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Co-creation of nations

Craig and I have been talking and thinking about current events and the emergence of collaborative technologies that enable different forms of dissent and shift the possibilities for government interaction with the populace.

Much like the ideas espoused by John Robb regarding open source warfare we are seeing an outbreak of dissent that appears to be open source dissent that is enabled by digital technology – by internet enabled mobile phones with photo and/or video capability, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.

Now in  Africa and the Middle East we see the rise of ‘leaderless’ rebellions and a reshaping of states where there is no single authority holding sway.

This brings into question traditional notions of government.  Structures such as councils of equals, dictators, oligarchies are being swept away. Instead we can see the possible rejection of the need for a supreme leader or centralised representational body.  This diminished role for central leadership, as states are more able to operate as matrices of interlocking responsibility and accountability, is made possible by new technologies and by the splintering of traditional power structures that we necessary in a pre-digital age.

Perhaps we will see the Swiss model of radically decentralised government gain traction due to increased communication and networking. Today we expect a nation to have a single leader, tomorrow we may see leaders by theme or by local area.

Posted in Ideas.

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By Kate Carruthers – 25 March, 2011

Welcome to the United States of Facebook

By Andrea Di Maio, VP Distinguished Analyst at Gartner, 7 February 2011

Originally published by the Gartner blog network and republished in this blog according to the Gartner licensing terms.

View the original post, Welcome to the United States of Facebook.

For the last few years I having been looking at government agencies around the world moving baby steps on social media.. I have been reading dozens of social media policies, guidelines, strategies. I have been pondering countless blog posts, discussion fora, slideshares. I have been hearing politicians and consultants, self-appointed communication 2.0 experts and bloggers-turned-opinion-leaders.

Everybody has been talking about how social media are changing the relationships between government and citizens, about the willingness to participate, about digital natives joining the government workforce.  This is why government agencies are rushing to establish policies, to set boundaries, to articulate business cases, to look for opportunities.

Now, what if this were all pointless? What if the behavioral patterns – both professional and personal – that social media like Facebook will develop and sustain were incompatible with existing regulations, processes, decision frameworks? What if the very concept of government and governance as we know them ceased to make sense?

Let me offer a few hypothetical scenarios for reflection.

  • Why should I comply with administrative obligations – ranging from paying taxes or fines, to separating garbage for recycling – if  I can instantly access a wealth of information about how not to comply as well as evidence about all those who do not?
  • Why should I allow a teacher to give a bad mark to his or her son, if I can launch a cause against the teacher, digging from Facebook information about his or her past and from pupils in previous classes or schools?
  • Why should I report a petty crime to the authorities if I can share the picture to a neighborhood watch group on Facebook?
  • Why should a student do a home assignment, if  the solution is either already available on the Internet, or can be socialized through Facebook with multiple classmate? And how could the teacher give him or her a bad mark, unless there is a mark for “degree of collaboration” or “ability to do research”?
  • Why should I accept to be treated by a doctor appointed by my public heath care organization after having seen his or her low ratings on Facebook?
  • Why should I accept that theaters and newspaper get government subsidies when I can be a reader, a member of the audience or a performer free of charge?
  • Why should I pay a ticket to visit the same museum that I can browse for free in the comfort of my living room?
  • Why should there be rules for equal air time for different election candidates, if they can do whatever they like on the Internet?
  • Why should I care if the government agency that employs me does not give me access to Facebook? I will use it on my smartphone anyhow.
  • Why should I work only with my agency colleagues on a particular problem? I can create a closed LinkedIn group and invite a few folks from my various networks to help me.

Every single relation inside and outside government may be challenged or even turned upside down.

What social media does is to put control back in the hands of the individual. Control in the past has been mostly based on information. Back in history, from oral transmission to manuscripts, from Gutenberg to radio, from TV to the Internet, people have had access to an increasing quantity of information. However this information was always conveyed through some form of organization: priests, publishers, media tycoons, industries, government agencies, unions, and so forth.

Social media is different. Each and every one of us can be a publisher, a commentator, an influencer, everyone’s voice can be heard. Of course this does not make the need for organizations go away: we still need to classify information, to group around issues, to give ourselves some basic rules to turn noise into value, to have welfare, to care about our relatives, our health, to have a job. But we need different kinds of organizations, and all we have today are new infrastructures, such as Facebook or Twitter or YouTube, while others – manufacturers, retailers, newspapers, government, banks – have not really changed.

But they will. Just think about money. It is a concept used to intermediate and decouple the exchange of value. I need something from you and I pay you a given amount of money; you may need something from me, or more likely from an organization to whose value chain I contribute, and you pay me (or that organization) another amount of money. But in a world where information is value, why can’t information be a currency? How many Gigabytes of music will you get me for a connection with a valuable part of my social network? How many tips about how to pay less taxes will I get you in return for a positive rating in your social network?

So while we think we have figured out how to make our existing organizations benefit from or limit the risk of social media, all we are really doing is trying to fit a cube into a round hole.

People on social media are aggregating and re-arranging in new and unpredictable ways, cutting across organizational and geographical boundaries, forming and dissolving bonds, coalescing around a cause to then scatter separately in different directions.

Our government systems are based on pulling together people who share a territory, who have something in common – be it language, religion, land, history, ideals or a combination of all these. Rules of residence, immigration, citizenship apply to processes that take from days to years to be completed. But in social media I can join a platform, a group, a cause today and leave tomorrow. And yet there is something greater than the individual behind value creation in social media too.

So what is the closest approximation to a form of government on social media? Maybe it is federation. Federation of interests, of networks, of information, complementing and contrasting more traditional criteria such as language, religion or political beliefs. Whatever is below that federal level (communities? groups? states? virtual cities?) has yet to be determined.

But, for now, welcome to the United States of Facebook.

Posted in Ideas.

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By craigthomler – 17 February, 2011

Open Public Data: Then What? – Part 2

By Daniel Kaplan, Director of Fing (the Next-Generation Internet Foundation, France), 31 January 2011

Originally published by Open Knowledge Foundation Blog under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

The following guest post is by Daniel Kaplan, Director of Fing (the Next-Generation Internet Foundation, France). On Friday he mapped three possible futures for Open Public Data, and today he suggests ways to ensure we will avoid some of the dangers he highlighted.

What triggers what?

One may believe that one of the three scenarios for the future of Open Public Data that I discussed in my previous post is more likely than the other. The problem is, why? What actions, decisions, or conditions, are more likely to get us going along one road rather than the other? Can we go wrong on one count, and right on another? I believe we have hardly begun to figure that out.

Yet we need to, otherwise we may be in for a backlash. There are many ways to open access to data, and many ways to accompany it. If, for example, open data is only seen as a way to reduce public spending by transferring the provision of public services to the private sectors (or event to the voluntary sector), then chances are the rising inequalities and the vicious circles described in the “dark side” story will indeed become realities.

We need to discuss a number of really tough questions. How should the role of public agencies evolve when companies and citizens are empowered by the data that they produce? What should be done (and by whom) in order to raise everyone’s capability to engage with data? What are the boundaries of transparency – are they privacy, security, or the ability to quietly ponder tough decisions, or should there be none at all? How will we finance the production of “public domain” data? How do we develop a “culture of data” that is also able to discuss how the raw data themselves are created? – because in fact, we have known since Einstein (and probably earlier) that there is no such thing as “raw” data, if by “raw” we mean data provided to us as nature made the phenomenon it is supposed to represent.

Another take on some challenges posed by Open Government Data

In an excellent 2010 report, “Open data, democracy and public sector reform”, Tim Davies of Practical Participation raised 4 challenges out of his observation of how “Open Government Data” (OGD) is used, and by whom:

1.”Data is not just for developers”: We should think of interfaces that allow everyone to peer into the data in ways that fit his or her needs – However, interfaces themselves are not neutral…

2.”OGD changes the gatekeepers, and the role of civic actors”: “Government, can retain some gate-keeping power by setting the categories and structure in which data is recorded and released. There will be greater need in future for capacity both in state and society to be able to debate the meaning of data”

3.”OGD supports innovation in public services – although it is not yet clear that there are strong models for the use of OGD in allowing communities to collectively debate and drive local change. Social and commercial entrepreneurs play a core role at present in turning OGD into new services or inputs into public services.”

4.”A focus on digitizing government underlies much OGD use, and can lead to concerns of politics, power and justice being under-valued in the development of OGD infrastructure”.

Actors and levers

The former is just an initial list. Many more issues will emerge as governments, local authorities, research labs and even corporations make more data available for reuse, and as citizens, firms, activists, researchers, lobbyists and artists scrutinize them, discuss them, add to them, and make interesting or distressing use of them. Actually, one of the ways to move forward in identifying and addressing the issues that will arise is to think in terms of actors: Who is impacted, who has a stake in the production, the release, the understanding, or the reuse of what data? Open or not, data does not float around in an anonymous space, rather in fields of force where interests, habits, capabilities, co-operate and conflict with one another. Nobody is empowered by them in the same way.

Who’s involved in Open Public Data?
OpenPublicData_Actors

We can also think in terms of levers, that is, decisions, structures and actions that can (hopefully) influence what the opening of public data results in.

Some of these levers are well identified, because they naturally emerge when one starts thinking of releasing data: The release conditions (licensing and pricing), the funding mechanisms of specialized data producing public agencies, and the stimulation of a re-user “ecosystem”. Organizing competitions in order to stimulate entrepreneurs and activists is good, but how could we reach out to communities who are less aware of the possibilities? Should we organize workshops or training sessions, not for geeks, but for media, community groups, non-digital SMEs? Should we support some potential re-users more than others? How could we think of interfaces that facilitate access to data by non-specialists, while remaining as neutral as possible as to how data should be interpreted? Who should build them? How should public agencies use Open Data themselves, in order not to be relegated to producing raw material that others will transform?

