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
Quick reality check: are we kidding ourselves?
Recently, UK Cabinet Office Minister Hazel Blears gave a speech about eGovernment and eDemocracy. Her concerns focused on the success, or otherwise, of local government. These two blog responses brought me up a bit sharply. The first was clearly sceptical:
"That's good coming from Blears! Local government, with a few exceptions, hasn't had a problem with revolutionising services, its central government that's been lagging and we get tired of hearing it the other way around.
I've spent the day chairing a meeting of the Yorkshire & Humber branch of the Society for Information Technology Management (the British public service IT managers body) focused on digital inclusion. It was lead by several examples of good practice and then by an attempt to discover the
barriers - the conclusion was that the UK lacked a national agenda for digital inclusion! We are potentially replicating the scandal of e-government where nearly four hundred councils did their own thing in different timescales but without the financial input!"
You get the idea...
The second blog was from former Cisco eDemocracy professor, now Professor of Political Communication at Leeds, Stephen Coleman:
"Even by the standard of other Ministerial statements in which politicians clearly have little to say, this seems to have been an extraordinarily vacuous speech. Hazel Blears refers to how online 'dialogue helps us make a better policy that really reflects what people need and want', but did not give a
single example of how such public input has led to policy that is in any way different, better-informed or more representative.
Referring to the Number Ten e-petitions, Hazel Blears cites 'Burma, Capital Gains Tax, The police pay deal' as examples of important public input. The questions she needs to answer, if her commitment to e-democracy is to be taken at all seriously, are i) how have these e-petitions contributed to government policy-making; and ii) how does she know what contribution they made in the absence of any evaluation of the Number Ten e-petitions project?
Although Hazel Blears' speech was short on detail, it was revealing for a couple of issues not mentioned. Firstly, amongst the successful e-democracy projects cited (Netmums, MySociety), there was no mention of any of the
projects launched by the government as part of its national local e-democracy project. It would have been interesting to hear how many of these are still going and are seen as contributing to government policy-making at any level.
Secondly, there was no reference to the government's own e-democracy centre (ICELE), which is odd considering that this is probably the main area of government spending on e-democracy. I suspect that these non-references were
the most important part of the speech."
Stephen has never found it hard to tell us what he really thinks! But it got me thinking that maybe we need to give ourselves a reality check here.
Those of us who either from personal commitment or professional necessity spend much of our time living in, and extolling the virtues of the wonderful world of connected everything sometimes have to stand back a bit and wonder if we aren't having ourselves on a bit. These two posts ask some critical questions? Can you advance the cause of transformation in the absence of national commitments and platforms, expecting all of the ‘small pieces' to ‘loosely join' as if by some sort of spontaneous policy combustion?
What exactly is the evidence that all of this online wizadry and digital hyperactivity adds to more than a few self-absorbed geeks with nothing else to do on a Saturday afternoon? What has been the real outcome - policy done differently (or even perhpas better?), better decisions made faster, people served and supported in truly mould-breaking ways?
It is tempting to look at the evidence of the last 10 to 12 years - roughly the period of the concerted eGovernment ‘project' for most developed countries at least - and get a sense of nowhere near enough real change or movement.
For the most part, government is not being done in recognizably different ways and certainly not ways that, in any reasonable interpretation of the world, would count as ‘transformation' . Underlying structures and systems remain largely unchanged. It's even harder to discern much real shift in underlying culture and behavour. The compelling and provocative insights of the kind of world that Charles Leadbeater sketches in his new book We Think (as just one example of many analysts and writers) - open, collaborative, subject to new forms of collective intelligence, breaking doewn the silos etc - are notable too often for their absence in the settled and intractable world of public policy and public management.
Am I being unfair?
Comments
Terry Ansari said: Funny thing Martin, as I was about to blog on something very much aligned to this subject...it was in fact, going to be based on a story you'd sent me recently. The former British health secretary, Alan Milburn, wrote an op-ed in The Australian entitled, "Power to the People" http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411791-26040,00.html
In it, he makes points that some would consider axiomatic, such as, "Today politics is struggling to come to terms with great changes: more assertive citizens, more diverse societies and more globalised economies. Together they call for new ideas, particularly a new relationship between the state and the citizen. As yet that call goes unheeded." Others would read this as more of the same empty rhetoric...how many times has an elected (or aspiring-to-be) official called for new ideas and new relationships?
