It was just another day in the summer of 2012 when my then 7-year-old son Mark ran into my study and excitedly insisted I come to see what he was watching on the TV.  Not wishing to dampen his enthusiasm, I obliged, and found myself sitting in our lounge with my son watching one of [...]

On its own, open data certainly has its uses, but they are limited. And the attention it continues to get makes it harder for anyone to talk about what makes data really powerful – open services. So what are open services? An open service is one that is freely available to everyone to use. The [...]

Based on my experiences from the fore-runner to 2012′s “Digital by Default” PS Public Service Events conference, I wasn’t expecting much more than “interested conversations.” How wrong was I… Why Sponsor Again? Let’s back up a little…  why did KANA sponsor, speak and exhibit for a second year? Quite simply because actual ‘Digital by Default’ events [...]

Whilst public sector organizations are similar to commercial sector organizations, and indeed both have a lot to learn from each other, public sector organizations have a number of characteristics that are largely unique to them. In the public sector, particularly local government, many services relate to a location, whether its someone’s home address or a [...]

It’s unbelievable in this day and age that companies, both large and small, are still refusing to handle even the simplest of the digital channels, email. Earlier this year, my wife and I went through that simultaneously painful and exciting experience of shopping for carpets (amongst other things) for our new house.  Like Liam Neeson, [...]

In this third and final part of the series on the Digital Citizen, I introduce the challenges government faces in servicing the Digital Citizen (read Part I and Part II). By now you know that the Digital Citizen is ready and waiting, and that whilst you might believe they bring opportunities for government, you also know they [...]

This is the second in a series of blogs on the Digital Citizen. The first, ‘The Emergence of the Digital Citizen – Part One’ outlines my thoughts on how the use of new technologies ,like social media and smart phones, have gone mainstream everywhere except government. That said, this blog highlights a few great examples [...]

Few will argue that the ‘digital citizen’ is a reality today, but many will still cite statistics that show – beyond a shadow of a doubt – that phone-based communication still represents most of government interactions. Whilst true, my problem with this is that I believe many infer this is the way it will always be… [...]

I made this assertion recently during my plenary presentation at the Transformation through Technology conference in London. Thankfully, I didn’t get lynched… The rationale behind my assertion is this…  whilst technology can certainly inspire a vision for transformation, it alone is not enough and without other factors, the likelihood of achieving the expected outcomes is significantly reduced. [...]

It almost seems wrong…  Whilst the verb ‘exploitation’ has very negative connotations, I’ve chosen it deliberately instead of ‘optimization’ or ‘shift’ to emphasize to our government customers the scale of the opportunity to improve not only citizen satisfaction but also their own service delivery through the exploitation of the myriad of on-line channels available today in [...]