Some levers are probably more political still, and call for broader vision and action. How can we promote a “culture of data” and avoid the emergence of a “data divide” that would separate those who are empowered by data, from those who might feel even more alienated from the world than they are today? Should this “culture of data” include some thinking about the right level of transparency for public (and private) actions? Actually, what about private data – I’m reminded of Adam Greenfield asking for data produced by sensors installed by companies in public urban space to be made public? And what should we do about crowdsourced data provided by citizens themselves? What, in fact, is the role of public players in regulating and stimulating Open Data in general?

Again, this list is not closed. In fact, the point of these posts is to open it. Let’s discuss what comes after opening up access to public data, so as to make sure that 10 years from now, we can be really proud we were part of that movement.

Posted in Commonwealth government, Culture, Governance, Governments, Ideas, International views, Policy, Practice, State and Territory governments.

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By admin – 14 February, 2011

Open Public Data: Then What? – Part 1

By Daniel Kaplan, Director of Fing (the Next-Generation Internet Foundation, France), 28 January 2011

Originally published by Open Knowledge Foundation Blog under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

The following guest post is by Daniel Kaplan, Director of Fing (the Next-Generation Internet Foundation, France). Today he explores three possible futures for Open Public Data, and on Monday he will suggest ways to ensure that we are moving in the best direction.

We tend to assume that the opening up of public data will only produce positive outcomes for individuals, for society and the economy. But the opposite may be true. We should start thinking further ahead on the possible consequences of releasing public data, and how we can make sure they are mostly positive.

All of us who advocate the opening up of public (and other) data for reuse by citizens, researchers or entrepreneurs, hope that something good will come out of it. What “something” we have in mind probably differs. The same goes for what each of us considers “good”: I may believe that creating commercial value out of free-to-use public data is good, while others may not. I may hate crime maps because they stigmatize without solving anything, while others may think they save lives. That’s fine. In fact, that’s even the basic reason why we should support open data: because it provides the common grounds upon which different agents, with different motivations, will create different things – with God, or Darwin, eventually knowing their own.

Drawing the consequences

Yet things may not be that simple. The opening up of public data is a vast, complex, never-ending process that encompasses thousands of different actors. It shifts information, power, and responsibilities, in ways that are difficult to foresee. Its consequences will probably be felt in many different areas: the business of service organizations, decisional software, participative democracy, job requirements for civil servants, budget funding of public agencies whose job it is to produce data, media economics and content, etc. And depending on how we open up public data, and on what we do on top of making data accessible, some of these consequences may be less positive than most of us would like.

So let’s start thinking in terms of consequences. Let’s imagine we won: A very significant share of “public-service information” (PSI) has become available for access and re-use, in machine-readable format, at little or (generally) no charge. A few years down the road, what consequences has it had on the daily lives of citizens and firms? On innovation and growth? On the ability of public agencies to reach public-interest goals (think environment or social care)? On democracy and public spirit?

A radiant future

The dominant story that we all tend to tell depicts a radiant future. Citizen groups expose corruption and abuse, and engage in informed public discussion leading to better decisions. They even contribute to enlarging the pool of public data, as can be seen on OpenStreetMaps. Large and small firms create all kinds of new and improved services, thus contributing to growth and quality of life. Scientists and data-journalists process masses of data in order to provide new insights on, say, climate change or urban dynamics. Public agencies co-operate with one another to eliminate redundancies, and with the public and citizen sector to provide better public services. Democracy finds a new youth through constant feedback, evaluation and debate.

Many examples, and a few studies, support this story. However, should we decide to deliberately look at the dark side of things, from the very same premises, it becomes just as easy to tell a quite opposite story.

Open Public Data: The dominant, happy story
what next 1

Peering into the dark side

Suppose, for example, that most of the innovative services that make use of public data are provided on a commercial basis, supported either by fees or by advertisement. In order to sustain themselves, they target the most affluent citizens and geographic areas. Having shown that they provide a much higher quality of service than public agencies do, they successfully lobby against “unfair competition” by the public sector. As a result, the public sector is limited to serving underprivileged populations, thus increasing inequalities in the face of once-public services.

The dark story of Open Public Data: What makes it less likely?

what next 2

Another consequence of openness may be that those agencies whose job it is to produce, say, geographic or statistical data, no longer derive revenues from the sale of their data. Since no additional money will come from the Budget, much of this data will either cease to be produced, or be produced by private corporations. Opening up public data results in less public data…

Transparency may also produce unwanted consequences. Imagine that, instead of engaging in broad, calm discussions on common-interest issues, citizen groups and lobbies abuse it by bickering over every individual decision, every bit of public spending. Instead of producing broader support for wiser decisions, total transparency sets interests against one another, inhibits decision-making and reduces overall trust. In fact, the total accessibility of data provides a high incentive to tinker with the data themselves, in order to make sure that even independent, computer-intensive analyses will provide the results the data producers expect. Opening up public data results in skewed data…

Imagine, too, that the ability to interpret and use the masses of public data that have become available remains very unevenly distributed – not that big a leap of faith. In a paper aptly titled “Empowering the empowered?”, Mike Gurstein quotes a 2007 research paper on the digitization of land records in Bangalore: “Their findings were that newly available access to land ownership and title information in Bangalore was primarily being put to use by middle and upper income people and by corporations to gain ownership of land from the marginalized and the poor.” Even here in Europe, is it so difficult to believe that well-funded lobbies will make better use of data than small local groups? That researchers interested in processing these data will need to look for funds in corporate pockets with a stake in their results? Perhaps the “wisdom of crowds” will correct this imbalance, yet perhaps not.

Data fatigue

When I first tested these two scenarios with the folks at Fing, they almost came up with a third story, that tells of limited and mostly disappointing results of open data. In this story, data end up being such a bag of complex, heterogeneous, hard-to-interpret material that few actors find the courage or the resources to seriously engage with them. The initial applications that we currently see entering competitions such as “Apps for Democracy” or “Show Us a Better Way” remain what they are today, that is, mostly proofs of concepts (or of their programmers’ skills), with at best anecdotal benefits for ordinary citizens. Most of them never make it to the market. Beautiful data visualizations do much for their designer’s fame and little to create a common understanding of complex phenomena. Only lobbies with very specific agendas dive into the datasets, where they find what they knew they wanted to find, with no one in a position to contradict them. After a few initial contributions to FixMyStreet and the likes, citizens become tired of having to do their municipality’s job. Open data hasn’t done much harm, but not much good either.

Open Public Data: Failing to engage
what next 3

In my next post, I will look at how we might work towards maximising the positive benefits and avoiding the potential pitfalls of Open Public Data.

Posted in Commonwealth government, Governance, Governments, International views, Not-for-profit view, Policy, Practice, State and Territory governments.

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By craigthomler – 11 February, 2011

A Records and Information Management Perspective on the Work of the Government 2.0 Taskforce

A Gov2au Future contribution by Adrian Cunningham

Reviews the work of the Australian Government’s Government 2.0 Taskforce during 2009 from the perspective of an archivist who was a member of the Taskforce.

This article focuses on the challenges, issues and opportunities for archivists, recordkeepers and information management professionals posed by the work and recommendations of the Taskforce.

The analysis focuses on two main themes, liberating heritage collections and on capturing and preserving authentic and accessible evidence of government 2.0.

The article concludes with a consideration of information management implementation strategies facing the Australian Government following the Government’s endorsement of almost all of the Taskforce recommendations.

Disclaimer: This paper represents the views of the author, not necessarily those of his employer.

It is reasonable to infer that the Australian Government recognises that archives, records and information management are matters of some significance in the context of Government 2.0, because it took the trouble to appoint an archivist to be one of the fifteen members of the Government 2.0 Taskforce in 2009. In addition a staff member of the National Archives of Australia was seconded to work for the Taskforce secretariat, based at AGIMO, for the duration of the Taskforce.

Archival involvement in recent trends towards opening up access to public sector information is a common theme in the jurisdictions that the Government looked to for inspiration and successful models. In the United Kingdom the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI), which has an explicit mandate to promote open access to and reuse of public sector information and is headed by Carol Tullo, is a division of The National Archives (i). The OPSI works closely with the UK’s Information Commissioner under the terms of a formal memorandum of understanding and has a similarly close relationship with the Director of Digital Engagement, who is based in the Cabinet Office.

In the United States of America the Obama Administration created a new Office of Government Information Services, headed by Miriam Nisbet, as a division of the National Archives and Records Administration. This Office has a mandate under the Open Government Act of 2007 to provide policy leadership and mediation services for government-wide Freedom of Information Act activities (ii).

Despite the technological connotations of the phrase ‘Government 2.0’, it is important to view the public policy direction signified by the Taskforce as being less about technology and more about establishing a whole new approach to governance, for which technology is merely an enabler. The Terms of Reference for the Taskforce run to almost 400 words, but do not even mention Web technology, instead using only the rather general term of ‘online’. The focus of the Terms of Reference is squarely on opening up the processes of public administration to both public scrutiny and also public participation, in addition to unlocking the underutilised potential of public sector information as a national strategic resource, and an enabler of innovation, economic growth and a more informed and engaged citizenry.

Broadly speaking, the deliberations of the Taskforce fell into two main areas: encouraging and enabling citizen engagement; and opening up access to and opportunities for the reuse of public sector information. As an information management professional, the author’s input into the work of the Taskforce focussed mainly on the second of these two areas. Nevertheless, as a Commonwealth public servant, I also became heavily involved in discussions with the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) about revising its interim guidelines for public servants using social networking technologies.

