Yellow Brick Roadmap: Five Examples of Getting Gov 2.0 Done

Since my post talking about the frustration in talking about making government more transparent, participatory, and collaborative, I had an epiphany. We are all Dorothy Gale.

Dorothy, from the Wizard of Oz, wore magical ruby slippers that empowered her to do what she most wanted--return home to Kansas. BUT she couldn't unleash their power until she believed that she could. Crazy, no?

How did our heroine get to believing? Via real life experiences. So, for Halloween I will be a Good Witch and provide guidance in the form of examples of real agencies solving the problems in becoming the government that we want to be. Call it the Yellow Brick Roadmap.

So, what are the barriers and what are solutions that agencies have found?

Privacy: The Department of Justice (DOJ) unveiled a new website and a set of social media tools at the end of September. They addressed privacy issues in 3rd party web tools--like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter--head on with a comprehensive Privacy Impact Assessment. DOJ writes that

[T]hese third-party websites are not a part of the Department’s internal information systems nor will they be operated by a contractor of the Department, the Department does not and will not collect information from individuals when individuals interact with the Department’s social web accounts. While it may appear that information posted by third parties on the Department’s accounts is the Department’s information, such third-party postings are technically and factually under the dominion of the third-party social websites.

DOJ's construct may be a good model for other agencies. Read the PDF of Justice's Privacy Impact Assessment.

Employee Use of Social Media: The Government Services Administration (GSA) is a Federal agency that provides services and support to other government agencies. They published a social media employee use policy in July. This policy addresses agency expectations,

As the technology evolves, this order and its accompanying handbook will evolve, but in general terms, this order defines guiding principles for use of these technologies by GSA employees. The use of social media technology follows the same standards of professional practice and conduct associated with everything else we do. Common sense and sound judgment help avoid the most vexing issues.

Read the PDF of the GSA Policy for Employee Use of Social Media.

Legal barriers in standard 3rd-party terms of service agreements: This was the original show-stopper for many agencies trying to use social networks. The federal government could not agree to some clauses in standard agreements with social media service providers.

Since this problem was identified a year ago, government-wide agreements have been negotiated with You Tube, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, and more with additional agreements in the works. This has been a collaborative effort with many agencies contributing time and lawyers including EPA, Commerce, GSA, Library of Congress and the White House.

While each agency will decide when and how to implement social media and social networking tools based on their priorities and strategies, a basic legal hurdle for all government has been cleared. See more on the process for using standard terms of service agreements on Webcontent.gov.

Strategy and process: Frankly, another barrier has been, how do you get started? A terrific model for people to learn from is provided by The Smithsonian, the world's largest museum complex and research organization.

This Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy was created through a fast and transparent process that directly involved, and continues to involve, hundreds of stakeholders inside and outside the Institution. This strategy will feed into the Smithsonian’s comprehensive strategic plan, currently under development.

I'll quick stipulate that the Smithsonian is not a typical government agency, yet their approach can be modified to fit the culture and needs of any agency. First, tie new media to the agency strategy. Second, appoint a leader with decision-making authority. Third, create a tactical road map. Fourth, create a funded unit that will implement the strategy.

Before people [you!] start to moan about how hard this is, nobody said it would be easy. The Smithsonian, however, is showing a way. See all the details at the Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy Wiki.

Transparency & Open Government. While the long-awaited Open Government Directive is not yet published, the President's January 21st call for a more transparent, participatory and collaborative government has already made an impact.

The Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Homeland Security have undertaken dialogues with stakeholders to strengthen not only services but also strategy. The Open Government Directive development process itself has included public brainstorming and a wiki to help develop the policy. Each of these projects and tools are part of the learning process to make open government robust and meaningful. It's already happening.

This Yellow Brick Roadmap to real accomplishments is meant to help people [you!] believe that we are making progress opening up government. And, to show concrete examples that can be leveraged by people [you!] trying to make progress in your own agencies.

The path to success is recognizing that we [you!] are already on the path, that you have the tools/ruby slippers and it's up to you to make it happen. Got it?

Have more examples with enough resources for folks to replicate? Add to the comments below. Then, pick up your basket and your little dog, too, and follow the Yellow Brick Road!

