in which they have the technical ability to do so.

This requirement may even potentially extend to platforms outside their direct control but where they can identify and request untrue (or otherwise uncompliant) comments about their company or brand to be removed - such as on Facebook pages or forums moderated by people outside the organisation (such as members of the public).

Some facts

The Australian Advertising Board is the directing group over the Advertising Standards Bureau body appointed to oversee the self-regulation of advertising in Australia by the members of the Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA).

It is a body independent of government and independent of advertisers. It is not underpinned by any government legislation or policy and it is a voluntary organisation which participating associations, corporations, advertising agencies and other bodies agree to abide by.

Decisions by the Board are neither legally binding nor, necessarily, reflective of government policy.

Where a participating advertiser does not abide by an ASB ruling (which is apparently very rare), the ASB can "liaise with industry and media bodies such as FreeTV, and the Outdoor Media Association which will either negotiate with the advertiser directly for the removal of the advertisement or in specific cases, take action to remove the advertisement."

The ASB may also refer advertisers to an appropriate government body and recommend a course of action.

However the ASB and its secretariat - the Advertising Standards Bureau - has no direct enforcement power, nor any ability to force other parties (such as industry bodies or government agencies) to take action.

Putting the ruling in perspective

This ruling needs to be considered seriously by ASB participants - corporations and advertising agencies in particular.

They need to have a long hard look at whether they can afford to maintain social media channels with the risk that anyone in the community who comments in a channels they can technically control - including, potentially, their competitors - can cause them a world of pain by posting untrue things about them.

I'm not sure if governments participate directly in the self-regulation scheme, however it would be bad form for agencies to ignore direct rulings against their advertising by the ASB.

Is it 'right'?

This is my opinion, but the ASB's position doesn't stand up to scrutiny in a technical, practical or fair sense.

It is based on 20th Century thinking whereby organisations control the channels, and therefore the conversations, with audiences.

In reality this control has slipped almost totally out of the hands of organisations due to the internet and particularly due to social media. Organisations can (and should) control their direct statements, however they can't control the statements of other entities and individuals, beyond having some influence and oversight based on Australia's legal framework around defamation, slander and copyright.

Redefining individual comments as 'advertising' is highly problematic and is a disservice to the already weak freedom of speech provisions in Australia.

If I say on my blog that the Honda Jazz is the best car ever made, it is reasonable to assume that this is my opinion, not an advertisement. If I made the same statement on Honda's company Facebook page this remains my opinion - I am simply directing it at the people who made the car, in tribute to them.

Of course there is an exception if Honda has given me money, privileges, or a Honda Jazz - in which case my comments are advertising and need to be treated as such. (Note that Honda has not given me anything and I've never driven a Honda Jazz, nor wanted to)

Of course this is just about a car - a product. How about if I say on a government Facebook page that, for example, "I think the Fair Work Act is the best workplace relations bill in the world". Would this have to be moderated and removed as, despite it being a potentially heartfelt personal opinion, it is considered advertising (aka - has no facts to back it up)?

Isn't 'opinion' by definition a personal view which may, or may not, be supported by facts?

Apparently not. It's advertising. Hmmm...


Let's take practicality. On a Facebook page with 15,000 fans, 1% being active any week, that's 150 posts to moderate. Assuming it takes 3 minutes on average to assess each, it will take 450 minutes, or 7.5 hours, solid work to moderate all content.

That's possible with a single part-time, trained, moderation officer.

Now let's consider the Tourism Australia Facebook page. It has 3,375,675 fans. If 1% are active in any week, that's over 37,500 posts to moderate. Based on 3 minutes per post, it takes 112,500 minutes, 1,875 hours, or 250 person-days (based on a 7.5 hr work day) to moderate. Each week.

On that basis, Tourism Australia would require at least 50 people (plus extras to cover for leave) to moderate the page to get rid of user 'advertisement' comments which are not evidentially statements of fact, such as these real comments on the page right now:

• "A very blessed country. It has almost all the best things in life. I love Australia"
• "Australia the land of grace and tranquility"
• "Best country in the world"
• "better hurry to this Whitsunday resort before it too is closed like so many of the others"

What have others said?

Generally industry bodies have come out cautiously and indicated that companies need to digest the ruling and consider its implications.

Those experienced in social media have been less cautious and mostly said the idea won't work (though a minority have said it just reinforces what brands already had to do).

Here's a few articles on the topic as a reference:

• Watchdog clamps down on Facebook
• Facebook ruling poses challenges for advertisers
• Rethink forced on the use of Facebook by brands
• Brands forced to get Facebook trolls under control
• Making Social Media accountable
• ASB rules brands are responsible for all fan comments on Facebook
• Facebook page comments must pass advertising laws

Science, Technology & Wellbeing - plus community engagement by government | 2013 Popular

There's an interesting event coming up in Canberra for Science Week, a discussion around Science, Technology & Wellbeing that seeks to build engagement between government, scientists and the community around the topic of "How can we improve our lives? And how might science and technology help?"

To be held as a free event on 18 August at Canberra's Southern Cross Yacht Club, the aims are to build:

a clearer picture of what wellbeing means to people and current issues of concern, to experiment with thinking about science and technology in new ways, and to help develop DIISRTE's new framework for community engagement about science and technology, STEP (Science & Technology Engagement Pathways; http://www.innovation.gov.au/step).

