Top 100 Social Media Tools 28 comments

Not sure if this is something to be proud of, or ashamed about, but I’m using (or have used) about 70% of the applications in the list. The encouraging thing is to note how many of these applications are free to use.

The list has been compiled from a cohort of learning professionals who shared their Top 10 Tools for Learning both for their own personal learning/productivity and for creating learning solutions for others.

If you want to influence the list and rankings, then head off to the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies.

TOP 10

Key to availability: D=download; H=hosted; C=insert code onto page

TOP 11-20

22-91

92-133

Microsoft’s Cloudy Vision No comments yet

Microsoft’s Windows Live efforts are the software giant’s answer to web applications and cloud computing. However, from where I stand, they’re less a cloud strategy than a layer of fog over the multibillion-dollar packaged software franchises that keeps Microsoft going.

Ray Ozzi, Microsoft’s chief software architect, seems to appreciate the scale of the task facing the software behemoth. In his interview with Om, he recognised that their legacy desktop applications were no longer the pivotal point for development: “A student today or a web start-up, they don’t actually start at the desktop. They start at the web, they start building web solutions, and immediately deploy that to a browser”

However, the various announcements about online versions of Exchange and Sharepoint, and the beta release of Office Live Workspace all seem to be distinctly underwhelming, and indicative of a “me too” mentality.

Users are getting more familiar with accessing web-based applications, and putting increasing trust in the likes of Google for providing secure services. From a personal perspective, I’m fed up with having to keep patching (mainly Microsoft) applications on my desktop, and finding Windows Vista runs ever more slowly each day (and that’s when it doesn’t crash and burn). I’ve resisted upgrading to MSOffice 2007 because quite frankly, I don’t need the extra features, and am making gradually more use of Google Docs and OpenOffice.  I’ve also started to dabble with Google Apps, and am in the process of migrating all my Outlook email and contact management to the Google environment, hence my reliance on Microsoft is diminishing by the day (unfortunately will be stuck with the Operating System for a while yet though).

Whether things like Foldershare or Skydrive will buy any time for Microsoft I don’t know, but the ad hoc nature of these ‘software plus’ services,  the small enhancements to its email and collaboration applications, plus some tweaks that let users access Office documents while away from their main PC,  doesn’t collectively strike me as being part of a major strategic rethink in how best to address the web-based picture. It certainly doesn’t appear to be tapping into the power and potential of cloud computing that the likes of Google and Amazon have been forging ahead with. Whether Microsoft’s failure to present a cohesive and compelling strategy is ultimately going to be fatal for them remains to be seen. They do have the benefit of a cash mountain behind them, so I guess they could buy themselves into anything (but not sure that Yahoo is the answer either!). However, I think it’s a bit like turning an oil tanker, and in the meantime Google has docked and is unloading the goods. Interesting times ahead I think

New Gov website fails accessibility standards No comments yet

Just picked up from Public Sector Forums (PSF) – the Cabinet Office have launched a new ‘Customer Service Excellence‘ website, which apparently fails the government’s standards for web accessibility, breaches the guidelines for government websites and contravenes the COI’s ‘Inclusive Websites’ guidance. The website claims to be ‘AA’ compliant, but accessibility expert Dan Champion described the site as “shockingly bad…. a catalogue of serious failings. Every page on this site fails WCAG level A on multiple checkpoints and requires significant attention to be made accessible”.
Clearly this needs to be brought to the attention of the government department responsible for defining and policing these standards….which is, oh dear, the Cabinet Office. Another case of do as I say and not as I do perhaps?

What has Web 2.0 ever done for us? No comments yet

The following is an abstract from an item I produced for the IDeA in response to a media query about the impact of Web 2.0 on Local Government.

What is Web 2.0?

The term ‘Web 2.0′ was officially coined in 2004 by Dale Dougherty, a vice-president of O’Reilly Media Inc. The term was intended to capture the feeling that despite the dot-com boom and subsequent bust, the Web was ‘more important than ever, with exciting new applications and sites popping up with surprising regularity’ It was recognised that companies that had survived the dot-com firestorms of the late 90s now appeared to be stronger and have a number of things in common. Thus the term was not coined in an attempt to capture the essence of an identified group of technologies, but an attempt to capture something far more amorphous.

Is it a revolution in the way we use the Web? Is it another technology ‘bubble’? It rather depends on who you ask. The short answer, for many people, is to make a reference to a group of technologies which have become deeply associated with the term: blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds etc., which facilitate a more socially connected Web where everyone is able to add to and edit the information space.

For the inventor of the Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, there is a tremendous sense of déjà vu about all this. When asked in an interview for a podcast, published on IBM’s website, whether Web 2.0 was different to what might be called Web 1.0 because the former is all about connecting people, he replied:

“Totally not. Web 1.0 was all about connecting people. It was an interactive space, and I think Web 2.0 is of course a piece of jargon, nobody even knows what it means. If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along. And in fact, you know, this ‘Web 2.0′, it means using the standards which have been produced by all these people working on Web 1.0.“

So, in essence, we can probably summarise as follows:

• Web 1.0 relied upon specialist skills to compose, format and publish content to the web, and consequently was limited to people and infrastructures that had these skills and capabilities. It was also primarily (though not exclusively) used as a broadcast medium for dissemination of information.

