The Template Strategy, it must be said, is an excellent idea. The plethora of information available on the web is of variable quality and there isn’t much specific to government. I imagine that this document will be welcomed across Whitehall and in many other jurisdictions.

There are many things to commend the document. It addresses the objectives and metrics that agencies should consider when they think about starting a Twitter account. There is a section on risks and mitigations that should start a healthy discussion among managers who enjoy that sort of thing. But mostly there is a lot of good, practical advice about how government agencies should consider integrating Twitter into their overall communications program.

Naturally, there are also a couple of points that I would make regarding the suitability of the document for the New Zealand context.

My primary concern is around the notion that corporate communications people need to approve all posts:

5.6 All other tweets will be cleared by staff at Information Officer grade and above in the digital media team, consulting relevant colleagues in comms and private offices as necessary. (p. 7)

The State Services Commission has issued guidelines for State servants using social media, together with the Code of Conduct there exits sufficient guidance for State servants to use their judgement when engaging with these tools.

My view is that with some training, some guidance and the trust of their organizations, New Zealand State servants should be able to blog and tweet responsibly and with an authenticity that would not be possible if their posts had to go past corporate communications.

This would also eliminate the risk of

criticism arising from the perceptions that our use of Twitter is out of keeping with the ethos of the platform (such as too formal/corporate, self-promoting or ‘dry’). (p.3)

The second area where I would encourage New Zealand practitioners to adopt a different approach is regarding followers. The template recommends that:

We will however, follow back anyone who follows our account, using an automated service…
(p.9) emphasis in original

I can not urge agencies strongly enough to disregard this advice. Forget about trying to follow people; follower counts are irrelevant. Focus on responding to those people who choose to interact with your agency via the service. Similarly the number of followers that you have is not a metric that has any value to a government agency — and trying to spend any time determining the relevance of those followers would be a criminal waste of taxpayer funds…

Those two reservations aside, I think this document is an excellent tool for agencies to start thinking about how they expand their social media presence.

Despite the evidence and regular predictions about the central role that mobile devices will play in the future of the web, public sector agencies (most of them anyway) have yet to recognize this and build or adapt their existing sites to accomodate these users.

One obvious reason is that public sector agencies’ investment cycles are a lot longer than twelve months and that we will start to see mobile-friendly sites developed increasingly over then next 36 months. That may be the case, but it points at what I believe is the fundamental problem with the .govt.nz domain space: that the management of government websites is mostly considered to be a technical function.

These are not, however, technical issues. The technology has been developed, is already widely used and understood. It is a question of business managers understanding how they can use these tools to better achieve their outcomes.

One possibility

Let me give you an example. We know that the telephone is New Zealander’s preferred means of interacting with government. We also know that it is the channel that causes the most grief for customers (and hence materially impacts upon the agency’s customer satisfaction ratings).

Yet how many government websites offer real-time interaction via the web, using instant messaging, for example? None that I am aware of (happy to be contradicted, point to examples in the comments).

Think about the advantages. You still have people in the ‘holding pattern,’ waiting to interact with a human being, but staff can see the nature of the query/complaint and make a judgement about moving it up or down in the queue.

You can also track contact drop outs against the logged query/complaint and garner much more data about the effectiveness of the interactions, because it can all be stored and – more importantly, given the volume of data we are talking about, searched.

Now to really add public value, you could have the customer service representative tag the data as it is entered during the exchange, for example applying microformats to describe attributes like location and time, which would effectively create a rich dataset for the agency — and for any enterprising third parties, much like Adrian Holovaty’s EveryBlock.

The solution

The first couple of aspects of the scenario above are pedestrian in both conception and execution. The notion of introducing semantics to the process has the potential to transform the agency’s interaction with its publics.

As I suggested above, the lack of coordinated and strategic development of the namespace is because what are essentially communications issues are decided by technologists.

A small part of the solution is wresting back control of the way our agencies interact with their publics; the greater challenge is to understand the technology sufficiently to effectively engage with management and the technologists in these discussions. Otherwise we will be doomed to keep arriving just in time for the ribbon cutting…

Photo: Waponi

Bob Conrad at The Good, the Bad, the Spin has a great post about why PR people should be using blogs, and it triggered a few thoughts about how we could be using them.

Yes, you can use them as a standard corporate communications tool, either internal or external, in the way that most often springs to mind when people start talking about blogging in the public sector. You can also use this incredible technology in some other more innovative ways.

