Collaboration eh?

Posted on November 7, 2018 by ThomK

In honour of the FWD50 conference taking place in Ottawa this week, here is a post that seems relevant to the conference theme of “Use technology to make society better for all”.

It is a post about yesterday, today and tomorrow. There are quite a few words and no pictures.

Yesterday

Before the existence of writing, collaboration was strictly a face-to-face affair and probably centred around survival. About 5000 years ago writing came along, and information could now be preserved and shared independently of a human to remember it. For the next 45 centuries, written information was the domain of the elite.

When the printing press was invented, rooms full of scribes were gradually replaced with new technology — machines that could accurately reproduce information at an accelerated rate. Ideas could now spread further and faster than ever before. Collaboration over distance was possible although it took a long time. Information was very physical and real.

Around this time, Information geeks the world over began a quest for the ultimate classification system. Every great power had a great library.

More recently, the Cold War and quantum physics research produced the internet and the web. The “interweb” changed everything if you wanted it to. Information could be in more than one place at once, and it could literally travel at the speed of light. Physical artefacts became digital — making it at once more accessible and more vulnerable. Everything became miscellaneous. Digital networks evolved into complex adaptive systems, and Digimon appeared in popular culture.

The web was a new frontier, unregulated and exciting, a new crop of 20 something techno wizards rose in business fame. Apple was born. The Cluetrain Manifesto was written and there was a boom in tech stocks. At the end of the millennium, we panicked over a couple of missing digits (Y2K) and spent billions correcting the short-sightedness of the previous decades.

In the GC, Government On-Line occurred and the Funding Fairy provided the means for departments to put their information online. Canada became a world leader, but the paper-based mentality that prevailed caused many to completely miss the opportunity presented by hyperlinks and digital logic, instead “brochure-ware” prevailed.

At the top of the hype curve, the tech bubble goes pop and we are reminded that gravity works. After the crash, the Web was reborn as Web 2.0 with user-created content and social networking taking centre stage. The Long Tail made its appearance and command and control hierarchies began to sense a threat, while the educated masses saw an opportunity.

Government CIOs scrambled to keep the information plumbing from backing up while Amazon and Google raised the bar of citizen expectations for online service.

Tagging and folksonomies entered the vocabulary of information professionals, curating became something anyone could do. Librarians and archivists struggled to catalogue and preserve some of the exponential growth while the cognitive surplus emerged to build things like Wikipedia — making human knowledge more accessible than ever before. CIOs were either bewildered or excited at the possibilities.

GTEC played an important role by bringing together examples and people. It became an annual, milestone event. It was at GTEC 2007 that Ken Cochrane announced that the GC was going to build a “Collaborative Library” and it was at GTEC a year later that we launched GCPEDIA — bringing people and technology together.

Today

GTEC is gone and FWD50 has taken its place as a gathering for technology hopefuls. The world is a scary place and we are not sure whom to trust.

High-speed wireless saturates the urban environment and ubiquitous network access is a reality. Digital natives experience continuous instant communication as part of everyday life while Government workplaces seem antiquated by comparison. The web and the collective forces that it enables are transforming all parts of connected society. Recorded information is produced at an accelerating rate.

Open source software matures and becomes a viable option for enterprise applications. Governments around the world join the Open Government Partnership, in Canada, the Federal Government publishes the Open Government Action plan.

Holistic User Centred Design begins to challenge solutions approaches to designing technology. Humanists and engineers are learning to work together.

The digital divide becomes a social issue, web accessibility becomes law and massive resources are assembled to ensure all GC organizations become compliant.

Bureaucracies built to manage people, work and information over the last couple of hundred years are beginning to show their age. New groups emerge in the evolutionary sea of information we know as the internet. Powerful forces compete to control the new territory — Anonymous becomes an entity.

The GC invests heavily in GCDOCS, SharePoint and other technologies designed to manage/control documents. The idea of knowledge as a product of interconnected networks and not just documents takes shape. Social innovation tools appear in pockets. GCpedia, GCconnex, GCcollab and other grassroots tools struggle for institutional support while gaining users. Something called the open accessible digital workplace is conceived.

Agile and Design Thinking is all the rage. Good ideas start to come back again.

Sometime after tomorrow

I originally wrote these words in 2012, it is kind of fun to reflect on the progress since then.

There is no Web 3.0, but something else emerges — a diverse, complex adaptive system, no, a network of complex adaptive systems. What seems to be emerging is a network dominated by motivations other than the public good. The government needs to step up.

In the GC, Shared Services Canada provides a reliable infrastructure, we share one email address across government, secure wireless is everywhere, non-government partners can easily and securely collaborate, the government cloud is a reality. Departmental CIOs become focused on transition and business improvement — information plumbing is rarely an issue. The government-wide technical architecture focuses on standards and interoperability, a diverse range of technologies and tools work together in relative harmony, vendors with “lock-in” strategies are shunned. Thrilled to see the idea of open standards and enterprise architecture come back, hopefully, they will stick this time.

GC Ideas is in constant use, the GC App Store is the first place departments look when they need software. Government developers routinely contribute to open source projects. The Open Knowledge policy is promulgated across governments around the world. The Marvelous Mistakes page on GCPEDIA competes with the Fabulous Failures page for most valuable lessons. Risk aversion all but disappears in an organizational culture that embraces experimentation and sharing lessons learned. Meh.

Tablet computers are everywhere, briefing binders disappear. The Golden Tablet program maintains a knowledge connection with departing employees. The GCTools suite is adequately funded. No Golden Tablets and the tools are frustrating to use, but big plans ahead.

Dreams of a digital nirvana don’t come true, but all is not lost. Networks of people who are comfortable connecting virtually emerge and disperse continuously. The definition of Public Service changes as the lines blur between indeterminate employees and partners. Agility is an operational requirement, and government organizations re-invent themselves. @fwd50 is a great example of this happening

Leadership learns to work with the nebulous “crowd.” Connections are made and governance structures adapt to include interfaces to the crowd. The management focus shifts from one of command and control towards engaging with self-identified stakeholders. Early steps being taken by some visionaries some of the time.

Serendipity becomes a business principle, the internet of things emerges, power shifts to those who control the algorithms but a balance is maintained by the digital collective. The Virtual Government Network is an international network 200,000 members strong where new and innovative methods are shared. The Virtual Government Network never became a reality but Apolitical did, the algorithm battles are just beginning.