The event is being run by the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education and should be a very interesting glimpse into how agencies are seeking to develop new frameworks for community engagement, building off increasing public participation engendered by the growth of the internet.

For more information and to book, visit http://wellbeingtechnologyforum.eventbrite.com.au/?ebtv=C

2013 Remembering to say thank you to citizens

Every day thousands of citizens donate their time and energy online to help government agencies across Australia.

They respond to feedback surveys on websites, provide submissions to consultations, share agency updates on Twitter and Facebook, participate in government-run online groups, provide tips and case studies to help government campaigns help others, create blog posts, websites and pages supporting government activities and even develop apps that add value to government data.

Much of this is done out of passion and interest in supporting the community, not for direct financial or personal benefit.

So wouldn't it be nice for agencies to sometimes say 'thank you' to the citizens that support public servants to do their jobs serving the government of the day and community?

I know several institutions that have learnt the art of saying 'thanks'.

There's appreciation of the efforts of teams in government operated hackathons, the Victorian State Library has invited its largest online supporters to 'meet the team' events at the Library to recognise their selfless activities and the National Library has recognised the largest contributors to Trove in several ways.

However there's many agencies who still forget the simple art of saying thank you to people outside their own walls.

Whether it is physical get-togethers, certificates or letters signed by the Minister or Secretary, a personal email from the online team, public recognition online in a Facebook group or some other method, saying thank you is one of the most important, and human, gestures that can be made to create a positive lasting relationship.

My wife and I will always treasure this simple thank you from the WSPCA last year.

The NAB has taken another route with the video below.

So think about it. When was the last time your agency thanked citizens for giving up their valuable time  to help your agency? What can you do more of to recognise their support, and encourage more of it in the future?

2012 Integrating LinkedIn into your agency's social media activity

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have become the staple platforms for commercial and public sector social media engagement in Australia - driven by the level of activity on those sites by Australians.

However LinkedIn, while used personally by many in business and government roles (around 16% of online Australians - over three million people), has lagged behind in its official use, particularly by government agencies.

LinkedIn, it is fair to say, is a curious beast in social media terms. Rather than being a place where people gather socially to chat and build friendships, it is a business networking site for discussing work-related issues and sharing useful resources.

Conversations on LinkedIn are frequently quite detailed, involve case studies and examples, tend to be more fact-based and involve less emotion and opinion than is seen on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

While lurking is possible, LinkedIn's real value is in the meeting of professional minds on complex issues, making it far less 'fun' to use, but far more valuable to power users.

I have used LinkedIn for professional purposes for years, building a large network of people I wish to maintain contact with, using it for finding staff, researching organisations and locating particular expertise. I contribute less frequently to groups in LinkedIn, but find several are sources of great knowledge on specific topics.

For agencies the case for LinkedIn use is different to the case for other online tools as LinkedIn is less effective as a communications platform, but can be quite valuable as a recruitment, contact management and stakeholder management tool or as a source of knowledge and expertise across many professional topics.

I believe this difference in purpose has held its use back in government as LinkedIn is less often used by communication teams and more often used by engagement and HR teams - who have been slower to adopt online channels in their every day work.

However, with over three million users, LinkedIn is now becoming important for locating and assessing staff and stakeholders and needs consideration within agency recruitment and engagement strategies. Through an organisation's LinkedIn profile agencies are able to tell potential staff what they do and offer, provide access to careers and information on their key goals and services or products.

By having an organisation page, individuals working at an agency can also link themselves to it - which provides the organisation with a view of which of their current staff are active on LinkedIn and also provides a way to keep an eye on alumni for prospective hiring back or approaching for expertise and knowledge of past events.

Of course, with organisations across Australia, or internationally, sometimes having the same name, registering your organisation with LinkedIn is also important to 'own' it before someone else registers it (if they haven't already). I recall having an interesting experience back at the Child Support Agency where staff in Australia were being accidentally associated with the UK's Child Support Agency before I could establish the Australian listing in LinkedIn.

For certain agencies (IP Australia, Austrade and the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education, for example), LinkedIn also offers opportunities to build business connections and lead or participate in appropriate topic groups in far more cost-effective ways that traditional 'round table' engagements.

So who is using LinkedIn right now in government and how?

Unfortunately the use of LinkedIn by agency isn't yet tracked by government social media lists, nationally, in Victoria, NSW, QLD or WA.

However, some agencies have begun using it, such as the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, FAHCSIA and the Department of Education, Employment, and Workplace Relations which have provided a profile, but no jobs or 'products'.

The Department of Health and Ageing has gone slightly further, listing key campaigns and the Brisbane City Council uses LinkedIn to advertise jobs.

However the government agency most effectively using LinkedIn in Australia that I've come across is  Queensland Health, which has customised its landing page to offer news and updates, lists jobs and provides plenty of supporting information on joining the organisation.

This last example shows what is possible with LinkedIn to attract quality recruits and draw back experienced alumni.

