GSRM for Digital Service Delivery?

Posted on August 30, 2018 by ThomK

Public Service Reference Model circa 2006 (original image by Neil Levette).

This is a quick post to share some work that was done by the Enterprise Architecture Division of the Chief Information Branch of the Government of Canada back in 2006. I became aware of it at a conference entitled Transforming Government – better outcomes for citizens, and in a way, it is directly responsible for my interest in working for the feds.

This is no longer really my space but chatting with some folks I realized that if you are involved in the current wave of digital service transformation you should at least be aware of it – building on what came before, avoiding reinventing things, and all that.

The thing is called GSRM (Government Service Reference Model) and at it’simplest the idea is that all of Federal Government services can be distilled into one of 17 or so basic service types. For each service type, there can be a library of patterns covering variations. All services are described and architected using a common lexicon.

Now I don’t know about you, but the Enterprise Nerd in me gets pretty excited when I think about the implications of such a thing. Common service architecture would presumably enable better data management, security, evaluation and potentially even my current fantasy of intelligent policy that evolves based on data. Sorry, I digress.

To be clear, I had nothing to do with the development of any of this. I became involved with the GoC originally to try and sell the idea to departments and agencies because I wanted an efficient, responsive government. At the time there was a team of very smart people who are now mostly retired working on GSRM as part of a bigger project called BTEP (Business Transformation Enablement Program). Unfortunately, in 2007-10, through a series of unfortunate events the Federal Government never really managed to adopt the standards. But others across Canada did, in fact, if your city offers 311 services it probably has its origins in the municipal version of this idea.

The upside of the failure to adopt the standard was that we pursued the idea of using a wiki for a collaborative architecture library which morphed into GCpedia which evolved into the GCTools and the first government-wide collaboration platform.

Ok, back to GSRM and the purpose of this post. I rummaged through my old files and put a few documents in this google drive.

The quick note will give you an overview while the service types document outlines the 17 service patterns. The other two folders contain some related material if you want to dig deeper, including a foray into applying GSRM to knowledge policy.

There is likely more documentation hiding somewhere on the internet. Let me know if you find any of this useful or if you already have something better.

Happy Transformations!

Thom

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?

You can change culture now: 3 essential truths for public service leaders

Posted on February 20, 2016 by ThomK

stick man on stairs square The Canadian federal public service has been trying to change its culture for a few years with initiatives like Blueprint 2020 and the Innovation Hubs. Now we have a new federal leadership that wants to adopt a new and more collaborative approach to governing. One might wonder what is keeping us from our goal…

I am not a millennial, but I am a pretty hip, late baby boomer who has been part of the interweb since close to the beginning. My career has been a little eclectic and I have had the opportunity to observe and participate in a wide range of transformational activities. I am telling you this, because it is that experience that has provided the fodder for the observations that follow.

A few years ago I was deep into an analysis of how governments could realize the potential of collaboration and social technologies. As I was mulling over how to synthesise all of the data into a sound bite that could be easily consumed by a busy executive, I was also thinking about how it connected with what I had learned from working in advertising and teaching consumer behaviour. In a rare moment of clarity while waiting for a red light I scribbled down three truths that seem to me to be both obvious and profound.

1. Sharing is good

Sharing is the activity that fuels successful collaboration, knowledge management and communication, which in turn are fundamental to a “capable and high performing” organization. By sharing we become authentic to those around us, sharing preserves hard earned knowledge and makes us more productive, telling stories makes us real, and helps to build the common purpose which is so important to successful change.

Most of the major research firms agree that the biggest challenge organizations face in implementation of social technologies within the enterprise is creating a culture that supports information sharing. Having been involved with over a dozen enterprise collaboration efforts I can say that my personal experience supports those findings. Culture, as the saying goes eats strategy for breakfast, apparently it also eats technology, and probably has a taste for deliverology as well.

Many people don’t share because they are afraid of making a Career Limiting Move (CLM), while others, (kudos if you are one), consider sharing part of their responsibility. Unfortunately too many seem to equate sharing with a CLM, and ultimately we need to institutionalize ways of rewarding sharing and punishing information hoarding. Maybe we can make sharing part of management accountability accords, it is pretty easy to count contributions to sharing platforms like GCpedia and GCconnex…

2. Ego gets in the way

By ego I mean an unhealthy focus on self. We have all come across individuals that try and withhold information, and manipulate those around them for personal gain or promotion. When combined with a lack of emotional intelligence I believe this is one of the most destructive forces in the public service today. We need to get our self-worth from something other than the size of our empire, we need to get emotional and career points for collaborating. We need to recognize the common purpose, (serving Canadians anyone?), as more important than our personal gain. Not only is the, “I only do what is good for me” attitude, bad for the organization, its beginning to look like it may be bad for your career as well.

