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Archive for the ‘government’ Category

Government Service Delivery via Twitter – @CBSA_BWT

Posted in government, social media, tagged , , , on 11 June 2010 |

Canada Border Services Agency is tweeting border wait times. This tweet reports that there's no delay at the Douglas (Peace Arch) border point in Surrey BC.

Well willya lookit that. The Canada Border Services Agency has set up a Twitter account that automatically broadcasts border wait times on Twitter.

So if you are sitting in your car wondering how much longer you are going to have wait to get over the border, just hand your mobile over to your passenger and tell them to look up: http://twitter.com/cbsa_bwt

Tweets are hashtagged by the name of the border point, so searching Twitter for the appropriate hashtag for the crossing you are interested in will also turn up the info you need. Here’s an explanation of how it works from the CBSA website: http://bit.ly/dwzprs

What I like about this is that it’s a use of Twitter for service delivery rather than marketing or promotion. In my little corner of the universe, we’re conditioned to think in terms of “getting the message out” more so than providing concrete information for our citizens to use. This Twitter account fills a basic information need without any fuss.

H/t: found via tweet from Martha, who points out that the explanation of how it all works is very well done:

@mjmclean: A very strong example of a #GoC Twitter protocol page. Nice work CBSA. http://bit.ly/dwzprs #gc20 #w2p
http://twitter.com/mjmclean/status/15846259435

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Don’t Ignore the Core

Posted in government, marketing, social media, tagged , on 27 May 2010 |

Check out this excellent infographic from Dave Fleet that models the web ecosystem as it exists in 2010. (If you’re not familiar with the “paid” and “earned” media concepts, read both of Dave’s web ecosystem posts — the original and the sequel.)

Schematic of the web ecosystem, by Dave Fleet

Source: davefleet.com

What I like about this, beyond its elegant big-picture simplicity, is that it shows how the the corporate website is still key to an organization’s web efforts. It’s the core from which digital engagement flows.

In the Government of Canada context, our core .gc.ca websites are the key places where we offer accurate & unbiased info on our programs or provide services to our citizens. For the Government of Canada overall web presence, .gc.ca is the foundational layer. Sure, social media interaction allows us to follow our stakeholders into the places where they spend their time online, but I don’t think we can successfully extend our reach without a core website to return to. (An advanced approach would be not only to extend into the social web, but also to allow citizens in return to co-develop our .gc.ca sites, but that’s a ways off isn’t it.)

I’ve mentioned the irrelevant corporate website in the past, but as this schema shows, it’s actually more important than ever to make sure the core stays relevant — as we pursue engagement via the social web, our strategies must incorporate the traditional website also. We must ensure our websites are citizen focused/client-centric/user centered/call it what you will…. we can’t ignore the core.

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Moving Beyond “Open is the Answer”

Posted in government, tagged , , on 11 May 2010 |

For a long time, we’ve been hearing about “open government,” about how releasing more government data into the wild will help to solve deeply entrenched problems around government transparency and civic participation.

But it’s becoming clear that simply being open is not the answer. Maybe this is old news to folks who follow this more closely than I have been, but anyhow.

This crystallizes what I’ve seen seeing in a very succinct way:

Even the most idealistic geeks are beginning to understand that entrenched political and institutional pathologies — not technological shortfalls — are the greatest barriers to more open and participatory politics. Technology doesn’t necessarily pry more information from closed regimes; rather, it allows more people access to information that is available. Governments still maintain great sway in determining what kinds of data to release. So far, even the Obama administration, the self-proclaimed champion of “open government,” draws criticism from transparency groups for releasing information about population counts for horses and burros while hoarding more sensitive data on oil and gas leases.

And even when the most detailed data get released, it does not always lead to reformed policies, as Lawrence Lessig pointed out in his trenchant New Republic cover story last year. Establishing meaningful connections between information, transparency, and accountability will require more than just tinkering with spreadsheets; it will require building healthy democratic institutions and effective systems of checks and balances. The Internet can help, but only to an extent: It’s political will, not more info, that is still too often missing. [via Think Again: The Internet - By Evgeny Morozov | Foreign Policy]

Also, this presentation covers similar ground well — as the blogger states, “openness and transparency are not sufficient: they are the beginning of a virtuous civic-sense-building process which needs to be accompanied by other tools in order to have an impact.”

