This week’s launch of a new news information portal MerrionStreet.ie represents a new approach by the Irish Government to communicate with citizens.

The site – named after the Dublin street on which Government Buildings is located – is based on the WordPress Open Source software platform, and was built for the Government by Arekibo for a reported €40,000. The project took five months to pull together since the initial RFP was awarded earlier this year.

The new website provides the Government with a more dynamic web presence with the inclusion of news, photos, videos, Facebook and Twitter pages, as well as options for newsletters and web chats.

The Government describes the site as ‘providing a view of Government not seen before’. It explains:

In simple terms, MerrionStreet.ie will review the wide range of government activity and then report certain key events as news. All government press releases will be accessible from our website – either by way of RSS feed or by way of links to all government departments. But our central task will be to take a variety of events and report on them objectively, in the language of a news bulletin. We will also feature ‘Issues’ where useful thematic information, not tied to a particular date, is presented.

We use the latest audio-visual tools and Internet capabilities to hopefully bring these events to life. We have video, audio, photographs, text, links to other websites and much useful data which people can share. We are linked to YouTube, Flickr, Facebook and Twitter.

The site explains how its objective is ‘not to create a competition with traditional media in terms of deadlines, scope or scoop’. Its hope is that it will be used by journalists and others as a reference point upon which to view the latest Government developments. Noticeable it says it will “not engage in political comment.”

Political comment

The site has already come in for criticism, however, with some describing it as a means for the Government to ‘present the most positive spin on its daily news’. In Ireland’s popular newspaper, the Irish Independent, Michael Brennan describes MerrionStreet as providing ‘an uninterrupted outlet for the Irish Prime Minister’s musings’:

Modelled on a news agency, merrionstreet.ie allows the Government’s highly paid spin doctors to “report” on the work of Taoiseach Brian Cowen and his ministers.

Fed up with being unable to control the bad news, which has been frequent, Mr Cowen now has an uninterrupted outlet for his musings, free from pesky analysis and less than gratifying comment.

Such sentiments have also been expressed on Twitter and in discussion forums with comments such as those below representative of a lack of trust in the objectivity of information being released:

@Paul_Duggan: So FF are are using the @merrionstreet as a PR tool rather than a state info service…

@john_mcguirk: Looking at this MerrionStreet.ie thing. Looks like taxpayer-subsidised propaganda to me.

@irish_eagle Wanna know what the Irish word for Pravda is? See http://www.MerrionStreet.ie #Ireland #ItNeverRainsHere

Anticipating this kind of criticism the site says:

MerrionStreet.ie is produced by a team in Government Buildings, involving the Government Information Service, Government Press and IT. Our objective is not to create a competition with traditional media in terms of deadlines, scope or scoop. Indeed we hope journalists find MerrionStreet.ie a useful reference point, and are free to report and use its elements.

Social media tools

The site utilises a number of Social Media tools including Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube. The team behind the site told Siliconrepublic they had seen what other nations, like the UK and France, had done in terms of embracing free social media tools and wanted to copy this approach. They cited Number10.gov.uk as a particular inspiration for MerrionStreet.

On announcing the new site, Government Minister Pat Carey tweeted:

New Government Comms. website launching tomorrow – merrionstreet.ie will mimic whitehouse.gov and Number10 websites. Will be a great tool.

The issue is that MerrionStreet does not embody many of the principles of these Government sites. The differences between the social media elements of Whitehouse.gov/Number10.gov.uk  and MerrionStreet are contrasted below.

@MerrionStreet

Follows 0 accounts, does not use hashtags or @replies and all tweets appear to be links to news articles. The current account is not utilising the platform in the manner in which it is intended i.e. as a two way communications medium.

@GSheehy: Right, enough is enough. Unfollowing @merrionstreet until format changes. No doubt someone will RT the interesting ‘exchanges’.

