In observance of National Public Service Week, I’d like to recognize some of my stellar peers who are contributing to making GCPEDIA the brilliant, vibrant place that it’s becoming.  Specifically, I want to offer my thanks and a small token of my gratitude to the gnomes and gardeners who are toiling regularly to make our wiki bloom.

Late last week on Twitter, I posted a shot of the shelf over my desk. Among other inhabitants, there is a gnome that I received from Thom Kearney in appreciation of my contributions to the wiki.  I’d like to pay that gesture forward and present one to you as well.

If you have made 1000+ edits to GCPEDIA, please contact me so we can work out delivery arrangements for your gift.

Happy National Public Service Week!  Keep on Gnomin’.

Update: Due to much positive interest from GCPEDIANS, this is now a permanent GCPEDIA Award!

Recently, I resolved an edit war on GCPEDIA.  Well, that’s a bit of an overstatement I suppose.  I intervened in a situation where a couple of users were beginning to revert each others’ edits and exchange words via the edit history comments.  I smelled smoke, then stomped out the sparks before any serious fire could begin.

It would be nice to imagine that as public servants we are less prone to misunderstandings caused by lapses in judgment, errant processes and failure to communicate.  It’s just not true.  A university education and a professional work environment can’t change the fact that we’re still fundamentally flawed, emotional, irrational human beings.  In fact, we might be even a bit more at risk for inadvertent involvement in skirmishes like this.

A degreed professional already has a significant volume of writing under their belt.  You have faith in your own abilities and place a high value on the quality of your work.  When you make a revision on GCPEDIA, it’s well reasoned and well intentioned.  So why on earth is that moron fiddling with your stuff? 

As an administrator on GCPEDIA, I am the guy who fiddles with a lot of peoples’ stuff.  Call me a moron if it makes you feel better, I’ve certainly been called worse.

One of the jobs I undertook that created a lot of rumblings among GCPEDIANS was to replace nicknames, handles and other abbreviations with the policy-decreed firstname.lastname format.  Boy did I get some interesting email.  I’ve saved them all, but they’ve been shared with no-one and never will be.  They’re just a reminder that despite being who we are—professional employees treading water in a tumultuous wake of constantly shifting policies, programs, priorities, and acronyms—we really dislike forcible change when it impacts something closely attached to ourselves.

Our birth names are given to us (forcibly, if we want to think of it that way) but nicknames and handles are a personal choice.  They also allow us anonymity, which a lot of wiki users would like.  Wiki policy aside, I don’t think anonymity is congruent with the transparency we’re aspiring to in government, or even the reality of the workplace as it presently exists.  I don’t know about you, but I haven’t attended any meetings or conferences lately as “The Overlord” (a nickname I used on computer Bulletin Board Systems in 1990-91).  And honestly, 19 years later I don’t look nearly as cool as I once did, so I doubt even I could resist the urge to snicker at that moniker.  But I digress…

Our feelings of professional competence, perceived social value, and sense of self can become deeply intertwined with our editing.  Adding anonymity to the mix makes it even more complicated.   A sense of ownership of our creations combined with a shell to hide inside makes for a dangerous vehicle to travel in.  We can safely drive around, running over toes as we go, while remaining reasonably well protected from flak from others.  But we also make an inviting target.  Not a co-worker, not a person, just a personae.

I haven’t swept the user records in awhile; I know there are more of you out there, and I’ll have to change your names eventually…

But in the meantime, name or nick, I want to see more on GCPEDIA: more openness, more communication, more co-operation, more accessibility.  Here are some suggestions:

• Create your GCPEDIA user page, if you haven’t already done so.  Include all of your business card contact information, a picture, and some interesting personal tidbits about you.  Make it an introduction, and an invitation to connect. If people want to contact you, phone numbers, email addresses, and talk page links allow them to do so using the method of their choice.
• When you edit, take a look at the article’s History tab and notice who the major contributors are to the document. “Major” it isn’t  the number of times a name appears in the list either, it’s the volume of text they’ve added or changed.  Compare Selected Versions of the article to see what and how much others are contributing.
• Use the Edit Summary box to explain what you’re doing, especially if the changes you make are significant or severe.
• In addition, consider leaving a Talk Page message for major contributors, introducing yourself and making a quick remark about your work.  (“Hi there!  I made some changes to the section on…”)
• Phone, email, or leave Talk Page messages to others who have made questionable or EXCELLENT changes to your “pet” documents.

