On invitation by Terrapinn I went to Digital ID Australia 2011 as international keynote speaker on citizen participation 2.0. The conference was held in the Sydney Hilton Hotel as part of the annual Cards & Payments Australasia Conference. The audience consisted mainly of delegates from Australian federal and state government. On the exhibition many businesses showed state of the art software applications and hardware solutions for identity management and secure transactions. Like Terrapinn’s conference last year in Melbourne, this one again was well organized by Charles King and Tiffany Yee.

As the former director of the Dutch Citizenlink program, I was asked to look at the issue of ID management from a citizen’s perspective, including the possibilities and challenges of social media. Under the title “Public Sector Innovation: from eGovernment to iGovernance” I made a case for a new view on citizen participation. Citizen participation 2.0 is not just something nice to do (to please your voters, or to keep them quiet), but something really necessary for organizational survival or political legitimacy.

In recent years we have seen that the basics of organization and collaboration are changing. Organizational and institutional boundaries disappear. Two ICT trends illustrate this development: cloudcomputing and crowdsourcing. Cloud computing means that data is stored outside an organization, information shared with chain partners, software leased in stead of bought, and so on. Crowd sourcing means that the expertise needed to carry out the organization’s tasks can also be found outside, i.e. by involving customers, stakeholders or citizens.

These trends do have a wider scope and impact outside the realm of ICT. Instead constructing your own office building, one can rent limited working space and promote teleworking. Instead of hiring permanent staff, one can temporarily contract self empoyed people. All of this has been done before, but it’s happening on a much wider scale. Besides, these are not just options, but compelling innovations that call for renewal of existing procedures.

It forces strategic management to reconsider the model of corporate governance, both in the private and public sector. Quoting a recent report by the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy, we need a paradigm shift from eGovernment to iGovernment, i.e. from building of electronic applications to management of information flows that are the result of the tremendous accumulation and distribution of data.

This fresh look on governance needed has already been incorporated in the Citizenlink approach to transform government, which consists of 3 steps: standardization of quality requirements, measurement of customer satisfaction and stimulation of citizen engagement. It calls for much more collaboration than usually practiced.

Interestingly identity management is a key issue in this respect. With the growth of digital services, also the number of ID’s increase. Every service provider wants you to enroll and register in their way. You’re advised not to use the same password, to change it regularly, not to write it down, so one tends to forget them. Someone who is active on the internet is likely to have several dozens of ID’s, be it user names, passwords, pin codes. It’s almost impossible to remember all of these.

I could illustrate my predicament by showing my 10 page list of ID’s that I updated when coming down to this conference. Whereas the private sector is a mess, considering also the abundance of hardware keys or proliferation of tokens, the public sector does much better. The Netherlands’ government has solved this by introducing one DigID for the whole of the public sector. It consists of one single username and password for every citizen to be used with any government body, combined with a unique citizen number. For convenience’s sake this is a desirable situation, however privacy might be at stake without sufficient countervailing power.

In any system the citizen is the weakest link, therefore should not be the missing link. On order to guarantee trust, we should redesign services in a way that ordinary people can responsible by being aware of the consequences of their behaviour. Identity management should be simplified, aimed at promoting single sign on, giving people choice, allowing anonymous access, being transparent, reduce data retention, and so on. iGovernance should deal with these fundamental issues.

Brian Hay of Queensland Police gave a frightening overview of global organized crime in the area identity fraud and pivacy theft. Since fighting identity crime is seen as a money problem in stead of a persons problem, prevention does not get serious attention. Although he stressed the need for sufficient powers, his view confirms my case for citizen involvement.

Malcolm Crompton, the former Australian Privacy Commissioner, spoke about Privacy by Design.Technology and law alone cannot solve the problem. He is an advocate of structures that limit information to be collected and connected. He also wants to dispense with credentials and with enrollment, and explore the possibilities of using accumulated reputation. Governance should deal with transparency, accountability and complaints mechanisms.

James Kelaher, who chaired the Australian government’s Access Card Taskforce (intended to replace some 12 different citizen entitlement systems with a single e-service solution, which however didn’t come about) also stressed the importance of this approach. Privacy should be built in, not on applications

The other international speaker, Alexander Nouak from the German Fraunhofer Institute, explained the conditions under which biometrics can be an effective remedy for identity fraud.

Patrick Mc Cormick of the Department of Justice gave an update of current web 2.0 initiatives in Victoria, and also dealt with need for having sound identity systems and user friendly and secure ways that support citizen behaviour using social media. See the interesting YouTube video for the staff of the department about the Social Media Policy.