Nevertheless, SiliconRepublic reports that Taoiseach Brian Cowen will eventually be among the MerrionStreet tweeters and will include the initials “BC” in his tweets to indicate his authorship. We have yet to see any tweets of this nature, however. Instead, tweets have been confined to announcements of his press statements, rather than any personal messages.

@Whitehouse

Follows 107 accounts (mostly Government entities or administration personnel). It uses re-tweets, hashtags and has a real person tweeting from inside the Whitehouse. Many members of the administration have also started using individual accounts in an official capacity.

@Number10gov

Follows 474,600 accounts. It uses re-tweets, hashtags and has a real person tweeting on events from Number 10.

Along with this the strategy explains the value of hashtags, re-tweeting and adding value with exclusive content. If the @merrionstreet account remains a static platform to be used simply as an RSS feed for news stories, it will quickly loose followers, and its value and usefulness will be further questioned. Instead, it should follow the strategy outlined by the UK Government, and embrace medium as a means of engaging with nearly 500 followers.

The MerrionStreet.ie images page displays sets of photos from the site’s flickr account. The Number10.gov and Whitehouse.gov websites also have flickr accounts, however, their use of these accounts differs in one noticeable and important way – their Copyright policy.

MerrionStreet flickr:

All photos published on the MerrionStreet flickr account use a Copyright All Rights Reserved license. This indicates ‘that the copyright holder reserves, or holds for their own use, all the rights provided by copyright law, such as distribution, performance, and creation of derivative works; that is, they have not waived any such right’.

For each photo there is a “Request to license MerrionStreet.ie’s photos via Getty Images” link, which forwards users to a Getty Images site to purchase the photos. Strangely even photos of Government buildings are licensed in this way.

Number10.gov flickr:

Publishes photos using the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license. This means that others are free to copy, distribute and display the photos on their sites, provided they give original credit to Number10.gov, do not use the photos for commercial purposes and do not alter or build upon the original works.

Whitehouse.gov flickr:

Publishes photos as United States Government Work. This means they are “not subject to copyright in the United States and there are no copyright restrictions on reproduction, derivative works, distribution, performance, or display of the work.”

The impact of setting such a restrictive license policy on Irish Government photos, is that any blogger or media outlet will need to either purchase the photos from Getty for use on their sites, or contact MerrionStreet directly. There appears to be a contradiction here as the site says: “We have video, audio, photographs, text, links to other websites and much useful data which people can share”. Unfortunately, this sharing does not extend to their photos.

Both the Whitehouse and Number 10 websites have their own video players through which they often broadcast live video, and which others can embedded on their sites. They also upload these videos to their respective YouTube channels, but YouTube does not represent the exclusive distribution mechanism for this media. Unfortunately, this is not the case with MerrionStreet.

MerrionStreet Video:

The site includes video footage of Ministerial speeches, Government announcements and a feature called “doorsteps” – where the Taoiseach or Minister answers a range of questions asked by a number of journalists. These videos are, however, all exclusively presented through YouTube. As such, the Irish Government appears to be explicitly endorsing this platform over and above the plethora of other video sharing platforms available.

The Irish government should avoid publicly endorsing one product or service over its competitors. Instead, it should ensure videos are available in different formats (e.g. .mp4) and on more than one video sharing platform. Also, they should ensure that when YouTube videos are embedded on MerrionStreet.ie they do not include the YouTube logo. This should apply to other areas of Government that create video content e.g. the House of the Oireachtas short films.

The MerrionStreet team could create its own branded, neutral video player that would allow anyone to embed the content. That would  be a more equitable way for the Government to spread its message, while still retaining a YouTube channel.

Number 10 Video:

Number 10 has its own platform neutral video player available called Number 10 TV. Videos on this player can be freely embedded in other websites and blogs. It also maintains a YouTube channel, however, it does not exclusively present its videos through this platform.

Whitehouse Video:

The Whitehouse has hundreds of videos available on its website, YouTube and Vimeo channels. It has been careful not to endorse any Video platform exclusively, and was required to create its own video player with captioning for Section 508 compliance.