I have worked on enough horizontal files to have come across this issue more than once. No matter how you structure a collaboration, the people involved can always sabotage it. While researching the horizontal governance issue sometime in the early 2000’s, I came across an Auditor General’s report examining the lack of progress on the climate change file. Without much reading between the lines it was obvious that the real problem was that the primary departments involved could not find a way to collaborate, mostly because the Deputy Ministers did not like each other. Now I am not pointing fingers at the senior ranks, you see this kind of behaviour at all levels. I suppose we should not be surprised, given the competitive, individualistic socialization most of us have grown up with. But humanity’s greatest capacity is to learn, and I like to think that we can learn to work together despite personal differences—if we set aside our ego once in awhile in favour of the common goal.

3. You can’t communicate too much

“You can’t communicate too much”, I posted this comment on twitter during a conference once and it quickly became one of the most re-tweeted updates, so it seems the sentiment hit a nerve.

Back in my advertising days we used to spend a lot of money on media buys and printing, and one of the worst things that could happen was for a print run or advertisement be published with a mistake. When it did happen it was an expensive and embarrassing lesson. After the first time we began to repeat instructions, in different languages if necessary, we would draw pictures, leave notes on the artwork, call the publisher, even attend press runs to make sure all was understood. Later in my career I worked with a Product Line Manager at a major telecom who told me that for an idea to get traction you had to say the same thing over and over again in as many different ways as you could think of —when you are sick of saying the same thing, it’s time to say it again— you can’t communicate too much.

In today’s information intense and dynamic workplace, trying to get the attention of information inundated executive ranks will take more than a little repetition. Going the other way, management can’t communicate too much with staff, especially during times of change. The mushroom school of management (keep them in the dark, and feed them sh*t), simply has no place in an agile and high performing organization— you can’t communicate too much.

In dynamic times, perfection is the enemy of communication, waiting for a complete and crafted message simply leads to speculation and fear, while communicating often and openly, even admitting you don’t know everything, leads to trust and understanding. Having a clear and common purpose is more important than knowing the details of how you are going to get there— you can’t communicate too much.

Conclusion

Changing the culture of something as big as the public service is a daunting task, sometimes compared to turning a supertanker. But the public service is not a ship, it is an organization made up of people, and it’s people who make the culture. The three truths that I have shared can and should be applied from the top down, but more importantly they can be applied by individuals regardless of rank, when you think about that, it means you have the power to change culture.

What are you going to do with that power?

Image Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Triskele-Symbol-spiral-five-thirds-turns.png

Editorial Note:

This post is adapted from one of two posts that was written for a GTEC 2013 blog series exploring what it means to be an Agile, Open, Collaborative and Mobile Government. The original post was entitled “Three truths to help you change the culture of the Public Service.” My focus in the series was on the Cultural, Organizational and Policy Infrastructure that provides the foundation for public service culture.

The Importance of Open

Image

Over the years I have had the chance to reflect upon lessons from quite a few successful and unsuccessful projects. One of the more significant things that I have been lucky enough to be involved with is helping to bring the Government of Canada GC2.0 Tools (GCPedia and GCConnex) to life in 2007. Since then, I have continued to work on enterprise collaboration and knowledge management efforts including several environmental scans of best practices world-wide.

One of the more important insights I have gleaned from this research and experience is that when it comes to an enterprise collaborative solution, open is important. According to McKinsey and others, achieving the potential of enterprise collaboration requires a culture of sharing, and sharing is a characteristic of open.

Open Door

Any solution that claims to be enterprise must be available and open to all employees, anything that imposes silos or mirrors existing hierarchies degrades the potential for emergence by limiting the number of participants. This is not to say that there cannot be private spaces, only that the creation of private spaces should require a business case if you are serious about open by default.

Open Information

Secondly, the information architecture needs to be open so that users can discover content and other users, both intentionally through search and serendipitously by accident, this enables the self-organization and relationship components of a complex adaptive system. Open information also means that you have to classify responsibly, declaring everything confidential is usually wrong and significantly decreases the value of the information assets.

Open Source

Using open source software is important because it allows a small internal team supported by a global volunteer network, to quickly adapt the technology to changing needs as they arise.

Outsourcing solutions means buying into someone else’s product roadmap and the cultural paradigm that goes with that roadmap. This might make sense in a mature market with global best practices like finance or human resource systems, but web-based collaboration is young, and governments are still learning what they need.

As government reinvents itself we cannot predict what will be required. Using open source software allows the organization to remain agile in a sustainable way. Keeping the expertise to develop and maintain low cost, light weight technology also serves the innovation agenda in ways that outsourcing never can.

Open Innovation

In the Government of Canada we are entering an era when outdated systems are being replaced by outsourced solutions. In many cases this is a good thing, but Enterprise Collaboration is one space where I believe this strategy would be a mistake. The reason is not technical but cultural. The GC2.0 Tools (GCpedia and GCconnex) should remain, low cost, open source, internally managed collaboration tools. Their very existence speaks to the innovation and skill of the public service. Attempting to replace what passionate public servants have collectively built with a third party solution clearly sends the wrong message.

@thomkearney

p.s. Writing this post, I am reminded of a favorite quote, “A mind is like a parachute, it only works when its open” – Frank Zappa, (according to the internet).

This post also appeared in the Canadian Government Executive Blog, November, 10, 2013.