During both panel discussions a difference of opinion became manifest. On the one hand are those who stress the necessity of large powers to prevent crime or fight abuse, especially in immigration and the police. They prove themselves right by citing examples of crime solved or illegal immigration prevented. In order to stop the bad ones, the good ones may heave to suffer.

On the other hand are those who doubt whether increasing powers will actually meet expectations. Moreover the level of security we try to reach has its price. We should not focus on technology and access only, but explore other possibilities to generate trust. As there is no reconciliation between these views yet, this debate will probably continue for a while. Actually I didn’t get a satisfactory answer to my final question: If my password or chip card is stolen, I’m issued a new one. What is being done in case my fingerprints get stolen … do I get new fingers?

On the way back I had a stopover in Kuala Lumper for talks with Malaysian delegates I met on eGovernment conferences last year in Singapore. I also took the opportunity to visit the Petronas Twin Towers. These impressive buildings are still proudly standing, and apparently no fundamentalist group is planning to take these down. The present “social media” uprising in the Islamic world probably is another, fare more promising road to a better life for people in these countries than the terrorist road taken in 2001 with destroying the Manhattan Twin Towers.

The quality of public services not only depends on the product itself, but very much also on the information about it. Recently we saw that the Dutch railways had trouble running trains in bad weather. Compared to other countries we didn’t perform that bad. But the biggest annoyance was lack of up to date travel information. The same problem arose again in the chemical plant fire at Moerdijk last week. The fire brigade did a good job, but the information about pollution was grossly inadequate. Interested parties had to rely on the old media, which in the absence of real information widely speculated about to risks. Unfortunately the national website www.crisis.nl was off line because of to much traffic. While a Twitter avalanche was running on the hashtag #Moerdijk, public authorities were manifestly absent.

How different is the situation in Australia, where during disasters people get online information from government via Facebook and Twitter. The city of Brisbane uses social media for alerts and notifications during the present floods. One can also download topical maps of the flooded area. The police of the State of Queensland maintains a Twitter stream on roadblocks, victims, volunteer calls, etc. The hashtag #thebigwet combines the information of many Twitter users. Other organizations anticipate this, for example, providers of temporary shelter for those in need. During the bush fires in the State of Victoria late last year, the same thing happened.

All of those government departments maintain websites for ordinary services. But social networking sites can be of extra help during crisis situations. First of all they provide interaction, not only transmitting but also receiving information. Feedback is specifically needed to complete data about victims. Furthermore, citizens do not need to address government for information, but they get right away. And not only in the place where they dwell, but in a form appropriate to the situation, i.e. mobile. When evacuation is imminent, people are probably not waiting behind a computer, but checking their cell phone.

Public sector information in the Netherlands is rather based on traditional digital communication channels. Although our country ranks top of the list in broadband penetration, internet usage and time devoted to social networking, the public sector is reluctant to embrace social media. With the exception of a number of good examples, structural use  is still limited. One of our strengths, cooperation between different government departments in one national portal for crisis information, turns into its opposite when its offline when needed most. Now disasters like the fires and floods in Australia are in general more violent, but the Netherlands can learn from clever use of social media elsewhere. Not only because social media are a hype, but because they have added value as noted above. It is high time that we adapt our contingency planning to the new opportunities. If not, then the next disaster will be the communication crisis itself.

Matt Poelmans visited Australia several times over the past two years as a keynote speaker at eGovernment conferences

Dat de kwaliteit van publieke dienstverlening niet alleen afhangt van het product zelf, maar ook van informatievoorziening erover is niets nieuws. Onlangs zagen we dat bij de spoorwegen, die moeite hadden om de treinen bij slecht weer te laten rijden. Maar de grootste ergernis was het gebrek aan actuele reizigersinformatie. Hetzelfde probleem doet zich opnieuw voor bij de rampenbestrijding. De brand bij Moerdijk is vermoedelijk goed bestreden en de gevaren vallen wellicht mee, maar de informatie schiet schromelijk te kort. Belanghebbenden waren aangewezen op de oude media, die er bij gebrek aan echte informatie driftig op los speculeerden. De website www.crisis.nl was op het moment dat het nodig was onbereikbaar wegens overbelasting. Terwijl een Twitter lawine gaande was rond de hashtag #Moerdijk, ontbrak de overheid op sociale media.

