I get asked enough times to actually publish about this.
97er is the generation of people born in 1997 or later Gen Y are the Millennials
97ers grew up with social media from as early as they can remember
Gen Y didn’t but they grew up with more digital skills than their parents – they just swerved the natural inclusion of social media
There is a marked difference
Photo own, published with permission from Sarah Casey
I have noticed a surge in criticism of the various efforts of government to ‘get digital engagement’. I think this is healthy and normal. I would like to add my 2pth to why I think this is happening, why it is not anything to be afraid of and in fact is encouraging. (This includes data, but I will write about that separately).
Many of my blog posts, and indeed many of the bloggers I read, have charted government’s move towards making good use of digital communication and social media tools. In the last year there has been a marked surge ahead in what had seemed a lonely battle, fought by few. For example:
1. Matt Tee has asked that all departments have a digital engagement strategy by the end of March 2010
2. The publication of documents such as Digital Britain, Smarter Government, and even *that* Open Source strategy published on Friday
3. The third successful year of the UK Gov Barcamp, attended by a great mix of civil service and private sector
4. The launch of data.gov.uk
5. Investment in making sure that no one is left out
On reflection, it seems that we have now managed to learn some of the key functions of what it takes to attract consultation (e-democracy) and build a responsive community (which is fundamentally what I think all this activity comes down to):
The maturity of understanding is there too, as demonstrated by the depth of discussion at UK Gov Barcamp – people now are beginning to grasp the fact that understanding the tools and how they work, freeing up the data, breaking down the barriers, realising the true cost (as well as the savings) is simply the necessary functional, biological steps this infant must learn in order to be ready for school, for life. Being able to walk, communicate with language as well as signals, awareness of social space, empathy, taking care of our own necessary functions (that no one really needs to know about), means that we are ready for big school – to be taught by those with years of experience and training, in a variety of disciplines.
I think it is important for us to note that this is where we are, and not think we are anywhere near our super sweet 16 coming out party – there is a long way to go, but the body is healthy and the mind being prepared. Many of those who read my blog are already a part of this world, the parental role in my metaphor, and so I urge an exercise in responsibility, encouragement, discipline and restraint when we are ready to beat our respective heads against the concrete wall of bureaucracy.
PS I have not written a post for months, essentially because blogging about the general state of the digital gov world is quite tricky to capture, but I am going to have a go at charting what I can of some of the disciplines over the next few months.
My recent frustration at various conferences and unconferences over the last few months has been compounded by the fact that I am already struggling along the path of setting and helping embed a digital engagement strategy in the Home Office. I have to admit to being a little fed up of the endless hectoring – as it is seeming to be now – about how we *must* do this, we *must* engage properly where the communities are already collaborating. I think we all know this now – and many of us attending and speaking at these events are facing the realities of actually making this happen, and we need to do more to support each other. (I am particularly rubbish at this, not through belligerence, rather through busy-ness and actually struggling to find the time to share – hence my use of this blog and twitter account to do this in my *free time* rather than formally sharing the work we do).
What we are up to in the Home Office
In the Home Office we are about half way through the website rationalisation work, converging and migrating content slowly but surely to the decreed websites: Directgov, businesslink.gov.uk, corporate sites and the Police portal. Although this policy has not been welcomed with open arms necessarily, it has been an absolute boon in enabling the digital strategy to be embedded throughout the organisation – rather than being a *thing* that a group of people in the e-comms directorate do. I am not sure how it would have worked otherwise. (This sounds like I am far further along the path than I am – this is still in principle, but the path seems finally clear).
Ignoring the actual development of a digital strategy in a department – really not too much of a challenge as the Cabinet Office and COI have set out extremely detailed and good policies for us to work from; and really it is simply a matter of tailoring that guidance to the work of the department and its agencies – making it something that is integral to all digital communication takes all of the effort and talent of a major change management and internal communication programme.
Thus my gratitude to the work already mandated to take place with the convergence and rationalisation of all government websites: the first giant step has happened.
