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.

Rather than six-monthly and annual reviews and awards, gamification is based on rapid, but less valuable rewards for achievements as they occur. This is an effective behaviour modification approach, as both the gaming and game industries would testify to. Rapid gratification means that patterns of behaviour are reinforced at a deeper level, resulting in a greater likelihood of the desired behaviour being repeated.

Gamification has begun to have a significant impact on a number of businesses. Online badges and achievements are the basis for the success of services like FourSquare and contribute indirectly to the success of services such as Facebook and Twitter (through the size of your friends list and the frequency that people respond to your posts).

They are also widely used by airlines (frequent flier miles) and supermarkets (shopper dockets and petrol discounts) and have promotional uses in many other industries (scratch and win tickets and similar).

To-date these gamification tools have been primarily deliberately used for marketing purposes – to influence customer behaviour (although mostly for commercial purposes and extremely rarely in government communication campaigns).

However with the announcement of the addition of achievements, badges and a leaderboard to Microsoft’s Visual Studio coding community, it is clear that the shift to using gamification for training and employee management is already beginning. Where will this go in the future in government and in business I wonder.

Will employees begin receiving achievements for completing specific courses and mastering skills their employers wish them to master? Perhaps even one for joining the company, and one for each year’s service? Will there be leaderboards based on standardised performance on specific tasks (brief writing or timeliness of ministerial responses – using an algorithm that compensates for frequency and complexity of briefs)? Will these achievements, badges and leaderboards begin to influence promotional prospects or pay rates – even holidays (turn in five badges for an extra week of leave)?

Will organisations take on the example of armed forces, who already issue achievements and badges to motivate and recognise achievements and where leaderboards do influence access into elite units and specific roles. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how far gamification will go in government, and in business. However the experimentation has already begun.

Craig Thomler

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.

The common goal

Successful communities share a common goal. Sometimes the goal is urgent and short-lived like when responding to a crisis, other times it is more subtle and long-term, like creating a high quality of life.

In terms of government interests in supporting their jurisdictional economy, most would agree with Velez when he says that the ability to create, access and apply knowledge is a fundamental determinant of global competitiveness (Valez E., 2008, as cited by MacDonald, 2010).

From the knowledge perspective, the goal of the network might be one of conceptual integration. Citing Cosmides et al. 1992, Bates states that conceptual integration across knowledge boundaries generates a powerful growth in knowledge because it allows investigators to use knowledge developed in other disciplines to solve problems in their own (Bates, 2005), she continues to quote Cosmides:

“At present, crossing such boundaries is often met with xenophobia, packaged in the form of such familiar accusations as ‘intellectual imperialism’ or ‘reductionism.”

Although she was talking about how the disciplines within behavioral and social sciences should make themselves mutually consistent I think this principle applies to government as a whole and the Virtual Government Network is for people that want to reduce xenophobia.

From a more practical perspective the Virtual Government Network is about sharing and learning, saving time and money by reusing good work rather than reinventing.  The underlying assumption is that more effective and sustainable government is more likely if we work together. This becomes the stated goal because it is the easiest to understand and likely the most relevant to potential users of the network.

Business Model

The network would initially be provided free of charge, paid for by profits that would be generated from the sale of training and associated professional services. As the network evolves the intention would be to acquire funding from governments, perhaps via the Public Service Chief Information Officer Council (PSCIOC) or a Public Private Partnership. The sustainable model will depend on reaction to the proposal and community interest.

Communication

Communication is consistently identified as one of the key ingredients for successful collaboration and an important part of any successful network. In this framework I identify two key characteristics of the communication infrastructure as being in near real-time and transparent and open.

For the network to be effective in responding to real-time events, communication from operators of the network and between network members themselves needs to be fast and accurate.  Messages between members and groups are completely driven by user content and the system simply needs to provide mechanisms for delivering the messages in a timely and reliable manner.  For messages from the operators to the members some crafting of messages and agreement on those messages may be required. This communications process interacts with governance processes and impedes the free flow of information. Careful attention to process design will be necessary to ensure that this kind of messaging can occur quickly.  Fortunately the principles of open and transparent will minimize the amount of messaging that requires “crafting”.

