The way we see it, the more people who are capable users of social media, the more amazing innovation we’re likely to see. That’s why we’ve teamed up with David Hood of Doing Something Good to offer regular social workshops in Melbourne, Sydney and beyond. David already has an excellent track record of social media success, running great workshops, and generally making a positive impact in the community.

We’re also thrilled to welcome Rebecca Frew to the team. Rebecca leads a suite of social media projects for the Department of Justice, including its Emergency Services Volunteer Engagement campaign, its Fire campaign and Play it Safe by the Water campaign (2012). She also brings a structured approach to educational design, ensuring the workshops deliver on defined learning objectives.

With our combined efforts, we’ve built an offering that goes beyond tips and tricks (though we’ve got those too!) to help you take a strategic approach to social media that is focused on results.

We’ve already got two workshops scheduled, with more to come. Click the links below for details.

Getting on Track for Success with Social Media

• Melbourne – October 12th & 19th
• Sydney – October 24th & 25th

Stay up to date with our latest offerings by following us on Twitter and Facebook, or by checking our workshops page.

Collabforge also offers tailored, private workshops for organisations, at your location or ours. To find out more, contact us or call us on 03 9663 7310.

A big part of this equation is open source software: free tools that make it easy for organisations of any size to get on board with innovative new approaches. Acquia is a company that supports organisations in adopting and maintaining open source software, and they have begun hosting a series of conferences and webinars to promote this exciting new way of doing business.

In their next webinar on September 25th (register here), they’ll be featuring two topics close to our heart:

Alberta Government: Speak. Share. Thrive. – Policy 2.0 Platform

The Alberta Department of Human Services has been tasked with developing the province’s first ever Social Policy Framework. In order to make the process as inclusive and collaborative as possible, they sought Collabforge’s help in developing a platform for online participation in the consultation process. The use of open source tools, driven by effective engagement strategy, has allowed them to build a robust and user-friendly platform. The underlying Drupal software gives them full control and a wide range of options as they continue to build new features and improve the user experience.

Pia Waugh: The role of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in Government

Pia Waugh is a community leader for open government. Having formerly worked in Australia for Senator Kate Lundy, Pia spearheaded the growth of the Australian ‘open government’ community by organising events such as GovHack, GovCamp and other events that bring together a diverse range of citizens who want to see government data made open for reuse.  Pia will be talking about why governments around the world are seriously considering widespread adoption of open source software, and why this is a real and valid option for Australia.

Acquia have also arranged three in-person viewing locations, for those who want to take the opportunity to meet others interested in these topics. Collabforge will be attending at the Melbourne location, and we hope to see you there!

Here are the details:

Register here: http://www.domorewithdrupal.com.au/webinar-registration

(Why register? So that we can track attendees to the locations below and forewarn the hosts!)

When?  Tuesday 25th September, 12pm to 1pm

What?  We’ve got two great presentations for you that we’ll keep to around 30 minutes.  We’ll take some questions at the end, and then give you some time to network and talk about the presentations with those around you.

Where? In order to allow you the opportunity to network with your peers, we’ve arranged for several locations for you to meet and watch the presentations together:

• Canberra: FaHCSIA, Tuggeranong Office Park, Soward Way (cnr Athllon Drive), Greenway
• Sydney: NHCCN, Level 19, 133 Castlereagh Street
• Melbourne: Department of Business and Innovation, Level 20, 80 Collins Street

If your city doesn’t yet have a location, and you are open to hosting your peers for this lunchtime webinar/networking, please contact christopher.harrop@acquia.com

Or, on the web

Alternatively, you can join from any PC or laptop.  We’ll be using Webex that unfortunately does require a browser plug-in.  You can test the plug-in ahead of time here: http://www.webex.com/test-meeting.html

Once you’ve got it working, join the webinar here:

https://acquiameetings.webex.com/acquiameetings/j.php?ED=198410662&UID=1111870652&RT=MTgjNTU%3D

If you prefer to use your telephone for audio, call 1800 804 786 with participant code: 803 643 9854

Q&A: In the interests of time, please send you questions to christopher.harrop@acquia.com.  Questions that arise during the webinar will be answered after the event.

Last year Collabforge started working with several catchment management authorities (CMAs) in Victoria to develop a more collaborative, transparent and efficient approach to developing their Regional Catchment Strategies.

CMAs “work to ensure land and water resources are protected and enhanced as well as improving the region’s social wellbeing, environmental quality and productive capacity in a sustainable manner.”

