Is Parliament House the peoples' house? Beth Noveck: Demand a more open-source government

Is Parliament House the peoples' house or the government's house?

This is one of the fundamental considerations within the open government movement. Does government exist to serve the public? Who participates in developing policy, creating laws and deciding what is best for citizens and communities?

Beth Noveck, in her TED Global presentation, Demand a more open-source government, poses a number of challenges to citizens and governments around the world to open up governance processes, involving citizens at every stage.

Brought to my attention by Andrew Krzmarzick of Govloop, Beth Noveck Delivers Terrific TED Talk on Open Government, Noveck's talk is the best I've seen on the topic this year.

There's also a great blog post about the presentation at the TED site, Demand a more open-source government: Beth Noveck at TEDGlobal 2012

I strongly recommend that you watch Noveck's talk and share it widely with your colleagues.

 

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Presentation from OPC IT's Web Xchange event

On Tuesday morning I gave a brief talk about building a social media infrastructure at OPC IT's Web Xchange event.

I've included my presentation slides below as a reference for those who have asked for a copy.

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63 reasons your agency should have a social media presence

It is 46 years since the internet was first developed (ARPA network), 21 years since the development of the first web browser (aptly named WorldWideWeb) and fifteen years since the launch of the first recognisable social network (SixDegrees.com).

Today half our population actively uses Facebook, and over 60 per cent of Australians use some form of social media.

However some in government are still debating whether social media is a valid channel for them to use, or whether it is simply a 'fad'.

I gave a presentation yesterday at an OPC Web Xchange event on why agencies should use social media an how they could build their social media infrastructure.

As part of my preparation for the event, in about twenty minutes over the weekend, I brainstormed 63 reasons why government agencies should have a social media presence.

Some may not apply to your agency. I may have missed others that do.

However in case you're struggling to justify using social media in your agency, here's my 63 reasons to start you off in thinking about which reasons are most important in your situation.

Note that they are listed alphabetically, not by importance.

1. advertise to your audience 
2. amplify your other communications 
3. attract good staff 
4. be approachable and reachable
5. break down silos 
6. build awareness of conversations already underway 
7. build awareness of services 
8. build community resilience 
9. build ongoing audience 
10. build personal connections 
11. build relevance 
12. build staff experience ahead of more advanced technologies 
13. build website traffic 
14. challenge the community to help solve problems 
15. collaborate with colleagues across agencies and jurisdictions 
16. collaborate with colleagues in your agency 
17. consult your audience 
18. convene supporters 
19. correct misinformation 
20. deliver emergency information 
21. employ agile policy development methodologies 
22. empower the community with information 
23. engage stakeholders 
24. explain to people what you do
25. find best practice overseas
26. find good staff
27. find good vendors 
28. get a heads-up on what will be in traditional media the next day
29. identify community influencers 
30. identify fraud 
31. identify opinion leaders 
32. identify unlawful behaviour 
33. improve accountability 
34. increase transparency 
35. listen to your audience 
36. locate experts 
37. locate stakeholders 
38. maintain engagement between campaigns 
39. market research 
40. organise events 
41. promote events 
42. provide consistent answers to questions 
43. provide customer service 
44. provide information in forms other than text 
45. remain effective in a 24/7 media cycle 
46. run competitions 
47. save money 
48. save time 
49. seek fast feedback on policy ideas 
50. share data 
51. share expertise 
52. share information with colleagues across agencies and jurisdictions 
53. share information with colleagues in your agency 
54. share knowledge nationally and globally
55. share media announcements 
56. source emergency information 
57. streamline processes 
58. support your Minister 
59. target geographically dispersed groups
60. reach an audience who won't talk to you face-to-face or by phone
61. reinvent government processes 
62. tracking audience sentiment 
63. train staff in engagement

And here's a word cloud of the reasons to show the themes that stand out.

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Mapping open data site generations

Over the last three years we've seen an increasing level of sophistication and capabilities in successive generations of open data sites.

To aid governments in their open data journey, I've mapped five generations for the progressive development of open data sites, detailed in the document below.

Please feel free to reuse the information within the bounds of the embedded Creative Commons license.

My next task is to release a view of open data sites around the world mapped against these generations to provide a view as to who is leading and who is lagging in the open data stakes.

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Redesigning government: Does the terminology of government hold it back?

I had an interesting discussion last week with a colleague about the terminology of government.

We talk about politicians as moving the 'levers of power' and departmental restructures as 'machinery of government' (MOG) changes (sometimes used as a verb "we got mogged!")

Lack of progress in bureaucracy is called 'spinning wheels' (which often appears to be what's going on while officers are 'fine-tuning' policy), while government communications is often referred to simply as 'spin'.

So why are these machine-like industrial era metaphors still used to apply to government?

Yes, that's right - industrial era. The term 'machinery of government' is thought to originate from 1861 with John Stuart Mill in Considerations on Representative Government - who argues against the tendency to consider government as a controllable, predictable machine.

I've previously written of the difficulties inherent for a government, structured under 19th Century principles, attempting to use 20th Century technologies to govern in a 21st Century world.

in this respect, if governments are seeking to move forward, surely they need to consider the terminology they use as well.

Let's use the example of another industry, medicine. From the 16th Century doctors began to think of humans and animals as complex machines, first clockwork and then, from the 19th Century, as a powered machine, the heart as a pump, stomach as a factory (with food the fuel), nerves as wires and joints as pistons.

Through the 20th Century this view became more sophisticated as we built a better understanding of how the body operated. New post-industrial technology paradigms were used to help conceptualise and communicate this understanding. The brain was considered as a computer, the nerves as a network and with our face and limbs the 'peripherals' that allowed us to interface with the outside world.

Each paradigm helped the doctors of the time to build a conceptual framework on which to view and understand the body and address its ills. Each was a partial model of what was really occurring, but was sufficient (based on the knowledge at the time) to provide a foundation for decision-making and treatment.

Government is still using industrial era terms and concepts, 150 years after Mill's book.

Our understanding of government and society has changed. our technology has changed. The outcomes that government is expected to deliver has changed.

Does industrial-era terminology still provide the right models for government? Are politicians still 'pulling the levers of power', or negotiating equitable solutions in partnership with other organisations and communities?

Should departmental changes be considered 'machinery' - moving parts from one department to another,  like moving parts from one machine to another, or considered within a context of matrix governance, where departments do not exist and public officials work across silos and functional in ad hoc teams to meet specific objectives and goals?

Can we conceptualise a 21st Century model of government using 19th Century terminology, or do the words, and the shape they lead our thoughts into, limit government to outdated modes?

To use a final industrial-era phrase, how do we 'break the mould' for government, unleashing new forms of governance that suit modern society?

What modern day terminology should and could we use to reshape our own models of government and describe a new collaborative, open, governance web suited to modern day society?

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