A blog about government-to-citizen digital communication and engagement, Government 2.0, GovDelivery, and other e-government issues
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Is “big data” essential or the latest marketing-driven buzz word?

February 14th, 2013 | Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery in Government 2.0 | Tech - (2 Comments)

By Brent Kastner, CTO, GovDelivery

big dataAs a self-confessed gadget geek, I tend to have the latest cell phone in my pocket, but do I really need the most up-to-date phone? That question is similar to the question government leaders must ask themselves when faced with new technology options. For example, the “big data” buzz continues in 2013 prompting many government officials to ask if this is really something their municipality, state or agency should be actively planning, budgeting, and implementing. Big data differs from a cell phone, of course, but the questions you ask to ascertain need are the same. What will this do for us that we can’t do now? What value will we gain from implementing this technology? Will our approach to our mission objectives based on legacy technology be obsolete if we don’t follow this current trend?

With one foot in the tech world and the other in the business world, I am a natural problem-solver who’s fascinated when technology and business concepts intersect to produce a useful tool, and that’s just what I see happening with big data. Of course, big data on its own is just that – lots of information. We can collect more data today than ever before in our history and a wider variety of data often in real time. Yet without analysis, the data means nothing. Collecting data, analyzing it, correlating it with archived data and finding actionable solutions to problems is the heart and soul of big data. I call it “distilling big data.” The power is not in the data but in how that data is used.

Governments will find value when they look at implementing some of the tools, techniques, and practices around “distilling big data”. In fact, the federal government considers big data so important that in 2012 President Obama launched the Big Data Research and Development Initiative comprised of 84 big data programs spread across six departments. At the local level there is also a need to explore how big data techniques can benefit constituents. I get excited when I consider the possibilities.

For example, a city could distill information about potholes, traffic jams, or crime and use that information to plot road improvement programs, traffic light analysis, and police patrol routes and presence to make positive change. By correlating and analyzing data, citizens and government officials can learn where to focus their effort and gain new insights into how to solve these and other problems. It’s not necessarily about gathering vast quantities of data but about correlating data you already have or that exists in varied forms that in the past would have been difficult or impossible to compare and analyzing this new combination of data to find fresh solutions.  In today’s data-driven world, “reporting” is no longer enough.  Governments, like the private sector, are making the leap towards analysis using the tools and techniques embodied in big data concepts.Obesity map. For data, see http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

Consider another example where the location of fast-food restaurants can be plotted against another public data-set such as childhood obesity rates in the inner city.  An agency focused on making positive change for children could use that data to target specific sections of the city, county. state, or nation to focus on creating additional nutrition and healthy eating campaigns for higher-risk areas based on the data.  Think this is too far-fetched? GovDelivery can actually help in efforts like this.

Like all game-changing concepts “Big Data” is both hype and reality.  As a business-focused technology professional, I am encouraged that big data is becoming a widely discussed topic, especially in the public sector.  For the first time cheap storage, computers, and new technologies and techniques are intersecting to allow data-driven analysis of public sector efficacy.  As these techniques are widely adopted in the public sector you will see more efficient decision making, increased openness with citizens and stakeholders, and a leaner, more efficient government.  I think that is more than just hype!

In the meantime, if you’re a government techie, think about what’s most important to your constituents and how distilling big data can help you meet those needs. I’d like to hear about any concerns you might have and if you’ve thought about how “big data distilled” might help you find solutions.

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How to Reach 400% More Audience

February 11th, 2013 | Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery in E-Government | Email Communication | Government 2.0 | Government Success Stories | State Government - (1 Comments)

Michigan_DNR_logo

This post was revised to include updated information on the webinar.

As a government communications professional, being able to reach your stakeholders is possibly the most important part of executing your responsibilities. If you need to send out communications to a specific group of people, being able to reach them is critical. It doesn’t matter what how well-written your communications are if they aren’t read.

So how do you increase your reach? Some recent posts can give you a tip or two: Let it snow! and Are you sitting on a pot of gold? But why not hear directly from a government agency that increased its outreach by 400%, growing their digital communication subscriber list from under 240,000 stakeholders to nearly 1 million.

