by msweeks
Sydney-based IBSG Director, heading up the IBSG public sector team in Asia Pacific for Cisco. Co-author of the Connected Republic 2.0 More about msweeks
An intractable challenge!
How's this for an understatement...."despite significant progress (in eGovernment), transforming the deeper structures of government is proving to be an intractable challenge." Really? What a surprise.
The insight comes at the start of a great blog from Don Tapscott at Davos where, in a moment of impromptu madness by all accounts, he convened a quick seminar on the challenges of "government 2.0". His report suggests the discussion buzzed and sizzled with exciting discussion and considerable passion as people grappled with the deep and uncertain forces that are already causing many of the traditional patterns and behaviours of government and democracy to stretch to breaking point.
Tapscott runs through 9 themes from the discussion - go and have a read to get a flavour of the full list - http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/tapscott. Here's just a couple of quickies...
Self-organisation - "people outside the boundaries of traditional institutions have at their fingertips the most powerful tool ever for organizing collective action. But the so-called “smart mobs” and “wise crowds” of the past are being superseded by movements for social change on an unprecedented scale. This is not simply occurring within nation states, where the third pillar of society (after corporations and governments)-the civil society-has historically addressed the needs of communities that have not been met by the market or government. Increasingly, “the people” are organizing across borders and exerting their power and influence on the global scene. This has big implications for governments." Must be a blogging thing to resort to these kinds of deflating understatements! Implications indeed. What Tapsott is describing is the rise of the "non state pbulic sector" or the "public purpose" sector as i saw it once described by US writer Lisbeth Schorr. What this refers to is the increasingly motivation and capacity for people to organise for common, public purpose without resorting to, or relying on, the instruments and resources of the structured state.
Here another - "past technological paradigms-the printing press, broadcast media, and the centralized model of the computer-were hierarchical, immutable and centralized. As such they carried the values of their powerful owners. By contrast, the web 2.0 is interactive, enriched with services, and distributed in control. As such it possesses an awesome neutrality - reflecting what is good and bad in society. Religious fundamentalists, terrorists, hackers and criminal networks have harnessed the power of mass collaboration to promote hate and commit heinous acts. The key to global security and freedom may lie in harnessing this same power." Indeed - the network is part of the solution to the problems it creates.
Tapscott ends with this observation - "if there really is a new paradigm in government emerging – a government 2.0 – how can such a change occur? New paradigm’s are received with coolness, hostility and vested interests fight change. This will be an enormous challenge to move to a new model and require leadership." That's true. It's also not especially original and has been the subject of considerale discussion in many jurisdictions around the world. We took some of these concerns apart at the recent Nobel Summit in Stockholm where our government 2.0 speakers, including Geoff Mulgan, brought some welcome measure and deep insight to the discussion.
Tapscott's nine point are a great way into a discussion which will not go away. The very purpose, role and indeed existence of the public sector, at least in some measure, are all at stake. Like the man said, an intractable challenge...
Comments
Terry Ansari said: As something of an adjunct to Martin's piece, here's an article from Don Tapscott's collaborator, Tony Williams. Tony ends his piece (much of which resonates in the TCR community) stating that we're "in a new golden age of democracy". While I think there is real and meaningful hope for that being the case, such statements cause me concern, for their implicit high-mindedness, not to mention providing a context for what democracy actually means in the world today...
Government 2.0: Wikinomics and the Challenge to Government
by Anthony D. Williams
Today, thanks largely to the internet, the kind of creativity and innovation that used to take place primarily within the confines of corporate walls now occurs across large, loosely connected networks of firms and individual entrepreneurs.
Already, millions of people have joined forces in self-organized collaborations that have produced dynamic innovations in goods and services rivaling the world’s largest and best-financed enterprise networks. If masses of ordinary people can peer-produce an operating system (Linux), an encyclopedia (Wikipedia), the media (YouTube/Current TV), a mutual fund, and even a physical thing such as a motorcycle, one should carefully consider what might come next.
Arguably, this vast global network of specialized producers who swap and exchange services for entertainment, sustenance and learning is becoming an economy unto itself.