Public Servants feel more connected with each other, and with the public they serve.
Most certainly for some.

Global government becomes possible as a global consciousness emerges. The collective intelligence gets a handle on our wicked problems. Technology serves the three Ps of Planet, People and Profit.

Yes, life is good in my fantasy future. What does yours look like?

Government as a platform eh?

Posted on June 18, 2016 by ThomK

I came across this draft post from when I attended the 2009 Gov2.0 Summit in Washington. It was just after Obama became President and the excitement in the air was like that in Ottawa recently with our new Prime Minister.

Reading it again, it occurred to me that it might be useful input into the conversation about what digital means to the governments of Canada.
Gov20summit There was lots of talk about government as
a platform on the first day of the summit and I must admit that I came to Washington a little unclear on the topic. There are multiple “layers of abstraction” and no doubt those who build hardware and software have a more detailed understanding, nonetheless I will share with you what I took away about one of the big themes of the conference.

platform for change

A data platform for services
By sharing data in open machine readable ways, the government can enable industry to create social and financial value by building services on top of that data. The dominate examples had to do with GPS and GIS data, (location, maps and details). There were impressive examples from the battlefront in Afghanistan to the streets of LA. The Obama administration has taken a bold step towards embedding this behavior in the bureaucracy with its Open GOvernment Directive.
A social platform
With its power to convene and consult with groups of citizens the government can be a powerful catalyst for civic action. With much of the credit of Obama’s election win going to the power of the internet to mobilize voters, the administration is very interested in how to involve Americans in taking action to solve their problems. By using modern internet tools the government could fulfill the promise of Jeffersonian Democracy it seems.
An economic platform
Finally with its power to invest the government can initiate market moves and affect the direction of the economy. The feeling in the room was that if government investments in infrastructure good things will happen.

There are probably many more ways you could describe Government as a platform. Gosh, I even heard a sidewalk referred to as a platform for social interaction. (Depending upon how you design and build it, you will get different behaviors. Add a bench and people sit down. Make it narrow and people walk on by.)

The thing about Government as a platform is that it provides a new perspective on the old problem of making government more effective. As I believe that genus with the funny hair said:

” you can’t solve old problems with the same thinking that created them”

New perspectives are a good thing.

There are many ways you can think of Government as a platform. The take away for public servants is to use this perspective to create new forces for good. To create policy and programs that will address the real problems the world faces today.

There you have it. My thoughts, such as they are. Feel free to comment, correct or elaborate, express whatever you want, just be polite about it ok?

January, 2014 Update

Posted on January 7, 2014 by ThomK

Some of the things I am involved with this quarter.

1. Leadership Summit 2014, February 25, Ottawa

Canadian Government Executive Magazine and lead sponsor Adobe put on a very informative day last year, and I am looking forward to attending and live tweeting this year’s event. Hope to see you there. http://cgeleadershipsummit.ca/

2. Collaboration Clinic, February 11, 2014, Ottawa

The Institute on Governance and I are delivering this one day session designed to equip you with the skills required to meet outcomes collaboratively. http://iog.ca/events-courses/collaboration-clinic-from-buzz-word-to-results/

3. Change Management Conference, May 5-6, 2014, Toronto

The Ottawa session back in November was well done and this one looks even stronger. I plan to attend and tweet this opportunity to connect with change leaders. Ottawa Session Storify – Toronto Session Web Page

If you are thinking of attending the summit or the conference let me know, I might be able to get you a discounted rate.

Other News:

On the consulting front I will be spending a few days a week back at TBS-CIOB helping the GC2.0 Enterprise Collaboration team prepare for the next stage in their continuing evolution. A related note is that Optimum OnLine recently published my paper on the first three years of pioneering Enterprise Collaboration at the Government of Canada.

I will also be spending time with the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention at PHAC, helping out with their transformation to digital via a learning approach to taking advantage of social technologies.

Finally, I am looking for interesting and meaningful work starting in April, 2014, if you hear of anything.

Thank you for taking the time to read this message, I hope you have a great beginning to the new year.

All the best,

Thom

@thomkearney

“Dreams of a digital nirvana don’t come true, but all is not lost.”

Posted on June 7, 2013 by ThomK

https://nusum.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/reflections-of-a-participant-observer/ 746px-Tesla_colorado

When I was asked to write a post comparing technology and tools across time, I was intrigued because I believe that the tools and technology we choose shape the culture of our workplace.

Twenty pages of draft text later, I decided that the topic was more suitable for a book than a blog post. So instead, here are a few reflections on technology and collaboration from someone who has been around a bit.

Collaboration to me, means a group of people working together towards a common goal. Technology helps or hinders us in that collaboration by finding the people to collaborate with, in sharing stuff we are working on, in co-creating stuff and in measuring our progress towards a common goal.

The past

Before the existence of writing, collaboration was strictly a face-to-face affair and probably centred around survival. About 5000 years ago writing came along, and information could now be preserved and shared independent of a human to remember it. For the next 45 centuries written information was the domain of the elite.

When the printing press was invented, rooms full of scribes were gradually replaced with new technology – machines that could accurately reproduce information at an accelerated rate. Ideas could now spread further and faster than ever before. Collaboration over distance was possible although it took a long time. Information was very physical and real.

Around this time, Information geeks the world over began a quest for the ultimate classification system. Every great power had a great library.

More recently, the Cold War and quantum physics research produced the internet and the web. The “interweb” changed everything if you wanted it to. Information could now be in more than one place at once, and it could literally travel at the speed of light. Physical artifacts became digital—making it at once more accessible and more vulnerable. Everything became miscellaneous. Digital networks evolved into complex adaptive systems, and Digimon appeared in popular culture.

The web was a new frontier, unregulated and exciting, a new crop of 20 something techno wizards rose in business fame. Apple was born. The Cluetrain Manifesto was written and there was a boom in tech stocks. At the end of the millennium we panicked over a couple of missing digits (Y2K), and spent billions correcting the short sightedness of the previous decades.

In the GC, Government On-Line occurred and the Funding Fairy provided the means for departments to put their information on-line. Canada became a world leader, but the paper-based mentality that prevailed caused many to completely miss the opportunity presented by hyperlinks and digital logic, instead “brochure-ware” prevailed.

Government CIOs scrambled to keep the information plumbing from backing up while Amazon and Google raised the bar of citizen expectations for on-line service.