Internal applications

In addition to the obvious applications like the corporate newsletter or management team meeting digest, there are a couple of other creative uses of a blog for your internal communications.

Issues register

Allow people in your communications or senior management team to post emerging issues. The comms team can also add comments detailing mitigations and tactics and include links to media coverage. Anyone else in your organization (with access) can then add material via the comment function. The blog becomes a chronological record of issues and how they were managed. Once an issue is dead, close the comments and update the post with a summary for the record.

Link blog

Set up a del.icio.us bookmarking account and, using the RSS feeds, syndicate the links (and the notes to each link) to an internal blog. Staff can then subscribe to the blog by RSS or, for those that don’t have this functionality in their agency, via email to receive a list of links relevant to their business.

If you are not using del.icio.us (or a similar tool like Ma.gnolia), I strongly urge you to experiment with it. To get a feel for it, have a look at the State Services Commission’s e-government bookmarks.

External applications

I believe that public sector communicators should trial blogs internally before they make the move to the world wide web, but once you have got your feet wet, you may want to consider some other ways to use this tool.

Crisis management

As Bob notes in his post:

Blogs publish information in real time. It’s obvious to say, but the need to release and respond to information in a timely manner is ever more critical. Organizations that fail to respond quickly to allegations and attacks will in effect be giving tacit approval to their critics’ complaints. Blogs offer a mechanism to respond quickly and affirmatively.
The Good, the Bad, the Spin.

This is never more important than when you are faced with a crisis. Your publics will expect an immediate (online) response and a blog will be far more responsive and versatile in a crisis that a traditional, over-engineered corporate website.

Keep the blog dark while you pre-populate all the pages that you will need: contact details, organizational information, pre-formatted media release templates etc. Then, once the crisis arrives, you flip the switch and you are ready to respond.

Another advantage of a blog in this situation is that you can have multiple authors, updating the blog from anywhere there is Internet or cell phone coverage.

Social media newsroom

Todd Defren, who cooked up the social media release template, has also developed a social media newsroom template and, while it is an excellent template, it may be a little sophisticated for most (New Zealand) government agencies. However, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be thinking about ways to maximize the effectiveness of your media releases. Using a blog as your publishing platform will immediately deliver a host of benefits.

It will mean that your media releases are native to the blogosphere, therefore the nature and extent of their take up will be more visible through trackbacks and specialist search engines. The commenting function will lead to much better engagement (if properly managed) and, best of all, you will be more easily able to use the hRelease microformat to mark them up.

Conclusion

Blogging in the public sector is a relatively new discipline, and I am sure there are other obvious applications for the technology that haven’t occurred to me. If you have any suggestions, please drop them in the comments.

I can’t give you a silver bullet that will work in every case, but I have been testing some of these arguments and have found that, as generic exemplars, they could provide the foundation for a case for a blog as an internal communications tool.

An externally facing blog would require a different set of arguments, with some overlap, but I am assuming that if you are pitching a blog, you would want to trial it as an internal tool first…

Benefits

This is not an exhaustive list, more a starting point. Add any others you think might help the case in the comments.

Multi-purpose

A good blogging tool will support all your communications requirements. It will manage all content types. You can publish text, images, audio, video in just about every format. You can pretty much run your entire comms programme from the one platform.

A blog also gives you channel options. Staff can subscribe for email updates, subscribe to the RSS feed, visit the site, or you could push highlights of the feed onto your Intranet.

Corporate record

Because it is so self-contained, it makes for an excellent argument for your CIO: all the content is in the one place. The entire record of the campaign is easily accessible, searchable and portable. It is an archivists dream.

Make sure that you have a well-defined exit strategy. On the ‘About’ page, detail exactly what the blog is for (cut & paste from your strategic initiatives) and how it will be managed, including the wrap-up.

On that note, make sure that at the end of the programme you include post implementation review material so that the record is complete. This way, in several years time, colleagues will be able to look back and see the complete record of your thorough planning and meticulous execution…

Measurement

I see this as being one of the key points to sell to management as it is a standout: the ability to accurately track how your content is being accessed and consumed. Any half-decent analytics package will allow you to see unique visitors, time spent on each page, entry and exit pages etc. You will be able to track the most popular content (and content types) and manage your communications programme – in real time – accordingly.