Shorts: Twitter Grows, Report Cards, Drupal and Memos

Twitter grows. Pew released some data last week about growth in Twitter use--from 11% of Internet users to 19% in just six-months. Other findings? Three groups of internet users are mainly responsible for driving the growth of this activity, social network users, people who are using mobile and folks under age 44. See more at the Pew Internet Project.

White Paper Report Card. Candi Harrison asks, "Web Manager Council’s White Paper – Is There Progress A Year Later?" In her post she recaps the goals of easily identifiable, relevant, accurate, and up-to-date information that is easy to understand, addresses citizen tasks, is consistent across channels, provides feedback channels and is accessible across reading, ability and language barriers. She gave government a mixed review. See more here.

White House goes Drupal. And TechPresident swoons as they announced that whitehouse.gov has moved to Open Source Software and dropped their proprietary system. I am not sure that this is a great advance for democracy--bottom line is that there will be a custom (read proprietary) system built on the open source platform. But it is good for open source. See more at TechPresident.

Finally, NextGov reports, no movement from White House on the issuing of the Open Government memo that the President announced January 21. See Next Gov.

Hey dot-gov! Don't Believe Your Hype

Success! Popularity! Fans! Page views! I win! Seems everybody wants to be Internet-important. Not to bust anybody's bubble, but government success and engagement numbers benefit from some perspective.

For starters, Federal Computer Week listed the "Top Ten Agencies with The Most Facebook Fans." Tops is White House's Facebook page with (now) 375,000 fans. That's a respectable number that continues to grow. But for comparison, the Facebook page for Nutella--that chocolate hazelnut spread--has 3.3 million fans. Plus there are two other Nutella fan pages with 977,000 and 750,000 fans each.

NASA, government's popular space agency, is pulling closer to 10,000 fans of it's Facebook page. Pink Floyd--a band that released it's last album the day that Netscape was founded and who created one of the best rock albums of all time Dark Side of the Moon (released in 1973 the same year that NASA's space station Skylab was launched)--has 1.6 million fans. [See also Mark Drapeau's post on this topic.]

Second, there are the arguments I hear about the important power of government content and presence on the Internet. Overall, this is true. According to comScore data* all dot-gov traffic combined puts government among the top 10 online properties.

Looking closer at the numbers is more sobering. Because government sites are fragmented they are less trafficked than the aggregated numbers show.

For example, the online classified site craigslist.org has three-fifths (60%) the traffic of the entire government. Comparing the State Department--despite high traffic for passport and travel information, the sports-entertainment site ESPN has ten times more visitors. Commerce.gov--whose data includes hurricane and storm tracking from noaa.gov, weather.gov, time.gov--has less than one-sixth the traffic of the popular Weather Channel. And, the transaction heavy Social Security Administration has 10% of the visitors that Wal-Mart does.



Government websites and social media efforts exist in a broader ecosystem. Yes, let's celebrate success, but let's first define and refine what that means. The tough news? Looking at numbers without context can lead to believing that you are more important than you really are. The good news? The fact that you are less important than you think doesn't mean that you aren't important at all.

* The comScore data on government sites July 09 and regarding other media sites Aug 09.

Shorts: Second Life for White House, Participation, SocNet Policy

Obama Team Officially Gets a Second Life.When President Obama spoke to a live audience in Ghana, his address was streamed to audiences in the virtual worlds of Second Life and Metaplace. After the speech there was a virtual discussion, led by a panel with the former ambassador to Qatar and an African historian. This event was announced by CBS News and organized as an official White House event by the U.S. State Department. No one knows yet what the future holds for the Obama administration and virtual worlds, but what we are sure of, is that they are actively seeking out, researching, and testing these opportunities. Read more.

Measuring Effectiveness of Participation Projects. What is the return on the investment of the government's time, resources, and attention into cracking open the political sphere to citizen engagement? In other words, how do open government projects operating within the government bureaucracy justify their keep? That's the subtext to a new report out from New York Law School's Center for Patent Innovations, overseer of the Peer-to-Patent project. Peer-to-Patent broke new ground in participatory government and the Patent Office decided to assess whether it's worthwhile to continue the project as part of the standard practice of how the U.S. vets patents. In its two-year life thus far, 2,600 people registered on the site as patent reviewers. More than 180 applications were vetted. Read more from Nancy Scola on Tech President.

