Three Privacy Tales

A very smart, millennial new media colleague was talking online privacy over a beer. He said that he didn't really have an expectation of privacy and that he trusted Google to do right.

Last month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt ruffled more than a few privacy feathers.

In a recent interview [CEO Schmidt] suggested that people pushing for privacy are the one's at fault: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

This sounds suspiciously like a reheated version of "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to worry about," that's trotted out by law enforcement types when pushing for stronger laws to violate individuals' privacy. It's an odd statement for someone like Schmidt to make, especially given the incredible level of scrutiny given to Google for the view it has into people's lives. To folks who are worried about such things, it sounds positively dismissive, which isn't the position that Google should be cultivating with those who are concerned right now." --More on TechDirt

This month, another tech giant, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, resurrected the controversy when he said that people don't expect privacy anymore.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told a live audience this weekend that the world has changed, that it's become more public and less private, and that the controversial new default and permanent settings reflect how the site would work if he were to create it today. Not everyone agrees with his move and its justification.

Has society become less private or is it Facebook that's pushing people in that direction? Is privacy online just an illusion anyway?--Read more on ReadWriteWeb

Facebook, with it's 350 million members has modified it's views on privacy as well as its policies. From a closed network in which only people that you have approved can see your profile, photos and other information to a fairly open network in which the default is "open to all" including search engine results.

My third privacy tale is from another direction--and continent. Europe has had pretty strong online privacy protections. In November, the European Union passed a law requiring Internet users' consent before cookies can be placed on their machines.

The amended directive will now state that national governments must "ensure that the storing of information, or the gaining of access to information already stored, in the terminal equipment of a subscriber or user is only allowed on condition that the subscriber or user concerned has given his/her consent, having been provided with clear and comprehensive information."

Cookies without user consent would only be allowed when they are "strictly necessary" to provide a service "explicitly requested" by the user such as storing shopping cart information on e-commerce sites, for example.--Read more at ClickZ

So, as big U.S. tech/new media moguls posit that privacy is becoming less important, to the Europeans, at least, it's critical to protect.

In the U.S., dot-gov has stronger privacy requirements than the private sector. There are some who think, though, that the EU controls will force a change in the commercial sector--especially to put more control in the hands of the consumer to be included in tracking and data gathering.

In the meantime, federal agencies will continue to face barriers in using commercial tools that use cookies to track users as these privacy tales play out.

7 Social Media Takeaways for Dot-gov

As we traverse to a new decade, here are seven takeaways to help small, medium and large agencies use social media to be more transparent, participatory and collaborative. Take what you can use.

1. Community without guilt. There are many "experts" will tell you that there is one right way to "do" social media. They are wrong. There are tons of ways to use new communications tools and channels. Want to engage with your fans, followers, friends? Great! Want to use social tools to rebroadcast your message? That's okay. Just want to see what people are saying about you? That's fine, too. Most important, make sure you have a strategy together before jumping in. You can always adjust later.
2. Social media is "plumbing." Don't adopt tool angst. While you need to know how different tools work (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, social voting), these tools are conduits to communicating and, hopefully, engaging with your audience. The key is to figure out what you are trying to accomplish (again!), and use the best tools to reach out and meet your goals.
3. All you can eat doesn't mean that you don't HAVE to eat it all. People get overwhelmed with the variety and scope of engagement opportunities. It's better to choose fewer, strategic projects and do them well than to spread yourself too thin. I predict that there will be as many abandoned government Twitter and Facebook accounts as there will be new ones in 2010. Prove me wrong!
4. Friction free. One of the reasons that Twitter is so popular is that it's friction free--in other words, EASY. It's super easy to sign up for Twitter, same with Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. This is the expectation that citizens now have for government services. Government needs to review our gateways to try and make it easier to use our services than to NOT use us.
5. Listening is important. Don't overestimate the importance of re-broadcasting your same tired messages in new venues. The real value comes from listening--from finding out what people are saying about your agency, where you succeed as well as where you are failing. My favorite saying is "Everybody has a point," even when their delivery makes it hard to hear. If you are listening, though, you have the opportunity to learn, see trends, and improve.
6. Communicate with economy and precision. One of the best things about Twitter is that it forces communications into 140 characters. This forces us to eliminate all the extra, flowery, self aggrandizing government language. It behooves us to do this not only when tweeting, but in our blogs, websites, manuals, letters, instructions, well, you get the picture.
7. Wisdom of the crowds can be time and volume based. Twitter helps define what is important, according to Clay Shirky, by “algorithmic authority." The idea is that if "all kinds of people are pointing at the same thing at the same instant, it must be a pretty big deal." Looking at trends in Twitter, Google, and your own search terms on your site can give you insight about what people think is important, NOW. What can you feature on the homepage of your website? Can you tweet a link to a resource? Clear up a misconception?

Bottom line, it's the same formula: What are you trying to accomplish? Who is your audience? How do new media channels help you meet your goals? Measure all your efforts against these questions.

This post is inspired by David Carr's very good post in the NYTimes on Why Twitter Will Endure. Read that, too!

