When Goliath Does Social Media…
We’ve had a couple of posts so far looking at cultural challenges in achieving government 2.0: Nic wrote about “The Theory of SPIN: Serial Professional Innovation Negation”, I blogged earlier on “Faceless Bureaucrats and Web 2.0” and Lisa wrote recently about a community ethic of government engagement … I wanted to turn to another aspect of the culture challenge: what compromises do we legitimately need to make to the vision of Web 2.0 (as we understand it in the commercial and community space) because the very nature of government requires it?
The general tenor of discussions to date (pardon me if you feel I am mischaracterizing them) seems to be that government 2.0 is a logical progression of public engagement, so let’s just do it already. However, there are some things that are different; and, more importantly, there are some things that should be different about how our government functions and engages, even in a 2.0 way. This, I think, is important to acknowledge as part of the ongoing work towards realising successful government 2.0.
Many open government or Web 2.0 enthusiasts have a high regard for the Obama-Biden campaign because of its effective and successful use of social media tools. However, since coming into office, new media experts, in a poll conducted by the National Journal, gave the Obama Administration a C+ grade.
Some of the reasons for this have been explored by Peter W. Swire, an attorney who advised the New Media team of the Obama-Biden transition, in an article entitled “It’s Not the Campaign Any More” (pdf). The New Media team operated the change.gov.au website and developed whitehouse.gov. Swire argues that there are three key differences between a campaign and a government:
“There are three key differences pre- and post-election: scale, the clearance process, and the limits on how the government can authorize actions.”
The difference between the use of social media tools in a campaign v. in government, seems to me to illustrate an argument that Joe Trippi made when he was visiting Australia earlier this year. He cited the book “An Army of Davids” by Glenn Reynolds which discusses how changes in technology are empowering “an army of Davids” to take on the goliaths of Big Media and Big Government.
The trend of social media (per Reynolds and Trippi) is not just a change of medium from television and radio, it is also causing a shift in power; a shift from the top to the bottom. When television was big, part of the sales pitch was that Goliath was good – you wanted to be the biggest party, the biggest company. The bigger you got, the more powerful and successful you were in the world. The new medium of social networking creates an environment in which armies of Davids can self-organise and self-form and take on the Goliaths who stand in the way of issues they care about
If this is true (to continue paraphrasing Trippi), then a big cultural shift needs to happen at the top of our institutions to adjust for the armies of Davids. As we look to the future, it’s important to think differently about how you provide the tools to the people out there because they will take them, grab them and use them
Taking on board Reynolds and Trippi’s argument, the power of social media was successfully harnessed by the Obama campaign to create an army of Davids to help him win the presidency. But this compares with the apparently less successful efforts of the Obama Administration to do likewise. This, I think, highlights how, in some instances at least, social media tools may not be a natural fit within government/ by Goliath.
This, I think, begs the question: which of the challenges to making government more 2.0 are simply a factor of government not yet knowing how to provide the tools and empower people? And which are a factor of the tools being an ill-fit for Goliath?
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Hi Mia,
Nicholas was ultimately right in his post, I probably wasn’t in a position to comment on it then authoritatively. Please note this is addressed to the Taskforce and us the constituents.
Having worked in the Public Service for a number of years, and now running my own Innovation company, it has become clear that we as constituents can not keep simply saying to the Taskforce, you should do it this way or you should do it that way. Or here’s a great process, technology or way of opening your data up, simply trying to give the Taskforce tools without showing you how to use them.
Whilst I know Taskforce members and the Secretariat all want to see wonderful things come from the Taskforce, as we the constituents do, I again agree with Nicholas on Radio National the other day. The Taskforce’s ultimate deliverable is to produce recommendations, reports and briefing papers for a way forward for Government for putting in place change mechanisms for this to occur. Ultimately this will only occur through legislative changes which must be debated upon and then implemented after the model is found to be sound, this will take time.
Our role as I see it, as the passionate, innovative and entrepreneurial, risk embracing thought leaders, is to help the Taskforce with this. We as in those willing and able to assist with this need to think ahead and put in place the machinery which will be needed to assist with the culture change both at the grass roots and senior management levels, which was so eagerly embraced at the Taskforce Roadshow here in Canberra.