The Whitehouse has also used YouTube.com to allow the public to pose questions to the President on a wide range of issues, and has recently been used by Press Secretary Gibbs to respond to questions regarding the recent oil spill.

There are longstanding policies against using advertising on federal websites or having sites endorse specific software or products. General Services Administration (GSA) guidelines prohibit .gov websites from commercially endorsing any product, commodity, or service.

GSA finalised an agreement with YouTube in February last year to resolve the legal concerns such as liability, endorsements, advertising, freedom of information and governing law. This allows for other government agencies to use YouTube without conducting their own formal assessment of its suitability and adherence to government laws.

MerrionStreet Facebook:

The MerrionStreet Facebook page has already garnered over 250 fans, but has seen very little by way of interaction or dialogue with these users. The current page appears to be merely an outlet on which news stories are posted, rather than a genuine attempt to start a conversation around particular news stories.

Number 10 Facebook:

The Number 10 website has developed a Facebook application in order to disseminate news and other information throughout the site. They’ve also recently announced a partnership with the Social networking site to support the Treasury’s Spending Challenge. The Democracy UK page will be used to stimulate debate regarding ideas proposed to cut public spending.

Whitehouse Facebook:

The Whitehouse has an extensive Facebook presence with more than 600,000 fans and thousands of ‘Likes’ and comments on news articles and videos. This provides a platform upon which the Whitehouse can share information including photos and videos, announce official government events and observances and gather feedback from constituents. This page enables users to publish their comments on Whitehouse news, something which is not possible on Whitehouse.gov.

Earlier this year, GSA signed a terms-of-service agreement with Facebook to make it:

easier for government agencies to create Facebook pages and use them to dramatically increase access to information, offer education on government services, and further empower citizens to interact with government.

This new agreement with Facebook resolves the legal concerns found in many standard terms and conditions that pose problems for federal agencies, such as liability, endorsements, advertising, freedom of information, and governing law. As part of this there is no advertising on the Whitehouse Facebook page, in contrast to the usual advertising that is included in the sidebar and header of users’ profiles and which appears on the MerrionStreet page.

Reaction

Reaction to the new site has been mixed. Many have commented on the cost involved in the creation of the website, when it uses freely available software. Some twitter reactions to the site include:

@gavinsblog: So Merrionstreet.ie is exactly what I expected – crap

@paulmwatson: When they said @merrionstreet.ie was inspired by number10.gov.uk they weren’t kidding. Expensive WordPress blog.

@ronnymitchel: In all fairness to @merrionstreet, although they paid waaaaay too much for the site, it does look nice for just @wordpress.

@micflan: 40k obviously doesn’t buy you a favicon, custom 404 pages or decent URL’s (index.php in every one). http://www.merrionstreet.ie/

This, however, misses the point and we should consider what the Government originally tendered for. The original RFP sought services including:

• Design of the website and associated accessible HTML templates
• Building the website according to the agreed design specifications
• Installation and commissioning of solution
• Provision of software maintenance and solution support including the associated templates,
• Provision of solution documentation
• Provision of solution training and handover to Department personnel

The RFP made no specific requirement for citizen engagement or dialogue through Twitter or Facebook. The only mention of social media in the RFP was:

The design must integrate seamlessly with various social networking sites ((e.g. YouTube, Facebook etc.) while maintaining a consistent look and feel wherever technically possible

Given this, it is perhaps not surprising that these elements remain relatively static.

Improvements

This is not to say that these elements shouldn’t be improved upon. The Government could attempt to create much more entertaining and informative YouTube videos – by taking inspiration from Whitehouse.gov’s West Wing Week and the Inside the White House series. MerrionStreet should be more aggressive and original in its efforts to communicate the Government’s message, over and above the creation of glossed up press releases.

As of now, their Facebook/Twitter pages merely republishes information posted on MerrionStreet. The team behind the site should consider posting more content that is original to Twitter/Facebook, giving users added incentive to visit these pages.