The CMA  Regional Catchment Strategies (RCS) will provide a high level guide for how the CMAs will manage one of our most valuable and increasingly scarce natural resource – water.

For these projects, our challenge was twofold: how can CMA staff and internal stakeholders develop strategies more collaboratively, and, how can they more collaboratively finalise policy with the public and the Victorian State government?

Two policy wikis have now launched to public consultation, and we welcome your input and participation:

WeConnect Goulburn Broken

JoinIn Corangamite

The rest of this post sets out the key pieces of the approach developed, and I believe, points to exciting opportunities for more holistic, systems-oriented approach to natural resource management and policy development.

1. Collaborative Policy, Wiki-Style

Making policy development more collaborative starts in-house.

A wiki is a simple website that enables users to modify its content, with permission controls. Using a wiki for policy-making eliminates document proliferation and revision nightmares. Instead of emailing around conflicting versions of a Microsoft Word document, there is a single source of truth, acting as a kind of “mecca”, attracting everyone involved in the policy creation process.

All changes are tracked in fine-grained detail, providing complete transparency of process. Linked “discussion pages” provide a place to talk about the content being developed, while not taking attention away from the content itself.

Imagine a single document floating in space, with people coming and going depending upon their needs. It also has the capability to “appear” or “disappear” on the Web, editable or not, depending upon permission settings. And finally, it provides access to a near unlimited number of editors, so long as they have a working web browser.

That’s policy, wiki-style.

2. Collaborative Consultation, Wiki-Style

By simply changing the permission scheme, the public (or any subset therein) can be granted the right to edit the wiki. This means the average (or above average) citizen can demonstrate their ideas in context, by actually editing the policy document directly. And there is no fear of losing the original version as it is safely archived in the revisions, easily reverted to at any time.

This is not to say that we advocate that the public have their way with the policy, generating their own version in parallel to government’s. To the contrary, we champion the approach of genuine collaborative drafting of the policy, on part of public and government planners throughout consultation:

1. A member of the public or a stakeholder makes a change to the strategy

2. A policy writer responds by revising, removing, or moving the contribution

3. This same policy writer briefly explains their actions to the original contributor

In this way, the policy is improved through the process while the public learns how their contribution will or won’t be addressed in the policy. And at the same time, the planners learn about the public’s interests in a grounded, applied context (streamlining the confusion of someone trying to explain their idea out of context).

Importantly, wikis are not intended to replace traditional consultation methods, but to augment them. And the process of discussing the adaptation of contributions cultivates deep appreciation on part of the public – they know they’ve been heard, and have been given the deepest opportunity to contribute.

To me, this is more than a novel means for consultation, it’s participatory democracy.

3. Cross-Organisation Collaboration

Another (and in my opinion possibly more significant) component to these projects, was the level of cross-agency collaboration that was and is continuing to be fostered. Since the platform used for both projects was open source (Drupal) the CMAs have in essence generated a shared, licence-free software asset.

This means that when one CMA makes a development to the software, it can be easily and near freely shared with the other. This also means that the barrier for participation of other CMAs to have their own wiki is significantly lowered – the hard work of designing and developing the platform being mostly done. (However, this is not to suggest that the hurdles involved in adopting new technologies and getting the fit right for a different organisation should be underestimated.)

This approach also sparked an agreement between the CMAs to freely and transparently share their knowledge and information throughout the process. This involved not just learnings and ideas for how their policy process, wikis and consultation might look, but actual strategy documents and software code.

In my experience of 50-odd collaborative innovation projects with government, I have never seen this happen.

Further, this sets up a future in which, through a common accessible format, these CMAs can share with each other the actual text and data of their strategies, with simple copy/paste commands.

This enables not only policy development efficiencies (less duplication and time spent writing those sections that every CMA will write) but it also enables automatic sharing of policy resources and collaboration between agencies on policies, without having to actually plan or manage this collaboration.

For example, say there is a set of common issues between any two CMAs (or any government agencies). By simply adapting your neighbour’s content to your own policy, you’re riding on the outcomes of their work. You of course contribute to the pool by developing your own subject-matter-specific content, which is likely relevant to other CMAs or agencies.

I have a vision of all ten CMAs eventually maintaining a network of policy wikis – providing a mosaic of aligned strategy that covers the entire catchment of Victoria. This would enable a shared pool of continuously improving content, and importantly, a shared pool of continuously more informed content developers. This community would of course include the valuable knowledge and insight that local citizens have to offer, but is as yet, largely untapped.

