Thoughts on the Disruptive Web

Mar 27 13 under All Posts, NickCharney | Comments Off

I spoke to a group of civil servants this week as part of their development program’s lunchtime speaker series; the talk covered a lot of ground and I wanted to take the opportunity to share some of my key messages from the discussion.

The web is disruptive 

The internet has disrupted, is disrupting, or will disrupt every business model currently in use today. To think it hasn’t, isn’t or won’t disrupt the public sector is naive at best. Understanding the impacts of these changes is critical to understanding the role of the public service because context is key and the context is now constantly changing.

GCPEDIA is a microcosm of a larger problem

GCPEDIA is still the only open communications tool that holds that could help us mitigate our geographic, ministerial and hierarchical information challenges and yet we have tremendous difficulty integrating it into the fabric of our business. The fact that as an organization we have such difficulty understanding how to best lever a technology (wikis) that is (conceptually) almost 20 years old concerns me (see: Debunking the Myths of Working More Openly).

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Rather than ‘why’ ask ‘why not’

Mar 20 13 under All Posts, CraigThomler | Comments Off
The US government uses challenge.gov to involve citizens in designing innovative solutions to government and civil challenges.
The UK government has adopted a digital-by-default approach and has mandated that agencies follow this, providing detailed guidance on what they must do and by when (even open sourcing service design guidance on GithHub for citizens to improve).
The Finnish government has adopted a crowd-sourcing approach to legislation, amending their constitution a year ago to allow citizens to develop laws which the parliament must consider and put to a vote.
Iceland’s government went a step further and crowd-sourced a new constitution.
The Canadian government used the free open source mediawiki platform to create a whole-of-government wiki for information sharing within government (the site isn’t accessible from the outside). In May 2012 it had over 32,000 users and contained over 18,000 pages of content.
58 countries (roughly 25% of all countries in the world) have joined the Open Government Partnership, making committed steps towards openness and transparency in government.
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#GovChat Master Schedule Locked & Loaded!

May 26 12 under Uncategorized | Comments Off

Welcome to #GovChat Central! I’m your host @ThomKearney

Every Wednesday evening at 8:00pm eastern please join us on #GovChat when we will feature a SPECIAL guest on our tweetchat. We will host a variety guests including Public Service players from all levels of Government from countries around the world.

Our goal at #GovChat is to stimulate conversations with thought leaders on how we can work together to make governments better.

I will be sharing hosting duties with a great group of people and please do advise if you’re interested in helping out.

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When Will We See Gamification In Government?

Apr 21 12 under All Posts, CraigThomler | Comments Off

Gamification refers to the practice of making non-game activities more like games by incorporating achievement-based reward systems.

Under gamification, using government examples, when your project or mission is complete you might receive a ‘completion badge’ (such as a letter from the Secretary, an Australia Day Award, or a medal). Or when you attain a higher level of proficiency in a particular skill you’d receive an ‘achievement’ or rise on the ‘leaderboard’ (such as a bonus or a promotion).

From the examples above, there’s clearly already aspects of gamification at work. Rewarding achievement, success and skills acquisition is a standard part of business and forms the basis of merit-based advancement systems – not just games.

However the gamification process involves a much greater level of achievement-based recognition, than has commonly been used in organisations.

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Framework for the Virtual Government Network

Mar 26 12 under All Posts, ThomKearney | Comments Off

Updated with video of Thom Kearney presenting on the Virtual Government Network at PSengage, November 22nd, 2011


Thom Kearney – The virtual Government Network @ PSEngage2011 – November 22, 2011 from PSEngage on Vimeo.

Original post from Jan 6th, 2011:

The following material comes from a paper I recently finished as part of my studies. I took the opportunity to combine what I have learned about Information Management and Collaboration and then apply that knowledge to something that might be practical.  If you want the paper you can find it on the Articles page, here is a somewhat abridged version for your perusal and comment. By the way, if you do comment I promise to get back to you, however my response may not be immediate.

Virtual Government Network Collaboration Framework

The framework elements generic in the sense that they could apply to any large-scale collaboration network; in this example they have been populated with the Virtual Government Network in mind.

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15 Commandments for Gov’t Agencies on Twitter

Feb 4 12 under AlainLemay | Comments Off

There is a promised land for government organizations – one where citizens pay attention to public agencies’ information and pass it along to others, spreading the word for all to hear. Although there are many paths to the promised land, your journey will likely pass through Twitter. But the roads can be treacherous. You can easily get lost along the way and end up in the “land of nobody listens”, or worse, the land of “nobody cares.” While the rules are not etched in stone, the guide below will help you learn how to use Twitter effectively and lead you safely to the promised land of transparency, participation and engagement.

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Happy Anniversary! #GovChat Going Weekly in 2012!

Jan 18 12 under Uncategorized | Comments Off

We are rapidly approaching the 1st Anniversary of #GovChat with our first #GovChat being held on February 2nd, 2011!

First off have to start with great thanks to Thom Kearney @ThomKearney for his monthly hosting support in making this first year such a success! Thanks Thom!

Thinking now of 2012 and how we can make #GovChat even better in this second year it has become clear that Twitter chat momentum is directly related to the frequency at which the chat is held. Based on our experience running and participating in other Twitter chats it is clear that monthly is not frequent enough to build and sustain the momentum possible for #GovChat.

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Scheming Virtuously – A Handbook for Public Servants

Dec 30 11 under All Posts, PSleader | Comments Off

One of the leaders we most admire in Web 2.0 government world is Nick Charney @NickCharney a man who is living on the edge of this ongoing social revolution in all associated contexts. We were over the top when he agreed to allow us to share his phenomenal content here on the PSleader blog and his are some of the most insightful of the great contributions we have had to date.

At the PSengage event in November we were also very pleased that the new Guideline for External Use of Web 2.0 for the Government of Canada was announced by Minister Tony Clement (see video). Since that time we have been working diligently on delving further into development of training and other supporting materials for application and use of this guideline on a practical “day to day” level.

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Q&A with Ina Parvanova

Nov 20 11 under All Posts, Uncategorized | Comments Off

This is the third installment in our series of highlighting PSEngage Speakers.

Ina Parvanova Public Affairs Director, at Mayo Clinic has extensive experience working in a fast paced environment. Ina started her career as a reporter, working for Reuters and Canadian Press. In 1998, Ina joined the Public Service and spent a number of years at Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada before joining the Privy Council Office where she was responsible for the international communications files.

In 2008, Mayo Clinic recruited Ina to establish its Research Communications function to support $540 million in research operations at Mayo Clinic. Ina is currently part of two leadership teams. One is a reflection of Mayo’s new strategy to make a global impact in healthcare called Global Bridges – a Healthcare Alliance for Tobacco Dependence Treatment. The other is statewide effort called Decade of Discovery: A Minnesota Partnership to Defeat Diabetes.

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PS Engage 2011 Free Webcast

Nov 19 11 under Uncategorized | Comments Off

On November 22, 2011 from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, All the plenary events from the conference will be webcast live from the Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa.

This means you can catch almost all the content from your desktop, see the program for details,  We will be capturing the video and at some point will likely make it available after the event.

If you want to catch it live, go here http://max.canwebcast.net/psengage

To test your connection before the event use the test site at:  http://max.canwebcast.net/200

You can ask questions and contribute using the participate button or on twitter at #PSE2011.

See you there!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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