That last point is key.  Don’t wait for someone to do something wrong to contact them; a criticism should never be the context of your first introduction to another person. Recognize and praise effort from others.  An unexpected compliment from a stranger is like a pat on the back from a DG.  You have the power to make someone’s day, make them more engaged with collaboration, or even make a friend.  Use it.  Do it.

I consider editing (and administrating) GCPEDIA a part of my job, and I always have.  If you read the wording of your job description, there’s probably some significant wiggle room for creative interpretation, provided that your primary product or goal continues to be produced or achieved on time.

For example, do your duties specify that you must:

• Work as part of a team that provides advice, recommendations, and information to project officers and middle and senior management.

Can you use GCPEDIA as a development platform to draft advice or recommendations?  Are you part of a working group that shares discussions, suggestions and findings?  Do you produce reports that could be of interest to public servants across the country if you published them on a wiki?  Could your division benefit from a GCPEDIA presence in order to share information about its purpose, and provide the answers to common questions?  Mention GCPEDIA in your Performance and Learning Agreement.

If you can’t justify it as a tool that helps you to accomplish a primary work objective, or a supporting technology that you need to fulfil performance expectations, add it as a required or developmental learning objective.  You’ve got support in high places.  The Clerk of the Privy Council has repeatedly spoken and written about the importance of GCPEDIA:

• In the Seventeenth Annual Report to the Prime Minister on the Public Service of Canada as a collaborative technology for enabling workplace renewal;
• In the 2010-11 Public Service Renewal Action Plan as an innovation allowing us to work with greater effectiveness and efficiency; and
• As a knowledge-base for capturing best practices and experiences so we can all learn from them.

“GCPEDIA and similar wikis are vital to the public service of today and tomorrow.”—Wayne G. Wouters

If it’s vital to the public service, it’s a vital component of your learning.  Add GCPEDIA to your Performance and Learning Agreement.  It isn’t taking time away from your work, it is your work.  It isn’t cutting into your value and productivity, it’s adding to it.  It’s an important component of the future public service, but it also provides increased  value to the Government—and ultimately, the taxpayer—here and now.

Let’s face it: few of us (if any) are completely consumed by our prescribed duties 100% of the time.  That said, the Government of Canada is paying for my time and my skills whether I am in the midst of high stress and high volume workload, or in a period of relative calm.  At minimum, donating my spare minutes to GCPEDIA gives the Government more value for their money.  I’m not playing solitaire, doing my banking, or making personal phone calls.  I’m working for Canadians and for my fellow public servants… and on those occasions that I am daydreaming, it’s about “How can I make this work even better for everyone affected?”

Which brings me to the last benefit of editing GCPEDIA: engagement—to purpose, and to people.  GCPEDIA keeps me productive, while allowing me enormous personal satisfaction, creativity, and choice.  “What can I fix today?  Who can I help?”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: GCPEDIA’s value includes but extends far beyond merely storing the knowledge of those employees that the Government has lost (or will lose). Its hidden value is in capturing and retaining the knowledge, involvement and interest of current and future employees.  In the inventory of qualities that make for an attractive workplace, money isn’t the highest consideration on the list.  In terms of long-term retention, ranking higher is the quality of the workplace, satisfaction with the work, and highest of all, satisfying relationships with co-workers—a perception of connectedness and belonging.

GCPEDIA.  People & Knowledge.  Gens & Savoir.  It’s all right there, under the logo.