Tomorrow, Christine Schwerin, Marketing Account Manager for the Michigan State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) sat down with us and offered up best practices, lessons learned, and tips on how to increase your communications reach. View the webinar recording on our website.

Still, for many, outreach is just the beginning. Engagement and customer satisfaction is often the elusive “true” goal. In reality, you’re competing with other communications (from businesses and friends and family). How do you increase engagement and customer satisfaction despite all the other things competing for your audience’s attention? You have to deliver information that is pertinent and resonates with your stakeholders. To that end, Christine is going to share how their communications strategy and execution has led to a 95% satisfaction rate with the DNR’s digital communications.

Webinar details

Topic: Best practices & successes from Michigan Department of Natural Resources

Duration: 1 hour

View the webinar online now.

 

 

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How to Get Citizens to Dig Each Other Out After a Snow Storm

February 8th, 2013 | Posted by Joseph Porcelli for GovDelivery in Community Management/Engagement | Current Affairs | Government 2.0 | Social Media - (0 Comments)

On December 26, 2010, a #snowpocalypse dumped a ton of snow in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. As a result of the storm, something very cool happened in Newark. Mayor Booker’s (@CoryBooker) constituents began tweeting requests for help with shoveling at their homes. He responded by taking action, and surprised many when he began digging people out. What was even cooler was the fact that others started showing up at the requested addresses to help him. Reading this story gave me an idea.

I wondered if I could coordinate a crew of my own neighbors to go out and shovel others in need. I also wanted to solve the bottleneck Mayor Booker created by having to physically be at every location that needed to be shoveled out. Consequently, in 2010, I launched the first pilot of what is now called #SnowCrew in Boston. It was successful in getting both shoveling requests and volunteers, but the process was directly dependent on me handling the requests and directing crews to locations. I was proud but not satisfied.

I wanted to see if I could create a system that did not require the intense facilitation required to plot shoveling requests and coordinate volunteer teams. It turned out that this could be accomplished using SeeClickFix.com, which was implemented in 2011. It worked and required much less coordination. I still needed to work on getting the word out and provide support to those who could not plot their own needs, but it took me about 80% less time.

Fast forward to present day. Beginning this morning, Boston is expecting a “historic blizzard” with up to 3 feet of snow.  Yesterday I re-activated #SnowCrew and already elderly, disabled, and sick neighbors have begun posting their shoveling assistance requests.

Here’s how it works:

Neighbors who need shoveling assistance can go to the website NeighborsForNeighbors.org (a social network for Bostonians that I founded) and click on the page entitled SnowCrew. Neighbors can add assistance requests, notifying nearby users on SeeClickFix that a neighbor needs help. I also tweet out new requests using the hashtag #snowcrew. It works, and it’s awesome!

snowcrew

While we’ve been able to prove this works on the neighborhood level, this storm (called #NEMO) will provide an opportunity to see what can happen at the city level. Wish me luck.

I hope my post sparks your interest and expands what you think is possible using technology that is readily available to any organization or citizen.

What problems do you envision that could be solved utilizing this kind of technology to empower citizens in partnership with government?

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Taking an Entrepreneurial Jump on the Cloud

February 6th, 2013 | Posted by GovDelivery in Cloud Computing | Current Affairs | E-Government | Government 2.0 | Tech - (2 Comments)

By Lance Horne, General Manager, GovDelivery Federal Team

entrepreneur definitionHas anyone ever encouraged you to act more like an entrepreneur? If you’ve been given well-meaning advice about being more nimble and agile in your federal agency, then you probably know what I’m talking about. The Merriam Webster definition of entrepreneur is “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.” And while most entrepreneurs have a clear vision of what they want to accomplish, they may not have all the core skills to achieve their goals.