But what does Wikinomics entail for government and how will mass collaboration transform the business of delivering public services and the nature of democracy? Could societies “open source” government much the way thousands of dispersed Linux programmers converged on the internet to develop one of the world’s leading computer operating systems? Would large-scale, web-enabled consultations improve political decision-making or channel greater ingenuity and urgency into efforts to solve global challenges like terrorism and climate change? What about the provision of public services: could public agencies use ongoing collaboration with citizens, civil society and the private sector to achieve better results at a lower cost?
Research conducted at the Toronto-based think tank New Paradigm suggests that the answer is “yes” to all of the above (see sidebar). Indeed, a confluence of technological, demographic, social and economic forces holds the promise and the inevitability of new models for delivering the functions of government – call it Government 2.0.
It’s time for governments to stop paving the cow paths – that is, focusing on automating existing processes and moving existing government services online. The emerging “age of participation” presents an historic occasion to fundamentally redesign how government operates, how and what the public sector provides, and ultimately, how governments interact and engage with their citizens.
Accelerating service transformation
After decades of effort and investment, governments that once supplied standard transactional services through a fragmented public bureaucracy are increasingly providing citizens and other stakeholders with a single window to public services. But as new waves of innovation wash over the internet, it is time for governments to move up the capability ladder yet again. Once the sine qua non of e-government, single window service offerings constitute one-way information flows to the citizen and are no longer sufficient in a world where customers are increasingly accustomed to participating in dynamic online communities such as Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia.
The new function-rich infrastructure of the Web 2.0 provides public agencies with significant opportunities to infuse innovation into the business of delivering services. For example, the age-old question of “who does what” can now be answered more creatively than ever before. Public services need no longer be provided by government alone; they can be provided by any combination of public agencies, the private sector, community groups, or citizens, using the web as a mechanism for collaboration, innovation and engagement.
Public service providers seeking to target young people can use web services and widgets to syndicate the delivery of services and information through new venues such as Facebook and YouTube. And, new waves of mobile and pervasive computing will enable governments to deliver highly individualized “anytime, anywhere” services to a generation of young users that increasing accesses the web through cell phones and mobile computing devices.
Enabling a 21st century work environment
The stereotypical image of public sector employment as home to rigid, repetitive and hierarchically-managed work environments must change if governments wish to remain competitive in the battle for talent. All too often, young employees arrive in the public sector workplace and are dismayed to discover that many of the applications and devices they are accustomed to using in their personal lives are not available for them to use professionally.
Drawing on their experience on sites such as Facebook and YouTube, young government professionals have organized their own ad hoc communities that transcend departmental and organizational boundaries using blogs, wikis, and social networking tools. More often than not, their enterprising, under-the-radar efforts have been stamped out by senior managers who cite as justification concerns about data security, legal constraints, or fears that sensitive information could leak out to the public.
Some leading agencies in the United States have seen past these constraints and are demonstrating how Web 2.0 technologies can promote knowledge sharing, better communication, increased collegiality and cross-departmental collaboration. For example, the US Department of State’s Diplopedia provides a living repository of organizational knowledge and enables foreign service officials to share vital information with colleagues around the world. Similarly, the Director of National Intelligence created Intellipedia, a wikified (but highly secured) intelligence portal, to promote better intelligence gathering and sharing across a variety of federal intelligence agencies. Both the Department of State and leaders within national intelligence community have noted the important role these technologies play in building bridges between the incoming generation of young employees and their senior peers.
Preparing for digital-era policymaking
In most countries, policymaking has always been a static, top-down process. Politicians study issues, seek counsel from a select group of advisors, deliberate and enact laws on the population’s behalf. Most citizens are on the periphery, playing no role other than casting a ballot every few years.
Times have changed. Web 2.0 technologies can make the process of engaging citizens in policymaking easier and less costly than ever before by providing tools to support knowledge creation and community building, two core aspects of digital-era policymaking.
For example, government agencies can post background information on the web and use online videoconferencing to bring in expert testimony. Web-enabled forums can provoke discussion and debate among hundreds, thousands and even millions of geographically dispersed participants. Wikis provide a platform for collaborative editing of policy documents, while social-networking technologies can connect citizens and organizations with common goals and interests.
