Attempting to outlaw Facebook, Twitter and their lesser-known cousins may cruel your pitch with Gen Y staff. To allow or not all? That is the conundrum for many council’s when it comes to the question of staff access to social media during working hours. But think carefully before pushing through a ‘no’ vote. Quite apart … Continue reading →

I recall very clearly a sitting with perhaps 25 other bureaucrats back in my public service days in a bland meeting room on the NSW south coast. We were talking about natural resources planning and had just been shown two graphs. The first was a histogram of financial grants distributed to organisations across the region … Continue reading →

We at Bang the Table are constantly being confronted by the reality that while just 5% of visitor traffic is from people using IE6 most of them are from government agencies! Stuart Strathdee, Chief Security Advisor for Microsoft Australia explains here why it’s time to let go of the past and update to IE8. Why … Continue reading →

We do a lot of presentations to public sector organisations. Unsurprisingly we get asked a lot of the same questions over and over again. Communications professionals more often than not relate back to how an online forum could impact the integrity of their organisational brand. We’ve selected the top six most frequently asked of questions … Continue reading →

Risk perception and demonstrable mitigation strategies are the biggest challenges we face as a new industry. Online consultation has opened up a world of new opportunities for reaching new audiences and enhancing community involvement in public life. However, with new opportunities come new risks. This will be an ongoing series of blog posts. To start … Continue reading →

Thanks to Lisa Schiff of Naracoorte Lucindale Council in SA for pointing this article from the SMH website out to me. Online protest stops trucks Josephine Tovey February 14, 2010 A Facebook campaign that stopped Waverley Council from building a truck depot near Bondi Beach could revolutionise the way people fight unwanted moves by their … Continue reading →

Many thanks to Bernard De Broglio for passing me this link after we met at an event last week discussing online participation for local government with members of the Australian Government Web2 Taskforce. It tells the story of how Birmingham City Council in the UK spent 2.8 million pounds sterling on a website that was … Continue reading →

I am always explaining to risk averse media specialists that the ability of organisations to control the message has gone in these days of interactive media. By way of example I show them sites like Qantas Sucks and Council Gripe. This eveining I came across this wonderful example (thanks to Bob Crawshaw whose Twittering alerted … Continue reading →

Newcastle City Council recently went online to host selective consultations with their community. Their new online engagement site, which they choose to build themselves rather than using a specialist provider, asked users a series of personal questions (presumably to allow sampling) before allowing access to an area where feedback on issues would be sought. As … Continue reading →