Looks like Prime Minister Gordon Brown has laid down a marker for online government services for citizens - and smack dab in the middle of a lengthy discourse about liberty, privacy and information management.

“… This is the century of information. Our ability to compete in the global economy, to protect ourselves against crime and terrorist attack, depends not just on natural wealth or on walls or fences but on our ability to use information - in industry, in our schools and universities, at our borders, in our police forces and intelligence services. And it is clear that we can use DNA to help solve crimes and we can use new powers of access to information to deny terrorists and criminals financial freedom and the ability to move across borders.

At the same time, a great prize of the information age is that by sharing information across the public sector - responsibly, transparently but also swiftly - we can now deliver personalised services for millions of people, something not dreamt of in 1945 and not possible even ten years ago. So for a pensioner, for example, this might mean dealing with issues about their pension, meals on wheels and a handrail at home together in one phone call or visit, even though the data about those services is held by different bits of the public and voluntary sectors.

But if Governments do not insist on accountability where people’s data is concerned - and are not held independently to account - then we risk losing people’s trust which is fundamental to all these issues and more…”

Now, I know there’s a long history of online services in Great Britain, and an extensive data protection regime. I have to think, though, that this speech sends some specific messages to the people working on Web 2.0 apps for the British government - as well as a lot of other regulatory specialists.

Technorati Tags: privacy, liberty, data protection, egovernment, epolitics

Another international organization is hitting the beaches of Second Life. On October 26, the World Bank is releasing the latest report from the Doing Business group:

“…“Second Life, as a global community with residents from more than 100 countries, is an ideal venue to host a virtual launch of a report that compares how easy it is for people to start and operate a business in 178 economies,” Dahlia Khalifa said.

Second Life is on the frontier of collaboration and technology. It brings people from around the world together by removing boundaries,” she added. …(news release)

It’s a noble effort and an example that the World Bank and its’ partners are looking for new ways to communicate their ideas - but Second Life has not proven its worth as a communication tool.

Earlier this year, Eric Kintz at HP argued why he still needed convincing about Second Life. Bandwidth and computing power were among the factors he identified for his reluctance to jump on the bandwagon, so to speak.

Those are very big issues for most government departments. Even OECD members have to evaluate the capacity of their network to deliver content over a service like Second Life - but also their network’s capacity to deliver that content back to their own employees.

I suspect that many organizations with outposts in Second Life (like Sweden) have set up separate networks and better equipment for their in-world representatives.

More on the event:

“…The event will be an open forum where policy makers and the public from around the world, including Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, can ask questions, challenge the findings, and contribute to a global business dialogue aimed at stimulating reforms that improve the business environment, and ultimately create more business startups, job opportunities, and economic growth.

Digital copies of the report’s overview, as well as World Bank–IFC virtual apparel and products, will be available to Second Life residents who attend the event.”

How are the clients of the World Bank - many of them living in remote corners of the internet - supposed to sign on for this report launch?

XP from Canuckflack

Technorati Tags: Second Life, World Bank, Doing Business, third world, international organizations, multilateral

I’m not saying this is my experience, or my world, but I thought I’d share it with you:

“… The Minister took speeches seriously. He saw them as occasions to demonstrate his erudition by impressing audiences with quotations, statistics and flowery language. He had no sense of occasion: every speech, no matter how informal or mundane the occasion, had to be written not for the moment but for posterity.

All this made Beth’s job a living nightmare. Not only did she have to co-ordinate the speechwriting process so that it met the Minister’s exacting standards, she had to do it in time for both translation into the second official language and for distribution to the breathless media, most of whom she knew would glance at the title and relegate the document to either the blue circular file or to the back pages of the Saturday edition…” (Ottawa Citizen)

That’s from this week’s entry in the the E.X. Files - a weekly column that putatively speaks from the voice of a jaded and frustrated executive in the Canadian public service.

This week, the column focuses on the art of preparing speeches for government ministers.

How does your budget account for blogger outreach? Is it couched within a larger media outreach or stakeholder relations program? Or is it simply a one-off contract with a public relations firm?

Many social media experts counsel organizations to build a relationship with bloggers, to maintain contact and ensure a steady flow of information and comments in both directions.

Many governments find relationships easier to build with bloggers of a like-minded political bent - even if their total blogger outreach program attempts to build links with bloggers across the political spectrum.

How transparent is this relationship? Are your contracts airtight and free of any hint of conflict of interest or self-dealing?

Even more importantly - how much of a “chinese wall” has been established between your blogger outreach program and your day-to-day communications work?

Unfortunately, bloggers are still viewed as possibly biased, poorly sourced and likely conflicted.

One Minister’s office in Ottawa is facing this problem. It appears they hired a consultant to produce some communications work - a consultant who happens to write a politically friendly blog.

No matter how this contract was developed, or the distance between the consultant’s personal blogging work and her professional communications work, there is an appearance of impropriety.

It’s never a good thing when your spokesperson has to say “We do not pay bloggers in our office.” (Ottawa Citizen)

but we’ve pulled together a blog for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. It’s en francais as well.