3 Reasons To Get With The Program Already

First, the change has already happened. It's done.

What has changed is the way people communicate and interact--with each other, with companies, with government. We don't yet know what that means. We can try and predict, but the main outcomes of these predictions is fodder for future laughs.

Now to you naysayers who say that not everyone is plugged in, not everyone uses social media or the Internet or even e-mail, I say, "So? You don't have to drive to know that cars changed the way we live, where we live, how we shop, where we go."

And, to you near-term nostalgics, the people who think that texting, tweeting, friending and gaming are stupid, who prefer a stamp to online banking, I say, "it's okay for you to feel that way, just realize that the rest of the world is embracing new channels."

Second, your brand has changed. "Brand" is not a visual representation of your organization. It is the experiences that people have with your organization and the sharing of these experiences within their networks. Brand doesn't belong to your agency, it belongs to people who interact with your agency.

For example, 65% of U.S. consumers report a digital experience changing their perception about a brand (either positively or negatively) and 97% of that group report that the same experience ultimately influenced whether or not they went on to purchase a product from that brand. In a nutshell, experience matters. A lot.

...That's why Amazon continues to pour money into improving its customer service rather than run traditional advertising or marketing campaigns. As Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has said, "We are not great advertisers. So we start with customers, figure out what they want, and figure out how to get it to them."--See more at AdAge.com

This matters a lot to government--at least it should. People expect that their tax dollars pay for the same types of experiences that they have in the private sector. When we disappoint, we fail. Government needs to better engage with citizens and provide services that people seek--less time broadcasting/marketing our messages and more time building good experiences. Better experiences will translate into better confidence in government.

Third, you simply disappear if you are not present. People are watching TV on their cell phones at their convenience. The entire country does not sit down at 6 p.m. to watch the evening news on traditional broadcast channels.

This is why monitoring, establishing and cultivating a strategic presence and inspiring meaningful engagement is so critical in social media. It impacts the bottom line. If we are not present within the attention dashboards of our existing customers and prospects, we intentionally remove ourselves from their decision-making funnel. Consumers are among the new influencers as they now have access to the same tools and channels that reach peers and shape their impressions.--[emphasis mine] More from digital marketing expert Brian Solis

Government frequently suffers from disproportionate emphasis on traditional communications channels. The story in the NY Times, the interview on CNN will remain important, but not the most important. The results from search engines that lead to content on web sites or engaging applications that are passed around and shared among friends on social networks are equally valuable. We have the skills to get traditional news stories, it's time to build skills to bring information directly to citizens.

Wake up! The world has already changed! But we still have time to shape what it will be and what government can do to better serve our citizens.

Searching for My Inner Craig

Topic One at the big Government 2.0 Summit here in Washington last week was "What is Gov 2.0, and how do we get there?"

This isn't a new question. Twenty-seven months after HHS launched the first Cabinet-level public discussion via a blog, we are still trying to define both the destination and the journey.

My own embrace of a new, open, transparent, participatory and collaborative era of government is shackled by the fact that I am an implementer. I don't get to sit on the sidelines and make smack-talk. I have to figure out how to make this work operationally, legally, and effectively for a federal agency. And, I would be a big, fat liar if I didn't admit that it is harder than it looks and more than a little scary [insert your favorite "not safe for work" link here].

This is where my unknowing mentor Craig comes in. Craig, the man who put the Craig in Craigslist, has been successfully herding cats--by not trying to herd them--on the humongous, world-wide online classified ad site and community he founded in 1995. He's also an active advocate of improving government services.

I've been studying Craig's zen-like approach to service and communities as a model to help me with Gov 2.0. In searching for my inner-Craig I've begun to identify some "truths" to help in actualizing open, transparent, participatory and collaborative government.

Truth 1 Trust. Craig says, "Most people are trustworthy and good and want to treat other people like they want to be treated." While this seems easy, in a bureaucratic, conservative command and control organization--like the government--it's easy to get stuck on the word "most." Since not everyone is a good guy, risk-averse organizations develop structures and policies to treat all comers as if they were "bad." Michele Weslander Quaid, CTO for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said that ODNI hired a risk manager to help make decisions based on risk/reward. By identifying potential risks and the chance the event will occur, government can develop policies that make sense. Working from fact, not fear, lets us trust people to do the right thing--even when it's something we didn't expect--and get out of their way.

Truth 2 Patience. Government social media and transparency efforts are in their infancy. We need to take the time to build out a process. It won't happen overnight. Craigslist grew organically in the Bay Area for years. There were trials and lessons learned to apply to new cities as it gradually expanded over a decade. This isn't to say that we need to slow down efforts, but that there will be successes and failures. We need to learn from both. It's like a three act play. After the heady first act of new blogs, video sharing and wikis, we are now in the long second act where the heroes are tested and do battle, make mistakes and learn how this works. We are still a ways from the climax and dénouement of Act III. We can't rush the story.