Groups, which are not linked to organisational profiles, also provide ways to connect and engage stakeholders. The most notable one I'm aware of in Australian Government is AusGoal, used to discuss the open access and licensing framework being put in place for commonwealth and state governments and share relevant information from around the world.

It is possible that there are many other government groups on LinkedIn, hidden behind passwords and only accessible to a selected few, as well as the many unofficial government groups publicly listed which government staff already belong to (such as the Online Communicators Forum).

In either case these organisational profiles and groups may offer benefits to agencies beyond the use of social networks for broad public engagement. The real challenge within agencies is to rethink the management and purpose of social media - from communication and engagement with large communities, to also include the use of social networks, such as LinkedIn, in more narrow, focused and specific interactions beyond the communications sphere.

2012 Australia's e-tax service hits 20 million lodgments over 13 years - an egovernment case study

Most people under the age of 35 probably don't remember a world without e-tax, a system developed by the Australian Tax Office to make it simpler and faster for Australians to complete their tax returns.

Before e-tax was introduced in 1999 Australian taxpayers all had to do their tax by hand, or get an accountant involved even for the simplest tax returns.

I still remember labouring over the complex and long (130+ pages) pre-eTax tax packs, like this 1995 Tax pack (PDF), a scanned version that has been archived in the ATO website. Even looking at this old tax pack makes me feel jumpy and tense - although these packs attempted to make tax easy, they were still daunting to complete.

While early e-tax software was a little rough around the edges and wasn't available for platforms other than Windows (a point of contention for Apple fans), it immediately made tax time much less of a burden.

The software has developed a great deal since 1999, become much easier to use and added useful functions such as autofilling employer group certificate information if you have an internet connection. e-tax now caters for a much broader group of taxpayers than when it was first created.

Sure e-tax still isn't available for Apple or Linux, but having a product for 85% of the market is far, far better, in my view, than not having one at all. As an Apple user myself, I have no problem with using a secondary PC to do my tax if it saves me time and effort overall (though an Apple version would be a nice-to-have, as would, now, a tablet version).

Last week I noticed an announcement that e-tax had just reached 20 million lodgments (as at 31 October this year). So I asked the ATO for some information about e-tax over the years - who is using it and where they live.

The information I received provided an interesting glimpse into the history of e-tax.

Growth of e-tax

In 1999, the year e-tax first launched, the tool was used by only 27,146 people to lodge their tax. By 2011, the latest available full year of data this had grown by 74 times to 2,600,228 people.

The service has grown every year, at an average rate of 43% over its 12 year life. This year looks to be no different, as e-tax lodgments only took four weeks to reach a million, compared to five weeks in 2011.

With over 2.5 million e-tax lodgments by the end of October 2012, and as the ATO doesn't 'close the books' until May 2013, e-tax is extremely likely to reach twelfth consecutive years of growth in absolute lodgement terms.

However while this is impressive, e-tax growth has slowed substantially over the last four years, to a rate of around 5% per year.

This is barely larger than the overall growth in tax returns, which suggests that e-tax has reached a plateau in usage. This isn't a bad thing overall - e-tax has been very successful and isn't in decline, however it has reached a point where the ATO might wish to consider expanding or redesigning e-tax to encourage a new group of tax payers to leap on board, or at minimum adopt a new marketing approach to encourage more people to trial the service for 2013.

e-tax lodgments from 1999 to 2012 (2012 is a partial year only) Source: ATO

e-tax demographics

It was also interesting to look at the demographics for e-tax, which the ATO was able to supply for 2011 (and I hope earlier years will become available as well, to show how the demographics have changed).

Gender was very balanced, largely reflecting Australia's population, with 48.9% of lodgements being by males and 51.1% by females.

However the average e-tax user was young and earned far less than the average weekly wage. In fact almost two-thirds (65%) of e-tax users were younger than 40 years old, with only 12% being aged 55 or older and half (51%) had an income of $21,600 or less, with only 11% earning $63,001 or more in the 2011 financial year. (see tables below).

This might reflect the digital enthusiasm of younger people, where pre e-tax generations may not be as familiar or comfortable using an e-tax system. It may also reflect the more complex tax situations of older and better paid Australians, which may require the aid of accountants.

Hopefully e-tax users are 'ageing', just as internet users are. If this is this case, which would need a number of years of e-tax demographics to detect, then it is likely that people who take up e-tax are sticking with it, meaning that the older and better paid groups will become more highly represented over time.

Age group	e-tax users	Percentage
18 yrs or less	105,284	4.30%
19 - 24 years	506,869	20.72%
25 - 39 years	991,412	40.52%
40 - 54 years	549,727	22.47%
55 years or older	293,575	12.00%
Total	2,446,867	100.00%

Income	e-tax users	Percentage
Less than zero	9,437	0.39%
Equal to $0	8,342	0.34%
$1-$6,000	146,675	5.99%
$6,001-$21,600	1,098,806	44.91%
$21,600-$63,000	913,771	37.34%
$63,001-$95,000	250,725	10.25%
$95,001 or more	19,111	0.78%
Total	2,446,867	100.00%

The location of lodgers was also interesting, particularly when compared to Australia's population. In absolute numbers, more Queenslanders than Victorians use e-tax, despite Victoria's 20% larger population, and more ACT residents than Tasmanians, despite Tasmania having 50% more people than the ACT.