• Web 2.0 technology enables anyone to become a web publisher by hiding the (web) complexity behind simple and easy to use interfaces, and hence the proliferation of personal blogs (short for ‘web log’). It also facilitates creativity, collaboration and knowledge sharing through web-based communities and social networking sites (e.g. Facebook).

The impact on local government

It’s a bit of a mixed bag in terms of how Web 2.0 is being used, deployed or adopted across local authorities, with some clearly seeing the benefits, and others reticent to get involved. Sites such as MySociety are pointing the way, with services such as ‘FixMy Street‘ demonstrating how the technology can be used to engage directly with citizens. The entrepreneurial spirit is also evident, with freelance individuals developing sites such as Local Gov Glossary, LGSearch and lgShout, but the question remains as to why these sorts of services are not developed, sponsored or supported by local authorities.

On a positive note, there is growing evidence that more councils are becoming actively engaged in developing online community techniques within councils’ own web services, with Redbridge a notable example. Their use of on-line polls for getting feedback on Post Office closures, and use of interactive forums is pretty much ground breaking stuff for local government. The whole site has that 21^st century look about it, – wish there were more like it! Also worth a mention is Chesterblogs, a blogging portal for city councillors. My apologies to any other candidate councils and services not mentioned here, but I haven’t had the time to trawl through over 410 council web sites and several thousand local services to come up with a definitive list (my next project maybe!)

However, broadly speaking, there remains an undercurrent of distrust, particularly where established command and control functions are threatened. The main concern is that employees may be wasting time in the use of non-work related social networks or websites, and in the related security and organisational image concerns. Managers want to know what their employees are doing, and quite often the only way of bringing about greater control in the workplace is by getting ICT departments to block access to sites such as Facebook and Youtube.

(Interesting aside – Hazel Blears’s keynote presentation to the recent International eParticipation Symposium expounded the virtues of using Youtube to get information out to citizens, and explained how DCLG were using this as a key media channel. She is clearly not aware that most government departments block employee access to Youtube for the reasons described above!.)

Encouragingly, there do appear to be some enlightened managers working in local government, and to quote David Wilde, chief information officer at the London Borough of Waltham Forest, “For managers it can be difficult to know what exactly their employees are doing. But the organisation needs to be outcome-based, and I don’t think we should be using technology to prevent access to [social networking] sites. If there are staff performance issues we should address them directly”.

So, in summary, the use of Web 2.0 sites and techniques in local authorities breaks down into several categories:

• the formal and informal use by employees or councils of existing social networking sites such as Facebook;
• use of third-party sites which use interactive or peer-to-peer techniques to try and improve public services, such as the problem reporting service ‘FixMy Street’,
• and the use of social networking or online community techniques within councils’ own web services.

The Improvement Development and Development Agency’s (IDeA) use of Web 2.0

The IDeA recognised the potential benefits of Web 2.0 technologies and techniques as early as 2005, and in this sense can be considered early adopters. The Knowledge Team identified Web 2.0 as the foundation for enabling people and organisations in the sector to improve the way they work through capturing and sharing know-how. A strategy was developed to improve the way that councils connect with each other to ensure that key learning and experience is shared within and across the sector. A key part of the strategy was the support, development and maintenance of ‘communities of practice’. These communities would connect individuals working in local authorities and provide a collaborative framework in which they can find solutions in areas where there is a common and shared interest.

This led to the development of the community of practice platform, which was launched as a pilot in early 2006, and as a fully supported service in September 2006. This has proved to be enormously successful, with over 9000 registered users representing nearly all local councils in England and Wales. There are presently 290 communities on the platform, devoted to sharing knowledge and best practice around a central theme of local government service improvement.

The platform supports a range of Web 2.0 applications that enable users to find and connect with experts, collaborate on documents, debate in forums and publicise their achievements, all in one integrated and trusted environment. The facilities are free to use for employees in local government and for people and third party organisations working with councils on service efficiency or improvement initiatives. It is currently the most successful community environment for professionals in the public sector.

[Steve Dale has been retained by the IDeA to support and advise on the strategic development of their Communities of Practice Platform and other Web 2.0 services.]

Civil Serf Cornered No comments yet

For anyone following the story in the UK press, and the churn in the blogosphere, it would seem the internet blogger who published accounts of life as a civil servant at the heart of the Brown Government has been identified and suspended, as reported in the Daily Mail.

Known by the pseudonym Civil Serf, she is a middle manager in the Department for Work and Pensions.

All a bit sad really; it was certainly one of the more entertaining blogs to emanate from the public sector, and I’m not sure she said anything that we don’t already know about the workings in Gov. It will be interesting to see precisely which rules she is deemed to have broken.

A guide to social media for organisations 1 comment

A number of other bloggers have already picked up on this, including David Wilcox, but worth another mention here. Colin McKay, who works for the Canadian government has produced a handy little guide offering some tips on how to get social media accepted by large (e.g. Government) organisations.

