GOVERNMENT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
THE ART OF SOCIAL ETIQUETTE
JUNE 2013 • ISSUE 18
e-gov 2.0 It’s all about the service UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS: REWRITING BOUNDARIES
EMERGENCY SERVICES ROUNDTABLE
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COVER STORY: E-GOV 2.0: IT’S ALL ABOUT THE SERVICE Online-enabled e-government offers unprecedented interaction with citizens and unparalleled new ways of improving efficiencies – but without the right customerservice culture, it’s only going to go so far. We look at the challenges governments are facing in transitioning to a customerservice mentality, and how online tools are facilitating the change.
SPECIAL FEATURES
10
20
52
REGULARS 2 Editor’s letter 4 News 41 Opinion: Esri, Nuance, Motorola Solutions 62 NBN Update
FEATURES 17 State ICT policies are the new black Long reviews and collaboration are driving state governments’ ambitious ICT-reform agendas – but how do state ICT policies compare? 26 RDNS: Reinventing client care with video Videoconferencing offers great promise for customer service – but healthcare giant RDNS is already using it. GTR goes onsite to find out how. 30 UC: redrawing government boundaries Unified communications (UC) is about much more than a PABX upgrade: we find out how UC is driving services change for government service. 35 Asset management stalwarts learning the value of IT Asset management’s tangible nature has perpetuated philosophical differences between the people on the ground, and those in IT. Can they bridge the gap? 38 Federal Budget 2013-14 roundup In a time of austerity, the Gillard government’s latest budget was eagerly awaited. Here’s a rundown of the IT-related measures.
CASE STUDIES 25 City of South Perth The City of South Perth is expanding its CRM system to mobile-wielding users. 32 Fair Work Ombudsman The FWO’s overhauled communications systems promise new customer-service options. 46 Australian Maritime Safety Authority How peak water-management authority navigated a fierce squall during its move to the cloud. 48 ACT Emergency Services A rapid-response team of geospatial experts is supporting flood and other relief efforts nationwide.
LEARNING THE ART OF SOCIAL ETIQUETTE
ROUNDTABLE: EMERGENCY SERVICES
Simply signing up to Twitter doesn’t mean you’re a social-media genius. Government organisations are warming to social media’s possibilities, but many are still struggling with how to integrate and manage it alongside other customer-service channels.
The federal government’s recent 4G spectrum auction has revived debate over the most appropriate technological strategy as Australia’s emergency-services organisations rapidly embrace new technologies. This GTR roundtable unites industry experts to share their thoughts.
50 City of Bunbury A data centre upgrade at the City of Bunbury, WA promises an innovative service-delivery model. 62 Kiama Municipal Council Regional-NSW NBN first-release site is tapping into the network to boost citizen interactivity.
GTR JUNE 2013 | 1
It may seem like semantic nitpicking to contrast the terms ‘citizen’ and ‘customer’ but – as government bodies tap into ICT to modernise their operations and organisational philosophies – the schism between the two philosophies often proves to be very real. While some organisations bound ahead with their customer focus, others struggle to find the right balance of government authority and private sector-like service. In the private sector, improved customer service is generally linked with reduced operating costs and increased revenues – both strongly desirable for profitbased organisations. In the governance-obsessed public sector, however, those ideals are masked by the omnipresent layer of governance and legislative requirements. This inevitably leads to organisational inertia – or, in worst-case scenarios, paralysis. But as we push towards social media and open data-enabled e-government 2.0, it is becoming harder for government bodies to ignore the proactivity and efficiency that modern customer-service technologies provide. Our cover feature this issue looks into the evolution of the customerservice imperative from several angles. As well as exploring the potential for customer-service reinvention, we find out how social media continues to challenge many organisations – and, in a separate feature, explore the latest in unified communications technologies that continue to help them. GTR’s site visit to the RDNS, where videoconferencing has enabled a new level of efficiency and customer service, may provide inspiration for government organisations in similar situations. Importantly, the governmentbacked RDNS trial has adopted wireless broadband to circumvent fixed-line connectivity issues for chronic and rehabilitative-care patients. Elsewhere in the issue, we look at the recent release of three states’ comprehensive ICT policies, and talk with Grantly Mailes – the man responsible for delivering on Victoria’s highly ambitious ICT reform agenda. We run through the ICT-related initiatives in the federal government’s 2013-14 Budget, and look at how the continuing divide between asset-management ground staff and supporting ICT organisations continues to challenge government organisations. There’s also a bumper crop of case studies – six different government organisations are profiled throughout the issue – and the regular range of expert opinion, the latest on the NBN, and an extensive roundtable in which we talk over the latest in emergency-services technology with the experts that are implementing it. No matter what group of Australians your organisation looks after, the need to deal with them as honestly, efficiently and effectively will continue to drive the need to think more like a profit-minded customer-service organisation. By the time you reach the last page of this issue, hopefully you will have had some new ideas about how you can kick-start the revolution in your own organisation. We’d love to hear them. Drop me a line at the below email address to share your thoughts on these topics, or anything that’s on your radar.
