Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World – Government stream part 2

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I’m at Day Two of Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World, where I’m chairing the plenary sessions and enterprise streams.

Other posts:

RIchard Kimber, CEO of Friendster, presentation

Rebekah Horne, head of Fox Interactive Media Australia and Europe, presentation

Francisco Cordero, GM Australa, Bebo, presentation

CEO panel

Paul Slakey, Google

Enterprise stream – Part 1

Enterprise stream – Part 2

Ross Ackland, Deputy Director, World Wide Web Consortium

Laurel Papworth, Director and Social Networks Strategist, World Communities

Paul Marshall, CEO, Lassoo.com.au

Government stream – part 1

The Law meets Web 2.0

Conference Twitter stream

Partner event: Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum on 24 February 2009

Government stream – Part 2

Paul Salvati, smartservice Queensland

Smartservice Queensland (SSQ) provides a single view of government, doing multi-channel delivery including branches, voice, SMS and online.

Traditional citizen engagement:

Face to face – high cost, limited reach

Mail – low cost, low engagement

Phone – medium cost

Australians want to access government online.

Australia has the 7th lowest population density in the world. Queensland is the most decentralised state.

49% of 55-64 year olds have interacted with government online.

Online Youth Engagement Project.

Used YouTube, MySpace and Second Life

Issues with YouTube:

* Availability and accessibility

* Intellectual property

* Distasteful or poor quality content is there

Second Life:

* Created Second Life island

* Was designed to enabled the management of community consultant workshops

* Did event to celebrate Youth Week 2008 – Lindy Nelson, Minister for Communities and Youth held a forum in Second Life

* 75% of participants rated their experience good or great – no negative experiences

* 90% felt it was easy or very easy to participate

* All participants felt moderately to very involved – a critical issue in community engagement

* 85% found the workshop as or more effective than real-life workshops

Benefits of Second Life consultation:

* Convenience and cost

* Non intimidating experience

* Chat history

* Opportunity for considered input

* Fun and interactive

* Facilitation materials available: whiteboards, presentations, registration desk etc.

* Transcripts are automatically generated – can go back to participants to go into more depth

Issues of Second Life:

* Reliability and downtime

* Possible negative experiences

* Issues with lag and limited concurrent users per region

* Legal implications and risks

* Requirement for moderation and understanding of online etiquette

* Requires higher level computers

* Anonymity may pose challenges

* People may be frivolous and inhibit productivity

* Accessibility for disabled esp. visual disability

Overall:

* There is a unique opportunity to engage with citizens at low cost

* Opportunity to engage with younger people

Dheeraj Chowdhury, Department of Education NSW

Centre for Learning Innovation

Provides a variety of tools and portals, including:

Writers Talk, providing resources on the Sydney Writer’s Festival

Sites2See, providing resources for learning

Murders under the Microscope, an online learning game that encourages interest in science – over 20,000 students participated this year, including many from abroad

Teaching and Learning exchange (TaLe): portal for teaching and learning resources

What’s under the hood: Open source software

Sourceforge is our bible for keeping on top of what’s out there – get before you build

We use open source tools such as OpenOffice, Gimp, Audacity, Drupal, ELGG etc. etc.

ELGG is useful for setting up social networks.

Fidg’t provides social networking functionality and visualisation

If you’re creating a social or collaboration site, you need to engage people quickly!

Mimic the look and feel of sites that people are familiar with.

Good artists borrow design, great artists steal.

Make it dynamic.

Expose friend’s activities.

Let them browse the graph.

Drive communication

Build communities.

Solve real world tasks.

CURLy – open source tool to brovide social bookmarking – an instant hit without internal marketing