Tagging and folksonomies entered the vocabulary of information professionals, curating became something anyone could do. Librarians and archivists struggled to catalogue and preserve some of the exponential growth while the cognitive surplus emerged to build things like Wikipedia—making human knowledge more accessible than ever before. CIOs were either bewildered or excited at the possibilities.

Today

High speed wireless saturates the urban environment and ubiquitous network access is a reality. Digital natives experience continuous instant communication as part of everyday life while Government workplaces seem antiquated by comparison. The web and the collective forces that it enables are transforming all parts of connected society. Recorded information is produced at an accelerating rate.

Open source software matures and becomes a viable option for enterprise applications. Governments around the world join the Open Government Partnership, in Canada the Federal Government publishes the Open Government Action plan.

Holistic User Centred Design begins to challenge solutions approaches to designing technology. Humanists and engineers are learning to work together.

The digital divide becomes a social issue, web accessibility becomes law and massive resources are assembled to ensure all GC organizations become compliant.

The GC invests heavily in GCDOCS, SharePoint and other technologies designed to manage/control documents. The idea of knowledge as a product of interconnected networks and not just documents takes shape. Social innovation tools appear in pockets. GCPEDIA, GCFORUMS, GCCONNEX and other grass roots tools struggle for institutional support while gaining users.

Examples of the power of social in communicating across silos and traditional boundaries accumulate. The idea of social networks in government becomes acceptable – as long as we call them “professional networks”.

Future – Sometime after tomorrow

There is no Web 3.0, but something else emerges— a diverse, complex adaptive system, no, a network of complex adaptive systems.

Control of information becomes less important, the cultural default is to share knowledge. Government is a platform and publicly funded data is routinely visualized by an army of professional and amateur big data analysts.
In the GC, Shared Services Canada provides reliable infrastructure, we share one email address across government, secure wireless is everywhere, non-government partners can easily and securely collaborate, the government cloud is a reality. Departmental CIOs become focused on transition and business improvement—information plumbing is rarely an issue. The government-wide technical architecture focuses on standards and interoperability, a diverse range of technologies and tools work together in relative harmony, vendors with “lock-in” strategies are shunned.

Tablet computers are everywhere, briefing binders disappear. The Golden Tablet program maintains a knowledge connection with departing employees. The GC20 suite of tools is adequately funded.

Dreams of a digital nirvana don’t come true, but all is not lost. Networks of people who are comfortable connecting virtually emerge and disperse continuously. The definition of Public Service changes as the lines blur between indeterminate employees and partners. The GovCloud becomes a reality. Agility is an operational requirement, and government organizations re-invent themselves.

Leadership learns to work with the nebulous “crowd.” Connections are made and governance structures adapt to include interfaces to the crowd. The focus shifts from one of command and control towards engaging with self-identified stakeholders.

Serendipity becomes a business principle, the internet of things emerges, power

shifts to those who control the algorithms but a balance is maintained by the digital collective. The Virtual Government Network is an international network 200,000 members strong where new and innovative methods are shared. Public Servants feel more connected with each other, and with the publics they serve.

Global government becomes possible as a global consciousness emerges. The collective intelligence gets a handle on our wicked problems. Technology serves the three Ps of Profit, People and the Planet. Yes, life is good in my fantasy future.

Conclusion

The Government Organizations and leadership types we have today are a product of the technology and tools of the past. The challenge now is how to incorporate things like ubiquitous network access and dynamic peer networks into serving a self-organizing public.

In times like these it is important that executives demonstrate a willingness to experiment and learn. We are lucky these days to have a disruptor like @alexbenay in the CIO chair at the GC, but he is only

Collaboration is a popular word these days. But collaboration is not a technology or a tool. Collaboration is people working together towards a common goal. Collaboration is more about values than it is about tech. We should be discussing exactly what those values are, here are four that I can think of, what do you think?

Open and continuous communication
Shared understanding of purpose/vision
Commitment to the greater good
Freedom from fear – respect and tolerance

New technology can open doors to new behaviour, but it is the people who share the value of collaboration who will deliver the outcomes.

Technology in and of itself will not save us. But if we take advantage of the opportunities it presents and if we shape the tools we choose to use in a way that reflects the values of collaboration then I believe anything is possible. What do you believe?

Thom Kearney can be found on the internet or in the crowd at GTEC.

This post originally appeared as part of the GTEC 2012 conference blog, I have updated it a little bit for 2017.

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Hold your breath, it’s going to go deep.

Posted on April 20, 2013 by ThomK

December 2013 Update:

The full paper is now available on the Articles page.

June 24, 2013 Update:

Our paper submissions are complete, now I have to do is write the paper entitled: THE CROWDED BOARDROOM — WHEN THE LONG TAIL COLLIDES WITH HIERARCHY: A REAL LIFE EXAMPLE. Should be interesting….

Hello,

I received the wonderful news the other day that our panel proposal for an academic conference was accepted.

Truth be known, I am only on the panel because I happen to know three guys with brains, and they were kind enough to invite me to join them. The proposal, (that I agreed to be part of), is below. I am posting this here in the hopes that one or two of you might give me some input and I think that would be cool.

————————————————————————–

The proposal:

The International Social Science Council’s 2^nd World Social Science Forum, 13-15 October, 2013 in Montréal, Canada

“Social Transformations and the Digital Age”

Panel Theme: “Collaboration and Governance For a Digital Era”

Abstract

While technology is proving eminently capable of connecting us, will it be enough to help us overcome chronic human problems, especially given the leaning biases of our institutions and their precognitive commitments towards hierarchy, romanticized leadership, equality and individual freedom? What else may be needed?

Each of the bold words may be a focus for debate. Is technology sufficient to connect us? From what chronic problems do we need saving? What are our institutional learning biases and how do we overcome them? Has hierarchical organization passed its prime? Why is leadership increasingly inappropriate in environments of collaboration and partnership? What’s the matter with equality? Why our notions of ‘freedom’ must evolve in the context of our increasing degrees of interdependence?

What else? There is growing interest in rising above traditional management and administration models, which are often observed as limited and ineffective, and moving towards organizing concepts such as distributed governance, collaboration and partnership, stewardship, self-organization, and real democracy – processes that promote constant inquiry and learning, and the development of collective intelligence.

Are today’s digital challenges simply pushing us towards incremental institutional adaptation by projecting tomorrow’s digital environment onto yesterday’s institutions? Or, is the emerging digital environment and its domains of Big Data, ubiquitous information, social media and mass collaboration posing a revolutionary challenge to our existing institutional models to help us embrace, unfold and orchestrate our social potential?

