Facebook 'news censorship' opens the political debate: but government is uncomfortably reliant on them to Operate

 A quick note from me while I am digesting the reactions in Australia. As I reside in New Zealand, my own perspectives tend to focus on the implications and impact here. There is plenty being written about the political firestorm about the legislation vs major global companies. I’ve read a couple of op-eds spelling out the implications of Facebook determining what is and isn’t acceptable content on it’s platform, see: SMH and The Guardian

It’s interesting that after years of strongly held positions on ‘free speech’ and concern for political freedoms Facebook has resisted change around problems including hate speech, genocide incitement, livestreaming of terrorism in Christchurch. Yet it is a commercial stoush that has shifted Facebook to determining whose links will and won’t be on it’s platform and making decisions about which user-generated content will be permitted.  

What this highlights is that on a closed platform, Facebook (or Google et al) make the choices about what information is prioritised or permitted. For government technology, many agencies will be reviewing their treatment of Facebook as a neutral platform. Yet they’re uncomfortably reliant on major company platforms for services, and I’m interested in why that is so. 

What do I mean?

When COVID-19 struck, online access as a civic right became starkly apparent. The parliament itself shifted to Zoom meetings and providing transparency of information in online working sessions. Critical government business either scrambled to be delivered online, or in many cases was cancelled due to higher priorities. 

Now we have all manner of important business occurring in digital channels. Court hearings, consultations, local councils debating budgets, cross-community hui/forums, and health information being disseminated digitally, often using Facebook. It is clumsy, but critical that it proceeds. Sadly, Glasgow COP26 was postponed. The United Nations bumbled along with some Zoom calls, but sensitive meaningful negotiations on climate commitments have essentially been put in the too-hard basket. Think about that for a moment. Intergovernmental business has no ability to be done in a for-digital medium. Talk about too big to fail!

In other aspects, Government advertising spend to distribute public health information was dominated by Facebook and Google. Emergency management, like in crises before shifted to Facebook. 

However it is very tricky to use Facebook if you don’t want to identify yourself by logging in. Facebook is providing global tools and technology modules that are reliable, but prompting you to pay if you want the reach within it’s network. Perhaps you simply don’t want to use the tools that your grandma has discovered. Or perhaps you are uncomfortable getting your key advice alongside a stream of reckons from distant relations about whether we should open borders, whether vaccines are safe, or angry rants about politics in the US.

Ackama in 2018 were proud to run a global 24 hour summit, enabling governments to operate climate-change advocacy in a formal forum. We collaborated with partners, pulled together an event plan, and delivered an end-to-end piece of formal business. But I don’t mind saying that this was high-pressure and high cost. There was not enough demand at the time for ‘virtual events’ - the ones where business really gets done - and everything needed careful planning, scoping, and design, beyond the technical costs of operations. I spent a fair amount of time in 2020, speaking to agencies about the need to transition to digital-first ways of operating, and clearly this crisis has allowed better online tools to be created and made available for sale. I am less certain that Microsoft Teams is one of those better tools, but at least agencies have something available and at least it isn't Yammer. I’m not sure if this will change the underlying system dynamic here though.

What tools should government use for live streaming, for consultations, for management of OIA responsibilities, for communicating new entitlements like a wage subsidy or tax relief, like providing communications ahead of a referendum? At present, highly customised (read expensive) alternatives to using a private platform. Why should each government agency implement OIA responses in their own unique way?

I’m just going to name the key drivers that I think mean government is essentially captive to these ‘free’ tools and will increasingly come under pressure. 

1. Not enough ICT strategy and budget.

2. Open source tools and strategies are not sufficient to overcome internally focused technology decisions within agencies. 

Ultimately if you can’t get budget to do things ‘the right way’ under pressure you will tend towards less open solutions.

So Why Can’t Government Agencies Deliver Mature Digital Services of High Quality and Reliability

Well, let's say up front. They can, while we saw some major criticism of government standing up a digital response to COVID. In NZ, an isolation booking system that was arcane and hostile to public users in a stressful situation. When QR codes were first launched, MBIE shoehorned their proposed compliance platform to force businesses to go through their prototype-level systems, compromising rollout of simple registration to operate safely. Behind the scenes, public servants were working incredibly hard, but from a public expectation point of view, why is this so hard to launch? Why can't our enterprise architects seemingly anticipate the hurdles that users will experience?

