Public Service 2.0 - reflections on Terry Moran's latest speech

The Secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Terry Moran, gave a speech last week to the Graduate School of Government, University of Sydney. Titled Surfing the next wave of reform, his speech discussed the public service's critical role in supporting and enabling government reform and good governance, and what would be expected of the APS into the future.

Without mentioning Government 2.0, Moran's speech touched on many of its elements. He argued that the public service needed to improve how it engaged with citizens - particularly through the use of new tools enabled by technological improvements in IT and communications,

The bedrock of government engagement with citizens is through the institutions of our representative democracy. At its simplest, citizens vote every three years or so to elect Members of Parliament who choose a government to make laws and decisions.

But that alone is far from the extent of the links between citizens and government. Governments will achieve their goals better if they also use other ways to engage with citizens to complement and reinforce our fundamental democratic institutions.

The remarkable advances in information technology and communications over recent decades have changed and expanded citizens’ expectations, but have also given governments much better tools for engaging with citizens.

We need to do much better at this task.

Moran said that the public service had to improve its use of technology in policy and program delivery to service citizen needs,

Second, in implementing and delivering the decisions of Cabinet, we need to do better at designing policies and programs in ways that take full advantage of modern technology and that are designed with flexibility and creativity, to meet citizens’ needs. The NBN will permit a step forward in this area.

And he said that the APS needed to become better at listening to citizens, particularly through the use of modern technology,

Government needs to empower individuals and communities in ways that allow it and public servants to have effective exchanges with citizens.

Perhaps most telling - and most personally exciting to me - Moran said that,

Our processes should allow the community to provide input throughout the policy and service delivery process. Information technology can play a crucial role facilitating communication between citizens and governments.

I understand this as Moran saying that to meet the challenges in the APS's future, the Australian Public Service needs to use appropriate tools and techniques to collaborate with the community throughout the policy and service delivery process, not just consult them at the beginning and deliver to them at the end.

Moran finished with the statement that,

To be successful, the reform agenda will need to embrace the best, frank and honest strategic advice, and it will have been based on the fullest engagement with citizens. I am confident we can meet the challenge.

The proposal put forward by Moran is a vision of a Public Service 2.0, one trained and equipped to embed a citizen-focus into their work, to be strategic (as well as frank and fearless) in their advice to government, to design policies and services that take full advantage of the technology at our disposal, making appropriate use of Government 2.0 tools and techniques to achieve the goals of the duly-elected government.

I believe it is a vision that will serve Australia well.

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Does the personalisation of the internet threaten citizen participation in democracy?

Yesterday evening I watched an interesting TED talk by Eli Pariser, Beware online "filter bubbles".

The talk discussed the increasing personalisation of search engines, news sites and social networks, using algorithms to selectively present or hide search results, content and comments based on a user's actions.

Pariser raised the importance of the flow of information and news in enabling democracies and questioned whether the fragmentation of the internet into individual views would likewise erode democratic society.

I share his concerns over this trend. When our major news sources only show us the news we wish to see and our social networks only highlight comments from people who share our views it becomes much harder to have inclusive discussions, debates and decisions.

I'd be interested in your thoughts. Are these concerns misplaced? If not, what can or should we be doing individually or collectively to defend our right to be presented with information and news which makes us a little uncomfortable, but well-rounded and able to participate effectively in our democracy.

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Is this the first eGovernment research paper? Published 1954

I've been reading the excellent blog post by Richard Heeks in ICTs for Development on The First e-Government Research Paper.

He discusses a research paper by W. Howard Gammon on "The Automatic Handling of Office Paper Work" published in 1954 that looks that the impact of ICT on government - noting at the time that there were approximately 40 computers in use by the US Federal public service.

What I find very interesting is that many of the points raised in Gammon's article - and highlighted by Heeks - reflect the situation we are in today with eGovernment and Government 2.0.

In a most insightful paper, Hammon identified the importance of understanding how and when to employ technology over understanding how to create or maintain technology, the need to re-engineer business processes rather than simply automate existing processes, the importance of 'hybrid' skills that combine an understanding of the ‘business’ of government with knowledge about the application of technology and the need for top management support, particularly to resist the politics of entrenched interests.

These factors remain of overwhelming importance today in government. We still have to contend with individuals and groups who struggle to effectively employ technology in the service of organisations, siloed business units who seek to protect their current practices out of fear of the consequences of change and there is an ongoing need to expand the ranks of strategic thinkers who can use their combined understanding of government business and technology to create positive change.

It is worth reflecting on why, after more than 50 years, we're still dealing with the same people issues despite having completely changed our environments.

Perhaps we need to collectively spend more time focusing on how we educate and empower our people to bring them along with us into the future.

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Dumbing down or lifting up - writing in plain English respects your readers

It makes me really upset when I visit a government website and find it written in dense technical or bureaucratic language.

I can appreciate the desire of public servants to be precise and accurate in their choice of words, but often the language chosen is incomprehensible to people without two degrees and ten years experience in government.

I've heard about - and witnessed - instances when experienced writers or communication professionals have translated complex text into plain English and been told 'you're dumbing it down'.

No they're not. They're lifting the language up.

Writing in plain English is about respecting your readers - writing for them, not for yourself or your boss.

When writing complex multi-syllabic diatribes, the writer is not demonstrating their intellectual superiority or eloquent grasp of sophisticated phraseology.

The writer is showing they don't have the writing skill and experience to lift their language out of government-speak to a level used by society, by their audience - a level used every day to share and explain some of the most complicated concepts and thoughts imaginable.

The writer is hiding behind their words, using them to conceal a lack of appreciation and respect for their audience and a lack of understanding of their topic. They are revealing their limits and fears - and they are not getting their message across.

One of the core capabilities for the Australian Public Service is to 'Communicate with Influence'.

'Influence' doesn't mean using big words, it means using effective words - words that can overcome the gaps in communication between writers and readers to convey meaning and understanding.

So when writing your websites and developing your documents, think about the invisible people in the room - your readers. Is your choice of words appropriate for their experience and education?

Will they be uplifted by your simple and clear language or left feeling 'dumbed down', lost and frustrated by your turgid turns of phrase?

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AGIMO announces finalists for 2011 Gov 2.0 individual innovator award

On Monday AGIMO announced the finalists for the 2011 Gov 2.0 individual innovator award, building on the award originally issued by the Gov 2.0 Taskforce last year.

I'm very proud to see the three finalists have all made significant contributions to Government 2.0 practice in Australia.

It is interesting to note that all three finalists are from state governments (not having seen the full list of entrants), however two have had roles which took on significant national interest - both through disaster management (Victorian bushfires and QLD floods and cyclones).

I feel that in the last year there hasn't been the same stand-out performance from individuals at a Federal level. While there are some fantastic Gov 2.0 projects and innovators in Canberra, often projects are quite large, requiring teams all doing their part, have long timeframes, or can face significant approval and scrutiny hurdles that may dilute of defy individual innovative activities.

Local government also struggles with scale, being smaller and more resource limited innovators often have a broader range of duties and may struggle to find the time to innovate, plus many innovations impact on a local level and, while often very significant, often don't attract a broader level of attention.

In my view state government in Australia is in a 'sweet spot' for many innovative Government 2.0 activities - large enough to be resourced and focused on direct citizen engagement to a greater extent than Federal - though, as always, time will tell.

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