AGIMO (the Australian Government Information Management Office) has a blog which is dedicated to the review of the Web Publishing Guide. Hopefully this blog will lead by example in showing how a Government department can communicate using a blog, lead to a more useful and usable Web Publishing Guide. As well as AGIMO beginning to understand web 2.0 tools and will start making use of other web 2.0 tools.

The big surprise for me (blogging more than a year after I expected is only minor), is that it is hosted in the cloud by wordpress.com. Not that there is anything wrong with this. I would actually recommend hosting a blog with wordpress.com as this resolves issues regarding security and keeping the wordpress current. It is just a conservative government department with I assume considerable IT resources surrendering the total control of hosting in house for the less secure external hosting.

Buried deep inside the Department of Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy is the two day old Digital Economy Future Directions blog.

Unfortunately, the blog was set up by people without a good understanding of social media, this is apparent as you read through the about page. With a promise that a future post will be on:

How do we maintain the same civil society we enjoy offline in an online world?

Clearly this blog was set up as a one way conduit for collecting input into issues that are to be included in a Future directions paper, that will delivered early next year. It will be interesting to see if this blog develops beyond that limited scope into a device for conversation.

Bad points

• The blog is buried deep inside the regular department web site, with no individual identity of it’s own. Just look at the URL: http://www.dbcde.gov.au/communications_for_business/industry_development/digital_economy/future_directions_blog
• The Terms of Use is written by lawyers for lawyers not humans. The Moderation Policy at least is better, at least I can understand it on the first read.
• The first real post Digital Economy reads like an extra dry Government report. Minister Tanner’s welcome is far better as blog content.
• Promotion of the blog appears to be solely the domain of the trusty old press release to traditional media outlets. However, it quickly made it’ way to new media, which is how I discovered it.

Good Points

• It is a Federal Government blog on a fairly high profile subject.
• People are willing to get involved, there have been over 600 comments on two posts in less than two days. The bad news is most are diatribes about internet filtering.

It is a baptism of fire for the team behind the blog and it will be interesting to see what will happen. This blog will either evolve or be buried under the landslide of comments about internet filtering. It is a case of unfortunate timing, if this blog was launched a couple of months ago, it could of been a good tool in the debate on internet filtering. Now most people have a strong opinion on internet filtering and are willing to voice them. The blog team needs to weather this storm of comments and stay focused. Otherwise this blog will be buried as will the chances of seeing any other blogs from the Australian Federal Government on high profile topics.

My words of advice to the communications team at the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. Look at how other government high profile blogs that work successfully, Evolution of Security is my favourite example. Find people inside your department who use social media and get their advice. If that fails, hire somebody who knows their way around social media ( two Canberrans that spring to mind are Trib and NathanaelB spring to mind) for guidance. Finally good blogs are not about making announcements and receiving comments, it is about conversation. So please make the effort to converse with us.

Evolution of Security is the blog of the Transportation Security Administration and the most popular Government blog I have seen, with most recent posts averaging over a 100 comments.

One of the most interesting differences between this and most Government blogs, is the effort that has been made to put a human face on the the TSA. The closest most people get to the TSA is brief conversations with faceless personnel at security checks in airports. So the TSA has made a serious attempt to show the human side of the TSA, all the contributors to the blog have their first name and a bio on the blog. It works, a large number of comments begin, hi name.

The blog has been so successful that one of the regular authors, Bob has moved from his regular job at Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport to be a full time blogger at TSA headquarters.

So why has the Evolution of Security been so successful in such a short time, it was only launched in January this year. I believe it is a combination of factors, airport security affects a large number of Americans and therefore a large number of people are interested in the subject matter, a well developed and executed a social media strategy which include putting human face on the TSA and this human interaction has lead people to constantly return and regularly comment.

The lesson for anybody about to create a government blog or other social media, make it with real people and let them interact, you will have the public interacting in return.

I was exploring SocialMedian beta when I can across a clip from Hyperkinesis on a post on the Los Angles Times blog about the Los Angles Fire Department’s use of twitter. The post was very interesting not only does the LAFD use Twitter, they blog and use YouTube, Flickr, Gabcast and Jaiku.

If you have a look at the LAFD web presence via their blog,YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and other social media services. You see that the LAFD are using social media to get the latest information to their citizens and promoting other information such as their Earthquake Preparedness Handbook. Their handbook may be an old school PDF, but more people are likely to be aware of the handbook and download it, because what the LAFD are doing with their use of web 2.0.