Joe and others have asked for details, like why the identities of the authors aren’t more clearcut. I’m trying. My name is at the bottom of the Welcome page, and my name shows up on the posts in the RSS.

To be fair, we’re making this blog a true team effort. Two of the posts have been written by members of my Public Education and Communications team.

We’re really excited about the developments in our shop - the blog is just one step in our efforts to expand our outreach and public education efforts.

The U.S State Department has built an extensive wiki-like repository for articles and information for its diplomats, says Federal Computer Week. Over 1400 articles are available, and over 250 wiki authors have been identified, as part of the effort to make more information available to diplomats and workers across the department.

“We do not seek to replicate the information contained within Wikipedia, but rather to answer ‘What are the issues for Embassy Quito?’ or ‘What are the functions of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor?’ A wiki for State is designed to harness the input of the organization to explain what it is and what it does. In an agency that can ill-afford reinvention, the wiki model, one of widely-available, electronically searchable textual information, may serve as a valuable tool is translating corridor knowledge generated slowly over time, to institutional knowledge available via computer.”(abstract of Chris Pronk’s presentation at Wikimania 2006)

The initiative has been underway since early 2006, and works over the unclassified OpenNet network available to State employees.

The project is certainly farther along in implementation than Intellipedia, a similar project aimed at U.S. intelligence analysts, which was described earlier this year as “in Model T stage.”

State’s Office of eDiplomacy seems to be advancing the application of several social media tools in a government environment, even to the point of encouraging internal blogging. The head of the Office told the Foreign Service Journal this spring that, in addition to diplopedia, they have put in place a

“simple blogging software as the basis for our highly successful Communities@State program, with almost 40 Communities of Practice already established or in process. (Foreign Service Journal)”

Little nuggets of information found across the internet indicate some of the elements necessary to implement social media projects in a hierarchical organization:

• hire senior employees with extensive technical experience as well as diplomatic experience
• tie the initiative closely to the information management network in the department
• hire young employees who are already tied into online networks like LinkedIn and others (just google “eDiplomacy and LinkedIn”)

Technorati Tags: eDiplomacy, Government Communications, wiki

Here’s a lesson for government communicators: never be too frank in the observations made in your communications strategies. That’s the take-away from the Telegraph’s coverage of a “Defence Communications Strategy” (pdf) written earlier this year.

Missing: MoD’s army of 1,000 press officers

The key paragraph for this headline:

“We have no clear idea of the number of people involved in defence communications work or their costs. Over 1000 people in MOD have a media/communications job code. This excludes many military personnel involved in communications work. Of this only 107 work to DGMC.”

The rest of the document makes it clear that MOD has a problem with brand identity, publication control, and a rabbit’s warren full of standalone Defence websites (47 of them).

The problem isn’t that MOD has a thousand press officers that are doing nothing: the problem is that uncounted managers and commanders have found a way to sneak photographers, webmasters, newsletter editors, and lord knows what else onto the payroll in that job code.

In fact, the strategy makes the argument that rationalization and centralization of messages, logos, brands and communication efforts is needed.

It talks about making the stories of average soldiers, sailors and airmen - in their voices - available to Britons at home.

The part I found surprising wasn’t even highlighted by the Telegraph: it can be found under the heading Demonstrate real progress on achieving operational success within a wider HMG strategy by:

“Establishing a common truth between briefings in theatre and in MOD so that (a) our corporate channels reflect theatre realities and (b) theatre are aware of corporate priorities.”

This Defence Communications Strategy reads like a high level, bluntly truthful overview of the state of affairs in MOD communications. Without the benefit of inside information or familiarity with the public environment in Britain, it strikes me as a useful attempt to draw a picture of the immediate challenges facing the communications regime in MOD.

And that’s why it’s easy to pick apart and criticize. And the MOD likely expected some reaction of this kind - SINCE THE STRATEGY IS POSTED ON THEIR WEBSITE.

h/t to Strumpette for the link, but a brickbat for jumping on the bandwagon and criticizing the Strategy without any real analysis.

When you run through a staffing exercise to hire a new media analyst, remember two things:

• monitor staff appropriately as they conduct the exercise;
• and teach proper email procedures.

Quite a large kerfuffle in Toronto about a completely insensitive email mistakenly sent to an applicant for a low-level media analyst position in the provincial government - an email where a contract employee referred to one applicant for the job as the “ghetto dude.” How did Evon Reid, the applicant, find out? The contract employee sent her comment to him instead of her colleague as intended. (Toronto Star, among many)

Not only does this incident reflect poorly on how the hiring process was managed, but it also highlights a shift in attitudes towards winning a job in the civil service.

Back in the old, old days, a civil service position was such a sinecure that applications (or should that be supplicants) approached each qualifying exam and screening interview with a sense of deference or fear. Hiring managers often believed that applicants “should be glad we’re even looking at them, this is such a golden opportunity” - and behaved that way during the hiring process.

Well, the world has changed. Many applicants have no fear in criticizing what they see as a flawed process. Clearly, Mr. Reid was entitled to bring the email to light and highlight the inherent insensitivity of the comment about him.

