Digital Insanity Magazine by Bruno Amaral

Drink your own poison

Sun, 21 Jul 2013 18:00:42 +0000

A friend of mine used to say that I drink my own poison, and that it is a good thing.

And the other day, in tune with this and my participation in BledCom, Wired published an article titled “If Politicians Had to Debug Laws Like Software, They’d Fix the Bugs“.

It comes down to this, programmers force themselves to use the software they build in order to better identify bugs and come up with solutions faster, it is called Dogfooding.

Applied to politicians, making them deal with the same conditions they impose on us would be a path towards a better society. It is funny, the article does not even question if politicians get special treatment, it is a given.

Opening doors towards a Connected government

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 12:56:26 +0000

The inspiration for this article comes from two sources. One is Clay Shirky’s Ted Talk on how the Internet will one day transform government.

The other is a story of a friend who built a civic movement. It is more than the story of a man and the way he sees the world. This is also about you and me and the way we can and should influence the world around us.

Basilio lived next to a street with serious problems of accessibility. A two-way car lane and a narrow sidewalk meant that people walking by had to stand against the wall to avoid being run over.

Making matters worse, this street is one of the main pathways to access one of Lisbon’s most central train stations.

He brought to the attention of the relevant stakeholders. The city hall and REFER, the company in charge of the train station. Not seeing any result he took it upon himself to pressure them into action. He built Entrada Norte – a civic movement and created a social media campaign across every channel he could manage: Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook and YouTube.

It took Basilio two years, the support of neighbors and friends and a number of opportunities to speak to newspapers and TV. Eventually, the street did change, turning into a one-way car lane, with a small fence being put in place to protect pedestrians a sidewalk and extra measures to ensure visibility at night.

How the government failed and Entrada Norte won

Here we are talking about every aspect of Government, from the local and regional bodies to the systems in charge of state affairs. The Entrada Norte civic movement was acting a local level and literally had to fight to get its voice heard. And has it turned out, the solution was actually quite simple to carry out.

The Civic Movement Process according to Entrada Norte
Analysis and research
Contact stakeholders
Media: Newspapers and TV
Local actions (demonstrations)
Meetings with interested parties
Repeat

The reason it took Basilio two years to achieve this victory is a failure in communication between government and the public at a local level, where ironically communication is easier to manage. The social media effort put in place was not taken into account by any government entity and served more as a way to show the relevance and concern of the people towards the problem and thus gain attention by the media and sequentially decision makers, than to alert the government directly.

On a scenario of ideal relationship management by any of the stakeholders, the Entrada Norte movement would have succeeded in half the time or less, and either city hall or REFER would be seen as a true communicative organization for doing so. What could have been a mutual victory turned out to be a defeat due to outdated procedures and lack of awareness towards social media.

Towards a connected government

The concept of Democracy began as an act of participation in public affairs. In ancient Greece, everyone who held the title of citizen could vote and make his voice heard. This model of participatory democracy eventually had to change into the representative democracy we know today. With the rise of the Web and the possibility to adopt new ways to work and collaborate we can explore a new approach to government.

A Connected Government could then be described as an entity that works as an enabler, coordinating efforts and setting priorities of other stakeholders. In its current state, Portuguese Government is more of a controlling entity, it is hierarchical and inefficient to solve problems of a small street.

Act as a network and change the way we work

The hardest change towards a connected government is structural change, it needs to be less hierarchical and have flexible procedures. That is a deep change that if we discussed would extend this article much further.

On a more practical perspective, there are a number of things that a Connected Government needs: – Tools to communicate – Free and open access to information – Research and analysis of big data – Bounty hunters – Geeks

Tools to communicate

As was said already, Social Media and internal communication tools are essential. From Twitter to blogs, Facebook and Wikis. And these tools need to work both ways and not just as a means for broadcasting information.

Free and open access to information

Despite today’s technology governments sometimes still fail to provide the Public with information in a format that is open: can be easily read in every platform, worked upon and even searched or shared as the user sees fit.

In Portugal, a group launched Demo.Cratica.org : a website that gathers and shares information about elected politicians, assembly minutes and other data they felt the government was failing to provide in an open format.