By operating in a transparent fashion and building in opportunities for any interested member to participate in the governance of the network, the number of messages that need explicit approval of a governance group should be kept to a few per year.

Principles

Statutory responsibilities

Governments share similar responsibilities around issues like providing for freedom of information while protecting privacy or ensuring that information is archived for future generations. Intellectual property needs to be protected and disposition authorities applied. The framework needs to respect these in a way that is acceptable to all parties.

Value statements:

Three broad value statements provided as examples:

1. Transparency
2. Neutral space
3. Learning

1. The need for transparency

This idea is not new, in 1948 Urguhart called for government confidential reports to be reviewed periodically to see what scientific and technical information could be released into the general pool of knowledge (Duff, 1997).  Reviewing confidential information is of course an added cost, and as the body of confidential knowledge increases the sustainability of that review decreases. By keeping the body of confidential knowledge as small as possible the system will be more efficient.  Assuming that we believe that the value of information to society increases with access, shifting our mindset from one of “need to know” to “need to share” should be a top priority.

The concept of transparency is considered by some to be so critical to the evolution of democracy that it has been enshrined in legislation.  Canada’s Access to Information Act is an early example while the Open Government Directive from the United States Federal government is a more recent and dramatically more complete example of the transparency principle being applied.

Finally, I believe that transparency is essential for establishing and maintaining the trust between members that leads to a willingness to share.

2. Neutral Space

To mitigate the potential for political dispute the virtual government network should be a neutral space.  Not a place for advocating particular political viewpoints, but rather a safe common ground, where the focus is on sharing knowledge and making government more effective.

3. Learning

The network supports shared learning and sharing of information and knowledge.  As such the values associated with learning must be respected. For the purposes of this paper these values are:

• Shared Knowledge
• Respect for diversity (promotion of diversity)
• Collective responsibility
• That individuals are best motivated by autonomy, mastery and purpose (Pink, 2009)

The articulation of the broad community values is something that should be undertaken in consultation with the community, so I am not going to try and develop these any further at this time.

Information Architecture

The framework breaks down the information architecture into three categories that might be useful in terms of figuring out the types of information a virtual government network would contain. One of the pre-development tasks is to prepare detailed views for each of the categories. Brief outlines of each type are provided:

Information about people

• Basic directory information
• Enhanced profile information (interests, resume, etc)
• Activity history (contributions, other)
• Relationships
• Group memberships

Information about people might be considered private and as such users need to be able to easily understand and control the release of information about themselves.  At its simplest this would mean users agree to a terms of use and simply not provide any personal information. A more sophisticated approach would be to allow users to complete a profile and control who could access various parts of it.  In either case, a clear privacy policy and excellent user experience design is required.

Information about topics

• Sources of information (libraries, collections, other…)
• Bibliographies and searchable databases
• Groups and individuals working in topic areas
• Documents and user-created content organized by themes of interest to all jurisdictions such as: Coordination, protection, resilience, social progress. (Wilson, 2010?)

Information about topics represents the explicit knowledge content of the VGN.  The intention is to build a repository of shareable stuff. Any information that could help another jurisdiction or links to such information would be valid.  Intellectual property is an issue to watch here, if protected work is posted the rights to that work will have to be managed.  The simple approach is telling users they are expected to only post unprotected work.  In this scenario the VGN will need processes for monitoring for protected material and quickly resolving any complaints. A more sophisticated approach would be to build some kind of digital rights management into the network, perhaps based on the creative commons licenses.

Information about information (meta-data)

• Dublin core
• Rankings (votes, links, citations, source value, etc)
• State (draft, final, archive, etc)

This part of the information architecture is dedicated to developing a sustainable meta data strategy that will support the finding and managing of the topic based information.  An important consideration is that the user not be required to add much meta data-the system needs to do as much of it as possible to ensure data integrity and user satisfaction. A second consideration would be that if the meta-data collected includes personal information that it be subject to the privacy policy. For instance visits or downloads of a document traceable to a particular user.