I feel that it is our responsibility to let the Taskforce get on with there job, we keep contributing with input, but more constructive and guiding input is needed. It’s fine to point the Taskforce at a UK model for this or a US model for that and tell the Taskforce, you should be doing it. That’s fantastic input for a briefing paper, but perhaps we should be thinking more in depth about these things, and providing suggestions of how something like that may be implemented here, and how to go about it.
Nicholas said during his Radio National interview that his expectation was that, the Community would assist in the transformation to a Government 2.0 culture, by continuing to create initiatives on their own to support a long transition (I personally, expect 5 years (my comment)) to a re-adoption of Innovation in Government and changing the risk averse culture to a risk embracing one (that is my translation).
I am currently working towards creating something which will be of use to the Government (at all levels) as a tool to assist with this process initially from a bottom up perspective. But I hope to also use this tool to assist from the top down perspective.
I really hope everyone else out there in constituent land can see the forest from the trees, we need to help here not hinder. Measuring the Taskforce against what we expect them to deliver, and what they are can actually deliver with the existing over-arching frameworks in place is not realistic.
I will consider the Taskforce a success regardless of whether the Taskforce fund any Government 2.0 or Web 2.0 project. I sincerely think our efforts need to be put into writing reports for them (for those of us who are writers), and for those of us who are not, we should be rallying together to set up the tools to support the model which will be rewritten through the legislation.
The Taskforce and the Secretariat are regular people just like us out here in Citizen land, they’re asking for our help and we need to give it to them in a meaningful way.
Yes, please do tell them what is wrong, by writing a report and suggesting changes which may assist them in making this happen as quickly as possible. Then look at seeing what you yourself or your organisation can put in place to assist them with these changes.
We need to keep the Government 2.0 momentum up or we will not benefit, there is much that needs to be done. It is our responsibility because we are passionate about it to make sure it happens.
The Taskforce need our ideas but ultimately what they need is assistance with the legaslative changes which are needed.
Rae
I’ve read this post a few times.. and I keep coming back to the peter principle.. there doesn’t seem to be a clean way to implement an inclusive gov2 without worrying/catering for the rise of the lowest common denominator..
I honestly don’t have a solution for this, other than to hope that there are enough individuals who are on a slightly higher “level” in order to move the discussion away from what ultimately could be a distraction..
If there is one thing I have learnt from the current raft of web2.0 tools.. its that VERY often, the mass/populous/current “in-thing” will win over and above reasonable thought/discussion/judgement..
Perhaps I am misreading the intent of this post (in which case, I am validating my own point), but I think it is really important to make sure that whatever mechanisms are put in place aren’t hijacked by those who happen to be ab le to gather the online support (as opposed to those who actually can form/support an informed decision on the topic at hand)
Hmm.. i’ve almost convinced myself that gov2 is a bad thing.. the only thing that is keeping me going is the fact that the discussion on this site so far is a) generally positive and b) generaly intelligent
when v2.gov.au starts getting “u suk” comments, then that is when we can safely admit defeat
I just live in the hope that we don’t ever reach that point…
after all…
life is not a rehearsal
cheers
Dan
Mia,
I must confess I had not even thought of gov 2.0 as being a “contest”. To me it is not nor should it be seen in this way at all. It is about voices being heard and cooperation and doing what is best for the whole community.
Human culture is largely about cooperation. As a species we have survived and prospered when we work together. Ideas like Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is really about a community working together to find the best allocation of resources. Armies have arisen as a way for the whole community to work together collectively against a threat.
Things go wrong when we get individuals and groups trying to take advantage of others and trust and cooperation break down.
Government 2.0 in my mind is about the building of trust and cooperation through breaking down barriers between “the governed and the governing”. The best way to build trust and cooperation is through transparency and through explaining what the rules of interaction are and how it can be shown that the rules are applied fairly.
We have got ourselves into a lot of unnecessary bother because the systems we have in place often assume that everyone is trying to cheat the system and break the rules whereas in fact it is the opposite. The only people who deliberately cheat and break the rules to their own advantage are about 5% of the population – unless the rules are unfair, unnecessary, or unjust. The thing about rules is that if there is a suspicion that some people are breaking the rules and getting away with it then this means that others now believe they have to in turn break the rules in order to protect themselves.
