If I could start with a blank sheet of paper…
David Eaves is a member of the Taskforce’s International Reference Group.
Recently, Martin Stewart-Weeks posted this piece on the blog:
“…imagine for a moment it was your job to create the guidelines that will help public servants engage online. Although you have the examples from other organisations, you are given the rare luxury to start with a blank sheet of paper (at least for this exercise). What would you write? What issues would you include? Where would you start? Who would you talk to?”
While the Taskforce is looking for suggested guidelines for how employees should interact on the web like those found here (a lot of these are great – I was impressed with DePaul University’s guidelines) I wanted to take a step back. Guidelines are important, but the post implicitly suggests the focus of a government’s web 2.0 strategy should be focused externally. If I had a blank slate I would write guidelines, but my emphasis would be to get public servants to start using Web 2.0 tools internally. This approach has several advantages:
- Start with a safe environment for individuals to learn: As a medium the internet is a notoriously complicated place to communicate. Flame wars, endless and pointless discussions, and even simple misunderstandings are commonplace. I’d like a place where public servants can get comfortable with both the medium and the different web 2.0 tools. People forget that only a tiny fraction of people have embraced Web 2.0 and most public servants are not part of that early adopter group. Throwing public servants into the deep end of the Web 2.0 pool risks setting them up to drown out of frustration. Creating Web 2.0 tools behind a government firewall gives public servants a lower risk environment to get comfortable and learn to use the technology.
- Start with a safe environment for institutional to learn: Developing a new communications culture, one where more public servants are accustomed to engaging with the public directly will take time. Giving public servants an opportunity to practice using social media behind the government firewall enables the organization to assess its strengths and weaknesses and determine what policies should be in place as it further ramps up its public facing engagement.
- Make mistakes internally first: For better or for worse, many government agencies are deeply sensitive to communication mistakes. An innocent gaffe that goes viral or is picked up on by the media can quickly temper a ministers or deputy ministers appetite to experiment with social media. Every ministry or department will, at some point, experience such a gaffe (most probably already have). Better that these initially happen internally where they can become learning experiences then having them happen publicly where they become communications crises that risk shutting down Government 2.0 experiments.
- Internal focus will drive much needed structural change: Building off point number 2, I frequently tell government officials interested in having their organizations “do” social media to stop thinking of this as a communications exercise. Rather than trying to get an analogue government to talk to a digital public – why not make the government digital? Adopting Web 2.0 tools internally is going to change how your organization work for the better. Social media allows people to more effectively exchange information, identify critical resources and avoid the duplication of effort – all of the types of things siloed, hierarchical governments aren’t good at. The fact that adopting these tools will make engaging in the online world much, much easier is only one of many much larger benefits.
All this isn’t to say that Governments shouldn’t engage with the public via social media/web 2.0. They should (they need to!). It is to say that there is huge value, learnings and efficiency gains to be had in adopting web 2.0 internally. If we focus exclusively on the external strategy we risk only changing how our governments communicate with the public and miss out on the real gains of transforming how our governments work.
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This is a good idea.
But “internal” should be internal to ‘whole-of-government’, or even ‘whole-of-public sector’ (crossing jurisdictional boundaries), so that there can be cross-fertilisation within government. This could be a silo-melting exercise.
I like the way you have brought together the productive dimensions of mistakes with organisational learning.
As many media theorists and researchers have noted developing new infrastructures for any online interaction normally follows an ecological model — of something that grows, dies, weakens, strengthens, etc. — rather than a rigid constructivist model that is about sovereign service delivery (ie you get what you are given).
The fluidity of the more productive ecological model of online interaction and infrastructure necessarily means there will be a greater chance of error. Luckily, the generation of computer users who shall inherit these Gov2.0 initiatives already have a geek-speak term for such errors — ‘fails’. Perhaps government departments should look at the culture surrounding ‘fails’ and how/why it has emerged now?
Error has a sublime dimension to it that serves as an opportunity for learning. ‘Sublime’ in the strict Kantian sense of forcing one to use their power of imagination to apprehend something incomprehensible. Error indicates an unknown unknown. Indeed, to learn from one’s mistakes is a cliched truism. Unfortunately there are many workplaces and institutions that shy away from using the productive dimensions of fails.
The medicine industry is a good example. Instead of looking at the way the cause of a particular medical error is distributed across the actions of many participants of a given medical procedure institutions such as hospitals have a culture of avoiding error. One my MD friends is in the early stages of doing some research on this, looking at how to move away from a juridical model of error to a pedagogical model to help improve communication between medical professionals and improve service delivery.
I’ve said to many throughout this process that there needs to be an environment of “permission and confidence” for public servants to engage. David’s ideas build both of these through experience.
There should still be a constant eye on the end-game which is public engagement. We don’t want to risk making “internal perfection” the goal before embarking on public engagement.
I also wonder how “external” “internal” is. Do public servants have constraints in sharing among themselves, or do they see the function of internal engagement as always under different rules than internal?
The relationship of internal to external use of Web 2.0 and social computing by government is more important than perhaps David’s post suggests. Ultimately it will become critical in supporting and expanding the use of the other. However, like Lisa, I believe there are subtle differences between these two worlds, both organisationally and technologically. The role of internal collaboration also goes beyond just supporting public engagement and it will be difficult to only address aspects of internal collaboration that directly relate to external public engagement. Personally, I would like to see internal collaboration (internal meaning both within agencies and between them) as a focus, but in parallel to the focus on public engagement and with an ongoing dialogue between them as they evolve.
David,
I appreciate what you are saying about .gov. Maybe we could agree, so long as PSers, as Michael says, are at least (across three layers) whole of government, with solo melting (nice) being the aim. I take it this is the reason for govdex. The problem for the glaciers (that I’ve noticed over the past decade) appears to be;
1. The social space isn’t run as an inquiry. The primary change created by the web (in my mind) is to the institutions of edu = from delivery to inquiry; national to global; institutional to interinstitutional, etc = all others must follow, eventually, so long as they are democratic.
2. The tools (mousetrap) are built then people are supposed to flock to what is pretty clunky machinary. Web design is a new industry, and government employees are trying to deliver.
3. Most online communities tend to build out of simple work relationships, (i.e .gov in our case) which is often a worry because the common factors, like human nature, seem to get precluded, especially by professional academics. I.e. People will change so long as there are good reasons, not good arguments.
Perhaps, if we must divide our communities’ social media by the usual divisions, of which gov is one to be isolated, the approach needs an agency like the Dutch have.
The main fields studied are health, welfare, social security, the labour market and education, with a particular focus on the interfaces between them.
The only major difference would be using some online tools, and employing some energetic moderators to spread the inquiry (be inclusive) by encouraging the timid, doing loads of outreach, and not being so fearful.
This is good work. Many leaders in government recognize that social networking will transform their domain. Governments need a roadmap – how social networking can be phased in. Otherwise, governments will stand aside. Services, effectiveness, and performance will not be optimized.
Government organizations need to understand how to collaborate internally first. This discipline can be leveraged to collaborate with citizens, businesses, and civil society.
I’ve used the same rationale for intranet development in the past – the advantage in using an internal network to create ‘web’savvy’ employees was the ‘freedom within a framework’ that it provided.
There are two significant benefits of internal web 2.0 implementations (or experiments) that I’ve seen: one is that the business benefit and measurement can be easier to identify. The other is developing the behaviours and understanding, or web 2.0 ‘habits’, that will then support external use. From a knowledge management perspective the simplicity of a number of the web 2.0 tools enables an organisation to build collaborative behaviours first, rather than adopt a more traditional KM approach.