Finally, the Taoiseach’s office should try to expand MerrionStreet into a more sophisticated online operation that seeks to engage with citizens, rather than merely push information to them. Unfortunately, the initial scope of MerrionStreet was far too narrow. Its objective was simply to ‘Deliver a cohesive and whole of Government approach to the dissemination of Government information in a wide variety of formats’.

Improving the site to become a two-way medium with comments and citizen engagement is when it’ll really become interesting. At the moment, the site isn’t up to the standards of Whitehouse.gov or Number10.gov.uk. Getting to this point will require a change in focus from the ‘dissemination of information’, to – as Australia announced yesterday – a more:

open government based on a culture of engagement, built on better access to and use of government held information, and sustained by the innovative use of technology.

Hopefully, this will come with the next release.

Further reading:

• Irish Government’s MerrionStreet.ie goes live
• Ireland’s Government reveals its social media strategy
• Broke State shells out €40,000 on ‘spin’ website
• RPF for Provision for and Support of a Government News Website
• GovFresh Free Gov 2.0 theme
• Australia Gov 2.0 Taskforce report
• April 2010 – OMB Social Media Guidance
• June 2010 – OMB Guidance for Agency use of Third-Party Websites and Applications
• Six New Media Challenges – Legal and Policy Considerations for Federal Use of Web 2.0 Technology
• PBS special segment on the White House new media team

The Center for American Progress (CAP) held a panel discussion in Washington last week on the use of Web 2.0 technology by the Obama administration. The panel was chaired by Peter Swire (Senior Fellow at CAP, and former counsel to the Change.gov New Media Team). He led an interesting discussion with Tim O’Reilly (Founder of O’Reilly media), Alec Ross (Senior Advisor at the State Department on Innovation), and Faiz Shakir (Research director at Center for American Progress), on Web 2.0 initiatives at the State Department and the issues in its future use throughout the Federal Government. 

At the outset Peter mentions three papers on the CAP website in relation to the Federal Government’s use of Web 2.0. These are:

1) It’s Not the Campaign Any More – This memo documents the different approaches to Web 2.0 by the White House, and the challenges they face. It discusses the contrast between the new and fun things that could be done on the Obama campaign, versus the limitations imposed within the Federal Government. The primary reasons that things are more difficult in the White House include:

• Scale: The Obama campaign had to cope with motivated groups of over 10 million individuals, while the White House has to cope with, and respond to the concerns of over 300 million Americans. This makes it difficult to respond to and manage individual comments. The White House Open for Questions initiative generated over 103,978 questions from 92,937 people in just a few days. This provides an idea of the scale of comments and questions the administration needs to deal with. Given the New Media team at the White House consists of just 8 – 10 people, it’s not feasible for them to interact or engage with so many individuals. Crowdsourcing initiatives such as the use of Google moderator (for Open for Questions) and IdeaScale (for Open Government brainstorming) suggest the administration is attempting to use the wisdom of crowds to filter comments and suggestions. Other organisations e.g. OMBWatch, are also providing analysis of comments, potentially helping the administration to deal with large quantities of feedback. 
• The Clearance process:  Responses to questions need to be “cleared” with all of the relevant agencies, before they can be posted on blogs, twitter or social networking sites. Peter describes an analogy of where an incorrect response to an North Korea question, could result in missiles being launched. While it’s a rather extreme example, the comments and answers posted from the White House could be construed as official government policy or opinion. In terms of foreign relations even seemingly inconsequential comments could have major diplomatic ramifications, and so everything needs to be vetted and analysed before posting. 
• Limits on Government authorizing actions: The White House needs to be careful not to endorse or authorize others to act on its behalf. While the campaign may have been able to take a lackadaisical approach to endorsing individuals or events, things are more nuanced and difficult in the White House. There could be charges of favoritism or politicization if the White House endorses individuals or organisations. The White House has to project an appearance of fairness and objectivity when discussing outside entities e.g. websites or platforms, and as such often says very little in response to it’s use of different technologies. 

