Engaging With The Social Web: A Risks and Opportunities Framework

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Engaging With The Social Web A Risks and
Opportunities Framework
http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/cultural-heritage/events/mc
g-2009/
Acceptable Use Policy Recording of this talk,
taking photos, discussing the content using
email, instant messaging, blogs, SMS, etc. is
permitted providing distractions to others is
minimised.

• Brian Kelly
• UKOLN
• University of Bath
• Bath, UK

Email b.kelly_at_ukoln.ac.uk Twitter http//twitter
.com/briankelly/
Blog http//ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/
Resources bookmarked using 'mcg-2009' tag
UKOLN is supported by
This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonComme
rcial-ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat)
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Renaissance West Midlands workshop, Feb 2009
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The Challenges
Expertise
Money
Time
Resources
Understanding
Reliability
Sustainability
Culturalissues
Challenges
Interoperability
Colleagues
Technical Issues
Management
Privacy, DPA, FOI, ..
Council
Accessibility
IT Services
Legal Issues
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Take-up Of New Technologies

• The Gartner curve

Rising expectations
Service plateau
Enterprise software Large budgets
Trough of despair
Developers
Early adopters
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Lets Be Realistic
Over-hyping expectations

• Ning allows you to set up and manage your own
  social network. Sounds great, doesnt it?

• But
• Will it have the momentum to support thriving
  discussion?
• Might it not just be an automated aggregator of
  content

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Lets Be Realistic
Over-hyping expectations

• Want to provide a safe social networking
  environment?
• You can with Ning.

But what of the pitfalls?
Am I bovvered?
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Accessibility Concerns
Accessibility

• Arent Social Web services
• Inaccessible to people with disabilities?
• Break accessibility guidelines (WCAG)
• Leave us liable to be taken to court?

DDA Institutions must take reasonable measures
to ensure PWDs arent discriminated against. Is
it discriminatory to fail to provide services?
People with disabilities are using Social Web
services as are disability activists
People with disabilities are using Social Web
services
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Sustainability Concerns
Sustainability

• What happens if Museum 2.0 services
• Are unreliable?
• Change their terms and conditions (e.g start
  charging)?
• Become bankrupt
• Things to remember
• Services may be unreliable e.g. Twitter
• Market pressure is leading to changes to TC
  paid-for services may become free (e.g. Friends
  Reunited)
• Banks may go bankrupt too but we still use them
• Need for risk assessment and risk management

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Interoperability Issues
Interoperability

• What happens if Social Web services host your
  data and
• You cant get the data back out?
• You only get the unstructured or poor quality
  data back out?
• You cant get the comments, annotations, tags
  out?
• Theres a need to
• Ensure data export capabilities or
• Upload data from an alternative managed sources
• Understand limitations of data export / import
  and make plans around limitations

How do we share knowledge experiences?
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Deployment Strategies
Organisational barriers

• I want to do use the Social Web but
• The IT Services department bans it
• The council bans it
• My boss doesnt approve
• Area of interest to UKOLN
• Just do it
• Subversive approach Friends of Foo if Foo
  cant use it
• Encourage enthusiasts
• Dont get in the way

UKOLN briefing papers available with Creative
Commons licence. (over 40 docs published)
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The Council Firewall
Organisational barriers
New Internet access policy for childrenFrom
December 2008, children will be able to enjoy
improved Internet access in all Portsmouth
Libraries. The current Walled Garden
arrangement will be discontinued. The Internet
access offered will be similar to that provided
in Portsmouth schools but we will also be
allowing access to games, Web chat and social
networking sites. For further information, please
contact

• The reality
• Useful Web services do get blocked
• There is dodgy/illegal/ dangerous material on the
  Web
• It may be simple to have a blanket ban
• Suggested approaches
• We can accept certain levels of risks
• More sophisticated responses are needed
• We should share the approaches weve taken

Feel free to respond to blog post at
lthttp//blogs.ukoln.ac.uk/cultural-heritage/2009/
02/24/access-to-social-sites-is-blocked/gt
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Deployment Strategies