4. Outcomes

Here’s a quick summary of the outcomes this approach to collaborative wiki-style policy and consultation offers:

1. Increased policy harmonization across and within agencies

2. New modes for sourcing knowledge and insight

3. Greater reach in sourcing knowledge and insight (essentially global)

4. More transparent policy process

5. More genuine consultation processes and outcomes

6. More responsive and adaptive policy

7. More efficient policy development process, internally and externally

Finally, if you’re an Natural Resource Management expert with innovative new approaches to share, we hope you’ll consider making a contribution to one or both CMA wikis. You can make a self-contained contribution to the Library, or edit the RCS directly.

If you want to keep up on the latest developments, check out Nathaniel James’s Adventures in New Giving project:

The landscape of giving (aka the altruistic economy) is beginning to shift.  Not content with the traditional institutions of charity and philanthropy, people are experimenting with new approaches.  New Giving is characterized by new platforms and tools to aggregate project funding from distributed crowds, self-organized giving communities (sometimes called giving circles) coordinating, usually at the local level, to drive funds to smaller projects that are typically off the radar of traditional funders and investors, and a focus on building social capital by moving financial capital to important projects.  New Giving is civic participation.

Adventures in New Giving is about discovery, storytelling and community-building.

Nathaniel is looking for pledges to support his 90 day, 9 city tour of New Giving. He only has 5 days left.

Learn more and support the project.

Collabforge projects VPS Hub and the CFA FireReady smartphone application have been named finalists in the Government 2.0 category of the Excellence in eGovernment Awards 2011.

VPS Hub was created as a whole of Victorian government intranet platform for collaboration across 42,000+ members of the Victorian Public Service (VPS). It provides online tools for new ways of working and innovating across government. The Hub establishes and builds virtual networks and partnerships, overcoming the barriers and silo-effect of traditional government structures. Through tools such as communities of practice / interest, blogs and wikis, staff share data, information, ideas and knowledge. This easily accessed whole of Victorian Government resource helps maximise job performance. It also diffuses lessons learned from innovation projects. VPS Hub is a secure extranet for collaboration between government and external parties. Read More >>

In response to the Black Saturday disaster that claimed 173 lives, the Department of Justice engaged Collabforge to developed a free FireReady iPhone application. The app provides people with real-time information on fires and tips to be fire ready. The app encourages users to do a five–minute assessment to gauge their level of fire readiness. The app delivers real–time emergency information and fire safety advice directly from the Country Fire Authority (CFA). Read More >>

Collabforge project, wePlan Parks Victoria, was recently spotlighted by the Government 2.0 Action Plan activities.

wePlan Parks breaks new ground as the first instance where social media has been used to engage with the public in guiding the future of Victoria’s parks. It was inspired by the City of Melbourne’s Future of Melbourne wiki and by a desire to reach a wider audience in real time throughout the life cycle of developing a park management plan. Parks Victoria is using wePlan Parks to complement existing citizen engagement and public consultation approaches. Read More >>

Collabforge Director and founder, Dr. Mark Elliott, speaking recently at the United Nations Public Service Summit in Barcelona, Spain on Government 2.0 initiatives in Australia.

“Most people don’t think of Australia when asked about cutting edge examples of Web 2.0 in Government. But in fact, the U.S. and increasingly Europe are looking Down Under for case studies on how to increase citizen participation in government. There are just so many great initiatives to showcase. There’s the City of Melbourne’s Future Melbourne, Parks Victoria’s wePlan, the Gov 2.0 Taskforce activities, the Victorian Department of Justice’s innovative work, and, the collaborative activities by the Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. These are all considered ground-breaking by international standards” — Dr. Mark Elliott.

The U.N summit, focused on the intersection of public service with the U.N.’s Millennium Development goals, provided a perfect opportunity for Collabforge to showcase not only Australia’s leadership in the Gov 2.0 space, but to also influence activities on the global level. Recommendations will be developed based on the ideas presented and debated by each of the speakers. These will then inform future U.N. decisions on how to improve public administration institutions, processes and practices in the fast-evolving digital era.

We’ll be sure to publish an update here once the U.N. recommendations are announced. And feel free to comment here if you have any questions or would like more information about the event.

Collabforge was commissioned to review the effectiveness of the online engagement practices and techniques employed by the Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce. We’re proud to announce the release of our final report and recommendations here.

The Taskforce’s online activities were assessed on publicly available metrics and personal interviews with members of the Taskforce, Secretariat and International Reference Group. These yielded candid ‘behind-the-scenes’ insights, while public participants provided rich feedback via the Taskforce blog.

Recommendations included the establishment of an ongoing Government 2.0 community of practice to allow discussion to continue.