Comparing e-tax usage against state populations at June 2011, proportionately the leader was the ACT with 21.1% of residents using e-tax. Next was Western Australia with 12.9% of residents followed by Queensland with 12.6%.

The lowest adopters of e-tax by population were the Northern Territory at 9.4%, Victoria at 9.9% and New South Wales at 10.2%. There may be substantial room for growth in e-tax use in these states, although the ATO might find targeted, rather than national, campaigns would best encourage take-up.

Location	e-tax users	Percentage	Population (June 2011)	Percentage
NSW	708,933	0.39%	6,917,658	10.2%
QLD	547,212	0.34%	4,332,739	12.6%
VIC	530,870	5.99%	5,354,042	9.9%
WA	289,235	44.91%	2,239,170	12.9%
SA	196,936	37.34%	1,596,572	12.3%
ACT	75,313	10.25%	357,222	21.1%
TAS	57,291	0.78%	495,354	11.6%
NT	19,857	0.81%	211,945	9.4%
Overseas	21,120	0.86%	NA	NA
Total	2,446,867	100.00%	21,504,702	11.4%

Conclusions

Overall my view is that e-tax has been an extremely successful initiative by the Australian government, encouraging millions of Australians to adopt a digital channel to engage with government.

The e-tax system itself, while necessarily complex (as is the tax system), has been refined to be usable and a far more pleasant experience than the prior paper-based tax packs.

However, like many innovative services and products, e-tax is now reaching a plateau, with little growth in annual usage over the last few years.

Assuming that e-tax saves the government money in chasing people to complete their annual tax chore, and therefore the ATO wants to keep growing e-tax use, it is time for the ATO to review the service to understand who isn't using it and why.

From this knowledge the ATO can make decisions on how to improve and promote e-tax, giving it a new kick in usage and, hopefully, both make tax time faster and easier for citizens and bring in tax dollars faster for government.

The ATO has taken a few steps to promote e-tax already, through media releases, the ATO Facebook page (though the e-tax Facebook page appears to have been deleted) and the video below.

These are a good start, however if with these communications e-tax still only has a marginal increase in usage this year, clearly more will need to be done to boost e-tax to the next level.

2013 How Asia is taking the Gov 2.0 lead and Australia needs to look north for inspiration

Over the last few days in Singapore I've had the opportunity to have some very interesting discussions with government and academic representatives about the state of egovernance and Government 2.0 across Asia - perspectives we all too rarely hear in Australia.

This is a major shame for government officials in Australia, who are not exposed as regularly to the fantastic insights and practices from countries that are, in some areas, leading Australia in their online engagement.

For example, South Korea has been rated first in egovernment globally since 2010 by the UN in their bi-annual E-government survey. In the latest 2012 result, Australia is ranked 12th, third in Asia-Pacific behind South Korea (1st) and then Singapore (10th) but ahead of New Zealand (13th) and Japan (18th).

I was fortunately enough to speak with a representative of the Ministry in South Korea responsible for their egovernment program and it is clear why they have achieved that position.

With support from their President down, a mandated government CIO role, long-term development strategy over more than ten years focusing on both supply (IT infrastructure) and demand (usability and access), the commitment of 1% of the government's budget to the provision of e-services and infrastructure and a unified whole of government change program to educate and support public servants, South Korea has hit the mark on the right way to implement a major change in national institutions.

Other countries in Asia are also being dynamic and adapting to their increasingly vocal online audiences.

Malaysia, where around 60% of the population have internet access, has over 12 million Facebook users and roughly 1.6 million active Twitter users - similar to Australia's 11.5 million and 2 million respectively. With a promise made in 1998 by the government to keep the internet censor-free, Malaysian government Ministers and Departments are making broader use of blogs for civil engagement than their counterparts in Australia.

Brunei, a small developed Asian nation that some Australians may not even be aware of (as it has only 400,000 people and a land area roughly twice that of the ACT), collaborated with South Korea to recently launch an E-Government Innovation Centre (eG InC.) designed to help the government achieve the Brunei 2035 target to establish a knowledge-based economy. The eG InC. was recognised in the 2012 Futuregov awards, winning the citizen engagement award.

I also learnt this trip about Singapore's appointment of a Chief of Government Communications, a new role created from 1 July 2012 designed to support co-ordination, information and resource sharing across the communications teams within Singaporean national government departments.

The Singaporean government created this role after the ruling party received the lowest vote in their history and recognised that government communication was an area that could be improved to better serve citizen needs.

Some might note similarities to the situation in Australia, if not in the governance solution.

One of the initiatives launched since this appointment has been a national conversation with Singaporeans regarding their issues and expectations towards 2030, involving a year long process to engage the entire nation in identifying major concerns and trends which the government can influence.

These are only some of the stories I've heard over the last few days, but are representative of the steps forward being taken in Asia to adopt digital and web 2.0 technologies to improve governance and drive future productivity and national wellbeing.

While Australia has many notable achievements in the Government 2.0 area, and I was able to share a number of them with people from across the region on this trip, there is much for Australian governments to learn from the approaches being taken in nations to our near north, as well as from those far to our west such as in Europe and the Americas.