2) Six New Media Challenges: Legal and Policy Considerations for Federal Use of Web 2.0 Technology

3) How to Buy Free Software: Procuring Web 2.0 Technology for the Federal Government

Panel discussion

The first part of the discussion focuses on Diplomacy 2.0 and the State Department’s efforts to engage and interact with an online audience to further its mission. Such initiatives include twitter, blogs, youtube and facebook.  An interactive travel map is available to track Secretary Clinton’s travels, while initiatives such as Ask the Secretary have  allowed the public to submit questions directly to the Secretary of State. The initiatives outlined by Alec Ross (including the SWAT campaign), provide a good indication of how social media is being utilized within the department. 

The second part of the discussion focused on the issues facing the adoption of Web 2.0 within government. These include privacy concerns, access for those with disabilities, commercial endorsement and advertising, terms of service agreements, regulations and security concerns. These are highlighted in Peter Swire’s paper on New Media Challenges, and overlap with many of the barriers to social media adoption outlined by the federal Web Managers council last year.

While the issues won’t all be solved overnight, it’s enlightening to see departments and agencies within the federal government taking risks in this area. The rollout of Web 2.0 across government requires risk and the acceptance that while mistakes maybe made, the greater risk is to not embrace these new forms of social software.

Tim O’Reilly talked about Government as a platform, in which users can easily access and mash-up government services to allow for a more transparent, open and participatory form of public interaction. Recent initiatives such as Data.gov, Open Government Initiative, The National Dialogue etc. all serve to highlight how far the administration is embracing the tenets behind Open government. While this movement is only at the beginning, the prevalence of discussions like this, recent barcamps and the upcoming Gov2.0 summit, serve to ensure the lexicon of Web 2.0 increases throughout the federal government.

If the video above is a bit too long there’s a 5-minute Youtube video in which Peter surmises Web 2.0 specific issues in relation to the federal government. There’s also a 23-minute audio interview with Swire available at Science Progress.

The video above was recently released on the GSA’s new Youtube channel. It outlines a wide selection of social media activities throughout the US government. A full list is included at the Whitehouse.gov newmedia page, and more extensive case studies are available at the National Academy of Public Administration’s wiki. Some of the most interesting examples of new media outlined in the video include:

• Library of Congress Flickr photo stream http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/

• National Park Service Facebook App to share stories and photos http://apps.facebook.com/mynationalparks/

• Peer-to-Patent project http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/peerpriorartpilot/

• Recovery.gov http://www.recovery.gov

• Serve.gov http://www.serve.gov

• State Department’s DipNote blog on Twitter http://twitter.com/dipnote

• State Department on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Washington-DC/US-Department-of-State/15877306073?v=wall&viewas=0

• Troop Tube http://www.trooptube.tv/

• TSA blog http://www.tsa.gov/blog and other federal blogs http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Reference_Shelf/News/blog.shtml

• U.S. Government channel on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/usgovernment

• USA.gov http://www.usa.gov

• USA.gov’s government FAQs, email and online chat http://answers.usa.gov

• USA.gov on Twitter http://twitter.com/usagov

Ideas and policy

Govloop has details about the different range of social media policies for different federal agencies, and details of the GSA agreements with social media sites are outlined in a good post at Socialgovernment.com.

Some recent new media examples from the US government which I’ve been particularly interested in relate to the crowdsourcing of ideas. These include:

• National Dialog on Recovery.gov
• Open Government Dialog

Whatever the critics say about these initiatives, they represent a sea change in attitude towards public consultation. Beth Noveck, Vivek Kunda and others recognize that Government does not have a monopoly on the best ideas, and thus should solicit public participation and ideas in appropriate areas. While the ideas and votes submitted for these initiatives are not necessarily large (say in comparison to Open For Questions), they do represent a not insignificant level of engagement with those parties particularly interested in these areas. That cannot be a bad thing.

To keep up-to-date with many of these sites check out govfresh.com, or the new news.usa.gov site (a government-wide news feed service).