Collabforge’s Future Melbourne project redefined public participation in city planning. The process behind this award winning wiki-based collaborative city plan has since been tuned and refined into a service package that is ready for implementation in your city or town. To inquire about our services, fill out our contact form today.

Planners are also encouraged to download the Future Melbourne Post-Implementation Review (PDF – 1.8MB). The review identifies key successes, learnings and recommendations which were informed by a range of quantitative data regarding site usage and engagement, during both the four week Future Melbourne public participation period and over the life of the project. A number of interviews were also conducted with participants, including staff from various Council branches as well as public participants.

This InSight, which has also doubled as a submission to the Taskforce, unpacks the ‘Government 2.0′ concept for the non-geeks out there, as well as featuring some hot new ideas for those who are already in the thick of it. Upgrading Democracy and unpacking Gov2.0 As the internet continues to make transparency and collaboration cheaper and easier, governments; government agencies and public servants are adopting tools that can make what they do more open and more participatory.

The Centre for Policy Development has released a new e-book looking at the idea of Upgrading Democracy: combining open access to government information with collaborative policy development to increase citizens’ influence over the decisions that affect their lives.

The ‘Government 2.0 Taskforce’ is currently putting together its advice on how to open up access to public sector information and use online tools to improve the conversation between government and citizens. Upgrading Democracy contains advice and ideas for the Government2.0 Taskforce from a diverse mix of academics and practitioners.

In his foreword Minister Lindsay Tanner describes the ambitious Gov2.0 reform agenda as ‘a way of thinking about how to make government smarter, cheaper, and more informed, responsive and engaged.’

With 16 articles and case studies ‘the essays here touch on pretty much every dimension of this venture.’ (Martin Stewart Weeks)

Read and comment online or download in pdf format from: http://cpd.org.au/2009/08/insight-edition-upgrading-democracy/

Collabforge was pleased to see ACT consultant Matthew Hodgson’s video open the day’s proceedings, especially given the reference to the Future Melbourne project.

The video presents an entertaining summary of Governments’ use of online services over the last decade and looks at the current evolution taking place through social media, Web 2.0 and more collaborative forms of citizen engagement.

Nice work Matt!

Citizen Innovation: Harnessing collaboration for service delivery, legislation and policy development. How can government and public sector organisations leverage the participation of their stakeholders in the interest of co-creating public resources?

The presentation outlines a roadmap to help governments and public sector organisations collaborate with the people who use their services, and become trusted partners in citizen innovation activities.

Citizen Innovation

PdF ’09 is on again (Mon 29 – Tue 30 June) and this year’s forum is set go off with keynotes from the likes of Michael Bloomberg (Mayor of New York), danah boyd (Microsoft Research), David Weinberger (Author), Jeff Jarvis (Journalist) and Mark Pesce (Future St).

You can see the schedule here and follow the twitter backchannel using the hashtag #pdf09

Our very own Mark Elliott wil be participating in a panel titled “What could a future White House 2.0 look like?”

How could millions of people collaborate to help govern the country? Jim Gilliam’s web site, White House 2, is one possible answer, but there are many others. This session is going to start off with a presentation from Jim looking at the top challenges that came up when building the application, to see how his lessons learned might be applied on a larger scale. In an email note to his fellow panelists, Jim said he was going to focus on seven areas:

-virtual ballot stuffing
-how do you encourage good contributions?
-how do you find the good contributions?
-how do you build consensus with thousands of people involved?
-how do you balance competing interests?
-what about all those crazy ideas?
-how do we get more people involved?

Then, Fabrice Florin of Newstrust, Mark Elliott of CollabForge and Craig Newmark of Craigslist are each going to offer insight on these questions, drawing on their own experience building and managing online collaborative projects.

Mark Elliott has arrived back in New York and is very excited to be involved in Participation Camp ’09 this weekend (27-28 June). The event is being organised using the open space method meaning people can nominate themselves as speakers and the event will be totally interactive as the organisers are encouraging people to get involved virtually.

The Participation Camp schedule can be found here and you can watch virtually through this link. Some presentations are being webcast via this livestream.

Remember to follow Twitter activity through the hashtag: #PCamp09

Speaker highlights include:

Mark Elliott (Collabforge) will lead a presentation on engaging citizens in collaborative planning and policy-making using participatory tools and methods.

Gale A Brewer (New York City Council) will host a discussion on her proposed legislation for making New York City’s public data accessible and machine readable.

Peter Corbett (iStrategy Labs) will discuss the innovative approach they’re using for the second instalment of the Apps for Democracy contest.

