Less than a quarter of the Australian Government's regular websites can be considered smartphone or mobile-friendly, according to a survey conducted by iTnews.

A survey by the ITNews concludes that government Websites fail mobile access tests. Actually, lets be specific:

• They surveyed 21 Australian federal Australian government, plus the mobile version of USA.gov.
• They used two specific testing tools, a W3C tool based on standards developed in 2008 and another that looks like it was designed to test to baseline of phones like the Nokia 6680 (from 2005).

Personally I think this makes the test results pretty limited, but worth discussing.

(A more recent evaluation tool is Google's Ready to Go Mo, although I'm not entirely clear what standards it is based on.)

Now, there are some very good examples of government in Australia using mobile. One example that comes to mind (because I used it the other day) is NSW's live traffic reports site - it comes in desktop, mobile and iOS versions.

Sticking with transport, in some states it is now possible to renew your car registration electronically using a smartphone. So clearly, mobile is being actively utilised as a channel by government. Front-end Websites are just one aspect of government communication and service delivery.

Being realistic about government budget cycles and priorities, I see a couple of issues:

Firstly, the Federal government is currently focused on updating their Web channels to be WCAG 2.0 compliant. One thing I would like to highlight is that WCAG 2.0 is technology agnostic - its actually all about the end-user:

"mobile accessibility is making web content accessible to people with disabilities in the mobile context. This includes users with visual, mobility, hearing and cognitive impairments as well as older users."

Second, the rise of mobile and demand from consumers (i.e. citizens and other stakeholders) for mobile access in all spheres of life is moving much faster than government planning and technology development cycles - see the latest Australian data from Google [PDF].

So what should government do? Be strategic about mobile:

The agencies and departments that should be thinking about this most are those that have a service delivery element or are involved in public education. The new work in the area of eHealth immediately comes to mind. In the US, the Pew Internet & American Life Project reports there that:

"Among smartphone owners, young adults, minorities, those with no college experience, and those with lower household income levels are more likely than other groups to say that their phone is their main source of internet access."

I'm sure we would see similar patterns here. Just within my family and social circle I know lots of young adults outside of my industry that only use wireless mobile devices for Internet access a home.

Do you need an app? Do you need a mobile Website? What do mobile users need from your agency? Do your e-government applications work on mobile?

However, at all levels of government they need to start thinking about the impact of mobile. I'm worried about government sites that have just been redevelopment or are about to be redeveloped. They need to think about medium term strategies for mobile.

Also, when setting budgets, the allocation between 'desktop' and 'mobile' need to be re-evaluated. A mobile first strategy for some departments could actually be a source of savings in the long term, as they focus on content that really counts.

This is a challenge and government needs to respond. But lets look at this in a smart way. I mean, does it really matter in the short term if the mobile experience of treasury.gov.au isn't that great?

In the much longer term, I'd like to see government move towards a completely different Web mobile. But that's a subject for another post!

UPDATE: A great example from the National Library of Australia, who have adopted a proactive strategy - they say in their introduction:

Where opportunity exists, conceptual leaders stand ready and eager to innovate. The mobile web provides superb food for innovation, as evidenced by the immersive Ludwig II app by the Bavarian State Library, which includes augmented reality features like 3D pattern recognition so that historical digital objects appear on the mobile screen, triggered by the physical location of the user.

It’s also demonstrated by NASA, who created a mobile portal to learning about space through their latest images from space, video, news and social media activity. The Eyewitness app acts as a showcase for the best photography featured in the Observer and the Guardian. It showcases the 100 most recent and topical images and includes ‘pro tips’ from the photographers. And it’s seen in Biblion, the New York Public Library scholarly journal reborn as a “multi-linear immersive experience” for the iPad. The inaugural edition (2011) delivers manuscript material, images, films, audio, and essays on the 1940 New York World’s Fair.

Importantly, the achievements of these institutions have been realised against a backdrop of economic hardship and a substantial reduction in funding for cultural and research institutions around the world.

Hat tip to Craig.

In the past six months, Southeastern [a UK railway operator] has leveraged Socialtext Connect, a flexible and robust developer toolset built on our REST API that enables developers to socially enable existing systems of record, such as ERP, CRM, or content management systems. The Socialtext solution, now integrated into the Southeastern infrastructure, enables employees to access train status information on the fly, in real-time with visibility across the entire workforce. By providing Southeastern with a more efficient way to share knowledge, expertise, ideas and information, the company can more quickly respond to change and serve their patrons effectively.

