My friend and former SMS colleague, Matthew Hodgson, has posted an insightful look into some of the reasons why government as a whole is resistant to the adoption of social networking tools.
Matthew argues that bureaucracy - red tape, silos, command and control networks - is a significant factor, as is fear of what is not understood. Matthew quotes Toby Ward of CorporateWebsite.com on the issue of social tool use, particularly Facebook:
"About half of the medium to large-sized organisations (it's even higher in Government and Financial Services) forbid and block employees from using it."
Matthew also references this ZDNet Australia article that discusses the same issue. In that piece, Research vice president at analyst firm Gartner, Richard Harris, is quoted as saying:
It's mainly because of the risk aversion mentality in the public sector, they won't start taking chances with unproven technologies just yet, though it is likely that some of the more innovative agencies will be experimenting with them this year.
Harris also suggests that 2008 is unlikely to be the year adoption in government takes off in Australia.
Matthew argues that education is a key factor in influencing decision makers when it comes to use and adoption of social tools. Fear and loathing of the unknown in the large public sector organisations I worked in for much of my career before launching acidlabs was a key factor to actually preventing staff from doing their jobs properly. New tools were banned simply because IT didn't understand them and couldn't be bothered learning. New ways of doing things, online or not, were discouraged because learning about them and implementing some change might be a hassle or a distraction. Never mind what the ROI might have been - simply an irrelevant concern.
I know Matthew and I have discussed this, at least as a part of other discussions, but I would like to suggest that the barriers to adoption in bureaucracies, and especially government, is the bureaucracy itself. The very fact that there are complex command and control structures where individuals and groups silo information and tightly control its sharing and distribution seems to me to be a major hurdle. I discussed this during my OnThePod chat with Duncan Riley a few weeks ago and it's also something that I've pushed back against in all of my conference presentations last year.
There are so many potential benefits should government be a willing adopter and permitter of social tool use. I find it disheartening, and frankly even annoying at times that the bureaucrats and technocrats that control our public sector agencies are so blind to the opportunities, especially when many of them are pushing hard for better sharing of information in their organisations and better connections with their constituent and client communities. As for the issue of efficiency improvements, where agencies are progressively given smaller budgets to do the same work, I can only imagine that opening minds and eyes to some of the possibilites of social tools could be a significant factor in improving productivity and efficiency.
I'm not suggesting that government needs to blindly open up its networks to any and all social tools. That's demonstrably inappropriate and fraught with risk. What I am suggesting is that moves to test social tools initially within the wall, in the same way organisations such as IBM does and progressive, careful and appropriate approaches to connection with client bases through appropriate adoption of social networking tools is a way for government to test the waters while minimising risk.
Share ThisTagged: business, government 2.0, social media
Link to original post