But other applicants feel no reticence in highlighting unprofessional behaviour in the hiring process. Like this commenter on the Torontoist blog, who applied for the same job as Mr. Reid:

“However, when i was interviewed i was absolutely dumbstruck by Ms. Siu’s lack of professionalism. The interview process was basically Ms. Siu and her colleague, who both seemed to be recent grads themselves, and their supervisor who seemed like d a legitimate government employee of several years. They made it clear that i would have to impress all three in order to get my second interview, and questions were shared equally between the three.

Anyway, the problems came when their supervisor had to leave half way during the interview, and Siu and her colleague began joking around. Hey, i love jokes, initially they were doing a great deal to put me at ease, as i’m generally very tense in an interview. But they just kept going with it to the point where Siu was pretending to collapse drunk on the table and all focus was taken off asking me questions and trying to find out if i was the right person for the job, which was why I was there. When the questions did return to me, at least one of the questions ask was an illegal on as set forth by the ministry of labor, or however if in charge of making such guidelines (see, very under qualified for the job.) The question asked was “How do you plan on getting to work each day?” which as innocent as it sounds, cannot be asked in an interview situation. Now, should not the Ontario Government be following the same rules as its given all other HR departments in the province?”

In the past, most civil services tried to recruit from the same informal network of candidates and applicants - people with similar educational, social and economic backgrounds.

Today, we have tried to cast our net wider, to expand the range of interests, expertise and experience recruited into the civil service.

And, thanks to online technologies, candidates and applicants can continue to share information, caution and criticism about the jobs (and the managers) on offer.

h/t to Accordion Guy

“… The old diplomacy was defined by a world of limited information. It was a veritable secret garden of negotiations. And secret negotiation still matters. But we live in a world where the views of a Pashtun herdsman, and the conflict he faces between illegal opium production and legal farming, holds the fate of a critical country in the balance. So the new diplomacy is public as well as private, mass as well as elite, real-time as well as deliberative. And that needs to be reflected in the way we do our business.”

- excerpt from David Miliband’s first speech as Foreign Secretary, speaking to The New Diplomacy (text on FCO site, spotty video on YouTube, and webcast on avaaz.org)

Which signals a greater commitment to online communities and a frank conversation with the general public?

• a blog, or
• co-hosting your first major policy speech with an international and online activist organization?

David Miliband, the British Cabinet Minister formerly known online for his personal blog posts as DEFRA Minister, has been promoted to the post of Foreign Secretary. No new blog yet, but the signs are encouraging.

In fact, Miliband’s first major policy speech was co-hosted by avaaz.org - a relatively new international and online activist organization. In addition to the vague but reassuring words in his speech about non-traditional influences on diplomacy and foreign policy priorities. the new Foreign Secretary fielded some questions submitted online by avaaz’ members.

“…At the end we handed David Miliband his own Book of Global Public Opinion, with all our members’ thousands of questions and pieces of advice, warning and encouragement. Clarion calls for an ethical foreign policy, a new global climate treaty, all-party negotiations and ending occupation in the Middle East, the protection of human rights and decisive action on poverty. I hope he’s reading it now.” (Paul Hilder, in HuffPost)

The talk is even being walked on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website.

The FCO is encouraging Britons to “Have Their Say” about the speech and the FCO’s priorities. Unfortunately, the system seems to consist of an HTML form, a formal review process once submitted, and then a static compilation of comments.

The three themes under this section have links to reddit, del.icio.us and digg - but none of the other pages on the FCO site seem to have them.

It’s a first step, isn’t it?

The larger question remains how Miliband’s past experience with online comment and activism will be reflected in the polices and practices developed by the FCO.

Will public diplomacy really change as a result? Or will the process be more incremental, simply as a result of institutional inertia and the greater challenge of shifting the course of a large foreign policy apparatus.

To ape Sally Field - you love me! you really, really love me!

Okay. Not me. A skinnier, more British, more Labour version of me. Oh, who was a journalist.

Okay. You love Jimmy Leach. Or at least the New Media Age awards did.

Tony Blair’s head of digital communications, has taken home the award for “The Greatest Individual Contribution to New Media.” Why? Epetitions. Podcasts. A YouTube channel for a Prime Minister. All put in place in less than a year.

Simon Dickson underlines the importance of Leach’s work: it has helped establish a precedent for British government communicators.

“…So Jimmy is free to do all sorts of radical things which most Ministries … would typically strangle at birth.

Standard Whitehall mentality is that it’s only acceptable to do something innovative if someone else has already done it. (Which, of course, is a contradiction in terms, but anyway…) And if the ’someone else’ happens to be the almighty Downing Street, all reticence disappears.

Suddenly there’s no need to fear a call from the most powerful office in the land, asking what the hell you thought you were doing. If you post your Minister’s stuff on YouTube, in the same way that No10 posted theirs, what can go wrong? (And if it does go wrong, at least No10 will probably be stuffed too.)”

And, as WhitehallWebby points out, he’s beat out a worthy slate of opponents.