– Bright Shiny Objects

Why are human beings and governments so attracted to bright shiny objects such as smart phone apps?

I’m sure there is a psychological malady in here somewhere – perhaps a “Bright Shiny Object Syndrome” (BSOS), which also might explain why some people passionately love geocaching and others are inveterate collectors of stuff and still others become compulsive hoarders. And BSOS may be related to that urban legend(?) about capturing monkeys by putting bright shiny objects (BSOs) into a monkey trap.

Certainly Apple seems to be making a handsome living off BSOS, with over 10 billion downloads from its iPhone Apps store at a 30% cut of the price each.  Apple also receives a percentage from iTunes music downloads, and has capitalized on what I would call “hardware BSO” by being first to market with products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad.  Of course plenty of other companies also cash in on BSO.  A perfect example is all the companies hoping to make money in the forthcoming boom in tablet computers this year.

How does this all relate to government?

Government employees, including senior executives and elected officials, range the gamut from early adopters to tech troglodytes.   And more than a few of them are afflicted with BSO syndrome.   Sometimes that’s harmless, like the employee who has an iPod plus video camera plus digital camera plus iPad and maybe two kinds of Smart Phones.   As long as “he” (they are usually men) uses his desktop computer with Windows XP for work, and operates all those gadgets on his own time, I see no harm in this.

A worse situation is a senior official who directs the government or department he/she leads to adopt the latest gee-whiz gadgets or web applications without connection to either the department’s business strategic plan or a coherent technology plan.  Then that department tries to simultaneously reach constituents – and perhaps obtain input from them – via too many methods, such as:

• a website (and maybe a variety of website domains such as countyparks.gov and parksforall.com and a domain for each major park)
• a variety of online services such as payment engines, permit applications, maps etc.
• blogs (and comments on blogs)
• tweets (and @replies)
• many different facebook pages
• webforms
• multiple YouTube postings and channels, in addition to the municipal cable TV channel
• open data
• smartphone apps
• e-mail
• mass-e-mailed newsletters
• crowdsourcing via a tool such as Google Moderator or Ideascale
• and probably via other bright-shiny-methods.

Sometimes I almost feel I “resemble these remarks” (i.e. have BSO syndrome myself):    The City of Seattle has a number of web applications and “bright shiny objects” such as Citylink – interconnected blogs at citylink.seattle.gov, multiple tweeting departments, a whole set of interactive services for making payments and obtaining information, a variety of Facebook pages and social media sites, open data at data.seattle.gov, a customizable website at my.seattle.gov, an award-winning municipal TV channel and much more.

So I’ll offer some tips – and this is advice the City of Seattle itself doesn’t always follow – on avoiding BSO syndrome in a world of Web 2.0 and Gov 2.0:

1.  Establish the brand of your website and try not to dilute it.  We have established www.seattle.gov as the definitive site for Seattle’s City government.  We actively resist setting up a whole series of competing domains with City information, e.g. seattlewater.gov or twistandsave.com (for a compact florescent bulb promotion).   We host our own implementation of WordPress, so that even the blogs (citylink.seattle.gov) are really part of the website.
I’ll be honest – this tenet is often hard to follow.   Many departments think they have some unique message which has to be communicated in a unique way with their own domain and website.   Sometimes this is just a new departmental web administrator trying to make a name for him/herself as a cool web designer.   Sometimes it is a legitimate request.  And sometimes it is something else entirely.  As CIO I need the wisdom of Solomon to recognize the difference!

2.   Drive traffic and inquiries back to the website from the other media.   When you tweet, include a link back to information on the website or in a blog.  When posting to the department’s Facebook wall, make the post short and succinct (include a photo or two, if appropriate) and link back to more information or an app on the website.

3.   Try to make the website as consistent as possible in look, feel and operation.  Use consistent headers, footers and navigation, as well as the same look-and-feel throughout the site.  Any government is not a collection of independent departments, but one entity headed by a single elected official with a single elected legislative body.  And try to be consistent in using a single payment engine for online payments, as well as “single sign-on” – one userid and password which provides access to all of the government’s online services.

4.   Be judicious in the proper use of tools.  In other words, use the right tool for the job.  Too often we have a hammer, so everything we see looks like a nail, even if in reality it is a screw or window or thumb.  

The best example of this is probably Citizens’ Briefing Book.   In January, 2009, President Obama’s transition team used Google moderator to try and crowdsource the major issues facing the nation.  Ideas such as “legalize marijuana”, “legalize online poker” and “revoke the tax status of the Church of Scientology” bubbled to the top.  Citizens’ Briefing Book is a noble effort, but I seriously doubt the tax status of Scientology is one of the most serious issues facing the nation!  Such crowdsourcing tools are more properly applied to single, specific, issues such as “what do we do with this vacant piece of land” rather than broad ones like “what are our budget priorities”.  Broad-based questions can be easily “gamed”.

