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A debate has been going on in Europe recently regarding which comes first - successful Web 2.0 egovernment, or citizen-centric and transparent government.
One argument goes that government must first undergo cultural change in order to deliver effective Web 2.0 services.
The other is that government will undergo cultural change through releasing Web 2.0 services.
I think there's a little truth in both approaches - a government firmly committed to opacity will not be interested in rolling out interactive, citizen-focused services. They are too threatening to the powers that be.
Whereas a government that is already down the road of transparency will be helped along it by hearing, listening to and responding to the wants and needs of its citizens, as delivered online via Web 2.0 services.
Below is a presentation that summed up the area neatly for me.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Which comes first, egovernment Web 2.0 services or government cultural change? | Tweet |
Is the future portals or mash-ups? | Tweet |
While many governments around the world pursue the 'one portal' approach, a few commentators are arguing for a different type of model - many correct doors rather than one big door.
This means reaching out to embed government content in the websites citizens choose to visit rather than simply attempting to encourage all web users to go to a single central portal for all government-related content.
This approach is described well in the Read Write Web article, E-Government Meets Web 2.0: Goodbye Portals, Hello Web Services, which states, in reference to the online channel that,Gartner's conclusion is that governments "should make sure that their information, services and applications are accessible through a variety of different channels, some of which are not controlled or directly owned by government."
This is similar to how government agencies already distribute physical publications beyond their own shopfronts - into libraries, doctors' surgeries, lawyers' offices and into the shopfronts of other government agencies. It also reflects how government has a presence at various community and commercial shows, festivals and other events.
In both these cases government reaches out into other organisations' venues in order to better reach citizens in the places they frequent.
I'm a proponent of this 'any door' approach being extended online. As an egovernment practitioner I do not necessarily care how people get to the information and services my agency provides online, provided that they get to them.
This means I am a supporter of central portals as an avenue outside my agency's own website to reach our customers. It also means I am a fan of greater cross-agency collaboration on information provision, where agencies with similar audiences work together to provide government information to citizens.
Most importantly it means I am a supporter of rss, mash-ups and embedded web services - any technology that allows my agency to reach beyond the confines of its own website to reach our customers in whatever websites they choose to visit - commercial, public or citizen-run.
After all, with research indicating that government sites only make up about two percent of online visits by Australians, if I want to magnify the effectiveness of my agency's tools and information online, I need to increase their reach.
For example (hypothetically), if my agency produced a video relevant to the customers of any organisation involved in the family law system, it would be worth our while to look at how we could reach beyond our own website traffic to the traffic of other involved websites.
Using Youtube, we could generate a video that can be embedded into any site across the family law system, thereby potentially magnifying the reach of its content.
Assuming that my agency has 10 percent of the traffic to the family law system, this could, with the agreement and support of other organisations, result in up to a 10x boost in traffic to the video - all targeted at the appropriate audience.
If we also had the video included in the australia.gov.au portal this would lift usage further, but in a less targeted way, as the portal does not specifically target the same audience as we are attempting to reach.
The approach in this scenario applies for any type of government information distribution online. It also means that government needs to think more about how it provides information online, and how easy and attractive it is for other organisations to embed the information, not just link to it.
Blogging catching on in the Australian public sector | Tweet |
I'm glad to see that blogging is beginning to become a more used tool within the Australian public sector, with the ABS launching Statistically Speaking, a blog for libraries in September, the Training.gov.au Project Blog having been running since June this year (with a Twitter feed since October at @TrainingGovAu) and Stap isi, a blog for local government, around since late August.
There are also a number of councillors blogging in the local government arena (list at Stapisi) - and as the site states, it's not a blog if comments are disabled (thanks Julie for the compliment of copying my design layout).
I have been told that there is also a state government blogger in WA, though have not yet tracked down their blog (can anyone help?) and the SA government won a Commendation for an internal blog in the recent Intranet Innovation Awards 2008.
If anyone is aware of other Australian government public sector blogs please let me know.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Balancing customer, agency and political needs in an online world | Tweet |
Long-serving public servants are familiar with the challenge of balancing customer, agency and political wishes, with a clear understanding that the role of the public service is to implement the policies of the government of the day and not to be customer advocates or lobbyists.
In the commercial sector similar challenges are often faced between customer, management/board and shareholder interests, however often the choice of master to serve is less clear. Without customers a business fails, thereby failing to meet the goals of management or shareholders.
This influence doesn't exist in most of the public sector - citizens are not able to pick and choose their service provider, the government makes that decision for them, providing many services in a monopoly environment.
This monopolistic model has worked well for government over the last century, ensuring that the bulk of citizens have a consistent experience - whether by phone, print or face-to-face.
However the effectiveness of the monopolistic model doesn't fully hold in the online world. Suddenly governments are not the only organisations with universal reach, and suddenly citizens can create services that fill gaps left by government.
This has given rise to a multitude of sites where, for little or no cost, citizens are providing better and more cost-effective services than can the slow moving and cumbersome wheels of government.
These citizen-provided services are also totally citizen facing, without any need to answer to political masters, making them often better attuned to community needs.
How should government address the challenge of these 'competitors',
by crushing them out of existence (an easy task for legislators)?
by ignoring them (as often seems to currently be the case)?
or by embracing, supporting and encouraging them?
Personally I feel governments should embrace and support these 'competitors', helping them access government data in order to improve their offerings and aiding them in reaching broader audiences - even at the expense of the government's own sites.
Of course, this willingness to be transparent and collaborative doesn't occur over night - as discussed government agencies are not acclimatised to competition, and the skills of most agencies do not reflect the skills useful in a competitive environment.
However I hope that this changes over time and government begins to support and foster these competitors, learning from them how to better meet the needs of customers.
Here's a video about some of the work of these citizens in filling service gaps that government had not yet either seen a need for, or been funded to address.
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Digital swarming - distributed collaboration and decision making | Tweet |
JD Stanley of Cisco has published a very interesting initial paper on 'digital swarming', an approach towards the use of collective intelligence to generate higher quality and faster decisions - with particular relevance to the public sector.
To quote,
Digital Swarming is about a digitally connected human and machine world. A world where dynamically forming, scaling, reconfiguring and disbanding collaborative communities swarm for a cause, learning from each other, lowering cost and cycle times, and producing outcomes and effects that are greater than an individual or small group could produce on its own.
I think this approach has huge relevance for the public sector, given the complex interrelated problems it faces where they relate to the economy, sustainability, education or public safety. The opportunity to accelerate public/private/people partnerships to achieve results is the effect we all are seeking. The Digital Swarming framework is meant to contribute to this goal.
He's looking for comments over in The Connected Republic