Tim Hwang (The Cooperation Project) plans to speak about the potential for gaming open government data.

It’s been a busy time for us here at Collabforge HQ and we’re gearing up for some more exciting activities over the next few weeks that we want to share with you.

Web 2.0 in Government – Sydney

Mark Elliott & I are heading to Sydney to speak at the Web 2.0 in Government Conference 2009 on Wednesday 24 June. It’s the first commercial conference on Government 2.0 being held in Australia and we’re really excited to be on the program.

Mark will be part of a panel session on the challenges of Gov 2.0 and will also be presenting on “Public consultation, wikis & internal collaboration” using
FutureMelbourne and wePlan Alpine as case studies. I’ll be speaking about “Citizen Innovation” and how government and public sector organisations can harness collaboration for service delivery, legislation and policy development by leveraging the participation of their stakeholders in the interest of co-creating pubic resources.

Participation Camp – NYU

From there Mark is jetting back to the USA to be a featured speaker at Participation Camp ’09, an un-conference organised by Matt Cooperidder which aims to “use our collective knowledge to solve the problems of participation [and calls] on all government representatives, technologists, developers, NGOs, wonks and activists to join us as we share knowledge about new technologies and new methods for public participation.”

It’s being held on the weekend of 27-28 June at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program @ the Tisch School of the Arts 721 Broadway, New York. For those of us unable to be there in person they’ll be holding a simultaneous virtual un-conference and participants should register for a “Virtual PCamper” ticket here and use the chat service Skype which is available for free download here.

Personal Democracy Forum – Lincoln Center, New York

It’s then over to the Personal Democracy Forum “the world’s largest and best known conference on the intersection of technology and politics” where Mark has been invited to speak on a panel titled “Imagining White House 2.0: Making Open Collaboration Platforms Work”, which will be chaired by Ellen Miller co-founder of the Sunlight Foundation. PdF (as it’s affectionately known) is the premiere conference on politics, democracy and the Web and this year’s stellar line up includes danah boyd, Craig Newmark, David Weinberger, Mark Pesce and Vivek Kundra.

We’ll be live tweeting, blogging and updating our involvement in these fantastic events so please join the conversation.

Photo courtesy of freeparking – thanks!

Last year Collabforge participated in One Web Day by presenting on our experience with the Future Melbourne wiki project (collaborative development of Melbourne’s 10 year plan).

This year looks exciting as there’s some big changes to the organisation with a Ford Foundation grant and Mitch Kapor and Nathaniel James coming on board.

Here’s more details via the JOHO blog (David Weinberger):

First, Mitch Kapor has agreed to become its chair. Mitch is an Internet lifer who has put his shoulder to the wheel in some of the founding efforts that have made the Net what it is today. So, yay!!!

What is One Web Day? As Mitch puts it:

OneWebDay is an annual, global event which is celebrated every September 22. Much like Earth Day, which inspired it, OneWebDay provides an opportunity for communities to celebrate the power of Web for positive change, to take action to protect what is precious about it, and to educate the public and policymakers on how the Web works.

Second, the Ford Foundation has given OWD a major grant — yay!! — so now we can move from being an all-volunteer organization to hiring an executive director…which leads to…

Third, Nathaniel James is the new executive director. He comes from the Media and Democracy Coalition, and is an ideal fit. Yay!!

One Web Day — founded by Susan Crawford — is a day for us to celebrate the Web, but also to renew our commitment to work together to advance the values that make the Web not just a technology but a hope. Today is a very good one for OWD and for what it can contribute to that hope.

I’m looking forward to Collabforge playing whatever part it can for this year’s September 22nd event.

More to come…

A question I’m often asked by clients, friends and people just passing by on the street is, ‘so what’s the big deal with Twitter anyway?’

This is of course a great question – that is, how is Twitter different than Facebook or any other social networking platform and why should one dedicate their precious time to learning and engaging with yet another web community?

There are a few reasons why Twitter is a big deal, but from my perspective, the primary one is that,

Twitter spreads ideas like air travel spreads the flu

Simply put, Twitter spreads ideas by liberating them from the ‘Facebook social graph’, enabling them to quickly and effectively leap across networks. This is due to the fact that when you post a message to Twitter, it is sent to the entire 19 Million strong network.

So effectively, the tweets of all 19 million Twitter users are thrown into one big heap and then sorted after the fact by followers, or, by hashtags. For example, this allows one to follow the tweets associated with a specific conference – here’s the tag for one I recently attended using: #ccisumit – or discover people interested in and providing information surrounding social media marketing.