How we are embedding the principles of digital engagement
In the Home Office we will be drawing the strategy of digital engagement down through every part of the department: policy, strategy, marketing, press office and the communications directorate. The disciplines separated into:
Policy: listen, monitor and engage (broadcasting consultations through all available channels as well as commentable documents)
Strategy: listen
Marketing: monitor, broadcast and engage
Press office: broadcast, listen, monitor and engage (as they would currently with online and offline press)
Communications directorate: broadcast, monitor and educate the rest of the department in appropriate use of social tools (by social tools this year I mean blogging, micro-blogging, commenting, creating commentable format documents, wikis and networks)
It is not quite as linear as this, Press Office and Comms will alert Policy to anything that may require intervention/response; and collaboration across the piece at timely intervals will enable the department to quickly learn how to use the internal and external community to do its job better. Nor is it as defined, we are working on this and need to learn more, from other departments.
Where are the current pressure points?
Press Office
Press officers seem confused as to how they should best utilise any digital engagement strategy, bringing in expert advice – absolutely right IMHO – as some of the social tools are broadcast mechanisms as much as they are for collaboration. This is something we are working through, hence my previous post about what is currently happening across UK government departments, specifically Press Offices. The common tool being twitter. Our latest thinking is:
But this is something that is still being explored and I would love to have a conference/unconference specifically around press office and digital engagement
Education of communication teams
With the best will in the world, those who are working currently in online communcation are not necessarily totally up to speed on everything that is happening in the digital engagement space – but they need to be. For a start, they should all have a twitter account; read blogs or at the very least use rss feeds to keep abreast of news that interests them personally; be sent to conferences that talk about this stuff as a part of their job; be given access to the sites that they need in order to ensure they are confident in advising the rest of the department on what works best in which online communcation challenge.
In the Home Office, we have now finally – and only just – added a permanent agenda item to the weekly meeting on recent developments in digital engagement; and we are going to be setting out some simple things for people to do as a part of their current jobs to enable the necessary skills to be developed. (This does not mean going on half day courses on how to use twitter). It does mean following, reading and learning from people such as Steph Gray, Dave Briggs, Neil Williams, Julia Chandler, Stephen Hale – to name but a few (and probably annoy the rest) – who are doing this brilliantly in departments across Whitehall, almost daily developing new tools and methods for collaboration/engagement.
Again, this is work in progress and something that we are just beginning to address.
Data
To have a digital engagement strategy that does not include having a single entry point to all of our raw, non-personal data would be frankly bonkers. We are working towards this but the issue is not an unwillingness to do so; rather no single ownership or knowledge of all of the data sets we are currently publishing across the corporate and agency sites.
We have now drawn together an informal team across the department, whose job it is to gather bits of this picture – and we are in the process of deciding whether to crowdsource the information with the digital community as well as this *team*, or to create the single entry point and just add data sets as we find them (which will take longer).
We are seeking help from Andrew Stott, director of digital engagement in the Cabinet Office, and the power of information taskforce to nut this one – and I will post on this separately when we have a plan.
Devolution of trust
This was the most interesting thing that has come out of recent discussions: managing the risk of having devolved broadcasting and engagement – this seems to be one of, if not the, biggest concern. No longer is it as simple as marketing doing the broadcast ‘sell’, press office managing the influencers and being the corporate voice and e-comms sorting the websites, with policy and strategy units setting the priorities and requirements. Now everyone needs to re-evaluate their role in an ever-changing consumer market, and trust that – with education and a certain amount of live testing – all colleagues do have the skill and nous to operate in this environment.
We are nowhere near resolving this one – and we are actively looking to other departments and governments worldwide for guidance.
Time
This is not something that is new, nor something that requires a ‘unit’ dedicated to *doing* it. It is simply a discipline that needs incorporating into current working plans and practices. In order to make it work well, it is necessary for digital engagement to be just an alternative method of behaviour that in time becomes the norm. Hence why it requires the principles of change management in order to be a success – as no one can really get away with assuming that someone else is going to do it for them.