People

Users

The primary users of the network are government employees at any jurisdiction in Canada. These users are authenticated and agree to a terms of reference that is acceptable to their employer.  The community is broadly defined by the term Public Servant.  An issue arises with the inclusion of consultants, contractors and other suppliers of services; this shadow government is estimated to be worth $25B at the Federal level alone (Ottawa Citizen, 2010).  It may be that there will have to be two types of users and two different entry levels of user.  Another consideration is whether to permit users from jurisdictions outside of Canada.

Roles

Types of users will have to be defined along with various roles that each type can perform.  The following is a preliminary list of potential user access levels.

• L1 Members are permanent government employees
• L2 Members are consultants and contractors under contract
• L3 Members are the general public
• L1 Operators are god
• L2 Operators are like captains
• L3 Operators have some additional edit privileges and can approve certain events like group creation.

In addition to Members and Operators other relevant people are those providing funds and other stakeholders that identify themselves, i.e. Unions, political parties, governing parties, etc.

Processes

Operation of the VGN will involve many processes. For the purposes of this paper I have identified two broad categories that I believe are particularly important.

Onboarding

Onboarding is generally concerned with attracting people to the network and ensuring that their early experiences are positive. Processes might include:

• Outreach and promotion
• Registration authentication and security
• Skills development & support
• Solutions matching

Gardening

The gardening processes are intended to maintain quality in the network, ensure that terms of use are complied with and generally support users in their efforts to share and collaborate.  Examples include:

• Content reporting quality (user reports on content)
• Activity monitoring (looking for irregular behavior, new content requiring meta-data, etc)
• User communications (personalized based on activity, role or other options, multiple channels)
• Tension management (see Donnelly, 2009)

The general concept of information value within the VGN is that users decide what is important. Content value could be some mix of attributes such as: source value, user votes, user links to the information, # citations, comments and other empirical and subjective characteristics that can be measured over time. These ideas should be reflected in the non-functional requirements for the supporting platform.

Technology

This paper does is not about the technology, however several characteristics have been defined that will provide some guidance when technology choices must be made. These include:

• Browser based
• Mobile enabled
• Open with lots of connectors
• Both open and secure (how secure?)
• Acreditable by government agencies (meets whatever standards are most common)

Governance

Governance of the network covers three areas:

• Decision making

o   Conflict resolution & resource allocation

o   Permission allocations (granting power to users)

• Performance measurement
• Strategic direction

Governance mechanisms should be as inclusive as possible and follow the principle of transparency. Provide a forum and guidelines for funders, operators, users and stakeholders.

Conclusion

The framework is intended to be a fairly holistic, top level conceptual architecture that might be used to guide the creation of a Virtual Government Network. It is a broad brush, high level view; there are improvements to be made, both in the generic framework and in the details. To move forward each element needs much more detail and discussion.  Maybe we can build something like this, maybe not, either way; I hope the framework is of use to others. Please comment and build on it.

Thom Kearney

This guide was made possible by the good folks at Forum One. Special thanks to them for sponsoring the guide, as well as all those who participated in making this excellent resource a reality. The full pdf is available on govloop.com.

1. Thou Shalt Listen Before You Leap

We cannot emphasize enough the fact that any government organization should learn to monitor social media before they even attempt to create a Twitter (or any other type of) account.

Read More

2. Thou Shalt Use Thy Profile Info Properly

Your profile should entice people to want to follow and engage with you. That means putting up a picture (a logo or other identifier) and filling in your profile information.

Read More

3. Thou Shalt Have a Disclaimer

Do you only plan to tweet from Monday to Friday, 9:00 to 5:00 or only check for mentions once a day at 3:00 pm? Fine, but you need to spell this out. You need a good disclaimer!

Read More

4. Thou Shalt Not Bully

As a government agency, you certainly want to give some authority to your account and discourage spoofers who may want to intentionally mislead the public. And certainly you will want to report to Twitter any accounts that appear to be intentionally spoofing your account and/or tweeting misleading information.

Read More

5. Thou Shalt Tweet Regularly

When deciding to follow your organization’s account or not, one of the first thing twittizens will do is look at your last tweet. If it is 2 months old, forget about it!

Read More

6. Thou Shalt Integrate Thy Tweet Approval Process

No one wants to go back ten times to get what is essentially the same content approved over and over again. The trick is to build in an approval process into your organization’s regular content approval process.