EDITOR David Braue e: editor@govtechreview.com.au NATIONAL SALES MANAGER Yuri Mamistvalov e: yuri@commstrat.com.au Tel: 03 8534 5008
ART DIRECTOR Annette Epifanidis e: annette@commstrat.com.au Tel: 03 8534 5030 DESIGN & PRODUCTION Nicholas Thorne CONTRIBUTORS Kevin Noonan, Brad Howarth, Kelly Mills MELBOURNE OFFICE Level 8, 574 St Kilda Rd. Melbourne Vic 3004 PO Box 6137, St Kilda Rd Central 8008 Phone: 03 8534 5000 Fax: 03 9530 8911
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Misperceptions wrongly keeping government CIOs from cloud A surfeit of often unclear or incorrect information about cloud computing is driving many government CIOs to unnecessarily tilt the playing field against the adoption of cloud services, an Ovum analyst has warned. Arguing that risk-averse government cloud policies tend to make government bodies so nervous about buying a ‘bad’ cloud service that they buy none at all, research director Steve Hodgkinson warned that many organisations are instead ending up with an even worse outcome: sticking with existing, inadequate and outdated systems that impede opportunities to revisit business processes and improve overall productivity. “The logic of government cloud computing policy usually starts with the implicit assumption that cloud services are risky, illdefined and unproven,” he said in a statement. “Cloud services adoption in government faces resistance caused by procedural, organisational and cultural inertia.”
Even confusion about the correct terminology is diluting the effectiveness of the cloud message, Hodgkinson warned. For example, many executives persist in speaking about ‘the cloud’ as though it were some massive, nebulous, omnipresent thing. But policy should, he explained, refer to a ‘cloud service’ – ‘a tangible service delivered on a professional basis by a trustworthy external service provider’. “Cloud services are just shared services that work,” Hodgkinson said. Another important distinction to make is between ‘cloud computing’ – the suite of infrastructure, virtualisation, automation, selfservice portals and multi-tenant architectures used to deliver a cloud service – and a ‘cloud service’, which is a specific combination of processes, people, organisation and technology designed and delivered as a specific service.
If government executives learn the differences between these concepts and subsequently get a better grasp of the relevant concepts, they can avoid the mistakes that have plagued many agencies as they considered early adoption of cloud solutions. Recognition of not only the risk inherent in adopting a cloud solution, but of the risk inherent in not adopting a cloud solution, must be compared in business cases to help organisations make rational, well-informed decisions as to the best way to proceed. “The risk of procuring a ‘bad’ cloud service is relatively low and can be contained by well-established risk-management mechanisms and shorter contract terms,” Hodgkinson writes, noting that deferring a potentially-useful cloud service runs the risk of “a deferred or missed opportunity for productivity improvement and innovation in policy and service delivery.”