The Taskforce took the view that the APSC’s interim guidelines, issued in early 2009, were not sufficiently encouraging of government agencies wishing to support their staff to use Web 2.0 technologies to engage in dialogue with the wider community and their clientele. Instead, the interim guidelines tended to emphasise the risks associated with the use of these technologies in terms of the potential for breaches of APS values and code of conduct, rather than the benefits that can be gained from opening up the processes of government to more interactive community engagement.

These discussions with the APSC led to one of the first outcomes of the Taskforce, five weeks before the Taskforce Report was finalised, when the APSC issued revised online engagement guidelines on 18 November 2009 – guidelines that reflected the arguments put to the APSC by the Taskforce (iii).

Each member of the Taskforce was encouraged to contribute posts to the Taskforce blog. I contributed two posts in September 2009, reflecting the two main dimensions of my particular concerns:

Part 1: Liberating heritage collections (iv)
Part 2: Capturing and preserving authentic and accessible evidence of government 2.0 (v)

It is no coincidence that this division reflects the dual roles and mandates of government archives and records institutions: the cultural heritage role and the accountability/public administration role. In short, memory and evidence – the two sides of the same archives and recordkeeping coin.

Liberating heritage collections
The issues here are all about digitising collections, discovery metadata, ‘crowd-sourcing’ of user-tagging and user-contributed content, and copyright. Archival institutions have proved to be somewhat innovative in their use of Web 2.0 technologies to open up access to and opportunities for the use and reuse of archival holdings. Examples of innovation of this kind such as the National Archives of Australia’s Mapping our ANZACS site (vi) were highlighted both at the launch of the Taskforce at Senator Kate Lundy’s ‘Public Sphere’ event in Canberra on 25 June 2009 (vii) and during many of the discussions and deliberations of the Taskforce. Of particular note is State Records New South Wales excellent use of Web 2.0 technologies in its ‘Archives Outside’ blog to engage and interact with its communities (viii).

Despite these laudable innovations, archival institutions have a long way to go before they can claim to be taking full advantage of the opportunities presented by Web 2.0 technologies. Partly they are of course severely limited by funding restrictions, as it costs large amounts of money to digitise more than just small samples of archival holdings. They are also, however, limited by the mindsets of the past. Under these mindsets a mission based on an overly narrow interpretation of the ‘physical and moral defence of the record’ (ix) and an emphasis on the professional mediation skills of trained archivists can tend to make archivists: reluctant to open their systems up to ‘unprofessional’ user-generated tagging and content; reluctant to make their holdings available for reuse, lest they lose ‘control’ of their collections; and sometimes even reluctant to open up the metadata in their archival databases for harvesting by search engines, lest it generate more demand for reference services than overworked reference archivists can cope with.

While I was very aware of the need for some archival ‘reinvention’ if we are to realise the promise of what Eric Ketelaar calls the ‘People’s Archives’,(x) the Government 2.0 Taskforce was arguably not the forum in which to air matters that are essentially the internal concerns of the archives profession (xi). In any case, the open and interactive groundswell signified by Web 2.0 and Government 2.0 will perforce encourage the change of professional mindset that archivists, together with many other ‘closed shop’ professions and vested interests, need to accommodate if they are to survive and prosper in the 21st century.

The concept of more open, transparent and participatory archives taking advantage of Web 2.0 technologies is gaining momentum within the profession (xii). Ultimately, harnessing the potential of Archives 2.0 is all about being able to relinquish control in order to build value through collaboration. This is a cultural rather than a technological issue.

This resonates with the major conclusion of the Government 2.0 Taskforce, which was that the main obstacle to successful Government 2.0 is neither economic nor technological, but rather cultural. Just as the culture of the public sector has to experience fundamental change to become more innovative and much less risk-averse if Government 2.0 is to become a reality, so to the culture of archives has to change if Archives 2.0 is to become the norm rather than just the exception.

Regardless of how much archives may wish to reinvent themselves, there are very real moral and legal barriers and issues for Archives 2.0. Privacy and copyright are significant issues, even though it is my view that many risk-averse archivists often exaggerate the risks associated with these issues to the point of paralysis or as an excuse to justify institutional inertia and conservatism.

Privacy is usually dealt with by limiting online access to name-identified personal information to information about deceased individuals – the logic being that the dead have no right to privacy. In practice, this is not so simple or easy. First, it is not usually easy or feasible to establish whether or not a named individual is dead or alive – so compromises are usually made whereby series of name identified records are only made available online when everyone so-named could be reasonably expected to be deceased. Even then, though, immediate family members of the deceased may have legitimate grievances about sensitive personal information being made available online for the whole world to see.

Copyright and licensing barriers to access and use of public sector information were a major concern of the whole Government 2.0 Taskforce, especially those members of the Taskforce who were lawyers and economists. In that context, the copyright barriers affecting cultural collections were but a small subset of a much larger set of concerns.

In my blog post I chose to highlight the absurdity that, under the Australian Copyright Act 1968, unpublished manuscripts are in perpetual copyright. Section 5.8.2 of the final report of the Taskforce was devoted to copyright law and cultural heritage. Before that section of the report could be written the Taskforce needed to decide whether its definition of public sector information was limited to information generated by the public sector, or whether it was broad enough to include third party-generated information acquired by the public sector, including third party copyright material held by cultural collecting institutions. Fortunately, from my point of view, the Taskforce agreed to a broader definition of PSI – thus making archival concerns about copyright very much in scope for the attention of the Taskforce.

The Taskforce deliberated at length about laws regarding ‘orphan works’, works for which a copyright owner cannot easily be identified. It finally signed off on recommendation 7.3, which called on the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) to examine the current state of copyright law with regard to orphan works (including Section 200AB of the Copyright Act 1968), with the aim of recommending amendments that would remove the practical restrictions that currently impede the use of such works.

While this fell short of my desire that the Taskforce recommend the abolition of the perpetual copyright provision for unpublished manuscripts it should nevertheless have the same practical effect, if that is the OAIC is able to recommend suitable amendments to the Copyright Act and if those amendments are enacted.

Apart from the issue of third party copyrighted material in cultural collections, the Taskforce was also very concerned to remove copyright restrictions on the use of older Crown copyrighted material, much of which is held in archives and libraries. Recommendation 6.7 recommended that copyright policy be amended so that works covered by Crown copyright be automatically licensed for use under a Creative Commons BY licence at the time at which Commonwealth records become available for public access under the Archives Act 1983. This picked up a recommendation made to the Taskforce by the National Archives of Australia in its formal submission responding to the Taskforce Issues Paper.

Capturing and preserving authentic and accessible evidence of government 2.0
This strand of Taskforce deliberations was all about recognition of how good information and records management is a prerequisite of effective ongoing access to public sector information. The Taskforce recognised that, to deliver open and reusable PSI, PSI has to be well managed at and from the point of creation and for as long as it continues to have value. There was also a recognition that, in a world of ‘mashups’, information reuse/repurposing, wikis and blogs, it is vital for governments to be able to retain accurate and authentic ‘original’ versions of PSI as a guarantee against misuse and misrepresentation.

Just as the challenge of Web 2.0 to the cultural heritage role of memory institutions will require some ‘archival reinvention’, so too does Government 2.0 require some fundamental reinventing of records management mindsets and processes. That topic, which has been provocatively opened up by Britain’s Steve Bailey, (xiii) was not, though, a particular focus of the Government 2.0 Taskforce, which focused instead on how Government 2.0 requires a reinvention of something much more important, governance.

Nevertheless, a reassertion of some basic principles of records and information management will be necessary if the Government 2.0 vision is to be realised. First of all government agencies need to know the PSI that they own or are responsible for. This requires exerting corporate control over the information assets of government in addition to an awareness of the value and usefulness of those various assets. Secondly, if PSI is to be accessible and useable, people need to be able to find it online. Thirdly, PSI of long-term value needs to be preserved to guard against losses resulting from technological obsolescence in software and hardware platforms.

The Taskforce Issues Paper did a very good job of highlighting the important issues here. It highlighted inter alia the value of ensuring the discoverability, quality and integrity of PSI and ensuring the long-term preservation of these assets through successive generations of new technology by the use of open standards and open file formats. The so-called Semantic Web or Web 3.0 was discussed in some detail, with its emphasis on the deployment of standardised metadata.

The dynamic and ever-changing nature of Web 2.0 resources poses particular challenges for recordkeeping professionals. Section 6.4 of the Taskforce report was devoted to information/records management as an enabler of open government. Along side some boxed text on the Semantic Web, the value of metadata standards and the National Archives’ approaches to digital preservation, the text emphasised the importance of building a culture of information and records management in government agencies. The risks associated with use of the so-called ‘Cloud’ or third party websites for storing government records were highlighted. While government agencies embracing Web 2.0 are encouraged to ‘go where the people are’ to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr in order to engage with their communities, it is vital that any records of such activity be captured and stored by government itself in order to guarantee the public record of those interactions.

Recommendation 12 of the Taskforce report, somewhat misleadingly titled ‘Definition of a Commonwealth record’ was delivered in two parts. Part One focussed on the property-based definition of Commonwealth record in the Archives Act, warning agencies that records stored on third party sites may not legally be Commonwealth records, as the Commonwealth does not own the servers on which the data is stored. As such, in order to protect the public record, the interests of the Commonwealth and the rights and entitlements of citizens it is vital for copies of such records to be kept in the control of the Commonwealth.