Hoe anders in Australië, waar burgers bij rampen online actuele informatie van de overheid ontvangen via Facebook en Twitter. Neem bijvoorbeeld de stad Brisbane die bij de grote overstromingen van dit moment via sociale media waarschuwingen en mededelingen verspreidt. Ook zijn er actuele kaarten te downloaden. De politie van de staat Queensland onderhoudt een Twitterstream over wegblokkades, slachtoffers, vrijwilligersoproepen, enz. Met de hashtag #thebigwet kan de informatie van de vele twitteraars worden gecombineerd. Andere hulpverleners spelen daarop in, bijvoorbeeld de aanbieders van tijdelijke onderdak voor degenen die hun huis uit moeten. Bij de grote bosbranden die de staat Victoria eind vorig jaar troffen gebeurde hetzelfde.

Al deze overheidsdiensten hebben natuurlijk hun gewone websites voor normaal gebruik. Maar sociale netwerksites kunnen meer. Om te beginnen is dat tweerichtingsverkeer: niet alleen zenden maar ook ontvangen. Feedback is ook nodig om de gegevens te completeren. Verder hoeven de burgers niet naar de overheid toe te komen voor informatie, die overheid brengt die informatie naar hen toe. En niet alleen op de plaats waar ze vertoeven, maar ook in een vorm die past bij de situatie, d.w.z. mobiel. Bij dreigende evacuatie zit men niet achter een computer, maar de meeste mensen zullen wel hun mobiele telefoon bij zich hebben.

De informatievoorziening in Nederland is nogal traditioneel ingericht en gebaseerd op oude communicatiekanalen. Hoewel de computerdichtheid in ons land maximaal is en het gebruik van sociale netwerken hoog scoort, passen overheden de sociale media slechts mondjesmaat toe. Met uitzondering van een aantal goede voorbeelden, is structureel gebruik beperkt. Een sterk punt als samenwerking tussen verschillende overheidsdiensten in één internet loket verkeert in zijn tegendeel als dat loket zwijgt of uit de lucht is. Nu zijn de rampen als bosbranden en overstromingen in Australië in het algemeen wel heftiger, maar Nederland kan een voorbeeld nemen aan slim gebruik van sociale media. Niet omdat die hip zijn, maar omdat ze meerwaarde hebben zoals hierboven aangestipt. Het wordt hoog tijd dat we onze rampenplannen aanpassen aan de nieuwe mogelijkheden. Zo niet, dan is de volgende ramp de communicatiecrisis zelf.

Matt Poelmans bezocht Australië de afgelopen twee jaar diverse malen als key note spreker op eOverheid conferenties

For the third time in less than a year I visited Australia as an international key note speaker. This time on invitation by Terrapin for Smart Government Australia 2010, held in Melbourne 14-15 September 2010.

Being invited “Down Under” to talk about eGovernment actually is an honor, since Australia is widely acclaimed to be in the forefront of Gov 2.0 development. It was indeed stimulating to have Nicholas Gruen, who headed Australia’s the Gov 2.0 Taskforce, as a conference chair. In his opening speech he stressed the importance of open networks that grow without access fee. The increase in public value is far greater than the profits private the companies who run these gain (Google’s “crumbs”). As far as platforms are concerned, in his view government should not act as a wholesaler but as a retailer. By providing open data, government can trigger applications. He gave examples of predicting crime, social security fraud, identifying peer schools. In case some of these infringe privacy, the role of government could be building integrity by creating public private partnerships. Gruen urged civil servants to blog and tweet, however of those present only a minority did. He reminded them that only by participating in social networks, you’ll get response. Being an advocate for equity of access, he conceded that the Digital Divide might not go away, and could resurface as the Participation Partition.

The parallell sessions showcased several projects and developments in the Australian public sector. John Wadeson of Centrelink, the Australian Government Agency that delivers payments and services for a number of departments, explained the customer strategy. At present social media tools are not much used, e-forms take the load of communication. However, log ins on websites are now far higher than phone calls.

Patrick McCormick of Victoria’s Justice Department talked about their Digital Engagement programme. Yammer is used for sharing of information, social media for identifying trends and impact. In fighting the recent bush fires, twitter, widgets and geospatial apps for fire protection helped to manage information ans support volunteers in the field. The @VictoriaPolice is an active user of social media tools.

The conference took place in Melbourne, capital of the state of Victoria. Maria Katsonis of the Department of the Premier explained their new Gov2.0 Action Plan. Aim is to shift from the citizen as a spectator to the citizen as a participant. It deals with 4 focus areas: Leadership, Participation, Transparency and Performance. Like in the federal action plan, much attention is given to releasing open data. Unlocking public sector information is seen as a way to improve services. A Public Competition called apps4nsw attracted quite a number of initiatives. One of the winners actually deals with evaluating school performance, an issue at present in The Netherlands.