With the release of the Australian Government's Australia in the Asian Century white paper - which was favourably commented on by many I've met this trip - it is time for public servants to look north for innovations and inspirations, as well as west.

2013 Are organisations failing in their use of social media and apps as customer service channels?

Guy Cranswick of IBRS has brought my attention to a media release about a new report from Fifth Quadrant, a leading Australian customer experience strategy and research consultancy, on social media and smartphone app customer service enquiries.

The report looked at how many Australian consumers had used these channels for customer service enquiries and why they'd used, or not used, them.

The figures are quite dim reading...

The study (of 520 participants) indicated that only 16% of Australian consumers have ever used social media for a customer service enquiry and less than one in 10 Australians had used this channel for customer service in the last three months. Gen Y ran 'hotter', with 29% having ever used social media for a customer service enquiry.

Why didn't people use social media for these enquiries? The survey broke down the reasons as follows (multiple reasons allowed):

• 32% said it isn't personal, 
• 30% said they did not know that they could,
• 30% said they were concerned with security issues,
• 22% said they thought it would take longer than a phone call, and
• 20% said they did not think it would be a good experience. 

The research also looked at smartphone apps and their use in customer enquiries. Here the figures were even lower. Only 15% of Australian consumers had ever used a smartphone application for a customer enquiry (20% amongst Gen Y), and only 8% of consumers had used this channel in the last three months.

The reasons for not using apps were similar to social media:

• 41% said they did not know they could,
• 21% said they thought it would take longer than a phone call,
• 16% said they thought it would make the process slower to talk to a customer service representative,
• 15% said they did not think it would be a good experience, and 
• 13% said that they did not think it would be easy to use.

My immediate reaction was to say that, well, social media and smartphone apps are still very young and immature, both effectively five or less years old as mass communication and engagement channels. It takes time for organisations and customers to adopt their use for customer service.

However, other research suggests that this may not exactly be the case.

Fifth Quadrant’s 2012 Customer Service Industry Market Report (with 120 business participants) found that 69% of Australian based organisations had implemented social media and 23% had implemented smartphone apps for customer service. This is a small sample, but still statistically significant.

In other words, while 69% of organisations will accept customer service enquiries via social media, only 16% of Australians have used this approach and while 23% accept these enquiries via smartphone apps, only 15% of Australians have used these channels.

So if organisations are offering these channels, why do so few Australians use them?

More of Fifth Quadrant's research offers a clue...

How many times should a customer have to contact an organisation to resolve a customer service issue?

Fifth Quadrant reports that the level of 'first contact resolution' (where a customer only needs to contact an organisation once to have their query resolved) is much lower for social media or smartphone app than for phone contacts.

• Phone: 78% of queries handled in one contact
• Social media: 59%
• Smartphone app: 51%

In other words, 41% of people attempting to use social media and 49% of those using smartphone apps will have to contact the organisation multiple times (often resorting to phone) to resolve their query.

This significantly increases the cost of the interaction to the organisation and the customer and reduces customer satisfaction.

So what's the issue? Poor organisational implementation of social media and app channels.

Fifth Quadrant's Director, Dr Wallace said,

“There is no question that social media and mobile channels will be important in the next few years as the percentage of consumers who use these channels for customer service doubles year on year. Rather, it is a question of how effectively organisations address the supporting business processes and skill levels of social media customer service representatives.

The challenge for Australian business is that they typically do not consider Multi-channel Customer Experience as a strategy, hence these new channels lack integration, they do not have accurate revenue and cost models and there is poor data analytics. This has resulted in a sub-optimal channel deployment and as the research shows, ultimately, a sub-optimal customer experience.”

So let's go back to the reasons again...

• There was an awareness issue (social media: 30%; apps: 41%).
  Organisations need to integrate information about the ability to engage them through social media and apps in their promotion, packaging and engagement.
• There was a speed/perceived speed issue (social media: 22% (take longer); apps: 21% (take longer) and 16% (slower)).
  Organisations need to integrate these channels with their other customer contact points, building the protocols and processes to make it faster and easier to engage online than by phone.
• There was an experience/usability issue (social media: 30% (not personal), 20% (experience); apps: 15% (experience) and 13% (easy to use)).
  Organisations need to codesign their channels with customers, putting extensive work into the upfront experiential design to make them an easy to use service with a great user experience. The investment in design is more than offset by the long-term cost savings in moving people from high-cost phone to low cost online service channels.
• There was a security issue (social media 30%).
  Organisations need to take the same actions as ecommerce companies did to reduce this to a minimum, providing context, clear security measures and escalation and rectification mechanisms that assure users that they won't be disadvantaged by any security problems.

Overall, organisations need to run these channels as part of their customer service framework, not remotely via communication, marketing or IT teams.

Want to learn more about the research and report?

See Dr Wallace's blog, Your call.