Within government, you are mission-driven. That means that you’re placed in a position to perform a vitally needed service to the American public, whether you work in the Department of Defense or the Federal Emergency Management Agency. I think we can all agree that your ability to reach the right audience, measure your efforts and provide a forum for citizens to consume and respond to information is vital to your agency’s success. Like an entrepreneur, it’s understandable that agencies might not have the time – or the expertise – to figure out how to manage every aspect of their organization or service, such as on-premise technology that facilitates and manages government-to-citizen (G2C) communications.

With the mandate to do more with less continuing into the foreseeable future, your agency might not have the bandwidth to set up appropriate systems for outreach and communication. But that’s where an entrepreneurial spirit can be used to your advantage. You may be relying on a variety of disparate systems that are daisy-chained together to reach citizens. Or, you may simply lack appropriate funding for a complete system overhaul. But you have an entrepreneurial option that can help – cloud computing.

Cloud

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines cloud computing as a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.

Leveraging industry providers with cloud computing capabilities that have the capacity to effectively reach millions of recipients can be a better, more cost-effective approach. Cloud services help you achieve greater efficiencies much more quickly than trying to piecemeal technology together on your own. And instead of lengthy implementation cycles, cloud-based solutions help you implement a better solution in days or weeks rather than months or years

Further, cloud computing isn’t merely an option any more. The Office of Management and Budget issued a “cloud first” policy nearly two years ago to federal agencies and departments. This policy was put together to achieve operational efficiencies by adopting “light” technology and shared services. Many agencies have used email-as-a-service as the entry point for cloud computing. But they could do so much more. For example, look at how the General Services Administration (GSA) has dramatically expanded outreach through an aggressive roll-out of cloud-based enterprise digital communication platform.

One of GSA’s first moves into the cloud was its implementation of a citizen-centric email update service in February 2006 to enhance citizen access to government information.  The agency’s existing “one size fits all” newsletter was replaced with a service that offered the public updates on over 140 specific topics.

From 2006 to 2010, the agency’s reach expanded from an active base of less than 50,000 to over 260,000 – a total increase of more than 500 percent. Even more notable, the amount of direct communication with the public increased from under 250,000 to over 1.4 million digital touches per month.

Let’s face it – the prospect of doing this on your own is daunting. And that takes me full circle to functioning like an entrepreneur, which really means focusing on what you know best: taking care of citizen needs. I encourage you to jump on the cloud and leave the G2C heavy lifting – a more cost-effective approach – to industry experts.

I’d like to hear about your experiences with cloud computing. Where have you had success? What have you found challenging?

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Rethinking The Typical Office Of Public Affairs

February 4th, 2013 | Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery in Compelling Content | Current Affairs | Government 2.0 - (0 Comments)

Dannielle Blumenthal, Communications Director, Bureau for Management at USAID recently posted this entry to GovLoop:

Download from Slideshare here, or see below. It’s pretty self-explanatory, given my general approach to communications, but please ask me any questions you might have. Obviously the main difference is the word “engagement” – it’s all about the interaction. – Dannielle Blumenthal

Rethink Public Affairs

If you look at the post on GovLoop, Danielle states in the comments: “The point is to de-emphasize the public relations function and amplify the information provision function. Also the broader goal is interagency cooperation and collaboration where possible.” I think this is key to understanding her vision for a “revised” public affairs office — one focused not just on providing information but on ensuring that the public or an agency’s stakeholders are engaging with that information. That engagement is what drives real value for the “consumer” (literally, the person consuming that information) and public sector organizations (which are focused on driving mission results.)

What do you think? Leave a comment, and we’ll share with Dannielle!

 

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Serious Content Can Be Shareable (and Fun!)

February 1st, 2013 | Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery in Compelling Content | Government 2.0 - (0 Comments)

Many government agencies are taking advantage of online video platforms as another tool in a multichannel digital arsenal. The official USA.gov YouTube channel has been around since 2007, and now features links to other departments and agencies ranging from the Library of Congress to FEMA. Many organizations start by offering pre-existing video content online, but communicators looking to produce engaging video content that energizes citizens on social media will need to be more creative.