Collaboration Tools the Shirky Ladder

Posted on September 3, 2013 by ThomK

This post originally appeared as part of the GTEC 2013 Blog

Collaboration is a word you hear a lot these days, and its one of GTEC13’s theme words. In the Government of Canada (GC) Public Service context, the Chief Information Officer, Clerk of the Privy Council and the President of the Treasury board have all called for increased collaboration between departments in the service of Canadians. A few years ago when I had the title Senior Director of “Collaborative Tools” I set out to understand the word better. The short form of the definition I came away with was that collaboration is a group of people coming together to solve a problem.

Of course, there is more to it than that.

Three Levels of Collaboration

One of the most cited books on the impact of the Internet on group dynamics is “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” by Clay Shirky, 2008. Shirky describes three levels of collaboration: sharing, cooperation and collective action. These levels exist on a ladder of increasing commitment, risk and reward. Understanding the levels reveals important nuances in meaning that have significant impacts in making the most of collaboration tools.

1. Sharing is Easy

The first level is sharing. Sharing creates few demands on participants. All you have to do is make content available where others can find it. When I tweet a link or update my LinkedIn status I am sharing. Sharing is a happy by-product of working transparently, and can take very little effort but have a profound impact when a connection is made. My criteria for sharing is that the information be safe and potentially useful to others. Sharing broadly, across departments, is important because it creates a critical mass of information connections that allows for serendipitous discovery and cost-effective re-use of information assets. Sharing also sets the stage for the more advanced levels of collaboration by establishing some common knowledge and awareness of individual interests and experience.

Responsible sharing is the single most important thing each of us can do to realize the potential of our collective knowledge and begin the journey to a more collaborative culture.

2. Cooperating Means Change

Cooperating is the second level and it is harder than sharing because it means “changing your behavior to synchronize with others who are changing their behavior to synchronize with yours” (Shirky,2008). When we agree to meet and make the effort to accommodate busy schedules we are cooperating at the simplest level. Co-creating a document is a more advanced form of cooperating. Cooperating creates community, because unlike sharing you know the individuals you are cooperating with. There is a degree of shared risk and reward. Conversational skills are important because we need to understanding both the shared goal and who is going to do what. Cooperating means adhering to some mutually agreed upon standards while remaining flexible. Cooperating between departments in particular is a competency that we need to grow if we really want a more agile government.

3. Collective Action is Hard

Collective Action is the third and rarest level of collaboration. Collective Action is when a group of people truly commit themselves to a shared effort, it is an “all in” kind of thing with shared risk, reward and accountability. In an organizational context, (think Westminster silos), shared accountability can be extremely challenging because of the lack of enabling and enforcing mechanisms between departments. All too often good intentions are lost in a tragedy of the commons as individuals become motivated by personal gain over collective good. Collective Action may be rare but it is a worthy aspirational goal for those that have mastered Sharing and Cooperation.

Different Tools for Different Levels

In the world of IT systems, vendors and advocates for particular solutions sometimes use the word of the day to help sell their product, and “collaboration solution” is a recent example. When we view collaboration in the light of Shirky’s levels, it makes it easier to understand the value that different tools bring to the equation.

To share widely you need open enterprise wide tools like GCpedia and GCconnex that can be accessed by everyone in the Public Service. For formal cooperative projects you may require document security and management work flows that proprietary tools provide. For collective action, we need changes to the mechanics of government before tools can hope to have much impact.

As the GC gears up for more horizontal collaboration, agility and mobility, it is important to remember that collaboration is not a tool—collaboration is an iterative social process. Collaboration is people, (you know the soft squishy things walking around in the office), working together, often in a very dynamic and ad hoc kind of way.

At its most basic, a collaboration tool’s job is to make it easier for a group of people to find each other and come together to solve a problem. The design paradigm behind the tool can have a profound impact on the types of collaboration that are possible – some are oriented towards sharing, while others are more about control. A single enterprise collaboration solution may be neither practical or desirable, rather an ecosystem of tools, connected by standards, may be the only way to enable the full range of collaborative behaviours the future demands.

The First Step is Simple

Collaboration can be formal and structured or it can be organic and come together in an informal way. Collaboration can mean sharing, cooperating or collective action. Achieving the highest levels of collaboration is hard, but fortunately the first step is pretty easy, simply do what you learned in kindergarten and remember to share.

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Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin Books.

Image credit: iStockphoto, Illustration File #4549099, contributor Mightyisland

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The Culture Table – Request for input

Posted on August 10, 2013 by ThomK

The purpose of this post is to share something I am working on in the hopes of receiving some feedback from people like you.

Back in April I wrote a post entitled “Hold your breath, it’s going to go deep” about the fact that I was presenting a paper at the World Social Science Forum in October, well the deadline is approaching and I am now trying to write the thing. The paper is to examine the cultural and governance implications of horizontally enabling tools like GCpedia. As part of that I would like to have a culture table that compares the two cultures with a focus on the divergent points of potential conflict.

To provide a frame for analysis of the conflicting cultures I have elected to use Schein’s three levels of organizational culture. The draft comparison follows.