10 things you should cover in your social networking policy. When the social networking phenomenon began, many companies dealt with it by not dealing with it — they simply banned/blocked social networking sites on the company network. Now, as social media grows up, policy is starting to try to catch up to practice. Check out the suggestions from copyright to employee conduct on and off the job. More on the TechRepublic blog.

Shorts: Flickr License, Chu Vents, CDC Web Stats

Flickr Creates New License for White House Photos. The White House had been posting pics to Flickr under the Creative Commons Attribution license that lets people reuse, reprint and remix the photos just as long as they credit the original photographers--but since government works can’t be copyrighted that was a fail. Over the weekend, though, the licenses changed, and now the photos are labeled “United States Government Work” and link to an explanation on copyright.gov.  The change marks a first for Flickr, which did not have a license for government works, other than a “No Known Copyright Restriction” license. Read the post on Wired.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu Vents About IT Bureaucracy and provides Quote of the Day: "They (DoE's infosec people) forgot the Department of Energy has a job, and it’s not to protect the Department of Energy. It’s to get something done...(Risk) has to be balanced against the mission of the Department and so this is something that I feel very strongly about." Can I get an AMEN?  From Personal Democracy Forum.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Posts Data on Web Experience. Being perfectly transparent about what people are looking for and how happy they are, CDC is posting quarterly numbers on visits,visitor satisfaction, what they look for on the site, and top pages. The quarter they are reporting includes heavy traffic from the peanut recall and H1N1 (nee swine) flu.  See the data dashboard on CDC.GOV.

Making National Tools Local

Gov 2.0 Camp was a blast! I am so sorry that I only made it to Happy Hour and the afternoon sessions on Saturday. But there are great summaries, impressions, resources and play by plays available here, here, here, and, of course, here. 

For the session "Ask the President," Macon Phillips, White House New Media Director, and Bev Godwin, usa.gov guru currently detailed to WH new media team, wanted to learn how to improve the question and answer. First, a quick overview from Newsweek

The President held his first "Open for Questions" event in the East Room of the White House. Basically the White House invited people to submit questions for POTUS odnline. People could then vote for the questions they'd most like to hear him answer. The whole event streamed live on whitehouse.gov, and around 100 regular folks where invited to the East Room to watch. Over 90,000 people submitted questions and 3.6 million votes were cast.--Read the rest.

Overall, folks felt the Q&A was successful. The nagging question remained, though, that this type of forum is vulnerable to special interests drowning out more organic issues.  For example, Politico noted that pot, once again, was a top question/question vote-getter, likely via a push by NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.

The President addressed the drug question head on, but from a participation and technology point of view, the issue of manipulating results remains. 

The White House used Google Moderator, a simple tool that helps groups determine which questions should be asked at all hands meetings, conferences, Q&A sessions (see TechCrunch). Moderator, as designed was  intended to be used locally. Pete Peterson very smartly writes in Tech President that it's hard to make policy on a national scale.

[Can government] focus its online engagement efforts at the local level. In a sense this means using tools like Moderator as they were originally intended. The advantage of this strategy is that the content and political decision-making process involved in localized issues tend to be less complex than at the national level. Participants can more readily see the impact they will have on a community concern than a national one. This does not mean the subject of the engagement is not Federal in nature. Many Federal agencies from the EPA to Homeland Security are tasked with conforming policies to cities and regions throughout the country. Answering the “how” question of policy – specifically, “how does that rule fit here?” – can be supported legitimately by online tools. --Tech President

If all politics are local, could Moderator function locally and roll up to a national agenda? The tool could ask for users' zip code or Congressional District and questions or priorities voted on locally. This would distribute the special interests geographically. 

People could begin by discussing and voting up questions in their locality and then popular questions could "advance" to a regional and then national level.  A bonus to this system, if by Congressional District, is that members of the House could also have access to the data from their districts, helping to inform their deliberations and decisions. If the tool was used for local politics, too, it would become even more valuable. 