Vivek Kundra delivered the keynote speech at FOSE on Thursday, outlining his four principles for how government operations much change to meet the challenges facing the US today. Unfortunately, the content of the speech has been overshadowed by his suspension following an FBI raid on the technology offices of the District of Columbia. Vivek Kundra – the former CTO for the District – however,  is not thought to be the subject of the investigation.

In his first speech outlining his technology agenda he described four core principles which will define his ambitions as federal CIO.

Word cloud of Vivek Kundra’s keynote [credit: wordle.net]

1. Making Transparency and Open Government a reality

One of President Obama’s first acts was to sign a memo on the principles that government should be open, transparent, participatory and collaborative. Kundra’s agenda embraces this principle of government as a central pillar to:

…allow people to participate in the public civic process, to look at where their money is going, how it’s spent and to hold the government officials accountable.

Aligning the principle of transparency requires a shift in mindset from a default assumption of data as being private and in the control of government officials, to a recognition that data should be public.

We’re going to be publishing government data and beginning with a default assumption that information should be [available] to the people, not with the default assumption that information should not be in the public domain. If you look at what happened when data has been democratized, when data has been put in the public domain, you’ve had an explosion of innovation.

Examples of this explosion in innovation were identified as the Human Genome Project, and what the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency did in terms of creation and innovation around the Internet.

2. Engaging citizens

Kundra identified what the new media team is doing at whitehouse.gov as a sign of the government opening up and allowing people to engage in terms of public debate. This openness on the part of government includes the publishing of all non-emergency legislation online, five days before the President signs it. This legislation can be reviewed and commented on by the public, before it is signed into law.

We’re going to be rolling out an ambitious agenda on how you can engage in the operations of government on a day-to-day basis, whether that’s rule-making or whether that has to do with health and human services, across the board.

This engagement and participation with the public was a key principle throughout the Obama election campaign. Indeed, during the transition change.gov had an Open for Questions feature, which allowed the public to ask for, and vote up questions for the administration-to-be. Through allowing anyone to submit questions, and then allowing others to vote on these questions, the transition team experimented with using the public to prioritize questions and comments. Kundra seems to suggest that this kind of platform could be rolled out throughout various agencies, to try to increase public engagement with government institutions.

3. Lowering the cost of government operations

Kundra wants to use technology more effectively by doing “a better job managing its more than 4 million employees and more than 10,000 IT systems”. In particular, he wants to change how investments are rationalized by focusing more on the outcomes and less on processes.

The time it takes for government to procure IT is an issue also raised by Chris Anderson in his FOSE keynote. The often protracted procurement processes that government organisations have to follow, means they are not as nimble as they could be in their procurement of IT.

if it takes two to three years to go through a procurement…and as processor speeds and technology innovate much faster, by the time the [deal] is made, we’ve bought something that makes no sense. We need to…rethink how technology specifically is procured in the federal government.

Kundra’s believes the difference between consumer technology and government IT, both in its cost and effectiveness, is an area which needs to be looked at if the government wants to reduce its $71 billion annual IT budget.

We’re asking a very, very simple question, which is: In your personal life, as a consumer, if you can go out there and buy technology for 1/10th the cost of what the federal government pays, why is that? What makes the government so special that it can’t embrace some of these consumer technologies? What makes this government process so different that there’s no way the government can take advantage of the Darwinian pressures in the consumer space to fundamentally innovate and to lower the cost of technologies?

The short-list of options to reduce this spending include:

• greater adoption of cloud computing services – already created a body within the CIO Council to explore how the federal government can move forward more aggressively in that direction.
• use of free and opensource technologies  – these can help cut costs, time to value/implementation and enable government IT to provide services more effectively and efficiently. The question Kundra posed is: “Why should the federal government continue to build infrastructure when it’s available for free in some cases?”