And here are some of the key findings from Fifth Quadrant’s 2012 Customer Service Industry Market Report (n=120):

Social Media:

1. In Australia, the predominant share of the 22 million daily customer interactions handled by contact centres is still handled by live agents (52%). Despite industry increasing the implementation of social media as a customer service channel, Share of Contact Handling by Social Media channels is 0.2%
2. Amongst organisations that offer social media as a channel for customer service, 67% report that the marketing department is responsible for managing it.
3. 63% of organisations in the study have only had social media as a channel for customer service implemented for 1 to 2 years.
4. Amongst organisations that currently have social media as a customer service channel only 29% reported their contact centre has the ability to escalate a social media query through to a customer support application that links through to an agent.
5. Past three months usage of social media as a customer service channel has doubled in the past 12 months (4% 2011; 8% 2012).
6. The proportion of consumers who believe they will be using social media more often in the future has also nearly doubled from 4% in 2011 to 7% in 2012. 
7. When asked whether they had received a response from an organisation via a Social Media network to comments they had made through Social Media, only 7% of consumers reported that they had. About 5% of consumers claim to have received essential information posted via a Social Media network. 14% of consumers report they have received information from an organisation via social media about new products and services. 

Smartphone Apps:

1. Amongst organisations that offer smartphone apps as a channel for customer service 50% report that the marketing department is responsible for managing it, with a further 33% reporting that IT is responsible.
2. 50% have only had smartphone apps as a channel for customer service implemented for one to two years, with 33% reporting smartphone app has been available for less than 12 months. 
3. Amongst organisations that do not currently offer smartphone app as a channel for customer service, 25% report they have no plans to. 
4. Further to the existing 8% of consumers who have used a smartphone app for customer service, a further 33% of consumers report that they are likely to use a smartphone app for a customer service enquiry in the next 12 months. 
5. Amongst Gen Y consumers, 29% report that they will be using smartphone apps for customer service issues more often in the next 1-2 years. This is significantly higher compared to Baby Boomer (8%) and Silent (4%) generations.

2013 But we're the experts! Why the 'internal expert' democratic governance model is gradually failing and what can be done about it.

Most public sector agencies are designed as centres of expertise on policy and service delivery.

By gathering, or training, experts in a given topical area and marshalling and directing this expertise to resolve specific issues and goals, agencies have been designed to design and deliver effective and sound policy and service delivery solutions to governments for communities.

Sure these powerhouses of expertise consult a little on the fringes. They access academia and business to provide 'fringe' expertise that they cannot attract into their agencies and engage with NGOs, community groups and individual citizens to check that service delivery solutions meet the 'on-the-ground' needs of specific communities.

This is necessary for fine-tuning any policy or service solutions to meet specific needs, where cost-effective to do so.

However the main game, the real policy powerhouse, are the government agencies themselves, who take on the roles of researcher, think tank, gatekeeper, designer and deliverer through their central pool of expertise.

This is a longstanding - even 'traditional' approach to governance. It was designed and adopted in an era where geography, communication and education limited the extent and access to expertise in a nation or community. Where, often, many people were disempowered politically and economically through limited access to information and knowledge.

Consider Australia at Federation in 1901. 

The new Commonwealth Government, in addressing national issues, had to serve a population of 3.7 million people (smaller than Victoria's population today), with an average age of 22 years old, dispersed over 7.7 million square kilometres.

There was no telephone, radio, television or internet, however the overland telegraph, which gave Australia high-speed communication with the world, was 30 years old, having been completed in 1872 and extended to Perth in 1877. While most communication travelled at the speed of a fast horse, train or ship, it was possible to share information across Australia the speed of light, though at the rate of only a few messages at once. This telegraphic networked served as Australia's communication backbone for almost another fifty years, until telephones became popular after World War II from 1945.

In 1901 Australia had one of the highest literacy rates in the world (80%) with school compulsory to 13 years old, though attendance was not enforced, many remote communities didn't have access to schools and Indigenous Australians were excluded. Literacy meant basic reading and writing, with the ability to add and subtract - the books issued to 13yr olds today would have been far beyond the ability of the majority of students in 1901.

The majority of Australia's 22,000 teachers hadn't attended a teacher's college, generally serving an apprenticeship as 'pupil teachers' and few 'technical colleges' existed to teach advanced students.

In 1901 there were only 2,600 students at Australia's four universities (0.1% of our population) and CSIRO wasn't even an idea (formed 1926). There wasn't a record of how many Australians had received a university education until the 1911 Commonwealth census, which reported 2,400 students at university and 21,000 'scholars' (with their level of education undefined).

In this environment, expertise was rare and treasured. Governments employed the cream of Australia's graduates and were almost the sole source of expertise and thinking on policy issues that the new nation had to address.

The 'government as centre of expertise' model made sense, in fact it was the only viable way to develop a system capable of administering the world's smallest continent and one of the largest, and most sparsely populated, nations.

Jump forward a hundred and ten years, and Australia is one of the most connected nations on the planet, with 98% of our 22 million citizens having instant access to the world through the internet and virtually every Australian having access to telephones, radio and television.

Education is compulsory to 15 or 17, with the majority of teachers tertiary educated and school attendance strictly enforced - including for Indigenous Austalians. We have about 41 universities, ten times as many as in 1901, as well as over 150 other tertiary institutions, with over 21% of Australians having received tertiary education.

As a result, the 'government agency as expert' model is failing.

