Rialtas.net – Government 2.0

Tom Watson MP Minister for Transformational Government, Cabinet Office

Below is an excerpt from the speech he gave at the Tower ‘08 conference on 10th March 2008.

You are all in this room today because you “get it”.

You know that the way that government configures public services is going to change beyond comprehension in years to come and you want to be part of it.

We all of us in this room understand the possibilities of technological advance.

Our challenge is to use it to make a difference to the lives of people we are all here to serve.

I began to understand the change going on in the world when I set up a political blog five years ago.

At the time it was seen as a radical act. People could not believe that I had opened myself up to such scrutiny and occasional daily abuse. I sometimes still wonder about that bit myself.

But the blog broke down the walls between legislators and electors in a way that interested me so I persevered.

Yesterday I read with regret the story of an anonymous civil servant blogger by the name of Civil Serf. Her bluntly written blog about life in Whitehall was taken down, after it came to the attention of the national press. Now, I’m not going to say that we should tear up the civil service code it’s very important that civil servants play by the rules, nor do I agree with everything she says, but surely a truly transformed government would be one in which speaking engagingly about life our public services would be far from newsworthy, and far from career wrecking.

When the MySociety people established the theyworkforyou web site, I began to understand how the old order of things was going to change.

Put simply, I began to understand the power of information.

So let me tell you where I stand.

I believe in the power of mass collaboration.

I believe that as James Surowiecki says ‘the many are smarter than the few’.

I believe that the old hierarchies in which government policy is made and crucially for you in this room the way in which it is delivered – are going to change for ever.

People tell me that we are entering a post-bureaucratic age. I don’t accept that. It?s just old thinking – laissez faire ideas with a new badge.

The future of government is to provide tools for empowerment, not to sit back and hope that laissez-faire adhocracy will suffice.

And as Kevin Kelly says “the bottom is not enough”.

A post bureaucratic age misunderstands the idea of an enabling state, one that moderates collaborative activity for a shared social good.

The collaborative state still requires leaders and enablers, doers and thinkers. It still requires public services but services with boundaries porous to external ideas.

Read the full speech here

http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/?p=1899