A much better approach to enforcement of rules is to make it easy for people to follow the rules and to understand what the rules are. This can be done in various ways.
We can embed the rules in our transactions so that if you do a transaction through a system we automatically follow the rule.
The rules that are not embedded in our transactions should be ones of general principle not details of how to do things.
We can make the outcomes of interactions transparent so that if a person deliberately breaks the rules then it is obvious they have done so.
We also make our punishments for breaking the rules that people are excluded from participating in particular types of transactions or in less severe cases they can make recompense in some other way.
For systems such as these to exist we have to have transparency. Transparency does not mean that everyone has to know everything about everyone else. What transparency means is that we are confident that people have followed the rules and that there is an umpire (often the government) and an umpire of umpires (often the legal system) that gives us comfort that the rules are being followed.
Opening up of information in government is NOT about opening up all government information to everyone. It is about setting up the rules and ensuring that the rules are followed with respect to access to government information.
Here are a some general principles that could be followed.
All information about rules of interaction between governments and citizens must be made available in a form that the citizen can understand.
All information held by governments has a set of rules about who can store the information, about how it is stored, about its currency and about who is allowed to access the information and rules about the release of that information to other parties. In particular all information stored about a person should be made available to the person if they ask.
If the task force can formulate and recommend such principles or similar broad principles and illustrate with examples of how it can be done in some specific cases then its task will be achieved.
I think Mia’s point illustrates one of the key issues with the concept of ‘Gov 2.0′ – it has many different aspects, some of which do not apply in certain constituencies.
Some of these faces include online engagement in consultations and publishing public data online in formats that enable easy reuse. These are the specific focus of the Gov 2.0 Taskforce’s agenda.
Others aspects include ongoing online engagement (very different from time-limited consultations), direct voter participation in policy formation, community legislation, pro-active government disclosure (currently the subject of the FOI reform process and a large step beyond providing set datasets in set formats), collaborative budgeting (as is being trialed at local and state levels around the world) and online voting (an idea in the Electoral Green Paper released on 23 September).
Some even consider Gov 2.0e extending into fields such as providing the underlying infrastructure for a national broadband network (a key enabler for many other services), revising copyright laws, telemedicine, cyberdefense and more.
What I find most important for government when looking at Gov 2.0 is to consider, in Tim O’Reilly’s words, government as a platform.
Asides from being involved in transactions and relationships with the public, the government is a facilitator for the community to self-organise and solve its own problems.
Where I see the greatest impact for Gov 2.0 is in providing the infrastructure to allow people to self-organise and resolve their own issues. This involves providing industrial strength community platforms and NOT limiting how people choose to use them, within law. This means permitting dialogues to occur which criticise the government, which stray into territory considered (by APS codes) ‘inappropriate’ and otherwise do not meet the ‘moral’ rules government enforces on itself as an institution, but are not legislated for the public.
Clay Shirley highlighted this in how the Obama Campaign operated the MyBarackObama site. One of the largest and most vocal groups that formed was in opposition to a position taken by the-then Senator Obama. However the group was not shut down or otherwise restricted by the platform owners. The Obama campaign allowed free and open criticism of their position on their own platform – democracy won.
This is what we really need to support and communicate to senior people across government. They must enable the community to share freely and must not restrict legal debate based on internal codes of conduct that do not have weight of law in the community.
This becomes even more critical that government take on this role when it is becoming clear that commercial interests are providing these platforms for online group formation, discussion and decision-making.
At the moment, commercial interests are effectively disintermediating the government in its role of supporting communities. I believe this will lead to subtle influences on public debate that may not be in the interests of the community in the long term. We will have a democracy enabled by businesses who exist to provide returns to shareholders, rather than returns to voters.
So, to tie my comments back to Mia’s post – when Goliath does social media, it must use it to build platforms, lifting the army of David’s onto its shoulders, allowing them to both see more and further than Goliath can alone – without restricting the directions in which the Davids can look.
Craig,
That all sounds fine to me, and I’ve argued that governments should be the platform for things like Inquiries 2.0. But often Web 2.0 platforms are easy to create and the conversation can repair to some place outside govt – which does ‘conversation’ better than governments. I’ve wondered before whether O’Reilly’s line about Governments as Platform is right – and whether perhaps governments shouldn’t just try to ensure that they give whatever help they can to ensuring that the right platforms evolve – from wherever seems appropriate.
