[LINK] Gov 2.0 in Oz

[Jan Whitaker]

The government will talk back to the public (5 February 2010)
  http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/the-government-will-talk-back-to-the-public-20100205-nhbk.html
  http://snipurl.com/u9zo9

The chief blogger at the media regulator promises 
a no-spin zone, writes Julian Lee.

As a name, Gov2.0 is up there with iSnack 2.0 in 
terms of naffness. And at first glance, it could 
be read as a desperate attempt by bureaucrats to 
clamber aboard the internet bandwagon before it finally leaves without them.

But the newly installed head of new media at the 
media regulator promises Gov2.0 will usher in an 
era of spin-free communication.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority 
is the first government agency to put into 
practice Gov2.0, a government-wide initiative 
aimed at encouraging bureaucrats to use tools 
such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to put them 
more in touch with the people they are employed to serve.

"The era of the command-and-control model is 
almost at an end," says Tom Burton, in his first 
week in the newly created position of the 
authority's executive manager of Gov2.0 
stakeholder engagement and external communications.

He comes to the job after three years working in 
the US, building up the web presence of a Barrack 
Obama-aligned think tank, the Centre for American 
Progress. One of his initiatives was to launch an 
appeal for people to make one-minute videos 
highlighting the trade by armed gangs in Congo in 
minerals essential for use in mobile phones. The 
videos attracted 400,000 views on YouTube.

It was in that role Burton witnessed the sheer 
volume of "conversations" - be they blogs, 
Facebook groups and videos - that forced 
government departments and large corporations to 
get on the front foot to ensure their voice is 
heard amid the cacophony of a booming social 
media. The US Food and Drug Administration now 
tweets its recall notices; Ford has mandated 2 
per cent of its workforce to be online talking 
about Ford - it hopes positively.

"If you don't fill that gap in conversational 
media, then others will," he says. "It's not 
always going to be negative 
 they aren't always 
going to flame you, but you have to be ready."

Being ready for him will mean monitoring those 
"conversations" that affect ACMA's many 
stakeholders - government departments, ministers 
such as Stephen Conroy, the broader media 
industry and the general public - and getting in 
early with what the media regulator thinks on any 
given subject. What it will not be is spin, 
Burton insists. "You can't go out there with PR 
spin. Your response can be quick, informal, but 
most of all it has to be authentic." [Oh yeah? 
I'm sure Minister Conboy will love that restriction.]

How, then, would Gov2.0 add to this week's 
announcement, for example, that the regulator 
accepted court-enforceable undertakings from 
Commsec that it would stop spamming customers 
that had opted out of receiving emails from the 
broker? "On something like that, there will be a 
discussion out there about spam and we need to 
participate in that. We can take that discussion 
and broaden it and allow people to talk about it."

He says that could end up with a situation 
similar to the US, where consumer groups online 
named and shamed two internet service providers 
that gave safe haven to spammers, to the point 
where the US media regulator was forced to step in.

Not that you can just "let rip" with policy on 
the fly, he says, even though the ACMA's 
chairman, Chris Chapman, has given him the brief 
to "change the process" and get people to engage 
with the authority more. "There are processes 
involved and you have to operate within the law," 
says Burton, a former managing editor of the 
Herald and editor of the smh.com.au website until 2002.

"The big issue for everyone serious about social 
media is learning to listen and then deciding to 
act on it 
 [there's] no point just listening and 
then saying 'OK, we heard you' and then doing 
nothing." [Which is going to be a very hard 
cultural norm to break in some C'wlth departments.]

The regulator's imprimatur on the web will be 
apparent in coming months as it gets out there 
and blogs. Above all, anything it does has to be 
"authentic", he says, citing the example of an 
employee of the US cable company Comcast who took 
it upon himself to begin responding honestly and 
promptly to queries from increasingly irate 
customers, and in so doing helped restore the company's battered reputation.

But given that part of Burton's job will be to 
encourage civil servants to tweet, blog and post, 
perhaps the bigger challenge will be the 
willingness of the government spin machine to let 
go, says Daniel Young, the digital director at PR 
firm Burson Marsteller. [and what will these spinmasters be paid to do then!?]

"The question is: will a government be prepared 
to risk its political capital in order to achieve 
these worthy goals in an era of highly 
adversarial politics and increasingly centralised 
government power? What is the incentive to cede control?"

Young also says that Gov2.0 could backfire if 
public servants' efforts are seen as being 
woefully out of touch. "It's possible such 
openness will expose the inefficiency of 
government or the distance between it and the 
people, which would have a negative impact on 
engagement," he says, citing the criticism of the 
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's wooden 
efforts on YouTube. [Public servants are not the 
same as government. So who is going to 
participate? Ministers? Parl. secs? Dept Secs? middle managers?]

Source: smh.com.au



Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the 
world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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