Category: community     Posted by: cornelius     Discuss: 5 comments

The term 'intrapreneur' is not a novelty in the business world. It's been around for 25 years and is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as "a person within a large corporation who takes direct responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk taking and innovation". The idea is gaining a lot of traction these days in the corporate world, with companies like Google and 3M allowing their employees to spend up to 20% of their time incubating their own side ideas. In government however, spending time on rethinking a process or product while working around bureaucracy is a notion that is typically frowned upon.

Governmental bureaucratic structures typically enforce compliance with rules and procedures and can kill new ideas because innovation often requires challenging the status quo or questioning long-held assumptions that may have worked well in the past. Furthermore, cultivating innovation is an evolutionary process and cannot be done overnight. Trial and error, experimentation without taking on undue risk, and adaptation to change should be concepts in the arsenal of every PS employee especially given the government's newly adopted PS renewal mantra. In this day and age, intrapreneurship seems to be the only cost-effective way governments can quickly replicate successful internal and external innovations, by adapting them to local contexts instead of always trying to reinvent the wheel.

» Share article on:

Category: community     Posted by: cornelius     Discuss: 2 comments

The April 11 edition of the Ottawa Citizen published a story called PS must embrace Web 2.0 tools citing Clerk of the Privy Council Wayne Wouters’ call for "collaboration, innovation and better use of technology" in the Canadian Public Sector. If anyone bothered to read the (mostly negative) comments of the story, they would realize that such ‘call to arms’ articles simply do not resonate with the Canadian public, especially in difficult economic times for those currently underemployed or unemployed in the private sector.

Is His Clerkiness (my term of endearment for all things Wayne Wouters) right? The answer is 'Absolutely!' (although based on his usage pattern of social media tools to this point my own evaluation would be that His Clerkiness himself still doesn’t have a clue as to what to do and how to engage, but hopefully he’s learning and that is commendable in its own right). But when it comes to the public, I think they are sick of impersonal press releases and newspaper articles that do not bother to do any research or provide relateable information. This type of article and press release may work internally because someone who is essentially the CEO of Federal Government employees pushes down a communication piece to his team, but at the end of the day, this only means a waste of printing paper when it comes to the public at large. I would make the argument that the public would likely respond much more positively to case studies or examples of how web 2.0 and social media tools used within the public sector are directly or indirectly improving the lives of public servants and citizens.

As a private person, I use social media tools (almost) daily. It makes sense for me to do so, mainly from a networking and research point of view. The internet is a huge repository of valuable information and I need social media users to point out the more popular resources that I may be interested in. I also am able to connect with thought leaders in my domain without having to fly to San Francisco, New York and LA and introduce myself during a professional conference. Social media saves me time and money, and it helps expanding my professional network.

» Share article on:

Category: community     Posted by: cornelius     Discuss: 5 comments

It's not a secret to anyone that baby boomers are about to retire in massive numbers and public agencies can ill afford to fall behind in the talent game. On paper, mobility across jobs, projects and teams are just some of the reasons why the public sector should be an employer of choice for today's top talent in all disciplines.

But let's face it, as much as no one wants to hear it (especially in a city like Ottawa where a large percentage of the population are public sector employees), the situation is not quite as well defined. The public sector bills itself as an environment that makes a difference in people's lives. These days however, 76 percent of a recent survey of young people up to the age of 30, think non-profits are more likely to make such a difference compared to only 16 percent who would prefer the public service for this same reason.

Now let's look at creative types (insert your favourite creative job here, I am a User Experience professional so I do consider myself part of this group). Since a great deal of our work relies on imagination, we absolutely don't enjoy working in a command and control organization. Moreover, creative types enjoy an environment that relies on the enthusiasm and optimism of young adults. Something we can find in non-profits, boutique consulting firms, etc. but not so much in the typical public sector department.

Another survey of young professionals revealed their notable preference for job mobility within a single organization as opposed to the open market. Sounds like an ideal situation for the public sector, but in reality, its image is one of a slow-moving, bureaucratic monolith, hopelessly experimenting with 'innovative practices' fed by external consulting firms, to streamline itself in what is becoming a much more competitive economical landscape.

» Share article on:

Category: community     Posted by: cornelius     Discuss: 2 comments

Last week I stayed up until 3:00AM EST to watch the live feed of the Davos World Economic Forum Social Media Panel, hoping that one of the speakers will describe the future impact of Social Media in all aspects of product design. The first guest speaker, George F. Colony, CEO of Forrester Research, provided me with a good starting point. He introduced the concept of 'Social Sigma', by making a parallel with Six Sigma and explaining that in the near future all companies will have to probe social networking and social media sites during the process of designing their products.

Don't get me wrong, this idea has been around for a while, but in a different form. Information Architecture, Design or UX practitioners following UCD (User Centered Design) Methodologies made of point of ASKING a sample of the product's end-user population about how to design a product. Virtually every site and consumer brand out there ASKS for feedback on their presence and products. This paradigm included ideation about business/technology requirements as well as user interface (ease-of-use, simplicity, recognition, etc.), and in most cases, it worked very well. End user research, IA, interaction design, prototyping, usability testing, all of these minimized the risk and in the end the product was relatively close to what the clients wanted. But...

» Share article on:

Category: community     Posted by: cornelius     Discuss: 2 comments

A lot of young people (either still in university or recently graduated) ask me about the prospect of getting a UX job in Ottawa, especially in the current state of the economy and the rising number of unemployed technology workers competing for jobs. While I don't monitor the job sites frequently, my answer to them is that I personally never really had a problem being employed, either as an independent or as a full-time employee, so as long as you put in the time to acquire the necessary technical/business/artistic skills required, I don't really see why you wouldn't be in good shape.

However, when i do do a quick scan on the typical job sites (Workopolis, Monster, JobBoom etc.) dealing with the National Capital Region market, the most I've seen is a couple of postings at a time. Traditionally, cities like Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal tend to have the bulk of the Canadian UX market, but I still wondered whether I was doing a real search or I was just scratching the surface. Another quick look in the careers sections within the websites of two well known Ottawa interactive agencies (Fuel Industries and Teknision) reveals at least about 10 other UX related jobs, but they are typically high end (Flash/Flex, UX Architect) requiring at least 3-5 years experience. The jobs catering to junior resources still seemed a bit more scarce.

» Share article on: