Online Social Networking & Business Collaboration World – Government stream part 2
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
Ross Ackland, Deputy Director, World Wide Web Consortium
Laurel Papworth, Director and Social Networks Strategist, World Communities
Paul Marshall, CEO, Lassoo.com.au
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
