The Next Big Thing

I’ve been thinking recently about when we are going to see the big breakthrough in the search for the much-expected transformation in the business of governing. It was partly prompted by a discussion I facilitated with government people from New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the OECD about “government 2.0”. Part of the discussion included a video link to Wellington, where we spoke with a group of high school students who have been working with Wellington City Council about how young people wanted to connect with government.

I think the big changes we’re expecting – maybe unrealistically – will only occur when two things happen. The first will be the day when a majority of senior policy makers, politicians and others who would define themselves as influential mainstream policy decision-makers and influencers “get it” about the role and potential of networked information and communication technologies. The minute a genuine critical mass of those types, who typically have views about technology ranging from agnostic to hostile, realise that in order for them to have any chance of securing the big policy outcomes they are chasing – sustainability, learning and skills, rescuing health systems from the cost-demand-technology crunch, helping people out of poverty and so on – they will need to embrace the potential of networked technologies, we’ll start to see real progress.

The second sign that a breakthrough will have happened is when governments spend as much time worrying about how to use these technologies in the service of opening up the democratic conversation as they do (when they worry about it at all) about improving the efficiency, reach and convenience of public services. The problem, of course, is there is a great deal less motivation for politicians to worry about the former than there is about the latter. But there is growing evidence that for ordinary citizens, grateful though they always are for any incremental improvement in the design and delivery of public services is concerned, their enduring focus is on the nature of the relationships they have, or often don’t have, with those who claim to represent them. I was especially struck by what the Wellington students kept coming back to with themes like these:

• Respect me regardless of age, ethnicity, knowledge


• We’re going to be the ones living in the communities


• I want to shape my world; I need to have a voice and need to feel I’m being listened to

And they had some direct and practical advice to politicians…you have to open up to criticism, be prepared to engage in real discussion, stop broadcasting messages and start having conversations.

I’m more and more convinced that it will be the combination of these two changes – making the debate about technology mainstream and investing more time and effort in the transformation of representation – that will drive the breakthrough we’re seeking. Until then – and I’m pretty sure we’re a fair way off that moment in most of the jurisdictions I know – the whole discussion about the transformative potential of technology in politics and government still feels peripheral.

For the most part, we are still talking with a relatively small group of technologists and occasional enthusiasts whose position in the public policy process remains peripheral. To be perhaps a little unfair, we spend too much time talking to ourselves, reinforcing our own enthusiasms and passion for the broader eGovernment project but, too often, unable to convince sufficient numbers of the really important players that it’s a passion they ought to be sharing.

Maybe we should take up a suggestion that one of the participants in the workshop put forward, to put together a kind of Government 2.0 ‘exhibition’ that you could take into shopping centres, schools etc to actually show people some of the simple but effective ways that technology could help citizens connect better with their governments and their representatives. Let them try it for themselves and see what all the fuss is about…iff we want real transformation, maybe we have to work a but harder at showing people what it’s all about.