IdeaScale Blog

In our continued effort to shorten URLs for our customers, we’ve made a minor change to IdeaScale URLs to make them shorter. This will have NO effect on any links to ideas that use the older URL – they will still work the same. An example of the new URL is below (‘akira’ has been removed):

http://openinternet.ideascale.com/a/dtd/17835-6017

Just to be clear: there is nothing that you need to do – old URLs will work just the same.

So we’re finally back from Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington, D.C. We had an amazing time meeting many of you and talking about the exciting opportunities ahead  - Both for IdeaScale as well as many Federal and State/Local agencies feedback and crowdsourcing efforts to make Goverment a Platform.

I wanted to distill some of the conversations that we’ve had with many agency representatives and give all of you an idea of where we are and our future direction.

Free License for Civic Engagement
We’ve decided to formalize and operationalize an IdeaScale License tailored and designed specifically for Gov Agencies – Federal, State and Local. So far we’ve made this available on an Ad-Hoc and case by case basis, but as of today we will allow any Gov Agency to use IdeaScale for free – We are calling this the IdeaScale Civic Engagement License. Most of you on this list already have this license – but just in case details on this :
http://ideascale.com/opengov

Open ID – Single Signon – Integration
A recurring theme has been around OpenId/Single Signon using OpenID and Drupal. I have had personal conversations with many of you around this and want to let you know that we take this seriously. We will be putting our heads to work over the next couple of weeks to come up with a series of solutions. Our initial goal is to make IdeaScale work seamlessly with a Drupal Installation so users do not have to login multiple times. We will also be working on integrating with other OpenID providers (Google, Yahoo etc.) as well as other social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

Best Practice and Recommedations
One of the themes that I heard was to create a specific set of guidelines and recomendations for best-practice for launching crowdsourcing initiatives. We have some internal recomendation (that work on the commercial side) but then like all good things – Gov Initiatives have their own set of challenges. I have talked to Lena Trudeau (NAPA) about sharing such details with with the rest of us so we all can learn from it. Here are some brief issues that we all should consider:

• Moderation Policy – Have a clear moderation policy and explain that to the end-user.
• Seed Ideas from an internal audience before launch
• Phased Rollout – Invite key (and trusted) members of the communitty to begin the engagement process and then roll it out to the larger userbase (blog post, twitter/fb update)
• Enable Twitter integration and create/resuse a hashtag. Monitor the twitter hashtag very closely.

Moderation Vs. Speech Suppression
This is obviosly a very sensitive issue and there are a few enhancements that we think we can do to make life easier for everyone:

1. Have a link that displays all the ideas/comments that have been “flagged” – this will allow users to get to the flagged ideas, but they will not be visible on the front page.
2. The same can apply to comments also.

Upload Vidoes / You Tube Integration
Another idea that was discussed was the ability for users to upload videos as part of the idea submission process. YouTube has an API and we probably can piggy back on that to allow for that functionality.

Some Implementations
Here are some links to implementations of IdeaScale that are live – this will give you an idea of how agencies are using IdeaScale. We have a few other projects that are on track, but since they are not public yet, we can’t share more. We will share more of them on next month’s update.

• http://broadband.ideascale.com (FCC)
• http://healthcaredebate.com
• http://opengov.ideascale.com (OSTP)

TOS Agreement with GSA
I know some of you are aware of this, but I wanted to point out and reiterate that IdeaScale and many other Web 2.0 sites – Flickr, YouTube etc. have signed a Terms Of Service Amendment Agreement with the GSA as a template for engagement with Federal Agencies. If your agency does not already have this executed with IdeaScale we’ve put a very simple and effecient process for doing this : Please send an email to usgovernment@surveyanalytics.com. So far the following Federal Agencies have ToS agreements:

• Executive Office of the President (EOP)
• General Services Admin (GSA)
• Federal Communication Commission (FCC)
• Department of Energy (DoE)

Apart from these Gov specific enhancements, we will be making many other enhancements from our own IdeaScale site (http://ideas.ideascale.com) – if you have ideas on improving IdeaScale please feel free to share them with us.

Finally, I want to thank all of you who have supported us through Gov 2.0 and for the wonderful conversations we’ve had. Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

“We are not studying in order to know what virtue is, but to become good, for otherwise there would be no profit in it.” – Aristotle

Virtue in Aristole’s conception could not be realized theoretically but had to be the product of experiences and direct actions that led to “good” happening. Similarly, theoretical conceptions of “customer-centricity” and “caring for the customer” don’t make organizations more focused on great outcomes for their customers; only action born of experience and true learning do–actions that customers themselves recognize as having helped them .

So far, I assume I have agreement (whether or not you are Aristotelian).  But what in Heaven’s name you might ask does this have to do with IT organizations? This is the IdeaScale Blog after all not Philosophical Inquiry. The simple answer: everything.