4. Finding the innovative path

Throughout the speech there was an emphasis on innovation, and recognizing that the government can be thought of as a leader in this area:

Everywhere I look, people talk about how the private sector is ahead of the federal government and that the federal government can’t lead. I reject that idea.

…we can be leaders, thought leaders when it comes to innovation – especially in these tough economic times and especially when we’re looking at two wars, a tough economy and innovation in terms of fundamental operations of government lagging.

The innovations that should be looked at need to focus on citizens, and be targeted towards providing services more efficiently. Technology should be thought of as an enabler, and a conduit towards the provision of services, rather than as a necessity in itself.

A simple example is an explosion in Web 2.0 technologies. We need to re-engineer on the back end – not the technologies but the staff and the teams within agencies to make sure that they’re better positioned to take advantage of some of these technologies and drive hard in that direction.

Enabling Web 2.0 technology in government requires a change in mindset for many within government. These technologies focus on letting go of control, and being more collaborative and transparent in how government operations are conducted. Government must be more willing to take risks in order to innovate and become more efficient:

They’ve been taught that the best way to survive is not to take any risks, and they haven’t been liberated in terms of testing out their ideas and making sure that they embrace innovation on a day-to-day basis.

Helping government overcome this cultural inertia, and become a more innovative and risk taking organization is one of Vivek Kundra’s key ambitions during his tenure as government CIO. He needs to get back to work, as soon as possible in order to ensure these principles are propagated, and implemented, throughout government.

Resources

• Kundra’s keynote is available to watch at FededTV . Chris Anderson’s keynote – outlining many of the arguments that Vivek Kundra builds upon – is also available at FededTV.
• A full transcript of the speech is available at fcw.com, along with analysis at crn.com, sciencelogic.com, joeflood.com and harvardbusiness.org.

Joshua-Michele Ross interviewed Clay Shirky at last week’s Fastforward 09 conference in Las Vegas. The Interview covers a range of topics of which I’ve made some notes below:

• Humans are inherently social, but historically there has been a significant hassle factor/transaction cost in grouping together. The Internet/Mobile technologies provides lots of new ways to lower this burden and efficiently coordinate group action
• Web 2.0 applications and services make it easier for people to find each other, share, collaborate and take collective action
• Stimuluswatch.org – a site which recently had 20,000 people on its site – costs $40 per month. The developments were completed for free by those enthusiastic about the project.
• You can service the demand e.g. Government creating services for citizens, or you can make it easier for people to service themselves (i.e. by making information open and easy to consume). Examples include Apps for Democracy, Show us a better way, Fedspending.org.
• Value comes from auxiliary services. Every time a huge technological change comes along, lots of old jobs are destroyed, but more new jobs are created. As long as the number of new jobs outpaces the destruction of the old jobs society will be better off.
• Businesses often ask the wrong questions. How do we preserve our profession and the way it’s currently constituted? We’re moving towards business models B->Z. Thinking we can preserve the existing status quo e.g. in Publishing, is just silly. The transition will be achieved by those with the lowest cost of experimentation with the highest value e.g. theguardian.
• Effect of failure for an organization = likelihood x cost. Classic response is to put systems in place to lower the cost of failure. Digital technology allows for this.
• The winners and losers will be separated by who is learning and adapting the fastest through continuous experimentation.
• The search/filter market is about linking people to opportunities they did not know about or could not otherwise find.
• Information overload has been the normal case for literate citizens since the 1500s i.e. since there were more books than a person could read in a lifetime. Information has been expanding continuously for 500 years. Information overload is caused by the breaking of old filters. When someone says they’re experiencing Information overload (a normal life experience), what they really mean is I need a filter business to help me.
• When Information outstrips the available filters – and we haven’t had time to filter out the bad stuff – that’s when people feel lost and quality has deteriorated.
• These [Web2.0] tools provide a platform for global action, the likes of which have never existed before.
• We can wire the social sphere to get collective action at a scale that feels like a barn-raising, but works like a multinational.

It’s an excellent synopsis of Shirky’s thoughts on group action and information overload/filter failure.