Participants

John Verdon, Knowledge Management Lead, S&T Outlook, Defence Research and Development Canada. Title: Knowledge and Collaboration Governance for Social Computing, Responsible Autonomy, Network Individualism and Self-Programmable Organization
Christopher Wilson, Senior Research Fellow, Centre on Governance, University of Ottawa. Title: From Management and Leadership to Collaboration and Stewardship
Thom Kearney, Partner, Rowanwood Consulting. Former Senior Director, Applied Collaborative Tools, Treasury Board Secretariat (Responsible for GCPedia). Title: The crowded boardroom – when the long tail collides with hierarchy, a real life example.
Peter Levesque, CEO, Knowledge Mobilization Works & CEO, Knowledge Mobilization Institute. Title: Leadership from the Middle and With Purpose – How problem solving is actually happening in the MUSH (Municipalities, Universities, Schools, and Healthcare) sector

—————————————

You know what to do, thank you very much.

Thom

Event for Public Service Leaders Interested in Change – Ottawa, April 4, 2013

Posted on March 17, 2013 by ThomK

Hello friends and associates,

I wanted to let you know about Canadian Government Executive First Annual Leadership Summit occurring in Ottawa on April 4, 2013. The theme is Leading Management Change in the Canadian Public Sector, and there are some very interesting speakers including one of the creators of the Balanced Scorecard, Dr. Robert Kaplan and the father of Enterprise Architecture John Zachman.

If you can attend I look forward to seeing you there, if not, I will share what I can on twitter. More detailed information is available on the web site at http://cgeleadershipsummit.ca/.

Hope all is well,

Thom

P.S. In case you missed it earlier we have collected most of the resources generated from PS Engage in November here http://wp.me/pKh0h-cY.

PS Engage Resources

Posted on January 18, 2013 by ThomK

psengage-overview-600ppg

This post is to document all the resources produced as part of PS Engage 2011 and 2012

Become a PS Engage Delegate Champion

Posted on October 11, 2012 by ThomK

PS Engage Delegate Champions help get the word out at earn a free or discounted pass to the event.

What is expected from a Delegate Champion?

Individuals that sign up as Delegate Champions agree to personally promote the event by:

Distributing 25-50 PS Engage Business cards, preferably with a short interpersonal conversation
Putting up posters in strategic locations like photocopier rooms and kitchens
Sharing conference details with your social networks
Other ideas include leaving interesting messages on boardroom white boards or perhaps a couple of biz cards in the executive boardroom just before a big meeting

So how do I get that free pass?

When you sign-up you will get a personalized discount code to share with people that provides a ten percent discount. When delegates register with that code you will be entitled to additional discounts.
The more people that register using your code, the more you save. You earn a 10 percent discount for each registration. Get 10 and you can attend PS Engage 2012 for free.

How do I sign up?

Contact Thom or Carmen to register for the program and get your personalized discount code and supply of PS Engage business cards info@psengage.org

Call for expressions of interest PS Engage 2012

Posted on April 29, 2012 by ThomK

Do you care about making the Public Service better? Would you like to participate in the planning for PS Engage 2012? As you may recall PS Engage 2011 was our Public Service renewal conference last year with the theme of a Tapestry of People and Ideas. Based on the overwhelming positive feedback and interest, we’re now gearing up for the 2012 event!

We’re currently developing this year’s theme but I expect it will have something to do with frugality and working across boundaries. There are a number of ways you can take part, some of which are listed below. If you are interested and have a little time to dedicate to a worthy and fun event, we would love to hear from you, simply reply to this message with your preferred coordinates and good times to meet, and we will arrange a virtual get together.

PS Engage 2012 Planning Committee Roles

These are the roles that have been identified, they may be performed by a single person or a small group. You can volunteer to lead or participate in any of these activities.

Sponsorship

Develop sponsorship package with communications, develop pricing and marketing strategy. Manage target list and sales funnel. Prepare and sign contracts. Make presentations. Arrange for sponsor material for web site, and day of distribution.

Program & Speakers

Articulate the theme, plan the daily program, arrange for speakers, take part in developing promotional material. Coordinate with speakers. Create conference overview document and later versions as it evolves.

Communications

Develop promotional plan, create communications material, write and produce web site, design logo and promotional cards. Manage web cast and twitter feed. Develop and produce posters, manage distribution. Evaluate web analytics, prepare and conduct post event evaluation.

Prepare and distribute regular emails. Manage list on SalesForce.

Floor Manager

Plan sponsor physical presence, manage floor space on the day of, coordinate with venue and suppliers.

Stage Manager

Work with Program group on content and manage stage the day of.

Logistics

Coordinate with speakers, make travel and accommodation arrangements, manage all vendor contracts, act as single point of contact. Arrange for meetings and take notes.

Volunteer Coordination

Manage volunteer list and assignments. Manage volunteer meetings.

Delegate Promotion and Sales

Work with communications on web site and other promotional material. Manage registrations.

Other

Whatever we have forgotten.

The bigger picture

PS Engage is a conference, PS Leader is an emerging non-profit organization with the mission:

To facilitate and advance collaboration, learning & innovation across all levels of government and geographies in support of connected, efficient, and open government.

If you think PS Leader is a good idea and would like to be part of the development of the organization drop us a line and we will invite you to the formation meeting.

PS Leader will engage in a number of activities in addition to PS Engage such as #GovChat , PS Leader Blog, Training, and the Virtual Government Network. If you are interested in participating in any of these specific initiatives, please let us know.

Thanks, we look forward to your interest and participation as these initiatives proceed.

Thom

Report from #PSE2011 – Five things you can do today

Posted on November 25, 2011 by ThomK

At the recent PS Engage Conference I had the honour of channelling ideas from participants into 5 things you can do tomorrow. With the flip chart paper spread out in my office, here is my report:

1. Read the Social Media guidelinesannounced by the Minister and take advantage of whatever authority they give you. Hold your department accountable for applying the guidelines in an effective way.

2. Reach out to a colleague, it may be someone you know but have not spoken to lately, or it might be someone you know by reputation. Ask them what they are up to, tell them what you are doing. Just a quick 15 minute status check. You never know…

3. When you find a solution to a problem, SHARE IT! Take the time to quickly document the problem and solution and put it in a place where others that might have that problem can find it. A good default location for Federal Public Servants is GCPedia, but any place where those that need it will find it is good.