Part One of Recommendation 12 also intended to call on the Government to review the definition of Commonwealth record in the Archives Act with a view to replacing it with a definition that defines Commonwealth record as any information created or received by the Commonwealth in the course of performing Commonwealth business. Unfortunately, a mis-print in the hastily assembled final report used the word ‘reviewed’ rather than ‘review’ in this recommendation, thus completely changing the sense of the recommendation from one calling for action to one noting that action (which has in fact not been taken) has already been taken. Unfortunately, this mis-print was compounded in the Government response to the recommendation, which merely noted the matter rather than committing the government to action.

Part Two of Recommendation 12 urged agencies to adopt information management and metadata standards issued by the National Archives and by AGIMO to assist the discovery, sharing and reuse of public sector information.

What next?
There was considerable debate within the Taskforce regarding the various possible bureaucratic arrangements for taking carriage of the Government 2.0 implementation agenda (xiv). While there was some opinion that the Australian Public Service Commission was the most logical agency to push through cultural change in the APS, there was a much stronger body of thought that the logical place to take ownership of the reforms was the proposed Office of the Australian Information Commissioner within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Undermining this logic though was the absence of any reference to promoting citizen engagement in the OAIC enabling Bill, even though that Bill had much to say about the need for the OAIC to promote open government and open access to government information. In the end, the Taskforce made no recommendation on which agency should be the overall ‘lead agency’, merely saying that the government should appoint such an agency, notwithstanding the fact that specific Taskforce recommendations are directed at particular policy agencies such as the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and the Australian Public Service Commission.

The Government response to the Taskforce report appointed the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) in the Department of Finance and Deregulation as the lead agency with overall carriage of implementing the Government 2.0 policy agenda. AGIMO was allocated additional appropriations in the 2010 federal budget to fund activities such as the data.australia.gov.au facility and other Government 2.0 initiatives.

Given that AGIMO’s preoccupation hitherto has (despite the name of the agency) been almost exclusively on government information technology matters rather than on information management and culture of governance (open or otherwise), this will represent a significant shift of focus for the agency. It is, however, not surprising – as the primary proponent of Government 2.0 within Cabinet was recently retired Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner. It will be interesting to see how successful AGIMO, primarily an IT policy agency, is at pushing through cultural change in government – an approach to implementation that seemingly belies the non-technical/pro-cultural-change focus of both the terms of reference and the final report of the Government 2.0 Taskforce. It will also be interesting to see if the momentum behind Government 2.0 can transcend the patronage of a single powerful Cabinet minister now that Lindsay Tanner is no longer Finance Minister.

In tandem with these reforms the Government will also be implementing its Freedom of Information reforms which, for the first time, allocates functional responsibility for whole of government information management to an agency of government – in this case the Office of the Information Commissioner. The OAIC legislation requires the creation of an information advisory committee to work with the Information Commissioner, former Commonwealth Ombudsman Professor John Macmillan. This committee is to include representation from the National Archives of Australia, specifically to ensure congruence between government recordkeeping policies and information management policies and practices.

Information policy
The OAIC Issues Paper, ‘Towards an Australian Government Information Policy’ issued in November 2010, (xv) rightly focuses on the need to have better coordination across the various agencies responsible for aspects of government information management to help agencies implement the Government’s policy intentions and how best to drive the momentum on open and reusable public sector information. An effective information advisory committee together with strong leadership by the Australian Information Commissioner are key to delivering these outcomes. What is also needed is a strong political will at the Ministerial level, including of course the Prime Minister, whose Department includes the OAIC, although the responsible Minister is the Minister for FOI and Privacy, Brendan O’Connor.

It seems clear that the content of the Australian Government Information Policy will be principles-based rather than prescriptive and detailed. While the ten principles presented in the Issues Paper provide an excellent framework, the devil will be in the detail of implementation and oversight. AGIMO and its predecessors have a long track record of issuing information management guidance and directives, but then lacking the resources and/or the administrative clout to drive their implementation in agencies. Unlike AGIMO though, the OAIC has some statutory powers. Nevertheless, the territory is contested and the OAIC will arguably have higher priorities during its first few years of operation driving FOI and privacy policy. The risk is that whole of government information policy implementation will be the poor relation and that the principles-based approach to managing information will in reality become nothing more than a set of motherhood statements to which agencies pay lip service at best.

Of course FOI, privacy and information policy are all inextricably linked. The very creation of the OAIC recognises that none of the three policy areas can be sensibly pursued in isolation. An example of this can be seen in the operation of the information publication scheme, which is required under the reforms to the FOI Act. A discussion paper on the scheme issued by the OAIC in December 2010 unfortunately makes the mistake of ignoring the interdependency between FOI and information management. Again, a principles-based approach is advocated, but there is no connection between the six principles presented in the discussion paper and the ten principles presented in the information policy issues paper.

For instance the issues paper principle about open access to information being a default position seems to be watered down in the discussion paper, which adopts a quite conservative approach to identifying the PSI which should be proactively published. Moreover, the enabling importance of good information management is barely acknowledged. The implication is that the information that is to be made available via the information publication scheme will somehow just ‘happen’.

The discussion paper makes no reference to the excellent project report on the topic of the then proposed Information Publication Scheme that was produced by E-Knowledge Structures (Eric Wainwright and Dagmar Parer) in late 2009 for the Government 2.0 Taskforce (xvi).

Some of the findings of this report have not been picked up in the OAIC discussion paper, particularly:

  • If the intent of Information Publication Schemes is to be achieved optimally, a wide range of underlying agency information management issues will need to be addressed, from initial document and metadata creation processes through to use of third party engagement channels. (Page 57)
  • While some specialist agencies have made much progress in developing services for the dissemination and use of government data, this area is not receiving the attention and resources it deserves, as a potential national economic contribution. Most Departments and agencies will not be able to progress this area of Schemes without clearer guidance on Government directions. (Page 57)
  • The discoverability of much important ‘operational information’ held on agency websites could be improved significantly in the short term by agency attention to the formats and metadata assignment practices for a small number of information types – notably material within Annual Reports, FOI Section 9 Statements, and Indexed Lists of Files. (Page 61)

The section of the discussion paper on agency information architectures says that the information published should be easily discoverable by members of the public. One way that this can be facilitated is through the deployment of standardised resource discovery metadata – the AGLS metadata standard maintained by the NAA (also available as AS 5044). AGLS has been endorsed for whole of government use for many years – an endorsement that was reconfirmed when the Govt endorsed the recommendations of the Govt 2.0 Taskforce last year. Applying AGLS metadata to the information published by agencies on their website will help users to find what they are looking for when then use the search engines on agency websites and other search engines such as the one that supports the Australia.gov.au site. Good metadata also helps ensure that users are presented with meaningful descriptions of resources when search engines present result sets in response to search queries.  It is surprising, therefore, that the discussion paper does not even mention the role of discovery metadata, much less the endorsed national standard, AGLS (xvii).

Another issue that will need to be addressed under the information publication scheme is what to do with older publications? Presumably once they are retired from active agency websites they will need to be preserved for continuing access either by the National Library of Australia’s PANDORA service or by the National Archives of Australia.

Embedding good digital information management in government
Perhaps the biggest single challenge in achieving the vision of good information governance and open access to PSI is that challenge of embedding good digital information management into the cultures and organic work processes of government agencies.

In the records profession we have been researching and talking about electronic records for more than twenty years. We have developed truckloads of standards, manuals, tools and guidelines. Yet, with some notable and commendable exceptions, most organisations either completely ignore this guidance or they do a poor job of implementing them.

A recent survey conducted by the National Archives of Australia revealed a depressingly large proportion of agencies that have no digital recordkeeping systems in place and no plans to address their absence. Meanwhile, the ‘paper mountain’ of records being printed to paper from born digital systems grows larger and larger. And this is not for any lack of data. There are petabytes of data clogging up data centres and storage area networks all over government.

In other words there are plenty of digital record-making systems – the problem is that there are precious few digital recordkeeping systems. The petabyte mountain has grown because of the belief that ‘storage is cheap’. But if you don’t know what data you have got, and don’t manage it properly, then you will have very little chance of finding what you need when you need it and you will be paying ever escalating bills to store a whole lot of valueless data just in case there is something in the data ‘slagheap’ that you might really need some time.

This is an unsustainable situation. Sooner or later organisations are going to realise that it is unsustainable and they are going to do something about it. In most cases this will probably involve getting rid of the data slagheaps, thus losing the high value records along with all the rubbish. When they have realised what they have lost in terms of vital records and wasted money, organisations might then turn their minds to creating a better future that does not repeat the mistakes of the past. A whole of government information policy and strategy has to be part of that future.

What then does the future hold for digital information management?
Maybe the reality will be one of slow incremental progress of two steps forward, one step back? Maybe we need to lower our expectations so that we are prepared to accept ‘good enough recordkeeping’ instead of best practice recordkeeping – as ‘good enough recordkeeping’ surely would be better than the chaos we see at present?

We need to be able to describe what success looks like and be flexible (not rigid and prescriptive) about how organisations can attain that success. It seems to me that good digital recordkeeping is best carried out by the same software applications and business systems that are used to perform business processes and in which the records are actually created not in other applications that are disconnected from core business processes. Embedding good recordkeeping and information management functionality in these systems requires good advocacy and liaison skills and the ability to be flexible. Ultimately, we need to focus less on process and more on outcomes.

It is important to take account of the findings of the recent University of Northumbria research project on this topic – the Ac+ERM (Accelerating the rate of positive change in electronic records management) project, which concluded that the main barrier to good electronic recordkeeping was a cultural one (xviii). Good recordkeeping has to be valued by the culture of people and their organisations. At best it is usually seen as worthy, but dull. At worst it is seen as difficult, dispensable, complex and boring.