So how indeed do we show that IT organizations are “virtuous?” In order to do so we need to establish three things, the first theoretical and the second and third practical:

• We care about the customers we serve
• We act on that caring every day
• These actions are attested to by our customers as having helped them do something better

Let’s go about this in an analytical way. First of all, who indeed are our customers? I argue that our customers are not only the internal people who avail themselves of our services but also the external partners and customers who do business with our companies. The net is, we have customers like anyone else does. Do we care about them? I have never seen an IT organization whose charter did NOT include clear mention of their role of, inter alia, as a services org. Serving is caring as long as you mean it. So far, we are covered on the theoretical side pretty well but as Aristotle admonishes us, the practical side is what matters more .

Do we act on that caring every day? I would argue that the answer is no. Too much of the “services” part of our collective gets intermediated by bureaucracy, abstraction, and fatigue. Again, it is not a question of bad intention–just of lack of clear application of our fundamental premise every day. Do we do good every day? Yes. Do we do enough good every day? No .
Finally, do our customers recognize our actions and are they positive about the help we’ve rendered? This is the simplest question of all. The answer is a stentorian (and ironic) NO. In my experience it is very rare indeed to find people touting the greatness of IT.

Well, what do we want to do about it? In previous months, I’ve written that justifying whether “IT matters” is unnecessary and counterproductive because it gives credence to the premise that indeed we don’t matter. However, I suggest something very different here: let’s make it easier to show that we are virtuous not by defending ourselves but by acting like ourselves. Let’s ask our customers what they want and then see how we stack up against what they ask of us.

If I were you I’d go to any crowd-sourcing tool (ie, IdeaScale, etc) and set up an instance to get your customers input on your organization and what they want of you. Solicit input from internal and external customers. And through hearing them and interacting with them, I can bet my bottom dollar you find you are already covering 90% of what they want. And that’s a pretty good ratio, certainly befitting virtue.

My own experience dealing with IT organizations has been generally very good. While at Microsoft, I found IT to be very helpful and open to new ideas on how to improve. The same is true in my current company, Ascentium. Am I lucky? Maybe. Am I a customer of IT? Yes. Am I touting IT? Yes.

Wow, we just completed a virtuous cycle. Now let’s go do a lot more.

Romi Mahajan is Chief Marketing Officer of Ascentium Corporation. Before joining Ascentium, he spent 7+ years at Microsoft where his last role was as Director of Technical Audience and Platform Marketing. Romi is widely published in the areas of technology, politics, economics, and sociology.

While issue management is not specifically addressed by the Project Management Institute (PMI) Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK), it is a key process necessary for effective project management. An issue is something that requires a decision made and associated actions performed. It is a situation that has occurred or will occur, as oppose to a risk that is a potential of a situation to occur. Typically, issues are tracked from a simple whiteboard, to a spreadsheet, to a full scale issue tracking and management system.

Issue management systems serves its purpose. However, it requires issues to be categorized and classified by the project management team. Feedback by the project team or end users require each issue to be assigned and prioritized. Often, team members and end users complain about the lack of transparency on the prioritization process. What gets ranked critical vs. high vs. low priority. In a previous post, I introduced you to using IdeaScale as a tool to solicit customer feedback and ideas. An alternative use of the tool is to implement it as an issue management system. Rather than priorities defined and assigned in a top down approach, using IdeaScale allows you to “crowd source” a bottom up approach.

Here are the conceptual steps to process from issue submission to closing.

1. Team member (and end user) identifies an issue or or problem that requires attention or decision.
2. The team member logs onto the IdeaScale portal and submits the issue.
3. All team members (and end users) access the portal to review the issues list, and vote up or down, the priorities of each issue.
4. Over time, and with critical mass usage of the portal, priority issues will rise to the top while less important issues will remain at the bottom. Ideas that reach a critical threshold (through the voting mechanism) will be assigned to an owner and tracked as part of the project management process.
5. After the issue is addressed and resolved, the “idea” is closed by the site administrator.

Develop Issue Management and Escalation Procedures

The first step to building an issue management process is to document the associated procedures. The State of California Office of System Integration defines the issue and escalation process as follows:

The Issue and Escalation Process describes how the project identifies, tracks and manages issues and action items that are generated throughout the project life cycle. The process also defines how to escalate an issue to a higher-level of management for resolution and how resolutions are documented.

Since the focus of this article is to crowd source the tracking of issues, here is a great example by the State of California, Office of System Integration – Issue and Escalation Process.