NASA recently got inventive with two “cheesy” videos parodying the viral “Gangnam Style” and lip-syncing to The Script’s “Hall of Fame”. Between the two funny clips, the organization attracted over 4 million page views.

While parody videos are a fun way to play on relevant pop culture topics and references, they are admittedly not always the best way to approach more serious content. However, government organizations can still take thought-provoking topics and more in-depth content while creating engaging videos.

A great example of this is Delta’s recent winning formula of putting a fresh, fun spin on important in-flight content that is often ignored. Delta’s new safety videos show how a highly regulated industry can captivate people’s attention by poking fun at itself while still being informative. The in-flight videos first went viral in 2008 when the company “broke the mold” with humorous elements narrated by a beautiful spokesperson, “Deltalina” and garnered nearly 3 million views.Deltalina

Four years later, passengers were bored again, and in December Delta released new videos that include absurd elements without compromising the mandated safety script. Delta released the videos hoping they’d go viral to maximize the ability to start a conversation and not just distribute required information. The company purposely includes new and unexpected elements to keep people interested and having fun during otherwise monotonous information.

Delta has hit on a winning formula to put a fresh, fun spin on mandated content that is often ignored and get people to pay attention to something important. Organizations in the public sector that want to share important information in a way that can be entertaining can model after Delta’s approach and create video content that is both engaging, informative, and most importantly, effective.

 

The People You Need in Your Community

January 30th, 2013 | Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery in Community Management/Engagement | E-Government | Government 2.0 - (0 Comments)

Something like this has probably happened to you in the past: On a whim, you’ve voiced a vague desire to start a business or perhaps go back to school or maybe even learn to speak Spanish.

And then what happens? Nothing.

Nothing happens because you don’t follow through on these fleeting thoughts. They fall into the category of “wouldn’t it be nice” but they represent nothing more than idle daydreams. Because you’re not really passionate about any of those plans, they simply drift into sight for a moment and then poof, out of existence when your attention turns to something more pressing or interesting.

There’s a lesson here that translates into a broader maxim that applies to any organization: It’s not enough to simply state a goal or kickoff a project, and cross your fingers and hope your team somehow accomplishes it.

Instead, you need to ensure that you or someone on your team has the passion, the persistence and the proper tools that translates into success.

A recent post on GovLoop, by Steve Radick, attacked this idea from a slightly different vantage point. The post, “Start Your Community with Role Models, Not Influencers,” posited the idea that in building a community of individuals with a common interest or goal, the single most effective way to ensure that that group thrives is to make sure it contains active and engaged people who are passionate about the community’s existence.

passionate people

In many cases, these “role models” may not necessarily be influential or powerful people, but they feel a personal connection to a community or a goal and want to see it succeed.

The post also makes the point that measuring the impact of a community often comes down to a simple numbers game (i.e. how big is your community?) that doesn’t really reflect how robust or engaged any given group is. (Think of a Facebook page that has tens of thousands of “likes,” for instance, but where no one actually posts on the wall. On paper, the numbers for this community look good, but the group isn’t really engaged in a larger sense.)

What does this idea of an active, engaged community look like in practice? Perhaps it means that the group members interact with each other in an observable, measurable way by participating in surveys or polls. Or maybe the group shows its passion by attending events that focus on some aspect of the group’s interests. Or it might even be something as simple as a blog feed for the group that is updated regularly and often commented on by users.

In any group setting, passionate people lead by example. They are the ones driving a dialogue between group members and starting spirited and thoughtful idea exchanges. These passionate participants help others understand what the group stands for, provide evidence of how the group can meet its collective goals, and by their actions, show others how people should behave within its environment.

From a government agency’s standpoint, there may be a goal within your organization of “improving interaction with the public” or to “improve inter-agency information exchange” through group collaboration. Or perhaps your organization simply wants to strengthen the relationship between employees and outside stakeholders by giving them a common forum in which to interact. Whatever your situation, your stated goal includes creating a community where one or more groups can interact, share and actively exchange information between themselves.