Truth 3 Customer service is public service. It's easier to have all the answers than to spend time listening to your audience. It's also not a successful strategy. For government, our audience--our customers--are the American people. We don't make government for the sake of government. We make government on behalf of, and in service of the people. So, its up to us to get out of our cubbies, our jargon, and our assumptions and get out of the way of the information and services people need. Behind Craigslist is the philosophy that people are basically good and their needs fairly simple (see trust above) so a minimal structure led by user needs will let people work things out by themselves. Government should not direct the user, the user directs the government to meet their needs.

Danielle Blumenthal is getting at this in her recent blog post.

Silence is not the answer. Jargon is not the answer. Long sentences and self promotion are not the answer. Let's stop talking to ourselves in a haze of groupthink and fear and start having real conversations about who the customer is (the public) what they want and need to hear (the truth) and how we need to say it so that they really get the message (any method of communication that works).--More from Branding and Social Media.

Knowing the truths is not the same as truly incorporating the truths. I am not all the way there, but I have a path. And I am working on it.

Thanks Master Craig, from Grasshopper Gwynne.

[For more on Craig, check out his blog or the recent Wired Magazine feature on him. ]

Rapunzel Was a Baby-Mama

This past week had a few stories from the Department of Defense and the defense against the dark arts of social media.

Last week, DOD launched the DoD Web 2.0 Guidance Forum, a new dialogue initiative. They said

We are using this blog as an approach to engage the public in Department of Defense (DoD) considerations of web 2.0 capabilities, and are excited to participate in this new facet to the President’s openness and transparency efforts.-Read more on the Forum.

In what seemed like only a few hours later, Wired reported that DOD was considering banning social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook because they cause security "headaches."

[T]his fresh ban stems from fears that Facebook and the like make it far too easy for hackers and cybercrooks to gain access to the military’s networks.

Last week, U.S. Strategic Command issued a “warning order” to the rest of the military, asking for feedback on a social media ban on the NIPRNet, the Defense’s Department’s unclassified network. (Naturally, access is already denied on the secret and top secret nets.)

“The mechanisms for social networking were never designed for security and filtering. They make it way too easy for people with bad intentions to push malicious code to unsuspecting users. It’s just a fact of life,” says a source at Stratcom, which is responsible for securing the military’s “global information grid.”--Read the rest in Wired's DangerRoom.

Seemed like a pretty quick assessment of the public sentiment. [Seriously, the dialogue is open through the end of August, so please participate.]

On Monday, the Marines announced an IMMEDIATE BAN OF INTERNET SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES (SNS) ON MARINE CORPS ENTERPRISE NETWORK (MCEN) NIPRNET.

The U.S. Marine Corps on Monday issued a directive banning access to Internet social networking sites on the Marine Corps Enterprise Network because such sites represent a security risk.

Marine administrative message 458/09 says that social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter "are a proven haven for malicious actors and content and are particularly high risk due to information exposure, user generated content and targeting by adversaries."

Social networking sites create vulnerabilities that can be exploited and may expose unnecessary information to adversaries, putting military personnel at increased risk of compromise, the directive says.--Read more on InformationWeek.

"What's going on?," you may ask. Hasn't DOD been at the forefront of social media engagement?

The questions being asked by some worried brass and the edicts and bans being handed down are a reflection of the reality that there is a conflict between legitimate security issues and the reality of this very open, very participatory new world.

But, I would like to offer a Grimm Fairy Tale.

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel let down your hair." And with that quick phrase, the prince was inside the fortress and "married" the fair maiden.

Bottom line, while you can set up multiple, extraordinary, and high-hurdle defenses, the desires and needs to extend beyond the "impregnable" fortresses may make them insufficient.

Better said by Talking Salmons.

Social media is how I communicate...It is the evolution of communication. Faster, fitter, more productive, free, easy and beneficial. Policy makers who ban social media because of the threat of viruses make no sense to me. Are we still in the era of burning towns to stop the plague? Do we ban cars when a teenager drives drunk? Do we ban computers when someone writes a computer virus?--Read the entire excellent post on Talking Salmons.

I am sounding a bit redundant, but, once again, this is stuff that we are figuring out. So, I would like to leave this post in the able tweet of Admiral Mike Mullen, chair of the Joint Chiefs.

Choir Boys and Rebels

The government meets web 2.0 conference circuit is getting tired.

All web 2.0 conferences are all starting to look exactly the same. Many speakers come from agencies that are boldly using social media in a new and exciting ways, and many more "believers," who are not allowed to use those same technologies, come to hear about it. But the status quo remains the same. NASA and DoD get to successfully use social media, and the rest of us, for the most part, don't. This is the divide that needs to be overcome. I understand that agencies like the IRS and SSA have intensely sensitive data and need to be extremely cautious. But there are a great many agencies that do not fall into this category that are prevented from using these technologies, despite any prior approval GSA may have gotten. My agency isn't even officially allowed to use Twitter yet...One panelist at a breakout session described how DoD is using "other transactions" to quickly fund new ideas to address current problems. While very interesting, this was less than helpful since DoD is the only agency that I know of with this kind of authority - everyone else has to use the traditional and time-consuming procurement system. For an expo, these are excellent speakers. DoD, NASA, The White House are getting things done, but as a method to further collaboration and expand the use of social media, it failed. We need specifics: case studies, business case strategies that succeeded to support any/all of these tools, etc. [emphasis mine]--More from Jaime Maynard on her GovLoop* blog.