Table 1: Points of Conflict

Levels of Culture

Gov2.0

Gov 1.0 (2007-2010)

Artefacts

Visible structures and processes

Observed Behaviour

Principle based guidelines

Loosely coupled networks

Communication based on need and interest (not hierarchy)

Collective learning

Constructive debate

Habitual knowledge sharing

Roles and Histories

Respect shown in disagreement

Prescriptive policy and web of rules

Departmental, Westminster system with legislated silos

Vertical communication patterns

Some cooperation amongst the willing

Territoriality

Established methods that have worked for decades

Respect shown by unquestioning agreement

Generic Job Descriptions

Espoused Beliefs and Values

Ideas, Goals, Values Aspirations

Ideologies

Rationalizations

Open by default

Trust and respect

Wisdom of the crowd

Experiment and learn

We is stronger than me

Authenticity

Design to “Fail fast”

Values and Ethics Code:

Respect for democracy
Respect for people
Integrity
Stewardship
Excellence

Share when ready

Non Partisan truth to power

Stay off the front page of the news

Design for “fail safe”

Basic Underlying Assumptions

Unconscious beliefs and values that determine behaviour, perception thought and feeling

Responsible autonomy is best

Deference to the most respected

Shared sense of purpose

Free information is powerful

Mistakes are learning opportunities

Beg forgiveness

Hierarchy is best

Deference to authority of the position

Entitlement to my job and benefits

What the boss wants

Information Is power

Mistakes are career limiting moves (that end up in the news)

Ask permission

Working for Canadians
(it’s a calling not a job)

This is just a draft and it is based on my perceptions. What do you think, am I being unfair to the Gov 1.0 or too Pollyanna with the Gov 2.0? Maybe something important is missing?

You can comment here, or you can comment on this Google doc version that I will be using as my working copy.

Thank you in advance, I look forward to your input.

Thom

[polldaddy poll=7312241]

Three truths to help you change the culture of the Public Service

Posted on June 26, 2013 by ThomK

This is one of two posts for the GTEC 2013 blog series where we are exploring what it means to be an Agile, Open, Collaborative and Mobile Government. My focus will be on the Cultural, Organizational and Policy Infrastructure that provides the foundation for public service culture. This is a great time to be discussing these topics as the Clerk has recently announced the Blueprint 2020 initiative with a call to action for all Public Servants to participate in shaping the vision for the Public Service of the future.

Recently I was deep into an analysis of how Governments could realize the potential of collaboration and social technologies. As I was mulling over how to synthesise all of the data into a sound bite that could be easily consumed by a busy executive, I was also thinking about how it connected with what I had learned from working in advertising and teaching consumer behaviour. In a rare moment of clarity while waiting for a red light I scribbled down three truths that seem to me to be both obvious and profound.

1. Sharing is good

Most of the major research firms agree that the biggest challenge organizations face in implementation of social technologies within the enterprise is creating a culture that supports information sharing. Having been involved with over a dozen enterprise collaboration efforts I can say that my personal experience supports those findings. Culture as the saying goes eats strategy for breakfast, apparently it also eats technology.

Right now, in the Public Service many people don’t share because they are afraid of making a Career Limiting Move (CLM), while others, (kudos if you are one), consider sharing part of their responsibility. Unfortunately too many seem to equate sharing with a CLM, and ultimately we need to institutionalize ways of rewarding sharing and punishing information hoarding. That kind of change will probably take decades, so maybe in the meantime maybe there is a need for some responsible anonymous input to Blueprint 2020? What do you say, should we throw a Blueprint 2020 Chatham House Party…err… Workshop?

2. Ego gets in the way

By ego I mean an unhealthy focus on self, we have all come across individuals that try and withhold information and manipulate those around them for personal gain or promotion. When combined with a lack of emotional intelligence I believe this is one of the most destructive forces in the public service today. We need to get our self-worth from something other than the size of our empire, we need to get emotional and career points for collaborating. We need to recognize the common purpose, (serving Canadians anyone?) as more important than our personal gain. Not only is the, “I only do what it good for me” attitude, bad for the organization, its beginning to look like it may be bad for your career as well.

I have worked on enough horizontal files to have come across this issue more than once. No matter how you structure a collaboration the people involved can always sabotage it. While researching the horizontal governance issue a few years ago I came across an Auditor General’s report examining the lack of progress on the climate change file. Without much reading between the lines it was obvious that the real problem was that the primary departments involved could not find a way to collaborate. Now I am not pointing fingers at the senior ranks, you see this kind of behaviour at all levels. I suppose we should not be surprised, given the competitive individualistic socialization most of us have grown up with, but human’s greatest capacity is to learn, and we can learn to work together and set aside personal differences if we set aside our ego once in a while in favour of the common goal.

3. You can’t communicate too much

“You can’t communicate too much”. I posted this comment on twitter during one of the conferences I attended recently and it quickly became one of the most re-tweeted updates, so it seems the sentiment hit a nerve.