Senator Kate Lundy who was speaking before me, outlined the plan for a National Broadband Network. Just the day before, the new minority Labor government was installed. The 2 independent MP’s who are necessary for the majority, got a commitment to secure fast internet for each Australian wherever he or she lives. She also stressed the choice for data availability, by default open. Government will facilitate the use of social networks, by choice of the citizen. Citizen centricity means that government should better cope with the 3 levels of jurisdiction. The Australian strategy to align eGovernment Policy and Public Sector Reform results in a strong combination.

The Dutch Citizenlink approach to foster citizen centricity was received favorably. It addresses in an integrated way quality requirements, satisfaction measurement and citizen engagement. The eCitizen Charter is the cornerstone of this approach. It is also used outside The Netherlands in the EU and has been recommended by UN and OECD. The state of Victoria “discovered” this charter already several years ago and published it. As far as Gov 2.0 is concerned, Citizenlink focusses on upgrading promising civic initiatives. An example is the existing Petitions website which was completely “2.0 restyled” and now services local petitions counters for municipalities. A national pilot WeEvaluate offers citizens an independent, easy and standardized way to comment on public services. The winner of the 2009 eParticipation Award ImproveMyNeighborhood (an extended version of FixMyStreet) provides feeds on complaints or suggestions by citizens in a way that municipalities can manage.

Australia being a continent rather than a country, is not as homogenous as a nation state. Compared to the Netherlands which has almost the same population but is much smaller in size, collaboration between levels of Australian government is less easy. The 8 states e.g. each have their own car registration, which means red tape when moving, even if is digitized. A presentation by the Electoral Commissioner of Victoria about e-voting showed that for an inhabitant of a city like Melbourne, there will be polling situations differing per level of government.

The presentations over the two days either dealt with back office reform or front office change. In Australia too, projects in the field of Government 1.0 and Government 2.0 seem somewhat disconnected. An exception was CIO Peter Nikoletatos of Curtin University, who presented a strategy for major organizational restructuring. In order to attract the Millennium Generation, who will be students in 5 years time, they are redesigning the administrative and the educational processes. As all consumer driven technologies (social media, mobile phones) are cloud based, cloud computing is not a choice but a fact.

So during the concluding panel discussion I stressed my point that the real challenge for the next few years will be to bridge the gap between Gov 1.0 and Gov 2.0. It is absolutely necessary for government to play an active role to accommodate input form social media into the back end processes of government. In order to prevent government in the cloud becoming government in the fog, leadership is inescapable. The Australian Open Government strategy rightly mentions this as the first of the four focus areas.

Australia is definitely in the lead as far as a Government 2.0 strategy is concerned. The Netherlands may have a lack of policy, but there is a lot of activity. Both countries face the challenge of implementing cross organisational collaboration. Because of its size, Australia may find it harder to reach consensus about implementation.

On invitation by FutureGovMagazine, I attended as an international guest speaker this conference held 26-27 July at the National Convention Centre in Canberra. The format was different from traditional conferences. Apart from three plenary speeches and two panel discussions, there where 12 round tables where delegates rotated every 40 minutes. The topics on the tables covered the whole range of technical and organizational matters in ICT and the public sector, from cloud computing to Gov2.0. I was asked to be international discussion leader for the table on Citizen Service Delivery. Participants were senior civil servants in Australian federal and state government.

Peter Harper, head of the Australian Bureau of Statistics gave the kick off with a strong plea for open government data, which means that these should be available, accessible and freely shared. Since the fixed cost of collecting the data is already paid for during the original process, the price of data depends on the marginal costs for distributing. In the internet age these are negligible. However, serious barriers do exist because data should be readable and understandable, and metadata has to be added. Moreover agencies that depend on selling data for their budget will experience a loss of revenue. Nevertheless there are sizeable economic and social benefits to be gained. It opens the way for pyramidisation, visploration and mashups of data.

The second plenary speaker was Nicholas Gruen, chairman of the Government 2.0 Taskforce, which presented last year a strategy that is widely acclaimed to be the world’s best. The basic assumption about open data is that you can’t imagine the difference between the reason for collecting data and the use that can be made of it. He gave examples of API’s developed on the basis of released data on public transport. The game changer is the idea that is behind the old suggestion box. For any organisation, the best minds are outside, so provide opportunities for engagement and feedback. This means that government should strictly act as a wholesaler of data, not as a retailer of information. As far as government blogging is concerned, the code of conduct for Australian civil servants advises that the focus should be on the area in between official and private conversation, i.e. professional views.