• Interested in using Web 2.0 in your organisation?
• Worried about corporate inertia, power struggles,
  etc?
• Theres a need for a deployment strategy
• Addressing business needs
• Low-hanging fruits
• Encouraging the enthusiasts
• Gain experience of the browser tools
• Staff training development
• Address areas you feel comfortable with
• Workflow processes
• Impact analysis and assessment
• Risk and opportunity management strategy
• Critical Friends friendly critics
• Culture of openness

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Headlines For 2010?
Tories Win General Election
Drastic Cuts in Public Sector Funding
Market place to have increased role in public
sector
Review of public sector Web services
Digital Lame Ducks condemned
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Critical Friends

• JISC UI programme is encouraging establishment
  of Critical Friends

See lthttp//critical-friends.org/gt
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Critical Friends / Friendly Critics

• Critical Friends
• Have a mission to make projects succeed
• Balance informal approach with critical eye
• Maintain confidentiality, frankness, sensitivity
  independence
• May have a funded role
• Friendly critics
• No formal responsibilities
• Willing to discuss and engage
• Will appreciate sensitivities, constraints,
• Unfriendly critics hostile opponents
• You know what they are!

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Towards a Framework

• Time To Stop Doing and Start Thinking A
  Framework For Exploiting Web 2.0 Services,
  Museums the Web 2009 conference

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Using The Framework
Note personal biases!

• Use of approach in two scenarios use of Twitter
  Facebook

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Use The Framework Yourself

• Feel free to you apply framework to
• Services youre planning
• Existing services
• Large scale initiatives (e.g. Creative Spaces)

What is the purpose? Who are the users?
What are the benefits? To whom?
What are the risks? To whom?
What are the risks of doing nothing?
What are the costs to developers, to users,
Remember the biases! Is the service really
intended to sustain the service provider?
Remember the need for the critical friend and the
need for sharing?
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Sharing Your Experiences (1)

• Theres now an even greater need to share ideas,
  plans, decisions
• Rapidly changing technical environment
• Best practices now yet established
• Changing political context

Developers at COPAC service use a blog to share
technical decisions, experiences, etc.
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Sharing Your Experiences (2)

• Guest blog posts on UKOLNs cultural heritage
  blog provide opportunity for sharing experiences
• Note that PR-pieces are not welcome!

I knew nothing of blogs back then, and nor did
our local authority. There were certainly no
policies on them at the time, but a suggestions
from one of our e-business staff led me at first
to open a MySpace account. But this didnt look
good, so Googles Blogger was tried instead.
So great were our webstats submitted under the
now-superceded system of Best Value Performance
Indicators reported by local authorities, that
the Audit Commission even questioned their
veracity.
.. they declared our figures unsuitable for
reflecting website usages by museums. this
decision might put the viability of the whole
project into question this could be a case of
the statistics-gathering tail wagging the
audience-focussed dog. But common sense prevailed

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Let The Public Know

• Frankie Roberto as a friendly critic

Social services, communities, etc. are now being
used to seek evidence of value-for-money. We
need to be able to demonstrate appropriate
processes are in place.
The paper sets out to answer this question by
way of original research and experimentation on
real data sets of museum objects, obtained from a
number of UK museums by way of a Freedom of
Information request.
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Openness The Sector

• We are experiencing
• Promotion of culture of openness (e.g. Creative
  Commons)
• Political pressures for public sector to be
  transparent
• Legislation such as FOI
• Implications for museums
• Opening up data can enhance access, support
  innovation,
• Need to be open about our policies, decisions,
• This can enhance museum values of trust

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The Risks

• Open government data
• Allows greater accountability to the public
  (friends enemies)
• Enables mashup maestros to visualise the data

A map of MPs expenses claims click on tag to
get MPs name
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What You Can Do

• You can
• Seek to open up your data (and start on the easy
  aspects your slides, perhaps)
• Open up your development processes
• Build on a culture of sharing ..
• but go beyond the MCG JISCmail list
• Regard an FOI request as an opportunity to be
  welcomed

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Conclusions
The future is exciting - but Curator Sapiens will
need to address the challenges.
Acknowledgments to Michael Edson for the Web Tech
Guy and Angry Staff Person post / comic strip