No matter which side of the ledger your opinion falls on the above, he does make some important comments around the paradox of decreasing voter turnout with increasing volunteerism and likewise, around the fact that the state cannot solve vexing issues without citizen involvement.
What's totally stuck in my craw (beyond the cavalier and context-free statement about cutting the UK Public Service by "a quarter") is his position on "the choice agenda in public services". Amongst other suggestions, I scratch my head at the comment about giving poorer people budgets from which they can "make school choices real, not rhetorical". Shouldn't there be a focus (to your point, a "national commitment or platform") on making public education more consistent? In the absence of central leadership and that's really what we're talking about, this strikes me, as does much of the so-called choice agenda, as being more theatrical than legitimately valuable or game-changing.
Perhaps the one statement in his piece that really took my breath away was this one..."Minimum standards would be set nationally that local services could exceed locally." Minimum standards in the public context are not generally "exceeded"; this is no slight to the great work of public servants around the world, it's ultimately a simple reality, when we speak of competing demands, public monies, fiduciary responsibility and probity. He may have been playing to his audience, but it hints at the huge disconnect that exists in so many places between elected officials and public servants, further confounding harmonious or progressive policy dialogues.
Milburn suggests that his vision creates a situation "where power is relocated to the lowest possible level". Perhaps, or is it a rather heavy-handed, even insidious approach to addressing policy failings and gaps in service capability, delivery and readiness by essentially abrogating huge swaths of public service responsibility?
There's no doubt that certain services are and should be downloaded to users, but is this being done in any coordinated manner that would speak to a plan underpinned by sound policy? You're right that small pieces won't loosely join by "spontaneous policy combustion" (great phrase by the way!)...an accountable and strong "centre" enabled, emdoldened and empowered by strong policy, needs to be firmly established if the potential of the connected-anything is to be realized. Until then, all of this "online wizardry and digital hyeractivity" (yet another great phrase) will continue to be somewhat blithely considered as just another "channel"...
In order for government to be done in "recognizably different ways", there needs to be recognizably different leadership. That leadership is 100% rooted in policy, whether we care to embrace that fact or not.
posted over 3 years ago
Martin Stewart-Weeks said: Agree that politicians in some situations have embraced the choice model, coupled with a subsidiarity rhetoric that I sometimes wonder if they really understand, on a pretty flimsy pretext and without much consideration. But I'm less inclined to throw out the choice stuff, if it's done properly. And doing it properly is at least partly about the way you set up the game.
I think the disconnect between the stats on engagement in formal politics and active and growing participation in less structured, but still highly political issues and campaigns, speaks powerfully to the instinct for authenticity and autonomy of which people need at least a measure to convince them that getting involved or taking up the 'self service' option is worth it.
So what I suspect is the key here is - and I know this will sound like flakey consulting language, but hey, it's what i do for a living! - you need the right mix of both. A strong guiding central policy framework that sets up and manages the rules of engagement, as it were, and at the same time looking for lots and lots of ways to give people the chance to take on legitimate responsibility for their own lives, for some degree of self-service and choice and for some degree of joining up loosely. Strikes me that there is a sense in which people, given the right conditions, will spontaneously combust and cohere but it doesn't happen in a vacuum. That's the point, I guess.
The best recent exposition of this truth, by the way, that I have seen recently is Charles Leadebeater's "We Think", the first three chapters of which you can download from his We Think site. A great mix of powerful insights into new ways of "organising without oranisations" and understanding the pragmatic design principles that make this spontaneity happen...
posted over 3 years ago
Public Strategy said: How far away is the new world?
Martin Stewart Weeks has a question. For the most part, government is not being done in recognizably different ways and certainly not ways that, in any reasonable interpretation of the word, would count as ‘transformation’ . Underlying structures a...
posted over 3 years ago