The robust discussion that followed Jamie's post included more than a few frustrated voices lamenting the lack of process and policy that can allow and encourage the use of social media tools in government agencies. Bottom line, it's not fun to see what everyone is doing if there appears to be no light at the end of your own tunnel.

So, tunnel!

Here's the thing. We are just at the beginning of a social information revolution. The roads are more like ruts in the ground. There are no traffic signals. And, yes, in many cases, it's the blind leading the blind.

But, it's not just government. The private sector--outside of the social technology companies themselves--is also wrestling with the upheaval that social media brings.

The ultimate issue is, How do hierarchical, risk adverse and change-fearing organizations incorporate tools that are anti-hierarchy, risky, game-changers?

Funny thing, these conferences that are causing frustrations--what with all the preaching to the choir--are the venues to create and build the networks and common language that choir members take back to their day jobs. And, the rebellious choir members are singing to colleagues, bosses, and compliance professionals from this same hymnal. And, some of the people who hear the music feel the joy and join the choir, too. This process repeats.

This is a sea change that is disrupting the basic structures of our systems, from contracting and buying services to shining bright lights on moldy laws to upending command and control structures. These institutions--acquisitions, legal, management--are meant to withstand fads and the winds of change. But the change is happening from within.

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, blogged on this earlier in the week.

We’re seeing movement from mere words to reality, and by bearing witness to that progress, I hope to help accelerate that progress, with actual results. Our goal involves:

• Increasing government accountability
• Everyday engagement between government workers and the public for customer service
• Everyday engagement between the public and their representatives regarding ongoing government policy

As a nation, we’re already heading to our shared goals, mostly via many grassroots, spontaneous efforts, often involving informal collaborations between the citizens and government workers. --[emphasis mine] Read more on FedScoop.

So, take heart and channel any impatience towards improving your own knowledge and networking with other choir members. See, for example, the terrific follow-on post by Jeffrey Levy with practical suggestions to build the community and help usher in the change.

Raise your voices. This is a choir like none we've seen in a very long time.

[* If you're not a member of GovLoop you can't see Jaimies post. So join GovLoop, it's a great social network tool connecting the government (local, state, fed, contractor) community.]

What Is the Most Important Thing?

My desk phone rang at 7:00 p.m. "Go Home!" said the caller.

Of course, he was glad to have caught me, and we had a quick confab about social media. And the arrows all pointed at the disruptive communications technologies that are social media.

The early days of ignorance and bliss are gone. The days when government staffers innocently clicked the button that said, "I agree," and opened up the Pandora's box of Facebook, YouTube, AddThis, Feedburner, MySpace, and Twitter.

Those few days when the Internet was free and open--a new, more transparent, collaborative and participatory way--for government to communicate and interact with her citizens. The days before the inevitable crush of rules and regulations, of some CFR thingie and the threat of potential hearings, made us grow up and take notice of what we had unleashed.

So today's discussion with my friend was about one of the regulatory tigers [link to pdf]. It doesn't matter which one because they are all important. Could be security. Could be privacy. Could be protecting the record of how a decision is made. Could be ethics. Could be cramming the Internet pipes of an agency with who knows what. Could be the sovereignty of the United States of America, for goodness' sake!

They are all important. And so is embracing the uncertainty and risk of this new more transparent, collaborative and participatory way for government to communicate and interact with her citizens.

We are now standing in the middle of an incredibly busy intersection of dozens of important interests. Working through the interests, it sometimes seems that these important interests don't know or recognize that they are all part of the same ecosystem. An ecosystem that is not yet in any balance. And, as each of the interests advocate vociferously for their needs, the shape of the discussion distorts.

My friend @bashley said, "We'll know #gov20 has come of age once it's cross-examined as if a defendant before a magistrate, awaiting sentence."

We are trying to build the perfect traffic circle. A circle in which all the interests enter into the traffic flow--the flow of this new more transparent, collaborative and participatory way for government to communicate and interact with her citizens--without colliding, without impeding the stream and without giving too much favor to any one interest.

Where You Are Matters: MySpace and Facebook

Had an amazing time at the Personal Democracy Forum in NYC last week. More than once I felt my head exploding with new thoughts. In this program full of great thinking and new ideas, danah boyd's talk on "The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online" was probably the most referenced, and one that struck a nerve.

boyd began with questioning the hype that Facebook was hot and that MySpace was not. Now that Facebook has caught up, traffic-wise, with rival MySpace, many think it's over for MySpace. But with 70 million visitors on MySpace, how does it not continue to be important?

She then discussed her research and the growing race, class and education divide between the two networks and what she calls a modern day, digital "white flight" from MySpace to Facebook.

