Twitter once provided me with an avenue to view, learn, be inspired, and gather information in order to become more knowledgeable. It played in a key role in my development over the last three years, over the last six months it has done nothing but annoy me professionally.

Had this been a one of my projects, I would have assessed the activity after a month and decided serious action had to be taken. Had I reviewed it and found the same issues still following three months inn, I would have reassessed the value and benefits of the project overall and taken appropriate action. Six months in, I probably would have fired myself.

So following this line of command, and rather than continue to be annoyed and uninspired, I have deleted my professional twitter account as it no longer serves a purpose for me.

Hunt me out on Google+ if you want to stay in contact.

Ciao twitter.

Dear Vodafone,

Over the last 2 months your customer service has gone from frustrating, to extremely efficient, to frustrating. Most of the frustration seems to come from a disconnect between your social media support and your technical helpdesk (on which I have wasted at least two hours of my time – which I understand is considered not alot in comparison with others). Your social media team have been efficient and concise, they address issues on the spot, follow up and ensure your concerns are being addressed.

However, this morning while all of my co-workers are receiving reception I am left looking at a little cross above my reception bar wondering if the $400 in lost pay dealing with your company and months of bad reception is really worth the three months free billing for a service where I am obviously getting what I pay for?

I was told this morning that there was an outage. When I said other people sitting beside me had coverage I was told to restart my phone, as though there wasn’t an outage. Then when I got no coverage again was told that there was outage. Your website indicates that there was a problem yesterday, but no problem today.

So in closing, I am receiving what I am paying for, nothing. I am unable to receive calls from clients, and I am losing money dealing with your unhelpful service desk whose only answer is ‘will have to wait’. In short, I am not paying for a service and you’re still costing me money – I hate to think what your business customers go through.

I think enough is enough. You owe me at least $400 dollars and I want it paid out in charity time to make up for your sins!! My suggestion is the HIV Volunteer Carer program for ACON.

Thanks,

Geoff Mason

These opinions are my own interpretation of what I have read, and my concerns are those of many.

Today I ended my media blackout thanks to an email I received from Getup. Ignoring the source, I was deeply concerned by the content. Concerned enough to, for once be very frank about a side of my life that I am proud of, but I rarely discuss as a topic.

Rebecca Hagelin is a modern day witch hunter in my opinion, based in the US she is associated with a number of extremist right wing Christian groups. Her views rival those of right wing Muslims. Although we call those Muslims terrorists, Rebecca Hagelin was provided with her own podium to promote her extremist views in parliament house this week.

Yesterday Rebecca Hagelin provided Australia with an insight into her beliefs. Rebecca believes she is fighting a war for humanity and if homosexuals should enter the sanctity of marriage it would bring about the end of the human race. In addition Rebecca implied homosexuality is equal to paedophilia, and that should homosexuals be able to marry child molesters would subvert any marriage amendment to formalise their abuse of children.

I have never been a fan of gay marriage, or any marriage for that matter. However Rebecca Hagelin’s language, and the language used by Barnaby Joyce in support of her views have deeper undertones which speak to a specific portion of Australia’s population.

Rebecca’s language was chosen to incite hatred (and potentially violence) against homosexuals and was used specifically to cause anger and generate active fear. Words such as war and aligning homosexuality with paedophilia were used to encourage (enrage even?) distrust and promote old perceptions that paedophilia and homosexuality go hand in hand.

The goal of this approach was to whip up a frenzy of action, not to just sign a petition, but to encourage action against the gay community as a whole.

George Bush was well known for using specific language and double en’tundras within his speeches which spoke directly to right wing Christian groups. Rebecca is using a similar tactic in her attempt to promote fear, and potentially violence against members of the GLBT community.

I strongly encourage anyone reading this to sign the Getup Petition in support of gay marriage. Rebecca Hagelin has made this debate no longer about gay marriage, but about homosexuals being second class citizens and potentially promoting violence against gay people.

Hopefully I am able to use this story to put the real damage of Rebecca Hagelin’s words into perspective.

Imagine a 17 year old girl or boy living in a country town, they are struggling with their sexuality, they have no direct role models to say ‘its ok’, and only have access to main stream media. They already feel out of place and are struggling to understand themselves and their feelings.

Although they have friends, they feel alone and can’t help but think about an extreme option to deal with what they are having trouble understanding.

That kid has little or no chance of making it through with thoughts of ending their life if all they read in the paper and see on the television are the words and face of Rebecca Hagelin.

We need that kid to hear millions of Australian’s signed a petition in support of the gay community in response to a measly 30,000 made by a small extremist majority.

Please sign Getup Petition. It will take 5 minutes and who knows, you could be saving some kids life.

If this post got you thinking, got you to take action, or you just liked it. Please share it with your friends.

Cheers,

@GRMSN

@LulzSec have become globally infamous for cracking a number of large databases and their more recent DDoS attacks on American Gov websites.

This morning LulzSec released a large collection (62,000) email addresses and passwords. Some of that data included Australian Government email addresses. Combined with recent release of the #RSA encryption algorithm, which is used heavily by Australian Government departments, crackers don’t even need to worry about spear phishing attacks in order to gain access to potentially sensitive materials.

So what can be done?

Employ the right people

Well for starters greater emphasize should be put on placing Web Specialists in web roles. I can’t count the number of times I have heard about a Government Agency overlooking a web specialists for managerial roles because they are more management material.

Unfortunately, this means managers who are in place are not able or fully equipped to negotiate processes and quality levels which could have major impacts on not only the quality but the safety of citizen data. While I agree communications, policy or even HR type specialists may be great channel owners, they are by no means capable of understanding the full scope of taking a technical direction when delivering a web platform – particularly one which may contain citizen data.

If it was my agency – I would be looking to better empower specialists to veto projects, regardless of timeframes laid down by executives.

Build to best practice

Push it through is a phrase heard all to often by web teams, as is rewarding project managers and directors for propelling a solution through the bureaucracy of best practice within web projects by only adhering to minimum of what needs to be achieved. What I am referring to here, is senior executives and program managers ‘managing’ stakeholders such as security, web specialists and infrastructure staff in order to meet their deadlines in place of delivering a product which actually meets standards.

Over the last 3 months Sony has lost 10 Billion in share worth, potentially millions of data assets and all because they failed to securely code. These hacks didn’t happen through a console, data sniffing, or a failed infrastructure service. A web browser was used to inject bad code into a site which hadn’t been built to the most basic of levels. Yes Sony could have been cracked using a version of Netscape – all they needed was a HTTP tunnel of some form.

This should be particularly embarrassing to Sony as the OWASP guidelines provide clear direction for mitigating such attacks.

Use professional web specialist companies

Unfortunately with the take off 2.0 services and the merging of web teams into communication areas within Government we are seeing a rise in creative companies who hire a front end web developer and call themselves a digital agency.

These companies have strong relationships with existing communication managers who are taking on more web based type activities, and these agencies are leveraging those relationships to land digital work.

This is probably the highest risk that Australian Government agencies are facing in the web sphere. It highlights the lapse in current processes.

Inexperienced, lacking in knowledge management teams with limited understanding of the entire spectrum of the issues which need to be addressed within the web space are being advised by design companies with minimal experience in the digital field.

I would be more than happy to provide a complete list of worthwhile digital agencies who either cater to or reside within Canberra who fully understand the implications of working with citizen and government data.

Let me just say this: I would treat firms who are known for their shiny Mercedes Benz magazine ads as the lowest level – if you want a top notch benchmark I would be looking to a Gruden or ReadingRoom for capable, experienced and knowledgeable digital services.

Happy to discuss.

G