The growing popularity of social media platforms and tools and other Web 2.0 technology creates particular challenges for recordkeeping. Who owns and controls the record? How can the authenticity and integrity of records be guaranteed in the dynamic and ever-changing world of Web 2.0? These challenges are not insurmountable, but they are significant. The NAA has made a start on addressing them by issuing guidance on recordkeeping and the use of social media (xix). Readers are also directed to the excellent project report on the preservation of Web 2.0 content and associated recordkeeping issues prepared for the Government 2.0 Taskforce by Barbara Reed of Recordkeeping Innovation Pty Ltd (xx).

Copyright and licensing issues
Finally, copyright and licensing regimes for public sector information will continue to be contested terrain for the foreseeable future, notwithstanding the Government’s endorsement of the recommendations of the Government 2.0 Taskforce.

Draft guidelines for licensing PSI for Australian Government Agencies recently issued by the Attorney General’s Department are curiously cautious in tone. Particularly disappointing is the narrow definition of PSI proposed in the guidelines: ‘material with the essential purpose of providing Government information to the public’. This is a markedly narrower definition than the one adopted by the Taskforce and, if adopted, will have the affect of significantly reducing the impact of the intended policy reform.

One good piece of news, though, is that implementation arrangements for the Taskforce recommendation about applying open licensing to legacy PSI once it becomes publicly available under the Archives Act are largely agreed by Attorney Generals and the NAA and now just await implementation. One difficulty here remains that of discerning Commonwealth copyright material from third party-owned copyright material in the records made available to the public under the access provisions of the Archives Act. In that context we still await news on the recommended review of the orphan works provisions of the Copyright Act. I suspect, however, that this matter will not be given particularly high priority by the law officers in question – mores the pity!

Conclusion
Only time will tell the extent to which the seemingly good intentions of the Labor Government to promote open and interactive government are translated into real and meaningful change at the coalface of public administration. There is much political and institutional inertia and many vested interests to overcome. Change will not happen overnight and it will require much determination, goodwill and strong leadership to overcome the inevitable barriers, resistance, roadblocks and setbacks that await such an ambitious reform agenda. Ensuring that Government 2.0 is not quickly forgotten as ‘2009 hype’ or yesterday’s ‘flavour of the month’ will require genuine commitment and clear and level heads.

For archivists and records management it is a daunting and an exciting time: daunting because of the scope and complexity of the challenges that face us; exciting because we stand on the threshold of a new and more relevant professional mission – one in which our unique skills can find new applications and appreciation. There is a ‘light on the hill’ of open, transparent democratic governance that values and relies on the information wealth of the nation – a wealth that promises to deliver much in terms of public good and good governance, if only its latent potential can be recognised, unlocked and harnessed.

Endnotes

  1. See: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/
  2. The first significant policy pronouncement by the recently appointed US National Archivist David Ferriero was NARA’s Open Government Plan issued in April 2010. See: http://www.archives.gov/open/
  3. Australian Public Service Commission, ‘Participating Online’ section of The APS Values and Code of Conduct in Practice, Chapter 3: Managing Official Information, at: http://www.apsc.gov.au/values/conductguidelines5.htm
  4. http://gov2.net.au/blog/2009/09/11/liberating-heritage-collections/
  5. http://gov2.net.au/blog/2009/09/14/capturing-and-preserving-authentic-and-accessible-evidence-of-government-2-0-part-two/
  6. http://mappingouranzacs.naa.gov.au/
  7. Public Sphere 2: Government 2.0, at http://www.katelundy.com.au/category/campaigns/publicsphere/open-gov/
  8. See: http://archivesoutside.records.nsw.gov.au/
  9. Hilary Jenkinson, Manual of Archive Administration, London, 1922.
  10. Eric Ketelaar, ‘Being Digital in the People’s Archives’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 31, no. 1, May 2003, pp. 8-22; see also also Isto Huvila, ‘Participatory archive: towards decentralised curation, radical user orientation, and broader contextualisation of records management’, Archival Science, vol. 8, no. 1, 2008, pp. 15-36.
  11. For a stimulating and inspiring insight into what is possible see Tim Sherratt, ‘Emerging technologies for the provision of access to archives’, October 2009, at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/24402148/Emerging-technologies-for-the-provision-of-access-to-archives-issues-challenges-and-ideas
  12. Joy Palmer, ‘Archives 2.0: If We Build It, Will They Come?’, Ariadne 60, July 2009, at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue60/palmer/ ; Kate Theimer, Web 2.0 tools and strategies for archives and local history collections, New York, Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2010. There was also an Archives 2.0 Conference held in Manchester, England in March 2009, see http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/cultural-heritage/events/archives2.0-2009
  13. Steve Bailey, Managing the crowd: rethinking records management for the Web 2.0 world, London, Facet Publishing, 2008. See also Stephen Clarke’s review article on Bailey’s book: ‘Managing expectations: the limits of the Web 2.0 juggernaut’, Archives and Manuscripts, vol. 36, no. 2, May 2008, pp.
  14. See also a report by Ian Reinecke, ‘Information Policy and E-governance in the Australian Government: A report for the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’, March 2009, at: http://www.dpmc.gov.au/publications/information_policy/index.cfm ; and the report of Taskforce Project 13: ‘Government 2.0 Governance and Institutions: Embedding the 2.0 Agenda in the Australian Public Service’, December 2009, at: http://gov2.net.au/projects/project-13/
  15. http://www.oaic.gov.au/publications/issues_paper1_towards_an_australian_government_information_policy.html
  16. http://gov2.net.au/projects/project-7/
  17. It should also be noted in this context that the National Archives of Australia is working with AGIMO and others to develop a common metadata set for use with the Australia.data.gov service.
  18. See: http://www.northumbria.ac.uk/sd/academic/ceis/re/isrc/themes/rmarea/erm/
  19. National Archives of Australia, Social Media: Another type of Commonwealth record, 2010. See: http://www.naa.gov.au/records-management/create-capture-describe/socialmedia/index.aspx
  20. Recordkeeping Innovation Pty Ltd, Government 2.0 Taskforce Project 9 Report: Preservation of Web 2.0 Content, 2009. Available at: http://gov2.net.au/files/2009/12/Project-9-Final-Report.doc#_Toc248025982

Posted in Commonwealth government, Governance, Governments, Ideas, Policy, Practice, Viewpoints.

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By craigthomler – 8 February, 2011

How will states adapt to true telecommuters?

By Craig Thomler, 1 February 2011

This is reproduced with permission from eGovAU

Today telecommuting often refers to people who work from home, logging into computer networks to prepare documents and exchange information remotely.

However across the world we’re starting to see examples of much broader and more intense forms of telecommuting.

Warfare
Take for example the RQ-1 Predator, an unmanned aerial vehicle that has been used since 1995 by the US Air Force. First used for reconnaissance and armed only with a high resolution camera, the Predator is now routinely equipped with missiles and used to attack ground targets. Predator operators may be hundreds, or even thousands, of mile away and operate their UAVs through video screens like modern computer games.

Similar unmanned devices are being developed for land and sea-based conflict, allowing operators to work normal shifts from bases close to their homes (or even from their homes), while these devices are employed in combat theatres around the world.

Emergencies
Unmanned vehicles are also being adopted in the emergency management field, with controlled robotic devices used to explore hazardous environments ahead of human teams. These devices have been used to map the Chernobyl disaster and recently the CyberQuad was introduced into Australia to support the fire brigade in mapping and fighting large blazes.

Space exploration
Many people will be aware of the Mars Rovers, two robots sent to explore parts of the red planet, seeking signs of surface water and life while expanding our store of knowledge. These robots, similar to those used in emergencies, have been used as a low-cost means of exploring a hazardous and remote environment.

Health
There are pilot programs in a number of countries exploring the potential for doctors, particularly specialists, to remotely diagnose and treat patients. In a world with too few doctors and many remote regions, the ability to have a specialist diagnose patients from a distance is an enormous cost and time saving tool, providing improved health outcomes.

Even more so, the potential for videoconferencing during surgeries, where experienced surgeons can view and collaborate with an on-the-spot colleague during a procedure – or even conduct surgery remotely, employing robotics.

Adult industry
While an area that some might find less delicate, the adult industry has a long history of innovating and employing new technologies. Much of the early innovation on the world wide web had its roots in adult pursuits. Similarly adult operators are exploring the opportunities for remote controlled devices. In fact the field even has a name, coined in 1975, ‘Teledildonics‘ – for computer or remote operator-controlled devices for sexual pleasure.

Entertainment
Virtual worlds and Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMPOGs) have been around now for a number of years (since 1974 in fact), some as games, some as social entertainment experiences and some as business tools. These worlds are growing in immersiveness and flexibility, providing more and more opportunities to conduct mass meetings remotely, demonstrate designs and working (virtual) prototypes and educate students.

Looking forward
With all these forms of ‘telecommuting’ developments there’s three trends I think are important to note.

  • We are increasingly able to control physical devices and perform complex actions at great differences.
  • Our virtual environments are improving to the extent whereby almost-physical interaction is becoming possible, and
  • we are entering a time where an increasing number of people will be able to conduct their business remotely from other states or nations, significantly complicating how taxes are assessed and laws are interpreted and enforced.

With increasing broadband speeds, such as via Australia’s National Broadband Network, it will become possible for a range of telecommuting scenarios such as the following three examples.

  • Remote mining exploration and analysis
    A geologist sitting in their Brisbane office will be able to take control of a contracted robot in the Northern Territory, remotely guide it to an exploration site and conduct a surface analysis and even a seismic survey to assess the mineral potential of the area.