And you thought social inside the enterprise was all about staff telling each other what they had for lunch?

Social media technologies are making fast inroads into organisations. In the context of knowledgeintensive work the propositions of improving communication, information sharing and user involvement seem particularly promising. However, the role and impact of social technologies in enterprises in general and knowledge work in particular are still not well understood, despite emerging scholarly works in this field. In this study we aim to contribute to this stream of research. We investigate the phenomenon of Enterprise Social Networking (ESN) in the context of Professional Service Firms (PSF). Our case investigates emerging communicative work practices on the ESN platform Yammer within Deloitte Australia. We perform a genre analysis of actual communication data captured on the Yammer platform. We uncover a set of emerging practices enabled by the platform within the case company and reflect on our results in the context of the knowledge-intensive nature of professional service work. We find that Yammer in the case company has become 1) an information-sharing channel, 2) a space for crowdsourcing ideas, 3) a place for finding expertise and solving problems and most importantly 4) a conversation medium for context and relationship building.

Kai has written a short summary on his blog. But beware - this isn't a blueprint for Yammer or any other enterprise social network. Neither does it provide data on the organisational value generated by the activity observed. As Kai also points out, in the case of Deloitte Australia:

a number of knowledge-work practices are not carried out within Yammer, even though we found these practices in some of our earlier enterprise microblogging case.

However, this is a great piece of research and provides more insight into the different ways that different organisations make use of social technologies.

Amazon reviews are just as likely to give an accurate summary of a book's quality as those of professional newspapers, according to a study from Harvard Business School.

Professor Michael Luca and his co-authors analysed the top 100 reviews from 40 media outlets, including the New York Times, and the Washington Post, between 2004 and 2007 for their paper. The academics used data from reviews aggregator metacritic.com, which summarises professional reviews and then awards ratings, if not given, based on content. They also looked at Amazon reviews for each title.

Although the study points out that there is "virtually no quality assurance" in Amazon's consumer reviews, which can also be "gamed" by publishers or competitors submitting false reviews, they found that, nevertheless, experts and consumers agreed in aggregate about the quality of a book.

Another piece of research looking at the reliability of information shared through social media. Earlier in the year, a report was published of researchers who looked at mining Twitter to predict the success of movies. The study was not so positive in this case:

Overall, the study found no clear evidence that shows a direct link between Twitter hype, ratings and box office sales.
“The most surprising finding was that Twitter data may not be representative enough of the total population, so it is somewhat risky to use the site for forecasting,” Sen said. “More sophisticated techniques may be needed to understand the applicability of such data sets, such as the metrics we developed to understand the extent of the difference between Twitter users and other online rating side users.”

search-volume forecasts will help spot consumer trends of this sort with increased precision. But the improvements they bring will be incremental. Sophisticated methods based on natural-language analysis of tweets, blogs, or Facebook pages, by contrast, hold greater disruptive potential. As users of social media grow accustomed to sharing highly personal information, apparently unfazed by market-research outfits like WiseWindow watching their every step, the feelings and intentions of hundreds of millions of people are there for data-hungry computers to see.

I’ve never been much of a futurist, which you might find odd since I spend a lot of time talking about new fangled ideas like ‘social business’ and ‘government 2.0’. From my perspective, none of this is futuristic – it is happening right here, right now if you look around. Reflecting on this week’s Intranets2012 conference and Dion Hinchcliffe’s visit to Australia, I thought it might be worthwhile identifying some of the ideas and trends that I see impacting intranets right now and into the immediate future.

Cross posted from the Headshift Asia Pacific blog. I talk about three points in more detail: Social intranets, mobile and the role of design thinking.

There is definitely something happening, as mobile computing technology adoption is getting faster and faster:

Smart phones are on track to halve that rate yet again, and tablets could move still faster, setting consecutive records for speed to market saturation in the United States.

Dion Hinchcliffe is visting Australia this week to promote his new book, Social Business by Design, co-authored with Peter Kim. The Headshift Asia Pacific team have been busy lining up speaking events and media interviews all week, however Dion and I have found time to put together a short whitepaper on the state of social business in Australia. This paper provides that all important Australian perspective on the trends and ideas outlines in Dion's book. The paper will be published online later today, but while you are waiting we've posted a video talking about some of the highlights: The criteria for the case studies included in the paper, the differences between Australia and the global experience of Social Business and key insights.