This isn't a time to throw out the baby with the bathwater, but to take a closer look at what actually happens when new tools are introduced. The WH New Media team is anxious to refine and enhance participation tools and are looking at each foray into new territory as a learning experience. And that's something that we can all take back to our agencies. 

Social Media as Source of Citizen Info

From The Atlantic "Pot on Brain of WH Questioners"

According to the White House,more than 90,000 people submitted more than 104,000 questions and cast 3.6 million votes on which to ask President Obama. The top-rated question under the category of "fiscal stability" is, you guessed it, about pot. "Would you support the bill currently going through the California legislation to legalize and tax marijuana, boosting the economy and reducing drug cartel related violence?" Top question in the budget category: "With over 1 out of 30 Americans controlled by the penal system, why not legalize, control, and tax marijuana to change the failed war on drugs into a money making, money saving boost to the economy? Do we really need that many victimless criminals?" Read more from the Atlantic.

This has been an ongoing theme, but Advertising Age online has an interesting take on "listening" to social media from a marketers' perspective.

The internet has made it easier than ever for consumers to get their opinions heard -- and for marketers to listen. But it also creates real challenges: Do marketers know who they're listening to? And at what point does the echo chamber of social media drown out the real opinions of the people who buy your brand?

"The data is a really compelling reminder that a lot of our target consumers are not the people who are sitting on Twitter freaking out over a packaging design that they don't like," said Diane Hessan, CEO of Communispace. She added, "These are people online, having conversations, and yet they are totally out of the loop on stuff us marketing junkies love to obsess over."

For example, in the past month, the Twitter community has been titillated by South by Southwest, AT&T, "Lost" and the redesign of Skittles.com. Missing from the list are things the Communispace and Lightspeed surveys, both separately commissioned on Ad Age's behalf, found that the general population is fired up about, such as the AIG bonuses and the bank-bailout plans.
There's also the straight numbers game: While 64% of Communispace respondents had heard of Twitter, only 6% used it. The Lightspeed responses indicated even fewer users had heard of it (3%), and most of the 58% who had knew of it from someone they know or -- get this -- TV. Read more on Ad Age.

So, what does this mean for government? As we move into social media spaces, we will need to learn to calibrate and understand the information that we receive. We cannot dismiss the concerns of a "vocal minority"--after all they are citizens, too--but not everyone is participating in social media tools. The unplugged voices count, too.

Taking the pulse of the American public will continue to be a combination of traditional tools like polling, focus groups and election results as well as "listening" to social media. As we transition and incorporate new forms of participation, we need to be very careful about our conclusions and remember that we are learning.

Shorts: Online POTUS Town Hall, Search & Better Websites

White House Using Google Moderator For Town Hall Meeting. And AppEngine. And YouTube. The White House is using Moderator, hosted on AppEngine, to determine which questions President Obama should answer at an online Town Hall meeting on Thursday. In just a few hours 6,932 people have submitted 7,037 questions and cast 236,048 votes on the site. Read more on TechCrunch.

And, Holy Cow, The White House Has a Digg Clone. The White House has launched a new web site where anyone can submit and vote up their most important questions for President Obama about the economy. That's right - the White House has a Digg clone! At least for the next two days. Activity on the site will culminate in Obama addressing the top questions on Thursday, March 26. Read more on ReadWriteWeb.

Transforming the Relationship Between Citizens and Government: Making Content Findable Online. [T]o truly make content available, it has to appear on the first page of search results for relevant queries on major search engines. What can government web sites do to be more findable? Findability is an in-depth process that involves both technical site architecture (ensuring search engines can crawl the pages) and content (ensuring the text is in the language of the searcher). As Kundra acknowledged, "“A two-way interaction between the government and its citizens,” he said, “will require a massive transformation by the government, on the back end, to ensure the government can deal with this new reality.”. But while a long-term plan to make government content findable in search engines is necessary, there are some basic steps that government sites can take to make content more visible in the short term. Read more from Vanessa Fox on O'Rielly blog.