Research and analysis of big data

Simply put, gathering information is expensive and takes time. It is however possible to let citizens contribute with information via their mobile phones, reporting problems and alerting about opportunities and thus allow government bodies to focus on curating and making that information actionable.

GeoDevolutas for example is an independent website where users can login and register vacant housing or buildings that are in ruins.

Bounty Hunters

Government is not the single entity in the public sector, and yet, when faced with a problem to solve it opts to create a research or workgroup to find solutions.

Other organizations sometimes issue a Bounty for solutions of a problem or new projects. Public bounties could be answered by Universities, individuals, private companies or any other stakeholder thus cutting down costs and allowing for a faster process of research.

Geeks

Not everything in an organization can be planned or predicted and communication teams are sometimes faced with challenges in the spur of the moment.

It is then important to have geeks on the team, people who are not only prone to technology but whose desire for an open government will drive them to build quick solutions to communicate in a time of crisis or to serve as a quick fix until a more permanent solution can be found.

Going Further

There are a number of free and open source tools that can help build a Connected Government (or organization), as well as examples of practical projects who only need critical mass to make a difference. I gathered as much as I could in a list of links.

The Slides from BledCom 2013 are also available on slideshare:

BledCom 2013: Towards a connected government from Bruno Amaral

It is your turn, please leave your comment or any questions.

Update: The panel discussion gathered in storify.

Why I don’t blog as much as I did

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 19:49:50 +0000

Social and Human Ideas for Technology. SHiFT is an event that began in Lisbon and in its 4th edition is expanding to Düsseldorf.

The people above are just a few that work in Social Media over at Fullsix. Click the photo to learn a bit more in our blog: SixthPath.

I was at BledCom back in 2008, I get to go back 5 years later! The presentation will be around government and social media, how we can make society more effective by applying new ways to collaborate and coordinate resources while at the same time breaking down barriers for an active citizenship.

Bledcom, Last day and final thoughts

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:15:16 +0000

Following the bar set high by the first day of the conference, the second and last part of the event lived up to expectations.

New Zealand contributed with an interesting perspective and explanation of the Maori Party’s campaign. Other presentations focused more on cultural aspects as well as in the analysis of discourse.

This is where David Phillips and I had a chance to participate.

We presented our paper on the analysis of online discourse and at the last minute thought about analysing the hyperlink network around BledCom.com.

And so we did.

Both the network analysis and the semantic analysis showed to be in tune with the spirit of the conference. As David Phillips explains, it’s not about the words we use the most, but the concepts present along the discourse.

This example of real time analysis allows for an up to the minute monitoring of a public relations strategy as well as an initial assessment on publics’ values. And we are just looking at the tip of the iceberg.

last but not least, I would like to thank everyone who took a part in organizing the conference. Your effort did not go unnoticed.

Bledcom, First Day

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 22:59:27 +0000

Made it to Bled after a trip that proved to be longer than expected.

And so far I most say that the choice of subject for the conference was perfect — Culture and Public Relations.

It was interesting to listen to perspectives on how culture changes Public Relations from Hong Kong to Germany, no matter what area we are talking about — Lobby, Stakeholder Management, Political Communication and more.

Such presentations do more than just spark curiosity, they make me re-think what I know about Public Relations in a broader scale. Due to the different values that help make up each culture practices and strategy need to be re-thought.

Each presentation can also serve to point out to a need to understand values systems and how they influence relationships as being the challenge for practitioners.

Cannot wait to see how tomorrow will turn out to be.

Bledcom 2009

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:59:12 +0000

In a few hours I will be travelling to Venice, so I can then reach Bled in Slovenia by train.

The occasion, Bledcom 2009 where I am presenting a paper with Professor David Phillips. We will be talking about A proof of concept for automated discourse analysis in support of identification of relationship building online.

What this means is that due to the way we now communicate it is possible to identify relationships and networks of relationships. Thus placing Public Relations in a new light.

But more on that later, I will try to post on the blog and on twitter as much as possible using #bledcom as a tag.

Photo Copyright: http://www.flickr.com/photos/trentstrohm/130077084/