Across our population there's far more expertise outside of government than within. Governments struggle to attract and retain talent in a global market, hamstringing themselves by restricting employment to Australian citizens, while the commercial sector internationally will happily take Australia's best trained minds and put them to use elsewhere in the world.

Despite this, government's basic model has barely changed. Agencies are structured and act as 'centres of expertise' on policy and service delivery topics.

True, there's a little more interaction with academia, with business and even with citizens. However agencies remain structured as 'centres of expertise' for policy design and service delivery, designed to serve communities with limited communication or education - limited capability to do for themselves.

This model may remain effective in certain parts of the world, in nations where literacy is low, geography remains a barrier and communication infrastructure is weak - like Papua New Guinea, regions in the Amazon and some other remote areas and developing nations.

However in developed nations, with high literacy, substantial tertiary education, where geography is no limit to communication and access to media and internet are almost universal, does the approach retain the same merit?

A 'centre of expertise' approach also has many downside risks which are necessary features of the system, providing the separation and public trust required by governments to operate in this way.

For example, when government agencies structure themselves as the experts, they need to maintain a level of mystique and authority to justify public trust that they are providing the best advice and solutions. 

Just like a religion has special rituals, and restaurants rarely let you see how their kitchens operate in order to preserve the trust of their worshippers and customers, government agencies conceal their day-to-day operations from scrutiny to maintain a mystique of expertise and create a clear separation between the 'agency business' of government and the external workings of society. 

This often involves keeping policy development processes hidden behind a wall of secrecy, bureaucratic language and bizarre semi-ritualistic procedures. 

This is also why, despite FOI and other approaches, governments largely remain secretive about their processes for designing policy. They can be messy, which may reduce trust and call into question the expertise of the agency or government.

As a result, if you're not a policy expert, in most countries it is unlikely that ordinary citizens have much knowledge of how an agency has developed a given policy, who was involved (formally or informally) or why certain decisions were reached. These activities are done behind closed doors - in the confessional, behind the kitchen wall, backstage - with all their inherent messiness, testing of 'dangerous' ideas and economic modelling of who wins and who loses with any specific decision treated as confidential and secret knowledge.

This leads to a second issue and a rationalisation. As the public isn't aware of how a specific policy or service was developed, generally seeing only the final 'packaged' solution, agencies can reasonably and logically argue that the majority of the public have little to add to the policy process. 

'Expert' policy officers can argue that; the public doesn't have sufficient context, doesn't have all the facts, doesn't understand the consequences of decisions or the trade-offs that had to be made.

And of course this is true. Because the public were not part of the process, they did not go on the same journey that the public sector 'experts' went on to reach a particular policy conclusion.

The public is told 'trust us, we're the experts', and again this is indeed true. Only the policy insiders had the opportunity to become the experts, all others were kept outside the process and therefore can never fully understand the outcome. 

Success in implementing policies and services relies on the public trusting agencies and governments to be the experts. To trust them to do their jobs as the 'experts' who 'know better' than the community. However the 'secret agency business' of policy and service design can feed on itself. Government may attempt to keep more and more from their citizens as, from their perspective, the more they reveal the less the public trust agencies. 

This is a tenuous approach to trust in modern society, where scrutiny is intense and every individual has a public voice.

If the agency policy experts, in their rush to meet a government timetable, overlooked one factor, or misunderstood community needs, a policy can quickly unravel and, like an emperor with no clothes, the public can rapidly lose faith and trust in government to deliver appropriate solutions.

In this situation it is rare that an expertise-based agency or government will be willing to publicly admit that they misunderstood the issue, convenes the people affected and expertise in the community and discusses it until they have a workable solution. It does happen, but it is the exception not the rule.

Instead, the first reaction to external scrutiny is often to protect their position and justify why the public should trust them. They may draw the wagons round, either seeking to bluff their way through ('you don't understand why we made these decisions, but trust us'), 'hide' the failure under a barrel (it was a draft, here's the real policy), or to tell the public that the agency will fix the issue ('trust us this second time'). 

In some extreme examples, governments may even cross lines to protect their perceived trust and reputation - concealing information or discrediting external expertise in order to justify the expertise inside their walls and try to regain public trust.

There are other risks as well to the government as expert model. Policy experts, who have worked in the field a long time, may not accept the expertise of 'outsiders' who appear to be interloping on their territory ' who are they to tell us what we should do'. Agency experts may become out-of-date due to not working in a field practically for a long time, they may hire the wrong experts, or simply not hire experts at all and attempt to create them. 

In all these cases, agencies have a strong structural need to preserve public trust and their integrity - which may often exhibit itself as 'protecting' their internal experts from external scrutiny, or otherwise attempting to prevent any loss of reputation through being exposed as providing less than good advice.

These risks mean that the government as expert model is under increasing pressure.

A more educated and informed citizenry, with high levels of access to publication tools means that every public agency mistake and misstep can be identified, scrutinised, analysed and shared widely.

Each policy failure and example of a government agency protecting itself at the expense of the community. Each allegation of corruption, fraud or negligent practice - whether at local, state or national level - contributes to a reduction in trust and respect that affects most, if not all, of government. 