4. High Five!
When you see something good, even just a little good thing – celebrate it! Let the individuals involved know you noticed, and let others know who the good guys are.

5. Connect – access Federal Youth Network, govloop, linkedin, gcconnex, yammer, or whatever network is appropriate for you to extend your connections and learn new stuff.

6. Rewrite your job description. Hell, re-write your team’s job descriptions. Make learning and adaptability an important part of it.

7. Narrate your work. By keeping a log of your work as you do it, you are creating a recorded history that can be invaluable for those that come after you. If you do it publicly though status reports to your network you are also contributing to 2, 3 and 5 above.

8. Add conferences like PS Engage to your learning plan. Make sure they are in your team’s learning plan. Make learning to learn a priority.

So there are eight ideas not five, what can I say? You are a productive bunch.

See you again soon.

Thom

Post PS Engage Activities

Posted on November 25, 2011 by ThomK

A huge thank you to the delegates, sponsors and volunteers that make #PSE2011 such a success. We are getting asked when 2012 is going to happen, and hearing stories of enthusiastic teams returning to work full of the spirit of renewal, so I guess it was a success.The big question now is do we do it again? And if we do, what do we do differently?

To answer those questions we are going to need your help. Look for an invitation to join a PS Engage collective intelligence site hosted by Chaordix , Intersol and Rowanwood, Assuming we can get it together in our spare time, we will be looking to get your opinion on the 2011 event as well as ideas for a 2012 event. Who knows? We might even extend the conversation around the Learning Circle Issues or the Tapestries of ideas that Jennifer created for us. Or perhaps we can work on the Virtual Government Network concept if there is enough interest. Maybe Delta Partners will get involved with a little of their awesome thought leadership. Whatever it is, it will be your opportunity to influence the future of PS Engage.

In the coming weeks and months we will be releasing material generated by the conference on the PS Leader Site. It is our intention to make the video, presentations, photographs and tapestries available. There is work to make that happen and everyone at the moment there are clients to satisfy, so it may take a while.

PS Engage never would have happened without the fabulous cadre of volunteers that materialized. You know you are appreciated.

Speaking of volunteers, right now, web-savy volunteers are welcome to apply for positions helping out with the current activities. This includes things like posting material to the PS Leader blog and perhaps editing photos and preparing presentations for publication, creating descriptive posts to go with each item, text and image.

Eventually if we decide to do another event, we will be looking for folks ready to make a slightly larger commitment and join the planning committee. If you are interested in any of that, please let us know by joining the LinkedIn group.

Thanks again to everyone involved. You make it happen.

Thom

Q&A with Ina Parvanova

Posted on November 17, 2011 by Thom Kearney

This is the third installment in our series of highlighting PSEngage Speakers.

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.

Questions and Answers with @Thumbtackhead

Posted on October 31, 2011 by ThomK

This is the second in a series of guest posts by @IM4Ward, on behalf of the PS Engage planning committee.

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.

GTEC thoughts and a pitch for PS Engage

Posted on October 25, 2011 by ThomK

Last week I was fortunate to attend the GTEC conference at the new congress centre in Ottawa. There was lots of talk about changes to the Federal Public Service in Canada. Some of the things that stuck with me are that:

The new Shared Services Canada is focused on the consolidation of IT Infrastructure, but it is part of a larger effort to move to shared internal services. Departments are to become leaner, more collaborative, and focused on their mandate.
Canada has joined the Open Government Partnership which means it is now accountable to other nations with the requirement to produce an annual report. Wouldn’t it be neat if they somehow engaged the crowd to produce that report?
Tony Clement announced that the Cabinet would replace briefing binders with secure wireless tablets. Let’s hope that is the beginning of tablets for all!
Later that day I ran into the Occupy Ottawa folks marching down Sparks street, reminding me there is a global movement afoot.

Any way you look at it, whatever your role in government, big change is on the horizon.

PS Engage is a one day learning and networking event that focuses on helping you make the most of that change. By bringing new and relevant ideas for public service modernization to Ottawa we hope to stimulate new thinking that doesn’t just “make do” in times of fiscal restraint, but that seizes the opportunity it presents to invent a new, more sustainable status quo.

I have written about what makes PS Engage different on my blog. People I talk to seem to agree that there is an awesome speaker line up and a jam packed program of relevant topics and interactive events.

Speakers include:

The Honourable Tony Clement, President of Treasury Board and Minister for the Federal Economic Development Initiative for Northern Ontario
Alan Silberberg, Founder of Silberberg Innovations and Gov20LA
Ken Cochrane, Partner, IT Advisory Services – KPMG Canada and former CIO Government of Canada and ADM for GCPEDIA
Lovisa Williams, Deputy Director, U.S. Department of State
Denise Amyot, CEO, Canadian Science and Technology Museums
Ina Parvanova, Public Affairs Director, Mayo Clinic
Andy Jankowski, Global Director, Intranet Benchmarking Forum
Steve Ressler, Founder GovLoop.com

For the complete list please visit the web site at www.psengage.org.

One of the most common complaints I hear from government executives is that they don’t have enough time to think. Book some time today for you and your team to connect and learn by registering for PS Engage. The cost is modest at $499.00 for a full day and early evening, with group discounts you can send five people for less than $2000.00.

There are less than 4 weeks until the event and seating is limited, register at www.psengage.org.

I hope to see you on November 22, 2011.

Thom

PS Engage – Q&A with Andy Jankowski

Posted on October 23, 2011 by Thom Kearney

This is the first in a series of guest posts by @IM4Ward, on behalf of the PS Engage planning committee.

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.

Today’s interview is with @AndyJankowski Global Director, Intranet Benchmarking Forum

Andy will be speaking about the shift from traditional intranet and portal environments to digital workplaces. He has been working in the area of collaboration and communication for years and has seen how the thinking, experimentation and solutions have evolved to achieve business goals and objectives.

1. From your experience, how do companies and government differ in their approach to adopting social workplace practices?

Surprisingly, not as much as you would think. While both entities are different structurally, they share similar needs and interests; knowledge sharing, expertise location and employee engagement to name a few. Regulatory environments aside, the approaches to which these entities, whether private or public sector, take in adopting social workplace practices is more affected by organizational culture than any other attribute. I have seen the same type of approaches, as well as speed and success of implementation, in both public and private settings. It just depends on the culture, leadership and willingness of the entities to change.