So we’re at a point where we recognize that releasing more government data will not in itself magically result in improved civic participation or greater transparency — rather opengov is at best one of many building blocks to help building healthy democracy and effective, accountable government. What then is the next step? How do we move beyond thinking that “open is the answer”?

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GoC Web Widgets

Posted in government, Web 2.0, web communications, tagged , , on 4 May 2010 | 7 Comments »

screen capture of the jobs.gc.ca search widget

The jobs.gc.ca search widget

Last week, I learned about a search widget for the jobs.gc.ca site. It’s a simple little badge that can be deployed in the right column of any gc.ca site (I gather it’s only being distributed with the GoC realm at this point). Users can start their job search from the widget. See the widget in action on the Public Service Commission site.

Love the idea of widgets as a means to extend your presence beyond the confines of your own site. Widgets also have the advantage of allowing people to take complex actions — such as starting their job search — from wherever they happen to be encountered. Compare this to email or RSS, where often, the action that can be taken is limited to clicking through to your landing page (and then doing whatever it is that you wanted them to do in the first place). A difference of degrees maybe, but still.

I already knew about the widget for Working in Canada from HRSDC. But are there more out there? I searched a little the other day but couldn’t find anything. But I’d be surprised if there weren’t others. If you know of any, please drop a comment or otherwise flag me down.

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The Clerk is Online

Posted in bureaucracy, government, social media, tagged , on 31 March 2010 | 4 Comments »

Reaction to the news that the Clerk is on Twitter

Wayne Wouters is the Clerk of the Privy Council. He’s the most senior civil servant in Canada, and now he has his own digital footprint. Yesterday he launched himself onto the web with the www.clerk.gc.ca site and two Twitter accounts.

This was timed no doubt in conjunction with yesterday’s release of the 17th Annual Report to the Prime Minister on the Public Service, the first issued under Mr. Wouters’ direction. (Aside: for a really quick overview of the reports themes, check out these visualizations).

Anyhow, it’s pretty impressive — not to mention validating to those of us in the bureaucracy who’ve already gone out and started participating online. Apparently I’m not alone with this. Here’s a sampling of reactions:

From @marknca (screen capped above):

triplet of cool for “the clerk”; on Twitter, has a verified acct, replies! very encouraging to the rank and file, thanks @WayneWouters! [View Tweet]

From @simonaioffe:

If @WayneWouters has his Twitter feed on his homepage (great 2.0 #win) http://ow.ly/1t5cx then depts should follow suit #GoCclerk #goc #w2p [View Tweet]

From @scilib:

. @WayneWouters welcome to Twitter. Great to see emphasis on public service renewal & use of new tech on your website. #cpsr [View Tweet]

From @AngelinaMunaret:

Congratulations 2 Clerk of the Privy Council & Secretary to Cabinet @WayneWouters 4 having verified twttr acct & using it. #gc20 #ccobcc [View Tweet]

From @dbast:

#GOC @waynewouters (PCOClerk)’s latest report mentions “Web 2.0″ three times- Woot! #gc20 #w2p [View Tweet]

In perusing the results page for my search on “@waynewouters” I noticed that there is some question around whether it is the Clerk himself doing the tweeting or whether it is one of his staff. Plus some helpful tips to whoever is managing the account (this one is my fave – “Tip: you don’t need to bit.ly URL-shorten “http://clerk.gc.ca”: it’s short enough!”).

This is actually something that’s been rolling over in my mind as I’ve been building this post — the approach on display appears to be a mix of corporate and personal branding. Frankly not sure what to make of it at this point, as I haven’t really had time to reflect. But regardless, it’s nice to see the Clerk with a public digital presence!

marknca: triplet of cool for “the clerk”; on Twitter, has a verified acct, replies! very encouraging to the rank and file, thanks @WayneWouters!

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I’ve Found my Work Plan

Posted in government, uncategorized, web communications on 22 March 2010 | 2 Comments »

First frame of the presentation

The five Ws of creating citizen focused websites

“Continuous improvement” is my mantra. I see managing web presences in the government context as the art of making small interventions that add up to result in a better user experience. It’s a survival tactic really — if I don’t break down the challenges inherent in a huge, complex and confusing government website into smaller, more manageable chunks, I’d be heading for the hills or jumping off a cliff in despair.