Of course this government as expert model hasn't completely failed. There are areas that the community isn't interested in, where the government is indeed the expert or where it would be dangerous to release information into the public eye - where we do have to trust the governments we elect to act in our best interests without the ability to scrutinise their decisions. These areas are shrinking, but some are likely to always remain.

However the model started fraying around the edges some time ago and we see it represented today in the increasing lack of respect or trust in government. 

Citizens don't compartmentalise these failures in ways that governments hope they will, often seeing them as systemic failures rather than individual issues.

As a result citizens trust governments less, have less faith that governments can develop appropriate policies and services and turn even more scrutiny onto agencies - even when unwarranted.

The failures of the government as expert model are only likely to grow and extend, with greater scrutiny and greater pressure on agencies to perform. This, unfortunately, is likely to lead to more errors, not less, as governments seek to make faster decisions with fewer internal resources, less experts, less time.

So how does this failing model get resolved? What are the alternatives approach that governments can adopt to remain effective, relevant and functional in a society with high literacy, education, access to information and almost universal capability to publicly analyse government performance?

In my view the main solution is for governments, except in specific secure topics, to turn themselves inside out - changing their approach from being policy and service deliver 'centres of expertise' to being policy and service delivery 'convenors and implementors'.

Rather than seeking to hire experts and design policy and services internally, agencies need to hire people who can convene expertise within communities and from stakeholders, marshalling it to design policy and codesign service and focus on supporting this process with their expertise in structuring these approaches to fit the realities of government and implementing the necessary solutions.

This approach involves an entirely transparent design process (for both policies and services), making it possible to inform and engage the community at every step.

Within this approach, government agencies gain the trust of the community through managing the process and outcomes, not through being the expert holding the wisdom. The community doesn't need to trust a black box process, it comes on the journey alongside the agency, developing a deeper and richer trust and support for the outcomes. As a result, the energy of the community is aligned to support the agency in making the policy succeed, rather than being disengaged, or actively opposing the policy and leading to failure.

Government becomes an active participant and enabler of the community, reducing the cost of communicating information and influencing citizen ideas as citizens are influenced through their participation or observation of the proces.

This approach does require substantial education - both within government and within the community - to ensure that all participants are aware and actively engaged in their new roles. It can't, and shouldn't, be introduced into all agencies overnight and there are some policy requirements where security should take precedence and processes cannot be as fully revealed.

However the approach could be introduced relatively easily (and some governments around the world have done this already). For instance, a government could select three to five issues and put together taskforces responsible for taking a collaborative approach to deliver specific policy or service solutions. 

These taskforces provide a 'public secretariat' for managing community and stakeholder involvement, acting as facilitators, not operators, to marshal community engagement in the design process.

This could even be done at arms length from a government, with taskforces drawing on expertise from outside public sector culture to avoid accidental imposition of elements of a central command and control model, provided they include core skills from the public sector necessary to ensure the policies or services developed can be effectively and practically implemented by government.

This process would test the public policy design model, capturing learnings and experiences - not from a single process run once, but from an parallel process, with multiple taskforces running at the same time to test the real-world impact in a reduced timeframe. Learnings from the taskforces would be aggregated and used to build a more complete understanding of how to adopt the approach more widely within agencies.

Provided governments committed to the outcomes of these processes, and selected issues of interest to the community, this approach would provide solid evidence for the effectiveness (or otherwise) of a facilitation/implementation, rather than an internal expertise, approach to governance.

Alongside this moderated approach to public policy development, a complementary citizen-led policy engagement approach could be introduced using an ePetition or ePolicy methodology.

Mirroring the approach taken in other jurisdictions, where the community is given a method to propose, develop and have debated in parliament, citizen policy and legislation, this would provide another route for citizens to engage with and understand the complexity of policy development and build an alternative route for high-attention issues for which governments are not prepared to take immediate action.

This approach has been adopted in several forms overseas, such as the ePetition approaches in the US and UK, where any petition with sufficient votes receives the attention of the government and, in the case of the UK, is debated in Parliament.

A more rigorous model is used in Latvia, where citizens are supported to design actual legislation online and, if they can marshall sufficient support, their bills go to parliament, they get to speak on them and the parliament votes them up or down.

This last model is beginning to be introduced in Scandinavian countries and Switzerland has long had a similar process, pre-dating the internet, which allows greater participation by citizens in decisions.

So, in summary, the 'internal expert' model designed for use in nations with limited literacy and education and poor communication, is failing to serve the needs of highly educated and connected nations, such as Australia, leading to increasing citizen concern and plummeting trust in governments.

To address this, governments need to adapt their approaches to suit the new realities - environments where there are more experts outside of government than inside and where citizens can universally scrutinise governments and publish facts, analysis and opinions which serve to increasingly force governments into difficult and untenable positions.

The key changes governments need to make is to turn themselves 'inside out' - exposing their policy and service delivery design and development processes to public scrutiny and engagement and becoming facilitators and implementors of public policy, rather than the expert creators of it.

While some areas of governance need to remain 'black boxes', many can be opened up to public participation, building trust with communities by bringing citizens on the journey with agencies to reach the most practical and appropriate solutions.

This will rebuild trust in governance and allow governments to improve their productivity and performance by tapping a greater range of expertise and building an easier path to implementation, where citizens support agencies, rather than oppose them.