Your PLA Homework:

Developmental learning (career path: 1 to 3 year outlook)
Objective:
(1.) To increase my knowledge of Web 2.0 and social media, and their emerging application to the Public Service Renewal initiative.
Learning Resources / Activities:
- Learn and use GCPEDIA, the Government of Canada’s Web 2.0 document collaboration platform.
- Learn and use GCconnex, the Government of Canada’s professional networking platform.
- Attend relevant workshops, Armchair Discussions, meetings, etc. whenever possible.

Back in September of last year, sometime after I was already entirely swept up by obsessive compulsive wikignoming—grafting and pruning the site in a way I hoped would make it prosper—it occurred to me that a similar role should exist to help users grow and prosper.  I created the Peer helper category on GCPEDIA, made a shiny new badge for myself and pinned it to my homepage, then did almost nothing to promote it, short of maintaining a high-visibility presence in the recent changes log, and jumping in to help whenever I saw someone in need.

I have this tendency to do a lot behind the scenes, but say little about it.  This probably explains why I was made an administrator on GCPEDIA, but also why no one from Communications has called to ask if I’d be willing to leave my job as a policy analyst and come work for them.

If you need another example, a colleague of mine recently expressed surprise that accounts for @GCPEDIA and @GCconnex exist on Twitter.  I wasn’t surprised.  I started them, and still manage them.  Other than a couple of (arguably self-serving) #FollowFriday announcements, I haven’t done a lot to promote these either.

In my own defence I can only say that the accounts are highly unofficial.  I took the initiative to reserve them because I felt they would (and should) eventually have future official use by the Government of Canada. For now, I use them to transmit information on service outages and new content, although they were also allegedly responsible for rickrolling nearly 60 of you this April Fool’s Day.  Unofficially.  But I digress…

Recently, I attended a meeting where it was announced that, at present, about 100 new users create accounts on GCPEDIA each day.  I’m pleased with this growth, but also greatly concerned about retention.  Ultimately, active usership is more significant and meaningful than total users and volume of new signups.  Who’s caring for these people?  Technical support is critical, and as far as I know, the project has experienced a recent staffing shortage.  How many users will GCPEDIA lose in short order if recent signups can’t find dependable, accessible, timely assistance with their problems?  What percentage of our collective intellectual assets are failing to be captured by the wiki because fear or lack of knowledge about editing content outweighs the desire to share?

I’ve been a wiki administrator since 2005, and a user for far longer, but I think many of us assume a comfort and ease of use of wikis, and a common knowledge of wikimarkup that doesn’t exist.

Not long ago I provided group instruction for about 40 people.  It was productive, but I had difficulty meeting the combined needs of the participants at both the speed and the technical level that they individually demanded.  Some were ready to dive into complex design and formatting, while the majority were extremely anxious about attempting even basic text entry.  The more experienced group was bothered by the interruptions to discuss fundamentals, while the less experienced users became overwhelmed by complex discussions.

This was the Government of Canada in microcosm—a shared desire to contribute professional knowledge, but a greatly variable level of technical knowledge.

This doesn’t need to exist as a barrier, nor do staffing and funding levels need to remain a critical determinant of our ability to retain users and capture their ideas.

Today, I’m pleased to announce that Jesse Good, Suesan Danesh, Amy Thorne, and Paula Ibbotson have joined me to assist users who need individualized support to help them achieve their personal or group goals on GCPEDIA.  I will continue to remain available as well, to the greatest degree that I am able, to provide training and support to groups or individuals in person, by phone, and over the wiki.

I’ll conclude with an excerpt from my blog on GCconnex, posted last September.  It’s written in the first person, but consider it an invitation to contact any one of us:

If you’d like to get your knowledge up on GCPEDIA but are unsure about the markup and layout, please contact me. If you’ve got a good start going, but things are becoming tangled and complex, or you need to add something new, just write or call.

I’m more than happy to help you to whatever degree you’d like, from a bit of coaching to taking a lead in structure, design and coding.   I can teach you the markup, show you by example by formatting and arranging the data as you need it, or even edit it with you live and in tandem during a phone call.

Don’t feel like you need to be an expert to get started on GCPEDIA.   This is, above all else, a collaborative tool.  Those with content but no software knowledge can help and be helped by users with the technical knowledge but no new content to share.