Implement IdeaScale to Capture and Monitor Issues

As shown below, the IdeaScale entry page can be customized to collect the information you need to properly manage the issues submitted. By default, the required fields include title/subject and description. In this example, I included stakeholders affected, due date, decision required, and suggested action. A category field is used to segregate issues vs. suggestions. As team members and end users submit their ideas, it gets included in the issues list. Other end users and team members can log into the portal and vote up, and down, the issues that are relevant to them.

For the IdeaScale method of issue tracking and management to work, it requires a critical mass of users. Crowd sourcing a task requires active participation in the community. If only a handful of users actual log in and submit issues and vote, then it emulates the traditional form of issue management. However, if a large enough group of users consistently log in and participate actively, then the concept of crowd sourcing issue management will work.

The bottom up approach of issue management increases transparency in the process. Users are part of the discussion and actually have input through the voting mechanism. The community polices itself and prevents abusers from rigging the system. Through IdeaScales API’s, the issue management system can be integrated to the project portals such as SharePoint, or other project management tools.

Bottom Line

As with any tool, whether it be a simply paper list, Excel spreadsheet, or a crowd sourced IdeaScale issue tracking system, it does not replace good project management and communication with the team. Before attempting to implement the described process, determine if the readiness of the project team and willingness to participate in the process.

[Daniel Hoang advises governmental agencies, business, and individuals on performance management, business processes, and strategic planning to improve organizational development and long-term growth. He is an experienced consultant, auditor, and strategic planner, and has over 10 years of online social media and social networking experience.]

I upgraded my iPhone a few weeks ago (not by choice – the phone took a dunk). Right on cue, by the time I got home, a follow up survey from the mother-ship was sent to me asking me about my experience. At the time the survey was sent, I was very happy with the transition to the new phone (I upgraded from my clunky 1st generation iPhone). All my info was restored from backup without a hitch by someone in the store, and thus I gave a glowing survey response.

Treat Your Customer Like a God

Apple is extremely interested in our purchasing experiences. I know this because after a previous shopping experience gone awry, a store manager called me within the hour to follow up (based on my negative response to the same survey). I felt like a god being treated with such respect! The manager was actually interested in what I had to say!

Being Treated Like Dirt

Well everything was good until I checked my voice mail and I realized all my saved messages were gone! I was of course furious! How could this obvious oversight be tolerated!? After calling technical support and hitting the genius bar, I soon realized that my previous god-like status was now reduced to another belligerent, babbling customer. That survey I completed awhile back was now inaccurate! I wanted a call from the store manager, but there was no way I was going to get it now. Where the F$#& is that survey you sent me just hours ago!!!???

Now I was pretty much being treated like dirt. My opinion had zero, or probably negative currency. If Apple didn’t want to hear from me, if nothing more, I wanted to be heard by other customers so the same fate didn’t happen to them! Of course I gave up fighting pretty quickly and moved on: how could I expect a huge company to care about my tiny issue?

Timing is everything

All organizations struggle with this problem: how to turn these fleeting moments of valuable feedback into useful suggestions that translate to ROI? Now that time has passed, I could care less about the issue – I’ve moved on. I’m not going to bother spending any time trying to get through the store’s management.

When something goes wrong for your customer, when would you want to contact them?

A) Beforehand. That is kinda pointless right? How can your customers have any useful feedback until they’ve actually used the product or service? (ie, “…everything ok? Oh you haven’t used it yet? Well great!”) You’ll most likely have low quality of data but high quantity.

B) Right Away. Well this is ideal. But how do you make a connection with the customer right when that happens? Most firms fail at this, and in their defense, it isn’t exactly easy. Using action alerts, you can set up triggers to be notified of a survey response based on keywords. However, this doesn’t solve the problem of when to sent the survey invite to the respondent.

C) Afterwords. This is where most firms fall into. Feedback collection happens at a pre-determined interval that the firm can only guess is most optimal (ie, 3 hours after purchase, etc). Again the problem persists: how can I ensure that the feedback I’m getting occurs at that passionate moment when my customer cares the most about articulating quality feedback?

Its all pretty much a crap-shoot. There could be whole swathes of customers absolutely furious with your product or service, but they would have no way of being heard.

Real Time Feedback with IdeaScale

The solution to this problem is real time feedback. Create an IdeaScale community for your customers and let them know you’re listening in real time, all the time. When you touch base with your customers, before, during, or after a problem, remind them you’re listening by directing them to your community. Let groups form around issues or suggestions, and let those impassioned groups edit and revise the solution. Most importantly, communicate directly with those groups to show them you’ve solved the problem and turn customers into advocates!

(Since my problem was phone related, I’m happy to see that the Palm Developers have already started collecting ideas  for the Palm Pre.)

More Info:

• QuestionPro Action Alerts:
  http://www.ideascale.com/help/151-window.html
• Palm Pre Ideas: http://preideas.com