Government must meet high-cost ‘new normal’ by fostering ICT innovation: AIIA Regardless of whichever government is elected on September 14, Australia’s ICT policy makers will need to engage better with Asian peers and stimulate local innovation, Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) chairman Kee Wong has warned. Speaking at the launch of the AIIA’s SmartICT Election Platform, Wong – a selfprofessed “serial entrepreneur” who is also managing director of technology consulting firm e-Centric Innovations – said it was incumbent on government bodies to stimulate Australia’s entrepreneurs, and to keep them innovating through their careers rather than simply cashing out of their first big success story. “We have great entrepreneurs that may have created one or two businesses in their lifetime, and they retire to savour the fruits of their labour,” Wong said. “When surrounded by highly ambitious, hungry and capable populous neighbouring countries in Asia, we cannot rely on this model in the future; we need our 35
4 | GTR JUNE 2013
year olds to be starting their fourth or fifth business.” “By the time they are done, they will have started another five or ten – and even when they hang up their boots, they will continue to foster and help other entrepreneurs that come behind them.” Building this culture will not only help promote the spirit of innovation in Australia, but will help the government build up a domestic capability that is going to become increasingly important in helping Australia fight off competition from lower-cost companies like Malaysia, which he said has a skilled workforce and costs around one-third as high as in Australia. “Malaysia and Australia form a synergy that is pretty obvious,” Wong said. “We need each other because we have no scale in our own right. It’s a no-brainer for Australian companies, if they want to look at the Australian market, to look at how we can partner with Malaysia for market access to Asia.”
Such partnerships will help Australian companies build out their capabilities and add value that will make up for Australia’s higher price structures, which can make local companies uncompetitive if they’re left unaddressed. To read the rest of this story, visit bit.ly/12DDqgp.
Kee Wong
Budget boosts local-government NBN initiatives Local government bodies will see an uptick in federal support around a number of ICT-related initiatives, particularly related to funding to encourage councils to make the most of the national broadband network (NBN). The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) will receive $5.7m in funding over the next two years to help local government organisations improve what the budget papers called “the efficiency and effectiveness of their service delivery by taking advantage of the bandwidth and high data capacity of the NBN”. The current funding expands the existing Digital Local Government program from the current roster of 40 councils, to an additional 15 local councils into which the NBN is currently slated to be delivered.
A number of local government programs are already underway to support the establishment of NBN education and serviceenablement programs within local councils touched by the NBN.
Barring any changes to the rollout in the event of a Coalition government, the network’s footprint is slated to grow steadily in coming years, with NBN Co recently announcing the addition of over 1.35m premises to the network’s three-year rollout plan. That announcement added nearly 190 new towns and groups of suburbs to the network’s schedule, bringing to 4.85m the total number of properties expected to be connected to the NBN by mid 2016. The budget also included a $55.6m allocation, over two years, to conduct a referendum on the financial recognition of local government bodies in the Australian Constitution. That referendum will be held simultaneously with the September 14 federal election.
AGIMO, CeBIT awards recognise government ICT innovation Sunshine Coast Council, DMITRE, Adelaide City Council and other government bodies were popping the champagne last night as Kate Lundy announced the winners of the Australian Government ICT Awards at a gala dinner during CeBIT last night. The awards, which are run annually by the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO), recognise ICT best practice at all levels of government and were highlighted by the naming of the Department of Human Services as the Overall
Excellence in eGovernment (and Service Delivery category award winner) for their Express Plus mobile app. Queensland’s Sunshine Coast Council won in the Applications Development Category for an eBusiness platform providing a single window to online services, while the South Australian Resources Information Geoserver (SARIG) 2020 project – which integrates over 400 spatial data sets from across government and the private sector – was named the best geospatial project. The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Census Spotlight project took out the prize in the Government 2.0 category, while Adelaide City Council’s Microsoft Lync-based unified communications implementation was awarded in the Project and Program Management category. A number of individuals were also recognised in the awards, with Pia Waugh of the Department of Finance taking home the Government 2.0 Innovator Award and Kiama Municipal Council’s John Holland and the Wollondilly Shire Council IT team receiving the ICT Professional of the Year Awards.