UPDATE: The paper is now available to read and download from SlideShare.

BTW if you are interested in attending either of Dion's workshops tomorrow, Social Business 101 (in the morning) and The Consumerisation of IT (in the afternoon) please contact the Headshift team by email at hello@headshift.com.au to request a last minute registration!

BBC research shows that 77% of the UK's online population is now actively participating in some way. We have been aware for some time that the 1-9-90 percent rule (or 1% rule) of interaction is too simplistic and this research adds more insight in understanding this dynamic. The BBC's model of Participation Choice identifies four key forms: passive, easy reaction, easy initiation and intense participation.

Remember, Google Sidewiki? I thought at the time that it would make a great way to help make intranets, including internal Web-based apps, more social and now it looks like Jive Software have provided this ability natively in their latest release. Why is this useful? Well, basically it provides a short cut to integrating systems of record with Jive's system of engagement platform to mix social collaboration with tasks.

Better than Sidewiki, Jive Anywhere appears to support HTTPS pages (which is critical these days for it to be useful, since most work systems are likely to be running on protected sites).

Jive Anywhere also takes the basic Sidewiki concept further by also integrating differently with different Websites. Examples Jive mention include Techcrunch.com, Linkedin.com and Salesforce.com where it may behave slightly differently.

I wonder if corporate system owners will view Jive Anywhere as vandalism, like people feared with Sidewiki? Personally, I think its a fantastic idea (but Google, take note about the execution).

For more thoughts on Jive Anywhere, see Charlie Hope's post and also Alan Lepofsky's analysis.

A very different experience here in South Australia (at least, in the department where I’m based). Rather than just an element of social networking, we went with Socialtext, an ESN platform that offers blogging, micro-blogging, wikis, groups, collaborative workspaces and a range of other features. I think the big difference is that we didn’t just install and configure the software, we took on the cultural change that is necessary to get the best out of it. Today, you’ll see the platform used for policy development, collaborative project management, social intranet, content management and a huge raft of other business activities. Growth continues and new applications for this way of working are being found on a regular basis.
Takeaway message? Enterprise Social Networking works, but it needs more than just technology and it needs the whole package to be embraced, not just tweets.

Writing in local Aussie IT news site, Delimiter, Renai LeMay reports on an article in The Register about Yammer trials by local government in Australia being abandoned. I really liked the comment above on Renai's piece that highlights how it can work, if the technology is supported and implemented in the right way. (I've blogged about that example before)

This is my comment:

I think its a little unfair to only call out Yammer on this issue, although I accept that they are fair game due to the hype that has been generated around it as a brand by both themselves and Deloitte etc. Yammer is not the only platform in this market and all the vendors (to varying degrees) recognise the need for the deployment of their tools to be supported in the way that Perry Wheeler describes. I’m currently working with a number of Australian organisations that aren’t convinced that a hands off, viral approach is the right way to do this.
Also many of the other US-based vendors in this space (tibbr, Newsgator, Jive, etc) are now investing resources into our region and I think we are only at the beginning of the mature adoption of these enterprise social computing tools. If you look carefully at Yammer, you will also see that the emphasis is now on supporting their premium paying customers to make the use of their tools more successful. Of course, none of this should come as a surprise. We’ve known that adoption of new collaboration and communication tools inside organisations can be hit and miss for decades.

Today I am pleased to announce that we at Socialtext have taken a huge step towards our vision by receiving a significant strategic cash infusion by Bedford Funding, the $1.4 billion private equity firm behind Talent Management Solution provider, Peoplefluent™. The infusion of capital that we are receiving will accelerate the development of our industry-leading enterprise social collaboration tools and augment sales efforts for both sides. We will ramp up hiring in all areas, and will also serve as the new Silicon Valley hub for Peoplefluent.

via socialtext.com

Like Alan Leposky, I think this is good news overall for Socialtext.

Additional coverage in Techcrunch.

What impact are new design practices and changing technology having on not just the physical office but also on the way we think about work itself? Is the idea of the individual office a thing of the past? In this program we explore the physical, social and cultural trends affecting the changing nature of the office and the way we work in the 21st century.

Another great episode from Future Tense. I was recently talking about activity based workplaces (ABWs) and this podcast provides a good overview of Macquarie Bank's Shelley Street building and the overall trends in open plan office spaces. Again, the role of technology is highlighted as a key factor but balanced by the need for the new leadership skills in the workplace, particularly as workplace demographics change. The show also discusses the impact on worklife-balance and our relationship with the people we work with.