Fed Web Managers Featured on Radio. Did you hear Fed 100 Winner Sheila Campbell on Federal News Radio? Sheila talks about helping citizens complete their top tasks and the Federal Web Managers Council. Also, the April Government Web Managers Conference. Listen here. Get information about the Conference in D.C., here.

Changes In Video on Whitehouse.gov

Whitehouse.gov--which had been using YouTube to embed and play videos so that the President's weekly address was dubbed the YouTube address--is making video available in multiple formats.

In addition to Vimeo and YouTube, the White House makes the presidential addresses available as mp3 audio files and mp4 video files that can be uploaded into any video player. (YouTube video files can be shared through linking and embedding but they cannot be downloaded for insertion into, say, Brightcove players.)

And today, the YouTube version of the president's address wasn't even easily found on WhiteHouse.gov's blog, which offered up a flash video player with no logo as its main mechanism for viewing, then linked out -- under the link "also available here" -- to Vimeo. --Read more at WashPost.

The use of YouTube by government has had it's share of critics. Some folks are saying that White House is "abandoning" YouTube, but the fact they continue to upload video to their channel disputes that. In addition, the White House has been uploading video to both YouTube and Vimeo for the past three months. See, for example, videos from the transition teams on Vimeo here.

The team did not retrofit videos already embedded from YouTube, so you may see different types of players, depending on the blog entry you are viewing.

The use of third party video players, like the ones used by the White House, is getting caught in the policies of government--privacy, accessibility, endorsement, even gifting. As government continues to extend into non dot-gov sites the tension between openness and participation and federal rules of engagement will challenge many trying to meet up with citizens where they are.

Shorts: Obama Web Team, Pentagon Blogger

Web-Savvy Obama Team Hits Unexpected Bumps: The team that ran the most technologically advanced presidential campaign in modern history is finding it difficult to adapt that model to government. WhiteHouse.gov has a blog and a YouTube channel, both firsts for a president. The online unit, which numbers at least seven, is larger than any White House has had, but it is not configured to replicate the campaign's work. New Media Director Macon Phillips said, "We're not running a campaign anymore. To us here, WhiteHouse.gov is not just a Web site. The new programs that we will roll out are more than just URLs. They are new ways to engage with citizens. Stay tuned." More on Washington Post.

Pentagon gets a blogger of its own: The Defense Department's in-house wire service, is taking a page from the bloggers and offering up a new new series of Internet reports from one of its own. Fred W. Baker III, who is currently on an extended assignment in Afghanistan, has a dedicated page on the Department of Defense website. It's a slick multimedia setup that combines video, photo essays and dispatches. More from Wired blog.

White House New Media Team Announced

From The Nation,

Several of the President's "key White House staff," according to a press release from Robert Gibbs, will manage large portfolios for Internet outreach and "citizen participation" online. The list includes several veterans of Obama's presidential campaign, naturally, a former web adviser to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and a former Google staffer who worked on the company's Moderator platform. --More from The Nation.

The new White House team is taking a holistic view of New Media. Basically the line is between traditional media--print and broadcast--and new media--communications using the Internet from email to websites to social media.

Team members named today are:
Macon Phillips, Director of New Media--since the election, he has served as Director of New Media for the Presidential Transition Team, developing Change.gov and overseeing the transition's overall online communications. Prior to that, he served as the Deputy Director of New Media for Obama for America, managing the day to day operations of the campaign's online program.

Cammie Croft, Deputy New Media Director--comes to the White House from the Obama-Biden Transition Project, where she served as the Deputy New Media Director, specializing in online communications. Prior to that, as the New Media Rapid Response Manager for the Obama for America campaign, she oversaw efforts to integrate new media and communications.

Jason Djang, Deputy Director for Video--served on the New Media video teams for both Obama for America and the Obama-Biden Transition Project as an editor and producer.

Jesse Lee, Online Programs Director--worked in the New Media department for the Transition team doing online outreach, having done online communications for the Democratic National Committee during election season and the blog for Speaker Pelosi.

Katie Stanton, Director of Citizen Participation--coming from Google where she was a Principal in the New Business Development team responsible for OpenSocial, Google Moderator, and various election-related initiatives.

More details on the new team at whitehouse.gov.

[hattip to Andrew Wilson, @andrewpwilson]