Ann Stewart, Australia’s CIO, whom I recently met at de WCIT2010 in Amsterdam, was the third speaker. Just last week the Australian government adopted the proposals of the taskforce and presented a Declaration of Open Government with three key principles: informing, engaging and participating. It urges agencies to develop an “action agenda” not only for themselves, but for collaboration with other agencies on common service areas and the Australian public. Public sector information (PSI) is central to public sector reform. A number of lead agencies are going to take responsibility for specific projects to overcome individual jurisdictions. When she asked the audience who was already involved in social media, just a small number of fingers were raised (including mine). Her reaction: civil servants should become “activists”.

My brief introduction at the round table sessions focussed on the 3-step Citizenlink approach for citizen centricity: standardising quality requirements, measuring customer satisfaction and promoting citizen engagement. Web 2.0 creates a whole new set of opportunities to practice this. The Netherlands and Australia having a population which is roughly comparable in numbers, but a surface that is certainly not in size (Australia being a continent rather than a country), creates a quite different environment. The general feeling of the Australian participants was that this makes collaboration between tiers of government harder to reach than in a relatively more compact society as the Netherlands. Just one example: Australia has 8 state car licence jurisdictions, a single federal licence plate is not foreseeable in the near future.

The panel on European Perspectives was composed of Austria’s CIO Reinhard Posch, Glyn Evans of the Birmingham City Council and myself. In reply to the question whether Europe, with the exception of UK, lags behind in PSI, I answered that it might look indeed as if less priority is given to open data. However that does not mean that nothing happens, on the contrary. First there is a long standing policy for creating basic registers in order to share government data. Unfortunately in their present form most are no reusable, for they don’t meet the requirements that Peter Harper stipulated. So that will take time. Not surprisingly many examples of reused data are in the field of public transport, parking reservations and the like, which are not the core business of government. But more importantly, whereas the Australian strategy seems to advocate releasing data and then “wait and see what happens”, in the Netherlands there is more focus on using the opportunities of Web 2.0 in the actual redesigning of public services. I gave examples of collecting data (e.g. feedback on public services), harmonising data (voting on decisions of city councils) and distributing data (performance and quality comparisons) to that end. So there might be a lack of policy, but there is a lot of activity.
The possibilities to create conditions for cross government collaboration differ in Australia and Europe. As a federal state, Australia has integration mechanisms which European Union lacks. On the other hand, European integration policy and law helps to set standards, such as the interoperability framewordk and the mandatory Service Directive.

The advantage of the conference’s format is a more personal conversation and interaction. At the same time it was challenging for the speakers to adapt their story to the different interest of 12 rotations. The groups of participants got to know one another so well that the second day I asked them to introduce a colleague in stead of themselves. It was a well organised event with high level participation, the sharing of knowledge and the awareness it created surely very helpful for Australian public sector reform.

Several of my fellow speakers I met on conferences before. During the speakers dinner I got to talk with Gerrit Bahlman, who was born in Rotterdam and emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 13. Presently he works as Director of Information Technology at the HongKong University. He and others are highly impressed by the rapid economic developments in the Asian and Pacific region, and at the same time wonder whether Europe and the US can adapt their societies in order to catch up.

Australia is due for general elections next August. There was quite some coverage in the press. But on television there was just one debate between the contenders for prime minister: Labour’s Julia Gillard and the Liberals’ Tony Abbott. Only journalists were present to ask questions, no audience. Quite different form the latest general elections in the Netherlands, with a preceding two week’s period of lively debates, daily polling and heavy use of social media.

Travel from Europe to Australia generally takes one and a half day. As there is no direct connection between Amsterdam and Canberra, the first leg in Europe is flying to Paris or London. As place of arrival in Australia one can choose any one of the larger cities: Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane. For a change a took the express train from Amsterdam to Frankfurt to board the plane to Singapore, with a connecting intercontinental flight to Brisbane. There I made a stopover to get rid of my jet lag and to visit the Great Barrier Reef. Was a very interesting trip by propeller plane and glass bottom boat, followed by snorkelling around a coral clay and swimming with turtles.

Matt Poelmans, July 30th

Invited by AustralianPublic Service Commissioner Lynelle Briggs, I attended the CAPAM (Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management) Conference “Citizens First” held at the NCC (National Convention Centre) in Canberra on 26-27 October 2009, and presented the Dutch Citizenlink programme for citizen engagement.

CAPAM 2009

Dutch Citizenlink Director Matt Poelmans presents e-Citizen Charter to Australian Public Service Commissoner Lynelle Briggs