This is not a criticism of the individuals in the named situations by the way.

Not enough budget allocations, and bias for capital funding bids. Although government have trialled many innovation initiatives, these typically spend years exploring a mandate and creating a project plan that lacks connection to real-world delivery of quality service.  If our digital teams are staffed by contractors, shifting from project to project, there’s reduced understanding of learning, facing long term consequences, and planning for long term outcomes. And who exactly is managing up to decision makers and advocating for less reactive decisions.

Economies of scale in tech don’t mature if agencies don’t adopt a common approach. If each agency has their own risk assessment, views on business rules, and develops an architecture from scratch, digital tools won’t be seen as ‘modules’ to be configured. They’ll be seen as magical tools provided by suppliers who have the power and control. These suppliers will then spend large amounts on configuration and governing scope as it is a risky environment to deliver specific to every government agency. There isn’t a common expectation of experience. 

If agencies can overcome their internal unique considerations, there is the potential for tooling to be shared. 

The NZ Government Common Web Platform is one example where the expectations were set, but agency behaviour never changed. An open source website platform, with an ecosystem of agencies creating their needs. Shared tooling was envisaged. After all, ‘how many online forum tools does the government really need?’. Well, not much was successfully open sourced and the rhetorical question was never answered. Not much inter-agency collaboration to my knowledge has really captured the ability to leverage collectively on a common tech stack. Perhaps naively, I believe shared-investments are still worth promoting.

Everyone is kicking off a digital transformation, but there is not a focus on identifying and educating staff in digital best-practices and innovation. 

Let’s face it, the reality of most business runs outside of the ICT applications we provide. Project management and critical data reside in MS Excel. Critical government business is managed in MS Word documents (rules, laws, consultations, commercial negotiations). Our digital teams struggle to have the resourcing for early planning, engaging with decision makers, and are caught in fire-fighting and delivery. Overall, there is chaos and a lot of promising change gets thrown away due to staff turnover. In what context are we learning the lessons of the past before kicking off a digital transformation? Must every major government re-platform rely on global consultants to provide the assurance and technology?

Where Should We Go?

I feel government should be thinking about this reliance on Facebook live streaming as indicative of a wider lack of a civic tech movement. Today’s government-on-Zoom may require a totally new technical approach to the future crisis we experience.

I think we should support and champion bold change. But we should also recognise that innovation efforts are inherently fragile and are not sufficient. 

We also should simply point at technical projects that are candidates for re-use and make them available to the leaders and teams across government. 

There is so much going on in government, that practical action and achievements should be applauded. For example, how inspiring is it that the Ministry of Health have open sourced their contact tracing app? Why would other countries not have potential access to our investment and not be able to enhance their own COVID response? Isn’t this the heart of good diplomacy and interest in NZ outcomes?

Single Digital Platform (SDP) is one internal to government effort in Victoria, Australia. I am interested in this as yet another common CMS technical effort. Although I am a little jaded at a technical level about the overall scale of the challenge, SDP is a team in government, directly delivering website services across agencies. It’s not so much the codebase, but the common approach allowing best practices to be baked in by default, and recommendations to be made on the wider digital literacy of service delivery.

In some ways SDP targets waste. Simple websites don’t need a unique delivery approach is their argument. But why not build up common practices as a default way of operating? Why not force justification to be non-standard rather than require constant relitigation of good practices?

See for example this very practical service design guideline.

We don’t need to figure out the power hierarchy to continue making progress with this. I am hopeful of DIA’s Digital Public Services. I also am frustrated at the time-wasting experience of the DIA Marketplace and lack of understanding of the needs of suppliers. 

We shouldn’t let this distract us from designing for sharing, reuse, and collaboration in every project - small, or large.

That said, it would be great to see drivers and momentum for picking up good practices.

Some fine work within DIA such as the Service Design Standard, and the Design System will hopefully win wider awareness and adherence . I think we are finally getting there with Usability and Accessibility standards, hopefully this can be expanded upon.

Anyway, just intended as food for thought. Hopefully this made you think, and I’ll keep watching Scomo vs Zuckerberg, two of my favourite people. I’d love to hear your comments on whether you agree with my assessment of Facebook as a proprietary closed platform and the implications for government.