Also announced on the night were the winners of the CeBIT.AU Business Awards, which were run in conjunction with the massive ICT conference held in Sydney recently. MyNetFone took out one of the four awards, in the Outstanding Project category, for its work implementing Voice over IP services to the Tasmanian government. The project, according to the judges, “delivered a financial and technical outcome which allowed seamless migration to the next-generation technologies in the future.”
GTR JUNE 2013 | 5
Fast-tracked open data projects boost Transport for NSW app cred Government organisations considering how to engage with developers wanting real-time data sets may find inspiration in the example of Transport for NSW (TfNSW), which has directly addressed complaints over past limited data access by fast-tracking six train-related application development projects through its App Hot House project. Held over the weekend of 16-17 February, the App Hot House brought together TfNSW developers and a number of eager app developers, which were whittled from an initial shortlist of 20 to just six developers through an intensive process of brainstorming and pitching. Two months later, the resulting apps have already gone live – and Rupert Hanson, one of the six developers to make the final list, couldn’t be happier with both the final result and the process by which it was built. “It has been an absolutely fabulous process,” he told GTR, “and a fast track to market. It’s a real credit to the government people involved, and the technical strength of the people the government chose to work with, that we managed to get it done as quickly as we did.” By encouraging and facilitating participation by six keen transport-app makers, App Hot House created “a very collegial atmosphere among the developers,” Hanson added. “You could talk to the engineers at Railcorp that run the system, and get a deeper understanding of what’s going on – and that access has remained open ever since. It’s really good to be able to have that dialogue with key people in government, to effect change with the systems and to gain access to get such a depth of knowledge.” The data sets provided for the six applications – which include Hanson’s Triptastic as well as SkedGo’s TripGo, Grofsoft’s TripView, Riverstone Labs’ Arrivo Sydney, Small Potion’s Hidden City and Quentin Zervaas’ TransitTimes+ – have been long sought-after by developers, many of whom have chafed at the government’s past efforts to limit third-party application development. Three years ago, Grofsoft principal Nick Maher was nearly sued for copyright infringement by RailCorp after building an app that gave commuters real-time train info. To read the rest of this story, visit bit.ly/16BMcAW.
6 | GTR JUNE 2013
Councils big on geospatial systems but some still struggling with business links Nearly one-third of local governments are still struggling to understand the value of geographical information system (GIS) investments and half have no plans to increase their investment in GIS technology, an extensive survey of localgovernment attitudes has found. The 2013 GIS in Local Government Benchmark Study, a joint project of Esri Australia and the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute (SSSI), surveyed 150 representatives of local governments nationwide– ranging in size from four employees to 7000 – about their use and perceptions of geospatial systems. Its findings painted a picture of current attitudes and investments in geospatial technology, as well as gauging its increasing integration with other business systems and usage outside of traditional silos. Fully 68% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the value of GIS is “widely understood within my council”, with 85% indicating that all departments in the council were accessing the GIS systems and the others indicating that use was focused on engineering, GIS or IT departments. The median investment in GIS systems was between $50,000 and $100,000 per year, although 29% said they were investing more than $100,000 annually and just 11% were investing less than $20,000 per year. However, only 38% of
Information Communicated Publicly via GIS 25%
Key areas of use for GIS Technology
EMERGENCY RESPONSE/SERVICES
25%
FLOOD MODELLING
8%
GOVERNMENT BUDGETRY SPENDING LAND USE PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT
56%
LOCATION OF COUNCIL SERVICES
58% 55%
PROPERTY INFORMATION
8%
NONE OF THE ABOVE
20
40
60
80
100
97%
ASSET MANAGEMENT
89%
CUSTOMER SERVICE
71%
EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT FIELD FORCE ENABLEMENT OR MOBILE OPERATIONAL AWARENESS
54% 57% 94%
PLANNING AND ANALYSIS
OTHER
3% 0
respondents were planning to increase their investment in GIS technologies. “There is still a limited understanding of how GIS really creates business advantages,” said SSSI president Gary Maguire, who sees a “vibrant future for the profession.” “The study highlights the importance of geospatial professionals and their knowledge, experience and understanding of emerging trends for locationbased technology. Local government administrators understand the power of location, but many still cannot put an enterprise location-based solution together as part of a total business platform.” That lack of complete integration was not hindering usage of the systems for specific business purposes, however: 97% of respondents were using GIS systems for asset management, 94% for planning and analysis, 89% for customer service, and 71% for emergency management. As with many other parts of the IT industry, mobile and cloud technologies had expanded the ways that users were accessing GIS systems: 12% said they were already utilising cloud-based GIS systems and 54% were accessing GIS data via mobile – creating significant new access channels for technology that had long been constrained to desktop and server deployments inside the organisation.
