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Last week the Social Web Analytics eBook 2008 was released by Phillip Sheldrake of Racepoint Group.

I've been browsing the book for a few days and have found it a very coherent view of the development of the online channel and the approaches now available to communicators to listen, engage, influence and be influenced by their customers, stakeholders and community.

In particular the book focuses on how to locate and monitor the conversations even now going on about your organisation, to more fully understand community views and trends in real time.

It's written at a level where beginners or those experienced with social media will still get value out of it. More...

There are many approaches in government - and the private sector - to managing their online channel. The area is still young and as yet I've not seen best practice structures emerge, as has occurred within other areas of organisation management.

In this post I intend to reflect on the different approaches and my own experiences of how well I have seen these work in practice.

I'll then propose the approach that I believe delivers the best outcomes for an organisation and its customers in today's environment.

I welcome all comments reflecting other peoples' experiences and views. More...

Eyeballs is the primary measure of choice of all mass medias - how many people viewed a television program, listened to a radio station, read a newspaper or magazine, or visited a website.

In a post in the Complexity and Social Networks Blog at Harvard University, Alexander Schellong discusses the uses of Web 2.0 technologies in government public consultancy.

He makes the really good point that government has done quite well in it's approach to public consultation over the years via town meetings, research and other tools.

This is something often missed by online enthusiasts - including myself.

Online is a new channel, but it's not the only channel.

Government functioned before the internet was created and, while online adds extra tools to the toolkit, in many cases they are simply more advanced tools - evolutionary rather than revolutionary changes. More...

Since the release of the report, The power of information (which I'm planning to blog about next week), the UK government has taken enormous steps towards using the internet in more empowering and collaborative ways to improve service offerings, communication and transparency.

I've blogged previously about the principles for online participation developed for UK civil servants, which was another direct outcome of this report.

Now the UK government has released a host of new government data, previously unavailable, for use in the development of mashups by individuals, companies and government agencies. More...

If you, like me, missed Garr Reynold's sold-out presentation in Sydney on Friday, kindly hosted by StepTwo (or if you'd like a second dose) listen to Radio National from 9am this morning.

Garr will be on for 15 minutes speaking about design - from a Presentation Zen perspective.

The piece will be repeated next Wednesday, as well as available through ABC's fabulous podcasts.

I've been reviewing a very interesting presentation from Paul Ramsay, one of my blog's Canadian readers.

Titled RoboCop, Public Service in the Internet Age, it asks whether government is simply on the internet, or is part of the internet.

It frames this question based on whether government is simply using the intranet to replicate the services it provides via other channels, or using the new medium to go further.

This is a topic I resonate with. For many years I've been telling people that what we see on the internet today is similar to what we first saw in films - stage shows re-enacted on a flat screen. More...

Are government communicators - and their agencies - perceived as authentic?

If you believe the Authentic Enterprise report from the Arthur W. Page society, this is one of the most critical questions for government in the digital age.

The report looks at three converging trends for corporate and government communications in the 21st society,

1. The digital network economy
   "...providing interlinked, low cost (even free) and easy-to-use ways to communicate, to publish and to broadcast, to work and to organize people with common interests. This is driving a shift in the way people interact with each other and with companies and institutions.

More...

The Victorian government has impressed me for several years for their commitment to the effective use of the online channel in government initiatives.

Their Graduated Licensing System (GLS) for young drivers has been extremely well-supported online, with one of the most creative approaches to the channel I've seen in government.

I don't know the budget for the development, however they have made good use of cheap open-source applications, using the Joomla content management system (one I use personally) for the website and using Youtube for storage and distribution of the campaign video. More...

I was reading through the comments on my post on Make government data freely available, and found Gav's (RedIguana) comments particularly thought provoking.

...Government also must create national standards for data, for example in terms of controlled vocabularies, etc, to ensure that data can in fact be aggregated nationally. It is no good if each council classifies roads differently, to actually produce a national aggregated dataset of roads with wildly differing definitions.

This comment, explored in more depth in Gav's blog, raises an important consideration for government as a whole. More...