Social media in government – CS Live

Alex AllanChairman, JIC

William PerrinTransformational GovernmentLinks to resources can be found at http://cslive.pbwiki.com

Social media – new ways of sharing information and doing business

Getting information from point A to point B to form policy or deliver a service

Written information

Face to face information

Social media - beyond A-B - what about C and Z ?

Note to Heath about Margaret Thatcher’s suitability as a Minister for Fair Trading.

Nov 1972

Telex – No10-Chequers

Thatcher Archive

Written information - 35 years ago

Classification

Main body of text

Addressee

and routing

Title

Written information - today

Title

Main body of

text

Copy listClassification - often missing

Routing metadata

(concealed)

35 years – any progress….?

Title

Classification

Main body of

text

Copy list

Face to Face – 35 years ago

Picture of Queen

Paste Board

Men listening to each other

Notes being taken

35 years on – Face to Face

Dubious PowerPoint

diagram

Women and men listening to presenter

A little note

taking

Everyone sitting back

35 years – any progress…..?

then – emphasis on communicating

now – emphasis on listening to pictures

“..slideware often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis.” Edward Tufte

Publishing 154 years ago….

Northcote-Trevelyan report – foundation of modern civil service

Command Paper

Crest

Generally un-engaging, huge process behind the scenes

Publishing today…..

Crest reassuringly prominent

Still hard to get excited

Command paper

Report about radically new ways of publishing information………..

154 years – little progress

Processes still paper driven, in lock step with Parliament, publication in big lumps at long intervals

Limitations – traditional and modern practiceCompartmentalisation

The Unknown As we know,There are known knowns,There are things we know we know.We also knowThere are known unknowns.That is to sayWe know there are some thingsWe do not know.But there are also unknown unknowns,The ones we don’t know we don’t know.

Limitations – traditional and modern practice

Donald Rumsfeld Ontology

Limitations – traditional and modern practice

Contained networks that die silently as originators move on

Tangled information flows - duplication and waste

Audit difficult Self fulfilling and perpetuating Practice embeds ‘knowledge is

power’ Artificially increases price of

information, inhibiting its use

Paradox – traditional and modern practice

Easier to find information in American public sector

on the web than in the office next door

Blinkers starting to come off

Rightsnet – public discussion forum

PBWiki – it’s free and simple

Basecamp – collaboration $12 a month

CabCam – video media inside Cabinet Office

UK CS in Facebook – 7,000 strong

Ministers blog publishing policy in real time…..

Meeting blogged before I got back to my desk

Consultation in demotic, online language

43 responses in 24 hours

Colleagues tell you where the good stuff is…….

484 people Digged this story

Whitehall - Britain’s most important knowledge factory…

….but with antiquated tools

What does this mean for civil servants?

Things are about to change, radically after 30 years static Knowledge Council working on collaborative tools Knowledge will be spread all over the networks Knowledge will be persistent and searchable Less effort to find information Challenge for working practices and IT Cabinet Office guidance out shortly

Now……

What have you done using social media you are proud of an you think we could learn from

Wouldn’t it be better if……. Use PBwiki to create list of opportunities and improvements

things we could do better on the web If you were god for the day/had a magic wand….. Use traditional boards to stick suggestions on Or (if no time) go to http://cslive.pbwiki.com

Copyright notice – if you claim copyright for any of the images or screen grabs please contact me

and I should be delighted to acknowledge or rectify.

Otherwise Crown Copyright applies

Some of these slides were originally used by William Perrin at a National Archivists Conference in Manchester