Read More

7. Thou Shalt Not Register Alternate Accounts

It is standard procedure for government organizations to register alternate site names to prevent squatters or spoofers. Unfortunately, this is forbidden under Twitter Rules and Twitter is pretty specific about it.

Read More

8. Thou Shalt Not Automate Thy Tweets

I know it can be tempting! Automation reduces the workload, but there are two major drawbacks:
1 – It is not social
2 – It can get you in trouble!

Read More

9. Thou Shalt Tweet in First Person

OK. This may sound like strange advice for an organization that frequently issues highly impersonal press releases: “Minister Soandso to visit site of the new WidgetrUs factory.” But experience has shown time and again that an individual on Twitter will beat out an anonymous organization hands down on followers, retweets, etc. So find a way to add humanity to your streams if you can.

Read More

10. Thou Shalt Not Bait and Switch

It can be tempting to spice-up our tweets to get more clicks, RTs, etc. This is especially true in the public sector where content can sometimes be…shall we say…dry. DON’T!

Read More

11. Thou Shalt Not Spam

Government organizations don’t spam, do they? Maybe not intentionally, but Twitter has a long list of behaviors that it qualifies as spam that you might not have thought of.

Read More

12. Thou Shalt Be Selective of Who You Follow

Following an individual or an organization on Twitter could be considered an endorsement of that individual or organization. So you will need to be selective and strategic about it.

Read More

13. Thou Shalt Monitor Thy Account

Creating a Twitter account is one thing but keeping it alive is another. If you create a Twitter account for your organization, you had better do some thinking beforehand.

Read More

14. Thou Shalt Contribute To the Conversation

Yes, you can use Twitter purely as a push medium and, indeed, some of the bigshots do. But you can move your agenda forward by retweeting those accounts that have the same goals as your organization.

Read More

15. Thou Shalt Measure for Success

As a government organization, you always have a duty to spend taxpayer money responsibly. In order to do this, you have to show that the resources you expended for “this Twitter thing” were justified.

Read More

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.

So with that we have made a determination to move #GovChat to a weekly format commencing February 8th, 2012! This is a very exciting prospect but also know that in order to pull it off we will require some additional support of the PSleader community participants to make it happen!

With this in mind we have already begun reaching out to some active individuals and have gotten positive responses to our need for additional #GovChat hosts but there is still room for more. As well assistance is required in sourcing additional SPECIAL guests, preparing chat scripts as well as cleaning up and publishing the #GovChat transcripts. Please email or tweet us if you’re interested on any of these levels. Also if any of you have suggestions or ideas for cool topics and/or SPECIAL guests for an upcoming #GovChat please comment below and we’ll get back to you.

These are exciting times in the PSleader Community and we know that weekly #GovChats have the power to rapidly drive participation and engagement on these important issues to the next level! Cheers!

PSleader

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. (more to come later)

However we were very pleased to see the completed version of this work in progress “Scheming Virtuously – A Handbook for Public Servants” Nick has put together and released. Our view is this should be required reading for those ready to engage socially in the context of the Canadian Public Service and so have included an embedded version below.

PSleader

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.

At this year’s event, Ina will be speaking on innovation at the Mayo Clinic and how Mayo is adapting to current challenges while staying true to its nearly 150-year old mission and values.

We asked Ina about innovation, adaptation and managing when you aren’t a subject matter expert. Here are Ina’s very thoughtful replies.

1. You’ve had a varied career that has covered a wide area of subject matter. What do you do to be confident about the decisions you make, even though you may not be the subject-matter expert?

In Communications, you’re as good as your knowledge and understanding of the audience. If you know your audience, you know what questions to ask the subject matter experts (because you know what questions your audience would ask) and you know how to deliver the message to your audience so it has the desired effect.

I think that’s where my varied career and diverse background come in – as a journalist, I’ve been fortunate to talk to people from all walks of life, to understand how they think. Having lived on two continents/three countries broadened that experience and allowed me to relate to allophones, to immigrants, to single parents – a multitude of audiences. I’ve always been a student of human nature and that’s what gives me confidence as a communicator – along with the belief that with an open mind and empathy one can identify with any audience and then build a bridge between them and the subject matter experts.