While it’s true that most messages you send will be read by those following you (i.e. they get your message in their ‘inbox’) the fact remains that your ideas are open for anyone to discover through a vast range of third party tools made possible by Twitter’s API (and this is something you should be well aware of when using Twitter – unless you are using a ‘Direct message’ (D), you words can be discovered and read by anyone and everyone).

Once discovered, your message can be remixed through simple copy/paste/edit, and then ‘re-tweeted’ (RT) back out to the entire network, and of course to the network of those following the re-tweeter. To give an example, my modest network of 414 followers gives me a second-order reach (those who follow my followers) of 5,928,649. That’s a heck of a lot of people who will receive my ideas should my followers decide to re-tweet them.

So there it is, Twitter spreads ideas like air travel spreads the flu – which makes it a tool like no other when it comes to discovering ideas, news, information and importantly, the people behind them. The flip side of this of course is that you can leverage this tool to spread your own ideas, and if they are contagious, then you just might infect the world…

Collabforge founder and chief consultant Mark Elliott is returning home from a whirlwind trip to the East coast of the USA. Mark was invited to keynote the City Planning, Civic Engagement & the Internet Conference at Princeton University – detailed post on this to follow soon.

Mark spent the first two days in New York and was a guest on acclaimed author and Frontline presenter Douglas Rushkoff’s new radio show The Media Squat on WFMU. Mark’s interview with Doug about participatory democracy can be found here.

There’s a real movement under way in the US towards Open Government and one of its key proponents is Matt Cooperrider from the iYear Foundation. Matt is the driving force behind the OpenGovNYC meetup group which aims “to improve government from the outside in, working together with cooperative government officials.”

Matt invited our very own Mark Elliott to lead a Collaborative Policy Building Workshop on April 28th to develop the process for running a ‘policy sprint’:

“Techies will be familiar with the idea of a coding sprint, at which coders will choose a particular project on a particular day and code like hell until it’s done. We want to do the same thing with policy, so that by the end of the day we’ll have something that we can present to Albany or City Hall.”

You can help take the ‘policy sprint’ idea further by participating in this wiki which captured the main themes to emerge out of the workshop. Mark then dashed over to Washington D.C. as guest of The Sunlight Foundation where he spoke to a group of people about Collabforge’s work on Web-based public engagement and mass collaboration. Sunlight are trailblazers in Open Government through a number of exciting projects that are committed to “creating new tools and Web sites to enable all of us to collaborate in fostering greater transparency.” Something all of us here at Collabforge are also very passionate about.

And all of these activities took place before the actual conference. Well done Mark on such a successful trip! Stay tuned for a full update on Mark’s Princeton keynote and more news to follow soon.

The term “Government 2.0″ (Gov 2.0 for short) has been around for a few years now and grew out of the Web 2.0 movement which is all about amplifying the Web’s inherent capacity for openness, participation, self-organisation, decentralisation, group-forming and network-enabled collaboration.

Gov 2.0 is about applying these Web 2.0 principles to the planning, management and delivery of government services by utilising blogs, wikis and social media to catalyse more participatory forms of democracy that can in turn facilitate stakeholder engagement, community consultation and citizen innovation.

Collabforge is at the forefront of the Gov 2.0 wave at both a strategic and IT development level through the successful delivery of exciting public sector projects like the Future Melbourne wiki (City of Melbourne) and the wePlan Alpine site (Parks Victoria) which extend our clients capacities for internal collaboration and community consultation.

The wider implementation of Gov 2.0 has received serious consideration and gained prominence only recently through President Obama’s ‘Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government’ which calls on his Chief Technology Officer to develop an ‘Open Government Directive’ to implement the principles set forth in this Memorandum:

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

23 US Federal Government Agencies and staff gathered at the end of March in Washington D.C. at a conference convened by AmericaSpeaks, Demos, Harvard’s Ash Institute, and others to discuss how to make Open Government a reality and their 51-page Champions of Participation report (PDF) can be downloaded here.

Around the same time that this was taking place, a range of practitioners and public servants organised the first US Gov 2.0 Camp which drew hundreds of people in government and industry from across the country to Washington D.C. Australia is getting ready to host its own Gov 2.0 Camp in Canberra and those interested in learning more can take part in the planning conversations going on at the Google Group here or join the Gov 2.0 Australia social network that I created on Ning.

There’s plenty of interest in Gov 2.0 and for good reason as it offers the potential for more open, participatory and collaborative forms of public engagement. In related developments Collabforge Director Mark Elliott is about to head over to the US as an invited speaker to the City Planning, City Engagement and the Internet conference being hosted at Princeton University. Stay tuned for Mark’s blog and Twitter reports to be posted here. Good luck Mark – looking forward to learning more about what’s happening over there!