But this takes time, something that the already lean civil service holds as a premium and any extra demand on a person or unit’s time comes at the cost of something else: and in my experience of the civil service – dropping anything will have a measurable impact on something.
Therefore digital engagement needs to be of proven and mandated strategic priority, with measurable benefit, in order to make this something that anyone can take seriously.
This can only be achieved by education and awareness in the senior civil service, strategic and policy teams. This is a deal-breaker, and one of the greater challenges.
Concerns over job security
As website rationalisation takes hold, so online communcations teams begin to feel disillusioned that their roles in departments are either feeders for the franchise teams running content on Directgov, or putter-uppers of corporate content on the official departmental website. Not exciting particularly, nor challenging and career-developing.
Naturally, attention is focussing on the digital engagement world, and there is a decided move towards *ownership* of social media. Any new project that uses social tools, challenges the status quo, involves a map (:)), or is at least vaguely more interesting than the convergence of content, triggers a pinata-bashing type scramble for the work. This is not in itself a problem, but – and here I risk being beaten at work on Monday – the scramble does not necessarily result in rational thought as to whether the idea in itself was a good one. The huge risk here is that projects are taken on and assigned simply because they are different and engaging, rather than whether they are right.
This can be mitigated by rapid education of online communcation teams, increased internal communication and… time. But again – this is an issue that needs to be addressed somehow.
Conclusion
The challenges that I have listed above are ones that I am particularly interested in resolving publicly (as it were). And would welcome conferences/unconferences/geek dinners/conversation in addressing. Apologies if this seems very last year, but the reality is that however exciting new stuff is – it’s not as challenging (therefore exciting) as creating the right environment in the first place that will utilise future development as a part of its daily work.
PS If anyone is reading this who works in the Home Office and is bewildered as to what I am talking about, seeing as there is nothing apparently happening where you work, do hunt me down on the gsi email and ask me. This is all WIP and there is much to be done (as you can see) before we achieve the nirvana I have set out.
After a few weeks of unavoidably engrossing myself in work (and family) I have neglected to blog. This is partly because of busy-ness but also because actually there has not been much to say. I tend to use this blog to showcase what I notice happening around government and the digital space, and for a while it was a struggle to keep up, now however, there is a gentle acceptance, adoption and movement in the direction of the future. The door is no longer being kicked at, it is open; the job now is to help everyone working in departments to mind that gap of knowledge.
What has become glaringly apparent is the widening gap between the use of social tools for big ‘P’ Politics and Politicians, and then public service. This took me by surprise, but explains why I was slightly frustrated by the projects at Rewired State that tended to focus on Politics and Politicians rather than public service data mash-ups that would help us in our lives (I was about to say daily but that might be a reach too far).
My focus is on the public service use of social media within the departments and by civil servants. This tends to cover four areas:
That leaves a glaring gap for us working in central government: local government. Centrally this is the remit of the department for communities and local government, but in reality this is a whole different ballgame and the choice to engage using social media would lie with each council. (Not going there right now, that’s a whole other post).
It also has created an interesting conundrum for the strategy units, who are perhaps not used to working in a communication world that changes society/community in quite the same way or at the same speed as the digital revolution has created. More and more I see strategy units re-checking the future, not only because of the economic crisis, but also because of the communication landscape and technical revolution. This is a very exciting place to be.
So… the update is: this is now not something ‘new’, it fits, in a way that Second Life never did; it is an external catalyst for change within departments for comms teams, marketing and press; it is re-energising strategy units and more importantly, or beautifully, it is re-humanising the public service, assisting (IMHO) democracy – not so much for the world of Politics maybe, but in utilising the democratic idealism for making sure our public services work well for us.
It is a good place to be, and although there are battles to be fought and won, creaking changes to be made and mistakes, the doors are firmly open, we just need information gap monitors 🙂 (See what I did there? I created a whole new job title).