2. How can a social intranet help a government workplace be more innovative?

Innovation often results from serendipitously connecting people and dots. Social intranets enable and speed this process by bringing unstructured information and previously unknown networks to the forefront of employee communication and collaboration. Government entities are by necessity hierarchical, structured and often complex. Social intranets can help a government workplace be more innovative by enabling information and person-to-person connections to flow freely without disrupting the necessary structures in place.

Andy has trained and competed for the past three years with the Heroes Foundation Cycling Team and we wanted to know if he was able to apply what he has learnt from his past time to his work.

3. What have you learned from cycling and racing that can be applied to bringing about change in an organization?

It’s a long race, but that doesn’t mean you can’t sprint several times throughout it. [Don’t be afraid to push things a little faster from time to time]
You do not know what is possible until you try and that’s when you realize that anything is possible. [Even organizations seamlessly adopting new processes and collaborating together]
It is better to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable than to try to live and work in a false world of comfort. [This is how progress and innovation happen]
Your brakes can be your worst enemy and cause more accidents than they prevent. Be careful when to apply them. [Be careful when deciding to stop an initiative]
A well organized team (peleton) will out race an individual in almost any situation. [A well organized team will break down barriers and silos and make more progress]
The same road looks different depending on the day. [Do not be too quick judge your organization and its ability]
A very slight adjustment (seat height, pedal stroke, gearing) can make a world of performance difference. [Small steps and improvements can cause big advancements]
Time is a man made concept. If you are creative, there is always time. [Being too busy is no excuse]

See you at #PSE2011!

Weaving a tapestry of ideas and people

Posted on September 26, 2011 by ThomK

Update: For results from the 2011 and 2012 conferences please see the PS Engage Resources post.

As many of you know I am helping to put together a networking and learning event as part of the @PSLeader initiative started by Jeff Ashcroft, Jeff is the same guy that got me into doing the #GovChat series of twitter chats, it all started with a comment on a blog post here.

Anyway, when I was part of the Public Service I was involved in the first Collaborative Management day and was excited about it, basically I think the whole #w2p #goc3 thing is awesome. Sadly, now that I am Private Sector I can’t participate in the same way, so that got me to thinking and…

…a while ago, a group of us in the shadow public service were chatting and felt that it might be a good idea to create an event that builds on the #goc3 momentum for collaborative management. Of course if we were going to do something it had to have value over and above what an internal conference could provide. The logic we came up with goes something like this:

If the focus of the Collaborative Management events is learning from others inside the Public Service, (and there’s lots to learn), then PS Engage distinguishes itself by emphasizing relevant ideas from outside the Government of Canada. Strategically this makes sense because exposing yourself to ideas outside of your norm is an essential ingredient for innovation. So the focus for us became about bringing new and relevant ideas to the table.

When we started to reach out for speakers, the response was overwhelming with the likes of Mr. GovLoop, Steve Ressler and Ina Parvanova, Director of Public Affairs for the Mayo Clinic, among the luminaries agreeing to share their stories with us. Just recently, TBS President, Tony Clement’s office confirmed that he will be giving the opening address—for a conference focused on bringing lessons of change to Ottawa, I can’t think of a more relevant opening speaker.

Speaking of fiscal restraint, lets not panic about cut backs and such. To my way of thinking, financial pressure is a tremendous opportunity when it forces us to look for new ways of doing things. After all, necessity is the mother of invention, or at least that is what my mother used to say—so come to PS Engage and help invent something great.

As a privately funded event we have to charge, the cost of bringing speaker’s in from out-of-town is significant, however we have managed to keep the price reasonable at $499.00. Any profit from the event will go towards funding further exploration of the Virtual Government Network Concept.

Group discounts are available, (5 for the price of 4), and if you are student who really wants to go, tell me why you need to attend and how much you can afford, and I will see what we can do.

As an educator, it is great to be part of putting this together, and between the speakers and the networking opportunities I am pretty confident that the conference will be a high impact/low-cost learning event. PS Engage, a tapestry of ideas and people, the perfect complement to Collaborative Management Day and a great way to get ready for change—what do you think?

Registration is open now, so get out your corporate credit card and go to www.psengage.org, if you need to put it in your learning plan you will find some learning objectives on the site to help you out with the words.

Hope to see you there, if you have any thoughts about this event or ideas for a future one, please share.

Thom

Of course you can follow along on twitter @psengage and #pse2011

Canadian Public Health Conference: Papers & Keynote Presentation

Posted on June 27, 2011 by ThomK

Last week (June 2011), I had the great pleasure of being part of the Canadian Public Health Association conference in Montreal. I attended the three days, participated in two panels, met a lot of great people and generally learned a bunch. During the plenary panel that I took part in I mentioned a couple of papers that might be of interest. I am putting them here to make them easy to find and to encourage feedback. Apparently there was video of the session as well, if and when I get my hands on it I will share.

Framework for a Virtual Government Network (.pdf)

This is my reflection paper for the course; Information, People and Society from the Centre for Advanced Management Education at Dalhousie University. Part of the Masters in Information Management I am pursuing. In it I propose a framework for multi-jurisdictional collaboration.

Embrace the complexity (.pdf)

This is my first contribution to the discussion around applying complexity theory to the problem of managing knowledge in the Canadian Health Sector. Here is the KM complexity presentation to go with the paper of the same name.

UPDATE:

I have posted the presentations on SlideShare

Let me know if you have any thoughts.

Thom

Library 2.0

Posted on April 8, 2011 by ThomK

I am delighted to be able to agree to run a morning session at the May 6, 2011 meeting of the Eastern Canada Chapter of the Special Libraries Association. The session consists of two parts:

Part 1 – 90 minutes – Use of social media in a professional context: why, when, and how to help users navigate (training and marketing).
Part 2 – 60 minutes – Major tools to become an effective social media librarian/professional

As part of my research to prepare the content for these two sessions I thought I would ask you. What do you think I should talk about that would be relevant to this elite group of Information Management professionals? Any favorite resources or stories of how Social Media makes the Library Profession more effective? Any other advice?

Thanks in advance

Thom

UPDATE – May 6, 2011

Wendy and I had a wonderful time speaking with the 50 librarians today. I have attached a PDF version of the completed presentation. Thanks to the SLA for having us and once again thanks to everyone that helped during the research phase.