So… let’s get started helping each other.

Note: This post contains links only accessible within the Government of Canada network.

On my administrative rounds this morning I was pleased to read a familiar name in GCPEDIA’s recent changes log: Wayne Wouters, Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet.

I was already aware of Mr. Wouter’s support of GCPEDIA, having described it as “a key enabler of workplace renewal”, but this…?  Did anyone see it coming?

Last night, shortly after 8 PM, he began crafting his user page, a talk page header template, and a discussion document on Workplace Renewal.  Then, this morning, he uploaded photographs and began making some fine adjustments to his featured article box on the wiki’s front page.

Reaction on Twitter was quick…

@Arkuszewski: Clerk of the Privy Council is on #GCpedia. (internal link) http://bit.ly/dCGVdH Great step forward for #renewal #GoC

@stourang: Nice!

@toddrlyons: Wayne Wouters is editing #GCPEDIA – http://bit.ly/cMmHo8 – Designing, writing, & uploading | #gc20 #goc

@scilib: who will be the first to add an edit to the #GCPEDIA discussion on workplace renewal?

@Wikisteff: Wayne’s post on GCPedia is actually quite good: http://www.gcpedia.gc.ca/wiki/User:Wayne.Wouters Way to go, Wayne!

 …with many retweets and clickthroughs in succession, not to mention a number of public servants jumping in to provide helpful edits to the Clerk’s posts.

It’s heartening when high ranking public servants come out in support of social media. I was able to experience this recently at the YMAGIN National Conference where the speakers in attendance included three Director Generals, two Senior Assistant Deputy Ministers, an Assistant Deputy Minister, and the Deputy Minister of HRSD.

But when the highest ranking public servant in the Canadian government actually signs up, logs in, and begins creating content on a wiki in real time … it’s an unprecedented embracement — tangible evidence of a genuine commitment to public service renewal, and the collaborative tools that will help make it a reality.

When I joined the public service I often heard it said, “In Government, everyone is an editor.”  For recent graduates — or others just accustomed to the experience of creating polished work and having it accepted verbatim and with full attribution — this is a warning about the process of government.

You write a document.  Several peers or senior colleagues will review it and add suggestions and changes.  After this initial round of  development, your manager will likely wish to take out their own red pen for additional quality control.  Once you’ve folded these in, your document (or rather, “the” document) will be ready to make its way up the chain to your director, who will likely make other edit requests for you to include before returning it for final approval.  Depending on who or what the document is for, the document may continue to morph for some time even after its left your workgroup.

For people who are either protective of their product or simply used to creating something “final” by themselves, the whole experience can be a bit unnerving.  Some edits will feel legitimately useful: significant additions of important information, corrections of errors, or re-ordering of content to make the ideas flow more effectively.  Other changes may sit less well: wholesale deletion of entire paragraphs, wordsmithing, or comma moving.

But this is the way we work in government.  What you create is a draft, which may ultimately be returned to you several times covered with sticky notes and red ink, or, in the case of electronic documents, with multicoloured strikeouts and comment bubbles detailing the tracked changes.  It can be initially painful and occasionally still frustrating, but more often than not the resulting product is superior to what any one person could have created alone.

If this is any different to what a wiki accomplishes, the distinction is lost on me.

You create a wiki document.  Several peers or senior colleagues review it and add suggestions and changes.  After this initial round of development, you advise your manager that you’ve got a draft posted.  The manager logs in and makes their own contributions to quality control.  Now there’s something online for your director to have a look at when they have some time.

The process is completely transparent.  Everyone’s edits, major and minor, are captured in the wiki’s history tab.  There are no multiple copies of the document floating around through email, nor any misplaced hard copies with edits yet to be added.  Everyone is editing the master copy of the document in real time.  None of the deleted text is ever really lost: it exists in a previous version.  Any content deleted from a previous version of a document can be copied forward into the current version, if someone decides it was worth including after all (as-is, or as draft text to be re-worked).