All this said, people are already divided and we accept that people from different backgrounds inhabit different environments. We cannot expect technology to automatically integrate people and generate cultural harmony. Although most of you call these sites "social networking sites," there's almost no networking going on. People use these sites to connect to the people they know....

But here's the main issue with social divisions. We can accept when people choose to connect to people who are like them and not friend different others. But can we accept when institutions and services only support a portion of the network? When politicians only address half of their constituency? When educators and policy makers engage with people only through the tools of the privileged? When we start leveraging technology to meet specific goals, we may reinforce the divisions that we're trying to address.

boyd summarized her thinking and research about social networks and the impact of institutions selecting specific venues for outreach.

1) Social stratification is pervasive in American society (and around the globe). Social media does not magically eradicate inequality. Rather, it mirrors what is happening in everyday life and makes social divisions visible.

2) There is no universal public online. What we see as user "choice" in social media often has to do with structural forces like homophily in people's social networks. People connect to people who think like them and they think like the people with whom they are connected.

3) If you are trying to connect with the public, where you go online matters. The key to developing a social media strategy is to understand who you're reaching and who you're not and make certain that your perspective is accounting for said choices.

4) The Internet has enabled many new voices to enter the political fray, but not everyone is sitting at the table.--read the entire talk on danah.org [emphasis mine]

So, as government agencies develop a social network strategy--and even as they are dipping their toes into the social media waters--the decisions agencies are making about resources and resourcing need to be informed by facts and not hype.

If government wants to reach people where they are, it needs to understand not only where "people are," but also who uses which tools and how different audiences expect to interact and consume information.

My excerpts and overview do not give boyd's ideas their due. Please read more here and think about how you might use her analysis as you develop your social media strategy.

The Revolution, et.al., Will Be Twittered

Andrew Sullivan blogging on Iranians using Twitter and social media as telephones and television communications were being shut down:

Mock not. As the regime shut down other forms of communication, Twitter survived. With some remarkable results. Those rooftop chants that were becoming deafening in Tehran? A few hours ago, this concept of resistance was spread by a twitter message.

That a new information technology could be improvised for this purpose so swiftly is a sign of the times. It reveals in Iran what the Obama campaign revealed in the United States. You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before.--Read the entire post at The Atlantic. 

While it's too early to say what will happen, it's clear that people are using whatever conduits they find to communicate, especially during a crisis.

At the same time the situation in Iran was unfolding, Crisis Camp was happening in Washington, D.C.

CrisisCamp DC started with one idea, "How can technology help people around the world during times and places of crisis?" Over the weekend about a hundred people got together to talk about how technology is or can be used for humanitarian relief. Industry, NGOs, responders, academics, public health, geek, non-geek and a few government joined to usher in a movement. 

Where else can you find sessions like Flood, Earthquake, Pandemic, Twister, Dirty Bomb, Last Supper-Armageddon, or the use of zombies as an example to help people think in new ways?

Government limits were also in the mix. Government can be slow, not willing to trust citizens as adults, hobbled by privacy and potential corruption, and too top-down when crisis is definitely felt and fought from the ground up (see Camp tweets for fuller flavor). A big theme was emphasis on listening rather then telling, adapting rather than knowing, and sharing. 

There has been discussion about authoritative sources for crisis information, and government is at the beginnings of understanding our role. We know what we know, but unofficial sources--real people--know what they are experiencing. Bringing these views and experiences together, with the help of smart smart people and technology, will define success and failure in future crisis. And, as everyone at Crisis Camp was well aware, on the ground this is real--survival and pace of recovery.

See notes from some sessions here, and as your interest is piqued,  join like-minded innovators at the Ning network for Crisis Camp. The hope is for the movement to go viral, with camps around the world working and sharing to best use technology in times of crisis.

Gov 2.0 Around the World

Check out this dot-gov video from down-under--Australia. Matthew Hodgson's video on Gov 2.0 shows that the challenges are trans-hemispheric [okay, I likely made that word up].

From PDF's and static pages created by the "experts" behind the green shades talking about themselves in arcane governtmentese to a landscape full of choice, relationships, trust, and community.

Making government personal, real and relevant. Coming soon to a continent near you!

Social Networking and National Security

James Carafano, from the Heritage Foundation, writes that government's Web 2.0 efforts are lagging--especially regarding safeguarding and strengthening American society. 

While the White House as well as many federal agencies are experimenting with social networking tools, their efforts are unguided by sound research or clear and coherent policies that encourage innovation while protecting individual liberties and privacy. The hierarchical practices of traditional government are not keeping up; they are inadequate for exploiting the explosion of social networking systems.