Special Libraries Association (SLA) and Social Media May 2011 (PDF)

What is Public Service culture?

Posted on August 23, 2010 by ThomK

Oct. 2013 UPDATE: You may also be interested in this post which delves a little deeper into the idea of public service culture and Gov 2.0.
———————

I am preparing to facilitate a workshop on overcoming cultural roadblocks to Web 2.0 at the Social Media in Government conference in Ottawa on Sept 27-03. As part of the background for the discussion, I am trying to synthesize three things.

A working definition of culture
A description of the existing and emergent culture in Public Service (Federal, Provincial and Municipal)
A description of a future culture that we can aspire to create within our sphere’s of influence.

We have had some twitter exchanges about #2 and to provide a little more detail for those that are interested, here are 4 early stage slides for your perusal and comment.

I look forward to exploring this area with you.

Also if you mention my name or code SPK you can save $400 on the conference.

Thom’s Top Ten #g2e 2010 edition

Posted on July 18, 2010 by ThomK

Back in May I wrote about attending Gov 2.0 Expo, in that post I promised to share some of what I learned. In short, it was an intense three days, lots of great presentations, and more importantly dozens of interesting and insightful conversations. Here is my report.

1. Top quote

I thought this was a very mature statement.

” web 2.0 tools are not something we need to learn to use, but environments we need to learn to live in.” Jack Holt, Dept. of Defense

For other things I thought were cool at the time you can check out my twitter feed from the conference.

2. Thou shalt engage

There is a ton of civic and employee consultation going on south of the 49th parallel. It seemed like every second presentation was about some form of engagement, mostly using the tool made available by GSA to all agencies, a good example is GSA’s own consultation.

With all this activity going on I expect we will see some more lessons learned in the next few months at WebContent.gov, but two early conclusions appeared in my mind:

A broad national conversation is difficult if not impossible and of limited value.
There are simply too many voices. Maybe when semantic analysis improves it will be practical but for now focus is essential.
Follow-up is critical. You need to know what you are planning on doing with the input, be transparent about your intentions and follow through. Be sincere and prepare for the unexpected. See this post from David Eaves for some perspective on what can happen.

David also had a wonderful keynote at the show about open data, baseball and government. You can watch it here.

For a Canadian perspective on engagement check out what the folks at Ottawa based Publivate are up to.

3. The big systems are coming

The early days of web 2.0 are rapidly coming to a close and I am seeing more and more big systems thinking entering the conversations. This is both good and bad. The good part is when the big systems are viewed as ecosystems with permeable barriers between components. The bad part is when those big systems encourage silos and are not designed to get better the more people use them. I am not sure if this is an observation from #g2e or just a recent reflection, but there you go – beware of big systems that encourage silos.

4. You can still do a lot with a little

The City of Manor, pop 5,800 showed us how creative partnerships with innovative thinking could accomplish some really interesting things. The image that sticks with me is the bar code stickers on the side of city trucks. Check out the presentation.

5. We have begun to move from rhetoric to results

I think it was Gwynne Kostin at the General Services Administration, Office of New Media and Citizen Engagement, who said this to me and I felt the same. Compared to previous conferences , there was not quite so much enthusiastic arm waving going on. The mood was a little more serious, a little more thoughtful. I think these are the signs of a movement that is maturing.

6. Culture change is the elephant in the room

This thing called culture frequently comes up as something that needs to change. We talk about it a bit and then conveniently move on to something else. What I almost never hear is the idea that culture is about people. For culture to change, people need to change.

Unfortunately that means you and I have to change.

I had breakfast with the amazing culture change artist Kitty Wooley (@kwooleyy) which led to a guest blog about how hard it can be to change, even when you want. You can read the post at the Senior Fellows and Friends blog .

As a former advertising guy, I am real interested in if, and how we can influence culture change.

7. Canada is seriously behind in some respects

I had the opportunity to chat a little with Senator Kate Lundy from Australia and learned about their Declaration of Open Government based on the three key principles of Informing, Engaging and Participating. Of course Obama has the Open Government Directive and I certainly heard the mantra of Transparency, Participation, Collaboration more than once.

I look forward to hearing something similar from our government….but I am not holding my breath.

8. But we might be ahead on the inside

Of the people I spoke with and certainly in the US and Australia there is nothing quite like the Canadian Government’s GCPEDIA. For the most part silos persist and efforts to improve internal collaboration are just beginning with initiatives like FedSpace generating a fair bit of discussion on govloop. Incidentally I had great chats with Emma Antunes who is on loan to FedSpace from NASA, and Mr. govloop himself, Steve Ressler.

9. We need a trusted GC url shortner

It seems like a small thing, but a trusted government URL shortened is essential for gov 2.0. The US version was launched at the show http://go.usa.gov/. I am pretty sure there is no official effort underway to do something similar in Canada, although I understand there is a page in GCPEDIA about it. If anyone has an update, please let me know.

Oh yes, it needs to come with metrics. Lots of metrics.

10. People will engage for their reasons, not yours

Kathy Sierra gave a great short keynote on Creating Passionate Citizens that I would recommend you watch. Who knew that pets were a gateway drug to passion? Video of Kathy’s talk at Gov 2.0 Expo.

There is lots of other video from the expo.

11. The more things change the more they stay the same

Web 2.0 technology is fun and amazing but when you get right down to it, social networks are about connecting people, and people connect (or not) depending on how well they communicate. There is noting new about that.

There is also nothing new about the power struggles going on all over the place. A disruption is underway and people are seeking advantage. What I think is different this time, is the potential for the “power of the masses” to be put to work on positive change. Millions of people can now come together at very little cost. I am excited about what can happen, and worried that it won’t.

I have to stop now, there is more, lots more but now its your turn.

This post also appears on govloop

Ottawa Drupal in Government session notes

Posted on June 16, 2010 by ThomK

At Gov 2 expo I chatted with some Drupal people and last night I attended the Drupal and Government session at the Ottawa Public Library. Here is a slightly cleaned up version of those notes. Please feel free to correct any errors or omissions.

Mike Gifford hosted with speakers from government and private sector. I learned that the first use of Social Media in a political campaign is generally attributed to Howard Dean who used in an unsuccessful bid four years before Obama. Both used Drupal.

Many (most) entertainment and sports sites use Drupal. Sony and other major sites in ent industry, myplay.com, Warner Brothers uses the multisite capability of Drupal as a shared platform for many artist sites built on common module library.