5.  Dilution of effort.   Some governments or departments are huge, and can devote a lot of people and resources to maintaining a vast variety of social media and web channels for information.  A San Francisco or Seattle can have numerous Facebook pages and twitter accounts.  

But in every case – large or small, governments should start with just a few social media channels tailored to their communities.   Some communities will rarely use twitter, or will rely on traditional sources (TV stations or newspapers) for information.  Others will actively get information from blogs or Facebook postings.   Trying to do too much – too many social media channels – will be difficult to keep operating and only confuse the public or weaken their confidence in government.

6.  Fail fast.   If you try a new social media channel and it doesn’t resonate with constituents, close it down and post a “nothing to see here anymore – see our website” notice on the door.

7.   Assign responsibility.  Most departments will assign their public information staff the duty of updating social media and insuring accuracy.  In Seattle, the Police and Fire and Transportation PIOs will tweet as they speed to an event or incident, and then tweet again as well as blog about what happened at the incident.  The tweets link to the blogs.   With the demise of the traditional media (television, newspapers), the rise of neighborhood blogs and ubiquity of computing devices (computers, tablets, smartphones) in the hands of the public, this approach also is the fastest way to get information to everyone.

Ten years ago, in 2001, the year of “A Space Odessy” and HAL, who could have imagined today’s environment of Facebook and Twitter and blogs and smart phones?  What will the social media and constituent relationship landscape be like in 2021 or even 2016? 

Perhaps, instead of titling this post “Bright Shiny Objects”, the title should be “Bright Shifting Objects” as we continuously roll with the changes in technology.

– Web 2.0, Gov 2.0, Society 2.0

Government 2.0

The whole two-dot-oh thing seems so “contrived”. Like a marketing gimmick. Or selling the “new improved” laundry soap, that is, the “new, stickier, more connected, web”.

Yet there is a kernel of truth here, not so much in the technology but in the fabric of our society. It is Society 2.0.

First of all, I’m not coining the term Society 2.0. I’m not sure who coined it, but I first heard of it on Monday, June 21st, from Julius O. Akinyemi, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Media Lab at MIT. I was privileged to be one of 25 or so folks who came together under the leadership of Zach Tumin of the Ash Institute at Harvard’s JFK School of Government. Zach sponsored an executive session at Harvard on the topic “Making the Move to Gov 2.0: Citizen Engagement and Empowerment”.

The phrase “Web 2.0” seems to have significant validity. Tim O’Reilly created and defined the term Web 2.0, I think. There IS a vast difference between the World Wide Web as it existed before about 2003, and the kinds of web “stuff” available in the last six years. Perhaps the watershed moment was in 2003 when MySpace was founded by Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe. MySpace is a signal achievement, marking the true “social web” where normal people could post information and easily interact with each other. Web 1.0 was about viewing information and doing transactions. Web 2.0 is about social interaction.

And the term “Society 2.0” certainly makes sense to me as well.

Those of us old enough to remember life in 1980 may still remember what life was like in those days of ancient history. Typewriters, secretaries, phones with cords. Film cameras. Giant paper phone directories plopped on your doorstep. Anyone who used a computer or talked about bits or bytes (much less gigabits or terabytes) was an uber-geek who must have a pocket protector and be one full bubble off the level of normal.

Today, most human beings in the United States feel naked without at least a cell phone, but preferably a smartphone. Anyone using terms like “typewriter” or “secretary” will make listeners smile like they are humoring a very elderly relative who is suffering from dementia. Many of us have to check our e-mail constantly. Most of us use text messaging or multi-media messaging as a matter of course. And who uses a film camera or even knows a retailer which develops the stuff?

Welcome to Society 2.0. The technology-enabled society.

Government 2.0. Now that term is foreign to me.

I certainly understand “government”, as I am one (sorta). Or at least work for one.

This morning I attended Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn’s regular cabinet meeting. Did we talk technology? Hardly. Indeed, except for the specific details of the subject matter, this could have been a Mayor’s cabinet meeting from 1980 or even 1950. We talked about jobs – the overriding need for people in Seattle to have living wage jobs and how we, as a government, can help businesses large and small make that happen. We talked about the South Park Bridge, which will close in five days because it is rickety and dangerous, and that closure will isolate a whole neighborhood for over two years until we can find the money to replace it. We discussed the need for people to feel safe and secure on the streets, and how our departments – not just police, but transportation and neighborhoods and the electric utility – can work to help people downtown and in neighborhoods feel safe.