2. How much of the innovative process is creative and how much is about defining the business case and making the concept tangible?

You are right that you cannot have one without the other. But in what proportion? I think that depends on the stage you’re in. In the beginning, an idea is just that – an idea, a spark, and the process of implementation seems to take a backseat. But as you go forward, the ratio changes, and no matter how brilliant the idea, it needs a solid rationale and institutional buy-in in order to get implemented. And the more innovative the idea, the more creative you need to be in defining the business case and making the concept tangible.

3. What are the qualities you look for in people to work on innovative files?

Natural curiosity, open mind and tenacity.

4. Resilience is often identified as a key element in one’s ability to accept change. How does one develop resiliency?

Interesting question!

You know, to the extent that experience can teach us, the more changes you’ve lived through, the more resilient you should be. Think of someone who has lived their entire life in their hometown, worked at the same workplace for over 30 years (yes, there are still people like that) – if they are forced to go through a significant change, it can be a traumatizing experience.

On the other hand, if change has been a regular part of your life, you know what to expect and you know you will survive and will be fine.

But experience is only part of the answer, because many would argue that there is a limit to how many changes one can go through without burning out. So can we develop resiliency to prevent that? Is it like a muscle, that as long as you exercise it, it will serve you?

I think so. Especially because it is already in us. We are born with it, it’s a basic survival skill. Kids are resilient. The question is how to maintain it and not lose it after life has dealt us a few blows.

As we go through various experiences – especially hardship – some of us lose that resiliency and start dreading change. Perhaps the key to accepting change in stride is having a healthy self-esteem. As children, we all start with a healthy self-esteem. Along the way, some of us become more fragile, more insecure, and end up finding solace in the past – the old way of doing things, the previous workplace or the last relationship. But if you have a healthy self-esteem, you know who you are, and the past – while it may have enriched you – does not define you. Even when you mourn something that is no longer there, you know that you will survive and the new circumstances are simply a new opportunity. In that sense, to me, self-esteem is the source of our resiliency, the magic ingredient to accepting change.

See Ina live and in person at PS Engage, November 22, 2011 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!

Time matters. People’s time matters the more that you are demanding they contemplate either large expenditures or something technical in nature or both. If you can tell the story in a simple to understand, bite size version, you are more likely to get a buy-in from skeptical management or budget conscious bean counters.

So frame your story as if you were sitting around a family dinner table. Keep it simple. Use basic language. Sure you can let loose with fancy nomenclature and or highly technical terms to show you know your stuff. But – relate it to the here and now, why is something practical, applicable and affordable at this period in time? Tell the story of other Government agencies doing what you propose. Tell the story of successful wins from the actions you seek.

There will be more in the PS Engage talk, but this is the basic outline of what I am addressing in Ottawa on November 22, 2011.

Alan Silberberg

The PSEngage conference is happening November 22, 2011 and the line-up of speakers is inspiring.  To give more insight to the knowledge and interests of the speakers we sent them each a set of questions tailored to their individual experience.  We will be posting the questions and their responses over the next few weeks, so please keep checking back regularly.

Today’s interview is with @Thumbtackhead, John Weigelt,  National Technology Officer at Microsoft Canada.

John’s participation at PS Engage 2011 will be to share examples of government 2.0 activities across jurisdictions.   If you’ve read John’s bio and his blog,http://www.thumbtackhead.ca/, you’ll realize quite quickly that John has an interesting approach to innovation.  Innovation for John is not a wishy-washy process, but rather something that requires rigour and structure to bring out, explore and ultimately exploit creative ideas to achieve the objectives.  Perhaps this comes from John’s military training.  Read the questions and answers below to come to your own conclusions.  

Q1: Your biographic information says you went to military college – Do you think military training influenced your approach to innovation? If so, how?