This is also a useful approach when it comes to making my work plans — and now that season is upon us, what with the new fiscal year right around the corner. (It’s no joke — the GoC’s fiscal year really does start on April 1.)

Which is why I was really happy to see this presentation from @resultsjunkie. It tells the story of continuous improvement for government websites. It’s a fully measurable process that can even help you with your organization’s MAF scores!

Continuous improvement is a cycle of planning, acting, evaluating and improving, then starting it all over again. Over time, all of these small improvements lead to bigger improvements, and show up in the key performance indicators being reported on.

And as an added bonus, the presentation is a slick little animated multimedia doohickey too. Unfortunately I’m unable to embed here since WordPress.com doesn’t seem to accept the code.

So head on over to where Laura’s posted her presentation on screencast.com and check it out.  I’m considering chucking out the draft work plan I started and just submitting Laura’s presentation to my bosses — because I couldn’t say it any better.

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Canadian Heritage – This Web Site Will Be Changing Soon

Posted in government, web communications, tagged , on 19 March 2010 | 1 Comment »

Canadian Heritage – This Web site will be changing soon.

So the Department of Heritage (www.pch.gc.ca) will be changing their website, and they’ve telegraphed ahead with the following notice to site visitors:

Before the end of March 2010, you will notice several improvements to the Canadian Heritage Web site, and many more changes will be coming in the next few months.

The Web site is being redesigned to make it easier for you to find the information you are looking for.  The main changes will include:

  • a new Funding section, which will provide direct access to the funding programs that are right for you;
  • new Topic categories, which will be grouped and labelled in a more intuitive way to lead you quickly to the information you are seeking; and
  • new and reorganized information under “The Department” section, which will give you a better understanding of Canadian Heritage’s responsibilities and services.

I think this is great approach, both in terms of flagging in advance that the site will be changing and also in terms of what is being changed on the site.

Telling your visitors that things will be changing not only helps to reduce the impacts of the inevitable disruption, but also generates positive interest in the change. Hooray for being proactive — Far better than waiting until the change has already been implemented and reacting to confused users. It’s sure some people will still end up disrupted, but not everyone will, and many (like me) will be looking forward to the update.

More important is the direction that they appear to be taking with the changes they are making. Right now, http://www.pch.gc.ca employs a combination of topic-based and organizationally based navigation. If I’m reading the 2nd bullet above correctly, it sounds like the site will be improving its topic-based  navigation, to perhaps allow for faceted classification. And while they won’t be doing away with an organizationally based portion of their site (long live government websites and their “The Department” sections!), here’s to hoping it’s going to be presented in a way that makes sense to outsiders.

I’ve long been of the opinion that grouping content based on topics or subjects is the way to go. And if multiple labels are attached, so much the better. The idea of making particular pages or groups of pages findable via more than one keyword or path is powerful — we can’t force our users to understand our taxonomies (think about trying to understand org charts from an institution other than your own!), and sometimes things just fall in more than one mental bucket at the same time.

And finally, the inclusion of a “funding” topic by Heritage Canada is brilliant — to me, it’s one of the most obvious things that citizens are looking for when interacting with the federal government. (And yes, adding something along these lines is on the to-do list at my org too.)

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And They’re Off… Budget 2010 Online

Posted in government, social media, twitter, uncategorized, tagged , , on 4 March 2010 |

A few minutes ago, the Department of Finance issued it’s first budget live tweet.The main website is at www.budet.gc.ca/2010/

I’ve set up a live feed to follow over at Scribble Live – will try to embed here. Stay tuned.

Update: looks like I can’t embed the live event — WordPress.com is stripping out the iframe code everytime I try to re-save this post. So head on over to the event over at ScribbleLive to watch or comment! It’s at:  http://www.scribblelive.com/Event/Budget_20107

And if anyone knows of a wordaround, post in the comments below.

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Department of Finance to Live Tweet the Federal Budget

Posted in government, social media, tagged , , on 24 February 2010 | 10 Comments »

News release: The Department of Finance is using Twitter.

The Department will begin tweeting when the Honourable Jim Flaherty, Minister of Finance, rises in the House of Commons to deliver Budget 2010 on March 4th.

Links to relevant portions of the budget will be tweeted in real time.

“Our Government wants to reach out to inform Canadians of actions we are taking to support the economy,” said Minister Flaherty. “Using social media will bring our message to Canadians in a new, cost-effective and convenient way.”