8% OTHER 0
20
40
60
80
100
GIS technology is widely used in local governments for specific tasks, but many councils are still working on bridging the IT-business divide. Source: SSSI/Esri Australia
Labor won’t stuff NBN pipeline as election poison pill: Conroy Labor will not take a poison-pill approach by pushing NBN Co to artificially accelerate the awarding of construction contracts in the leadup to the September 14 election, communications minister Stephen Conroy has pledged. Speaking with GTR on the NBN’s status and the party’s evolving e-government platform, Conroy dismissed suggestions that, fearing a widely-tipped Coalition election win, Labor would award larger and longer construction contracts to ensure as much of its fibre-to-thepremise (FttP) network would be deployed even well into any Coalition government’s term. “NBN Co have taken a very responsible, business-like approach to the NBN, and have behaved properly when it comes to contracts,” Conroy told GTR. “There could be no business justification for having contracts that lock you in for ten or even five years in the construction industry.” Malcolm Turnbull, opposition spokesperson on broadband and communications, has committed the incoming Coalition to honouring NBN contracts that are already in place, should the party be elected in September. Turnbull launched his party’s long-awaited alternative NBN policy this week, advocating for a $29.5 billion project that would primarily capitalise upon existing infrastructure.
NBN Co’s contract management practices came under fire recently after NBN Co was recently forced to revise downward its projections on network completion, from 286,000 premises to around 155,000 premises, in the wake of revelations that subcontractors had been unable or unwilling to invest in training enough staff to complete the work. Investigations by the Australian Financial Review revealed an “increasingly bitter relationship between NBN Co and its contractors, amid rising concerns about labour and skills shortages.” Issues with all of NBN Co’s major contractors were arising because they were paying low rates to workers that were reluctant to commit to piecemeal work; at the same time, the reports suggest, contractors were reluctant to commit to extensive training investments for short-term contracts. Although he conceded that it would not be “appropriate” for NBN Co to sign major new contracts during the caretaker period – between when Parliament is dissolved and the election happens – Conroy remained adamant that NBN Co would continue to focus on commercially sensible terms of engagement during months of business-as-usual in the leadup to the election.
Stephen Conroy
“These are serious and credible business people on the NBN Co board,” he told GTR. “They have not and will not engage in [poison-pill] behaviour. They’ll continue their build because that’s what their mandate is, until they’re given an alternate instruction by a government – whether it’s a successfully elected [Labor] government or a newly elected [Coalition] government.”
Despite cloud hype, most CIOs still doing IT inhouse For all the discussion about new technologies and the way cloud-delivered services will revolutionise businesses and government agencies, most companies are still pursuing “prosaic” in-house IT strategies, an Ovum government analyst has advised. Polling of 63 CIOs, all of whom attended Ovum’s recent CIO Strategy Summit, found that 74% of ICT activities are currently provided primarily by an inhouse ICT department. Shared-services arrangements accounted for around 9% of ICT activities, while outsourced arrangements comprised 13% of activities. Only 4% of ICT activities were being sourced as cloud services – primarily softwareas-a-service (SaaS) applications.