Back in my advertising days we used to spend a lot of money on media buys and printing, and one of the worst things that could happen was for a print run or advertisement be published with a mistake. When it did happen it was an expensive and embarrassing lesson. After the first time we began to repeat instructions, in different languages if necessary, we would draw pictures, leave notes on the artwork, call the publisher, even attend press runs to make sure all was understood. Later in my career I worked with a Product Line Manager at a major telecom who told we that for an idea to get traction you had to say the same thing over and over again in as many different ways as you could think of —you can’t communicate too much.

In today’s information intense and dynamic workplace trying to get the attention of the information inundated executive ranks will take more than a little repetition. Going the other way, management can’t communicate too much with staff, especially during times of change. The mushroom school of management (keep them in the dark, and feed them sh*t), simply has no place in an agile and high performing organization.

Conclusion

Changing the culture of something as big as the Public Service is a daunting task, I applaud the sentiment behind Blueprint 2020 and encourage everyone to get involved. But it is also important to remember that an organization is people, and an organization’s people are who make the culture. The three lessons that I have shared can and should be applied from the top down, but more importantly they can be applied by individuals regardless of rank, when you think about that, it this means you have the power to change culture.

A final note:

I am writing this on Father’s day, 2013 and as it happens this date is also the anniversary of my father’s passing at the age of 89. A child of the depression and a jet setter of the 60’s he lived his life with an ethos of “doing the best you can, with what you have”. In these uncertain times it is easy to blame others for inaction, but I say, do what you can, with what you have.

What do you say?

Image Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Triskele-Symbol-spiral-five-thirds-turns.png

“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.

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 opportunity.

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.

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

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, 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.

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.

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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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

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

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

Licence to innovate

Posted on February 7, 2011 by ThomK

This slide has proven to be popular with clients so I thought I would share it in case you need to sell Web 2.0 or innovation inside the Government of Canada.

One client made a small license size version, maybe #w2p could print some up?

Let me know if you find it useful. I have posted a jpg and the ppt. No attribution expected on this cause its all stuff the Clerk said.

Here is a PowerPoint version Licence to Innovate

And here is the French version

Votre permis fédéral pour innover .ppt

Framework for the Virtual Government Network

Posted on January 5, 2011 by ThomK

Update

Here is a video of me talking about the VGN at the PS Engage conference.

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/32839611 w=400&h=225]

————— Original post with a link to the paper. —————

The following material comes from a paper I recently finished as part of my studies. I took the opportunity to combine what I have learned about Information Management and Collaboration and then apply that knowledge to something that might be practical. If you want the paper you can find it on the Articles page, here is a somewhat abridged version for your perusal and comment. By the way, if you do comment I promise to get back to you, however my response may not be immediate.

Virtual Government Network Collaboration Framework

The framework elements are generic in the sense that they could apply to any large-scale collaboration network; in this example they have been populated with the Virtual Government Network in mind.

The common goal

Successful communities share a common goal. Sometimes the goal is urgent and short-lived like when responding to a crisis, other times it is more subtle and long-term, like creating a high quality of life.

In terms of government interests in supporting their jurisdictional economy, most would agree with Velez when he says that the ability to create, access and apply knowledge is a fundamental determinant of global competitiveness (Valez E., 2008, as cited by MacDonald, 2010).

From the knowledge perspective, the goal of the network might be one of conceptual integration. Citing Cosmides et al. 1992, Bates states that conceptual integration across knowledge boundaries generates a powerful growth in knowledge because it allows investigators to use knowledge developed in other disciplines to solve problems in their own (Bates, 2005), she continues to quote Cosmides:

“At present, crossing such boundaries is often met with xenophobia, packaged in the form of such familiar accusations as ‘intellectual imperialism’ or ‘reductionism.”

Although she was talking about how the disciplines within behavioral and social sciences should make themselves mutually consistent I think this principle applies to government as a whole and the Virtual Government Network is for people that want to reduce xenophobia.

From a more practical perspective the Virtual Government Network is about sharing and learning, saving time and money by reusing good work rather than reinventing. The underlying assumption is that more effective and sustainable government is more likely if we work together. This becomes the stated goal because it is the easiest to understand and likely the most relevant to potential users of the network.

Business Model

The network would initially be provided free of charge, paid for by profits that would be generated from the sale of training and associated professional services. As the network evolves the intention would be to acquire funding from governments, perhaps via the Public Service Chief Information Officer Council (PSCIOC) or a Public Private Partnership. The sustainable model will depend on reaction to the proposal and community interest.

Communication

Communication is consistently identified as one of the key ingredients for successful collaboration and an important part of any successful network. In this framework I identify two key characteristics of the communication infrastructure as being in near real-time and transparent and open.

For the network to be effective in responding to real-time events, communication from operators of the network and between network members themselves needs to be fast and accurate. Messages between members and groups are completely driven by user content and the system simply needs to provide mechanisms for delivering the messages in a timely and reliable manner. For messages from the operators to the members some crafting of messages and agreement on those messages may be required. This communications process interacts with governance processes and impedes the free flow of information. Careful attention to process design will be necessary to ensure that this kind of messaging can occur quickly. Fortunately the principles of open and transparent will minimize the amount of messaging that requires “crafting”.

By operating in a transparent fashion and building in opportunities for any interested member to participate in the governance of the network, the number of messages that need explicit approval of a governance group should be kept to a few per year.