Colin writes on the SoSaidThe.Organisation site:

“I think the advice in this 23 page guide to secretly implementing social media in organizations could be equally useful for any government employee looking to try out new technologies – I’m pretty certain on that point, since I’m a government employee in real life. You can find the guide at this link, and please feel free to share it with your friends, colleagues and bosses”.

Here’s an excerpt, from the introduction:

How do you do it? How do you bring a spirit of innovation and experimentation to the communications shop of a large organization?

I’ve worked in a large organization – the government – for the last ten years. You can find bright, creative and resourceful people around every corner, in every department.

During the course of their careers, many of these people have thought of a move that could improve their work or their environment.

From experience, we all know that small changes in process or presentation are easily won. After all, it’s just another line on an approval sheet, or a tweak on the website.

Large organizations can also be convinced to launch a large-scale overhaul of their systems – whether it’s a supply chain, assembly process or online order system.

But it’s a real pain to get them to rethink their relationship with humans outside the security fence. After all, our customer service reps seem to be doing a good job, right? That sales force really does have a handle on the needs of the community, doesn’t it?

In speaking to hundreds of workers and managers for large organizations (government and private sector), I’ve been asked the same questions, over and over:

• How do you convince your boss to even experiment with social media?
• Doesn’t it mean a lot of extra work?
• Isn’t this sort of stuff blocked by our organizational policies?

This Secret Underground Guide to Social Media for Organizations is meant to help you answer some of those questions.

I liked the simple structure and practical tips that Colin provides in the guide. A ‘must read’ for anyone who feels constrained by organisational bureaucracy and office politics.

Communities of Practice in Local Government No comments yet

So glad to see the Community of Practice (CoP) website for local government getting some blog coverage.

Happy to provide any help, information, advice to anyone wishing to use the platform, or anyone wishing to start up a similar initiative for their communities. My credentials? I set this one up for the Improvement & Development Agency.

Fostering a collaboration culture No comments yet

An excellent posting from Shawn over at Anecdote about fostering a collaboration culture. A good corollary to my recent postings about what I see as growing and misplaced belief that Web 2.0 is the solution to more effective knowledge sharing. They key point I was trying to make is that technical solutions (blogs, wikis, RSS) by themselves do not create, nurture or develop learning and sharing communities, or improve engagement between government and citizens. I emphasised the importance of people in the equation, both in terms of skilled facilitators (those who support and encourage conversations and collaboration) and the willingness of the users themselves to actively engage (e.g. a shared domain of interest). Shawn refers to fostering a culture of collaboration, which I think is quite often overlooked by those who are rushing headlong into implementing Web 2.0 facilities in order to achieve better knowledge management. To put this into perspective, the investment (time, cost and support) for the ‘people and process’ side of the communities of practice being developed across local government exceeds the cost of the technology by a factor of ten or more. Furthermore, this is recurrent cost and not a one-off capital expense.

However, I’m not encouraged by recent conversations I’ve had with representatives from one or two large government departments, who seem to have a budget for progressing a collaboration strategy, which extends to implementing a technical solution (usually Sharepoint) and nothing else. To quote Shawn “I think it’s a big problem because this narrow view of collaboration starts to get the concept a bad name: “yeh, we did collaboration but no one used it.” Let’s all hope the ‘people’ message is getting home.

Abuse of power? No comments yet

A warning for any business that uses an American company for domain name registration. eNom is one of the largest domain registrars in the US with over 5 million domains registered through it. The company was cited in the NYTimes earlier this week for seizing all the domains of a perfectly innocent travel company from the Canary Islands because one of its holiday destinations included Cuba. Clearly is doesn’t matter that the target audience for the travel company was not US citizens (who face travel restrictions for supposedly evil regimes such as Cuba). An abuse of power? Arbitrary restrictions on legitimate businesses that operate outside the US? Be warned!

It’s not the (social networking) technology – it’s the people that matter No comments yet

This is getting to sound a bit like my hobby-horse. In response to a query from someone working in local government who wanted to know how they could use social networking sites to engage with their citizens, I felt compelled once again to remind them that technology by itself was not the answer.

I know this is a very contentious thing to say, but you don’t need online social networking tools to engage with citizens. You could – for example – talk and listen to them (an ancient craft, dating back several millennia, but rapidly falling into disrepute). I don’t want to knock the advantages now available through social networking, which provides enormous opportunities for connecting people we wouldn’t otherwise know existed, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that technology is an enabler and not in itself a solution. It doesn’t necessarily follow that building the best website with all the latest social media widgets will deliver better/more effective engagement with citizens.

The blinding light of Web 2.0 hype seems to be obscuring the fact that the most important aspect in building any community (of interest or practice or whatever) is the people and NOT the technology. Though I do appear to be an increasingly isolated voice on this point. And just in case I’m accused of having Luddite tendencies, I did design and develop the (very successful) Web 2.0 community platform being used across local government (almost 9000 registered users and growing). There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that it’s continued success is very much a factor of the considerable investment in the people that support and facilitate the communities within it and not the fact that they have access to the latest social media tools. Surely I can’t be the only one who thinks this way? I’m deeply troubled if I am