    The information and analysis could be immediately visible to their employer, a Perth-based mining company. The site could be mapped digitally and then have geologists from around the world explore the area virtually – literally ‘walking’ their avatars over the landscape and discussing specific areas in real-time.

  • Global industrial design
    Equally an industrial design team operating out of Newcastle as a semi-autonomous unit of a Swedish furniture manufacturer could develop new designs for bookcases and chairs and trial them via virtual worlds with other designers and potential customers around the world.

    When a final design is approved it could be automatically loaded into the systems of an offshore manufacturer and produced, either in a fully automatic or manual factory, then shipped to customers around the world.

    As a side project, the designs could also be made available for virtual sale into a range of virtual worlds and games, like the Sims – providing a secondary income.

  • Remote entertainment experiences
    A resident in a nursing home in Wagga Wagga could remain an active gardener through participation in a robotised market garden in the Adelaide Hills. Every day they could go online and check how their plot was developing, using robotic devices to plant seeds, pull weeds and water. When their vegetables were grown they could be harvested and sent to market collectively, with the profits going to offset the costs of the market garden.

    Through virtual technology the resident could walk around, or even fly over the garden with complete mobility. Integrated sensors could simulate the smells and even the feeling of digging in the soil, keeping the resident both entertained and productive, raising their self-esteem and enjoyment of life.

    Residents from nursing homes around the country and overseas could work together, sharing their experience with plants and making collective decisions on how to manage the garden. (The original Telegarden was operational from 1995-2004 as a university experiment)

In all of these situations the data would pass through a variety of Australian states and through international jurisdictions. The individuals performing the actual work do not necessarily own the work, it could be a collaborative effort by individuals across different nations.

We’re seeing the inklings of this process now with the increasing digitalisation of products. No jurisdictional restrictions on written, audio, visual or digital interactive material can be effectively and universally enforced when they can be transmitted almost instantaneously across the internet to virtually any country in the world.

The creators of these digital works may also be located anywhere in the world. Collaborators may each live in a different jurisdiction and be subject to different laws and regulation. Whose jurisdiction takes primacy for taxation purposes for a truly virtual organisation? What happens when a digital product is illegal in some jurisdictions and legal in others?

It is even hard to enforce regulation or taxation over physical products, unless governments wish to inspect every single mail item – adding enormous time and cost burdens to an economy.

Identifying which jurisdiction’s guidelines apply can already be difficult – is it in the jurisdiction that the work originates, where the servers storing the information live, where the organisation is registered or where the goods and services are sold (at least for physical products, who taxes and regulates virtual items)? What if jurisdictions don’t agree?

As teleconferencing becomes more prevalent and more global in nation, governments will increasingly have to reconsider their state-based laws, regulations and taxes to contend with hyper-mobile individuals, workers who can deliver a service using remote assistance anywhere in the world, from driving a delivery vehicle to performing operations, without leaving their own home or neighbourhood.

Perhaps governments should already be taking great strides towards normalising their regulatory approaches,to reduce inefficiencies and ensure that their laws and taxes will remain enforceable as telecommuting rises.

Posted in Citizen view, Commonwealth government, Culture, Governance, Governments, Ideas, Local government, Policy, Practice, Service delivery, State and Territory governments.

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By craigthomler – 1 February, 2011

Applying the New Capitalist Manifesto to Open Government

By Stephen Collins, 25 January 2011

This is reproduced with permission from AcidLabs

As a part of the research work I’m doing for my book, I’m read­ing rad­i­cal econ­o­mist, Umair Haque’s, The New Cap­i­tal­ist Man­i­festo. In it, Haque posits a set of Laws for the 21st Cen­tury busi­ness and describes some­thing that, though referred to in the book, is laid out else­where as The Mean­ing Organ­i­sa­tion. Given my deep inter­est not only in the busi­ness inno­va­tion Haque’s book argues for, but also in open gov­ern­ment, I’ve been think­ing about how these laws might be mod­i­fied to fit a world of open gov­ern­ment, fit to gov­ern for the future.

Cer­tainly, gov­ern­ment around the world oper­ates much like the dinosaur busi­nesses Haque argues against. Much gov­ern­ing, and indeed pol­i­tics, is done in the cause of expe­di­ency, for a quick fix or to quiet a restive cit­i­zenry or oppo­si­tion. While the over­all aims of most demo­c­ra­tic gov­ern­ment may be wor­thy, gov­ern­ing is rarely done with gen­er­a­tional social good in mind, or is con­sid­er­ate of eco­nomic good of the entire pop­u­lace. So too the other laws look inter­est­ing in this light.

So, here is my attempt at redefin­ing The Laws of Con­struc­tive Cap­i­tal­ism into a set of Laws for Con­struc­tive Gov­ern­ment. By no means do I think they are per­fect, but per­haps they can spark some con­ver­sa­tion. My notes are in plain text with no emphasis.

The Laws of Con­struc­tive Government

1. A gov­ern­ment can­not allow eco­nomic, social or phys­i­cal harm

“Through the act of pol­icy or pro­gram, A GOVERNMENT CANNOT, by action or inac­tion, ALLOW peo­ple, com­mu­ni­ties, soci­ety, the nat­ural world, or future gen­er­a­tions to come to ECONOMIC, SOCIAL OR PHYSICAL HARM.”

I’d like to see all pol­icy and pro­gram ideas and imple­men­ta­tions tested against a harm mea­sure to ensure that nei­ther cur­rent nor future aspects of the mea­sures are deliv­er­ing a harm that can be avoided. It’s kind of like a triple bot­tom line for pol­icy devel­op­ment and pro­gram delivery.

2. Thick value is authen­tic, mean­ing­ful and sustainable

“the fun­da­men­tal chal­lenge of 21st cen­tury gov­ern­ment is cre­at­ing more value of higher QUALITY, NOT just low qual­ity value in greater QUANTITY.”

Ill-​​considered, knee-​​jerk reac­tions to neg­a­tive opin­ion, review or actions are all around us. In Aus­tralia, mis­steps such as pre­ma­ture can­cel­la­tions of grant pro­grams, ill-​​considered plans for Inter­net cen­sor­ship and deten­tion of selected asy­lum seek­ers all rep­re­sent the cre­ation of thin value—an over­pro­duc­tion of bads and under­pro­duc­tion of goods (in the non-​​widget sense). From the fail­ings of Afghanistan, where West­ern mil­i­tary action has resulted in the estab­lish­ment of an ingrained thugoc­racy to the NT Inter­ven­tion in Aus­tralia whose fail­ings in respect of the very peo­ple it pur­ports to want to help are man­i­fold, gov­ern­ments con­tinue to take actions of ques­tion­able authen­tic­ity, mean­ing and sus­tain­abil­ity. Gov­ern­ments should aim for pol­icy and pro­gram imple­men­ta­tions that are founded in long term soci­etal and eco­nomic good based in think­ing and action that will pro­vide for real value.

3. Next-​​level pol­icy advan­tage is con­struc­tive (not just competitive)

“Cre­at­ing 21st cen­tury pol­icy advan­tage demands a quan­tum leap: NEXT-​​LEVEL POLICY ADVANTAGE IS CONSTRUCTIVE, NOT JUST COMPETITIVE. Com­pet­i­tive advan­tage means: to the cre­ator of the most value go the spoils of pol­icy reform. But that value might be van­ish­ingly thin – as it was for Wall St, Detroit, the Gap, big food, big pharma, or big media. Con­struc­tive pol­icy advan­tage means: to the cre­ator of the thick­est, goop­i­est, high­est–qual­ity pol­icy value, go the spoils of implementation.”

So much pol­icy today is made up of thin value — quick fixes in the name of opin­ion poll advan­tage or to be seen as “doing something” — rather than long-​​term deci­sions that build advan­tage and social inno­va­tion into the reform agenda. Con­struc­tive Gov­ern­ment pol­icy reform should rather focus on response over reac­tion and cre­at­ing gen­er­a­tional social benefit.

4. Con­struc­tive pol­icy reform is disruptive

“CONSTRUCTIVE POLICY advan­tage IS deeply, sharply, lethally DISRUPTIVE. When the two go head-​​to-​​head, indus­trial age sources of com­pet­i­tive pol­icy advan­tage—cost advan­tage, party iden­tity, vote mar­gin, scale and scope, and dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion—are almost always pul­ver­ized by the new sources of con­struc­tive pol­icy advan­tage: loss advan­tage, respon­sive­ness, resilience, cre­ativ­ity, and dif­fer­ence.”

Imag­ine a pol­icy reform per­spec­tive that wasn’t about gar­ner­ing votes and upping the opin­ion poll mar­gin. Rather, imag­ine all pol­icy reform and imple­men­ta­tion being about social goods, decreas­ing bureau­cracy, cre­at­ing a resilient nation, cre­ative prob­lem solv­ing and a bet­ter world across generations.

5. Tomor­row is today

“20th cen­tury gov­ern­ments built value chains. 21st cen­tury gov­ern­ments are build­ing value cycles instead — because value cycles let them renew resources for TOMORROW, instead of merely exploit­ing them for TODAY. By uti­liz­ing value cycles, Con­struc­tive Gov­ern­ments are learn­ing to achieve not merely an indus­trial age pol­icy advan­tage, but are leap­ing past it, to attain a loss advan­tage.”