Lightweight

Quick, easy and very cheap to install and maintain and integrate with your existing systems. For the range of functionality that is being delivered, this is a spectacularly cost effective and versatile (see next point) solution.

Extensibility

You can add all manner of plugins to enhance the functionality of the site to better achieve your communications objectives. This means that the blog can be specifically tailored to suit your, and your audiences, requirements.

Feedback

The other key point, of course, is the raison d’être of social media: the conversation. Staff can comment and it is completely transparent. You have the option of allowing anonymous comments, or require that people identify themselves in order to participate (see the risks). In any event, everyone will be able to follow the discussions and they will be captured for posterity.

Risks

In all honesty, for an internal communications programme, there aren’t all that many. There is a risk that not everyone will want to contribute, this could be mitigated by enabling anonymous comments, but I would advise you to accept the risk on the grounds that you would want to foster open, honest and transparent engagement.

The only other risk that immediately springs to mind is that all of the other business units will want one. However, I am sure you will be able to come up with some others.

Photo: samdiablo666

Anyway, there has been quite a lot of comment, but I think Allan Jenkin’s summed it up best, in his rather colourfully titled post, Tim O’Reilly can eat my ethical shorts:

I make ethical judgements about what I write, and about what I allow others to write on my blog, every damned day. I think I do pretty good. My “badge,” in other words, is Desirable Roasted Coffee. Read it… if you think I am ethical, keep reading. If you think I am unethical, don’t read it.. and let me know. I don’t need a badge to proclaim my honesty. If I did, you’d have every right to be skeptical.

As public sector communicators, we already have a code: it governs not just the way we blog, but every facet of the way that we work (and to a limited extent, the way we conduct ourselves out of the office as well). But in this age of the increasing proliferation of social media, it is not a bad idea to think about some of the issues raised by O’Reilly’s proposal.

When I posted the principles for public sector social media, I touched on the notion of acceptable comment, but I wasn’t nearly as prescriptive as O’Reilly. The reason for this is that, much like Allan Jenkins, I believe that public sector communicators are acutely aware of their ethical responsibilities and this sort of thing does not need to be spelled out. [Nate Anderson at Ars Technica has a good piece on why this sort of prescriptivism will not succeed in the private sector either. Robert Scoble also has some pretty good points from a bloggers perspective.]

What does it mean for us in the public sector? Certainly, we are not immune to ugly blogging, and indeed given our profile are probably more at risk to elements of this.

It means being particularly vigilant when we do launch social media: 9-5 just won’t make the cut, you need to moderate after hours and on weekends to maintain (or develop) your credibility and to ensure that the space is one that is ethically pristine.

It means that we link out cautiously and develop relationships that reflect the integrity of our endeavour – and we do this by engaging before we launch and remaining sedulously active thereafter.

And finally it means that by modelling the behaviour that we would like to see in the social media we participate in, we contribute to making our online society a more inclusive, welcoming and enjoyable space for everyone. Just like the rest our job, really.

I can see why Tim O’Reilly wants a code of conduct for bloggers. I just don’t agree that we need one, and I certainly don’t think that an attempt to regulate people’s behaviour on the Internet is either feasible or necessarily desirable.

[Media release for the Standards, again microformatted]

Fortunately – unless you have a burning desire – you don’t have to read the whole document. You can just use the audience page to read the sections that are relevant to your role type.

I would, however, recommend that you do read as much of the material as possible. The Internet is increasingly important as a delivery tool for content both in terms of government strategic direction and communications/public affairs practice. Understanding how the web works (and why standards are so important) is no different to understanding the printing process, or the media cycle. It is just part of our job.

If the whole web standards thing just leaves you cold, ask yourself this question: would it be considered acceptable to build a government office that had no wheelchair access? Or that was constructed from materials that were known to be of inferior quality? Or only allowed access to the wealthiest and those with the newest technologies?

Websites are no different. Taxpayers are paying for us to build them, so every New Zealander who wants to access the information or services on those sites should be able to do so. Irrespective of their physical location (and available bandwidth) and the technology they are using (assistive or otherwise).

This fundamental right to access is non-negotiable.

Before I get into my impressions of the workshop, I thought I should share the feedback that the other attendees submitted via the web form over the last couple of weeks.