Image courtesy of Chad Dunbar – thanks Chad!

Collabforge senior consultant Darren Sharp recently returned from a trip to Canberra as an invited speaker to the National Library of Australia’s Innovative Ideas Forum 2009 (IIF).

The topic for this year’s IIF was ‘The value and significance of social networking for cultural institutions’ with a particular emphasis on social networking innovations through which online services engage with their users in the development of their content. The line up included Marcus Gillezeau (Firelight Productions); Anne Summers (author & journalist); Mark Scott (Managing Director of the ABC); Rose Holley (ANDP); Darren Sharp (Collabforge); Jillian Dellit (The Le@rning Federation); and Jo Kay (Second Life Designer).

Darren’s presentation “Library 2.0: citizens co-creating culture” explored the modes and means of community engagement through social media and how to leverage stakeholders to co-create services through user-led innovation. It also explored the concept of Library 2.0 which Casey & Savastinuk essentially define as a re-orientation towards “user-centered change”:

It is a model for library service that encourages constant and purposeful change, inviting user participation in the creation of both the physical and the virtual services they want, supported by consistently evaluating services. It also attempts to reach new users and better serve current ones through improved customer-driven offerings.

Darren’s presentation can be viewed here in its entirety:

Darren was also interviewed by the Canberra Times for a story about Twitter following his IIF2009 presentation which can be read here.

The National Library of Australia embraced this year’s forum topic by starting a blog and encouraging all attendees to use the ‘iif2009′ tag for all blog posts, presentations or flickr photos and the hash-tag ‘#iif2009′ for tweets. This helped coordinate a fantastic Twitter backchannel (See Katie Hannan’s [@katykat] brilliant forum summary using the Twitter stream) that provided audience-generated context and conversations about the presentations as they were happening live on stage.

Darren developed a “Social Networking Manifesto” to encourage the NLA through the following provocations:

• Utilise the power of a real-time social infrastructure!
• Provide access points to the Social Web!
• Start a conversation with the public!
• Be vigilant about owning your social media handle!
• Create your own community of lead users!
• Collaborate using wiki-based platforms!

This advice applies to any organisation that’s serious about engaging with their stakeholders and wider community via the Social Web.

Please contact Mark.Elliott @ collabforge.com or Darren.Sharp @ collabforge.com if you’re considering going down this path.

Collabforge started consulting on the Carbon Down program in September last year (2008) and has forged (no pun intended :-) a close working relationship with its team. Our input is aimed at helping develop and refine the program’s Web strategy, which is designed to achieve a reduction in carbon emissions on part of SMEs (small to medium sized enterprises).

Carbon Down is three year, $10m collaboration between the Victorian Employers’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VECCI) and Sustainability Victoria. From the website (CarbonDown.com.au),

Carbon Down is a partnership between business and government dedicated to reducing Victoria’s carbon footprint through innovative, practical solutions.

I feel this program’s objectives are of great importance to our local and global community. While big business is increasingly recognising the importance and opportunities of addressing resource efficiency and sustainability, small and medium sized business (as I know all too personally) rarely have the time to take a strong stance in this area, even when the intention to reduce carbon is genuine.

An additional challenge in engaging this sector is the fact that it is very large (est. 500,000 in Victoria alone), diverse, fragmented and difficult to communicate with due to the high demands placed upon those running their businesses – and the current economic climate doesn’t help matters.

Yet another challenge (there are many) is the lack of political leadership in this area. Many SMEs we speak with mention the importance of government taking a strong stance in this area, and while there is the soon to be introduced carbon emissions trading scheme, at this point it doesn’t look likely to deliver the outcomes that we need – it focuses on big business (rewards heavy polluting industries) and does little if nothing to address SMEs.

In coming months, the Carbon Down program will be launching its online program – we’ll blog here when this happens. If you are reading this as an SME and are interested in getting involved, please contact me (Mark.Elliott ~At~ collabforge.com) or post a comment below.

I’d also love to hear from you regarding anything relating to the intersection of sustainability/carbon reduction and SMEs – thoughts, opinions, solutions, opportunities, initiatives, websites, etc…

Note: this is a revised reblog from my personal blog (29 May 2008 ) as a means of providing some background info on the projects that Collabforge has undertaken in the past. I’ll be aiming over the next month or so to provide some insight into our past work, as well as some pretty exciting directions we are planning.