Networked Knowledge California (NKCA), for example, illustrates what can be done when simple web-based tools transform raw public data into formats that are meaningful and useful to community residents and local-government policymakers. Research shows that tax delinquency, unpaid utility bills, mortgage defaults, building-code violations and tenant complaints all start to climb well before buildings are eventually abandoned and neighborhoods slip into decline. Spotted early enough, a community's decay can be reversed through a combination of well-targeted public programs and private-sector investment. But although the danger signals are all on public record, they’re typically inaccessible to the public, buried deep within the bowels of city hall.
Through an intuitive web-based interface, NKCA knits together municipal databases and inspection records, looks for indicators of urban decay, and plots the information on local and state-level maps posted online. Rather than having to look at each database separately, public officials, citizens and businesses can search by zip code or other parameters to view comprehensive information on one property, or see at a glance which communities might be headed for trouble.
Private-sector developers can now spot potential investment opportunities such as a cluster of buildings in financial difficulty, while community organizations are using the NKCA as a tool for community empowerment. NKCA even has a code-enforcement tracking system that lets residents monitor the City of Los Angeles’ responses to housing-code complaints and violations similar to the way online customers track their FedEx packages. Data that might otherwise have gone unused in filing cabinets is suddenly a catalyst for better policymaking, more effective local government and neighborhood economic development
Overcoming the crisis of leadership
Transforming the structures of government from command-and-control hierarchies to innovative and agile networks of public and private participants is proving to be a major challenge. Deep and resilient legacies combine to frustrate progress. Common obstacles to change include conflicting timeframes and motives, particularly between the public service and politicians; a lack of incentives to innovate; and the absence of urgency in many quarters.
Persuasion has long been one of government’s most crucial powers and public leaders will be called upon to master the art. Persuading agencies to experiment with Web 2.0 technologies and new strategies for delivering services; persuading managers that social networking technologies are not a distraction but an essential tool in today’s workplace; persuading customers that data sharing will result in greater convenience and higher quality services – these are just some of the challenges for which leaders must plan.
It is truly a time when either government plays an active and positive role in its own transformation, or change will happen to it. The transformation process is at the same time exhilarating and painful, but the price of inaction is a lost opportunity for government to redefine its role in a new golden age of democracy.
Anthony D. Williams is the coauthor of Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything and vice president, Government 2.0 at New Paradigm. He has an MA in research and political science from the London School of Economics and is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Government.
SIDEBAR
Government 2.0: Wikinomics, Government & Democracy is a global, syndicated research project that will identify and analyze emerging opportunities to harness new models of collaboration to transform the public sector. It builds on a wealth of continuing research by New Paradigm and a global faculty of experts. The aim of the investigation is to equip subscriber organizations with relevant information and the insights required to exploit new models of web-based collaboration to reinvent the way they develop policy, partner across institutional boundaries, and engage and serve their constituents. The program will be conducted in partnership with the world’s leading thinkers and practitioners.
posted over 3 years ago
Martin Stewart-Weeks said: This kind of writing is alluring and annoying in equal measure. Alluring because he’s partly right and is clearly picking up the same signals and trends that many others are, ourselves included. Annoying though because in many ways the analysis misses the point, which is to describe how any of these changes or new capabilities adds up to truly transformed government. How much of this story is really all about doing government, traditional government, better (faster, smoother, more inclusively)?
The story will get interesting when it confronts some big questions – how any of this changes the role and purpose of government, how any of this ushers in a whole new way to tackle the ‘public’ work that we have assumed is the natural and exclusive territory of the public sector or traditional government and how any of this unsettles and redraws the underlying contours of power, authority and accountability on which the whole edifice is based in the first place.
Anything else is incremental and essentially ‘embroidery’ on a relatively unchanged canvass (to mangle a few innocent metaphors!). Nothing wrong with incremental embroidery and making government work better. Indeed, some might be uncharitable and speculate whether all of this so-called transformation isn’t much more than government getting on and doing what it should be doing anyway.
When we met at the Nobel Summit and canvassed the prospect of Government 2.0, I was struck by the contest between the romantic and the realist frame that people brought to the debate, and depending on which you choose or feel more comfortable with, you will get very different answers about the potential of these trends and new capabilities and their implications.
posted over 3 years ago