To add to this discussion, ‘Athens’ on the Net from the New York Times is a very interesting article which explores the dangers of allowing the market to develop the platforms online and the risks of allowing organised groups to simulate public opinion online.
The last three paragraphs sum it up,
Craig,
We have a representative democracy and there is no need to change the paradigm. The issue that Government 2.0 addresses is helping make representative democracy more effective. This means that our representatives need to better reflect all the views of the people they represent. For example there is technically no reason why we should not have a system like the Task force has instituted where ideas can be voted on and there is one vote per person – and people can change their minds.
The vote does not need to be binding on our representatives but it helps inform them any more than the votes in the Task Force ideas are binding on the Task Force.
Politicians now try to find our opinions with their private polling. Why not make the polling process more transparent and also in a way that others can put up suggestions.
Hi Kevin,
I’m not sure what you are objecting to in my comments as I wasn’t suggesting changes to Australia’s representative government model.
Could you explain thanks.
Craig I was responding to the Athens article you quoted which, the way I read it, was suggesting that initiatives like gov 2.0 could be leading us towards crowd sourced decision making and hence away from representative government.
At this stage I believe we should be looking at gov 2.0 as strengthening representative government and making it work better. If gov 2.0 starts to be seen as undermining representative government then it will meet fierce opposition. We do not need metaphors such as gov 2.0 leading to government as a vending machine getting any credibility.
Mia,
I tend to be quite philosophic about the introduction of a media created by harnessing hyperlinking with internet protocols. (and adding one more = http). It’s not just the concept of .gov domains that were introduced. The first was .edu. The institutional names which get put in front of them are usually interchangeable, and a lot of insiders still think they are delivering a service (useful tool).
Government is there to implement the things which we agree (as a nation) need to be done,,, after learning about them. Trouble is these days, is that National Governments are a bit powerless in a world of multinationals. And not all of us think in terms of “the queen’s great matter“.
So most of the work required for the web aware is in creating (online) institutions which (the committees in) parliament’s can use. If you want to get some idea of where their education is up to, here’s a late sub from the Aussie Clerk of the House. Well intentioned? (you know that’s the unkindest thng one can say about anyone?)
Your last question’s a doozy.
If you consider that we’re just seeing a shift in the media which is constructed between people, then one factor holds the key. It’s called AGOSP in your end of town. Primarily, for the Nationally and technically minded, it’s just an authentication hub down at DHS, which says this person is an Aussie.
So, as far as gov “knowing which tools” and “empowering people”. Empowering people is an Americanism. In philosphy, it is said to be a (misguided) positivism. In Australian, it is (technically) called bull****.
The tools? that’s a bit harder. If you’re in the (global) education space, you know that every profession requires different tools; astronomers, e.g. want different tools than economists. And the bandwidth demanded by each is sooo variable. In the .gov.au space, the main tools, from the need I see, are the real time stuff, which enables a few remote sites to share a learning at the same time. . Our taskforce seems to be doing well with overloading this blog by treating it as a forum, so we know it’s not the tools so much as knowing that PLU’s are having a go.
Regardless, the key is in the (single) sign on to every tool sponsored out of the public purse. Put up something like sandpit.gov.au, put a cc liense on every .gov.au domain, and let it rip, I have no doubt theunwashed.gov.au could do some quite remarkable things; most probably by inventing a few new tools, and a new process of government.
In the artivle Improving Access to Government Data on the Web, Diane Mueller makes some very important points.
Mia,
Public administration and service delivery is process driven, whereas gov 2.0 is about facilitating citizen participation and is relationships driven. It is a different orientation. Done well, it is plausible to anticipate that citizens and communities will be enabled to create and sustain their own solutions and rely less on centralised government services. So the new orientation is putting relationships at the core of public service.
Oh, and I would give more space to the Obama Administration. For one thing, there is a lot of interaction happening on the Administrations Facebook & YouTube channels. And the National Journal poll included an F grade from Nick Schoper, New Media Director for the House Minority Leader. So the poll result is just not credible.