Sure, technology was there and it permeated the meeting – in the background. Three people, including the department director sitting my right, took notes on their iPads. I took notes using Microsoft One-Note on my HP Mini which uses Windows XP and which sat on top of the table – I’ve not yet become a fanboy for Apple technology. But I used my BlackBerry to set an appointment with the FCC and text message my deputy. Everyone else at the meeting surreptitiously checked their BlackBerrys for e-mail.

But Government 2.0? Whatever that is, it wasn’t present there, and it certainly should not have been.

Crime Maps on http://www.seattle.gov

Now don’t get me wrong – Government is doing a lot of innovative work with technology, and Seattle is a leader. You can follow the tweets of the Seattle police department and fire department and transportation. We’ve got a set of 15 interlinked blogs for up-to-the-minute information. You see any account balance and pay almost any bill or tax of the Seattle government online. And we do really cool stuff like a Traveler’s information map and posting Fire Department 911 calls on a map within a couple minutes of dispatch. Anyone can download a ton of information from data.seattle.gov. On Monday, June 28th, you be able to view a map showing crimes in your neighborhood and download redacted but pretty complete reports on any of them, a service probably unique in the nation.

But if websites are Web 1.0 and Facebook is Web 2.0, and typewriters/corded phones are Society 1.0 yet smartphones and ipods and email or text messaging are Society 2.0, then all that innovative stuff in Seattle is probably Government 1.5, not Government 2.0.

Government still has not quite figured out how to harness mobile phones and Facebook and LinkedIn. We still conduct public meetings with presentations by officials followed by citizens trooping one by one to the microphone to deliver a two or three minute diatribe to elected officials. We are not gutsy enough to allow even moderated comments on our blogs, or to establish a free-wheeling social network of citizens, much less a smartphone app for interacting with elected or senior government officials.

But there are glimmers of hope for Government 2.0. Mayor McGinn’s public meetings often include a display of tweets projected on a screen. The Seattle Channel has figured out ways to live-stream video from almost every major public meeting in the City. The Channel’s Ask-the-Mayor show includes interaction from constituents via e-mail, telephoned and even videotaped questions from citizens. IdeasforSeattle gives people an opportunity to suggest and rank ideas, and we’ll have a new, improved Idea generating tool later in the summer.

Gov 2.0 - Ideas-for-Seattle

A true Government 2.0 needs to be more interactive.  Government 2.0 will be about inclusion:  elected officials having the ability to listen to a large number of constituents, not just the NIMBYs (not-in-my-backyard) who can show up at a meeting, or the lobbyists with the clout to get a face-to-face meeting with the official.   Government 2.0 needs to be about drafting new solutions from a wide variety of people (“crowdsourcing”), not just those who have the time or media attention to relentlessly push forward their own agenda.    Gov 2.0 will be empowering people on their own blocks and in their own neighborhoods to have more control over and take charge of their safety and quality of life.  Fundamentally this requires a change in culture in government from “we’ll collect the data and make the decisions, and let you review them” to “let’s collaborate and work on this together”.**

Technology has a role in this.  For example, by using tools to harvest @replies from Twitter.  Or to engender comments and discussions on Facebook or blogs without having the conversation degenerate when a few anonymous people use four letter words to viciously attack government and elected officials, a problem old and new media outlets face every day. We need ways that a “public meeting” can span two days allowing everyone to attend and discuss the topic and voice and debate ideas with online and video tools, without the need to travel downtown to City Hall for a meeting at fixed time. 

And we – government – need to harness the tools which the “normal” people of Society 2.0 use every day. Their mobile phones, and smartphones and Facebook. We need to harness those tools, so that our constituents don’t have to come “downtown” or come to government to use services or give input on policy. So they can use tools they already use – the Internet and Facebook and mobile phones – to interact with officials at meetings or to give feedback to elected official.

Interacting with your government should be as easy as posting to your Facebook wall or texting on your smartphone or adding a comment to a blog.   But it will also be hard because it will require every constituent – as well as our officials – to listen to the ideas of others and interact, discuss and collaborate in new ways beyond giving a two-minute speech at a public meeting or writing an e-mail message.    When our culture changes that way,  then perhaps we’ll have “Government Two dot Oh”.   (And we’ll be talking about Gov 3.0!)**

**These paragraphs changed from the original post due to Jon Stahl’s comments, below.

– The Digital Fireside Chat

An Obama Text Message

President-elect Barack Obama made groundbreaking use of technology to win the 2008 election. Can he now use technology to lead the nation and communicate with the nation’s people in new, life-changing ways?   I think so, and I think this foreshadows new ways for Governors, Mayors and other elected officials to lead and communicate.