Principles

Statutory responsibilities

Governments share similar responsibilities around issues like providing for freedom of information while protecting privacy or ensuring that information is archived for future generations. Intellectual property needs to be protected and disposition authorities applied. The framework needs to respect these in a way that is acceptable to all parties.

Value statements:

Three broad value statements provided as examples:

Transparency
Neutral space
Learning

1. The need for transparency

This idea is not new, in 1948 Urguhart called for government confidential reports to be reviewed periodically to see what scientific and technical information could be released into the general pool of knowledge (Duff, 1997). Reviewing confidential information is of course an added cost, and as the body of confidential knowledge increases the sustainability of that review decreases. By keeping the body of confidential knowledge as small as possible the system will be more efficient. Assuming that we believe that the value of information to society increases with access, shifting our mindset from one of “need to know” to “need to share” should be a top priority.

The concept of transparency is considered by some to be so critical to the evolution of democracy that it has been enshrined in legislation. Canada’s Access to Information Act is an early example while the Open Government Directive from the United States Federal government is a more recent and dramatically more complete example of the transparency principle being applied.

Finally, I believe that transparency is essential for establishing and maintaining the trust between members that leads to a willingness to share.

2. Neutral Space

To mitigate the potential for political dispute the virtual government network should be a neutral space. Not a place for advocating particular political viewpoints, but rather a safe common ground, where the focus is on sharing knowledge and making government more effective.

3. Learning

The network supports shared learning and sharing of information and knowledge. As such the values associated with learning must be respected. For the purposes of this paper these values are:

Shared Knowledge
Respect for diversity (promotion of diversity)
Collective responsibility
That individuals are best motivated by autonomy, mastery and purpose (Pink, 2009)

The articulation of the broad community values is something that should be undertaken in consultation with the community, so I am not going to try and develop these any further at this time.

Information Architecture

The framework breaks down the information architecture into three categories that might be useful in terms of figuring out the types of information a virtual government network would contain. One of the pre-development tasks is to prepare detailed views for each of the categories. Brief outlines of each type are provided:

Information about people

Basic directory information
Enhanced profile information (interests, resume, etc)
Activity history (contributions, other)
Relationships
Group memberships

Information about people might be considered private and as such users need to be able to easily understand and control the release of information about themselves. At its simplest this would mean users agree to a terms of use and simply not provide any personal information. A more sophisticated approach would be to allow users to complete a profile and control who could access various parts of it. In either case, a clear privacy policy and excellent user experience design is required.

Information about topics

Sources of information (libraries, collections, other…)
Bibliographies and searchable databases
Groups and individuals working in topic areas
Documents and user-created content organized by themes of interest to all jurisdictions such as: Coordination, protection, resilience, social progress. (Wilson, 2010?)

Information about topics represents the explicit knowledge content of the VGN. The intention is to build a repository of shareable stuff. Any information that could help another jurisdiction or links to such information would be valid. Intellectual property is an issue to watch here, if protected work is posted the rights to that work will have to be managed. The simple approach is telling users they are expected to only post unprotected work. In this scenario the VGN will need processes for monitoring for protected material and quickly resolving any complaints. A more sophisticated approach would be to build some kind of digital rights management into the network, perhaps based on the creative commons licenses.

Information about information (meta-data)

Dublin core
Rankings (votes, links, citations, source value, etc)
State (draft, final, archive, etc)

This part of the information architecture is dedicated to developing a sustainable meta data strategy that will support the finding and managing of the topic based information. An important consideration is that the user not be required to add much meta data-the system needs to do as much of it as possible to ensure data integrity and user satisfaction. A second consideration would be that if the meta-data collected includes personal information that it be subject to the privacy policy. For instance visits or downloads of a document traceable to a particular user.

People

Users

The primary users of the network are government employees at any jurisdiction in Canada. These users are authenticated and agree to a terms of reference that is acceptable to their employer. The community is broadly defined by the term Public Servant. An issue arises with the inclusion of consultants, contractors and other suppliers of services; this shadow government is estimated to be worth $25B at the Federal level alone (Ottawa Citizen, 2010). It may be that there will have to be two types of users and two different entry levels of user. Another consideration is whether to permit users from jurisdictions outside of Canada.

Roles

Types of users will have to be defined along with various roles that each type can perform. The following is a preliminary list of potential user access levels.

L1 Members are permanent government employees
L2 Members are consultants and contractors under contract
L3 Members are the general public
L1 Operators are god
L2 Operators are like captains
L3 Operators have some additional edit privileges and can approve certain events like group creation.

In addition to Members and Operators other relevant people are those providing funds and other stakeholders that identify themselves, i.e. Unions, political parties, governing parties, etc.

Processes

Operation of the VGN will involve many processes. For the purposes of this paper I have identified two broad categories that I believe are particularly important.