Update…
So, the gaps are:
Hermione Way, newspepper.com, interviewed some of the participants after the meeting on the 4th December. Whilst we set up collaborative areas for all of you to continue to add/develop some of the ideas that came from the day, I thought that is might be interesting for you to see what people said as soon as released from the room.
HUGE thank you to Hermione for doing this, and for highlighting what we are doing in this week’s (episode 3) techfluff.tv. She came in for the second half of the meeting and joined in on the discussion around social media and policy development. You may notice that I am not interviewed, this is because I am RUBBISH at being in front of a camera, much better at writing. Anyway, everyone else said it so much better than I could.
Steph Gray Department for Innovation, University and Skills (DIUS)
Mark O’Neill Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Mitch Sava Polywonk and David Wilcox Social Reporter
Matthew Cain Newscounter (Note the hesitation in the middle and the twitter conversation at end… diamond)
Alan Moore SMLXL
Once more, apologies for the slightly erratic blogging of late. Cutting to the quick, and following my title… here goes:
Paul Carr
His book is now available on Amazon – buy it/review it. Here is my review, unlikely to be published as I owned up to swiping one of his books at the launch (when they were there for ‘reference’ only… so, sorry):
Paul Carr embarrasses me on the delayed trains from Waterloo, 11 Aug 2008Bringing Nothing to the Party: True Confessions of a New Media Whore
I stole Paul’s book from him last Thursday – thank God I did! (I have run dry of ‘holiday reading’ and need some respite from the PID documents generated by Directgov).
I don’t *know* Paul, but I know of him and have met him a few times (enough to bully him into inviting me to his launch party, sort of).
So, to the book… I started reading it on a super-delayed train from Waterloo last Friday. The carriage was so packed that people were reading it over my shoulder (so the embarrassment factor of laughing out loud was lessened by the stifled snorts of laughter behind me). The stifled snorts were enough for an opportunist like me to start a conversation, which started with Paul and who he was, leading quickly to me and who I was.
So buy this book, it helps you network on trains.
Other reasons to buy this book:
1. It helps you embrace your inner jealousy streak
2. You take comfort from knowing that however bad your unrequited love-life is, it is not as bad as Paul’s
3. For a brief moment you step into the drunken and hedonistic world of internet entrepreneurship – and realise it’s not all that (apart from Robert Loch’s legendary parties of course)
4. You can get the gen on many of the internet billion/squillion-aires, and dine out on the stories (adopt them as your own – why not)
5. Google party description – from the point of view of a normal person i.e. you – Chapter 9.0 (all of it)
Um.. I had better now buy the book – from Amazon 🙂 – for someone else
PS I read it twice
The lovely, lovely, lovely (OK enough) people at WordPress put me as 78th on their ‘growing blogs’ list. Too cool, my standards are not high – 78th is enough for me. The tag-line for the link happens to be: Watch live streaming Beijing Olympic Games 2008, then you have to scroll like mad to get to me, but hey… it’s there!
Toolkits
I am STILL working on this – but in the real world, so it is taking time. I will be running an event in October that should give us the Toolkit part one… hopefully. If you want to come, email me.
Holidays
I am in Africa from the 21st with my girls, concentrating on my cause: www.justicefortom.com so will not be blogging, nor will I be working officially; however, I shall do sub-blog-management: sorting comments whenever I can get access.
I will post again in October, but will be managing the blog, so please do keep me entertained, horrify me, with your conversation.
E
If you could put together your ideal tool-kit for engaging online, what would be in it?
By tool-kit I mean ways of finding and engaging with the people you want to do any of the following:
To my rather amateur but enthusiastic mind I would say something like:
You can reply to this plea – as ever – personally to me mulquem@gmail.com – or, as I would prefer, here as a comment.
You are here because you need help in social media. To get an understanding of how the internet keeps your data and how you can use it to your advantage….. Well read on, interact and enjoy the future….
Emma Mulqueeny 