However, to change this goal from a simple preference to active practice, you need to find a way to create engagement among community members. That means tapping into the power of passionate participants, who could come from anywhere in your ranks. These are the people who will model constructive behavior, and who will help ensure that collaboration and dialogue with the group is maintained and implemented on a daily basis.

A number of tools exist that can help you drive this sense of community and engagement in an organization, including our GovDelivery Collaborative Community Management (CCM) tool. This flexible, robust community-building solution lets you create collaborative environments where users can share information in a virtual space, and interact with each other in an active way. But ours is just one tool. There are many out there. By marrying an organizational goal with passionate users and robust tools, you can ensure a community both forms and thrives.

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Let it snow! Inclement weather drives engagement with the public

January 28th, 2013 | Posted by GovDelivery in Analytics/Data | Email Communication | UK Government - (1 Comments)

By Kathy Kyle, Digital Communications Consultant, GovDelivery UK

The whole of the United Kingdom experienced a week of widespread travel disruptions and school closures due to unusually inclement weather.  The extended forecast promises additional wintry, blizzard-like conditions – with as much as seven inches of snow, rain and ice over the next week. One of the worst incidents reported was last Wednesday, when 30 people were forced to spend the night in a shelter after becoming stranded when the A39 between Bridgwater and Williton in Somerset became impassable.

More than ever, it is critical that government agencies at the national and local level efficiently and effectively alert local residents about floods, school closures, and road and mass transit disruptions.

At GovDelivery, we are finding that the snow has had a tremendous impact on the uptake of subscribers to government services and information, with increases in local authority subscriptions topping 3900% this past week. In one day, West Sussex received 1,447 new subscribers interested in receiving alerts. As we expected, there was an upward trend in subscriptions to the Highways Agency (HA) and the Met Office, with increases in alert subscribers of up to 180%.

West Sussex County Council website

More compelling than the expected increase in subscribers to weather and transit-related services was the surge in citizens subscribing to central government organisations, whose missions are completely unrelated to the impact of extreme weather. For instance, the National Audit Office (NAO) experienced a 16% increase new subscribers over the latest snowy three-day period, and the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) saw a 114% increase over the course of the same week.

This demonstrates the power of the GovDelivery Network, a bi-directional relationship formed between government organisations that use our integrated, seamless digital communications platform. Visitors have the opportunity to opt-in to alerts regarding a variety of government services. This cross-promotion of government services drives subscriptions, helping organisations reach dramatically more people, especially those who may have never known about or thought to search for a specific government topic.

Derbyshire County Council, who is using GovDelivery to reach more residents regarding school closures, experienced an increase of 956 subscribers in one day. Other councils – Sheffield, Herefordshire, and Crawley Borough – all experienced increases between 575% and 752%, with the majority of traffic to their websites coming from HA, the Met Office, and Department of Health.

With nearly 1.5 million subscribers in the UK alone (41 million worldwide), the GovDelivery Network not only drives engagement, but connects citizens to potentially life-saving information in an efficient, effective way through a simple, opt-in subscription process.

With pending severe weather across the country, it is more important than ever to leverage the GovDelivery ecosystem to maximise direct connections with citizens.

Learn more about how central government and local authorities are reaching more people.

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Global leaders tweet towards a more open world?

January 23rd, 2013 | Posted by Mary Yang for GovDelivery in Compelling Content | E-Government | Federal Government | Government 2.0 | Social Media - (0 Comments)

By John Simpson, Business Consultant, GovDelivery Federal

Just after the new year, the Washington Post advertised a recent study showing that an increasing amount of world leaders are taking to Twitter to increase their reach to the public. While this new report from the Digital Policy Council does show a significant upward trend in the number of leaders that are leveraging Twitter, a 75% increase from 2011, the more revealing graph is the one below that highlights which country’s heads of state have the largest amount of followers and supposedly the larger trend towards open government.

