Devon County Council is holding a Create/Innovate month in June, which involves a programme of activities and events associated with experimentation, discovery, play, learning and reflection. The aim behind Create/Innovate is to raise awareness of creativity, innovation and service design within the council. It also aims to promote and foster an internal climate of creativity. All staff will be encouraged to participate throughout the month in a variety of ways from engaging in policy to watching videos of international speakers.
Devon council has an enlightened approach to the web, recognising that talk of digital participation is meaningless if your staff are blocked from using web-based resources such as video from streaming media services such as YouTube. Yet that is exactly what happens throughout the Scottish public sector. Recently we ran a workshop on social media for a government agency and requested access to certain types of website (video streaming etc). Here is the response from the Scottish Government’s systems management team:
The web service… is a very limited and popular resource, not only the fixed bandwidth we have available but also the resources available to manage, monitor and police its use. Currently we do not offer media streaming from YouTube……micro managing individual staff access to individual internet sites and resources would be a complicated and time consuming task, therefore this is very much an exception rather than the norm.’
The week before, Scotland’s Deputy First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, announced
Technology and access to high speed internet is a vital part of Scotland’s infrastructure, and that is why we are committed to delivering a world class digital infrastructure to the people of Scotland by 2020.
Well, the people of Scotland includes the workforce. A world class digital infrastructure needs a world class workforce competent and comfortable using web-based resources. The government is actually preventing its staff from becoming more innovative and cost effective by blocking access and spending time ‘policing’ rather than encouraging and supporting. Arguably the workforce represents one of the biggest digitally excluded groups: they have bandwidth, they have computers, they have creativity. All they need is support, encouragement, and trust. The Society for Information Management thinks so too:
Social media will not go away. It is a logical application of web technology. It is increasing in use, and becoming the communications channel of choice for many, particularly for young people.
Failure to engage with the trend is tantamount to decrying the telephone at the end of the 19th century. The growth of social networking and publishing platforms, and the consumer participation that they generate forces organisations to re-evaluate business strategy.
Social media – why ICT management should lead their organisations to embrace it
If our aspirations for digital inclusion or participation are to be achieved, the Government has to set an example by encouraging a change in culture similar to what is happening in Devon and advocated by the Head of the Civil Service:
Most staff can be trusted to use these technologies appropriately if they are aware of the constraints and the risks. And appropriate line management intervention may, in some cases, be a better solution than tighter technical controls that hinder business use.