On November 9th’s ABC program “This Week” (George Stephanopoulos), the discussion turned to our previous major national economic crisis – the Depression. Our current situation has some parallels to that in 1932 – new leadership in a nation facing an economic crisis of frightening dimensions. As we know, the New Deal never really “fixed” the Great Depression – it took World War II to do that. But 1932 is still remarkable for the terrific leadership of Franklin Roosevelt: fresh ideas, a new outlook, and a new way of communicating with people, including Roosevelt’s famous radio “fireside chats”. “This Week’s” commentators mentioned the possibility of “digital fireside chats” from our new President.

Barack Obama, with a tech saavy and skilled team, used the web and Internet to identify and mobilize up to ten million supporters, of whom at least three million financially contributed to the campaign. According to Time Magazine, the campaign raised $150 million in September, 75% of it online (not me, incidentally, I contributed by paper check!).

According to wired-dot-com, volunteers used Obama’s website to organize a thousand phone-banking events in the last week of the race — and 150,000 other campaign-related events over the course of the campaign. The campaign also created myBarackObama.com, essentially a social-networking site with 35,000 affinity groups – the site has some 1.5 million accounts. These social networks were also used to fight many of the false rumors and McCain robo-calls. The campaign even announced Senator Joseph Biden as Obama’s running mate via text message.

Bill Greener, a Republican consultant from Alexandria, quoted in the Seattle Times, said: “We are getting crushed in early voting and the efficient use of technology. It’s a huge deal when the other side is text-messaging to cell phones while our side is hoping we’ve got a good e-mail list.”

One surprising part of that statement is this: a “good e-mail list” is now taken for granted in campaigning – and it falls short!  Just three presidential elections ago, e-mailing was an esoteric technology only used by a small fraction of the population. 

Researchers at Princeton and the University of Michigan conducted a 2006 study and concluded that a text message delivered by cell phone could boost voter turnout among young people by 4 percent. While that might not sound like much, Obama’s margin of victory was just 6%.

Will the Obama campaign now shut down MyBarackObama.com and take its database of mobile phone numbers, e-mail addresses and supporter names and just put them on a backup tape and send them to Iron Mountain for storage until the next campaign?   I doubt it! More likely they will be used to communicate the new President’s message on programs and change, and turn out those supporters to lobby on behalf of legislation.

The “new” web, web 2.0, abounds with tools for communication and collaboration: not just text messaging, but blogging and social networking, YouTube channels and wiki’s. A vast variety of ways for a new, tech saavy, President to engage the people of the United States, and allow us to engage him with our ideas and energy.

Invariably eyes will turn to the 20% to 40% of the population who do not actively use technology or have Internet connections – the “digital divide”. Those without access to technology are, disproportionately, lower income and non-white. Bridging that divide has been a major effort at the City of Seattle and in many other governments.

Now, with a national leader who embraces high tech, it will become “cool” for everyone to use tech and have access. (We call this “Leadership by Example”). Cultural barriers to using technology will fall, and programs to bring it to everyone (such as Seattle’s Community Technology and Broadband work) will gain even more momentum.

Then perhaps we – the People – can become active participants in government, not just observers between elections.

All these are great ideas for a digital fireside chat – and a two-way one – via the electronic fireplace of the computer monitor.

Web 2.0 and Government 1.9

Government 1.9 - click for more

Original post:  8 May 2008
The Internet has been taken over by a new set of interactive, community-making technologies. This is really old news: blogs, RSS feeds, MySpace and Facebook and LinkedIn, wiki’s have been around for a number of years. They’ve vastly increased use of the Internet by everyone. Yet governments have been slow to adapt them for public agency use. There are good reasons for this – I firmly believe governments should NOT be on the bleeding edge of adopting new technologies – since we use taxpayer funds, we need to be careful in how we experiment.
But Web 2.0 technologies are all about building online communities and increasing interaction between people. And these are exactly what governments are all about! We have a natural set of communities – the people living in and neighborhoods existing within our city limits or county lines. And we have elected officials who thrive on interaction with constituents. We need to adopt at least some of these Web 2.0 technologies to improve government. I’m convinced governments are now on the verge of an explosion in the use of these tools (hence “government 1.9”). I’ve written a longer essay about this here, and I’ve collected a few examples of the pioneer government Web 2.0 implementations here.