Global Connections

Government 2.0, also referred to as e-democracy, has received a major boost in Australia with the Federal Government adopting 12 of 13 recommendations of the Government 2.0 Taskforce released in December 2009 and all 28 recommendations of the recent review of the Australian Public Service report proposing a “blueprint for the reform of Australian government administration'. 

The central thrust of these policy and regulatory reforms is a “commitment to open government” and use of Web 2.0 interactive communication to increase citizen engagement across the APS”.

These reforms follow a number of online public consultation trials conducted by federal departments in late 2008 and early 2009 and guidelines developed by the Australian Government Information Management Office.

While these are welcome initiatives in many respects, a number of warning signs are flashing in relation to Government 2.0 and use of Web 2.0 generally.

Independent research into the 2008-2009 federal government online public consultation trials that I led and which is reported in the June issue of The Australian Journal of Political Science and also in my book, The 21^st Century Media (R)evolution, found that many government departments and agencies set up sites for citizen engagement but were not prepared to receive and process public comments. They did not allocate additional resources for reading public comments; sites were heavily moderated; public servants could not respond in a timely manner because of regulations; and none had specialist tools such as text analysis software to process large volumes of public comment.

Furthermore, some government agencies – as well as many companies and organisations – do not have a culture that is conducive to listening. To the contrary, one of the major risks in moving to ‘open government’ or ‘government 2.0’ and organisational use of social media generally is that it is interpreted by management as an opportunity or requirement to distribute more information.

A significant study of communication from 49 US government offices published this month by two scholars from the University of Maryland has found that most citizens do not want more information.

People want government to listen more, not talk more. They want delivery on the promise of 2.0 which denotes two-way interaction.

Simply providing more information to the public is likely to create information overload and be counter-productive to citizen engagement and public communication generally.

Listening to the public (or publics) can be assisted in a number of ways including:

1. Comprehensive media monitoring – not only of traditional media and official sites, but also of social media such as blogs, microblogs such as Twitter, video sharing sites such as YouTube, and social networks. Social media are major sites of public comment and expression which no government or company can afford to ignore;
    
2. When large volumes of public comment occur – such as thousands or even tens of thousands of blog posts, Tweets, social network comments, text messages, or e-mails – listening requires specialist resources and specialist tools such as content analysis or text analysis to identify key themes, popular topics, and dominant views. Individual responses to citizens may not be possible, but acknowledgement of common concerns and interests is an essential part of listening and good policy making;
    
3. Metadata needs to be collected to identify influencers and credible sources of comment. While audited circulation statistics and reputation indicators such as mastheads are not available for social media, metadata on the number of unique visitors, duration of visits, return visits, links to sites, user ratings (e.g. stars), reviews, recommendations, and posted comments provide indicators of the most credible and relevant sites.

The same warnings and advice apply to businesses. Improving public communication does not necessarily mean talking more; it often means listening more. Web 2.0 social media, in particular are about two-way engagement and interaction.
 

Jim Macnamara addressed a seminar at the National Press Club in Canberra on 2 June sponsored by Media Monitors in which he reported these and other findings of his research.