I have finally come across a copy of Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Government, 2006 (no link: subscription only). And while I am not a big fan of their literature – I find the hype cycle is too IT focussed and lacks a wider perspective – I thought that I might share a few (belated) observations about this report.
Instant Messaging
The first is that it picks Enterprise Instant Messaging as on the rise in government. This is something that I believe we should be pushing for really hard. As I posted last year, this should be in widespread use now, at least as an inter-agency tool, if not hooked into the PSI.
The report notes that there are two reasons for the slow take up in government: IT Managers concerns about it being a vector for malware, and cultural. The cultural reason is substantiated by a quote from an (unnamed) state’s deputy CIO:
Instant Messaging is the biggest waste of time ever created.
This guy obviously hasn’t spent enough time managing his emails…
The authors then go on to note that, in terms of business impact, IM is the communications tool of choice for next generation government workers.
And this is, I think, something that cannot be overstated. Every bright, hopeful and shiny-eyed inductee into the public sector today will expect to be able to connnect with their peers using the tools they use in their personal lives. Imagine being shown to your desk/cubicle and there not being a phone: what would be your response?
Semantic Web
The authors also comment on sematic web markup, for both public and corporate content (by corporate, they appear to mean intra- and extranets) as an emerging trend. This is particularly encouraging, for a number of reasons. As the report notes:
…microformats represent a change in direction from a top-down model to define ontologies with RDF/OWL to a bottom-up model to annotate content.
Delivering information across the Web with machine-readable and interpretable semantics offers the potential for enhanced application/site interoperability, automation of information discovery, more contextually relevant searches and options that are difficult or impossible (for example, show doctors in Minneapolis, Minnesota that are open on Saturday morning).
The sematic web should be driven by the public sector. Making information accessible, discoverable and usable should be the minimum standard expected for the expenditure of taxpayer dollars. I have posted on microformats before, so it is encouraging to see that this message is being conveyed back to government business and IT managers through the Gartner briefs.
Social Media
Any excitement about the inclusion of microformats should, however, be tempered by the complete absence of any evaluation of social media. No blogs. No wikis. Nada.
Oddly, The Hype Cycle for Content Management, published a fortnight later (July, 2006), does touch on these tools. Does this mean that government aren’t using these tools, so they don’t rate a mention? I am not so sure. The CM paper notes that, in private enterprise at least, Wikis are “sliding into the trough” (their terminology), with a market penetration of 1-5% of the target audience. It gets weirder. The authors then talk about “RSS: Blogs,” as if RSS was exclusively tied to blogging or the terms were somehow synonymous.
Perhaps this is just a symptom of Gartner’s focus on the tools themselves, rather than the way people use all of these tools to communicate with each other and their publics. In any case, I find it a little disappointing for a firm that is selling analysis to conflate the two. Any other thoughts on the Gartner methodology?
8 Comments
Just a quick fly-by comment without having read all of the post in depth, but…. one problem I can forsee with wider use of IM within government is the informality of communication being even greater than email. When you consider the trouble that informally expressed emails can cause government when an OIA request is received, can you imagine what’ll happen when people OIA your IM chat history? (can we say ‘Lying in Unison’?)
Your point is a good one Andrew. What I was angling at was the selective use of IM to deal to most of the mundane, process oriented communications that take up an enormous amount of our time. If the conversation takes a more interesting turn, you always have the option of saving it to the corporate record (as you would an email).
The difference is that you eliminate the need to manage a whole class of your comms (all the cruft, essentialy)- close the window and it is gone.
As for OIA requests, this sort of information should always be discoverable, irrespective of the channel. You can be asked to hand across handwritten notes…
When I think of all the absolute rubbish that has gone over the various IM channels I’ve been a part of (going back to IRC and even earlier to bulletin boards [hardly instant]), versus the matters of actual substance that have occurred on said channels – rubbish wins hands down. In the business environment, it comes down to interruptions. As you know, Jason, we used IM witin the team and the wider unit, but it was mainly for subversive counter-comment when some managerial type would brush past pontificating. V. satisfying but counter-productive, really. If the technology is there, it will be mis-used. Look at email – count the number of emails you receive in the day, sort the substantial stuff from “the rest” and I bet you’ll have less than 2% of the total. IM is the same only faster.
Also, regards the OIA, you can also be asked to document conversations that have never been written down in order to respond, or even the unwritten thought processes that went into a decision.
Exactly: faster, and opt in. I can decide not to accept a chat, or if I do accept, I can bail and burn it once I am done: instant and disposable…
As for documenting unwritten thought processes, I pity the person that requests full disclosure of the stuff I think about during the average working day: sort of like Kafka on Xanax.
i tried floating the IM idea here. Someone said, “if it’s for informal chat to free you from email, why not just phone them?”.
i had no reply.
Mmm, nice comeback – but I’m not buying it. Advantages of IM over the phone:
i agree, but trying to convince a senior manager who’s edgy about blogs to adopt something that is easily depicted as a time-waster is difficult at best.
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