Some attempts to limit email haven't gone as planned. One client of Christina Randle, a workplace productivity expert with the Effectiveness Edge in Austin, tried remedying employees' email overload by banning staff from sending messages on Fridays. It backfired. Employees just stored outbound messages and sent them all Monday morning. "Instead of getting 100 messages on Friday, [people] got 200 in their inbox on Monday morning," she says.

If you want to fix email in the workplace, you've got to treat it as a systemic problem.

Patient Opinion was founded in the UK in 2005 and since then has grown to be the UK's leading independent non-profit feedback platform for health services. Patient Opinion Australia (POA) was established in 2012 and, similar to its UK counterpart, is registered as an independent not-for-profit charitable institution. Patient Opinion is about honest and meaningful conversations between patients and health services. We believe that your story can help make health services better. How it works:

• Share your story of using a health service
• We send your story to staff so that they can learn from it
• You might get a response

Your story might help staff to change services Share your story and help make our health service better!

I've frequently shared the story of the original Patient Opinion with the Australian Gov 2.0 community, so I'm really excited to see Patient Opinion Australia (POA) finally launch. Its going to be interesting to watch how Australian health consumers and institutions respond to the idea.

UPDATE:

Looking around at the small amount of coverage POA has received in the media and social media, it looks like we'll have to work through the same concerns they experienced in the UK:

Nurse for Nurses blog:

I have a concern with the anonymity of the process. Our existing government complaints process is also anonymous and this has led to organisations being put under the microscope because disgruntled people have used the process to mischief make.

I am also concerned that this website will encourage people to circumvent existing complaints management systems and use this website as their first port of call rather than giving the organisation an opportunity to address their concerns.

ABC Radio National:

Norman Swan: So what do you do about the fact that some people in the health care system who have some of the most difficult circumstances have the least access to online sites such as yours? So that you’re going to get the middle class complaining but not people who have three kids, single parents and out of work?

Michael Greco: Well, again experience in the UK has shown that that’s not quite the case. There were some concerns about for example, that elderly people don’t use the internet. Well they’ve disproven that.

However, they have received more positive coverage on the Australian Ageing Agenda (also provides a lot more background on the project in Australia).

Adoption is a fulltime job,” said Staresina. “Forget if you build it they will come.

A quote from Emily Staresina about the SharePoint + Newsgator intranet recently implemented at Australian property development company, Stockland. Since they launched at the end of last year, about a quarter of Stockland staff have completed their Newsgator profiles.

An example

Recently, there was a large conference at work with many senior managers in attendance. Traditionally, the internal communications staff would write up an article after the event, post it on their intranet portal, and send an email to employees with a summary and a link.

This time, though, those same communications people selected more junior staff (outside of communications) to attend the conference and serve as roaming reporters. The reporters posted live updates throughout the conference using the firm’s new collaboration platform. Communications staff also posted but they added to the conversation instead of dominating it.

Now, without email and without searching, people at all levels from around the world were following the conference by following real people (“I felt like I was there”). And, more importantly, they were able to participate.

The graduates were particularly active, asking questions and contributing content. But senior people at the event also used the social platform, soliciting ideas and feedback, adding comments to other conversations. People discovered the hot topics via their newsfeeds, added comments and likes, and interacted with people across their division (and some from other divisions).

We’d never had anything like that before.

Better for the individual and for the firm

Far from being dead, the internal communications function at that conference became much more valuable. They went from producing impersonal content with few readers and zero feedback to using social tools and practices to engage a larger audience in more meaningful ways.

Whether you’re a communications professional, a senior manager, or just someone who has something to say, that kind of transformation is available to you.

If you’re still relying on people coming to you for your message (or visiting your portal or reading your email), then you’re missing one of the biggest communications shifts in history.

Great story about how social intranets are changing internal communications for the better. Don't keep you intranet stuck as a destination, make it a platform for employee participation.

Microblogging is great for maintaining a cohesive work environment among geographically dispersed offices, says James Dellow from the social business consultancy Headshift.

"With access to microblogs, executives can be in touch with what's going on across the whole organisation. In a virtual sense, the CEO is sitting next to the employee."

In the future, Dellow says enterprises will be using data analytics to pick up issues, trends, and opportunities from microblogging conversations.

I was quoted in the SMH, in an article by Cynthia Karena who was looking at the benefits of enterprise microblogging with tools like Yammer, Chatter and tibbr.