Onboarding

Onboarding is generally concerned with attracting people to the network and ensuring that their early experiences are positive. Processes might include:

Outreach and promotion
Registration authentication and security
Skills development & support
Solutions matching

Gardening

The gardening processes are intended to maintain quality in the network, ensure that terms of use are complied with and generally support users in their efforts to share and collaborate. Examples include:

Content reporting quality (user reports on content)
Activity monitoring (looking for irregular behavior, new content requiring meta-data, etc)
User communications (personalized based on activity, role or other options, multiple channels)
Tension management (see Donnelly, 2009)

The general concept of information value within the VGN is that users decide what is important. Content value could be some mix of attributes such as: source value, user votes, user links to the information, # citations, comments and other empirical and subjective characteristics that can be measured over time. These ideas should be reflected in the non-functional requirements for the supporting platform.

Technology

This paper is not about the technology, however several characteristics have been defined that will provide some guidance when technology choices must be made. These include:

Browser based
Mobile enabled
Open with lots of connectors
Both open and secure (how secure?)
Acreditable by government agencies (meets whatever standards are most common)

Governance

Governance of the network covers three areas:

Decision making

o Conflict resolution & resource allocation

o Permission allocations (granting power to users)

Performance measurement
Strategic direction

Governance mechanisms should be as inclusive as possible and follow the principle of transparency. Provide a forum and guidelines for funders, operators, users and stakeholders.

Conclusion

The framework is intended to be a fairly holistic, top level conceptual architecture that might be used to guide the creation of a Virtual Government Network. It is a broad brush, high level view; there are improvements to be made, both in the generic framework and in the details. To move forward each element needs much more detail and discussion. Maybe we can build something like this, maybe not, either way; I hope the framework is of use to others. Please comment and build on it.

Letting go for high performance leadership

Posted on October 4, 2010 by ThomK

In Gov 2.0 circles I often hear that organizational culture needs to change. If you think about that you will realize that people need to change. If you think about that you will realize that you have to change. Last year I heard the story of a public servant leader who discovered that sometimes by letting go, you get better results. I think it is a good example of the transformation many of us need to consider for ourselves.

Two years ago, Angelina Munaretto took leadership of the Applying Leading Edge Technologies (ALET) working group within the Canadian government. This horizontal, mostly voluntary group was established to explore ideas around the use of social media and Web 2.0 tools for the government communications community.

At the outset, the group was structured in a traditional way and using government hierarchy: a Project Manager, two sub-working groups with co-chairs, and an advisory committee. Work began on defining the deliverables, finding members for the working groups and then working towards meeting the needs of this defined structure.

What nobody counted on, but in retrospect is not surprising, is the level of interest, passion and commitment exhibited by the entire government community in response to the global trend towards Web 2.0. All areas — not just communications, but programs, IM, IT and human resources — wanted to participate in some way. Those who were involved in applying the tools on a day-to-day basis started suggesting new projects that would help advance their programs, communications and use of Web 2.0 tools. The community grew into 150 people and 36 departments and agencies represented. Five departments seconded employees to work on deliverables for the community at no cost to the project.

Says Angelina: “We moved from being a community of practice who met to deliver pieces of work, to a group of professionals who wanted to make a difference.”

I know which one of those scenarios I would prefer, what about you?

Resources were needed and community members were stepping up to volunteer to help the ALET group meet the needs of the community. More people and more resources called for more management capacity, but there was simply no additional capacity. The working groups could no longer be managed within the traditional project structure. More management capacity was required but was simply unavailable. Angelina soon found herself in a position where a shift was required.

What this meant for Angelina was that she had to adjust her leadership style. No longer would she define tasks and delegate responsibilities – she could suggest broad areas of work or needs that the community was articulating, but this was highly different. When community leaders stepped up and offered their expertise and leadership, Angelina moved to providing secretariat support and broad guidance on the overall outcomes sought by ALET. Members of the group were given autonomy to shape the products they were producing. It became less about leading the group towards the completion of a deliverable to more about facilitating the collaboration and contributing where help was needed . The deliverables were defined by the needs of those working on them, instead of the project leader. In personal terms, Angelina had to relax her expectation of control. She also had to learn to trust people to do the right thing, sometimes with very little direction – and learned when to offer help or check in to ensure that people had what was needed to complete a deliverable.

What she found was that when a group of people are motivated and given the autonomy to take direct action, the results can be impressive. What had started as a management team…led by Angelina became a relatively self-sufficient group that produced impressive results including an extensive research document which provided essential input into policy development, a social media toolkit and numerous guides to using a wide variety of social media. The most tangible result though was getting Departments to share key development documents for use of social media so that the community could re-use these for their own campaigns. The work that started with ALET planted the seeds for a vibrant communications community that continues to grow, share best practices and build guidelines to help others.

Angelina has now moved to Library and Archives Canada, where she is the Manager, Digital Engagement and Social Media. ALET continues to thrive under new leadership and the resource pages on GCPEDIA continue to be some of the most visited.

When I look at this case, I see a perfect example of intrinsic motivation as described by author Dan Pink, there is a wonderful RSA animate video that captures the essence of his message on You Tube. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc]

The project, in spite of being run differently than a traditional government project, was highly successful – mostly due to Angelina’s ability to stop trying to control the project and instead to facilitate the collaboration and articulate the greater purpose. She gave the members of the working group the autonomy to make progress on something that would make a real difference.