The findings were surprising given the level of attention given to cloud services in recent years, but reflect the very different reality that many CIOs are still living every day, Ovum Asia-Pacific IT research director Steve Hodgkinson said in a statement. “These results reveal a rather prosaic focus on traditional in-house IT operations,” he explained. “ICThe reality for this group of CIOs is that ICT management is still about managing the people, processes, and technologies of the in-house ICT department. It is therefore not surprising that a shortage of people and skills was regarded by CIOs as one of their major challenges.” There were indications the cloud model will start to ramp up more in the near future, however: outsouring and cloud services were
projected to account for one-third of overall ICT activities in the next year or two, while cloudbased data centre and application services will increase to account for more than 15% of the ICT mix within a few years. To accommodate this change, Hodgkinson recommends that those CIOs still relying primarily on in-house ICT should already be looking for skilled staff to support an expansion of cloud-computing capabilities into the future. “New mindsets and skills are required, particularly for counterparty risk management and systems integration,” he explained, “and these skills can only be learned with hands-on experience. It’s really all about organisational learning and agile thinking.”
GTR JUNE 2013 | 7
Regional IT execs anticipate APAC data centre expansion Consolidation of IT infrastructure may be allowing data centre tenants to get by with less floor space, but growing overall demand for data centre floor space will continue to drive Australian companies’ data centre investments across the Asia-Pacific region, a new survey has found. Fully 83% of respondents to Digital Realty’s latest Asia Pacific Data Centre Demand Survey said they would expand their data centres this year or in 2014, with increased security most commonly named as the reason for the expansion. The need for greater security outpaced disaster recovery, which was the second mostfrequently named reason for data centre expansion. Accessibility was also seen as important, with two-thirds of respondents preferring a data centre located in the country where they work. Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Sydney were the most commonly named cities for
data-centre location, which reflects the broad makeup of the survey – conducted for Digital Realty in January by Campos Research & Analysis, and including 401 IT decision makers across the four countries. Respondents suggested that while their power needs remained constant – an average of 5.0 kW per rack compared with 5.1 kW per rack a year ago – they were requiring approximately 10% less floor space on average: 13,300 ft2 (1235 m2) on average this year, compared with 14800 ft2 (1375 m2) last year. These figures confirm a trend towards higher-density computing power, with moreefficient systems able to support increased computing loads at similar power draws. The Australian results of the survey suggested a local market that in which consolidation was ahead of the average, with 68% of companies having built a new data
centre in the past 24 months, 78% planning to expand their facilities in 2013 and 29% planning to expand in 2014. Of those, 58% will expand in more than one location. Average raised floor space in Australia was 12,300 square feet, with 68% of respondents reporting average raised floor space greater than 10,000 ft2 and an average target of 12,900 ft2 among those wanting to expand their data centres. To read the rest of this story, visit bit.ly/11Hcnp1.
ICT inaction risks e-government disaster: AIIA The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) must take a proactive role in monitoring government bodies’ use of technology in order to stimulate the innovative, value-added government ICT initiatives that are currently failing to take hold in Australia, Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) deputy chair Andrew Stevens said in helping launch the organisation’s SmartICT Election Platform. Noting that ABS statistics on the use of technology were lacking, Stevens said the need to more actively benchmark Australian government institutions had grown from a lack of innovation around the use of ICT in government, which had contributed to Australia’s steady fall down the World Economic Forum’s ICTadoption leaderboard in comparison to its major economic and regional peers. “Finland, Singapore, Sweden… the United States, Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong all rank higher than us for their readiness for the digital economy,” said Stevens, who is also managing director for IBM Australia & New Zealand. “If we are to pull ahead as a digital nation, then we need solid data to inform our decisions.