Fundamental reforms will be required for conducting national security in a world driven by global listening. Washington cannot fully adopt and exploit social networking systems without profoundly changing the process of governance. Advocating such change, however, is premature. First, the government must understand and develop the means to interact in the new world in which it lives. The Administration should:

• Restructure the government's means for conducting strategic communications;
  
• Create human capital programs to prepare national security professionals and decision makers with new skills, knowledge, and attributes; and
  
• Direct national security agencies to establish research and development programs focused on threats and competitive advantages of social networking tools.--(my emphasis) Read the entire backgrounder on heritage.org

Much of what I have been tracking about security and social media has been about cyber-security. Here, Carafano asks us to take a look at using social media to protect our country, rather than simply as a threat to our security. And to do so in a systematic, deliberate way. 

This approach--understanding the way networks develop, improving the knowledge and skills of employees and fundamentally changing how government communicates--has to be accomplished while government continues to use the new tools. This practical, if imperfect, experience is driving the policy and the research agenda. Waiting for research and policy would squander the opportunity to build experience (and perhaps expertise) of government innovators and innovation.

Both threads, deliberate change and raw experimentation, are needed to strengthen and protect our country as information creation and usage is being fundamentally restructured before our eyes.

Shorts: Open Gov Dialogue, Smithsonian Future, SocMed Personalities

White House Closes Down Phase I of Open Government Dialogue, Preps for Next Phase. After receiving 900 submissions and 33,000 votes on ideas ranging from strategies for making government data more accessible to legal and policy impediments to transparency, the White House closes the Open Government dialogue at opengov.ideascale.com (hosted by the National Academies of Public Administration). All materials will be reviewed along with comments received from government employees in March. The goal is to use ideas from the first phase to "inform deeper discussion." The White House wanted to clarify that while "the voting on the brainstorming submissions will be instructive, it will not determine which topics are discussed in the second phase." A little confusing, too, is that the brainstorming tool will remain open for the lively dialogue through June 19, it just won't inform the process (?). More on the next steps on WhiteHouse.Gov.

The Smithsonian Crowd-sources for It's Future. The grand museums(s) on the Mall is hosting a discussion on YouTube. They are "looking for a few friends and fans from around the world to help us form the future Smithsonian experience. A revolutionary Web and New Media Strategy project is underway, and we invite you to collaborate with us as we envision a rich new media future for the Institution." They are asking people to join their group on YouTube and submit a <1 class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(192, 192, 192); ">More on Smithsonian's channel.  [A little funny because the "conflict" for Night at the Museum 2, filmed at Air and Space, includes a rant against the modernization of the museum experience.] 

What’s Your Government 2.0 Personality Type? Steve Radick creates a fun set of social media archetypes ranging from the Edgerider--an early-adopter of all things technology always looking for the latest and the greatest Internet meme, idea, and initiative--to the Skeptic who asks, “Why the hell are you spending so much time on Twitter and Facebook when you could be doing real work?" And a bunch in between. See if you can find yourself at Social Media Strategery.

5 Social Media Memes Changing Government

Federal Computer Week, reporting on a government leadership summit [sorry, too lazy to find out more about another one of these meetings prolly sponsored by some publisher or something] talks about five social media elements that will change the way the government works.  

My [very] loose roundup of the new memes are

1.  Where, once, government was leading on technology requirements, it is now one among many (competing) consumer interests. 

What I think this means: I've been at plenty of meetings where folks say "we're the government, we are huge, they want our business, they will change to meet our needs." But if a company's entire business model is advertisement, and government doesn't drive enough traffic, where is their incentive to destroy their income stream? If government wants to use the tools, we need to figure out how we can adapt.

2. Public engagement reveals the law of unintended consequences. 
What this means: Forays into social tools need to be flexible, and program managers need to keep an eye on results. None of us knows what will happen when we try something out--servers may crash, agencies may be overwhelmed with comments, the only response will be the chirps of crickets, or you might be stuck naming your international space station after a satirical opinionator. Good news for NASA on this last one--they saw an opportunity rather than a disaster.

3. Stop the analysis paralysis and make data available. 

What this means: Here is a big cultural change, from the government churning data into tables and reports that is delivered tied up in a bow to a dynamic process of developers unleashing the data to tell all kinds of stories. See #2. Also, expect a clamoring to open up more data sources.

4. It's the content, stupid!
What this means: Government can embarrass itself jumping into social streams without having anything to say. It's a conversation. It's a message. It's not just having a Facebook page or Twtitter account. It's not the technology, but the way that it's used.  So, if you say, "What's a hashtag?" you have no business putting your government agency on Twitter. Leading to #5.

5. This is the new way of the world. 
What this means: Despite old-fashioned concerns about employees goofing around (what's the difference between that sudoku book and YouTube, as far as productivity goes?) and real, to-be-addressed concerns about privacy and security, people are working, learning, collaborating and living differently. It's happening. And, even as some of the tools fall to the wayside and new ones developed, expectations of citizens and employees are out of the bottle. They can't be put back in.

Welcome to the changing government.

Read the FCW article I jumped off from, here. 

Has RSS Peaked?

Forrester Research published a report a few months back on the state of RSS feeds [see below for info on RSS feeds]. Forrester thinks that the numbers of users of this technology has topped out. According to Steve Rubel, blogging at Micro Persuasion

[T]he research entitled "What's Holding RSS Back?," says that nearly half of marketers have moved to add feeds to their web sites. Further, RSS adoption among consumers is at 11% up from just 2% of users three years ago.  [But] that might be all she wrote for RSS' growth track.

