One Government first date experience

Get ready, citizens! Soon you will have an unprecedented opportunity to engage our federal, provincial and municipal governments to offer feedback and acquire real-time information on the issues that matter to you through smart government websites and social media tools!

Oh wait…that’s not actually happening….hmmm, well, why not?

That’s the question we posed to Government of Saskatchewan senior policy advisors, communications personnel and website managers at a zu luncheon called One Government (#1gov) last Thursday in Regina.

We called it a zu first date event because we decided to pick up the tab for dinner, give out chocolates and flowers to see if any government employees would come out to see what we had to say. To our delight, they did show up! They said we were a bit harsh in our assessment of governments for a first date but nevertheless right on the money.

The big picture: one government
After providing a quick intro as to who their date was for the luncheon (ie: zu), I introduced our CEO Ryan Lejbak as the first of three speakers.

Ryan hammered home the point that you shouldn’t have to understand government in order to communicate with it. He said that less than 1 per cent of people know how governments are structured but government websites are setup based on the org chart and citizens are expected to navigate through that maze in order to find the information they need.

He further noted that the early versions of online government were called e-government, whereby information was posted to citizens via the web in a brochure-like manner. While he thought e-government was a great start, it’s now an outdated idea.

And it’s no secret that people don’t trust government information like they used to and there is a need for governments to reinvent their image. The vision for doing just that is what zu calls ‘One Government’ (other thinkers call this Government 2.0 or Wiki Government).

Ryan described One Government as an organization that is effective, communicates with its stakeholders through two-way communication, and provides the same user experience from department to department no matter how the communication occurs. So, when you’re talking to the Ministry of Education, Forestry or Health, the message should be delivered the same way.

He recommended three pillars to tackle this challenge and they can be found on Ryan’s blog post about this event.

The stats
After Ryan gave the big picture for governments online, my fellow amazing Account Executive Stephanie Hughes told us the hard-core facts about online communication tools.

She illustrated that with the evolution of the Internet and the communications tools, people now have the ability to connect with governments in a variety of different ways, and they want to connect with governments using this new technology.

In particular, the younger generations in Saskatchewan, those born after 1974, are constantly connected through technology. They spend copious amounts of time on Facebook, instant messaging, sending text messages and so forth.

Some studies indicate that these groups spend 25 hours in a 24-hour day using technology because they multi-task. I know I’ve been caught watching TV, surfing the web and instant messaging on my laptop, texting on my phone and eating a bag of Cheetos all at the same time.

What really drove the message home that governments need to be better connected online was the latest social media revolution video that we showed. Check it out; it has some powerful stats.

The strategy
To wrap things up, Albert Jame our Creative Director then gave an overview of how to develop a proper web strategy.

Albert talked about how the single biggest hurdle in web planning is having everyone seeing the same end result for their website. To help with this problem he recommended trying a news release exercise at the outset of planning a new website.

The activity asks each person of the website redesign team to write the news release for when their website gets launched several months down the road. You may be surprised at how divergent the ideas are and you’ll see what people are thinking.

Albert also passionately spoke about how all advertising or educational promotions from the government (ie: TV, radio, print, etc.) should point back to the web. He encouraged us to think about the web as an infinite brand impression, compared to a finite one like the pint media. For example, you never see a website refer to a billboard for more information.

He covered a ton of topics but he lastly encouraged the attendees to create a social media policy as a first step so employees can start experimenting with Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and the like. Al recommended that any policy should allow the government to be responsive and allow debate but not abuse, while promoting messaging that is genuine and transparent.

The rub
In sum, the underlying message is that action needs to be taken to improve the Government of Saskatchewan’s web presence, like most every government right now. Technology can help make governments better for citizens, make democracy stronger and give citizens a voice like never before.

According to Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics, governments have responsibilities beyond market requirements such as addressing issues of poverty, crime and providing adequate health care. That is really just a fancy way of saying that governments deal with really frickin’ important issues that affect us all. Hence, if we do, in fact, believe in democracy and majority rule then don’t these issues deserve an intensely collaborative effort through this new technology? Yeah, I think so.

The answers aren’t perfectly clear yet and they won’t be easy to implement, but it’s time to start trying. Governments have an amazing opportunity to innovate and to collaborate with citizens like never before.

Call me crazy, but I want to have a say in what our government does more than every four years and I don’t want to have to write a letter, join an association or call news talk radio in order to participate.