Attendees were asked to rate five categories from 1 – 5, with 1 being poor and 5 an excellent. Those categories, and ratings recorded were:

1. Venue – 92% of respondents gave it a 4 or a 5
2. Presenters – 64% rated them a 4 or 5
3. Content – 64% 4 or a 5
4. Food – 70% rated it 4 or 5
5. Organization – 85% rated it 4 or 5

Those who submitted comments were similarly positive about the event. Most acknowledged that there was a tremendous amount of material and that they had come away with a better understanding of planning needs, structure of the response and tools and techniques to help manage communications during a crisis.

A common theme to emerge in the comments, however, was that the content was not particularly relevant to the public sector practitioner and was too focussed around crises, rather that more issued based case studies:

Presenters were well experienced and case studies best practice, however, the examples they gave were almost all of oil companies where resources were unlimited. It would have been good to have done a public service case study were resources (money and people) were limited and we had to prioritise a response – a workshop of a case study like this would have been good.

I did agree that the focus was all on situations that most of us would never have to deal with (oil tanker running aground in Wellington harbour and spilling several thousand tonnes of crude — nah, never happen here), but the more I have thought about it over the last couple of weeks, the more I have come around to the view that the event itself is pretty much irrelevant: it is the way you deal with it that matters.

As Kym and Dick demonstrated, the formula for the response is predictable. If you plan for an event like an oil spill, or an earthquake, or a pandemic, then you can roll out your plan for just about anything; crisis, emerging issue, it doesn’t really matter – you will have the tools and the training in place to effectively manage it.

And if you look at the issues that we have had to deal with in the public sector over the last several years, I think that you will agree that most — if not all — either were well managed using these principles, or were poorly managed and could have benefited from this approach. I am, however, keen to open this up for discussion.

Then last week Savaia got in touch to suggest a regular meeting for members interested in internal communications. So here it is: micronetworks.

The idea is relatively simple. The Network will provide the administrative infrastructure, all you have to do is register your interest in participating in one (or more) of the micronetworks. We will set up emailing lists for each of them, something like subject@psnetwork for example, and then people who have registered for that group will be able to communicate with colleagues who share an interest in that topic. I can also set up a web page that lists the members of each group (password protected) and their agencies – if that will help.

So, to get the ball rolling, here are a couple of suggestions for potential micronetworks:

1. Internal communications
2. Social media (web-based communications)
3. Social marketing
4. Crisis communication

If you have other suggestions, please add them in the comments. If you want to join a micronetwork, fire me an email. Once we reach a critical mass, I will set up the mail groups and the web page and let you know where you can find all this good stuff.

I think it would also be helpful to have someone volunteer to coordinate each of the micronetworks, so I will put my hand up for Social media. Anyone else keen to take on a micronetwork?

1. A ‘best of’ 2006 type thing, incorporating the highlights of the year from a comms perspective
2. Predictions for 2007 and what new technologies and approaches will bring
3. An ‘awards’ type post, where I handed out spuriously named gongs for various acts of infamy
4. None of the above

You will be pleased to note that I have (I think) avoided the clichéd options and gone for the merely hackneyed. But more of that later. First, an announcement.

Strategic Crisis Communications

Once we had waded through the feedback for comms@06, it became apparent that you wanted more professional development opportunities that offered intensive, interactive learning. So, we have organised the first of the Network workshops for 2007, a one-day session on Crisis Comms.

In order that you get the most out of the day, we are limiting numbers to 20. This will mean that you get to engage with the presenters and discuss issues relevant to your agency or experience. Registrations open in the middle of January, so I would urge you to register early to avoid missing out. More details available on the Network site.

Christmas & PR

As promised, option 4 for your amusement. A joke I was told at the first PR Christmas party I attended as a young tacker, pretty much straight out of Uni.

Many years ago, the BBC called up the then Prime Minister a couple of days before Christmas and asked him what it was that he would like to receive for Christmas.

Being reasonably media-savvy and a long term denizen of Whitehall, the PM recognized immediately the pitfalls around the question. After some deliberation, he gave what he thought to be a modest and suitably unassuming and very British answer. Pleased with his guile, he hung up.

On Christmas day, after enjoying lunch with his extended family, he gathered them around the wireless to listen to the broadcast.

“Finally, we asked a number of prominent people,” the announcer began after the news, “what they wanted for Christmas. The American ambassador said that he wanted to see an end to famine in Africa, the Russian ambassador said that he hoped for world peace, and the British Prime Minister wanted a nice pipe and his slippers by the fire.”

Back in January

Regular transmission will begin again in the middle of January. Have a safe break.