According to the research, of the 89% of those who don't use feeds only 17% say they're interested in using them... "Unless marketers make a move to hook them — and try to convert their apathetic counterparts — RSS will never be more than a niche technology,"

RSS is only one form of opt-in communications. The potential is bigger when you look more broadly to social networking [like Facebook newsfeed, Twitter and Friendfeed]. This larger promise still holds and as the technologies become more invisible the newsfeed could even one day subsume RSS. --Read Steve's entire post. 

This trend is important since government is using RSS to broadcast press releases and other information to stakeholders. It's not costly if automated, so even if the numbers of users are small, there is little lift to implement.

The White House stimulus reporting site Recovery.gov is working to incorporate RSS feeds from Departments and agencies into their reporting, and the potential to use RSS to transmit data for mash ups remains appealing. While this technology may be niche as far as mass subscriptions go, the use of this data by developers and other key stakeholders makes the small effort create and maintain government RSS feeds worthwhile.

Did you want to learn more about RSS? Here is a great introduction video from CommonCraft:

7 Deadly Blindspots in Social Media

Seven deadly social media blind spots are outlined in MarketingProfs Daily Fix by Mark Ivey,

1) Not thinking like social media marketers: Social media is all about sharing, opening up, being transparent, providing real value to our customers. It’s about long-term relationships, not short-term campaigns. We must give up control, take some risks and get out there. 

2) Not connecting social media programs with the larger corporate strategy and other programs: Social media programs are too often set up as separate silo programs. 

3) Not really listening to customers: Social media is about listening to our customers. What are their needs? What are they missing? How are they using your product/service? [U]nderstand what they would want from you.

4) Not listening to the market: How can you target your products/services if you don’t know your market? Think about your goals—what are you trying to monitor/achieve? 

5) Not trusting the employees: The old days where the company controlled employees’ content is long over—they’re conversing online whether companies condone it or not. Establish company guidelines but provide employees the tools and freedom to express themselves—and then step back. 

6) Not creating “social” content: Good content drives traffic, links, goodwill and much more. The problem is much of our content is in corporate-speak and brochure-ware that we slap on the web. Your content needs to be fresh, interesting, engaging, relevant to your audience--and “share-able.” Forget your message a few minutes and focus on your customers. 

7) Not creating cool videos: See the trend? Videos need to be about the customers’ needs, interests, not your latest product overview. -- [my emphasis added] Read the full story at MarketingProfs.

Even though the article focuses on marketing, dot-gov still has a take away: If you want to use social media to meet your goals, start with your customers first, and your customers again, last. It's in the creation of value for your customers (citizens, stakeholders) that you will be able to use new tools to achieve your mission.

Who Controls Language on the Interwebs?

A rose by any new name may be unfindable.

Last week, official Washington began calling the artist formerly known as "swine flu" the "H1N1 flu," as did the World Health Organization. There are very good reasons for this--the virus isn't transmitted by eating pork products, it is hurting the economy, the relationship between pigs and the virus is debatable, it is more accurate to call it by it's scientific name and the government response is based on science, etc. 

That said, people are looking for information on "swine flu" and people are talking about "swine flu." From BlogPulse:

The blue line is the trend for the use of the term "swine flu" in blogs, and the orange trends "H1N1." 

Looking at Google Trends, we see that the change in terminology from "swine flu" to H1N1 was picked up and acknowledged in the news (lower graph), but is not having much impact in general web searches (upper graph). This data is for U.S. searches only.

CDC has said that they were going to work on transitioning their online information to H1N1 from swine. That sounds like a good idea, since we wouldn't want a choice of words interrupting people's ability to find critical health information. 

Takeaway? Use data and trends to find out what people are looking for and build web sites and tools according to data. Help people learn the new terms, but remember that once a meme has legs, it's ingrained in the collective and will not be replaced easily.

In the meantime, wash your hands!, and see CDC for up-to-date information on the H1N1 (swine) flu. 

If you want to track what is happening in the blogosphere the Nielsen BlogPulse is a great resource. Book mark it! Also, Google Trends for what people are looking for. Great FREE sources.

Digital Kids = Digital Future

Over the past few days I have observed discussions on the value of new media tools and whether it makes sense for government to jump in. It's true that we are still struggling with Web 1.0. Some think we should get that right before moving on. But these discussions were about today. Not about tomorrow. 

Chris Brogan blogged on Envisioning Digital Kids. He said that the adults of tomorrow now live in a world where

The Web is always on.


The Web is mobile.


Google has always been around, and is the core source of search information.


Cell phones are the default phone.


Apple TV, Netflix, and the Web are where shows and movies come from.


iPods are where music comes from.


Everything is play-on-demand. Nothing is appointment-based.


Most all software is web-based.


We share pictures and movies with relatives always.


We never get lost (GPS).


We buy what we want (Amazon).


