2013 update Should government agencies or Ministers supply content to newspapers if it will end up paywalled?

Thirty years ago if you wanted to read the news, you bought a newspaper. A paper newspaper, with real money.

As a result all of a government's announcements - media releases, Ministerial statements, advertising and other content had a price tag by default.

You didn't get to see them if you didn't pay the paper's price (except if you browsed in-store - a practice news agents discouraged).

Over the last twenty years however, news has become freely available online. Go to any print publisher's masthead, online-only news service or agency website and you can read the releases, statements and even see the ads without paying a cent.

Clearly this has been good for governments, who can reach a wider audience with their content due to the lack of a 'paywall' barrier to consumption.

However with the major newspapers now considering paywalls, should government agencies be prepared to go back to the days of allowing commercial providers to charge money for the content they provide to newspaper proprietors for free?

This is a thorny question. On the surface it looks easy - it was OK before, it should be OK now. However we have a new generation of citizens who grew up with free news, who are less inclined to pay for news and therefore government is likely to struggle to reach them.

At the same time we have a phlethora of news sites, some will be paywalled but others won't. Agencies can now distribute releases, statements and even advertisements via their own websites, email lists, and social media channels.

So does government need to rely on traditional media to carry straight news? It is still appropriate for agencies to allow newsprint publishers to 'clip the ticket' for the content they release for free?

Should there be a requirement that Ministerial and agency content isn't hidden behind the paywall and remains part of the free content provided by news services? A traffic generator, but not a profit centre?

I don't have a ready answer to this.

I would expect the news publishers would be quite happy commercialising government content, as they have done in the past, as it gives them cheap content to boost their profits (which can, of course, be taxed).

I also expect that older public servants and politicians wouldn't even question the right of publishers to make money from government content, as it was done before.

However for younger people the situation may not be so black-and-white.

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.

Paywalls for media providers mean government agencies need blogs and social media more

With the news this week that Fairfax is following News Ltd in introducing paywalls to their major metro online news mastheads, organisations need to think deeper about their social media strategy.

With a paywall strategy two things happen.

Firstly a large number of people stop using the paywalled websites. For example it's been reported in Wired's article, How The New York Times Paywall Is Working, that the New York Times, which has successfully increased online revenue using a paywall, has seen their visitors fall by more than 60% - and note that some (if not most) of their remaining visitors are not paying, therefore can only see a few articles each month.

That's with a two-tiered model, with some free content still available. If a single-tier model is used, such as by the London Times, visits can drop 90% or more.

Secondly, the reach of paywalled articles falls dramatically. Content behind paywalls cannot be easily shared via social media or email with people who do not pay for the content, reducing the 'readership' even more than the 'circulation'.

So regardless of whether paywalls work for the proprietor, raising their online revenue, they can gut readership and circulation - the reach that is important to media and PR professionals.


So let's consider the numbers based on the Sydney Morning Herald, for example.

As of their report for January - March 2012, as covered in Mumbrella, Fairfax reports that the Sydney Morning Herald receives 2,889,000 unique visitors per month and that they visit 158,656,000 pages - or an average of 55 pages per unique visitor.

Let's say that the Sydney Morning Herald introduces its paywall, on a two-tier model that allows people 20 free articles per month. Let's also assume that they are as successful as the New York Times and only shed 60% of their audience (note they're likely to shed more initially and 'win' some of it back over time, but we'll keep this simple).

Immediately we see a fall in unique visitors to 1,155,600. However page views drop far further than you'd expect as not all their remaining visitors will pay. So assuming that 50% of their remaining visitors pay and maintain a 55 page average, while the others only view 20 pages per month (the unpaid maximum), page views drop to 43,287,200 per month.

That's about a quarter of the pageviews before the paywall was introduced.

(Of course, if the fall in unique users is much greater, as may particularly be the case in the short term and was the case for the New York Times, these numbers could be much worse.)


Now assume this is happening, as planned, across Fairfax's Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the Canberra Times, as well as across The Australian and News Ltd's other state-based mastheads.

Essentially all of Australia's major online metro news publications.

And what happens?

Suddenly all those media releases crafted and distributed to mainstream media are reaching a small fraction of the audience they reached in the pre-paywall days.

Your media release, which you could reliably claim to a Minister's office was reaching a large number of Australians, is no longer as effective by a long, long, long way.

Equally your advertising in 'mainstream' online news outlets reaches a lot less people. Hopefully this will reduce the cost as well - although historically as traditional media audiences have shrunk, advertising costs have grown.

So what should government agencies do to preserve their reach in a media landscape where the majority of Australians have abandoned traditional media in favour of free, but more niche, news sites?

Extend their social media presence and their own media channels (such as blogs) of course.


While paywalls may help traditional media players better monetise their online mastheads, they will not help organisations that need reach.

As a government agency, if you have information you MUST get out to Australians, the introduction of paywalls means you will need alternatives to traditional media channels for distribution.

So it's worth ensuring now that you have the skills, experience, procedures and governance in place to switch to a social media focused information distribution strategy to ensure that you preserve your reach while traditional media battens down their hatches to preserve their revenues.

Accessibility - a great video from FaHCSIA to educate staff & management

Last week FaHCSIA released a great video on accessibility that they're using to educate staff and management on its importance, who it affects and the basics of what to do.

I think it is an awesome resource for all organisations (not just government) to help them understand their legal obligation and how to meet it.

We need more resources like this for government, tools that use video, pictures and sound to help educate and influence, not simply more PDF manuals like this.

I've embedded the video below and it is also available directly from its YouTube link or as a MP3 from FAHCSIA's resources section.

Which social networks should you use when? Great infogram from Mashable

I thought this infogram had huge relevance to governments, as well as to corporations, so have posted it to ensure it doesn't get missed by people in the daily hurley-burley.

The infogram provides some excellent suggestions on the strengths and weaknesses of various social media services and when to use each.

Find out more at Mashable: http://mashable.com/2012/04/16/social-networks-tips-infographic/