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“We need to retool our economy, root and branch – and we must face the fact that we’re punching below our weight in the digital arena. If Australia wants to maintain its relative prosperity to the world, then it’s time for government and business to act. There is no time to lose.” The AIIA’s push for better data is one of six key elements in its SmartICT Election Policy, which represents the peak ICT industry body’s wish list for whichever government should come to power after the September 14 election. These include: 1. Shifting the focus to driving take up and use of our national broadband infrastructure, with a particular focus on Government use of SmartICT; 2. Stimulating growth and innovation by ICT start-ups and small business; 3. Motivating small and medium sized enterprises to improve their productivity by ‘getting online’ and becoming digitally capable; 4. Addressing the ICT skills shortage; 5. Growing our ICT capability through improved research and development (R&D)
capability and capacity and forging better links between research and industry; and 6. Acknowledging the ‘value’ of the digital economy by tracking and measuring its performance. “The economic impact of digitisation accelerates as countries move to more advanced stages of digitisation,” AIIA CEO Suzanne Campbell, who was also flanked by AIIA chair and entrepreneur Kee Wong, said at the launch. “Those countries that are digitally constrained, even with the presence of broadband infrastructure, receive less benefit.” “The reason for this is largely because they have yet to establish the ecosystem to capitalise on the benefits of smart ICT,” Campbell added, “and it’s exactly this point that underpins the SmartICT Election Platform. If we’re really, genuinely serious about building the ICT capability and capacity to be relevant and competitive in a global digital world, then the ecosystem that supports that outcome must be in place.” “It’s time the government – and, indeed, all of us – took ICT seriously.”
s ocial media
Learning the art of social etiquette SOMETIMES IT TAKES A MAJOR EVENT TO DRIVE A SHIFT IN AN ORGANISATION’S BEHAVIOUR. FOR TOWNSVILLE CITY COUNCIL, THAT EVENT WAS A CATEGORY 5 CYCLONE, AND THE RESULT WAS A SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY THAT IS THE ENVY OF MANY COUNCILS AROUND AUSTRALIA. Story by BRAD HOWARTH
10 | GTR JUNE 2013
T
ownsville’s web content officer Bree Milkovic wasn’t working for the council at the time Cyclone Yasi made landfall in early February 2011. But like many residents she kept a close eye on the social media updates that the council was issuing. Council had only adopted social media in the days leading up to the event, spurred by success in Brisbane and other locations in using that medium to update the public. She says Townsville’s goal was to ensure that residents could access to and spread accurate information “There were a lot of problems with misinformation,” Milkovic says. “We had images circulated of The Strand that were Photoshopped, and people who were making incorrect statements. Council was able to come in, set the scene and myth-bust, and make sure
the community was able to remain calm and not reacting to any of the very explosive comments that were out there.� While councils and emergency organisations alike have learned the power or Facebook and Twitter for disseminating the truth in a crisis, Townsville City Council went on to embed social media into its overall communications strategy. Realising that people wanted to engage through those channels, it created social media accounts for different functions such as events, libraries, galleries, and of course, disaster management. One of its greatest successes was a Twitterbased promotional campaign called Townsville Shines, which ran in conjunction with the annual V8 Supercar races in 2012. Council recruited residents, racing drivers and celebrities and encouraged them to tweet using the hashtag
#townsvilleshines. The hashtag was used more than 1 million times by 250,000 people over the three weeks of the campaign. “It was a really great way for us to create a mini sales force for Townsville, but also a way for our residents and community to blow their own horn and talk about why they love our city,� Milkovic says. Different governments and government agencies are finding different reasons to embrace social media, but slowly and surely they are doing so. While some Federal politicians have gone mad for Twitter, it has actually been local government that has embraced it, Facebook and other tools most openly. According to an Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government national online survey undertaken during October 2011, 68.6
GTR JUNE 2013 | 11
s ocial media
CURRENT USE OF WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES 10%
BLOGS
Local governments are using a variety
32%
INTELLIGENT MAPS
of social-media channels to improve communications with citizens.
9%
RSS FEEDS
Source: The 2013 Esri GIS in Local
28%
SMART PHONE APPS
Government Benchmark Study.