In my mind, this shift is an example of what needs to happen with leaders across the public service; from a mentality of command-and-control to one of creating a collaborative culture. Angelina’s example demonstrates that when people are given the autonomy to work on something that motivates them and is in service to something larger, whole communities can benefit. And really, isn’t that what being in the public service is all about?

I would like to thank Avra Gibbs Lamey, a communications professional and contributor to two of the sub-working groups under ALET, for co-authoring this post. Avra can be found on twitter @gibbslamey. Angelina can be found @AngelinaMunaret .

The biology of business

Posted on September 16, 2010 by ThomK

Found this today on twitter and have to share it. For me, it has the” ring of truth” to it.

[slideshare id=2778948&doc=cdocumentsandsettingssharondesktopbiologyofbusiness7-091226113330-phpapp02]

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.

Thom Talks #1

Posted on May 10, 2010 by ThomK

This is my presentation from the March 16, 2010, CapCHI meeting. CapCHI is a Computer-Human Interaction group, based in Ottawa. This is the first time I have told the GCPEDIA story outside of Government.

[slideshare id=4029979&doc=capchithomtalks-12734448247163-phpapp01]

Cultural risk

Posted on March 21, 2010 by ThomK

I was recently asked to create an executive briefing that included a high level assessment of the risks associated with adopting social media in the Government. I segmented the risks by three areas; Policy, Legal and Cultural. The cultural risks are what interest me at the moment and they relate to the internal culture of the organization. I found myself writing and rewriting these words:

Conflict occurs between hierarchical and network management philosophies when power based on information control is replaced by power based on reputation.

To complete the risk equation, I believe the likelihood and impact of this occurring depends on the degree to which key individuals try and maintain power structures based on information control.

I am wondering if the statement captures the essence of the risk ?

Can the risk of conflict in this situation be mitigated — perhaps it is inevitable, even necessary?

Thoughts?

Engagement anyone?

Posted on January 21, 2010 by ThomK

There is a lot of talk about employee engagement these days. In management circles we talk about strategies and best practices for achieving high levels of employee engagement. Perhaps this is in response to reports of a general malaise and historically high absenteeism, or maybe because we are finally waking up to the fact that we really do need to “do better with less” if we hope to leave the world a better place.

So what is this thing called engagement?

For me engagement is a personal thing, it is an organic network of relationships, messages and memes. It is about rallying around some of the common themes and goals in an organization. It is about giving permission to staff to take responsibility for finding new and better ways of doing their jobs. It is about demanding intellectual accountability and value for every salary dollar we spend. It is about enabling staff to take small risks and implement ideas directly. Most importantly it is about trusting each other to do what we think is best. Accepting some risk and celebrating early failure.

Engagement isn’t something you can outsource. It comes from sincerity about working for improvement and a tolerance for many points of view.

So how do we improve engagement?

Attitude.

The #1 factor that will determine the success of an engagement effort is the attitude of the people involved. This means that:

Staff need to take on their leadership responsibility by speaking up and pushing their organizations to improve.
Middle Management needs to accept the fact that control is an illusion and be willing to trust their staff. And they need to define themselves in a away that does not require the control of information. They need to listen very carefully to those pushing for change.
Senior management needs to promote leadership at all levels and demonstrate that appropriate risk taking is acceptable.
We all need to be tolerant and listen to multiple points of view. Perhaps most importantly we need to approach the monumental tasks in front of us with a positive attitude.

Engagement isn’t something you design and build so much is it something that you cultivate in your relationships. Certainly we can design processes, polices and reward systems that create an environment that is engagement friendly, and we must continually work to reduce systematic barriers to engagement, but ultimately it comes down to the attitude of the people in the system.

And that starts with you and me.

Authenticity – how much is enough?

Posted on January 13, 2010 by ThomK

Recently I was part of an interesting conversation about executives participating in Social Media.

The question that came up was how much of the executive’s posts had to be made by the individual themselves. My first response was that if the post had their name beside it then it should have been the executive at the keyboard. After some discussion however, I began to realize that maybe that is not realistic. After all senior executives frequently have assistants send email under their name, and memos, directives, etc are usually written by a staffer and then distributed under the executive’s name. So maybe the same rules should apply.

We talked about several scenarios:

Only the executive posts under their name. Even if most of the posts came from staffers, only the posts actually typed by the executive would carry their name. Staffers, who would probably make most posts would post under their real name and their profile would identify them as part of the executive’s staff.
An organizational user would be created to make most posts. For instance the “Office of the Executive” . In this case the user profile would identify the individuals using that account. Only posts actually made by the exec would carry his or her individual name.
Staffers would be allowed to post as the executive assuming her or she had approved the message. This model is similar to what happens today with email and other correspondence. Readers would never really know if the post was actually typed by the executive, (does that mater?), but they would know it had been approved by them. In addition there may be staffers identified as authorized contributors, who would post under their own name.

There are likely variations on the three scenarios above that we did not explore. I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts. What other approaches have you run across? What approach has the best balance of authenticity and practicality given the incredible time pressures on most senior executives?