This post focuses on CollabForge’s work with the City of Melbourne in reengineering it’s city planning process towards a collaborative outcome. Specifically, CollabForge’s development of the Future Melbourne wiki – an online environment for internal collaboration and public consultation.

Here’s some background:

A month before I graduated with my PhD (Nov ’07) I was contacted by the manager of the City of Melbourne’s Strategic Planning & Sustainability Branch – David Mayes. David had a vision for reengineering the City of Melbourne’s process for generating its next 2020 ten year strategic plan. Previously, plans were produced using co-operative participation. A requirement of this project was that the new plan be produced by collaborative participation.

What followed was several months of meetings in order to map the existing planning process and redevelop it with the aim of taking advantage of ‘Web 2.0′ opportunities and the emergent capacities of mass collaboration.

Fast forward five months: the city’s ten year plan has been moved to a wiki-based collaborative environment for both internal collaboration, and public consultation.

• Facilitated by the wiki, the plan has undergone internal collaborative development by the City’s special team in charge of the plan’s creation, Future Melbourne, City officers, Councilors, and hundreds of stakeholders (compared to Sydney’s recently released plan which was put together by more or less a handful of people).
• The project launched its public consultation on May 17th, 2008, and around 150 public participants registered and contributed several hundred edits to either the plan directly, or one of the many ‘discussion pages’ associated with the plan’s content. While this wasn’t the first project to use a wiki for public consultation, it was (as far as I know) the first in Australia. It was also the first (in the world as far as I know) to use a wiki so extensively in a city planning process.

Yet more interesting are the implications: could this be the beginning of participatory governance, where the public relies less on the elected representatives and is more able to directly engage in the creation and implementation of policy?

While it’s true that an edit to the city plan wiki does not guarantee that a public participant’s contribution will still be there when Council signs off on it, there can be no doubt that a well considered opinion demonstrated in the context of the document (not just as a comment in the margins) will not only be more persuasive, but will influence the downstream development of the plan.

In other words, the wiki was the plan’s content, even post consultation, and whatever form it took in the end, the publicly edited version was a step on that path.

(Imagine sending a story you wrote to a team of editors and having them not only reply with meta-level commentary, but also edits directly to your story. If this went back and forth enough times, you’d probably lose track of whose words were whose, and in the end, really only be focused on the merit of the content.)

Well this is exactly the idea and potential behind mass collaboration, ‘the power of the many’ by putting primacy on the merit of the content instead of the reputation of the author, bigger and more complex results can be achieved (Wikipedia has done in around 7 years what it Britannica took 240 to do).

CollabForge is currently developing post implementation review of the project which will soon be available on the Future Melbourne wiki. Please post a comment here if you would like to be notified when it is released.

And please share any experiences and or thoughts you may have surrounding collaborative consultation and participatory democracy – the implications are big, so it’s worth discussing…

Last Friday, Minister Gavin Jennings, Victorian Minister for Environment, Climate Change & Innovation, launched wePlan.parks.vic.gov.au, a collaborative community consultation site that Collabforge built for Parks Victoria (Australia’s state of Victoria parks management body).

(Upper pic, left-right: me, Alex Gibson – Collabforge developer of the wePlan site, Hon Gavin Jennings. Lower pic: Hon Gavin Jennings – & my MacBook Pro

Truth be told, our involvement was much greater that just the development of this site. We have been working very closely – I’d even go so far as to say collaboratively – with Louise Rose and Stacy Giannini in the development of a strategic approach to online community consultation.

The strategy we’ve developed aims at providing the best match for process to tools, as well as flagging of the major considerations, risks and opportunities that social media and online collaboration present (e.g. moderation, virtual community dynamics, content licensing, community management, etc).

This strategic approach characterises Collabforge’s work in general. Does your organisation have experience in the development/application of online engagement and or collaboration strategies? If so/not, please share your experience and thoughts!

Getting this blog started has been on ‘my list’ for a year now and it’s finally gotten to the point where enough is enough – time to make it happen!

I’ve been blogging a bit on Collabforge’s progress and experience on my personal blog, however this space will strive to not only inform visitors on our business experiences etc, but to open up a channel for discussion, sharing and perhaps even… yes, collaboration. :-)

So stay tuned (we’re planning a major overhaul to this site in the next month or so) and please subscribe, and we’ll do our best to pass on some useful info and interesting reading that will make it worth coming back for more. And of course your feedback on this site and our work is more than welcome, it is strongly encouraged!

Any initial recommendations for redesign or readability – anything you wanted to see but didn’t find?