17%
SMS
53%
SOCIAL MEDIA
14%
NONE OF THE ABOVE
3%
OTHER 0
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per cent of the 235 respondents reported using some kind of social media tool, with the highest percentage (41.2 per cent) using Twitter. That Twitter had only been launched five years earlier points to a very rapid uptake and the possibility of a much higher usage amongst councils today, especially as a 2012 UK survey of 78 councils found that 97 per cent were using Twitter (further information can be found in Anne Howard’s ground-breaking report Connecting with Communities, published in August 2012 and available at bit.ly/POOJh6). Their path to embracing social media can vary widely, however. One of the key motivations is to align social media with councils’ prerogative to consult with its constituencies – but, according to the International Association for Public Participation’s executive director for Australasia, Michelle Blicavs, many are not sure how to best make use of it.
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“They are struggling to understand what it all means and how they should react, what they should post and what they should respond to,” Blicavs says. “If someone tweets ‘this is terrible’ does that constitute a submission? And because they could get hundreds of those, how does that contribute?”
Social-media champions Often she says it comes down to having the right person in the right place for social media to catch on. For the City of Marion in South Australia, that right person was Councillor David Speirs. As the City’s youngest councillor, Speirs had grown up as part of the Facebook generation. While he concedes social media did little to get him elected in 2010, since then he has worked hard to create a presence across Twitter and Facebook, posting three to four times a day. He was also a driving force behind
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Marion’s social media strategy, which was enacted a year ago. Speirs believes he has dispelled some of the fears regarding social media, and has even run training for other councillors. “A lot of the risk that people talk about is not founded on anything other than rumour and perception,” he says. “But to overcome that initial hurdle that the world’s going to fall apart as we go on to social media in a political environment, you do need to have someone who is part of that political executive driving it.” While it is early days for Marion, other councils have strongly embraced social media from an engagement perspective. Victoria’s Frankston City Council, for one, began its social media journey two years ago. “Our community engagement was already quite robust,” says Emma Smith, Council’s media and communications coordinator,
While some Federal politicians have gone mad for Twitter, it has actually been local government that has embraced it, Facebook and other tools most openly.
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“but we realised that there was this untapped demographic that might have been time poor, working outside of the municipality, and wanting to engage with us using social media.” Strategies were developed for departments such as the Frankston Arts Centre, the visitor information centre and the libraries, but it was soon apparent that residents wanted similar engagement around topics such as roads, rates and rubbish. Smith says Council conducted a comprehensive consultation with staff, executives and councillors, which led to the creation of a corporate Facebook and Twitter account, as well as the creation of Frankston TV to promote the region on YouTube. She says the whole process has been handled with great professionalism.
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“Over the last 12 months we’ve made sure that our back end is in order by putting some robust social media guidelines together that have been legally checked off, and put together a staff toolkit,” Smith says. “Council is a big organisation so we have to make sure that there is a corporate way off doing things, but that each area of Council has a social media feed that best suits its audience.” Social media has also been embraced at a HR level, with requirements embedded it into Council’s induction process and code of conduct, along with training and even some personal development programs. And, Smith says, it is being led from the top: “Our CEO is leading the charge in communicating with staff on a regular basis and saying that social media is an official extension of our communications and an official way of communicating with our residents and businesses.” Smith says customer service staff that normally engage through a front desk, telephone or via email can also respond to queries fielded through social media, which has also been used to extend the reach of council activities, such as live-tweeting of events including a review of the vision for the community.
“We were able to in real time communicate with residents that couldn’t physically attend by connecting with us on Facebook and Twitter that day, and found that it was such a comprehensive, robust way to communicate,” she says.
Social media ROI As with most social media implementations, the economic justification supporting social media at Frankston remains elusive, particularly given the investment of time that it requires. Smith says that one of social media’s benefits, however, is that it is highly measurable – enabling her to provide reports back to councillors on metrics such as likes, followers and reach. “We think that is working very well,” Smith says. “Versus the cost of an ad in the paper, versus the cost of a PR campaign, you can justify the spend that way.” The desire for governments of all shapes and sizes to engage through social media has created an opportunity for service providers. For example, Wholesome Media’s co-founder Keren Flavell says her company’s TownHall product is designed to increase the quality and quantity of engagement through Facebook, with features