A wiki isn’t useful for every document — sensitive information requires sensitive handling, and you probably don’t want employees making wish-list alterations to official policies — but for fast and efficient building of unclassified documents, why not wiki?

In my last GCconnex update about the recent user survey, I encouraged everyone to contribute their opinions about the look, feel, and usability of the Government of Canada’s internal professional networking platform via the GCconnex Professional Network Pilot Working Group forum.  I’m pleased to say that changes have already been rolled out, with more in progress.

Paul Jackson said:
“I just noticed that there are colour contrast issues with the layout and design. We should be achieving at least 4.5:1 colour contrast ratio (between foreground text and background colours) to avoid excluding people with poor vision.”

…and in less than a week, a new theme with sharp text and high contrast was rolled out.  User response on The Wire was immediate and overwhelmingly positive.  On the very high end of praise was Kurt Conroy who gushed (tongue firmly in cheek), “OMG I LOVE GC-CONNEX I THINK I’M GOING TO DELETE MY FACEBOOK ACCOUNT B/C THIS ROX.”

I concur.

Thom Kearney reports that the number of widgets in the default profile page has been reduced, ostensibly to minimize the complexity of the user interface as new widgets are being added.  According to Charles de Grasse, GCPEDIA’s “technical lead infrustructure go-to guy”, the new widgets may not be bilingual. This is temporary.  (For the technically curious, the developer log of installed modules and other GCconnex changes is here.)

Some new users continue to express a bit of system shock upon signing in, while others find the system more intuitive than Facebook.  Should you find yourself in the first group, it’s safe to say that there is more than enough community support to help anyone in need.  I’m available by email or by phone to help you any way I can.  Just drop me a line.   My contact information is on my profile pages at GCconnex and on GCPEDIA.  Additionally, help files exist at both sites.

If you’ve ever doubted that feedback can lead to tangible and timely response, the progress at GCconnex is heartening.  Login or sign up today, and for some guidance on how you can help make the platform better, check out Thom Kearney’s recent blog entry about how to report bugs and make feature requests.

Recently, GCconnex (the Government of Canada’s professional networking platform) conducted a 14 day survey (October 20 to November 2, 2009) to gather user impressions. Now, Thom Kearney has posted the results of the 253 completed responses, along with an invitation for users to share their thoughts on the GCconnex Professional Network Pilot Working Group forum.  If you have an opinion about the look and feel or usability of GCconnex, the ELGG software it runs on, or the findings of the survey itself, I strongly encourage you to join the group.

If you’ve yet to register with GCconnex, the best way to form an initial impression to share with your fellow public servants is to sign up immediately.  Alternately, if you were an early adopter who hasn’t dropped by for a look recently, you might want to check out the current state of the platform.  As George Wenzel reported on The Wire recently: “Haven’t logged into GCConnex in a while – wow, things sure have changed!” 

The November 10, 2009 meeting minutes of the Government of Canada professional networking pilot group posted on GCPEDIA indicate that CIOB will keep running GCconnex as-is at least until end of the current fiscal year, but that “CIOB will not fund next year at [the] current level”.

Your feedback and participation in GCconnex is vital.  And, if you need a hand moving in, call me.

UPDATE:  Thom Kearney has released additional details on his GCconnex blog.

In March of 2009 David Eaves suggested that GCPEDIA will save the public service .  As a public servant and a GCPEDIA administrator, I’d like to believe he’s right.  His main argument was that GCPEDIA has the potential to become the repository of much knowledge that will be lost (or at least not conveniently accessible) once the baby boomer generation retires.

Has this been happening in the time since his article was originally published?  While I can’t claim to be familiar with every article produced on the wiki in the last 7 months, I’d have to say: not obviously. I’ve watched with interest as Mitch Bloom has been toiling away at “Things you wish you knew as a new public servant‎” but I haven’t noticed other similar examples (note: GCPEDIA is only accessible from the Government of Canada computer network).