We learn things from our friends (news via social networks). --Read the entire post.

Yes, there are people who don't have broadband or even Internet. Yes, there are people who don't use email and prefer paper and stamps for communications. Yes, some folks want to pick up a phone and ask questions. And, yes, dot-gov is still working on getting Web 1.0 right.

But it will soon be too late to engage with the next group of adults. The digital natives in my house ALWAYS have more computing power and instant access to information in their hands (cellphones) than we could have imagined five years ago. Some thirteen year olds will be voting in the next presidential election. 

How do we make government a relevant information provider? a relevant employer? a relevant part of society for the adults of tomorrow? 

For starters government leaders and technologists need to look ahead and get out of the muck of current barriers and old ways of thinking. Take a look at Brogran's list above and think how your programs are relevant to tomorrow's adults.

Dot-gov needs to aim to an unknown point in the future and not shoot ourselves in our static foot. 

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.

Open Data: Compare and Contrast

Soon after I posted on the very open and collaborative project at the U.S. Geological Survey, Wired had a post on the other side of the coin, Officials Hoard Valuable Databases Funded by Taxpayers

Government agencies across the country are sitting on gigabytes of valuable digital data that could be mashed, mixed and re-organized in crafty ways by Web 2.0 entrepreneurs and public interest groups engaged in everything from government oversight, to providing practical information to Americans.

Yet, despite federal and state public records laws designed to make the data accessible, many agencies are fighting more ferociously than ever to keep data created with public funds out of public hands. In their battles to withhold information, bureaucrats are citing everything from copyright and trade secret privileges to privacy and national security concerns. -Read more on Wired.

It's the clash of the titans. In one example from Wired, a nonprofit requested anonymous information about patient diagnoses, along with the physicians' identifying number, the procedures performed and amounts billed to Medicare to help match patients to experienced doctors for specific procedures and to determine if practitioners were over-billing Medicare or receiving government funds for high-risk procedures they didn't have the experience to perform. The nonprofit wanted to make this information available to consumers via their website. But the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services--parent of Medicare--denied the request on grounds that it violated doctor privacy by disclosing physician incomes.

And therein lies the rub for more than a few datasets: individual privacy and personally identifiable information (PII). Information that had been gathered painstakingly using paper and data cards and maps stored in City Hall are now much easier to put together and much easier to access. And data gathered for one purpose might be very useful for another, unrelated purpose. One that the data owner did not necessarily agree to. 

Government under the Privacy Act has an obligation to protect citizens' privacy. The Privacy Act states in part:

No agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains... (See the Department of Justice for the Privacy Act of 1974).

We are experiencing a huge shift in data accessibility. 

Example of Big Shift #1: When we were buying our house in the early 1990's, I had to go downtown during "business hours" to research the amount of money that the current owners paid. [They were claiming that they were going to lose money on the transaction, and the data showed otherwise!] Now, anyone can go to WashingtonPost.com and see the price we paid. 

Example of Big Change #2: A few years ago, we used to call people to get directions to their houses. (Make a right at the second light there's a 7-11, then you'll drive by the house with the gnomes...) Now you give me a number and street, I can easily get specific directions--and even a picture--of your nearby Starbucks or your house. From my GPS enabled cellphone.

So what?, you say. Well, the Supreme Court, privacy advocates, and just plain people who don't want everyone to know how much money they make are concerned about making private information--or information that they consider private--easily available and combinable online. The barriers of time, location, and, even, expertise have fallen away. It changes the entire game.

In many, many cases, the PII can be scrubbed from the data set. But in some subset of cases, when data sets are combined, PII is exposed.  

This is the true clash of the titans--transparency versus privacy. The public versus the personal. Increasingly, it is government between these two giants, trying to balance and move forward (okay, and to be honest, sometimes playing one against the other to meet other, less pure objectives).

We live in interesting times. There are real problems to solve. We got some work cut out for us. 

Data About Twitter

Read Write Web talks about data from Hitwise about where Twitter leads people

According to the latest data from Hitwise, Twitter sends most of its traffic to Google, Facebook, TwitPic, and MySpace. Overall, Twitter sends about 1 in 5 users to social networks and another 1 in 5 to entertainment sites like Twitpic, YouTube, or Flickr. Even though some people think that Twitter is just a 'poor man's email system,' Twitter's clickstream profile is very different from that of most email services.

There are a number of interesting results in Hitwise's study. Among others, Hitwise notes that a higher share of downstream clicks from Twitter.com go to blogs and personal websites than from search sites, social networks, or email services. A larger number of Twitter users are also being sent to news and media sites, which points towards Twitter's growing role as a medium for sharing and breaking news stories. --More from Read Write Web.

Twitter is a great place for folks to share links to resources. Makes sense to get gov links on Twitter.

An easy way to use Twitter is to automatically send your agency RSS blog or newsroom feed to Twitter by Twitterfeed. Not the sexiest use of Twitter, but one that doesn't have much lift and can help broadcast information. See, for example, the Department of Labor twitter account.