A great uses of social media by people who know their stuff, promoting information that will save lives. And a path I hope our local emergency services will follow.

Using Wordpress.com, Flickr, Youtube and Twitter to keep the information flowing

My experience with NFP organisations, particularly the larger ones is that they are conservative in their approach to almost everything including new technology. So I was very surprised when I got pointed to the American Red Cross MidWest Flooding Online Newsroom thanks to Rex Hammock.

Somebody inside the American Red Cross has got it right, using of Wordpress.com, Youtube, Flickr and even Twitter to create a quick, low cost and effective way to get across information to the world about the impact of the recent flooding in the Mid West US and the American Red Cross’s role in providing relief.

A lesson for anybody who needs to create an effective communication tool, quickly and on a tiny budget.

Finally a WA Gov blog?

Well not quite, it is a blog complete with comments, but it is not strictly from a WA State Government Agency. Bentley technology precinct is combined efforts of the WA Department of Industry and Resources, two local governments, the City of South Perth and the Town of Victoria Park and Curtin University of Technology.

The aim to promote the Bentley technology precinct as a centre for ICT development in WA and the region. And what better way than using a blog. A few cynics will say a blog is passe but it is far better than 10Mb PDF newsletters (which you can download from the site).

Seriously, this is an attempt to engage the community and hopefully it will become a good tool and an example to WA State Government agencies that blogs can be effective two way communication devices.

The aim of this site is to showcase government web2.0 sites, but in this case I will make an exception because the 2020 Summit community site shows what can be done quickly and on a nonexistent budget.

On Monday morning there was a conversation on twitter between Laurel Papworth and Stephen Collins about the need to get people who understand the web into the 1000 attendees at the 2020 Summit. Within an hour 2020summit.org was created by Stephen and live.

Even if you are not interested in the 2020 Summit (and you should be), it is interesting to watch the web site evolve and see how the talented people behind the site engage the community. A lesson for anybody interested in building a site to engage a community.

HREOC listening tour blog

Now this is your traditional blog, running on WordPress and allowing comments to promote the Listening Tour of the HREOC Commissioner Broderick as she travels around Australia and to gather your feedback on the direction HREOC should take over the next five years. The comments are moderated as expected and are governed by an acceptable use policy. A couple of the more interesting conditions are:

• do protect your personal privacy and that of others by not including personal information of about yourself or about others in your posts to the blog, (such as names, email addresses, private addresses or phone numbers);

• do represent your own views and not impersonate or falsely represent any other person;

Overall a positive use of a blog to interact with their audience.

What I found interesting was while the blog and main HREOC site look identical they have different domain names and hosting half a world apart. The blog’s domain name is hreocblog.com and hosted on a commercial provider in the US. While www.humanrights.gov.au is hosted in Australia, probably inhouse. This does not surprise me, I know of more that a few Government IT departments that are unwilling to host a blog inhouse because of security fears(ie fear of the unknown), lack of skills and/or knowledge or just because it is easier to say NO. It also looks like the communications staff of HREOC, who I assume are responsible for the blog where unable or unwilling to get their IT people to delegate a subdomain name like blog.humanrights.gov.au and point that to their blog on the other side of the world.

News blog of the Department of Defence

By the Wikipedia definition of blog the News blog of the Department of Defence is a blog, is a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. However, like most people I expect a blog to allow the readers to interact, which is not the case here.

Given that it is a specific tool for delivering media releases and related material to a very specific audience, media outlets. Does it need to interact with it’s intended audience? If this website does it’s job, the conversations will be carried out by the media and their audience, not by the News blog of the Department of Defence. The only people likely to interact with this website are people who have an axe to grind with the Department of Defence, so I understand the logic behind not allowing comments.

Is it a blog? I will let you decide, but as a tool to deliver media material to media outlets it does it’s job. Though a RSS feed in addition to email announcement list would be effective way to deliver material to media outlets and other interested parties..

Ripped Off blog

The NSW Office of Fair Trading has created a blog which allows NSW consumers to tell their stories about being ripped off. Their conditions of use and moderation policy are fairly restrictive. To be fair, the Office of Fair Trading needs to protect themselves from somebody naming a business and then making claims that are slanderous.

The blog is a great move, hopefully it will provide the Office of Fair Trading with information about consumer behaviour, particularly those who do not approach the office for assistance. As well as informing and educating consumers about the risks out there and hopefully get more of those who did get ripped off to get real help.