Map: Heads of State on Twitter

The Washington Post continues that “the numbers sound like a big win both for Twitter and for open government, which have gone hand-in-hand since even before the Arab Spring uprisings popularized social media as a form of civic participation in 2010.”

participation medalWhile it is undeniable that Twitter holds enormous outreach potential to a global population that is only increasing its use of social media tools, the assumption that “more leaders tweeting equals a more open society” is a misguided notion. Simply because a member of a leader’s staff maintains a regular presence on Twitter does not mean that anything being communicated is new or the government is becoming increasingly transparent. Having a large amount of followers does not automatically mean that a government is lending itself more to the idea of an active dialogue with its citizens. Without proactive engagement and real participation in public discussions, social media simply becomes an avenue for leaders to spam their followers. It is also not much of an accomplishment to tout a large base of followers over other global leaders when your country already has a large, social media savvy citizenry.military connection mobile

Many organizations that leverage social media, both within and outside of the government, use these tools as simply a device for re-purposing the same, old information. Having a bare bones social media policy does not mean an organization can boast about being more open to the public. Tools like Twitter and Facebook were not conceived as a one-to-many tool, but as a means to connect people across the world and discuss issues relevant to them. Whether it’s talking about your cousin’s ugly baby photos or the organization of a protest against a tyrant, Twitter is about proactive engagement and conversations. A steady and sizable increase in global leaders communicating to their population through social media is a positive trend, but progress cannot stop there. A country’s leader having a large following online doesn’t mean that the country itself is moving towards a policy of open government. It’s what a leader does with his or her social media megaphone that matters.

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Reach Out and Touch Someone

January 21st, 2013 | Posted by GovDelivery in Community Management/Engagement | Federal Government | Government 2.0 - (2 Comments)

By Lance Horne, General Manager, GovDelivery Federal

reach out and touch someone

More than 30 years ago, an ad agency came up with a tagline to soften AT&T’s image and position the company as an indispensable element of everyday American life: “Reach out and touch someone.”  After spending the last 15-plus years working within the public sector in a variety of roles, I’ve formed some strong opinions about how agencies can leverage technology to communicate more effectively with citizens. I’ve also seen how more effective government-to-citizen (G2C) communications can boost an agency’s image and position it as an essential part of citizens’ lives, much like AT&T managed to do with its “Reach out” campaign. Over the next few weeks I’ll share some of my thinking on this, starting with today’s post that focuses on G2C outreach and communication.

Government agencies have come a long way over the years in jumping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon – more are using web sites, Facebook and a variety of other social media channels to try to facilitate communications with citizens. But one area that’s still a quandary is how to get better at G2C communications, meaning ensuring that targeted information reaches the right audience, measuring the impact of communication efforts, and providing a conduit for citizens to not just consume information, but to react and respond to it. Many government agencies still rely on the more traditional forms of communication to get information to targeted groups of citizens, including advertising, print media, and channels that rely on physical delivery services.

Government agencies, much like industry entities, are most effective when efforts are focused on meeting the core mission. Things like defending our country, coordinating the logistics involved in keeping people fed and safe after a natural disaster such as Hurricane Sandy, and maintaining vital services are just a few of the areas where government focus is critical. It’s understandable that agencies might not have the time – or the expertise – to figure out how to more effectively reach out and touch citizens with vital communications. Clearly, leveraging industry providers with innovative and efficient technological offerings that have the capacity to effectively reach millions of recipients is a better approach.

Anyone who works within government realizes that you’re always going to be asked to do more with less. It’s been a general mandate for the past several years and isn’t going away anytime soon. So what do you do to boost G2C communications? One way is to develop a subscriber base and to immediately adopt subscribers from agencies with interests similar to your own. Working with the right industry G2C partner is something that agencies can do right off the bat to boost their profile and reach out and engage constituents more effectively.

If part of your overall mission is to have better relationships with citizens, then having a process in place for good G2C communications can help you accomplish that. And in the words of the AT&T tagline, you’ll be better able to reach out and touch someone.

Watch for more of my thoughts in coming weeks on topics such as cloud computing, improving communications with returning military and their families, and mining big information and ideas using big data technologies. In the meantime, I’d like to hear your thoughts on G2C communications. What challenges are you having in this area? What successes?

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