Cer­tainly, aware­ness of the need for sus­tain­able pol­icy is grow­ing, but it’s largely emerg­ing in the pro­gres­sive Left of pol­i­tics. I’d rather see it (notwith­stand­ing fun­da­men­tal ide­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences across the polit­i­cal spec­trum) appear­ing through­out. It’s cer­tainly doable, pre­sum­ing polit­i­cal expe­di­ency is aban­doned as a first prin­ci­ple. Even on the pro­gres­sive Left, expe­di­ency rules at times. Pol­icy reform ought to focus on renewal or even growth of resources and elim­i­na­tion or con­sump­tion of waste.

6. Peo­ple, not (inflex­i­ble) policy

“20th cen­tury gov­ern­ments build pol­icy propo­si­tions. 21st cen­tury gov­ern­ments hold value con­ver­sa­tions instead. Con­ver­sa­tions are had with, by, and for PEOPLE, NOT inert, mass-​​made “POLICY”. Con­ver­sa­tions are had with peo­ple, com­mu­ni­ties, and soci­ety – and they are the key to replac­ing inflex­i­ble pol­icy reac­tions with thought­ful respon­sive­ness.”

As a young pub­lic ser­vice grad­u­ate, I was taught that pol­icy is exactly that — pol­icy. It’s nei­ther law nor reg­u­la­tion and ought to be sub­ject to con­sid­er­a­tion before imple­men­ta­tion. That is, if the pol­icy doesn’t fit, do some­thing else that is bet­ter — ide­ally for the gov­ern­ment and the sub­ject of the pol­icy deci­sion. In the same way, this law con­sid­ers the bet­ter­ment of soci­ety before inflex­i­ble imple­men­ta­tion of policy.

7. Prin­ci­ples, not plans

“20th cen­tury gov­ern­ments build strate­gies. 21st cen­tury gov­ern­ments begin, instead, with philoso­phies. Philoso­phies express the “first PRINCIPLES” of authen­tic, endur­ing pol­icy cre­ation, NOT just near-​​term PLANS to cap­ture or extract value. They are the key to shift­ing past scale—to resilience.”

Ah, prin­ci­ple. With increas­ingly cen­trist gov­ern­ment across the demo­c­ra­tic spec­trum, the prin­ci­ples behind Left and Right are increas­ingly mean­ing­less. So, instead, let’s have gov­ern­ments come to the peo­ple with an agenda founded in philoso­phies that will inno­vate, cre­at­ing a resilient soci­ety, capa­ble of with­stand­ing change — polit­i­cal, social and envi­ron­men­tal — over a multi-​​generational long term.

8. Impos­si­ble, not possible

“Con­struc­tive Gov­ern­ments focus on achiev­ing the IMPOSSIBLE — NOT just set­tling for the hum­drum, worka­day POSSIBLE. Instead of com­pet­ing for votes and opin­ion, they are mas­ters of pol­icy cre­ativ­ity: the art of pop­ping new pol­icy agen­das into exis­tence that rivals have long since writ­ten off as undoable, unat­tain­able, or sim­ply impractical.”

Con­struc­tive Gov­ern­ment looks to ambi­tious pol­icy and pro­gram reform. They attempt (and ide­ally are suc­cess­ful) at fun­da­men­tal change; change that their rivals see as unachiev­able. Some­times, they’ll imple­ment those changes in the face of strong oppo­si­tion — from the short-​​term thinkers polit­i­cally and from soci­ety — because those changes will bring about a greater good. It’s an inter­est­ing thought.

9. Out­comes, not advantage

“20th cen­tury gov­ern­ments seek prag­matic pol­icy out­comes first, last, and always. 21stcen­tury gov­ern­ments know that the work they do, the stuff they imple­ment, and the words they say are all mean­ing­less unless it has resulted in tan­gi­ble, pos­i­tive OUTCOMES that enhance the well-​​being of peo­ple, com­mu­ni­ties, soci­ety, and future gen­er­a­tions—NOT just if it earns near-​​term ADVANTAGE. Mean­ing is the key to break­ing through the glass ceil­ing of super­fi­cial, skin-​​deep “dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion”, and instead mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. Think of it as the cherry on the dou­ble fudge triple choco­late sun­dae of thick value.”

Out­comes > out­puts. There’s a novel idea. It’s hard to take such a long view into the now. Gov­ern­ments in recent times talk a lot about this sort of thing; David Cameron’s Big Soci­ety is one such vision that appears to be turn­ing into so much talk. But exe­cu­tion is where it counts.

10. Smart beats dumb

“20th cen­tury gov­ern­ing often results in dumb pol­icy: pol­icy that is locally, glob­ally, and eco­nom­i­cally self-​​destructive. It’s built on con­sump­tion and expe­di­ency instead of social inno­va­tion and soci­etal invest­ment, and the rust­ing iron law of dimin­ish­ing returns. It’s a model left over from the indus­trial rev­o­lu­tion – and in the 21st cen­tury, it is fail­ing to pro­duce an authen­ti­cally shared pros­per­ity, rather it is prone to more and more fre­quent and vio­lent bub­bles, crashes, and crises. SMART pol­icy BEATS DUMB: it’s built on invest­ment in increas­ing returns for peo­ple, pro­grams and resources, whose real, uncertainty-​​adjusted returns are pos­i­tive sum.”

No side of pol­i­tics has a lock on dumb pol­icy. In fact, all of them are pretty good at it. And good at oppos­ing it. But then they come up with their own pol­icy clangers. I’d rather see all pol­icy for­ma­tion taken away from the on-​​the-​​fly doorstop inter­view sound grab, elec­tion period town halls and focus group opin­ions and founded in real research, informed from a wealth of diverse views and fac­tors — acad­e­mia, sci­ence, soci­ety, reg­u­lar peo­ple, sus­tain­abil­ity, cli­mate experts, Nobel Prize win­ners, plumbers, lit­tle kids.

11. Bet­ter is better

“In the 20th cen­tury, worse was often bet­ter. What was bet­ter for the pol­icy and bud­get bot­tom line was usu­ally worse for peo­ple, com­mu­ni­ties, and soci­ety. In the 21st cen­tury, the tables are turn­ing. BETTER IS BETTER. Con­struc­tive gov­ern­ments earn higher qual­ity pol­icy and bud­get out­comes by cre­at­ing value that accrues to peo­ple, com­mu­ni­ties, soci­ety, the nat­ural world, and future gen­er­a­tions alike – instead of harm­ing them by shift­ing costs to them or bor­row­ing ben­e­fits from them cre­at­ing short term bal­ance or sur­plus in the name of polit­i­cal expe­di­ency. In turn, they’re begin­ning to ren­der indus­trial age rivals who can only cre­ate thin value uncom­pet­i­tive, uncon­struc­tive, and just plain irrelevant.”

GFC, any­one? Urban plan­ning and devel­op­ment flaws in Bris­bane and other flood affected areas through­out Aus­tralia this Sum­mer? And have we, or will we really reform enough to avoid another round? Let’s have some gov­ern­ment that works with bet­ter in mind. At all levels.

12. Bet­ter than isn’t good enough

“Most gov­ern­ments still con­ceive of supe­ri­or­ity as being “bet­ter than” a cohort of imme­di­ate, famil­iar com­peti­tors; in par­tic­u­lar their polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion. Pre­pare for dis­rup­tion: the bar of suc­cess has just been knocked into the next galaxy. Con­struc­tive Gov­ern­ments aren’t merely seek­ing to be just a tiny, incre­men­tal bit “BETTER THAN” rivals in yesterday’s terms — because it ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH to cre­ate a con­struc­tive advan­tage. They are fun­da­men­tally redefin­ing what suc­cess means, to encom­pass mat­ter­ing most to peo­ple, com­mu­ni­ties, soci­ety, and future generations. When a Con­struc­tive Gov­ern­ment comes to town, good enough isn’t good enough – and often being “bet­ter than” in yesterday’s terms is a down­right disadvan­tage.”

More than any­thing, this Law reminds me of Seth Godin’s Pur­ple Cow. A bet­ter prod­uct isn’t enough, your prod­uct (or in the case of gov­ern­ment pol­icy and pro­gram) needs to be out­stand­ing! How long will it be before we see a Con­struc­tive Gov­ern­ment come to town? The elec­tion of the Obama gov­ern­ment, with its catch­cry of “Yes We Can” was seen by many as the promise of exactly this. Now, per­haps, the best we can do is com­pare that gov­ern­ment and its Pres­i­dent to a fic­tional one that seemed to be what was hoped for.

13. Rev­o­lu­tionise

“Here’s the com­pet­i­tive logic of the next decade: rev­o­lu­tionise — or get rev­o­lu­tionised. So the only ques­tion left is this: where’s your revolution?”

Well, yes. Quite.

Posted in Ideas.

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By craigthomler – 26 January, 2011

Will the UK’s Big Society form part of Australia’s Gov 2.0 Future?

Gov 2.0 and Open Government is becoming a global phenomenon and it is harder and harder for governments to ignore the changes in society, in economic and information flows and in citizen engagement.

The UK is possibly a little ahead of Australia in addressing some of these challenges, with their government having outlined its vision for future UK society last year.

Termed the Big Society, the vision involves empowering citizens, businesses and councils to work together to co-create and operate more effective public services. This approach is being enabled, in part, through greater government transparency, open copyright, Gov 2.0 approaches, use of social media tools and supported through a directed culture change program across politics, the public service and citizens.

The feature United nation at RSA Journal provides three perspectives on how the Big Society is beginning coming about.

While the UK is in a very different financial position to Australia, the same digital pressures are facing both our nations and many others around the world.

So will the UK’s Big Society form part of Australia’s Gov 2.0 Future?

Or will we forge our own unique destiny?

Posted in Commonwealth government, Culture, Governance, Governments, Ideas, International views, Local government, Policy, Practice, Service delivery.