Whether or not you agree that there is value in capturing past and present ways of doing for posterity (and given some of the reader comments to Mr Eaves’ article, it’s a contentious issue) I still believe that GCPEDIA will save the public service.

GCPEDIA is as valuable for what it is as it is for what it represents.  As a public service renewal initiative, it functions as a collaboration tool that can aid government employees in their work across federal departments and provincial boundaries.  And as a public service renewal initiative it proves tangibly that the Government of Canada sees value in Web X.x technologies by providing these tools to public servants nationwide — tools like GCPEDIA, GCForums, and GCconnex.

As a relatively new addition to the public service, I can honestly say that until recently I had serious doubt about the government’s ability to move into the 21st century.  I never doubted there was interest in doing so, or a belief in the necessity, but as far as actually achieving this… well, the mantra I heard recited by many senior employees was a reminder of the glacial speed of government.  From my own early experiences, I was inclined to agree.  I arrived in 2007, and was promptly delivered a computer running Microsoft Windows 2000, Office 2002, and Internet Explorer 6.  Not exactly the recency that I was accustomed to from my experience in the private sector…

Don’t misunderstand, I love the public service, but nothing really excited me about it until GCPEDIA.  I blogged about this excitement recently on GCconnex, along with my own pledge to try to help Mr. Eaves’ prophecy come true:

I returned to the public service in mid-August 2009 after 9 months parental leave and was amazed to discover GCPEDIA and GCconnex, which seemed to have been getting underway just as I was planning my escape vector to Babyland.

I say “amazed” because before I left I’d had some heavy discussions with Pierre-Luc Pilon (and others) at the October 16 and 17 2008 YMAGIN UnConference about how great these types of tools would be for the GoC.  I never dreamed they would actually materialize, let alone afford me an opportunity to be personally involved. So fresh back in my chair at HRSDC, and with ~4 years of MediaWiki administrator experience, I applied for and was accepted as a sysop on GCPEDIA.  I’m thrilled to be able to put my experience to work at work, and I’m eager to donate my spare work cycles to assisting your project or group.

If you’d like to get your knowledge up on GCPEDIA but are unsure about the markup and layout, please contact me. If you’ve got a good start going, but things are becoming tangled and complex, or you need to add something new, just write or call.  I’m more than happy to help you to whatever degree you’d like, from a bit of coaching to taking a lead in structure, design and coding.   I can teach you the markup, show you by example by formatting and arranging the data as you need it, or even edit it with you live and in tandem during a phone call.

Don’t feel like you need to be an expert to get started on GCPEDIA.   This is, above all else, a collaborative tool.  Those with content but no software knowledge can help and be helped by users with the technical knowledge but no new content to share.

So… let’s get started helping each other.

I can’t imagine I’m the only one who feels this way.

I believe that GCPEDIA will save the public service not merely by storing the knowledge of those employees that it has lost, but by capturing and retaining the knowledge, involvement and interest of current and future employees.  If you’ve done any investigation into the qualities that make for an attractive workplace, you’ll know that money isn’t the highest consideration on the list.  In terms of long term retention, ranking higher is the quality of the workplace, satisfaction with the work, and highest of all, satisfying relationships with co-workers — a perception of connectedness and belonging.

This is the difference that GCPEDIA brings, that differentiates it from just another GoC software rollout.  We talk endlessly about silos.  Now, finally something that allows me to meet, learn from and collaborate with colleagues across Canada.  This platform is vital to members of Generation X, Generation Y and the upcoming Generation Z who will come to here to discover a government that embraces forward thinking and transformation — a government that finally offers the allure that has lured away so many others to the private sector.

I’m filled with much hope about what’s to come in the next five years, but for long term prosperity into the coming decades, tools like GCPEDIA and GCconnex must represent only the current iteration of a progression towards an ideal.  Nothing we build today is capable of sustaining the future indefinitely.  In five years, what GCPEDIA has become and what it must change into should already be obvious to employees at every level.  If we can maintain, or even increase the momentum we’ve created today, we’ll already have prepared to make the turn ahead, even if the ship itself can never steer as nimbly as we wish.