The Ottawa Library uses Drupal and showcased the site at the session. The department of Agriculture used it to prototype their intranet prior to implementation on Interwoven, apparently it is not uncommon for large organizations to use Drupal to compliment their older enterprise content management systems. The Department of Defense is using Drupal to build a comprehensive social intranet that incorporates hundreds of modules as well as a MediaWiki install. Lots of good lessons there for GCPEDIA perhaps.

Why Drupal?

because of social networking aspects, inter relationship stuff,
modular architecture 6000+ modules available.
A accepted solution , now in the Whitehouse, in parallel with open data adn gov 2.0 movement, definitely seems to have momentum as a platform in the US gov.
A well developed community; in the crowd there were a number of Drupal development shops including; open concept, liquid CMS, evolving web, openplus dot ca, user advocate group, u7 solutions. Those are the names I jotted down as people called out their companies, I am pretty sure some of them are not quite right.

Deven Crawler, Ottawa Library talked about the third law of a library guru whose name i did not catch but I loved the law: ” save the time of the reader” .

Michael Keara, User Advocate Group, was a user systems architect who worked on the Ottawa Library site, he talked about a user design paradigm where his objective is to provide the most value to the user for the least interaction cost. He also had an interesting road map that went something like this:
roadmap: users – personas – roles – tasks – info archtecture – database integration

users are real people
personas are the generalized symbols
roles are the hats to wear, one user may have many roles
tasks are what each role needs to do tasks, design challenge is to present the right tools at the right time
information architecture is the layout and logic of the information flow
database is about getting the right content out of the database to the user in the right place at the right time

One issue with Drupal that came up is that the content is embeded in the code, making it sometimes difficult to deal with. Apparently there modules to deal with this kind of thing though, so it does not appear to be a show stopper.

Patrick Lajeunese from Agriculture talked about the experience of their communications group using Drupal to create a high fidelity prototype of a revised intranet. Interestingly it sounded like within Agriculutre it was pretty easy to get a virtual machine with a LAMP stack.

Drupal can handle bilingual sites, but it requires list of modules Patrick said he would be willing to share. I loved it when he said that they started the project by looking for templates shared on GCPEDIA. HTML, CSS and some php were the core skills they needed for working with Drupal.

Jason Peltzer talked about a secure closed intranet using Drupal for a fairly comprehensive social intranet including some integration with, MediaWiki, RDIMS, and Remedy. The Remedy ticketing system is being used to generate translation requests that include a link to the original content inside Drupal. Sounds like a much more efficient system than the one I have experienced.

Generallyspeaking they practice a no code philosophy, using more than 200 modules, Documents are stored in rdims. uses drf’s as the only way to upload doc. The GC desperately needs something like this to keep GCPEDIA from becoming a shared drive. Jason talked about thier content model has having three main groups

Primary content types	Secondary content types	User generated content types
users groups projects service	ads announwnts course event FAQ photo etc	blog tweet forum etc

He talked about a one day training program they have for content publishers that was half IM training and half learning how to use the system. I like the emphasis on the Information Management part. Another useful feature he talked about was the email notification of expired content with automatic removal of old content.

Why social networking?
Purpose is to create and strengthen connections bases on shared career and hobby interests. CIO buys into this. User content type includes skills and hobbies, Drupal uses taxonomy to generate communities on the fly.

Jason also had an interesting road map that went like this:
quality – personalization – social networking – collaboration, the basic idea being that when quality of content improves we want to personalize it, once we personalize it we want to share it, and once we are sharing content we start to collaborate.

David Pewer and (Kent intern Law student at McGill) from the Technology Law Clinic at Ottawa U talked about the important topic of returning development efforts to the open source community. The legal haze in this area as it relates to crown copyright makes it seem risky for Government departments to contribute to open source communities, the procurement group in PWGSC is responsible for managing licenses for the Government but dont have a lot of experience with open source. the Technology Law Clinic have prepared an opinion (available on GCPEDIA I think) and are writing a white paper regarding GC contributions to open source. They presented their analysis of the situation, this is my incomplete summary:

Copyright act does not put restrictions on how crown copyright material is licensed.
Communications policy says ok if license is non exclusive, IP remains with crown and royalty is levied. this is subject to interpretation but changes to communications policy is desired for clarity.
The hereditary feature of the GPL does not intact restrict use.
Risk of patent infringement remains very small.

My take is that there not much stopping sharing for non commercial use but its a bit problematic for commercial use because communications policy seems to inadvertently get in the way.

Big props to the folks at Government of Canada, CIOB who have released a large number of Accessible Web Templates under crown copyright, using a MIT open license. This might be a good example for others in the GC to follow. Also check out their twitter channel @GCWebStandards . The hope is that an international community will form around developing accessible modern web templates for widespread use.

Like I said, lots of good stuff. #drupalgov

Thomas goes to Washington

Posted on May 11, 2010 by ThomK

Last year I had the opportunity to attend the gov 2.0 Summit & the gov2.0 Expo Showcase as part of my responsibilities as Senior Director, Applied Collaborative Tools with the Canadian Government. My objective of attending was to meet new people and learn from others experiences. I accomplished both in spades, including chats with Beth Simone Noveck, Andrew McLaughlin, Anil Dash and Tim O’Reilly and other luminaries in the Gov 2.0 world.

Afterward I shared my impressions with a presentation entitled Thom’s Top Ten , this was delivered via the normal lunch and learn process in the corporate boardroom with the added twist of a web conference. The web conference added 60 or so people from across Canada to the 40 or so in the room. By all accounts it was well received, some folks even tweeted their praise.

This year I am attending gov 2.0 Expo as a private consultant, the Executive Interchange program I was participating in having ended. So now my objectives are the same except that I have a new perspective. I am still looking for ideas to share and ways to make government better, but I am also looking for projects to get involved in. I am excited to be attending and look forward to meeting up with both old and new acquaintances.

Looking at the attendee directory, I don’t see many Canadian Public Servants on the list. This is unfortunate given the fact the highest ranking public servant in Canada has called out for more use of Web 2.0 tools. I will do my best to share what I learn with my friends on the inside.

If you are attending the Expo, look me up, I would love to chat. If you are not attending, let me know if there is someone I should look up on your behalf, or give me a question to ask or issue to investigate. If I get some good answers, I will blog about it. Whatever happens I promise to share what I learn with a new and improved Thom’s Top Ten.