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By craigthomler – 24 January, 2011

The World’s Top 10 Gov 2.0 Initiatives

By Darren Sharp, 19 January 2011

Originally published by Shareable Magazine

The Gov 2.0 movement continues to gain momentum around the world with a number of inspiring people, projects & ideas rising to prominence over the last year or so. Sometimes the most important innovations emerge from the periphery where creative citizens take a “do it first, ask for permission later” approach that can generate a wealth of benefits for the entire global community. So here’s my pick of the world’s best Gov 2.0 initiatives. What are your favourites?

10) SeeClickFix

SeeClickFix is a map-based citizen reporting platform that enables the public to report and track non-emergency related issues via web and mobile. Co-founder Ben Berkowitz developed the idea after getting frustrated with city hall’s lack of response to graffiti in his local neighbourhood. Governments can access a dashboard to acknowledge outstanding issues and close the loop with constituents. The service is similar to the UK site FixMyStreet built by open government pioneers MySociety.

9) Manor Labs

The City of Manor on the outskirts of Austin Texas with a population of only 6,500 has made a name for itself by embracing Gov 2.0 through its innovative use of online services. Manor Labs is the brainchild of CIO Dustin Haisler and has gained international recognition and won numerous awards for its ideas generation platform, pothole reporting system and use of QR codes. Manor in partnership with GovFresh ran a Gov 2.0 makeover for the City of De Leon and documented the steps to enable other local towns to emulate its efforts in municipal government innovation.

8) The Australian Government

The Australian Government have been leaders in the development of an open government policy framework through initiatives like the Government 2.0 Taskforce, the Declaration of Open Government and Ahead of the Game: Blueprint for Reform of Australian Government Administration. The Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) recently launched aGov 2.0 Primer which “is about putting the policy ideas and principles into action and providing examples of where and how agencies can engage with the public and release more data online.”

7) Public Sector Innovation

Christian Bason is the Director of MindLab, a cross-ministerial innovation unit in Denmark that develops engagement models for citizens, public servants and business to co-create public sector services. Christian’s new book Leading Public Sector Innovationoutlines his service design model for co-creation involving the seven activities of framing, knowing, analysing, synthesising, creating, scaling and learning. The slide decks ofChristian’s recently delivered Masterclass and public lecture series present a valuable distillation of some high-level themes from the book.

6) Place-based creative problem-solving

Photo by urbangrammar on Flickr

“How much does a city trust its citizens?” asks Chiara Camponeschi in the opening of her publication The Enabling City, an ideas packed toolkit for urban-based social innovation & sustainability. Chiara developed the work for her Master’s degree as a means to demonstrate the “potential of participatory governance and co-design in moving cities and communities towards a more sustainable future.” It’s packed full of creative thinking about active citizenship and I especially love the idea of seeding local communities with a “Social Innovation Mayor” to drive long-term structural change through open leadership.

5) Kate Lundy's Public Sphere

Senator Kate Lundy (Australian Parliament) was named the winner of the International Top 10 People Changing the World of Internet and Politics at the 11th World eDemocracy Forum held in Paris, October 2010. Senator Lundy has been a strong advocate of Gov 2.0 for Australia and has actively used open government principles for her work in public office through an innovative series of Public Sphere consultations that used a unique
co-design methodology for policy collaboration.

4) Crisis Commons

CrisisCommons came out of the CrisisCamp movement of volunteers who collaborate to develop open tools and aggregate crisis data to assist response organisations in civil incident management. Its efforts were recently recognised by a two year, $1.2 million dollar grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation which will enable the organisation to continue its commons-based approach to crisis management. Random Hacks of Kindness is a spin-off project that mobilizes the global developer community to “hack for humanity” and develop code that responds to global challenges.

3) CityCamp

CityCamp was founded by Kevin Curry in 2010 as a Gov 2.0 unconference to catalyse innovation in local government. The success of the first camp in Chicago inspired a number of other cities to host their own events in London, San Francisco and St. Petersburg, Russia. CityCamp refers to itself as an “open source brand” that uses a repeatable pattern with step-by-step instructions protected under a Creative Commons license. The rapid spread of CityCamp’s model might come down to the founders #1 goal to: “create outcomes that participants will act upon after the event is over.”

2) Ushahidi

What is the Ushahidi Platform? from Ushahidi on Vimeo.

Ushahidi (which means "testimony" in Swahili), was first developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. The site has grown to become an important resource for citizen journalists in times of crisis like the Haiti earthquake. The Ushahidi platform provides tools for communities to crowdsource real-time information using SMS, email, Twitter and the web. Check out this Ushahidi-powered interactive map of the Queensland (Australia) floods and recovery effort put together by the ABC.

1) Wikileaks

The diplomatic storm unleashed by Wikileaks in what’s come to be known as “cablegate” has stress-tested the US and its allies commitment to the principles of open government. Wikileaks has demonstrated that governments consider “openness” a virtue so long as it doesn’t embarrass them or reveal that realpolitik is still alive and well. Wikileaks has changed the Gov 2.0 game by exposing governments and world leaders to the powerful forces of radical transparency and giving citizens access to a body of evidence that can be used to scrutinise critical decisions made in our name.

Posted in Business view, Citizen view, Commonwealth government, Culture, Governance, Governments, Ideas, Local government, Policy, Practice, Service delivery, State and Territory governments.

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By craigthomler – 20 January, 2011

Public opinion research or public engagement: Which is the policy tool of the future?

by Don Lenihan, Vice President, Engagement, Public Policy Forum, 17 January 2011

This is copied with permission from the public engagement online community.

Public opinion research (POR) is likely the most influential policy tool of the last few decades. It helps clarify public debate by providing a methodologically rigorous way of assigning weights to different views, and, as such, helps guide strategists, planners and decision-makers. But will it continue to enjoy this privileged position in the future? There are good reasons to doubt it.

As the term “public opinion research” suggests, POR measures people’s opinions or views on an issue. Not so long ago, knowing a lot about people’s views at one moment told us a lot about what their views would likely be later on, maybe even 10 years later on. Opinions were more stable and, as a result, the future was more predictable.

The reasons are well known. Societies like Canada and Australia were culturally and racially more homogeneous; the public was less well educated and far more deferent to leaders and institutions; people often lived and died in the same community; the world moved more slowly; things were simpler and less interconnected.

This is changing. Globalization, new technologies, education, travel and immigration are dissolving many of the bonds that held societies together, fragmenting views and rendering public opinion more volatile. In practice, this means there will be less coherence and resilience in the public’s views, making POR a much less reliable guide to interpreting them. Even where a relatively clear message exists, the chances that it will shift unexpectedly are growing.

The 2010 municipal elections in Calgary and Toronto may be harbingers here. In both cases, candidates whom the polls suggested had virtually no chance of winning at the outset unexpectedly roared ahead to become the new mayors. We now know that the use of social networking tools such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are major contributors to this kind of volatility. Explosive growth in their use suggests this volatility will intensify.

These changes have major implications for politics and government. Leaders can no longer count on the kind of stability and cohesion they used to take for granted. Nevertheless, effective planning requires both. As a result, strengthening social cohesion will almost certainly be an emerging concern.

If so, there is really only one viable strategy for this. Communities of all sorts can adopt goals that their members-businesses, organizations and/or individuals-will plan and organize around together. This, in turn, will create new relationships, and new forms of stability, cohesiveness and resilience to change. This mirrors what we do in our personal lives.

As children, our social environment is defined by the routines our parents and care-givers establish. As we mature, we interact more with the outside world, which, in turn, exposes us to new things and makes our world less stable and more complex. As we become adults, we move out into the world and, as we do, we must make choices about the kind of life we want to live. For example, we will likely choose a spouse, a career, a place to live, plan for a family or save for retirement. All these activities involve setting goals, then organizing around them. This gives our life direction and purpose and, at the same time, builds relationships and creates stability and resilience to change.

The same is true for our society. In the past, as in childhood, choice played a less critical role. The key forces of social cohesion-forces such as culture, language and religion-were passed down from generation to generation through institutions and practices. By-and-large, people did not choose their core values, social roles or basic beliefs. They were acquired passively through participation in a culture and a way of life. Someone who was born an Irish catholic in the early part of the 20th century likely also died one.

As a result, our grandparents were called on to make far fewer life-defining choices than us. That is changing. As our environment becomes less stable, we must make more choices to compensate by creating stability. Moreover, if the current generation is called on to make more life-defining choices than their grandparents, then their children will be called upon to make even more than them. The trend is accelerating and there is no end in sight.

A key challenge for the future will be to counterbalance this historic surge in centrifugal forces, not just as individuals, but also as communities. Policy is an important tool here. If communities can set long-term goals, this can help provide stability. However, for this to work, community members must arrive at these goals together, through deliberation and dialogue. If the members have had no real part in making the choice, they will not feel committed to the goals, and so will be far less likely to mobilize around them.

This brings us back to POR. Although the methodology is no less valid than before, the conditions that made it so attractive to decision-makers are changing. Increasingly, POR will not answer their needs. Not just because the findings are less reliable, but because, as a leader, it is no longer enough to know what people’s views are. Leaders must challenge them to go beyond simply having opinions and ask them to start making decisions- together.

This is where public engagement comes in. If POR provides a methodology for weighing views, public engagement provides a methodology for turning views into shared goals; and that is the overarching challenge for the future. The question now is whether our leaders are ready, willing and able to take us there.

Comments, please…

Don

View and comment on the original at Public opinion research or public engagement: Which is the policy tool of the future?

Posted in Governments, Ideas, International views, Policy.

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By craigthomler – 19 January, 2011