A1:  I think that my military training influenced my approach to innovation in several ways.  The best way to consider this is to try to imagine the crosswalks between a military operation and a business process.  For both it is critically important that leaders select and maintain the objective.  By describing their objectives leaders can empower entire communities to innovate to help attain the broader goal.  Military training also helps people think about broad and often innovative approaches to solving a complex challenge.  When encountering a tough adversary, a military leader will consider a wide variety of factors, probabilities and build out several scenarios to test an idea.  Rarely will the effective leader choose a single approach to victory.  Full campaigns will include a main action, perhaps several auxiliary actions, feints, special forces etc.  All must be performed with creativity and innovation, lest the adversary gain the upper hand by being able to predict what may happen.  With innovation, it’s important to look broadly across the problem space to seek out new approaches.  Finally, one last thing that it helped me appreciate is the concept of Exercising Empowerment. Sometimes people in very structured organizations like the military, government or large businesses project a sense that there is little room for independent thinking.  I would suggest that it is actually the opposite and that great ideas are always welcomed.  Not that I would encourage everyone in uniform to pick their own pace when on parade, but there are opportunities to innovate within all structures.

Q2: Technology is driving a lot of innovation and change – What can business leaders do to understand the innovation options presented by technology without becoming a technologist.  What are the types of questions business leaders should be asking?

A2: I think that the business leaders need to consider the outcomes from innovation.  The Boston Consulting Group identifies 5 outcomes from innovation:

• New to world products or markets
• Expanding your current customer base
• Reaching entirely new types of customers
• Incremental changes to existing products
• Improving efficiency in existing processes.

By focusing on the outcome, the business leader can abstract out the technology and explore the business outcome that will be driven.  Rarely does innovation simply pop arbitrarily into mind, rather, it is usually as a result of hard work on a particular problem carefully extended through a connection with other ideas or experimentation.  Business leaders should therefore focus on their area of expertise and look to harness adjacent innovation by extending their expertise through the careful application of technology.

Q3:  In your blog post, “Hearsay and other crimes against innovation” you emphasize the importance of fact checking and conducting the necessary research to substantiate the proposal.  Can you give some ideas or examples of how these elements can be built into a business case?

A3: Evidence based decision making is fundamental to managing the risks and opportunities presented by any change to the status quo.  To make good decisions, it is essential that there be a thorough understanding of the evidence being used.  There are any number of ways that statistics can be presented in a biased manner (as is well described in “how to lie with statistics” .In one case I saw an internet study where a very small percentage of a small global sample size answered (with a checkbox) that they had lost between $10 and $100 due to a particular type of fraud.  The study went on with some gratuitous extrapolation by multiplying the $100 Maximum against the entire Canadian population to arrive upon a multi-billion dollar impact for this fraud.  This created an alarming number, 4X any number previously proposed.  Given the margins for error, the factor of 10 difference in the potential losses all multiplied 1000s of times created a completely fictional statistic that eventually made headlines.  Imagine what would happen if the government program leader took that number at face value to look to resolve what was reported as a huge problem.  Even worse that the potential loss of funds, the misdirection of resources or efforts due to mis-prioritization has the potential to torpedo not only service delivery programs but sink entire businesses.

Q4: The Fed. Government is pushing improvements in the management of information through policies and directives – resulting in the focus of efforts being on compliance, rather than on opportunity.  What can you say about the relationship between information management and opportunity?

A4: Information is the lifeblood of government/ businesses and has been called the cornerstone of democracy.  It is therefore paramount that information be properly managed throughout its lifecycle.  Policies, directives, standards, guidelines and recommendations all play a role in providing advice and guidance for consistency across the organization.  While compliance is a necessary part of business and government routine, I’ve always had a love hate relationship with the term and how some people approach it.  In the worst cases, compliance is a sort of lowest hurdle to get over to be able to operate.  Like the runner in the Olympic race, some organizations will look to barely clear their compliance requirements, or just hit them so that they don’t get into trouble with their oversight body.  It has been shown that even though an organization meets its compliance checklist, it can completely fail in the meeting the objective of the compliance requirement in the first place. I believe that organizations should look broader than simple compliance to fully capitalize on the opportunities that can be garnered by going beyond the checklist.

Be sure to see John and other smart people at PS Engage, November 22, 2011.

The PSEngage conference is happening November 22, 2011 and the line-up of speakers is great!  To give more insight to the knowledge and interests of the speakers we sent them each a set of questions tailored to their individual experience.  We will be posting the questions and their responses over the next few weeks, so please keep checking back regularly.