Links to Finance news releases, advisories, major speeches, publications and reports will be posted for users who follow the Department.

Follow us today at http://www.twitter.com/financecanada.

Wow, live-tweeting the federal budget — that’s quite the way to launch your presence in the Twittersphere.

Doesn’t sound like interaction is part of the plan. At least that’s what I am reading in to this — the release tells what kind of content to expect, but nobody is being invited to ask questions or respond, whether via @replies or DMs.

And to date, that’s how @financecanada has been operated – in 16 tweets quietly issued since mid-February, the account has acted as a feed to news releases and such issued by the org. (Aussi disponible en Français : @financescanada.)

And that’s fair enough– if you’re not set up to respond in a timely manner (and most federal orgs are not), then its better not to venture there. But on the other hand, interaction is something that Tweeters generally expect. So I’m not sure how long this “twitter as news feed” pattern exhibited here and by many other GoC corporate social presences will be sustainable.

Update:

This bit of news is taking a turn for the weird. It turns out that there is more than one Twitter account claiming to be from the Department of Finance. @financecda and @financecanada. Which is legit? Here’s a recent @financecda tweet:

From: @FinanceCda
Sent: Feb 24, 2010 13:43

@FinanceCanada is imposter account. Please remove from your lists. #cdnpoli

sent via web

On Twitter: http://twitter.com/FinanceCda/status/9587494715

So if we trust this claim then @financecda is the real account.

But: where is the French equivalent account? I found no @financescda counterpart, while @financecanada has @financescanada as its equivalent. And the news release from the Department of Finance website says that the account they are using is @financecanada. So unless http://www.fin.gc.ca was hacked, I’m inclined to believe that @financecda is actually the impostor. Anyone else care to weigh in?

Final Update:

And in that tweet above there’s a typo! Should read impostor, not imposter. More significantly, Canwest journalist @davidakin has been tweeting about the impostor issue. He obtained a confirmation from the Department of Finance on which accounts are real:

Fin Dept spokesman Jack Aubry: The Department of Finance’s only twitter accounts are @financecanada EN and @financescanada FR

So there we have it. I admit, I was fooled by the impostor claiming that the other guy was a fake. I take solace in the fact that it didn’t take me very long to realize my mistake. A good lesson in there about trust and thinking critically about what you see and read!

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Branding: It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way

Posted in branding, government, tagged , on 5 February 2010 |

In my post from earlier this week on branding and usability, I referred to Gerry McGovern’s quip about how “Organizations need to stop trying to use traditional advertising techniques to create false images” (source: Building a brand on the Web). I’d like to delve more into this argument.

The “false images” dig refers to an idea of branding that’s along these lines:

The idea behind a brand, as opposed to a product, is that it’s intangible. Advertisers try to create a series of social associations with a product: these nebulous associations, not any physical attributes of the product itself, constitute the brand. The idea is quite simply to fool people, to make them think of one thing when they are paying for another [via Russell Smith, in the Globe and Mail]

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Here’s what I mean: those all-important associations that marketers try to create when they are building a brand don’t need to be a smokescreen — people thinking about X while they are shelling out for Y. Why does the attribute  have to be dissociated from the product or service?

And when it comes to branding in a government setting, there simply cannot be any sleight of hand. None.

I’m sure you can imagine some possible outcomes for a government program or service that does not embody its brand promise. Take, for example, innovation, when in fact the systems and processes underlying the program or service are outdated and inadequate. Or service excellence, when frontline staff are inadequately trained or don’t receive the information they need to do their job. Or transparency when in fact opaqueness is the management team’s preferred operating style.

Leaving aside hypothetical examples, it’s basically this:  when undertaking branding in government, realism has to be the order of the day. This is because our operating context is fundamentally different from the private sector. We’re not trying to attract citizens away from competitors. It’s not like citizens can choose which government they want to pay taxes to, or which government office they’d like to receive their passport from. It’s not that citizens particularly like dealing with governments.

Under these circumstances, governments cannot afford brands that promise feel-good abstractions. These are in fact distractions of no service to our citizens. Reality is paramount. The attributes that we need to restrict ourselves to are really basic stuff: competence, accountability, impartiality, helpfulness, efficiency. And then we must deliver on these — I’m sure you know the drill. So that citizens can get what they need from government and then government can get out of their way.

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